It feels like a lifetime since I posted last. Only 3 months in reality but it feels like ages. I guess I should recap versus waxing poetic about any one topic.
As the days crept on toward Parent/Teacher Conferences I grew more and more anxious. This was despite the fact that Lilah's teacher had been keeping me updated frequently about her progress. When the night came, I was sick and shaky. We sat down in the tiny plastic chairs and talked. Areas of concern included fine motor skills and delay in initiating work. Lilah preferred to look around the room and watch everyone else instead of doing her own work. When she got started, she usually completed it to some degree of accuracy. Modifications had been put in place, like allowing her to write on a white board to prevent fatigue and encouraging her to pick up cotton balls with tweezers to strengthen her hand (an activity she adored for some reason).
Areas of praise included her sweetness, attentiveness, quietness (!!), self-control, and what a good friend she was. I voiced concern about the Common Core requirement for the children, to be reading when they leave kindergarten. I saw some fiery Irish spirit come out as Mrs. McNeil walked to the bookshelf and said, "They not only want them to be reading, but reading at THIS level." She thrust a picture book at me, and let me tell you, it wasn't See Spot Run. It was a complex book for a 5 year old. We were assured that not every child is developmentally able to meet that requirement and the 1st grade teachers were well aware that not every incoming student would be reading.
Socially, Lilah is blossoming but navigating some difficult waters for someone so small. Whether it was the boy with the probable crush who woos by punching or the boy with anger problems who pulled out a fistful of her hair "to take home" or the girl no one likes because she's mean who reacts to loneliness by being meaner, there were new situations every day that required a nigh-adult level of maturity to understand. Lilah has had two meetings mediated by the teacher to reach an understanding with someone who harmed her physically. Both times she was prompted gently to say she accepted an apology in lieu of "That's okay," because the behavior was definitely not okay.
When she was being teased that she didn't really have a baby in her tummy and wasn't really a mommy during free choice time, I tried to lessen her anger by cautiously reminding her that her "baby" didn't have a father, so was probably just a pretend fetus. She tossed her blonde hair and said, "Maia (her friend) has two mommies and no daddy and she's not pretend." So I quit while I was behind and let her go back to cramming Eloise up her sweatshirt and walking around with one plastic leg hanging down like a strip of forgotten toilet paper trailing behind her.
Thanksgiving was a quiet, Alexander-only affair. The week after I took Lilah to do some Christmas shopping for cousins. She was dressed in her holiday dress from the year before, a red velvet and lace concoction with a matching ribbon-bedecked cloche. We had barely entered Somerset when she announced, "I need to see Santa." She had always shied away from the experience in years past so I was surprised, but shrugged and queued up to see the big guy. We hadn't been waiting long before an Elf greeted us to usher us back to the holding pen where all the other children and parents were being kept. Lilah told the Elf, "My daddy couldn't be here with me today." The Elf aww'd accordingly and asked if he had to work. "No, he drank too many beers and is throwing up in the bathroom." The blood drained out of my face and I assured the Elf (who had her eyebrow raised at me) that he only had the stomach flu and had not consumed ANY beers. She nodded, clearly not buying it, and gave Lilah a pitying glance before we went in to see Santa. She told him what she wanted for Christmas - an Elsa bag for ballet, fuzzy blue Frozen slippers, a new dress for Eloise and Caroline, and the Lego figures of Emmet and his friends from the Lego Movie. The other Elves were trying to get a picture of her but she wouldn't look up. I snapped one of her explaining her list to Santa and it was very genuine and sweet. They got a few half-baked smiles. I suggested they tell her to stop smiling and look angry instead. They got the big, defiant Lilah grin I knew they would. When we were checking out, the first Elf whispered to the others what Lilah had told her about her drunk daddy. After seeing Santa, all children were given 3 "Santa coins" and a list of stores in the mall where they could redeem them for things like hot cocoa, ornaments, and cookies. They patted her on the head and said, "Poor thing," before handing her 7 Santa coins and sending her on her way with looks of disgust for her mother, who was clearly in denial of her father's drinking problem. I shook my head and shuffled her along, the little liar.
We were invited to the Larsen Christmas celebration with my aunt and cousins this year. It was such a special thing for me to be able to attend a gathering of my family members. Other than my grandmother's funeral, it was the only time we'd all been together since well before I got married. Lilah was recovering from pneumonia after a nasty run-in with Thanksgiving Day croup left her immune system pretty ravaged. She was bundled in a flannel nightgown and snuggled on top of an old trunk covered with pillows and blankets. She watched the other kids play, joining in now and again before going back to her perch. She said a few times, "I didn't know there would be so many girls." Her dad's side of the family is definitely boy-heavy when it comes to cousins. On my side, Isaac and Bentley (5 and 3) were then only small boys in a flock of girls. Most of the children were blonde. For the first time since I had her, it actually felt like she belonged to my family too. In addition to the kid gift exchange where she received a Frozen-themed board game and was over the moon, she listened to a reading of the Nativity and received a gift from my Aunt Beth. There was a copy of the children's book The Box House that she wrote recently (excellent, by the way), and a new outfit for Caroline - a beautiful dress and hooded cape. She ran off to get Caroline to change her, clutching her gifts and smiling. Even Dano and I received a gift of several new movies and a cookbook. I was caught off guard and so thankful. It was more than I'd grown to expect out of Christmas, getting to be in a family setting where I didn't inherently feel like an outsider graciously allowed into someone else's family circle.
I'm not sure if it was the contrast of going back to feeling like an outsider, or if it was just the holiday itself, but actual Christmas was a little bit awful for me this year. Dano had parents, grandparents, and siblings in town for a big celebration. There were several dinners, outings, and the usual holiday gift exchanges and cookie decorating afternoons. I spent 100% of my spare time either shopping, cleaning, or preparing for those different obligations. I cut my sleep by 1-2 hours per night. I wrapped gifts, knitted furiously, cooked, and cleaned until sometimes late into the night. In his defense, I couldn't have done it without Dano. He pulled more than his weight and tried to keep my sanity in check as well. It felt like as soon as I'd met one obligation, the clock started ticking to the next one and I hated the feeling. I'd be plunged back into work for 8 hours, only to resurface gasping (it's flu season) and launch into the next scheduled activity. I finished up all my work for Christmas Eve and raced home, only to have Dano tell me Lilah was with cousins decorating cookies. It hurt my heart a little that she was, once again, making all these Christmas memories this year without me. She was still having fun, but I felt like I was missing everything in an attempt to do it all. I got a text that she was worn out and weepy so I picked her up and took her home. We changed into pajamas, I threw a gingerbread in the oven, and we crawled into bed. I held her and she said, "You know, I think I just needed some Mama time." Tears trickled down my nose into her hair.
"I definitely needed some Lilah time. What do you want to do?"
"Um, can we watch Gilmore Girls and do a craft?" So that's where Dano found us 2 hours later, hands covered in glitter.
We had Christmas Eve at his sister's house later that night and it went fine. I was a little subdued but tried to fake it. I wasn't joyful, I wasn't merry. I just was. It didn't feel good. I tried to relax on Christmas and take the day to enjoy the people I loved. It wasn't bad, as long as I kept pushing the fact I had to go right back to work the next morning out of my head.
On the 26th, Lilah was morose and sulky all morning. She said she just wanted her family to be home with her. I told her she could tell her Grannie if she felt bad and she'd take care of it. I got a text at 8:38 that she missed her mama, along with a sad face picture. I'm sure Lilah was just being dramatic but it still hurt me. She called me shortly after that to say she was lonely and she missed me. I stepped out and cried. What was the point of all the rushing around and planning and events if I couldn't even spend time with my kid? What if she'd gotten pneumonia because I was too busy to take care of her properly over Thanksgiving? I got it together and worked as hard as I could to get out early. I sent my mother-in-law and Dano a text at 2:30 that I'd probably be able to leave at 3. I was elated. I could spent 2 hours with Lilah just playing, and then the adults were supposed to go out to dinner around 6. At least I'd get some playtime in. I called my father-in-law on the way home to let him know I was out of work and see where they were. He told me they were all at the DIA downtown. My heart sank. It was one of my favorite places, and I was missing that too. It didn't sound like they were anywhere near done. There was just silence on the phone. "Well." I swallowed hard to keep from crying. "I guess just let me know when you're back?" He said he would and hung up. I burst into tears. When I got home, I just turned out all the lights and crawled into bed, feeling miserable. Dory was concerned and confused but couldn't get her short legs up on the bed, so just kept trying to jump up and falling halfway down like an idiot. Dano tried to talk to me and pat my back but nothing made it better. I felt like I was trying to do everything everyone wanted and doing none of it well. I had seen status updates and photos of the Ferrell Christmas and that hurt came rushing back fresh, that I was an outsider in my own family as well as the family I married into. I just stayed in bed when someone finally brought Lilah back around 5:30. Dano said we weren't going out to dinner, which I told him was a mistake. We'd already committed to it. He said he didn't care and declared it a family night. He got takeout and we watched Peg + Cat's Christmas special. I sorted all my new yarn, which helped cheer me up. I did crafts with Lilah and we snuggled. I still feel this lingering sadness hovering on the edge of my life right now. I'm keeping busy at work and home to avoid it like a healthy American adult. I have some time off around the New Year I'm hoping can breathe some life back into my, well, life. I'm tired of feeling like an exhausted ghost, just floating listlessly from one event to another. I don't know where along the way I lost my joy, but what is a holiday worth without it? I can say from experience, not very much.
Merry Christmas to all...
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
For good
I know I just posted, but it really does seem like so much has changed. Lilah Rose has changed.
She hasn't been helpless in a long time, but she has always vacillated between independence and laziness, wanting to do everything for herself except when it comes to chores and boring things she should actually be doing. But I am astonished at the change in my child after only 4 days in kindergarten.
The first 4 days I walked her to her hallway and every day, she wanted to do more and more on her own. She wanted to hang up her own backpack, despite the hook being taller than she was. She remembered to mark herself down for bag lunch. She tried hard every day to remember her routine, to get her lunch bag into the correct bin, get everything she brought back into her backpack to take home. By Friday it was apparent she didn't need to be walked in. She kept telling me, echoing Chihiro's last line in Spirited Away, "I can handle it."
Lilah helped me all weekend with anything I needed, from chores to shopping to baking. She visited her cousin in the hospital. She spent 4 hours making muffins and bread with me. She slept in and snuggled in the mornings, but kept talking about how she couldn't wait to be back at school. My heart felt so at ease. She said she was so happy she chose Kennedy to be her school.
On the way to the store, she requested (per usual) her Pandora station instead of whatever I was listening to at the time. I switched it on. She chirped song after song until For Good from Wicked came on. I looked in the rear view mirror at the happy face of the little lady in the backseat and my eyes blurred. I was so proud of who she was, small as she was. She was my every shortcoming made right and I was so blessed she had chosen me to be her mother. I have always felt like she was my redemption, and few times more than that moment, for whatever reason. Half in jest but half in earnest I sang the first few lines to her.
"I'm limited. Just look at me. I'm limited. And look at you, you can do all I couldn't do." Never to be outdone, of course she joined in with equal parts drama and sincerity.
"I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn, as we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them, and we help them in return. Now I don't know if I believe that's true. But I know I'm who I am today because I knew you. Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better, but because I knew you I have been changed for good." She cocked her head and widened her eyes, nodding at me to cue me in. I laughed at her.
"It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part: so much of me is made from what I learned from you..." I choked and stopped. It was wholly how I felt. No, of course we weren't separated friends never to meet again like Elphaba and Glinda. But we were inexplicably linked to one another and she has truly taught me as much as I could ever hope to teach her and now she was making her way in the world without me. No tears escaped, but I couldn't sing the next line and shook my head. Lilah knew. She always knows. She picked it up.
"You'll be with me, like a handprint on my heart." She smiled and laid one hand over her heart. I got it together and by the last chorus, we sang it together.
"Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea. Like a seed dropped by a bird in the woods. Who can say if I've been changed for the better. I do believe I have been changed for the better. Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
This morning, Lilah Rose took a rolling backpack filled with zucchini and dark chocolate muffins for snack as well as her own backpack, lunch, and water bottle. I unloaded her from the Versa and nudged her across the parking lot once there was a break in the line of cars snaking their way through the drop-off line. She went in with a friend, waving behind her. I told her to have a good day, and that I loved her, and she disappeared into the school. I had a harder time with that than her first day of kindergarten. I texted Dano how she'd gotten on, what she'd done. He asked how I was. He, like Lilah, always knows. I thought about it. How was I doing? I looked at the double doors of the elementary school and pictured my only child walking confidently down the hallways, happily looking forward to learning and friends and her teacher. Such a strong, amazing girl. I truly am who I am today because of this tiny human. I texted him back.
"I'm just so proud of her."
She hasn't been helpless in a long time, but she has always vacillated between independence and laziness, wanting to do everything for herself except when it comes to chores and boring things she should actually be doing. But I am astonished at the change in my child after only 4 days in kindergarten.
The first 4 days I walked her to her hallway and every day, she wanted to do more and more on her own. She wanted to hang up her own backpack, despite the hook being taller than she was. She remembered to mark herself down for bag lunch. She tried hard every day to remember her routine, to get her lunch bag into the correct bin, get everything she brought back into her backpack to take home. By Friday it was apparent she didn't need to be walked in. She kept telling me, echoing Chihiro's last line in Spirited Away, "I can handle it."
Lilah helped me all weekend with anything I needed, from chores to shopping to baking. She visited her cousin in the hospital. She spent 4 hours making muffins and bread with me. She slept in and snuggled in the mornings, but kept talking about how she couldn't wait to be back at school. My heart felt so at ease. She said she was so happy she chose Kennedy to be her school.
On the way to the store, she requested (per usual) her Pandora station instead of whatever I was listening to at the time. I switched it on. She chirped song after song until For Good from Wicked came on. I looked in the rear view mirror at the happy face of the little lady in the backseat and my eyes blurred. I was so proud of who she was, small as she was. She was my every shortcoming made right and I was so blessed she had chosen me to be her mother. I have always felt like she was my redemption, and few times more than that moment, for whatever reason. Half in jest but half in earnest I sang the first few lines to her.
"I'm limited. Just look at me. I'm limited. And look at you, you can do all I couldn't do." Never to be outdone, of course she joined in with equal parts drama and sincerity.
"I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn, as we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them, and we help them in return. Now I don't know if I believe that's true. But I know I'm who I am today because I knew you. Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood. Who can say if I've been changed for the better, but because I knew you I have been changed for good." She cocked her head and widened her eyes, nodding at me to cue me in. I laughed at her.
"It well may be that we will never meet again in this lifetime, so let me say before we part: so much of me is made from what I learned from you..." I choked and stopped. It was wholly how I felt. No, of course we weren't separated friends never to meet again like Elphaba and Glinda. But we were inexplicably linked to one another and she has truly taught me as much as I could ever hope to teach her and now she was making her way in the world without me. No tears escaped, but I couldn't sing the next line and shook my head. Lilah knew. She always knows. She picked it up.
"You'll be with me, like a handprint on my heart." She smiled and laid one hand over her heart. I got it together and by the last chorus, we sang it together.
"Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea. Like a seed dropped by a bird in the woods. Who can say if I've been changed for the better. I do believe I have been changed for the better. Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
This morning, Lilah Rose took a rolling backpack filled with zucchini and dark chocolate muffins for snack as well as her own backpack, lunch, and water bottle. I unloaded her from the Versa and nudged her across the parking lot once there was a break in the line of cars snaking their way through the drop-off line. She went in with a friend, waving behind her. I told her to have a good day, and that I loved her, and she disappeared into the school. I had a harder time with that than her first day of kindergarten. I texted Dano how she'd gotten on, what she'd done. He asked how I was. He, like Lilah, always knows. I thought about it. How was I doing? I looked at the double doors of the elementary school and pictured my only child walking confidently down the hallways, happily looking forward to learning and friends and her teacher. Such a strong, amazing girl. I truly am who I am today because of this tiny human. I texted him back.
"I'm just so proud of her."
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Leaving the nest
A little back story. We all went to the kindergarten Open House and Ice Cream Social the week before school started. Lilah got to meet her teacher, find her locker, and explore her classroom. She found that they did indeed have toys (we weren't sure. Public school these days seems all business). She cuddled a baby doll, played with a kitchen and cash register, built something at a work bench, and found at least 4 toy phones to talk on. One had princesses. She asked her new teacher, Mrs. McNeil, why there were so many phones and where they had all come from. She informed Lilah that parents through the years had donated phones, and her own boys had grown out of their phones and they had all made their way to the classroom. "Everybody likes phones." Something about this conversation drew Lilah in, because she left what she was doing and meandered over to where I was filling out questionnaires.
"Mama, I have school questions."
"Well babe, I don't have those answers. How are you going to solve this problem?" She thought about it and walked cautiously to her teacher.
"Excuse me. I have some questions." I stopped writing and watched. She smiled at Lilah and asked what kind of questions she had. "How is school going to work?" Mrs McNeil laughed. I tried to beam my thoughts into her head. Don't blow her off. Make her trust you. Let her know you can solve problems she has. This means more to her than you know. This is a test. I watched her take Lilah to a little table. She got down and had a chat with her. She told Lilah that it was her job to teach Lilah about letters and their sounds, and Lilah's job to be a curious learner, to learn how to learn, that they would be scientists and mathematicians and scientists. The list went on and Lilah beamed, telling her she was already working on those things. "I'm really glad I'm in your class!" She happily went back to playing and I choked back tears but a few got out. She was excited to start school, learn, and have a new teacher. She was nervous and wanted to know what to expect and this woman had put her mind at ease. It might just all be okay.
That day I was mentally avoiding crept up on me, mostly due to Dano's surprise party being my primary occupation for the holiday weekend. A great crowd of people, burgers and brats, water balloons and cake made for a memorable birthday and Labor Day. I spent the latter part of the evening wandering around like a ghost, trying to find more stuff to clean so I wouldn't have to think about the next morning. Which inevitably came.
Lilah Rose was up and out of bed with bright eyes and a smile. She poked ceremoniously at her raspberry scone, got dressed in a crazy-looking, mismatched outfit before remembering she had laid out a back to school outfit the night before. Uncharacteristically for me my stomach didn't hurt with anxiety. I was just focused on getting us all out the door on time. My stomach did start to hurt on the drive there. Dano and I walked her to her hallway, to her locker. I took so much comfort from seeing other parental anxiety on the faces of parents I've known and grown with through preschool, birthdays, snow days, and sick days. Now our kids were in school together for the foreseeable future. There were seasoned parents with encouraging smiles and friendly nods. Lilah walked confidently into her classroom and started building a tower, proudly sporting a name hat. She hugged us, we stood there awkwardly for a few minutes, and just sort of backed out of the room. I followed Dano down the hallway to the cafeteria where the PTA brunch was about to start. You know that feeling when you leave your purse or your phone someplace, that naked, exposed, forgetful feeling? It was like that, times a thousand. Dano said how proud he was of her, that we'd given her all the tools she needed to handle today. We mingled during brunch then drove home. We spent the afternoon at Ikea replacing flood losses and buying Lilah a big girl twin bed to surprise her after school. I checked my phone a hundred times. We went home to put the hellish Ikea furniture together. I checked my phone some more. The last time she had been at a school, she'd gotten a concussion.
I counted down the hours until I was finally on my way to pick her up after the longest day ever. It had felt so wrong. Like having a phantom limb. We'd spent 5 years keeping her alive and close by. Leaving her with strangers all day felt counter intuitive. I collected her from the line of tiny people, re-entered the school to collect most of her things that she'd forgotten to grab, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to extract information about the day. She'd loved everything. The worst part of her day was leaving school. The tiny anxiety voice in the back of my head whispered, "They still aren't learning anything yet. It all might change then." She did have a blue note in her backpack indicating she'd broken a rule and we were supposed to talk to her about it and return it the next day. It didn't say which rule or what had happened. Lilah had circled "Safety" and "show respect" and drawn a stick person on it. My heart sunk and I emailed Mrs. McNeil, who apologized for the mix up and said it was just in the scrap paper pile the kids colored, not to worry.
Today Dano picked her up, and while I made dinner I again asked 50 questions in hopes of getting 5 answers. She told me that she'd felt upset at one point and had missed me, so she took a break in the bathroom to cry and calm down. This broke my heart, but I took comfort in the fact the teacher hadn't mentioned it, so it couldn't have been too bad and she had handled it on her own. During her bath she kept going on and on about the letter B. I asked her what she was talking about Bs for.
"B is for Belle, Mama. Mrs. McNeil asked me to go get a B, and I did, and I brought it to her and we talked about Bs. They say ba ba ba, B B B. Ba ba ba. I know all about Bs and she said 'Great job!'" I was brushing her hair after her bath at that point, and for the first time I had to fight hard to keep the tears from flowing. She had learned so much, grown so much over the summer. We had found a great learning/fun balance and she had come far with her letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. It's not reading or anything, but the first learning-related thing I'd heard about, it sounded like she'd done what she was supposed to do. It was all happening so fast but she was doing so well. I couldn't be sad in good conscience. She loved school, loved her teacher, was excited about learning and trying new things. I liked seeing her principal very present at the school, high-fiving kids and greeting parents. The school and PTA was excellent at communicating goings-on with parents. Lilah was eating her whole lunch and playing hard, coming home and eating ravenously. She was happy and well adjusted and we're so proud of her. I'm taking it one day at a time, emotionally. It doesn't feel real, or maybe it feels a little too real. How on earth did we get here?
"Mama, I have school questions."
"Well babe, I don't have those answers. How are you going to solve this problem?" She thought about it and walked cautiously to her teacher.
"Excuse me. I have some questions." I stopped writing and watched. She smiled at Lilah and asked what kind of questions she had. "How is school going to work?" Mrs McNeil laughed. I tried to beam my thoughts into her head. Don't blow her off. Make her trust you. Let her know you can solve problems she has. This means more to her than you know. This is a test. I watched her take Lilah to a little table. She got down and had a chat with her. She told Lilah that it was her job to teach Lilah about letters and their sounds, and Lilah's job to be a curious learner, to learn how to learn, that they would be scientists and mathematicians and scientists. The list went on and Lilah beamed, telling her she was already working on those things. "I'm really glad I'm in your class!" She happily went back to playing and I choked back tears but a few got out. She was excited to start school, learn, and have a new teacher. She was nervous and wanted to know what to expect and this woman had put her mind at ease. It might just all be okay.
That day I was mentally avoiding crept up on me, mostly due to Dano's surprise party being my primary occupation for the holiday weekend. A great crowd of people, burgers and brats, water balloons and cake made for a memorable birthday and Labor Day. I spent the latter part of the evening wandering around like a ghost, trying to find more stuff to clean so I wouldn't have to think about the next morning. Which inevitably came.
Lilah Rose was up and out of bed with bright eyes and a smile. She poked ceremoniously at her raspberry scone, got dressed in a crazy-looking, mismatched outfit before remembering she had laid out a back to school outfit the night before. Uncharacteristically for me my stomach didn't hurt with anxiety. I was just focused on getting us all out the door on time. My stomach did start to hurt on the drive there. Dano and I walked her to her hallway, to her locker. I took so much comfort from seeing other parental anxiety on the faces of parents I've known and grown with through preschool, birthdays, snow days, and sick days. Now our kids were in school together for the foreseeable future. There were seasoned parents with encouraging smiles and friendly nods. Lilah walked confidently into her classroom and started building a tower, proudly sporting a name hat. She hugged us, we stood there awkwardly for a few minutes, and just sort of backed out of the room. I followed Dano down the hallway to the cafeteria where the PTA brunch was about to start. You know that feeling when you leave your purse or your phone someplace, that naked, exposed, forgetful feeling? It was like that, times a thousand. Dano said how proud he was of her, that we'd given her all the tools she needed to handle today. We mingled during brunch then drove home. We spent the afternoon at Ikea replacing flood losses and buying Lilah a big girl twin bed to surprise her after school. I checked my phone a hundred times. We went home to put the hellish Ikea furniture together. I checked my phone some more. The last time she had been at a school, she'd gotten a concussion.
I counted down the hours until I was finally on my way to pick her up after the longest day ever. It had felt so wrong. Like having a phantom limb. We'd spent 5 years keeping her alive and close by. Leaving her with strangers all day felt counter intuitive. I collected her from the line of tiny people, re-entered the school to collect most of her things that she'd forgotten to grab, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to extract information about the day. She'd loved everything. The worst part of her day was leaving school. The tiny anxiety voice in the back of my head whispered, "They still aren't learning anything yet. It all might change then." She did have a blue note in her backpack indicating she'd broken a rule and we were supposed to talk to her about it and return it the next day. It didn't say which rule or what had happened. Lilah had circled "Safety" and "show respect" and drawn a stick person on it. My heart sunk and I emailed Mrs. McNeil, who apologized for the mix up and said it was just in the scrap paper pile the kids colored, not to worry.
Today Dano picked her up, and while I made dinner I again asked 50 questions in hopes of getting 5 answers. She told me that she'd felt upset at one point and had missed me, so she took a break in the bathroom to cry and calm down. This broke my heart, but I took comfort in the fact the teacher hadn't mentioned it, so it couldn't have been too bad and she had handled it on her own. During her bath she kept going on and on about the letter B. I asked her what she was talking about Bs for.
"B is for Belle, Mama. Mrs. McNeil asked me to go get a B, and I did, and I brought it to her and we talked about Bs. They say ba ba ba, B B B. Ba ba ba. I know all about Bs and she said 'Great job!'" I was brushing her hair after her bath at that point, and for the first time I had to fight hard to keep the tears from flowing. She had learned so much, grown so much over the summer. We had found a great learning/fun balance and she had come far with her letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. It's not reading or anything, but the first learning-related thing I'd heard about, it sounded like she'd done what she was supposed to do. It was all happening so fast but she was doing so well. I couldn't be sad in good conscience. She loved school, loved her teacher, was excited about learning and trying new things. I liked seeing her principal very present at the school, high-fiving kids and greeting parents. The school and PTA was excellent at communicating goings-on with parents. Lilah was eating her whole lunch and playing hard, coming home and eating ravenously. She was happy and well adjusted and we're so proud of her. I'm taking it one day at a time, emotionally. It doesn't feel real, or maybe it feels a little too real. How on earth did we get here?
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Girl meets world
I've seen a lot in the media lately where moms post something heartwarming, outrageous, or emotionally moving, people rally around them, and it turns out to be at least partially fabricated in order to gain attention. Random mom posts an anecdote about how she hates her body, but her kids tell her she's beautiful, stretch marks and all. These got a lot of negative commentary, claiming the women only posted so a bunch of strangers would comment on how beautiful they were to boost their egos. Fabricated stories or not, women's bodies have garnered a lot of attention in the media lately. Not just women's bodies, but women in general. Their health, sexuality, independence, public voice, and ability to stand up for themselves have been hot topics in the past few months. I've found myself swept up in it, not only because I'm a woman myself, but because I'm raising a small one.
Now obviously I don't think a man should make more than I do simply for having a penis, and I'll shout as loud as anyone if a bunch of cranky old white dudes think they should have ANY say in the goings on inside my uterus. I don't take kindly to cat-calling and street harassing, and I will call out any man who thinks it's his prerogative to do so, unless he wants to call out how I look like I'd be a good friend, or let me know I have a nice smile or that my sandals really bring my outfit together. Unfortunately, I've never heard a "Damn, girl. You are wearing those glasses," or a "I bet you'd bake a mean cake," but I'm holding out hope.
It's been a weird week in a weirder month. Well, I guess last month, since August just happened. But this week certainly wrapped up one of the more discombobulated months of my existence. In an day I talked back to a street harasser at lunch time, and after dinner had to break up a fight between two moms in Barnes and Noble, there came a lot of opportunities to discuss things with Lilah. I don't dumb things down for her, but I also don't want to overwhelm her with information she isn't able to process. It's a difficult balancing act sometimes. I also try extremely hard to never criticize my body or appearance in front of her. Of course there are those days where I stare sullenly into the mirror and loathe the reflection. There are the times I try on three outfits and each one fits me awkwardly in all the wrong places. But I swear, those are the times I leave the bathroom or bedroom and hear, "Mama, you look beautiful, or "I love those earrings!" In an effort to not appear a total hypocrite when I tell her excessive makeup only hides a beautiful face, it doesn't make one, I've scaled way back on the amount I wear myself, sticking more with nude tones, clear lip gloss, moisturizing creams, and SPF-enhanced mineral powders, saving the war paint for extremely special occasions. To my surprise, my skin is healthier and I look like myself in the mornings, not a weird, naked version of myself who wouldn't get the mail, let alone go out without "getting ready".
Lilah Rose and I talked a lot yesterday about the moms who got in a fight. Why grownups lose it too, how sometimes even parents freak out and act like kids, push in line, yell and call names. Lilah said, "You would never act like that, Mama." I told her she was probably right (I can't see myself putting my hands on another woman's face and shoving her back because she told me to get in line to get a Frozen bookmark), but that she'd seen me lose my temper plenty of times, snap at her or fight with Dano, say rude things or swear instead of taking a break and using nice words. I don't want her feeling like adults are infallible, or thinking we succeed without failing or royally screwing up. I don't want her respecting me because I'm her mother. I want her to respect me because I'm honest when I screw up, I can scrape up enough humility to apologize when I freak out. I want her to show me respect because I showed it to her first, and that's life. Sometimes there are people in charge of you that you don't respect or agree with, but they're still in charge. If you want respect, you show it to other people first. And unfortunately, she's already had to learn of several adults that no matter how they act or what they say, it's okay not to listen to them because they aren't in charge of her, or what they're telling her isn't right. That's tough to process at 5.
Today we were driving on the way to pick up Rowan for his birthday outing, and Lilah said something out of the blue that caught me completely off guard.
"Mama, I can't wait until I'm big and I turn into a person like you." I laughed, trying to keep derision out of my voice, but let me tell you. It was hard.
"Why would you say that, pumpkin?"
"Because. I like you, I like how you look and how you are, and I want to be like you too."
"Like me, how? You know sometimes I don't act right. Sometimes I'm stubborn and I throw tantrums and have bad days and lose patience when I shouldn't. There are things about me that I know you can do better." I wasn't fishing for an ego boost, I was just terribly curious what on earth had brought this up.
"You would never be like that all the times. And I like how you look. I like the kind of clothes you wear and that you look like a grown up." I laughed again, derision-free this time.
"Well, I am a grown up. But you can wear dresses and things now, same as me. You don't have to wait to be a grown up to dress nicely. You always look good in whatever you wear."
"Yeah. But I like how you wear them. And I want to wear them that way when I'm big." I never got a clear idea what she meant by that, so I switched gears.
"Well when you're big, what kind of a person do you want to be?" She was quiet a bit before replying.
"I want to be an actual, real, me kind of person. You know?" I didn't. "I want to be me, only a grown up me. But still Lilah."
Not wanting to lose her identity in the process of getting older and entering the adult world. I hear ya, sister. I've been struggling with my own identity this year. Actually liking who I am, but realizing with chagrin that my body is changing. Not drastically, not even necessarily in ways I dislike, but definitely aging. Maturing. Realizing this with some distress that my partner won't agree that it's a positive or neutral change. Realizing that 7 years into a marriage, relationships sometimes stall out and I'm not sure how to jump start it with the tools I have. Putting on a new outfit that makes me feel confident and stepping out of the bedroom smiling, only to be met with indifference and having to ask later if it met with actual disapproval or he just hadn't noticed. Getting really weary of having spent so many years with opposite schedules, having sacrificed time together to raise a child without daycare and neither of us being good at making each other a priority. Spending a lot of evenings alone and missing my best friend, forging on to figure out who I am without him but liking myself a lot better when complemented by him (not verbally, but emotionally). There was a time I literally unable to sleep without him next to me, to wake me up when I sobbed through the nightmares that came almost every night. I can sleep now. No more nightmares. But I still sleep best with him. It's weird being a feminist whose life is made better in every way by a man. It's weird thriving in a career where I'm respected, happy, a trusted voice, an authority figure, but knowing I never could have gotten to this place without the person who sacrificed and struggled along side me to get me there. It's another balance issue, how to teach Lilah she can do anything without needing a man, but her having grown up watching me do everything with a male partner.
At the end of the conversation, Lilah said she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Not a doctor who listened to coughs and things. "They're too hard to inspect. I want to be in charge of skin because I can see what's wrong, I don't have to listen to it. Kid skin. If it's infected, I'll make it better." I told her those are called pediatric dermatologist, and they take a lot of school and math and science to become. After trying the title out a few times, she nodded. "Okay. A dermatologist. I like school, and I already know math. That's what I'll be then."
Now obviously I don't think a man should make more than I do simply for having a penis, and I'll shout as loud as anyone if a bunch of cranky old white dudes think they should have ANY say in the goings on inside my uterus. I don't take kindly to cat-calling and street harassing, and I will call out any man who thinks it's his prerogative to do so, unless he wants to call out how I look like I'd be a good friend, or let me know I have a nice smile or that my sandals really bring my outfit together. Unfortunately, I've never heard a "Damn, girl. You are wearing those glasses," or a "I bet you'd bake a mean cake," but I'm holding out hope.
It's been a weird week in a weirder month. Well, I guess last month, since August just happened. But this week certainly wrapped up one of the more discombobulated months of my existence. In an day I talked back to a street harasser at lunch time, and after dinner had to break up a fight between two moms in Barnes and Noble, there came a lot of opportunities to discuss things with Lilah. I don't dumb things down for her, but I also don't want to overwhelm her with information she isn't able to process. It's a difficult balancing act sometimes. I also try extremely hard to never criticize my body or appearance in front of her. Of course there are those days where I stare sullenly into the mirror and loathe the reflection. There are the times I try on three outfits and each one fits me awkwardly in all the wrong places. But I swear, those are the times I leave the bathroom or bedroom and hear, "Mama, you look beautiful, or "I love those earrings!" In an effort to not appear a total hypocrite when I tell her excessive makeup only hides a beautiful face, it doesn't make one, I've scaled way back on the amount I wear myself, sticking more with nude tones, clear lip gloss, moisturizing creams, and SPF-enhanced mineral powders, saving the war paint for extremely special occasions. To my surprise, my skin is healthier and I look like myself in the mornings, not a weird, naked version of myself who wouldn't get the mail, let alone go out without "getting ready".
Lilah Rose and I talked a lot yesterday about the moms who got in a fight. Why grownups lose it too, how sometimes even parents freak out and act like kids, push in line, yell and call names. Lilah said, "You would never act like that, Mama." I told her she was probably right (I can't see myself putting my hands on another woman's face and shoving her back because she told me to get in line to get a Frozen bookmark), but that she'd seen me lose my temper plenty of times, snap at her or fight with Dano, say rude things or swear instead of taking a break and using nice words. I don't want her feeling like adults are infallible, or thinking we succeed without failing or royally screwing up. I don't want her respecting me because I'm her mother. I want her to respect me because I'm honest when I screw up, I can scrape up enough humility to apologize when I freak out. I want her to show me respect because I showed it to her first, and that's life. Sometimes there are people in charge of you that you don't respect or agree with, but they're still in charge. If you want respect, you show it to other people first. And unfortunately, she's already had to learn of several adults that no matter how they act or what they say, it's okay not to listen to them because they aren't in charge of her, or what they're telling her isn't right. That's tough to process at 5.
Today we were driving on the way to pick up Rowan for his birthday outing, and Lilah said something out of the blue that caught me completely off guard.
"Mama, I can't wait until I'm big and I turn into a person like you." I laughed, trying to keep derision out of my voice, but let me tell you. It was hard.
"Why would you say that, pumpkin?"
"Because. I like you, I like how you look and how you are, and I want to be like you too."
"Like me, how? You know sometimes I don't act right. Sometimes I'm stubborn and I throw tantrums and have bad days and lose patience when I shouldn't. There are things about me that I know you can do better." I wasn't fishing for an ego boost, I was just terribly curious what on earth had brought this up.
"You would never be like that all the times. And I like how you look. I like the kind of clothes you wear and that you look like a grown up." I laughed again, derision-free this time.
"Well, I am a grown up. But you can wear dresses and things now, same as me. You don't have to wait to be a grown up to dress nicely. You always look good in whatever you wear."
"Yeah. But I like how you wear them. And I want to wear them that way when I'm big." I never got a clear idea what she meant by that, so I switched gears.
"Well when you're big, what kind of a person do you want to be?" She was quiet a bit before replying.
"I want to be an actual, real, me kind of person. You know?" I didn't. "I want to be me, only a grown up me. But still Lilah."
Not wanting to lose her identity in the process of getting older and entering the adult world. I hear ya, sister. I've been struggling with my own identity this year. Actually liking who I am, but realizing with chagrin that my body is changing. Not drastically, not even necessarily in ways I dislike, but definitely aging. Maturing. Realizing this with some distress that my partner won't agree that it's a positive or neutral change. Realizing that 7 years into a marriage, relationships sometimes stall out and I'm not sure how to jump start it with the tools I have. Putting on a new outfit that makes me feel confident and stepping out of the bedroom smiling, only to be met with indifference and having to ask later if it met with actual disapproval or he just hadn't noticed. Getting really weary of having spent so many years with opposite schedules, having sacrificed time together to raise a child without daycare and neither of us being good at making each other a priority. Spending a lot of evenings alone and missing my best friend, forging on to figure out who I am without him but liking myself a lot better when complemented by him (not verbally, but emotionally). There was a time I literally unable to sleep without him next to me, to wake me up when I sobbed through the nightmares that came almost every night. I can sleep now. No more nightmares. But I still sleep best with him. It's weird being a feminist whose life is made better in every way by a man. It's weird thriving in a career where I'm respected, happy, a trusted voice, an authority figure, but knowing I never could have gotten to this place without the person who sacrificed and struggled along side me to get me there. It's another balance issue, how to teach Lilah she can do anything without needing a man, but her having grown up watching me do everything with a male partner.
At the end of the conversation, Lilah said she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. Not a doctor who listened to coughs and things. "They're too hard to inspect. I want to be in charge of skin because I can see what's wrong, I don't have to listen to it. Kid skin. If it's infected, I'll make it better." I told her those are called pediatric dermatologist, and they take a lot of school and math and science to become. After trying the title out a few times, she nodded. "Okay. A dermatologist. I like school, and I already know math. That's what I'll be then."
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Deep Summer
"Deep Summer is when laziness finds respectability." ~Sam Keen
We find ourselves in the midst of summer, for better or for worse. Job changes, childcare changes, taking on new hobbies, shedding old identities. I found myself spending the first 6 weeks or so spinning out of control. My phone would chirp or vibrate almost constantly with reminders from my calendar to do this thing, run this errand, make it to this play date, pay this bill. Dano makes fun of me that I need my calendar to tell me when to have a period. He isn't wrong.
Lilah Rose started violin lessons with our friend John. I can feel my heart swell when I watch her practice and concentrate so hard, trying hard to get it right. The violin itself is so small that it looks like a toy, yet it still makes music. Having a tiny violin player in the house isn't as awful as it sounds. She can't stand when it makes screechy noises and tries her hardest to make it sound good. She isn't playing songs (her goal is to learn Rye Whiskey) but she's playing notes. John is working with her weekly to build up her muscles and work on rhythm.
She is also in swim lessons. If someone bet me she wouldn't drown, after 5 weeks of class, I would not take that bet. She'd still sink like a stone. The good part is she isn't afraid to get her head in the water anymore, and she has learned not to inhale while underwater. Baby steps.
I was looking forward to our trip to the UP/family reunion. It's always...interesting...when that much family gathers in one place. Too much of a good thing sometimes. But the high points were staying in a beautiful wooden cabin overlooking Indian Lake. I hadn't stayed in Manistique since I was pregnant. It's a lovely little town on Lake Michigan. Our cabin was right next to the Ball's, so the kids would meet at the playground in between cabins every morning after breakfast. They fished for hours (and didn't catch a thing). They paddle-boated around (Lilah sat regally in the back, allowing herself to be paddled). There was swimming and grilling and bonfires and hiking. Dano, Lilah, and I took a short day trip jaunt over to Munising to meet the ever-lovely Mia and Matti, some of the best things to come out of our time in Marquette. We hiked to several waterfalls. Lilah hiked the trails well, never asking to be carried and exercising a reasonable amount of caution. It always takes me back to when we first hiked those trails with her in a backpack at 9 months old. We've done it every year since.
Being in Manistique was funny, in a way. People would hold out our debit cards and read our names, asking who we were related to in town, this person or that person. They unashamedly asked what we were doing in town, where were we staying, and how we liked it out there. It was never unpleasant (although I'm sure it could be if you lived there year-round and everyone knew your business) or meant unkindly. Just people being curious. Our check-out lady at the little grocery store asked us where we were from and why we were visiting. The owner/manager/line cook of Floyd's Diner (incidentally named Tony) sat at our table with us, squeezed my shoulder, patted Lilah's cheek, and threw an arm around Dano while striking up a conversation about anything at all - whether I could cook an egg, why this was the best city in the world to retire.
When we got back, I realized in horror that summer was half over. In a few short weeks, Lilah would be starting kindergarten. I wasn't ready. Was she ready? Would we ever be ready? Nabi time this past 10 days or so has been a fight. I wasn't sure what was going on. They were concepts she knew, I knew she knew them, and had been plugging away happily at until recently. Now, every day was a fight. It took her 45 minutes to do 15 minutes worth of exercises. I even caught her lying one day and telling me she'd already done Nabi time with her dad, like we wouldn't talk about it. I was losing my mind one night just trying to get her to do a particular math exercise. I didn't feel like 15 minutes of disciplined, sit-down, learning time was too much to ask considering she'd be doing just that for her whole day in a few short weeks. I finally threw my hands up in frustration.
"Lilah Rose, what is the matter with you? All you have to do is count how many circles there are. Why can't you just count the circles? I know you know how." Lilah tossed the Nabi aside and sighed heavily.
"Mama, counting circles is so boring." I was surprised. She'd been doing those math exercises for weeks without complaint. I took the tablet from her and made some adjustments to the lessons, bumping her up from Pre-K to K and beyond in some areas. She started flying through problems again, and asking for more. I moved her from basic letter recognition (something she struggled so much with last year) into phonics, word building, and more abstract English concepts like parts of a story. She ate it up and did the lessons perfectly with no help. In a screen filled with pictures of objects that started with D, and a row of letters at the bottom, the only instructions it gave her were to choose the letter that the pictures started with. She chose correctly every time, without me telling her what the objects started with, what sound that letter made, or the names of the letters themselves. She was loving the science lessons, parts of the body and physical properties, how magnets work, seasons, and weather. She filled a bag with toys one day to take to a friend's pool because she wanted to know which were high-density and which were low-density. The only thing she still struggles with is social studies. The lessons are absurd, and it's hard for me to blame her. The questions want Common Core, trite answers. She'd prefer the essay questions and imagining a creative answer. She isn't always wrong, but her answers aren't the ones the quizzes are looking for and she gets frustrated to see that she got one "wrong". Did Columbus set out to find new lands in which to build houses and grow food? Yes, probably, but the Nabi wants you to focus on trade. Lilah does not give two shits about trade, plus she's seen Pocahontas.
I think in light of the way she's blossomed and progressed over the summer, she'll be just fine in school. I watched her write the other day after leaving her alone about it and encouraging play dough time, cutting, coloring, and painting, and her fine motor skills had come such a long way. As long as her teacher can recognize her boredom cues (I wish him/her luck, since I gave birth to her and still didn't know that's what her problem was) and challenge her appropriately, and as long as they appreciate (to a reasonable extent) her creative answers and interesting perspectives, she'll thrive. In the meantime, we're just careening toward Autumn at a pace I'm not entirely comfortable with. We're about to leave behind such a large chapter of our family story and step into this new epoch.
We find ourselves in the midst of summer, for better or for worse. Job changes, childcare changes, taking on new hobbies, shedding old identities. I found myself spending the first 6 weeks or so spinning out of control. My phone would chirp or vibrate almost constantly with reminders from my calendar to do this thing, run this errand, make it to this play date, pay this bill. Dano makes fun of me that I need my calendar to tell me when to have a period. He isn't wrong.
Lilah Rose started violin lessons with our friend John. I can feel my heart swell when I watch her practice and concentrate so hard, trying hard to get it right. The violin itself is so small that it looks like a toy, yet it still makes music. Having a tiny violin player in the house isn't as awful as it sounds. She can't stand when it makes screechy noises and tries her hardest to make it sound good. She isn't playing songs (her goal is to learn Rye Whiskey) but she's playing notes. John is working with her weekly to build up her muscles and work on rhythm.
She is also in swim lessons. If someone bet me she wouldn't drown, after 5 weeks of class, I would not take that bet. She'd still sink like a stone. The good part is she isn't afraid to get her head in the water anymore, and she has learned not to inhale while underwater. Baby steps.
I was looking forward to our trip to the UP/family reunion. It's always...interesting...when that much family gathers in one place. Too much of a good thing sometimes. But the high points were staying in a beautiful wooden cabin overlooking Indian Lake. I hadn't stayed in Manistique since I was pregnant. It's a lovely little town on Lake Michigan. Our cabin was right next to the Ball's, so the kids would meet at the playground in between cabins every morning after breakfast. They fished for hours (and didn't catch a thing). They paddle-boated around (Lilah sat regally in the back, allowing herself to be paddled). There was swimming and grilling and bonfires and hiking. Dano, Lilah, and I took a short day trip jaunt over to Munising to meet the ever-lovely Mia and Matti, some of the best things to come out of our time in Marquette. We hiked to several waterfalls. Lilah hiked the trails well, never asking to be carried and exercising a reasonable amount of caution. It always takes me back to when we first hiked those trails with her in a backpack at 9 months old. We've done it every year since.
Being in Manistique was funny, in a way. People would hold out our debit cards and read our names, asking who we were related to in town, this person or that person. They unashamedly asked what we were doing in town, where were we staying, and how we liked it out there. It was never unpleasant (although I'm sure it could be if you lived there year-round and everyone knew your business) or meant unkindly. Just people being curious. Our check-out lady at the little grocery store asked us where we were from and why we were visiting. The owner/manager/line cook of Floyd's Diner (incidentally named Tony) sat at our table with us, squeezed my shoulder, patted Lilah's cheek, and threw an arm around Dano while striking up a conversation about anything at all - whether I could cook an egg, why this was the best city in the world to retire.
When we got back, I realized in horror that summer was half over. In a few short weeks, Lilah would be starting kindergarten. I wasn't ready. Was she ready? Would we ever be ready? Nabi time this past 10 days or so has been a fight. I wasn't sure what was going on. They were concepts she knew, I knew she knew them, and had been plugging away happily at until recently. Now, every day was a fight. It took her 45 minutes to do 15 minutes worth of exercises. I even caught her lying one day and telling me she'd already done Nabi time with her dad, like we wouldn't talk about it. I was losing my mind one night just trying to get her to do a particular math exercise. I didn't feel like 15 minutes of disciplined, sit-down, learning time was too much to ask considering she'd be doing just that for her whole day in a few short weeks. I finally threw my hands up in frustration.
"Lilah Rose, what is the matter with you? All you have to do is count how many circles there are. Why can't you just count the circles? I know you know how." Lilah tossed the Nabi aside and sighed heavily.
"Mama, counting circles is so boring." I was surprised. She'd been doing those math exercises for weeks without complaint. I took the tablet from her and made some adjustments to the lessons, bumping her up from Pre-K to K and beyond in some areas. She started flying through problems again, and asking for more. I moved her from basic letter recognition (something she struggled so much with last year) into phonics, word building, and more abstract English concepts like parts of a story. She ate it up and did the lessons perfectly with no help. In a screen filled with pictures of objects that started with D, and a row of letters at the bottom, the only instructions it gave her were to choose the letter that the pictures started with. She chose correctly every time, without me telling her what the objects started with, what sound that letter made, or the names of the letters themselves. She was loving the science lessons, parts of the body and physical properties, how magnets work, seasons, and weather. She filled a bag with toys one day to take to a friend's pool because she wanted to know which were high-density and which were low-density. The only thing she still struggles with is social studies. The lessons are absurd, and it's hard for me to blame her. The questions want Common Core, trite answers. She'd prefer the essay questions and imagining a creative answer. She isn't always wrong, but her answers aren't the ones the quizzes are looking for and she gets frustrated to see that she got one "wrong". Did Columbus set out to find new lands in which to build houses and grow food? Yes, probably, but the Nabi wants you to focus on trade. Lilah does not give two shits about trade, plus she's seen Pocahontas.
I think in light of the way she's blossomed and progressed over the summer, she'll be just fine in school. I watched her write the other day after leaving her alone about it and encouraging play dough time, cutting, coloring, and painting, and her fine motor skills had come such a long way. As long as her teacher can recognize her boredom cues (I wish him/her luck, since I gave birth to her and still didn't know that's what her problem was) and challenge her appropriately, and as long as they appreciate (to a reasonable extent) her creative answers and interesting perspectives, she'll thrive. In the meantime, we're just careening toward Autumn at a pace I'm not entirely comfortable with. We're about to leave behind such a large chapter of our family story and step into this new epoch.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
The Nabi
So Spring finally showed up in Michigan and let all the peoples rejoice. There were times this Winter when I wondered if it would ever come, if we had stumbled upon some George Martin-esque Winter where White Walkers roamed the earth and babies froze to death in their cradles.
We've been making great strides in our little palace, touching up paint, remaking our bedroom, building raised beds for my glorious garden. Well. I supervised and provided inspiration and moral support. My dear husband built them and drank beers. We have also been trying to keep a certain little Miss occupied since she's left the preschool. In jest (and when she's elsewhere) we refer to her as the preschool dropout. Dano worked dutifully on the Princess Letter Flashcards we'd made Lilah and she had nearly all of them down. She had many playdates and lots of cousin time. We took her to her formal special education evaluation that had already been set up with the school district. I was made to wait outside while the speech pathologist and occupational therapist took Lilah and Caroline into the "exam room" (i.e. room filled with toys and fun things to do) and started "testing" (i.e. playing) with her. It took a really long time but I heard a lot of praise and laughter. I kept leaning toward the door to eavesdrop. Dano kept hauling me away and telling me to knock it off.
At the end, they turned Lilah loose to play in the room and talked us through their assessment. I was pretty impressed with how thoroughly they'd tested her while keeping her laughing and engaged. The occupational therapist said Lilah was on the low end of normal fine motor development. She held a pencil correctly with only minor verbal correction and her grip and pressure were appropriate. She could draw a person with recognizable parts and colored even though Lilah didn't act like she loved doing it (she doesn't). They noticed a very faint tremor in her hands after working for awhile, so suggested some muscle-strengthening exercises to try over the summer. The only part of the motor assessment she failed was when the therapist build a simple structure out of blocks and asked Lilah to replicate it, Lilah went freestyle and built a castle. When asked, "Does yours look like mine?" Lilah nodded yes but commented that hers was better.
Typical, I thought.
The speech pathologist had a little more to say. She said they'd started out by just having a nice conversation about Lilah's birthday party in Chicago the week before. She'd gone into amazing detail about riding the train, going to the American Girl Place, having lunch and a cake, getting to choose her very own doll whose name was Caroline. On and on. So she didn't have a lot of concerns when she went to test Lilah, but they'd started at the preliminary speech testing.
"Lilah bombed. Not just bombed, but didn't get a single question right and I was getting really worried." I'm sure I visibly went pale and felt myself shaking. "It didn't make any sense to me. There were four pictures and I'd ask her things like, 'Point to the one where the children are eating the cookies.' One would have children eating cake. Children baking cookies. Children eating cookies. Children slicing carrots. She'd just pick any old picture and move to the next one. I had just had this conversation in incredible detail with this child, but she was bombing my easiest tests." The standardized tests required her to do all of the levels in order to score it, so she moved on to the harder levels. Lilah Rose scored off the charts, in the high 90th percentiles, in following directions, sentence structure, speech relationships, sequencing, you name it. "I couldn't believe this kid. She was doing things my older elementary kids can't do yet, and doing them perfectly. But when we went back and retested the basic things, she bombed again. Honestly, I just don't think she cares about them. They're easy and boring, they don't challenge or interest her. She points to whatever so she can move on, and she smiles at me while she does it like she's hoping her charm will work to get her out of if. My gut feeling is everything she's doing poorly, she doesn't care about. Get her in a project-based learning environment and I think she'll thrive. Challenge her and get her interested and you'll see a whole different kid." I wasn't sure what to think.
"But what about the basic stuff she's not doing? We keep dragging her back to get her to do the basics, colors, shapes, numbers, letters but she is really resisting or acting like she forgets the minute we show her."
"I don't think this kid forgets anything. I think she's beyond that. She knows it, she knows you know it, and she doesn't feel like proving she knows it. Meet her where she's at and challenge her. She knows more than you think. If I'm totally wrong, we have her assessment done and can pick her up in kindergarten." Turns out, she wasn't wrong.
After lots of free play this Spring, Dano and I had some serious discussions about preparing her for school in a way that wouldn't jar her or feel too academic. I signed her up for a few week-long day camps to get her used to being gone for more days and longer hours. One thing we debated about was electronic use. EVERY child she's friends with has some sort of computer, iPhone, or tablet in the house they play on. Not only does Lilah not have those things, she's been deliberately shielded from them. She watches 30 minutes of TV a day on average, with the exception from a movie here or there. She never has computer time, and smart phones "are for grown ups only". The only tablet in the house is my e-reader and she does have a few book on there she goes through every so often. Although Dano and I thought we had made the best choice possible to raise a human child in the age of the cyborgs, we had been slapped in the face with reality on her kindergarten tour. We were informed that starting in kindergarten, there was a state-mandated computer proficiency test done on an iPad or PC in the classroom. My heart sank. So not only would she be singled out because of her weird brain, she'd be the only kid there who had never played on a smart device before. I watched kids at work go through an entire physical exam without ever making eye contact with the doctor examining them. Were they autistic? No. They were on their phones or game systems or tablets. 5 year old twins with their own iPads. 9 year old boys with their own smart phones. I hated it and swore it wouldn't be my kid. So here I was feeling like technology was being forced on us whether we liked it or not.
I went to Target to talk to a really sweet college-age girl about the tablets they had geared toward kids. I felt sick to my stomach, like a total sellout. She walked me through a few models and I explained the circumstances to her. She pointed me toward one called the Nabi. It was virtually indestructible. It came pre-loaded with a free Pre-K to 3rd grade curriculum that matched the Common Core Standards in public school, so the terminology and subject matter would be familiar once Lilah entered kindergarten. It was an Android tablet we could use for things like web surfing and skype in Parent Mode, but in the password-protected "Nabi Mode", it was Fort Knox. The only web sites she could access were the ones we pre-approved in Parent Mode. The fun games like puzzles and coloring could be put on a timer to power off after a predetermined amount of time. The educational lessons and quizzes and games would power off as well, but if she chose to play them over the fun games, she could earn 15 extra minutes of time a day. The device itself was put on a parent-controlled timer and was unusable between the hours of 8pm and 7am. At 7, it would wake her up with a song and a list of morning activities she had to complete, "Make my bed, get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast." After an accumulated hour of Nabi time or at 8pm, whichever came first, it would start yawning and telling her it was tired before going to "sleep" until the next day. We programmed her chore list into the Nabi where she could earn virtual coins to use in the "Treasure Chest" to buy new games or coloring sheets, or we could (and did) set them to earn zero coins so we could give her physical rewards in lieu of virtual ones.
What absolutely blew my mind was watching Lilah power through the education levels. Not only was she using between 25-35 minutes of Nabi time a day on average (nowhere near her hour time max), she was flying through levels in Wings Academy, the pre-programmed curriculum. If given a dozen eggs labeled with anything from upper or lowercase letters, asterisks, and just nonsense symbols and told to tap all the letters, Lilah got all the letters. When asked to tap only the lowercase letter e, she found all the e's. Every letter-related lesson, no issues. Upper and lower case, mixed in with wing dings and punctuation marks. She could spot the right letter every time. The numbers were a little more of a challenge because she couldn't recognize all of the numerals, but the math concepts she had down. Ordinal numbers, the concept of 100, counting by 10s to 100, counting past 10 into the teens. She could count in order to 30 and it was really easy for her to do simple problems like subtracting and adding within 5 as long as she had something visual or tangible to add or take away. Reading comprehension came easy for her, listening to a story read aloud by the Nabi and taking a quiz at the end. She's watching social studies and geography videos and quizzing at the end, doing awesome. I couldn't wrap my brain around her in the science category. The questions were asking things like "Would this marble sink in water? Why or why not?" And she's answering "Yes, because it has a higher density than the water." Cosmos is paying off, apparently.
Seeing her excel when challenged and allowed to progress and perform at her own pace in a stimulating environment makes me so happy, but also resentful. She missed her end of year picnic, preschool graduation, final field trip to a dairy farm. She isn't aware she's missing out, but I'm angry for her. Trying to let it go and realize that we (so very apparently, now) are doing right by our daughter, but some days it's easier than others. I'm fielding questions from her like "What are the stars' middle names?" and she's asking to stay up late and watch Mars rise. We're feeding her interests and stimulating her brain as best we can. With 5 years of good habits under her belt, it doesn't look like the Nabi will turn her into a cyborg. In fact, with heavily enforced limits and involvement on our part, it seems to be a powerful tool that actually allows her to control the pace of her home-based education.
We've been making great strides in our little palace, touching up paint, remaking our bedroom, building raised beds for my glorious garden. Well. I supervised and provided inspiration and moral support. My dear husband built them and drank beers. We have also been trying to keep a certain little Miss occupied since she's left the preschool. In jest (and when she's elsewhere) we refer to her as the preschool dropout. Dano worked dutifully on the Princess Letter Flashcards we'd made Lilah and she had nearly all of them down. She had many playdates and lots of cousin time. We took her to her formal special education evaluation that had already been set up with the school district. I was made to wait outside while the speech pathologist and occupational therapist took Lilah and Caroline into the "exam room" (i.e. room filled with toys and fun things to do) and started "testing" (i.e. playing) with her. It took a really long time but I heard a lot of praise and laughter. I kept leaning toward the door to eavesdrop. Dano kept hauling me away and telling me to knock it off.
At the end, they turned Lilah loose to play in the room and talked us through their assessment. I was pretty impressed with how thoroughly they'd tested her while keeping her laughing and engaged. The occupational therapist said Lilah was on the low end of normal fine motor development. She held a pencil correctly with only minor verbal correction and her grip and pressure were appropriate. She could draw a person with recognizable parts and colored even though Lilah didn't act like she loved doing it (she doesn't). They noticed a very faint tremor in her hands after working for awhile, so suggested some muscle-strengthening exercises to try over the summer. The only part of the motor assessment she failed was when the therapist build a simple structure out of blocks and asked Lilah to replicate it, Lilah went freestyle and built a castle. When asked, "Does yours look like mine?" Lilah nodded yes but commented that hers was better.
Typical, I thought.
The speech pathologist had a little more to say. She said they'd started out by just having a nice conversation about Lilah's birthday party in Chicago the week before. She'd gone into amazing detail about riding the train, going to the American Girl Place, having lunch and a cake, getting to choose her very own doll whose name was Caroline. On and on. So she didn't have a lot of concerns when she went to test Lilah, but they'd started at the preliminary speech testing.
"Lilah bombed. Not just bombed, but didn't get a single question right and I was getting really worried." I'm sure I visibly went pale and felt myself shaking. "It didn't make any sense to me. There were four pictures and I'd ask her things like, 'Point to the one where the children are eating the cookies.' One would have children eating cake. Children baking cookies. Children eating cookies. Children slicing carrots. She'd just pick any old picture and move to the next one. I had just had this conversation in incredible detail with this child, but she was bombing my easiest tests." The standardized tests required her to do all of the levels in order to score it, so she moved on to the harder levels. Lilah Rose scored off the charts, in the high 90th percentiles, in following directions, sentence structure, speech relationships, sequencing, you name it. "I couldn't believe this kid. She was doing things my older elementary kids can't do yet, and doing them perfectly. But when we went back and retested the basic things, she bombed again. Honestly, I just don't think she cares about them. They're easy and boring, they don't challenge or interest her. She points to whatever so she can move on, and she smiles at me while she does it like she's hoping her charm will work to get her out of if. My gut feeling is everything she's doing poorly, she doesn't care about. Get her in a project-based learning environment and I think she'll thrive. Challenge her and get her interested and you'll see a whole different kid." I wasn't sure what to think.
"But what about the basic stuff she's not doing? We keep dragging her back to get her to do the basics, colors, shapes, numbers, letters but she is really resisting or acting like she forgets the minute we show her."
"I don't think this kid forgets anything. I think she's beyond that. She knows it, she knows you know it, and she doesn't feel like proving she knows it. Meet her where she's at and challenge her. She knows more than you think. If I'm totally wrong, we have her assessment done and can pick her up in kindergarten." Turns out, she wasn't wrong.
After lots of free play this Spring, Dano and I had some serious discussions about preparing her for school in a way that wouldn't jar her or feel too academic. I signed her up for a few week-long day camps to get her used to being gone for more days and longer hours. One thing we debated about was electronic use. EVERY child she's friends with has some sort of computer, iPhone, or tablet in the house they play on. Not only does Lilah not have those things, she's been deliberately shielded from them. She watches 30 minutes of TV a day on average, with the exception from a movie here or there. She never has computer time, and smart phones "are for grown ups only". The only tablet in the house is my e-reader and she does have a few book on there she goes through every so often. Although Dano and I thought we had made the best choice possible to raise a human child in the age of the cyborgs, we had been slapped in the face with reality on her kindergarten tour. We were informed that starting in kindergarten, there was a state-mandated computer proficiency test done on an iPad or PC in the classroom. My heart sank. So not only would she be singled out because of her weird brain, she'd be the only kid there who had never played on a smart device before. I watched kids at work go through an entire physical exam without ever making eye contact with the doctor examining them. Were they autistic? No. They were on their phones or game systems or tablets. 5 year old twins with their own iPads. 9 year old boys with their own smart phones. I hated it and swore it wouldn't be my kid. So here I was feeling like technology was being forced on us whether we liked it or not.
I went to Target to talk to a really sweet college-age girl about the tablets they had geared toward kids. I felt sick to my stomach, like a total sellout. She walked me through a few models and I explained the circumstances to her. She pointed me toward one called the Nabi. It was virtually indestructible. It came pre-loaded with a free Pre-K to 3rd grade curriculum that matched the Common Core Standards in public school, so the terminology and subject matter would be familiar once Lilah entered kindergarten. It was an Android tablet we could use for things like web surfing and skype in Parent Mode, but in the password-protected "Nabi Mode", it was Fort Knox. The only web sites she could access were the ones we pre-approved in Parent Mode. The fun games like puzzles and coloring could be put on a timer to power off after a predetermined amount of time. The educational lessons and quizzes and games would power off as well, but if she chose to play them over the fun games, she could earn 15 extra minutes of time a day. The device itself was put on a parent-controlled timer and was unusable between the hours of 8pm and 7am. At 7, it would wake her up with a song and a list of morning activities she had to complete, "Make my bed, get dressed, brush teeth, eat breakfast." After an accumulated hour of Nabi time or at 8pm, whichever came first, it would start yawning and telling her it was tired before going to "sleep" until the next day. We programmed her chore list into the Nabi where she could earn virtual coins to use in the "Treasure Chest" to buy new games or coloring sheets, or we could (and did) set them to earn zero coins so we could give her physical rewards in lieu of virtual ones.
What absolutely blew my mind was watching Lilah power through the education levels. Not only was she using between 25-35 minutes of Nabi time a day on average (nowhere near her hour time max), she was flying through levels in Wings Academy, the pre-programmed curriculum. If given a dozen eggs labeled with anything from upper or lowercase letters, asterisks, and just nonsense symbols and told to tap all the letters, Lilah got all the letters. When asked to tap only the lowercase letter e, she found all the e's. Every letter-related lesson, no issues. Upper and lower case, mixed in with wing dings and punctuation marks. She could spot the right letter every time. The numbers were a little more of a challenge because she couldn't recognize all of the numerals, but the math concepts she had down. Ordinal numbers, the concept of 100, counting by 10s to 100, counting past 10 into the teens. She could count in order to 30 and it was really easy for her to do simple problems like subtracting and adding within 5 as long as she had something visual or tangible to add or take away. Reading comprehension came easy for her, listening to a story read aloud by the Nabi and taking a quiz at the end. She's watching social studies and geography videos and quizzing at the end, doing awesome. I couldn't wrap my brain around her in the science category. The questions were asking things like "Would this marble sink in water? Why or why not?" And she's answering "Yes, because it has a higher density than the water." Cosmos is paying off, apparently.
Seeing her excel when challenged and allowed to progress and perform at her own pace in a stimulating environment makes me so happy, but also resentful. She missed her end of year picnic, preschool graduation, final field trip to a dairy farm. She isn't aware she's missing out, but I'm angry for her. Trying to let it go and realize that we (so very apparently, now) are doing right by our daughter, but some days it's easier than others. I'm fielding questions from her like "What are the stars' middle names?" and she's asking to stay up late and watch Mars rise. We're feeding her interests and stimulating her brain as best we can. With 5 years of good habits under her belt, it doesn't look like the Nabi will turn her into a cyborg. In fact, with heavily enforced limits and involvement on our part, it seems to be a powerful tool that actually allows her to control the pace of her home-based education.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The hardest thing (a series of unfortunate events)
This is a long post that took me a few different days to write, so be warned.
As most people know, we thoroughly enjoyed Lilah's first year of preschool. She played, she sang songs, she had snack, made friends, went on field trips. We very happily signed her up for the 4 year class. In addition to the same classroom and teachers, it was to be more days every week, and small group time focussed on kindergarten readiness.
I first felt like something was off around mid-September.
I talked to Dano, who said I was looking for trouble. Lilah didn't seem on track with other kids. When I'd sit down to work on writing or coloring with her she would actively resist. She said "I don't know" to answer any academic related question. She would do math while we cooked or find letters when we we read, but she was instantaneously frustrated and resistant toward any formal teaching. I emailed her teacher that I was concerned that she didn't know any shapes or letters besides L consistently, and only the color blue despite having been cleared by the ophthalmologist. She said she shared my concerns. One day she was compliant. The next day she acted like she didn't even understand the question. She suggested a chore chart to get her in the habit of doing a little every day, and we'd discuss it at conferences. We did, and I showed her doctor the correspondence with the teacher. She felt too much was being expected of a 4 year old, and we were dealing with a personality, not a deficit. She explained that her eldest had needed reading enrichment until she was 7, then she began reading at a 6th grade level. She was a late bloomer, but got there in her own time. Reassured, we dutifully practiced her name every day until conferences.
We went a little nervous (well, I was). We sat down in the absurdly small chairs and waited while the teacher went through some papers and looked grave. I had such a feeling a dread in the pit of my stomach. I looked around the room at the artwork. They had been making gingerbread-esque cutout art of their families. I counted them. Nothing by Lilah. Mrs. Fuller pulled out a stack of worksheets and explained that in their small groups, they had been tested on a variety of topics and when Lilah had agreed to at all, she hadn't gotten anything right. She repeatedly sunk down in her chair during group, saying she was too tired or wanted her mama, wanted to go home. On a worksheet where she was told things like "Color the square red," she had colored nicely, but only blue star was accurate. She pulled out page after page of Lilah's work, then other children's to compare it too. She said she was concerned about Lilah having a learning disability, that no other child was unable to identify colors or shapes. Dano smiled and pointed out that she got blue square, and had colored nicely in the lines. My eyes were too full of tears to joke. Her teacher was sitting in front of us telling us how serious it was. That she didn't know her letters, and at this time she wouldn't recommend kindergarten. I found some words, barely audible.
"She knows letters. She picks them out in the bathtub, and when we read. She knows blue and red too." Mrs. Fuller said she was relieved to hear it, and maybe she suffered from anxiety instead? Or maybe a working memory problem. Dano pointed out that she memorized 9 minute songs, and could quote movies she's seen once, or pick out an artist based on their style of mandolin playing. "Maybe if you made it more engaging or made it a game to her, she'd be more receptive." I was more defensive.
"She isn't hitting other children, right? Biting? She plays well and gets along?"
"Yes, but out of all the other children, she's pretty much the only one who can't do these basic things. I'm very concerned." The meeting ended shortly thereafter. I was crushed. Dano was convinced it would be all right. I ended up bursting into tears at her doctor's desk and spilling out the entire story. If it were possible to compassionately scoff derisively, this doctor managed it. Again I was told Lilah wasn't defective, she just wasn't compliant and this teacher had no call to use such strongly worded phrases. What worried her most, she shared, was that Lilah was for some reason resistant to learning and afraid to get things wrong. In an environment where making mistakes should be encouraged, she was being made to think less of herself because she wasn't "up to par", being called out in front of other children for not knowing what they knew. "We have to get her confidence back, first. Accuracy will come later." She also suggested getting Lilah evaluated by the school district just in case she did need some extra help in an area or two. This was free, as was any assistance she may need. I was so grateful. Why hadn't we been told that was an option by her teacher? I found out later it was because Mrs. Fuller didn't know it was.
Dano and I thought about dance class. It was a rigid environment where much was expected of these tiny people, but not more than they could give. They were rewarded at the end and praised throughout for attempts, even utter failures if they tried hard. They received smiles, squeezes on the shoulders, honest praise without sugar coating ("Good try, it looks better this week!"), and finally a stamp at the end for their participation. I made up my mind and emailed the teacher. I wanted Lilah pulled aside before group and told that she didn't have to know the answers, but she had to try her best and not say she was tired or wanted to go home. If that happened, she would get a stamp on the hand afterward just like at dance. We went to Michaels and picked out stamps with owls, birds, butterflies, and flowers. For a time it seemed to work. Her teacher reported her participation improved, as did her enthusiasm. Her accuracy did not. I tried not to care.
The special education teacher I had been corresponding with took a careful history of Lilah's milestones and wanted to know any concerns we or Mrs. Fuller had. She caught me off guard with her next question. "What are her strengths? What is she good at?" They weren't only focussed on a possible deficit. They wanted to know the whole Lilah. She wanted to visit the preschool to see Lilah in her natural habitat. I told Lilah someone would be visiting her preschool to watch her play and ask her some questions.
"Why?"
"Well...you'll be in kindergarten soon and it will help them find the best place for you."
"Right. At Kennedy. With my new lunch box. And girl teacher." Ever the optimist, Lilah already had her heart set on a lottery-entry magnet program where she planned to eat lunch every day out of a Totoro bento box straight from Japan and thrive in a female teacher's class (she'd been surprised to learn that one of the three teachers was male). I was nervous when the day came and grilled Lilah as soon as I got home for a full report. "Well, she came over while Annalia and I were playing dress up. I was Elsa (always, she's the Ice Queen and her best friend, the Princess)."
"Okay. What did she say to you?"
"Asked my name, and asked if I was dressed up like Elsa from Frozen." Lilah beamed. "I told her I was. She wanted to know what color dress Elsa wore, and I told her it was blue like mine. Then I twirled for her."
"Then what?"
"Um...she asked if I knew any letters and I told her I knew L. I wrote an L for her."
"Yeah? What did she think of your L?"
"Oh, she was impressed. Then she asked if I knew any other letters. I told her A was for Allison and D was for Dano and also Downton Abbey."
"You really told her D was for Downton Abbey?"
"Um, yeah? So then I played some more."
When I spoke with her later in the week, the special ed teacher said Lilah was a delight to talk to, very engaging, bright, and social. She had a fine motor delay, and she had some concerns about her receptive language skills. When asked what color something was, she would give any old color along with a winning grin.
"She knew a color answer was expected of her, so she'd give one with that bright smile, just asking me to buy it and let her get back to playing. We see that sometimes in receptive language delays. They compensate very well." I told her I didn't think language was the problem, but they could go ahead and check it out if they wanted. All in all, she'll be getting a speech evaluation and occupational therapy to help her write and cut. She had just as many lovely things to say about Lilah as things she was concerned about. I compared it ruefully to the terrible conference where not one positive suggestion to improve things had been made. I'd even had to send an email to Mrs. Fuller outlining the steps of getting an educational evaluation for a child, since somehow after 15 years of preschool teaching, she'd never referred a child for extra help.
The winter dragged on endlessly. The children spent more time home for snow days than in preschool. Lilah bonded more closely with her little friend who played Frozen with her. Every day she'd tell me what they had for snack, what story they'd read, and how she and Annalia had played Frozen with Annalia's twin Matilde pretending to be their faithful pet cheetah named Cheese. I always encouraged her to stop by one of the project tables and do a craft, write in her journal. Lilah laughed at me every time. I couldn't blame her. Give a kid the option of table work or endless play, and come on. What will they choose. And if she did sit down at a table, no teacher sat along side her to show her how to write or cut. Projects seldom came home, and when they did, there would be one sad snip cut into them with Lilah's name written in adult handwriting after she'd abandoned the project. Dano called me angrily after the project where she was supposed to decorate and cut out the letter L came home blank. It was her favorite letter, and no one had even bothered to help her cut it out when she'd attempted to do the project. We talked long and hard about taking her out and putting her in another preschool for a few months. I felt like I was failing her. No matter how hard I worked with her, she was blissfully unaware she didn't know as much as her counterparts in the classroom, and content to be an Ice Queen forever. Those kids played hours on their iPads, complicated educational games. Lilah planted bulbs, cooked, asked questions about the origins of the stars and why doctors couldn't cure certain diseases, and made up entire universes in her head to be happily played out in the sanctuary of her bedroom. But if I held up a flashcard, told her it was orange, then asked her what it was, she'd smile and answer, "Circle?" before walking away. She was smart. I knew she was smart. Why couldn't she just get it?
Dano and I talked to his sister, who'd pointed out Drayton was a lot of things, but it wasn't educating her. No one instructed her, then tested or graded her work. She was tested and graded on concepts she'd never been taught. How can she succeed at Alphabet Bingo if she hadn't memorized her alphabet? And why were 4 year olds being expected to have every shape, color, number, and letter memorized in the first place? She talked us into making peace with the preschool for what it was - a playgroup - and seek out actual instruction for her outside the classroom. Let her play out the rest of the year happily, ignore her teacher, and get her the actual help she needed. I felt much more at peace. One Saturday morning, while pondering to myself why Lilah couldn't just memorize flashcards like I did, it dawned on me what is probably painfully obvious to everyone else in the world. Lilah and I have different learning styles. When she was interested in something, she memorized it down to the smallest details. The kid had worked out the entire plot to Wicked just by piecing it together through the songs that showed up (out of order, I might add) on her Pandora station. I got together with Dano and we created some flashcards of our own. Every card had a letter and a corresponding character from Frozen, Despicable Me, Spirited Away, Wreck-it Ralph, any other film she had memorized. The letter on the card was colored to match the character. She got a chocolate chip before she started, and one after she finished (a professor of mine did that with us on test days, only it was mini candy bars. She said it jump started the mind and jogged the memory). She had to sit criss-cross on the floor with her hands still and look up while we stood and held up the card (a trick spelling-bee champs use, looking up to picture the word itself in the air). She had to repeat after us. A is for Anna. B is for Belle. After three days, she knew a handful of letters she'd never known before. After five days, she knew 21 out of 26 without prompting. I felt like such an idiot. Mrs. Fuller, me, everyone had been coming down so hard on Lilah for not learning the way we thought she should. When I took five damn minutes to actually think about how Lilah learned, the solution had been screaming at me all along. Teach her the way she learns, not the way you do, you huge moron. I grew a shade more resentful of the teacher who'd had her for the second year in a row and had arrived at "maybe disabled" instead of "right-brained learner".
The final straw came last week on Wednesday. I was having the first day in what would be the worst week of my career. I didn't know it at the time I was getting the story and hearing the preliminary imaging reports, but we were rapidly losing a healthy 4 year old to a disease no one knew she had. By rapidly, I mean within 24 hours of it being found. I was just hanging up with another nurse who was giving me the first of many bad reports on this child when my cell phone started buzzing beside me. Caller ID displayed a mom of one of Lilah's classmates. Weird, I thought, and picked it up. She identified herself and apologized for calling me at work.
"Lilah hit her head, and we can't calm her down." I think she said some more words, but it sounded like she was underwater. When my brain started registering sounds again, she was saying something about trying to call us but not being able to reach either of us, our emergency cards weren't up to date, something about an old class roster.
"Where is she? I want to talk to Lilah." Someone handed her the phone. "Lilah Rose? Talk to me, goose. It's Mama."
"I hit my head!" She wailed into the phone. "I want you."
"Darling, it's going to be fine. Where are you?"
"I want you."
"We'll be there to get you. Where are you?"
"At preschool."
"What's your name?"
"Lilah Rose."
"How old are you."
"Four."
"You're going to be fine. I promise. We'll be there. Daddy might get there before me. I'm in Farmington Hills today." She started crying again that she wanted me to get there first. "Okay, okay, okay. I'll be there. What teacher is with you?" She told me no teacher was with her. "What grown ups?" Silence. "LILAH. Who is with you?"
"Juni's mommy, and Addie's."
"I need to talk to a grown up. We're coming for you."
"Okay." I was told she hadn't lost consciousness and probably didn't need medical care, but was hysterical and they hadn't been able to calm her or reach us. I seethed and told them to hang tight, that Dano would come to get her. I called him. He was furious and immediately left the house. She'd just fallen hugging a friend and they'd been trying to pick each other up. A complete accident. But there was no excuse for not being able to reach a parent, or not calling the emergency contact, my sister-in-law who's had the same number for 10 years. I called the vice-president of the school board, fuming. I spilled out all the educational cockups that had taken place over the year, the lack of actual teaching, and that since the school had failed to do more than provide a playgroup, the least they had to do was keep her safe in an emergency and couldn't even manage to do that. I told her we'd take some time to calm down before making any decisions, but I didn't know how I could send her back or write another tuition check after what had just happened. She was totally understanding and shocked, asking when we'd updated our information and who I'd given the changes to (I'd given it to the membership person twice after she got it wrong again back in December).
I had just made it back to my desk, shaking, when another call came in about our patient. More absolutely awful news. Tears started rolling down my cheeks as I trudged into the doctor's office to tell one of them. He asked after Lilah. I told him she was heading home and appeared fine to Dano. They'd both called me to let me know he had her and they were leaving. I could hear the tightness in his jaw through the phone. I hadn't sat down in my chair before my phone was going off frantically with texts to call home immediately. I called. Lilah had gotten extremely drowsy, and Dano let her rest but not sleep. He was having a hard time keeping her awake when she started projectile vomiting and shaking, saying she was dizzy. I told her to clean her up and get her to the office. Her pediatrician was at the Troy office, which meant I had to drive across town to meet them. The 30 minute drive was the longest in my life. They barely beat me there. Even though her doctor was behind, the staff put Lilah in a room and worked her up without me saying a word. They got all her vitals calmly and with a smile, and had Dr. Kolin see her next. I asked Dano if he was aware she was getting preferential treatment and he nodded through clenched teeth.
Dr. Kolin came in and immediately commented on how pale she looked. Lilah swooned several times on the exam table, whether nauseated or dizzy I didn't know. She got a thorough head to toe, and neurologically was fine but we were told one more vomiting episode would warrant a CT scan of her brain, and we had to wake her up for neuro checks every two hours through the night. She said she wanted to avoid radiating her little brain if we could help it, which I appreciated. She scribbled out our encounter form, jokingly asking me to chart for her (she'd broken her wrist a few weeks earlier and I've been her shadow lately, doing her charting and helping with exams). I told her after she saw Lilah out of order, I'd chart whenever she wanted. She told the front desk to write off whatever our insurance didn't pay, since head injuries were a higher level of billable care and she technically had a stage 2 concussion. I thanked whatever gods would listen for the hundred thousandth time for my amazing employers. No fewer than six pediatricians checked on her at all hours over the next few days, not only the one on call for the night. Texts, calls, and emails.
On the way home, Lilah started to tell me what happened. I welcomed the talking after how strangely silent she'd been in the office, occasionally making comments that didn't make much sense.
"I fell and hurt my head. I wanted you so badly. I cried for you and Addie's mama tried to call you. Juni's mama picked me up and held me and I cried for you. She told me to be brave, and you were helping other kids. She told me my fingers were candles and I should blow them out, and blow all my bad feelings out into the snow. I blew them and I felt better, but I still wanted my mama." I was sobbing as quietly as I could in the front seat, silently blessing the mothers that had been there for my child when I couldn't be. My heart was shattered hearing that she'd needed me and I wasn't there. I updated the vice-president and the mothers who had helped her on Lilah's condition. The assistant teacher hadn't contacted us, and Mrs. Fuller had been on vacation for the week, a fact not even the class rep had been aware of. Dano and I were zombies for the next few days. Not sleeping, waking Lilah around the clock to ask her questions, look at her pupils, make her squeeze our fingers and press back against our hands. She was spacey and confused, sound-sensitive and headachey for a few days. We both went with her to her field trip to the DIA the day after the concussion. He and I had talked in hushed tones, and I'd had a long talk with the doctors who knew her best. No one told us what to do other than trust our instincts. The decision was both the easiest and hardest we've ever made as parents: she could never go back to that school again. I waited until I was calm and emailed the president, vice-president, and our class rep. All were so sorry, all understood. Our class rep said her son had been having similar educational problems and was getting about as much assistance at the school.
A vague email from the school went out to her class that Lilah would not be returning to Drayton. I cried every night. I was taking from her the one thing she loved most about her life for reasons she could never understand. We kept her busy with play dates, outings, and crafts. We practiced cutting and pre-writing projects at home (most Frozen-themed or fun animal projects she liked). And emails poured into my inbox. Multiple families with the same concerns we had about the "curriculum", lack of teaching, and lack of instructing. Some who hadn't had the courage, but had wanted to leave as well. And the most meaningful emails of all were from mothers who seemed genuinely sad they wouldn't see Lilah on their volunteer days anymore. Some mothers I knew well, some I had honestly never spoken to.
"I will miss her. You have a sweet daughter."
"My daughter will be heartbroken to hear Lilah isn't coming back."
"I miss Lilah at Drayton."
"I miss her spirit. I love how in awe she always was of new things."
"Lilah made me smile every time I worked."
"I am so sad to see her go."
"Lilah always found a lap to sit in and was so sweet."
"I think Lilah is lovely. She is a gentle spirit and has a brightness in her eyes. My daughter will miss her so." I treasured the kind words even as they broke my heart. All the reasons they would miss her were the reasons we had to take her out. We had to preserve all the wonderful Lilah-ness before a stupid personality conflict broke her spirit.
I never did hear from the assistant teacher who was in the class that day. Mrs. Fuller contacted me when she got back from vacation. I probably shouldn't have been as angry at her email as I was. It contained things like she was sorry if she gave us the impression Lilah was going to receive extensive 1:1 time to work on her fine motor skills, but she simply didn't have the time for that (with 5 adults to 20 kids, I felt someone should have had the time for some 1:1. Not her always, but someone). She went on to illustrate how she'd "tested" Lilah again a few weeks ago with no improvement in what she knew - a couple colors, a handful of letters, one or two numbers, few shapes, and couldn't write her name. At one point, she'd asked Lilah what a shape was while pointing to a rectangle and Lilah had answered "Yellow". I smiled when I read that. I could picture the smirk on Lilah's face when she said it, just like she did to us when she was trying to get out of something. Instead of recognizing it as a tactic to get out of work by inducing frustration, it was just used as further "proof" of a deficit. The email ended with although she wasn't a doctor, she had been a preschool teacher for 15 years and Lilah was not a typical 4 year old. That wasn't her fault, our fault, or Lilah's fault. I was angry at the fact that Lilah not being "typical" was considered a negative quality. I loved my strange little bird, all the more lately for seeing the outpouring of love from people in her life and seeing how her knowledge bank blossomed when information was presented in a way her brain understood better. We hadn't raised her to be a cookie cutter kid. What the hell had we been doing, listening to this woman who "didn't have the time" to recognize Lilah's strengths and capitalize them, but apparently had the time to test her on her supposed deficits. I was angry we had to advocate so hard for her when she was only 4. After many tearful conversations late into many nights, we vowed over and over again to protect her from anyone who wanted her to be different than what she was. If it meant getting an IEP through the district for her to get whatever accommodations would help her learn best (books on tape, quiet and low-distractibility places to take tests, modified homework assignments) we would do it. I was at least thankful it happened now so we knew how to handle it for the rest of her time at school, but I was weary to the bone thinking their might be 14 more years of fighting for her.
We got the news today that she had indeed won a place in the lottery at Kennedy, just like she said she would, along with all of her very best Drayton friends. In touring the school, they emphasize project-based learning, hands-on sciences, small tutoring groups led by parents trained by teachers to help each group at their level, camping experiences, several school gardens, heavy emphasis on music and band, and even a vegetable stand where school-grown produce is sold at pickup time. I'm sure it won't be perfect, but at least the learning style seems much more her speed, and the kindergarten teachers we met were right down there on their level helping, touching shoulders and bumping fists, smiling, and reminded me a lot of Miss Amanda's sweet approach with her tiny dancers. Kindergarteners in every class met the tourists with confident smiles and even handshakes, 5 year old tour guides who pointed out the highlights of their classrooms, of which they were obviously very proud, finally asking the principal at the end if they'd done all right and receiving a high five and a grin in response. It was the kind of environment I could see Lilah happy and thriving, where a little bird could test her wings with support and guidance. We'll see where this next chapter takes her.
As most people know, we thoroughly enjoyed Lilah's first year of preschool. She played, she sang songs, she had snack, made friends, went on field trips. We very happily signed her up for the 4 year class. In addition to the same classroom and teachers, it was to be more days every week, and small group time focussed on kindergarten readiness.
I first felt like something was off around mid-September.
I talked to Dano, who said I was looking for trouble. Lilah didn't seem on track with other kids. When I'd sit down to work on writing or coloring with her she would actively resist. She said "I don't know" to answer any academic related question. She would do math while we cooked or find letters when we we read, but she was instantaneously frustrated and resistant toward any formal teaching. I emailed her teacher that I was concerned that she didn't know any shapes or letters besides L consistently, and only the color blue despite having been cleared by the ophthalmologist. She said she shared my concerns. One day she was compliant. The next day she acted like she didn't even understand the question. She suggested a chore chart to get her in the habit of doing a little every day, and we'd discuss it at conferences. We did, and I showed her doctor the correspondence with the teacher. She felt too much was being expected of a 4 year old, and we were dealing with a personality, not a deficit. She explained that her eldest had needed reading enrichment until she was 7, then she began reading at a 6th grade level. She was a late bloomer, but got there in her own time. Reassured, we dutifully practiced her name every day until conferences.
We went a little nervous (well, I was). We sat down in the absurdly small chairs and waited while the teacher went through some papers and looked grave. I had such a feeling a dread in the pit of my stomach. I looked around the room at the artwork. They had been making gingerbread-esque cutout art of their families. I counted them. Nothing by Lilah. Mrs. Fuller pulled out a stack of worksheets and explained that in their small groups, they had been tested on a variety of topics and when Lilah had agreed to at all, she hadn't gotten anything right. She repeatedly sunk down in her chair during group, saying she was too tired or wanted her mama, wanted to go home. On a worksheet where she was told things like "Color the square red," she had colored nicely, but only blue star was accurate. She pulled out page after page of Lilah's work, then other children's to compare it too. She said she was concerned about Lilah having a learning disability, that no other child was unable to identify colors or shapes. Dano smiled and pointed out that she got blue square, and had colored nicely in the lines. My eyes were too full of tears to joke. Her teacher was sitting in front of us telling us how serious it was. That she didn't know her letters, and at this time she wouldn't recommend kindergarten. I found some words, barely audible.
"She knows letters. She picks them out in the bathtub, and when we read. She knows blue and red too." Mrs. Fuller said she was relieved to hear it, and maybe she suffered from anxiety instead? Or maybe a working memory problem. Dano pointed out that she memorized 9 minute songs, and could quote movies she's seen once, or pick out an artist based on their style of mandolin playing. "Maybe if you made it more engaging or made it a game to her, she'd be more receptive." I was more defensive.
"She isn't hitting other children, right? Biting? She plays well and gets along?"
"Yes, but out of all the other children, she's pretty much the only one who can't do these basic things. I'm very concerned." The meeting ended shortly thereafter. I was crushed. Dano was convinced it would be all right. I ended up bursting into tears at her doctor's desk and spilling out the entire story. If it were possible to compassionately scoff derisively, this doctor managed it. Again I was told Lilah wasn't defective, she just wasn't compliant and this teacher had no call to use such strongly worded phrases. What worried her most, she shared, was that Lilah was for some reason resistant to learning and afraid to get things wrong. In an environment where making mistakes should be encouraged, she was being made to think less of herself because she wasn't "up to par", being called out in front of other children for not knowing what they knew. "We have to get her confidence back, first. Accuracy will come later." She also suggested getting Lilah evaluated by the school district just in case she did need some extra help in an area or two. This was free, as was any assistance she may need. I was so grateful. Why hadn't we been told that was an option by her teacher? I found out later it was because Mrs. Fuller didn't know it was.
Dano and I thought about dance class. It was a rigid environment where much was expected of these tiny people, but not more than they could give. They were rewarded at the end and praised throughout for attempts, even utter failures if they tried hard. They received smiles, squeezes on the shoulders, honest praise without sugar coating ("Good try, it looks better this week!"), and finally a stamp at the end for their participation. I made up my mind and emailed the teacher. I wanted Lilah pulled aside before group and told that she didn't have to know the answers, but she had to try her best and not say she was tired or wanted to go home. If that happened, she would get a stamp on the hand afterward just like at dance. We went to Michaels and picked out stamps with owls, birds, butterflies, and flowers. For a time it seemed to work. Her teacher reported her participation improved, as did her enthusiasm. Her accuracy did not. I tried not to care.
The special education teacher I had been corresponding with took a careful history of Lilah's milestones and wanted to know any concerns we or Mrs. Fuller had. She caught me off guard with her next question. "What are her strengths? What is she good at?" They weren't only focussed on a possible deficit. They wanted to know the whole Lilah. She wanted to visit the preschool to see Lilah in her natural habitat. I told Lilah someone would be visiting her preschool to watch her play and ask her some questions.
"Why?"
"Well...you'll be in kindergarten soon and it will help them find the best place for you."
"Right. At Kennedy. With my new lunch box. And girl teacher." Ever the optimist, Lilah already had her heart set on a lottery-entry magnet program where she planned to eat lunch every day out of a Totoro bento box straight from Japan and thrive in a female teacher's class (she'd been surprised to learn that one of the three teachers was male). I was nervous when the day came and grilled Lilah as soon as I got home for a full report. "Well, she came over while Annalia and I were playing dress up. I was Elsa (always, she's the Ice Queen and her best friend, the Princess)."
"Okay. What did she say to you?"
"Asked my name, and asked if I was dressed up like Elsa from Frozen." Lilah beamed. "I told her I was. She wanted to know what color dress Elsa wore, and I told her it was blue like mine. Then I twirled for her."
"Then what?"
"Um...she asked if I knew any letters and I told her I knew L. I wrote an L for her."
"Yeah? What did she think of your L?"
"Oh, she was impressed. Then she asked if I knew any other letters. I told her A was for Allison and D was for Dano and also Downton Abbey."
"You really told her D was for Downton Abbey?"
"Um, yeah? So then I played some more."
When I spoke with her later in the week, the special ed teacher said Lilah was a delight to talk to, very engaging, bright, and social. She had a fine motor delay, and she had some concerns about her receptive language skills. When asked what color something was, she would give any old color along with a winning grin.
"She knew a color answer was expected of her, so she'd give one with that bright smile, just asking me to buy it and let her get back to playing. We see that sometimes in receptive language delays. They compensate very well." I told her I didn't think language was the problem, but they could go ahead and check it out if they wanted. All in all, she'll be getting a speech evaluation and occupational therapy to help her write and cut. She had just as many lovely things to say about Lilah as things she was concerned about. I compared it ruefully to the terrible conference where not one positive suggestion to improve things had been made. I'd even had to send an email to Mrs. Fuller outlining the steps of getting an educational evaluation for a child, since somehow after 15 years of preschool teaching, she'd never referred a child for extra help.
The winter dragged on endlessly. The children spent more time home for snow days than in preschool. Lilah bonded more closely with her little friend who played Frozen with her. Every day she'd tell me what they had for snack, what story they'd read, and how she and Annalia had played Frozen with Annalia's twin Matilde pretending to be their faithful pet cheetah named Cheese. I always encouraged her to stop by one of the project tables and do a craft, write in her journal. Lilah laughed at me every time. I couldn't blame her. Give a kid the option of table work or endless play, and come on. What will they choose. And if she did sit down at a table, no teacher sat along side her to show her how to write or cut. Projects seldom came home, and when they did, there would be one sad snip cut into them with Lilah's name written in adult handwriting after she'd abandoned the project. Dano called me angrily after the project where she was supposed to decorate and cut out the letter L came home blank. It was her favorite letter, and no one had even bothered to help her cut it out when she'd attempted to do the project. We talked long and hard about taking her out and putting her in another preschool for a few months. I felt like I was failing her. No matter how hard I worked with her, she was blissfully unaware she didn't know as much as her counterparts in the classroom, and content to be an Ice Queen forever. Those kids played hours on their iPads, complicated educational games. Lilah planted bulbs, cooked, asked questions about the origins of the stars and why doctors couldn't cure certain diseases, and made up entire universes in her head to be happily played out in the sanctuary of her bedroom. But if I held up a flashcard, told her it was orange, then asked her what it was, she'd smile and answer, "Circle?" before walking away. She was smart. I knew she was smart. Why couldn't she just get it?
Dano and I talked to his sister, who'd pointed out Drayton was a lot of things, but it wasn't educating her. No one instructed her, then tested or graded her work. She was tested and graded on concepts she'd never been taught. How can she succeed at Alphabet Bingo if she hadn't memorized her alphabet? And why were 4 year olds being expected to have every shape, color, number, and letter memorized in the first place? She talked us into making peace with the preschool for what it was - a playgroup - and seek out actual instruction for her outside the classroom. Let her play out the rest of the year happily, ignore her teacher, and get her the actual help she needed. I felt much more at peace. One Saturday morning, while pondering to myself why Lilah couldn't just memorize flashcards like I did, it dawned on me what is probably painfully obvious to everyone else in the world. Lilah and I have different learning styles. When she was interested in something, she memorized it down to the smallest details. The kid had worked out the entire plot to Wicked just by piecing it together through the songs that showed up (out of order, I might add) on her Pandora station. I got together with Dano and we created some flashcards of our own. Every card had a letter and a corresponding character from Frozen, Despicable Me, Spirited Away, Wreck-it Ralph, any other film she had memorized. The letter on the card was colored to match the character. She got a chocolate chip before she started, and one after she finished (a professor of mine did that with us on test days, only it was mini candy bars. She said it jump started the mind and jogged the memory). She had to sit criss-cross on the floor with her hands still and look up while we stood and held up the card (a trick spelling-bee champs use, looking up to picture the word itself in the air). She had to repeat after us. A is for Anna. B is for Belle. After three days, she knew a handful of letters she'd never known before. After five days, she knew 21 out of 26 without prompting. I felt like such an idiot. Mrs. Fuller, me, everyone had been coming down so hard on Lilah for not learning the way we thought she should. When I took five damn minutes to actually think about how Lilah learned, the solution had been screaming at me all along. Teach her the way she learns, not the way you do, you huge moron. I grew a shade more resentful of the teacher who'd had her for the second year in a row and had arrived at "maybe disabled" instead of "right-brained learner".
The final straw came last week on Wednesday. I was having the first day in what would be the worst week of my career. I didn't know it at the time I was getting the story and hearing the preliminary imaging reports, but we were rapidly losing a healthy 4 year old to a disease no one knew she had. By rapidly, I mean within 24 hours of it being found. I was just hanging up with another nurse who was giving me the first of many bad reports on this child when my cell phone started buzzing beside me. Caller ID displayed a mom of one of Lilah's classmates. Weird, I thought, and picked it up. She identified herself and apologized for calling me at work.
"Lilah hit her head, and we can't calm her down." I think she said some more words, but it sounded like she was underwater. When my brain started registering sounds again, she was saying something about trying to call us but not being able to reach either of us, our emergency cards weren't up to date, something about an old class roster.
"Where is she? I want to talk to Lilah." Someone handed her the phone. "Lilah Rose? Talk to me, goose. It's Mama."
"I hit my head!" She wailed into the phone. "I want you."
"Darling, it's going to be fine. Where are you?"
"I want you."
"We'll be there to get you. Where are you?"
"At preschool."
"What's your name?"
"Lilah Rose."
"How old are you."
"Four."
"You're going to be fine. I promise. We'll be there. Daddy might get there before me. I'm in Farmington Hills today." She started crying again that she wanted me to get there first. "Okay, okay, okay. I'll be there. What teacher is with you?" She told me no teacher was with her. "What grown ups?" Silence. "LILAH. Who is with you?"
"Juni's mommy, and Addie's."
"I need to talk to a grown up. We're coming for you."
"Okay." I was told she hadn't lost consciousness and probably didn't need medical care, but was hysterical and they hadn't been able to calm her or reach us. I seethed and told them to hang tight, that Dano would come to get her. I called him. He was furious and immediately left the house. She'd just fallen hugging a friend and they'd been trying to pick each other up. A complete accident. But there was no excuse for not being able to reach a parent, or not calling the emergency contact, my sister-in-law who's had the same number for 10 years. I called the vice-president of the school board, fuming. I spilled out all the educational cockups that had taken place over the year, the lack of actual teaching, and that since the school had failed to do more than provide a playgroup, the least they had to do was keep her safe in an emergency and couldn't even manage to do that. I told her we'd take some time to calm down before making any decisions, but I didn't know how I could send her back or write another tuition check after what had just happened. She was totally understanding and shocked, asking when we'd updated our information and who I'd given the changes to (I'd given it to the membership person twice after she got it wrong again back in December).
I had just made it back to my desk, shaking, when another call came in about our patient. More absolutely awful news. Tears started rolling down my cheeks as I trudged into the doctor's office to tell one of them. He asked after Lilah. I told him she was heading home and appeared fine to Dano. They'd both called me to let me know he had her and they were leaving. I could hear the tightness in his jaw through the phone. I hadn't sat down in my chair before my phone was going off frantically with texts to call home immediately. I called. Lilah had gotten extremely drowsy, and Dano let her rest but not sleep. He was having a hard time keeping her awake when she started projectile vomiting and shaking, saying she was dizzy. I told her to clean her up and get her to the office. Her pediatrician was at the Troy office, which meant I had to drive across town to meet them. The 30 minute drive was the longest in my life. They barely beat me there. Even though her doctor was behind, the staff put Lilah in a room and worked her up without me saying a word. They got all her vitals calmly and with a smile, and had Dr. Kolin see her next. I asked Dano if he was aware she was getting preferential treatment and he nodded through clenched teeth.
Dr. Kolin came in and immediately commented on how pale she looked. Lilah swooned several times on the exam table, whether nauseated or dizzy I didn't know. She got a thorough head to toe, and neurologically was fine but we were told one more vomiting episode would warrant a CT scan of her brain, and we had to wake her up for neuro checks every two hours through the night. She said she wanted to avoid radiating her little brain if we could help it, which I appreciated. She scribbled out our encounter form, jokingly asking me to chart for her (she'd broken her wrist a few weeks earlier and I've been her shadow lately, doing her charting and helping with exams). I told her after she saw Lilah out of order, I'd chart whenever she wanted. She told the front desk to write off whatever our insurance didn't pay, since head injuries were a higher level of billable care and she technically had a stage 2 concussion. I thanked whatever gods would listen for the hundred thousandth time for my amazing employers. No fewer than six pediatricians checked on her at all hours over the next few days, not only the one on call for the night. Texts, calls, and emails.
On the way home, Lilah started to tell me what happened. I welcomed the talking after how strangely silent she'd been in the office, occasionally making comments that didn't make much sense.
"I fell and hurt my head. I wanted you so badly. I cried for you and Addie's mama tried to call you. Juni's mama picked me up and held me and I cried for you. She told me to be brave, and you were helping other kids. She told me my fingers were candles and I should blow them out, and blow all my bad feelings out into the snow. I blew them and I felt better, but I still wanted my mama." I was sobbing as quietly as I could in the front seat, silently blessing the mothers that had been there for my child when I couldn't be. My heart was shattered hearing that she'd needed me and I wasn't there. I updated the vice-president and the mothers who had helped her on Lilah's condition. The assistant teacher hadn't contacted us, and Mrs. Fuller had been on vacation for the week, a fact not even the class rep had been aware of. Dano and I were zombies for the next few days. Not sleeping, waking Lilah around the clock to ask her questions, look at her pupils, make her squeeze our fingers and press back against our hands. She was spacey and confused, sound-sensitive and headachey for a few days. We both went with her to her field trip to the DIA the day after the concussion. He and I had talked in hushed tones, and I'd had a long talk with the doctors who knew her best. No one told us what to do other than trust our instincts. The decision was both the easiest and hardest we've ever made as parents: she could never go back to that school again. I waited until I was calm and emailed the president, vice-president, and our class rep. All were so sorry, all understood. Our class rep said her son had been having similar educational problems and was getting about as much assistance at the school.
A vague email from the school went out to her class that Lilah would not be returning to Drayton. I cried every night. I was taking from her the one thing she loved most about her life for reasons she could never understand. We kept her busy with play dates, outings, and crafts. We practiced cutting and pre-writing projects at home (most Frozen-themed or fun animal projects she liked). And emails poured into my inbox. Multiple families with the same concerns we had about the "curriculum", lack of teaching, and lack of instructing. Some who hadn't had the courage, but had wanted to leave as well. And the most meaningful emails of all were from mothers who seemed genuinely sad they wouldn't see Lilah on their volunteer days anymore. Some mothers I knew well, some I had honestly never spoken to.
"I will miss her. You have a sweet daughter."
"My daughter will be heartbroken to hear Lilah isn't coming back."
"I miss Lilah at Drayton."
"I miss her spirit. I love how in awe she always was of new things."
"Lilah made me smile every time I worked."
"I am so sad to see her go."
"Lilah always found a lap to sit in and was so sweet."
"I think Lilah is lovely. She is a gentle spirit and has a brightness in her eyes. My daughter will miss her so." I treasured the kind words even as they broke my heart. All the reasons they would miss her were the reasons we had to take her out. We had to preserve all the wonderful Lilah-ness before a stupid personality conflict broke her spirit.
I never did hear from the assistant teacher who was in the class that day. Mrs. Fuller contacted me when she got back from vacation. I probably shouldn't have been as angry at her email as I was. It contained things like she was sorry if she gave us the impression Lilah was going to receive extensive 1:1 time to work on her fine motor skills, but she simply didn't have the time for that (with 5 adults to 20 kids, I felt someone should have had the time for some 1:1. Not her always, but someone). She went on to illustrate how she'd "tested" Lilah again a few weeks ago with no improvement in what she knew - a couple colors, a handful of letters, one or two numbers, few shapes, and couldn't write her name. At one point, she'd asked Lilah what a shape was while pointing to a rectangle and Lilah had answered "Yellow". I smiled when I read that. I could picture the smirk on Lilah's face when she said it, just like she did to us when she was trying to get out of something. Instead of recognizing it as a tactic to get out of work by inducing frustration, it was just used as further "proof" of a deficit. The email ended with although she wasn't a doctor, she had been a preschool teacher for 15 years and Lilah was not a typical 4 year old. That wasn't her fault, our fault, or Lilah's fault. I was angry at the fact that Lilah not being "typical" was considered a negative quality. I loved my strange little bird, all the more lately for seeing the outpouring of love from people in her life and seeing how her knowledge bank blossomed when information was presented in a way her brain understood better. We hadn't raised her to be a cookie cutter kid. What the hell had we been doing, listening to this woman who "didn't have the time" to recognize Lilah's strengths and capitalize them, but apparently had the time to test her on her supposed deficits. I was angry we had to advocate so hard for her when she was only 4. After many tearful conversations late into many nights, we vowed over and over again to protect her from anyone who wanted her to be different than what she was. If it meant getting an IEP through the district for her to get whatever accommodations would help her learn best (books on tape, quiet and low-distractibility places to take tests, modified homework assignments) we would do it. I was at least thankful it happened now so we knew how to handle it for the rest of her time at school, but I was weary to the bone thinking their might be 14 more years of fighting for her.
We got the news today that she had indeed won a place in the lottery at Kennedy, just like she said she would, along with all of her very best Drayton friends. In touring the school, they emphasize project-based learning, hands-on sciences, small tutoring groups led by parents trained by teachers to help each group at their level, camping experiences, several school gardens, heavy emphasis on music and band, and even a vegetable stand where school-grown produce is sold at pickup time. I'm sure it won't be perfect, but at least the learning style seems much more her speed, and the kindergarten teachers we met were right down there on their level helping, touching shoulders and bumping fists, smiling, and reminded me a lot of Miss Amanda's sweet approach with her tiny dancers. Kindergarteners in every class met the tourists with confident smiles and even handshakes, 5 year old tour guides who pointed out the highlights of their classrooms, of which they were obviously very proud, finally asking the principal at the end if they'd done all right and receiving a high five and a grin in response. It was the kind of environment I could see Lilah happy and thriving, where a little bird could test her wings with support and guidance. We'll see where this next chapter takes her.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Winter Dance Show
I don't know why, but I've still been wracked with anxiety about dance. Dano goes and reads a book during the lessons. I watch with interest, but also with my heart in my chest until she gets her stamp at the end. Part of it is because Lilah is the most uncoordinated in a class of uncoordinated. She tries really hard, but sometimes her body just seems to arrest itself as she gets behind in the steps and can't decide where to jump in.
Once, she was messing around on the barre and fell hard onto the floor. The teacher came down to her level and very firmly told her, "We do not fall like that in dance class." Lilah's eyes flashed and she crossed her arms defiantly and threw her nose in the air, refusing to make eye contact. "If you do not do all the steps, you do not get a stamp at the end."
Lilah replied with a "Hmph." I tried not to drop my head into my hands. I knew this mood. She'd given Lilah a direct order and was being defied. This was the part where her dad or I would get as angry as she was, would order her to time out or haul her into her room to have a break. Miss Amanda returned to the front of the class like nothing had happened and continued where she had left off. Lilah Rose stood rigid, nose in the air, looking absurdly out of place in the middle of a line of tiny dancers. But I watched something different happen. She watched as the other dancers kept going, and realized she was out of place. I don't know if she was embarrassed or self conscious, but she melted from her defiant stance slowly and fell into sync with the others. She worked twice as hard and earned her stamp at the end. I was so thankful to see her bow to social pressures in this case, that there is a limit to her defiance when she sees she isn't benefitting from it.
During the last practice before the show, Lilah had the dances down to about 75%. All of the girls had their moments where they were backwards, lopsided, unable to hold a pose. None of them were perfect but they were all so enthusiastic and adorable. I wasn't anxious in a "Dance Moms" way. I could have cared less if she got all the steps perfectly. I just didn't want her to knock down another dancer, or go rogue and bunny hop all over the stage in her excitement at performing (it had happened to several of the girls once or twice during rehearsal), or freeze or burst into tears.
I had nothing but bad anxiety dreams the entire night before. I woke up and cleaned the whole house to keep my mind off it. Lilah ate a leisurely breakfast, helped with some cleaning, took over my Pandora station and switched it over to "Disney Princess Radio". She's discovered the thumbs up and thumbs down approach to hearing more songs she likes, although she roars in rage when she runs out of "skips". "Defying Gravity" from Wicked came on, and she listened carefully before giving it the thumbs up. After a few more songs from Wicked that morning and dozens of questions, she had pieced together the plot and took herself back to bed to sing "Defying Gravity" at the top of her lungs. I smiled and wished I were more like her. She was so excited and confident. I'd be terrified and frozen. My stomach seizes up before I go in a patient's room for a breastfeeding consult or patient education, or have to train a new employee or give a review. "You don't know anything. They're older than you. You look ridiculous. You are ridiculous." I take a deep breath before entering every room and pretend to be someone else. Someone who knows what they're doing. Someone who oozes confidence and expertise. Somehow they buy it. Somehow no one's called "Bullshit!" But I'm afraid that every time will be THE time. The time it all comes crashing down and I'll be exposed as a fraud.
And somehow my offspring was in her bed, smilingly belting out "I'm through accepting limits, 'cause someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change but til I try I'll never know! Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity and you can't pull me down." I marvel at it daily. But I pretend there too. I tell her what I know to be true, instead of what my fears whisper to me every day. I pretend to know how to be a good mother, and it comes. She's growing up with the spirit I pretend to have, and I envy her for it. She's fearless and brave and strong, even when she's strong-willed. And she was about to do something I know I never could. It's a crazy thing, to admire your 4 year old.
We drove her to the community center and my hands were shaking. I thought I was going to throw up. I had no rational explanation for why I was being so crazy. We had been told to deposit her in a group of others in her age group. All of Miss Amanda's classes at her level were performing that day. I just had to take her to the front, remove her toasty robe, and turn her over to her teacher. As I did, I got pushed away from the stage by the throng. I panicked. I hadn't told her where I'd be. I hadn't kissed her, or told her she'd be great. I didn't tell her to walk carefully up the steps, and to keep her eyes on Miss Amanda. I hadn't told her anything. I was trying to at least catch her eye to try to get all those things into her head with just a quick glance. I saw a French-braided, blonde head take a seat with her class without looking back. I saw a classmate squeeze her affectionately. I heard Miss Amanda say, "It's so nice to see you, Lilah." I was 4 feet away and getting pushed further back. I turned and walked away. I wanted to cry, for me obviously and not for her. I got to our row of seats, and Dano squeezed me.
A few opening numbers by the "show dancers", and her class took the stage. Their jazz dance was first, and I saw her do her dance, grinning the entire time. She stayed in her place, kept her eyes on the teacher, gave it her best shot, and only paused once to look out into the dark crowd for us before stepping back in with the rest. During her ballet dance, she got really excited to do a releve and bounced up and down a couple times afterward. When the teacher reminded them to make sure their butterfly was on the right hand, she took this as criticism and switched hands even though she'd gotten it right the first time, so spent the majority of the dance with the butterfly on the wrong wrist, but no one cared. She certainly didn't. We didn't. We watched the rest of the dances. I was relaxed and proud. There were dancers of all shapes and sizes, fully clothed, no cleavage or midriffs (although Kim pointed out there was a lot of cheek showing under one of the jazz costumes), and no sexual dances or twerking. Seeing all the levels of classes, I was so happy to be at this dance school. I'd be comfortable with Lilah continuing on if she were interested. I'd try to be less anxiety-ridden for the rest of the season/her dance career. I seriously had wanted to hug Miss Amanda for the work she does with the girls. I'd seen her on stage dancing in several of the show numbers, and she was so talented. To pass that on to the smallest and most uncoordinated group of preschoolers I'd ever seen was nothing short of a gift.
We collected Lilah and everyone hugged her and told her how awesome she'd done. She got flowers, and cousin hugs, and love showered in every direction. She chose Lebanese as her celebration dinner location, and we ate, drank, and generally made merry with friends. I kissed her goodnight that night, exhausted and proud of herself, still humming "Defying Gravity". I think she's right. Our bird will fly high.
Once, she was messing around on the barre and fell hard onto the floor. The teacher came down to her level and very firmly told her, "We do not fall like that in dance class." Lilah's eyes flashed and she crossed her arms defiantly and threw her nose in the air, refusing to make eye contact. "If you do not do all the steps, you do not get a stamp at the end."
Lilah replied with a "Hmph." I tried not to drop my head into my hands. I knew this mood. She'd given Lilah a direct order and was being defied. This was the part where her dad or I would get as angry as she was, would order her to time out or haul her into her room to have a break. Miss Amanda returned to the front of the class like nothing had happened and continued where she had left off. Lilah Rose stood rigid, nose in the air, looking absurdly out of place in the middle of a line of tiny dancers. But I watched something different happen. She watched as the other dancers kept going, and realized she was out of place. I don't know if she was embarrassed or self conscious, but she melted from her defiant stance slowly and fell into sync with the others. She worked twice as hard and earned her stamp at the end. I was so thankful to see her bow to social pressures in this case, that there is a limit to her defiance when she sees she isn't benefitting from it.
During the last practice before the show, Lilah had the dances down to about 75%. All of the girls had their moments where they were backwards, lopsided, unable to hold a pose. None of them were perfect but they were all so enthusiastic and adorable. I wasn't anxious in a "Dance Moms" way. I could have cared less if she got all the steps perfectly. I just didn't want her to knock down another dancer, or go rogue and bunny hop all over the stage in her excitement at performing (it had happened to several of the girls once or twice during rehearsal), or freeze or burst into tears.
I had nothing but bad anxiety dreams the entire night before. I woke up and cleaned the whole house to keep my mind off it. Lilah ate a leisurely breakfast, helped with some cleaning, took over my Pandora station and switched it over to "Disney Princess Radio". She's discovered the thumbs up and thumbs down approach to hearing more songs she likes, although she roars in rage when she runs out of "skips". "Defying Gravity" from Wicked came on, and she listened carefully before giving it the thumbs up. After a few more songs from Wicked that morning and dozens of questions, she had pieced together the plot and took herself back to bed to sing "Defying Gravity" at the top of her lungs. I smiled and wished I were more like her. She was so excited and confident. I'd be terrified and frozen. My stomach seizes up before I go in a patient's room for a breastfeeding consult or patient education, or have to train a new employee or give a review. "You don't know anything. They're older than you. You look ridiculous. You are ridiculous." I take a deep breath before entering every room and pretend to be someone else. Someone who knows what they're doing. Someone who oozes confidence and expertise. Somehow they buy it. Somehow no one's called "Bullshit!" But I'm afraid that every time will be THE time. The time it all comes crashing down and I'll be exposed as a fraud.
And somehow my offspring was in her bed, smilingly belting out "I'm through accepting limits, 'cause someone says they're so. Some things I cannot change but til I try I'll never know! Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity and you can't pull me down." I marvel at it daily. But I pretend there too. I tell her what I know to be true, instead of what my fears whisper to me every day. I pretend to know how to be a good mother, and it comes. She's growing up with the spirit I pretend to have, and I envy her for it. She's fearless and brave and strong, even when she's strong-willed. And she was about to do something I know I never could. It's a crazy thing, to admire your 4 year old.
We drove her to the community center and my hands were shaking. I thought I was going to throw up. I had no rational explanation for why I was being so crazy. We had been told to deposit her in a group of others in her age group. All of Miss Amanda's classes at her level were performing that day. I just had to take her to the front, remove her toasty robe, and turn her over to her teacher. As I did, I got pushed away from the stage by the throng. I panicked. I hadn't told her where I'd be. I hadn't kissed her, or told her she'd be great. I didn't tell her to walk carefully up the steps, and to keep her eyes on Miss Amanda. I hadn't told her anything. I was trying to at least catch her eye to try to get all those things into her head with just a quick glance. I saw a French-braided, blonde head take a seat with her class without looking back. I saw a classmate squeeze her affectionately. I heard Miss Amanda say, "It's so nice to see you, Lilah." I was 4 feet away and getting pushed further back. I turned and walked away. I wanted to cry, for me obviously and not for her. I got to our row of seats, and Dano squeezed me.
A few opening numbers by the "show dancers", and her class took the stage. Their jazz dance was first, and I saw her do her dance, grinning the entire time. She stayed in her place, kept her eyes on the teacher, gave it her best shot, and only paused once to look out into the dark crowd for us before stepping back in with the rest. During her ballet dance, she got really excited to do a releve and bounced up and down a couple times afterward. When the teacher reminded them to make sure their butterfly was on the right hand, she took this as criticism and switched hands even though she'd gotten it right the first time, so spent the majority of the dance with the butterfly on the wrong wrist, but no one cared. She certainly didn't. We didn't. We watched the rest of the dances. I was relaxed and proud. There were dancers of all shapes and sizes, fully clothed, no cleavage or midriffs (although Kim pointed out there was a lot of cheek showing under one of the jazz costumes), and no sexual dances or twerking. Seeing all the levels of classes, I was so happy to be at this dance school. I'd be comfortable with Lilah continuing on if she were interested. I'd try to be less anxiety-ridden for the rest of the season/her dance career. I seriously had wanted to hug Miss Amanda for the work she does with the girls. I'd seen her on stage dancing in several of the show numbers, and she was so talented. To pass that on to the smallest and most uncoordinated group of preschoolers I'd ever seen was nothing short of a gift.
We collected Lilah and everyone hugged her and told her how awesome she'd done. She got flowers, and cousin hugs, and love showered in every direction. She chose Lebanese as her celebration dinner location, and we ate, drank, and generally made merry with friends. I kissed her goodnight that night, exhausted and proud of herself, still humming "Defying Gravity". I think she's right. Our bird will fly high.
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