Pro-School Part II

The follow-up to my school post yesterday is that yup, I'm pro-school for Gwen too.


Here's why I'm pro-school:
"A growing body of research shows that quality early learning programs can have a rangeof benefits for children. These include improvements in reading, writing, math, creativity,social development, work habits, motor skills, and performance on standardized tests. Inthe long term, they have also been found to reduce costs in other social policy areas."
-- Expanding Early Learning In British Columbia For Children Age Three to Five: Early Learning Agency Report, April 2009

The other reason I'm pro-school is that Gwen is really, really smart.

I am absolutely overjoyed that full-day kindergarten will be in effect all over our province by the time she starts school, and am crossing my fingers that the other recommendation made by the Early Learning Agency in their April 2009 report will come into effect soon enough for our family, as well. That would be the implementation of half- or full-day programs for three- and four-year-olds. Essentially: subsidized preschool.


When I say Gwen is really, really smart, that doesn't mean I think she's going to graduate high school at age thirteen. I'm not even concerned about academic performance at this stage - I've never been tempted to drill her with cue cards to teach her how to read. What I mean is that she is craving stimulation, all the time. She exudes the readiness to learn. She is intelligent, she is resourceful, she is persistent, she is thoughtful, she is clever, she is observant. She will pick up gestures and phrases and meanings faster than you could possibly expect.


I know some people are bristly at the thought of full-day kindergarten. I've heard other moms say they don't want to rush their kids into academic pursuits too soon. "Let kids be kids!" While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think three or four years old is too soon for some semi-structured group learning, and the research backs this up.


What brings this home to me more than anything is Gwen herself. She is two years old and knows her alphabet, her colours, her shapes, her numbers up to twelve (some days, fourteen), and the lyrics of countless songs. She could not possibly make it more obvious that she is ready to learn. Let kids be kids? Okay, but recognize that a kid's main job is to learn like crazy, to soak up everything he or she can. I think we have a responsibility to nurture that, to provide children with a stimulating environment and positive opportunities.


Yes, sure, there are lots of options out there for learning. Lots of kids get terrific, stimulating learning opportunities from their parents. They may take part in semi-structured group classes such as Gymboree, Kindermusik, or a host of others. They may attend the school district's excellent Strong Start program, a drop-in for kids under five and their parents in a high-quality learning environment. Or, you know, they might be SOL because both their parents work.


For those kids, there's preschool. That's where Gwen will be next spring when she turns three. It may not be government-subsidized by then, but I do appreciate the province's efforts to make these valuable learning opportunities - which, as stated above, go such a long way in determining the future course of a child's life - available to all children.


So, if Gwen already knows so damn much, what is she going to learn in a preschool anyway? Well, my own preference is that whatever preschool she goes to will have just as clear a focus on social learning as academic learning, if not more so. I want Gwen to learn what it's like to be part of a larger group of kids than the three or four she's with at daycare - all the social interactions and adjustments that go along with that. I want her to adapt to a somewhat structured day and to plant the beginning seeds of discipline and respect that come with the expectation she will listen and obey her teacher. I don't want kindergarten to be the first time any of that happens.


As I mentioned above, every family needs to make their own choice based on their own values and the needs of their child. I'm grateful that the government is making more choices available to more families. This is our choice - what's yours?

Pro-School

Today a really lovely box arrived at my doorstep.

It's just like thousands of other boxes all over the country, maybe millions of boxes all over the world. It's just like dozens of boxes I've received before. But this one is different for one simple reason.

I first started my degree in November 2002 as a result of reading the book Happiness by Will Ferguson. The protagonist of the book is an editor who - get this - gets paid to read books and tell his boss which ones are worth publishing. He also gets to make snarky comments about the ones that aren't. This sounded like a good job, and I figured an English degree was a good step towards getting a job like that. But as I couldn't afford to quit my job and do school full-time, distance learning via Athabasca University was the best solution.

Since 2002, a lot has happened in my life. I left my first husband and moved to a brand new city - that was the first time I took a break from school. I re-married, got pregnant, bought a house, had a miscarriage, got pregnant again, all while continuing to study. Somewhere in the midst of all this it became clear that a degree in English would probably not affect my work life in any way, so finishing the program became valuable merely for its own sake rather than as a means to an end. I took a year off both work and school when Gwen was born, and returned briefly to my studies in early 2009 - only to discover that trying to balance school, work, motherhood, volunteer duties, and the ever-elusive "having a life" didn't seem to work. School was the thing to go, and though I felt it was the wrong choice I didn't know how to correct it.

Now it's 2010, and I have 15 credits left to earn. FIFTEEN. That sounds like such a piddling little number, doesn't it? Full-time students could earn that in one term, maybe two. Alas, I am not a full-time student. I am a full-time employee, I am a full-time parent. It takes me about six months to finish one 3-credit course. That means that finishing up those last fifteen credits will take me about two and a half years.

Do you know what the date will be in two and a half years? November 2012. Exactly ten years since this ridiculous, amazing, misguided, inspired, brave and crazy dream began.

You guys, I'm going to do it.

That's why today feels different. This is the first time since I started my degree that there is an end in sight, a firm(ish) plan for when and how I will complete this program. It means that I will be studying non-stop for the next 2.5 years, and because I have already reached the maximum number of prep and junior-level courses, I won't be able (as Chris suggested) to take straightforward and easy stuff like Basket Weaving 101. All my courses have to be above the 300 level, so I'm taking stuff like Popular Culture and the Media, Psychology and Women, and Literature and Hypertext. No, it won't be easy. But the thought of finally being done, of having at last reached this lofty goal - and the poetry of having done it in some arbitrarily-defined time, like a decade - is immensely appealing. I'm going to do this.

I've contacted an advisor and confirmed that the degree requirements have not changed in the intervening decade (!), and that the courses I plan to take will fulfil them. I'm working on a study schedule and wistfully fantasizing about ways to take some time off work to get this done.

When I became a mother, I struggled with the feeling that spending money on my own education - which, as it seemed it would not genuinely affect my career, felt like a vanity project - ultimately took away from any money that could be spent on Gwen's future education. And who knows, maybe Gwen's education would actually be in the right area and at the right time and able to do her some genuine good, so how could I take away from that? It was my wonderful husband Chris who put me straight, pointing out what a great role model I would be for Gwen if I followed through on my plan and completed this goal. This new aggressive plan for completing my degree will mean sacrifices by all three of us, so it genuinely will be a family victory if - no, WHEN - it comes to completion.

Wish us luck.

"I Sleep This Door*": More about Travel and Sleep

* The title is taken from one of the two phrases Gwen says repeatedly during her bedtime protests: "I'm awake," and "I sleep this door." "I'm awake," is obvious in its meaning. I'm awake, so why are you blathering on about sleep and trying to get me to lie down? I'm awake! "I sleep this door," is a little bit more obscure, and I've tried to get her to explain what it means to no avail. But I think what it means is that she doesn't want to be left in the room alone, she wants to go out of "this door" and hang out with the big people. The ones who, like her, are awake.

The reason we chose to do sleep training with Gwen when she was only 7 months old was simple: I didn't want her to be able to stand up in the crib and shriek, "MAAAAMMMMMAAAA!" when I left her there to learn to fall asleep on her own.

Let me dig into this tangent for a second. That is what sleep training, in any form, really is: assisting your child in learning how to fall asleep without your help. That's the objective view, at least. From the child's point of view, of course, you are heartlessly abandoning them and will NEVER LOVE THEM AGAIN.

There is a school of thought that allowing babies to cry themselves to sleep will cause brain damage. I am not here to rule on whether or not this is accurate. What I will say is that the intensity and the length of time for which Gwen cried (at seven months old) prior to falling asleep, was acceptable to us, her parents, as safe and non-damaging. We do not believe that her emotional state or her physical brain were harmed in this process. NOTE: this does NOT mean it was easy to listen to her cry, just that we believe she was safe while doing so.

We also followed the philosophy of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, M.D., who compared the crying of a child learning to fall asleep without assistance is similar to the crying of a child upset because his mother won't let him climb up on dangerous playground equipment. It's protest crying. And just as we don't let Gwen do things that are dangerous, no matter how she cries or fights or fusses, we don't let her compromise her sleep simply because we are unable to withstand her protests. Dr. Weissbluth also brings forward many valuable points about just how important sleep is to productive learning and later success in life, concluding that not doing whatever it takes to get your child a good night's sleep is just as dangerous and neglectful as letting him climb that jungle gym.


So. We did sleep training, and it was a resounding success. And then this trip came along, this trip where Gwen could climb out of her playpen and suddenly my strategies of just leaving her alone until she was ready to go to sleep were totally null and void. And I had vowed before going on this trip that I was not going to stress about her sleep, so I didn't. If she didn't want to go to bed, she didn't. I wasn't going spend two hours arguing with her about it.

Which brings me back to: there's a reason why we did sleep training when she was a baby. Because now? Now that we are back home and trying to get into a routine and she's had a week or so of staying up late, watching TV before bed, and snuggling with Mama? Now she argues about it. And it is INCREDIBLY hard not to get drawn into it, because she's a very smart little girl, and I'm a patient and compassionate Mama, and I want her to go to bed but I also want her to feel GOOD about going to bed, and that means that I want her to understand what's going on and participate in it voluntarily.

The fact that she can speak full sentences tricks me, without even realizing it, into expecting her to be a reasonable, rational person, and as a result I treat her that way. If a rational, reasonable person were crying and begging me not to leave, well, I would not leave. I would stay and help them through whatever they needed help with, in whatever way possible. But Gwen, despite her language proficiency, is NOT a rational and reasonable person. She lacks the self-awareness to say, as anyone else would, "Okay, I'm feeling better now. Thanks for the hugs. I'm really tired, so I think I'll go to bed." And as much as I'd love to believe Gwen is capable of self-regulating like that, she really is not. The second half of our holiday proved that in a very loud and emphatic way.

We've been back from our trip for a full week now and we are still having some real struggles at bedtime. And it kills me, it really does. I have had to work to pry her limbs off my head, where she has wrapped herself like some kind of face-sucking alien. And let me tell you, that girl is strong. But it's not the physical battles, it's the emotional ones. All she wants is for me to lie down with her until she falls asleep. (Is that so wrong?) And some nights, the only reason I don't do that is because I don't want her to get used to it. It's like the mentality that makes us go to the gym and work out so that we will look good in our exercise clothes when we're at the gym. Whafuh? It's a cruel joke that kids are too young to grasp the concept of "sometimes", as in, sometimes Mama will snuggle with you, and sometimes she won't, but either way THE WORLD WILL NOT END.

I guess if she were a rational, reasonable person, she would know that already.

Healing: Some Breastfeeding Discussion

While catching up on my blogrolls after my ten-day holiday, I was surprised and moved to find that not one, but TWO of my favourite writers had tackled the subject of breastfeeding in the past week.

First, Linda at All and Sundry tells us that "It's all normal" when it comes to feeding your child. Having been contacted by a doula, Linda ponders what this pro-breastfeeding advocate might have said to her when she was [formula-] feeding her own kids. Apparently, this unnamed doula feels that there are a lot of negative things said to breastfeeding mothers, and so she takes it upon herself to counteract this by offering an encouraging comment to breastfeeders whenever she sees them. Linda muses on what she herself might say to a formula-feeder, and concludes that the appropriate response would likely be to "Smile and tell her what a beautiful baby she had. Because anything else is really none of my damn business."

To which, of course, I offer a hearty AMEN.

Heather at The Spohrs Are Multiplying opens her post by saying that "Breastfeeding is really, really hard in the best of circumstances." (Now there's a sentence we don't see or hear often enough!) She discusses her own struggles in feeding her daughters. Madeline, born premature, spent her first weeks and months in the NICU, being fed pumped milk. Annabel is healthy and at home, and has been since the start, but Heather's mental health deteriorated so significantly following Annabel's birth that her doctors, caregivers, and family were all pleading with her to increase her medication to a level that would genuinely assist her. Heather, with the stubborn single-mindedness that seems so familiar to me, didn't want to up her meds, as it would then be passed to Annabel through breast milk. It became a choice between her own mental health and her daughter's physical health, and we all know who wins loses in that scenario. After struggling with guilt and panic attacks, Heather made a choice ensuring that she would be the best mother she could be to her daughter. It was months later before she could actually write about this choice, however, as she still felt ashamed of her decision.

These are powerful stories that need to be shared. I've witnessed horrible prejudice and mistreatment of bottle-feeding moms, and I've treated myself badly for my own sense of failure. My mental health was precarious at the time that I tried to make rational decisions around how to feed my daughter, but of course I couldn't realize that at the time. Looking back, I wonder how I got through it. But even knowing what I know now doesn't change the fact that I still struggle with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. I've tortured myself on dark lonely nights when I can't sleep, wondering if Gwen's disinclination for affection was caused by an unrewarding breastfeeding relationship. I've wished thousands of times that one choice or another could be revisited: the choice to have a hospital birth led to us getting the Norovirus, making Gwen too ill to nurse and jeopardizing my milk supply. Or the choice to believe the public health nurses when they said I didn't really need to see a lactation consultant, they were just as knowledgeable.

The breastfeeding bomb pops up in unexpected places, and whenever it does it's like a punch to the gut. Gwen is now two years old and yet when she goes to the doctor, I still have to answer whether she was breastfed or not (and I never know what to say, because it's not really a yes-or-no question in my world; yes she was, but not exclusively). Reading magazines or checking out websites about parenting and kids' health will still poke me in my sore spot by reminding me that one of the Top Five Ways to Avoid Everything You Want to Avoid and Make Your Kid Brilliant is to breastfeed.

I am taking steps, now, to let go of this. It's still difficult. But I think there are a few key things that are helping me. One is to realize, like Heather says, that breastfeeding is difficult at the best of times. Having difficulty with something that is difficult is not a mark of failure. And ours, like Heather's, were not the best of times. A favourite statement I like to remind new moms about - one that I wish I had known, back at the time when breastfeeding felt like the only way to be a good mom - is that "Lactation is natural. Breastfeeding is an art." Yeah, that's right, world. It doesn't just happen magically, and it isn't all innate. IT'S A HELL OF A LOT OF WORK. Sure, some women take to it more easily than others, and if you're one of them, thank your lucky stars. But for the rest of you? You need to know - you're not alone. You are not the only one struggling with this. And it pisses me off that we as a society would rather let new moms feel like failures, feel isolated and scared and that they are doing it wrong, than to tell the truth: it's hard, and feeling like it's hard is NORMAL, and it doesn't make you a bad mom.

Another thing that helps is to look at Gwen - who now gives affection eagerly and unabashedly - and know that neither her health, nor her intellect, nor her emotional development, are any the poorer for having breastfed for a shorter time than I imagined, and having never achieved the brass ring of "exclusive breastfeeding".

Finally, and this is the hardest and yet most important key to my letting go: I did not fail at breastfeeding. (I have never said or typed those words before, and it's challenging to do.) I need to change my thinking. I did breastfeed. I breastfed my daughter to the absolute extent of my ability for nine full months. That was not what I'd planned, not what I'd hoped, but that is what happened. And I should - I CAN - accept that. I did not succeed to the extent that I'd dreamed, but that is not the same as failure. And I am starting to work on redefining that experience not in terms of what I did not do, but in terms of what I did do. Maybe I can even define myself (in my own mind - the only place it really matters) as a breastfeeding mother, not a breastfeeding failure. And when I see those little breastfeeding bombs, I can remember those moments with contentment, not resentment.

Fairy House by Amber

Because I am so blatantly, inarguably awesome, a full month has passed since Amber asked me to take a picture of the fairy house she made for Gwen's birthday.

PERSONALIZED AND EVERYTHING, YOU GUYS.

In case you would like to hear some of my litany of excuses, I include them for your enjoyment!

First of all, I was all set to take the picture, but I couldn't find one of the pieces. In fact, three weeks later I have no idea where it is. (It's the piece that's meant to go on one side of the box's lid, to make it look like a floor. It's never stayed on properly, and in fact I didn't even know what it was until I saw Amber's post with pictures of the other houses she's created.)

So that's why the left-hand side of the house doesn't have a dark floor. Because it's lost. What kind of people lose their floor? Unlucky fairy people, that's who.

EDIT: I totally found the missing floor this afternoon during the pre-dinner tidy-up. Insert sounds of frustration here!

This house is adorable. As you can see, it includes three people and an incredibly charming cat. It also includes a heart-shaped table and three ... um ... things. (These pictures only show two "things" because ... wait for it ... I don't know where the other one is. OF COURSE!.)

So, in the photos above, I am assuming the "things" are cushions for the happy fairy people (they are relentlessly cheerful, no?) to sit around their quaint little table and admire its colourful design. But the "things" also kind of look like sandwiches, so maybe ...

..maybe they are meant to be lunch? I don't know. The cat looks pretty stressed in this picture, though, doesn't it? It's as if it KNOWS there aren't enough sandwiches to be shared with a feline friend, and no cute kitty kibble to be found either. Poor puss.

(Okay, so now I am anthropomorphizing a WOODEN cat. It's no wonder I can't keep track of Gwen's toys, with this kind of mental state.)