The Family Room

Kindergarten, week two: let's go crazy!

Suddenly, the summer was over.

Here in my city, we're not used to 90 degree weather, and we wilt like orchids in the heat. June is famously cold, July and August are unpredictable and September is usually warm, sunny and lovely.

All summer, we drove up and down the hills as freezing tourists in hastily-bought sweatshirts passed by, clinging to cable-cars for dear life. Isaac grew, he read his first book, he got his first relatively successful haircut, he handled the dentist, the doctor and the developmental optometrist with aplomb. And there was more perseveration, more language, more affection and playfulness, more rigidity, more maturity and more obsessive-compulsive behavior.

His emerging sense of independence--of the desire to understand and try to control his environment--means that we have more compulsiveness to--what? Manage? Endure? Gently redirect? If only. Like so much in our world, it's good (desire for independence) and hard too (obsessive, sometimes even frantic).

And then there's school, and with it a sensory bombardment that is at times excruciating for him. He comes home exhausted, crabby, hyper, starving. He's immovable or he's bouncing off the walls. He wakes up in the morning saying, "No recess. I don't want to go to recess." I ask him why, and it's so obvious it hurts: too. much. noise. No structure, though he doesn't verbalize that. Children running past him, screaming.

How exactly is this supposed to be fun?

We've arranged for more support for after care. We're hoping to get more support for the transition times: lunch, recess. He seems to like his teacher and is already mentioning one of the kids.

It's Sunday, and after a low-key day yesterday followed by twelve hours of sleep, he's happy, relaxed, playful and silly. He and his dad are playing a game of smoosh (in which they smoosh each other with pillows) as I tap this out on the bed.

I am hoping that we'll find our groove. After two years of consistency and support, we're out there, and there's no going back.

The turkey burger diaries

After Isaac's bath tonight, I casually mentioned that I was going to go heat something up for my dinner since J. and Isaac had already eaten. Isaac's lower lip started to quiver. "No!" he said. "No heating!" I knew where this was going.

It's going to be awhile before we eat turkey burgers again in this house.

I'll explain.

A few nights ago, I thought it would be fun to make healthy burgers, so I bought 1/2 lb of ground turkey thigh meat, 1/2 lb of ground turkey breast meat, added salt, pepper, chopped garlic and a little dried fennel (you can substitute ground dried coriander) and turned on the skillet to heat while I molded the turkey into patties. After about a minute, I added the olive oil, waited until it started to smoke just the tiniest bit, and plopped in the burgers.

Within seconds, the house was filled with the savory smell of garlic and turkey and warm olive oil. Yum. I washed my hands, opened the kitchen window and put the buns in the oven to toast.

I offer you all this detail just in case you're a fan of the turkey burger, and because, as I mentioned, I won't be making them for a while yet, so someone should enjoy my little recipe.

As the burgers cooked, the oil got hotter and hotter, and, before I knew it, our hyperactive smoke alarm went off. I turned off the heat and ran into the bedroom, where Isaac was standing rooted to the spot, his hands over his ears. "It's okay, sweetie," I said, "It's just the smoke alarm," as J. ran to open the back door. I grabbed a dish towel and waved it at the alarm, which finally, blessedly stopped.

Damn. We were just getting past all that fire drill crap.

So now we are on a daily regimen of "alarm in the house" social stories, and turkey burgers (which were delicious, by the way, and make sure to get the dark meat too so they're not too dry) are off the menu for a while.

My next challenge: to find some more light summer dishes that won't unduly traumatize my son.

Blame it on the Thunder Burp

Earlier this week, NPR broadcast a story by Alix Spiegel on the relationship between imaginative play and self-regulation in children. The theory, based on work by Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, holds that the nature of play has changed dramatically in the last century, from imaginative, fluid and active to more narrow, rule-based and focused on toys. "It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."

Chudacoff points out a number of other factors that have dramatically altered the nature of play in the last century: the growing concern for safety, and an increasing thirst for achievement among the middle class.  He argues that this decrease in imaginative, unstructured play correlates to a reduction in children's ability to self-regulate, which is critical to emotional development and, yes, success. 

Those of us who have children with special needs or learning differences have often been sensitized to the importance of play.  In fact, "Delays or abnormal functioning in...symbolic and imaginative play" is one of the diagnostic criteria for autism, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), a tome with which I am all too familiar.

And it makes sense.  In play, we rehearse life: relationships, conflicts, dreams, beliefs; we learn impulse control and to be resourceful with a stick, a cardboard box and a few pebbles.  And we all know that the time available to our children for pure, unstructured play continues to decrease, filled instead with lacrosse, and piano, and language lessons, and school, and enrichment of all sorts.

I can't possibly do justice to the entire article here; for that you really need to read the article or, better, listen to the story.  But it makes me wonder what else, in our high-achieving and hyper-scheduled world, we may be unconsciously giving up for our children--and if it's possible to get it back.

Finally, I would be remiss by omitting the story behind the Thunder Burp, a toy gun which, according to Spiegel, was the first toy ever to be advertised on TV outside of the Christmas season.  The Thunder Burp may be long forgotten, but its, um, echo remains even today.

The above is cross-posted on Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

Sense and Sensitivity

Interesting piece in the New York Times today about Sensory Integration Disorder. It's such a minefield: is it or isn't it a "real" disorder? Should or shouldn't it go into the DSM? Do or don't therapies work? Should or shouldn't insurance companies have to pay for it? Should or shouldn't classrooms accommodate the sensory needs of their students? It's enough to make you want to close your eyes, put your hands over your ears, spit out your orange juice and yank off that scratchy sweater.