Saturday. We needed lots of groceries. After a leisurely breakfast, and with U in a good mood, we ran some errands together and then headed to Woodman's. U was in a good mood, but evidently it was not a mood for grocery shopping. Don pushed the cart around the produce section while I alternately ran in circles after U or held him while he squirmed to be put down. As we began down the meat ...   more »

Inventing the Child

To use the type of language that quickly becomes familiar to a reader of this book:

The dominant culture reproduces itself by telling itself stories about itself. These stories tell of the rightness of obedience to authority, of the natural order of hierarchy, of power, of the obvious right of the strong to use violence and force to coerce the weak, of the need of the subjugated to be controlled. Children learn these stories, which reinforce the realities that they themselves experience and that they see around them.

By telling these stories about children (or stand-ins for children, as...   more »

Ulysses held up a toy T-Rex -- a dark purple, realistically styled, suede-ish critter about 4" high, once merchandise from my street vendor days in Philly -- and said, all throaty and gutteral,   more »

Ulysses and I were hosing off in the showers after our usual Saturday morning swim at the Princeton Club. From 10 a.m. to noon is their so-called "Family Swim," one of two scheduled times in the week when the lap markers are hauled out of the water and parents with kids of all ages can get in and splash around. Unstructured fun and adventure.

In the shower across from us, a mother and daughter were in conflict.

The girl was behind the shower curtain. The mother was outside, still in her swimsuit. She was reaching in and applying shampoo ...   more »

Ulysses and I went to Tenney Park. I had planned to go to Rev. Darryl Richie's installation as settled minister at James Reeb Universalist Unitarian Congregation this afternoon, but Ulysses was having a rough day. It would have been too agonizing for him to sit through the event in the sanctuary, where it was happening, and too pointless for me to sit through it playing with him in the nursery.

U and Don have been sick with colds since last week. Somehow I dodged that bullet. U seemed pretty much recovered from his cold, so I got him up earlier ...   more »

We had had a swell time swimming at the Princeton Club. Ulysses rode on my back as I used a double layer of blue kickboards to take the strain off my neck as I kick-propelled us back and forth through the big pool. In the hot tub, he stood on the tile bench, his chin just above the water, and absolutely unafraid as I disappeared under the surface and came up spouting at him. When it was time to go, he turned and pushed the heavy glass door shut behind him when we left the pool area and headed to ...   more »

Ulysses's first Happy Meal. There's a milestone for ya.

On a day where there were many occasions to take him out of the car and put him back in, he was exceedingly miserable with getting in. We'd drive a little and then have some reason to get out, and then putting him in to get to the next place was a screaming, tortured nightmare. It didn't help that his midday nap had been cut short by a soaking wet diaper and he never managed to drift back into it again.

Finally, errands out of the way  -- and    more »

We went to the Northside Farmer's Market today. We were chatting with a volunteer we know who was staffing the Northside Co-op info table. Conversation turned to Ulysses -- how's he doing, my, how big he's getting, and so forth.

"Is he a good eater?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah!" I answered immediately, nodding.

I was thinking of how much he enjoys eating lemon and lime slices, the toppings and sauce off his pizza before tearing up and hurling away the crust (and after discarding the pepperoni), how much pleasure he gets from munching on green onion stalks, basil sprigs, and ...   more »

More fashion direction: I was wearing a nice skirt and top while we were out, for the first time in maybe a couple of months. But I peeled them off on coming home. I was planning on heating and eating some of that beef and pork biryani I made the other day -- delicious, and loaded with Indian spices of high stain potential. In anticipation of the possibility that U might join me in a bowl of stew -- literally -- I got down to underwear.

Ulysses found the clothes in their pile on the floor and picked them up, ...   more »

Ulysses was pushing his toy shopping cart across the bumpy lawn towards the sidewalk. Not easy. With about a third of the way yet to go, he backed away from the cart. Then he reached up towards me, a cue for my hand. He grasped my wrist and placed my hand, palm down, on the cart handle. He made little high-pitched grunts of dissatisfaction until I was stationed properly behind the cart, both hands gripping the bar.

Then he walked behind me, placed his hands on the backs of my knees, and pushed. Squeals of delight as I began to ...   more »

UnschoolingDiscussion · UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com


From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Thu Sep 8, 2005  1:54 pm
Subject: Accusations -- a student's reward for good work [Was: Re: I need some help]
Glena,

I can relate! Similarly, in the seventh grade I was accused of
plagarism because my book report seemed (to her) so good that it had
to have been copied from the dust jacket. The teacher didn't bother to
look at the dust jacket before leveling her charge.

At first, I thought it was a compliment. I was trying to write the way
"real writers" wrote, so being compared to the pros ...   more »

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Thu Sep 8, 2005  7:18 am
Subject: Re: I need some help.....(sorry it's long)

Sandra,

I totally agree with you. I'm sorry, I didn't explain the point of the
book right. The book "Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling
Ourselves" does not justify pressing lessons on kids. The whole book
is about just the opposite. It shows how disastrous it is to press
lessons on kids.

I agree, and the writer of the book would agree, more than twice IS
just too much. If she could go back in time and take back whatever
efforts ...   more »

UnschoolingDiscussion · UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Wed Sep 7, 2005  11:25 am
Subject: Re: Not First Day of School   

Robyn,

--- In UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com, "Robyn Coburn"
<dezigna@c...> wrote:
> Today would have been Jayn's first day in mandatory school (in CA)
if we had
> not been so fortunate as to have been led to Unschooling.


That's great!

My son is not "school age" yet. Yesterday I was visiting a friend
whose son just started kindergarten last week. We walked to the bus
stop together to meet him coming home. She said, by way of calculating
when he would ...   more »

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Wed Sep 7, 2005  11:10 am
Subject: Re: I need some help.....(sorry it's long)

--- In UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com, "Kim J. F…"
<kim@t...> wrote:
> I need some advice on what to do with my kiddos. My kids are 8,7,5
and 8
> months. My concern is really with the older ones. We have been
unschooling
> for a long time. Though periodically we have tried using a
curriculum, but
> always stop after like 2 weeks.
> My problem is that though my 8 year old does seek out some
information, they
> really just play most ...   more »

Today we all went to the Union Cab picnic at Demetral Field. The candidate's forum was at 1 pm. Don is running for the Board, so he was there for that. He made his statement and answered questions with the other seven candidates. That lasted about an hour and a half. For an hour and a half, I chased Ulysses around the Demetral Field picnic shelter and kept him off the hot grills, out of the dog poop, and away from Don's lap.

Every time Don started to talk, U screamed with happiness and ran straight for him. I would ...   more »

I dreamed that Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Starship Enterprise was the size and shape of Ulysses. Some crisis was in progress. I picked up the captain and moved him from one spot to another.

"Come on, Captain!" I urged. "The lives of a thousand crewmembers are depending on you!"

Captain Picard started to wail.

   more »

Lake View Elementary School playground, home of lots of jungle gym slide sets, and the only playground I know of in town that's shaded at midday, thanks to a stand of lovely old oak trees. Far less than a mile from home, it's an easy bike ride.

So quick a bike ride, in fact, that U is usually not ready to get off the bike by the time we arrive. He grabs at his helmet, clutches at his bike seat straps, and otherwise shows that he wants more riding. So around the grassy field we go, threading our way through ...   more »

Ulysses was working at one his favorite tasks, scrubbing the toilet in the front bathroom. I left him happily at it for a minute or two, but when I came back to see how he was doing, he had added a new element.

He looked joyfully up at me as I approached, glad to show me what he'd done: he'd put his life-sized toy biscuit into the water, and it bobbed gaily in the bowl as he plunged the toilet brush up and down. But his pride quickly dissolved into confusion and shock.  Instead of praising his cleverness, I cried ...   more »

Today around noon at the oak-shaded playgrounds of Lake View Elementary School, Ulysses for the first time showed cognizance of the rungs of the jungle gym. One had curved rungs along a concave arc. He stood both feet on the first rung and looked towards the next, about the same height from the ground. He stepped off onto the ground and walked to the next rung, and slung his legs around it, looking to the next rung, a little higher up.

He spent some minutes contemplating the rungs and threading his body under and around them, sometimes stopping to crouch ...   more »

The other day Teletubbies aired a film clip about a girl, about 5, making a whimsical face out of a pumpkin. She was in what was apparently the basement of a home. All the craft supplies had been laid out for her, presumably, by some unnamed adult. There were muffin tins of glitter and dry beans, piles of colorful dry leaves and felt, and so forth.

"I'm going to make a pumpkin head," says the girl, and she comments on what she's doing as she glues on leaf ears, straw hair, bean eyes. mouth and nose made of something crafty. ...   more »

This is Ulysses's favorite picture. It came from Ocean Meir at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation in May, along with a thank-you card she sent me for making baklava for the month's International Lunch, Greek theme. You can see where he's affectionately sucked on the edge of it. He carries it around in the seat compartment of his Sesame Street rider. Every now and then he takes it out and holds it up to admire, looking at the faces of the three animals and saying his word that means "animal": a baby-pitched "Woof, woof!"   more »

Look who appeared coming down the hallway, with his favorite new toys. He loves to scrub at the toilet with the brush. Who can stop him? Yesterday I found a missing toilet brush while emptying the diaper pail into the washing machine. I figured it would turn up sooner or later.
   more »

Today Ulysses and I went to the playground at Berkeley Park around 7 p.m., after the heat of the day had subsided a bit. That is, it was only 89 degrees.

U wasn't interested in climbing the stairs and going down the slides today. A few steps after we walked onto the gravel, he fell to his knees and happily started digging in the rocks with a stick he had found there. I picked him up to carry him to the base of the stairs. He began to wail. I put him back down. Except for one foray up the ...   more »

We had been playing at the Warner Park playground for at least an hour. Ulysses headed to the far end of the jungle gym/slide contraption, whatever they call those things, the location of the only set of stairs that led up into it, presumably so that he could traverse back along its length and go down one of the slides. He had done this several times earlier in the evening.

But since our last trip to the stairs end of the gym, a trio of loud-talking teenagers had migrated there from the nearby picnic table where they had been sitting. ...   more »

Ulysses and I went to the Lakeview Library. There he fell in love with the fish in the tank in the children's section.

A girl of about 5 was also watching the tank. "What a nice fish tank!" I said to her. "Look at all the pretty fish!" It turned out I was way out of my league with these simplistic comments.

"It's not very clean," she replied.

She went on to point out how green residue was built up in several areas of the glass. I could see streaks where a scraper had been. But I didn't know enough ...   more »

Hot, hot, hot! This Wisconsin summer has finally begun in earnest. Yesterday evening, Ulysses was desperate for a drink of water, but unfortunately we couldn't figure that out before first offering hot dogs, crackers, the breast, Children's Tylenol (in case it was teethin pain), all the games we could think of, a Teletubbies episodes, play session with the ferrets, etc. Finally I thought to offer a soda bottle of water. When he gulped down half of it, and then instantly quit screaming, we knew it was the right choice! It was a hot and sunny day and we spent most ...   more »

After going out to the Coppertop for breakfast to celebrate our wedding anniversary, we stopped at a playground we noticed on Segoe Road.

A boy of about three ran over to meet us, smiling. He approached Ulysses, who was smiling at him, too. As they neared each other, they slowed down and then stopped, their faces about a foot apart. "Hi, baby! Hi!" said the boy. Both faces were lit with curiosity and eagerness. I marvelled at how naturally adept they each seemed to be at appropriate social interaction, the way the boy had stopped at a distance that was ...   more »

It started with trying to go outside. Oh, how Ulysses wanted to get out that screen door to the yard. I decided to distract with him the package that had just arrived via UPS from LaserMonks. I made a big show of opening the cardboard box, and I succeeded in attracting his interest. Whew.

Then I saw what was in the box. Dozens of styrofoam peanuts were stuffed around the ink cartridges. Looking exactly like snack treats. Uh-oh. I quickly brushed the peanuts into an empty Amazon.com box that was nearby on the floor and brought back the LaserMonks box. ...   more »

I took Ulysses to the playground at nearby Warner Park on Madison's Northside today. I pushed him in the kiddie bucket swing while all around us moms and dads with various shades of brown skin spoke in Spanish to their little ones as they played.

A little blond boy of about 8 or 9 rode up on his bicycle and stood behind us.

"Beba voli ljuljati!" I cried in Serbian to Ulysses as he thrilled to the movement -- Baby likes to swing. "Lepo ljulamo!" -- We're swinging nicely! And such like.

After a minute or two, the blond boy ...   more »

Black, black, black is the color/ of my true love's hair. So goes the old English folk song. Ulysses's hair is slowly coming in curly and strawberry blond, or perhaps brown, but last night I dreamed he had a thick, glossy cap of black hair, like Nico Angenent-Mari when I saw him last night when we went to dinner at his family's house. But Ulysses's hair was shiny black instead of shiny copper like Nico's.

He looked so different, I thought as I regarded him. So grown, so ... formed. I had to focus consciously to see my baby boy in him, the face and expression I've come ...   more »