Fun at the "Fight Guy" Museum

This past Saturday I brought my family to the Higgins Museum to see a long sword demonstration and a “genuine” live Viking Warrior. Now that I have two boys, a membership at the Higgins is a must, especially since one of them now has more swords and shields than I can count and calls himself “Fight Guy.” This year in our world history curriculum, we’re studying the Middle Ages. The last time we went, I spent the entire time explaining to my two-year old why none of the “guys” were fighting, so I figured sword fights and a chain-mailed warrior would make his day.

The Higgins Armory Museum is the only museum in the Western Hemisphere entirely devoted to the study and display of arms and armor. It’s got African armor, Viking armor, Asian armor, swords, maces, and among other things a life-size crusader mounted on a horse in a giant Great Hall. They have an ongoing calendar of events for all ages including arms demonstrations, an Old Norse reading group, and hands-on courses in the historical martial arts. My kids are still clamoring to go back and take the full audio tour.

The Viking warrior was a stocky guy with long blond hair and a bushy beard, both which appeared real. Viking helmets, he explained, did not have horns. The metal piece down the front is very handy for keeping your nose intact. He disliked the name “Viking,” preferring “Norsemen.” The word ‘Viking’ came from the expression “I Viking,” which is what the Norsemen said when they took time off from their farms to raid other lands. Most of the time, they were busy with their own farms and settlements; they were, in fact, part-time-pirates.

I was interested, but not suprised, to learn that what we know about the Vikings is suspect. Most of the educated historians of the Middle Ages were monks living in monasteries. They were the ones able to document the attacks by Vikings, and were often the ones violently attacked because of the treasures they kept cloistered with them. This, obviously, made their writings somewhat one-sided. When we read about the Vikings during our History lessons, we hadn’t learned much about their lives at home, only their attacks on English monks and the Franks (or, “the other guys” according to my little one.)

None of this, however, impressed my children as much as the weaponry. When I asked them what they liked about the visit to the museum, my older son said “I liked the long sword.” My two-year old said “I would like the spear, because it was longer and had a pointy tip.” Obviously he thought I was asking not to find out what he’d learned but to plan a future weapons purchase. He clearly picked up some new fighting techniques (only the final third of a long sword is sharp, so you can hold it with your other hand in the middle and use it to whack people, generally while yelling “ha HA!”)

All of this is somewhat puzzling to me. We used to be a peaceable household. My older son, who was into geography, and my daughter would merge their interests by staging weddings and other events with their stuffed animals (“it’s a dance class in Micronesia!”) But then Fight Guy came along. At the same time, my older boy started getting into a series of comics about Indian Mythology, which are all about “brown guys fighting” as my little one says; executing various revenge plans, stealing brides, chopping off heads and things like that. And then there’s the Middle Ages, full of sacking and looting and crusading. Practically every section in the Activity book that accompanies the text in our history curriculum includes a make-your-own-weapon activity.

How do we teach these things without glorifying violence? How do I make sure my kids realize the crusades weren’t all fun and games without scaring the pants off of them? How do I read the newspaper without scaring the pants off of me? The Higgins, at least, is all about violence from another age, a quaint age where you could actually wear something that would protect you from harm. Going to the museum, you learn that violence used to be a way of life, that an “honor” society meant that you plowed your field with your sword in your lap, just in case you pissed anyone off over a pint of mead the night before. Maybe things haven’t changed much. For the moment I’ll just enjoy watching my kids whack each other with foam swords. At least they’ve all got shields, and the welts don’t last.

Published in the Groton Landmark on March 3, 2006

Detecting Childhood Vision Problems

”If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Right? Sometimes, it’s not so simple. As my children’s teacher, I get to see them work through their challenges and frustrations daily. Most of the time, things that are hard one day give way to new competence (and less whining), and even the kids can see the progress they’re making little by little. But occasionally, the tears just keep coming and things don’t get any easier. If you’re homeschooling, you can catch the problems that won’t slip past one-on-one attention.

When he was five, my son taught himself to read and devoured hundred-page books faster than I could get them out of the library. His handwriting, however, was awful. It wasn’t just that it looked bad, but that he couldn’t write even half a line in our penmanship program without breaking down into tears. Some letters were larger than others, some veered off the line, other letters, like “b” and “d,” he kept mixing up. Math was torture, too, because he kept messing up writing the numbers. For months, there was no improvement.

So, we started vision therapy. What vision therapy does is teach children, using a variety of games and exercises, what they should be seeing under certain conditions. Knowing this, they can make their eyes work to produce that result. One of the exercises, for example, was a plastic w-shaped contraption with a picture of a fishbowl on one side and a fish on the other. If you pull your focus closer toward you, you should be able to see the fish go into the fishbowl. If the fish disappears, you’re in trouble -- it means your brain is ignoring input from one of your eyes.

Vision therapy entailed 12 weeks of driving to Worcester and doing exercises three times a day for 10 minutes each. Between that, practicing music, karate and managing to do any schoolwork, we had an awful lot on our plate. But it helped immeasurably. Afterwards, my son could write an entire story with hardly any complaint, and the writing was actually legible and at grade level.

Lucky me, now we’re back there with my daughter, who’s now 5. She would rub her eyes whenever I tried to work with her on her math workbook, and tilt her head to the side. Unlike my son, she won’t complain -- she’ll just refuse to do anything that’s “hard” or pretend she has no interest in reading and writing. When I try to “buddy read” with her following along as I point to the words, she can barely make it a few minutes without rubbing her eyes and saying she’s tired. I’m really, really hoping my third child doesn’t have vision problems, because I’m tired of spending one afternoon a week driving back and forth from Worcester.

Aside from that minor complaint, I’m very grateful I caught these problems before my children got older. The vision therapy office is usually full of middle-school kids who’ve likely been told for years “you just have to work harder” or “you’re not paying attention.” Many of them have been falling behind for years and have finally been crushed by the sheer weight of their middle-school homework. Vision therapy can help the vision, but it can’t help the years of feeling stupid or the hours lost struggling with homework.

In the home school, excess whining or running from the room in tears is generally a good indicator there might be a problem. In a class with 20 or 30 other kids, vision issues can often be missed, or misinterpreted as poor behavior or a learning disability. Some things to look for are: holding a book very close, squinting or covering one eye, holding the head at an angle while reading, constant poor posture during close work, poor attention span and fatigue. Correcting a vision problem can make a huge change in a child’s life. I can sure see the difference.

Published in the Groton Landmark on February 17

Living with Little People

When I tell people I home school my children, I often get asked, “Wow, how can you spend so much time with your kids? I don’t think I could do that.” My kids are still young, so for the most part we’re together, from the moment they wake up until Dad walks in the door after we’ve eaten dinner. I find it amusing that no one ever asks anything like “how on earth can you spend so much time with your husband?” It’s almost as if children are another species, like gremlins or large, carnivorous snakes—you might feed them and play with them a while, but what the heck would you do with them the rest of the time?

Part of what I’ve learned is that when you spend so much time one-on-one with children, they cease to be children as much as little people; little people who happen to be around a whole lot. They’re not just a set of ages and behaviors to be managed according to the latest parenting advice. We’re all learning how to get along with each other, when we’re at our best and worst, similar and different, and not just a few hours a day. It’s good practice for the real world. In any case, any group of people functions better with a set of ground rules that keeps them from eating each other up and sucking on the bones. We’ve all got to work together.

So, here are our house’s ten rules for living with little people:

• Everyone needs to get along. The seven-year old, five-year old, and the two-year old all need to be able to play together. Many toys on the market these days are made for one child playing alone, or with at most one child of the same age. We don’t have many of these toys. Instead, the kids play with each other—they build houses, make up games, and whack each other with foam swords. I want my kids to learn to value the people around them over the things they have. Also, since they’re around each other so much, they need to learn how to share, be fair, and resolve conflicts (often with the help of me, the indescribably old person).
  
• Everyone gets time to themselves. Especially Mom. We’re generally all done with each other by lunch time. After lunch, we have quiet time in separate rooms (even the two-year old will sit with books or play by himself for an hour). It’s important to have time to hear yourself think, not have to be social, or play something that you simply can’t do with your little brother around. As the mom, I need to catch up on my own projects, and simply have some peace and quiet and a break from being Chef, Nurse, Mediator, Teacher, Boo-boo-kisser, and Hostage Negotiator.
  
• Balance your life and take care of basic needs. I’m at my best when I get to go to kickboxing, get enough sleep, and have some spiritual nutrition. My kids are at their best when their basic, physical needs are met. It’s nearly impossible to balance all our needs as well as managing to cover the curriculum work I’ve planned, and often I’m restless, tired, and feeling like my cup is empty (last time I spent some time listening to a meditation tape, I was interrupted by my kids fighting over a urine specimen cup. If it was from the 2-year-old doctor’s appointment, but he didn’t use it—does that still make it his?) Still, I figure that modeling for the kids how to lead a balanced live and take care of one’s self and other people is better than any curriculum. These are life skills. Big ones!
  
• Share meals. The whole world knows this. If you want to make friends, and keep them, eat with them. Break bread and share food. Sometimes we light a candle. Sometimes the dog snatches someone’s food.
  
• Everyone pulls their share. Mommy is so much happier when she doesn’t have to cook and clean up the table, never mind pick up the pants and underwear that someone has molted in front of the (unflushed) toilet. The kids clear their own dishes, wipe the table (onto the floor, of course), and are supposed to clean up their toys before both lunch and dinner. Loud ABBA music makes cleaning more fun, and drowns out the complaining.
  
• There will be no toys that drive Mom ape#$%*. I want to enjoy being with my kids, not spend all my time cleaning up toys that they play with for only thirty seconds or grit my teeth when someone’s sitting on the talking Elmo doll. I learned early on that my kids don’t really play with toys that make noise—they just make them make noise and go play with something else, then go back and make them make noise again, and so on, like a big repetitive motion injury. Open-ended, multipurpose toys are great, and quieter (except for the shrieking and foam-sword whacking noises). Why should I have a gazillion toys when “Mr. Sockie” is driving the pirate boat?
  
• There needs to be a rhythm to the day. There is a Japanese concept called “ma,” which means “the space in between things.” Things go smoothly when there’s a feeling of enough time to the day. If we have too much to do, or we’re out all day, we really feel it. The best days are when I’ve left enough space in the schedule so that we feel like we’ve done what we’ve wanted and needed to do without feeling pressured. These days are rarer than I’d like, but we aim for them.
  
• Lots of hugs.
  
• Keep your perspective. I keep reminding myself that the child humming the Nutcracker on a kazoo while banging on the trash can is a good thing. And it will feel so good when he stops!
  
• Everything in its place. At least socks, pencils, and baby wipes. I’ve found it highly disturbing to my sanity to have to spend half an hour looking for crucial things (like the plastic hook that goes with the Captain Hook outfit). Things are hard enough that we don’t need anyone having a tantrum (me) because they can’t find something important.
  For the most part, this works for us, especially if I get my quiet time. Some days go well, and other days we’re all waiting at the window for Dad to come home. But usually, at the end of the day we’re still happy we get to be together. And that’s still heaven, even if I’m hiding in the bathroom.
  
  Published in the Groton Landmark on January 27.