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What are they doing now: Noah
June 18, 2013 was Noah’s 26th birthday so it seems entirely appropriate that I finish this series about my kids with him, my first born and oldest son.
When I first became pregnant, I hoped for a boy. As I told Jon (Noah’s dad), I assumed that if I had a boy first, he’d naturally have the “first born” characteristics—he’d excel in academics, he’d want to please his parents, he’d “go with the program.” I was nervous about raising a boy. Since I was a firstborn, I thought having my boy come first would give me a headstart on parenting.
I could not have been more wrong.
Whether or not birth order factors into how your children develop, I can’t say. But what I will say about Noah is that from the beginning, he’s very much known who he is and what he can and can’t, will and won’t do. Noah did not have a “strong will” of the kind you read about in parenting books. He wasn’t a rebellious kid or an angry kid or even a disobedient one. Rather, Noah always had a strong sense of two things:
1. The limits of his body. Noah was incredibly clear-sighted about his abilities and proved reliably aware of what he could do/attempt and what he couldn’t. However, as a parent, that sense of power and competence in his body meant watching him climb the outside railing of a two-story stairwell at age 2, and shimmying up tall trees by age 4, indoor rock climbing at ages 9-10, and playing lacrosse in high school (after no previous sports experience whatsoever), and eventually doing urban gymnastics as a young adult (like jumping off two-story buildings and flipping over hand railings).
2. The unlimited power of his mind. Noah never met an idea he didn’t want to chase. He read voraciously from 8 years old and hasn’t stopped. His curiosity about language led him to study Klingon, Esperanto, and constructed languages for what would have been his junior and senior years in traditional high school. Instead, as a homeschooler (unschooler, really), Noah pursued what interested him.
I often say that Noah is the child sent to teach me to be human. He was playful, free-spirited, curious, not interested in rules for no reasons, confident in his abilities, willing to talk about anything, and utterly guileless. Rewards and punishments never worked with Noah, though believe me, I was suckered into trying both, frequently.
What worked for us was to become close to each other, for me to become a student of his temperament and a friend to his spirit. Noah showed me the value of learning for its own sake—for self-directed, absorbing, pursuit of a topic because you must wrestle it to the ground and know it intimately.
Noah never did go to high school (like a couple of his siblings). He did take Algebra 2 at the local high school (we couldn’t afford tutoring for him at the time). When I picked him up after his first test, he jumped in the car and I said to him: “How was the test? Did you feel okay about it?”
Noah replied: “It was okay, but guess what? I wrote two poems.”
“Excuse me? You mean during the test?”
“Yeah. I got done quickly and then wrote these two really awesome poems. Want to hear them?”
That in a nutshell is all you need to know about Noah.
He is currently in college (for a second time – first time quit due to frustration with the system, but is now ready) studying computer science. He is moving to Connecticut with his longterm girlfriend who will be in a Master’s program there. Noah will study at the local college.
Noah was, as all firstborns are, the guinea pig. I’m so grateful for his energy, his ability to forgive me when I overstepped, his cheerful optimism about life, his passion for self-directed learning, and for teaching me how to be a mother and a compassionate human being.
Revision is Not Editing
In Brave Writer, we separate the ideas of revision and editing. Revision is “casting new vision” for the original piece of writing. It’s a “re-imagining” of the original content. You have what you want to say, now you are considering all the various ways it can be said.
Your freewrite/draft is the jet stream of thought. It’s all of it rushing out of the writer onto the page willy-nilly.
Revision is not, now, taking that freewrite/draft and fixing commas or identifying run-on sentences. It’s not addressing tone or spelling mistakes. Those practices fall under the category of “copy-editing.”
Revision is that drastic over-haul type work that literally changes the draft sometimes so completely, the original is hardly recognizable in it any more (except maybe some sentences or the germ of the idea). Revision is where you hunker down and look at specific thoughts expressed insufficiently in the draft, and then determine how to expand them, how to enhance them, how to deepen the content or insight or facts-basis.
Revision IS writing.
In fact, most writers would say that revision is the craft, is the heart of being a writer.
What I find in parents (and even in those who claim to be writing instructors) is a tendency to skip this part of the process. They move right to editing and call it revision.
When asked to give revision notes or support, they draw a blank or they praise what’s good or they give general comments like, “Be sure you think about your audience” or “It’s a good idea to make sure your points are in a solid sequence.”
This kind of general feedback isn’t helpful to writers. What helps is to become a child’s creative partner. What you want to do, what you need to learn how to do, is how to create a dynamic partnership of idea generation.
For instance, you might see a flat-footed opening line (note: they are all flat-footed in the first draft – it’s completely rare that the first line stays the same in well revised writing). Your job isn’t to point out that it is flat-footed or could be revised. It isn’t to assign the task of making it better to your child. It’s literally to brainstorm ideas for improvements. Let’s say the child is writing about white water rafting, you might try something like this:
“I wonder how we can make this opening line grab the reader’s attention. Let me think, let me think. What if we start with the experience—Let’s get in the boat. Are you in it? What’s happening now? Close your eyes. What do you see? Blue? What shades?”
You’re jotting things down as they come out of your child’s mouth. Then you say:
“How about the water? I can imagine there’s a spray. Is there? Yes? Where did it hit? What is a water spray like? Does it remind you of anything? Oh good one! The spray of a garden hose when your brother aims it at you. Good one! Yes! Let’s jot that down.”
You’re wool-gathering. You’re collecting
- images,
- experiences,
- thoughts,
- curiosities,
- comments,
- ideas.
You aren’t telling your child what to do. You’re helping your child think freshly about what is already on the page. You are providing the dialog partner the way you would in conversation:
“Then what happened? Oh wait, how did you get there? That must have been amazing! What did your brother say?”
But now, you are focused on writing and you are providing the conversational partnership that your child’s writer needs. You are thinking in writing categories but having discussions about it (natural ones). You aren’t an English teacher. You are an interested friend, partner, ally.
Do you see the difference? Stop the generalizations and get into conversations. Help get those words out.
Then, when you go back to that opening sentence, you have a selection of things to choose from that might grab the reader’s attention. Together, you can find the one and write it in a way that makes magic.
Poetry Teatime: Al fresco!
I love the idea of Poetry Teatime, and the times we have done it, all of us have really enjoyed it. The truth is, though, that we haven’t done it very often. Tea is an afternoon thing, right? But there’s the baby’s nap, and swim practice to get to, and dinner to start, and frankly, most days, there’s already too much to do. Teatime gets delayed, then rescheduled, and then forgotten for months.
This day was different, though. It was a beautiful, perfect spring day in late May, a rarity in Texas. Here, it goes from cold and drizzly to beastly hot nearly instantaneously, and usually in April. We all wanted to be outside, but the kids needed lunch, and really, we needed to do some schoolwork, didn’t we?
Poetry teatime al fresco! I quickly gathered up some lunch and made tea while my 12 year old set the table outside. I retrieved the too-long-neglected stack of poetry books from the dining room (where else would they be?), and we all sat down with a collective, nearly audible sigh.
The 12 year old chose a poem from Caroline Kennedy’s A Family of Poems, which was just a starting point. We got to the section of silly poems and stayed there, relishing each one. The two-year-old, an avid participant in just about everything, surprised us by not wanting to choose a poem. Instead, she insisted that we needed to sing “I’m a Little Teapot,” and so we did. Six times!
Teatime al fresco was perfect. We really do need to make time for it more often.
~Janeen
Visit our Poetry Teatime website!
Are you a Type A mom?
Do you find it difficult to operate without a checklist? Do you find yourself worried about getting it all done?
On the flip side, do you wish you could be more relaxed, but each time you try, the anxiety rises and you don’t quite relax?
It’s difficult to battle who you are—how you naturally interact with the world. Messy people buy the manuals of the naturally organized thinking they can change if they just have a system. Type A parents want to find a way to relax without feeling like they are lazy.
I say: Work with whatchu got! It’s too hard to do a personality-ectomy! Better to suit your aims to your style.
For instance, if you want to be a more relaxed mom—one who puts the warm fuzzies ahead of the workbooks, change the checklist. See if that helps.
Self-awareness is the first step. Each time you are tempted to push your kids toward what feels like work rather than delight, breathe. Feel your face. Are you smiling? Are your brows furrowing? Get back to connection with your children. Measure your day (checklist) with a new “Type A” criteria.
Check these off as you do them:
__ Hugged each kid
__ Made eye contact with one and had a conversation for 3 minutes
__ Asked questions of my quiet child to find out more about her process, not her work completed.
__ Played a game.
__ Took a walk.
__ Cultivated silliness (silly voice, body, jokes, puns, dance moves).
__ Put on music.
__ Smiled at my children, each one, at least once.
__ Gave 5 compliments.
__ Ate tasty foods and noticed the flavors.
__ Let everyone stop “working” sooner than they expected.
__ Did someone’s task for them.
__ Sat next to my child during her hardest subject until she finished it, offering encouragements.
__ Gave myself and kids permission to NOT do a boring chapter of the workbook.
__ Left a mess so my children could return to it later to finish the art project or the Lego build or the play fort.
What if you had a check list like that? Would that help you be a Type A mom who is also more fun?
Try that for a couple of days and see if you find a new groove for your careful personality—one that measures and values connection, over work completed. (You are likely to still get all the work done – that’s who you are! But now you’ll make room for the other stuff you wish you would do more spontaneously.)
Good luck!
Image by Betsy Weber (cc)
