17 February 2007
Live and learn
Four and I have a verbal game we often play during bedtimes. It would shock the moms I avoid in the parking lot (the ones who apparently have hair-stylists on staff), I'm afraid, but then they don't visit here.
It basically goes like this: we each try to out-do the other in assertions of how smelly/stinky the other one is (Moms of little boys know how interesting smelliness is to our boys......). So, for instance, I might lead off with, "You are the smelliest boy on the planet." Then, Four might say, "No you are," which would lead us into an adjacent game about how I'm not a boy and he is and etc, but I digress. He might say, "No, you are the smelliest Mama on the planet." Then I might say, "You are smellier than elephant poop." Much giggling. Then he might say, "YOU are smellier than elephant poop and giraffe boogers on top." More giggling.
You get the idea.
So the other night we'd gotten rather far into it and I was running out of things to add onto the endless chain of smelly things (if you can't think of something you lose the game). Reaching into my historical TV commercial database I added "rhinoceros b.o."
There was a pause (pauses are allowed--it's once you start the retort sentence that you are liable to lose for lack of a coup de grace addition at the end). Then he said, "What's b.o.?"
Fair enough. I am not sure when I last heard the phrase--it may well have been before he was born, who knows? Being older than dirt as I am, I find the millennia tend to blur a bit.
So I explained that b.o. basically means armpit stink.
Another pause.
Then (bemusedly): "There's no 'b' in armpit."
I practically swallowed my tongue guffawing and snorfling.
Later I wondered why I thought this so hilarious. I think it's because Four is another of my children who I had to fight a teacher over. In first grade, Four wasn't reading. He didn't even know the alphabet in fact. This didn't surprise me, since he'd spent kindergarten in a progressive school that didn't believe in that kind of thing (they do teach kids to read--just not that way). So he went to the local public school as a pretty clean slate. His first grade teacher--new to the first grade; she'd transferred from high school teaching--was horrified, appalled, alarmed, and over that year increasingly frenetic and indignant at what she took to be my irresponsible attitude.
I just kept saying that his learning style had always been that he watched for a long long time, til well past the "deadline" in the official rule book for whatever skill it was (walking, for instance), then all of a sudden, he'd just be able to do it. Without intermediate gropings.
She just wasn't listening, was convinced that my attitude was borderline (or not) neglect, got the reading teacher to gang up on me, called me at home repeatedly. I finally had to get the Special Education Supervisory teacher to call her off of me.
The next year, I allowed some provisional testing. I still remember sitting at the low table with his classroom teacher, the reading specialist, a counselor, the Special Education Supervisor (bless her heart forever--she retired right after this and not a day goes by I don't think of her with gratitude), and a couple others. The reading specialist was the same one who'd ganged up on me the previous year. She hadn't seen the results, but she started in talking about deficit this and benchmark that and as she was talking opened up the folder.
Her eyes fell on one of the reading measures (I forget the acronym--this was an acronyminous meeting--har har).
Here's the delicious part: Her jaw LITERALLY dropped. I mean, I have read that phrase I don't know how many times in my life. I'd always taken it for a metaphor, or for a drama queen gesture favored by preteens.
But it dropped.
Kid's scores were in the high 80th percentiles.
neener neener.
So, I think, that's why I thought that armpit remark was so hilarious.
I'm not saying we can't be blindsided by a disability or a learning problem or a need for classroom accommodation or whatever. Of course we can. (Two's hearing loss is a prime case in point.) What I am saying is that sometimes, maybe most times, we really do know our kid.
And the good education professionals, the ones with experience with actual children, usually know this. The new ones, the insecure ones, the ones who are teaching from their egos rather than their viscera---they don't. It is something they have to learn. And they learn it not from books and tests and data tables: they learn it from our kids and from us.
If we are lucky. And if they are.
Oh, and yeah, in the game in question, I lost. I was trumped by the addition of goose farts on a hot day.
That's m'boy!
It basically goes like this: we each try to out-do the other in assertions of how smelly/stinky the other one is (Moms of little boys know how interesting smelliness is to our boys......). So, for instance, I might lead off with, "You are the smelliest boy on the planet." Then, Four might say, "No you are," which would lead us into an adjacent game about how I'm not a boy and he is and etc, but I digress. He might say, "No, you are the smelliest Mama on the planet." Then I might say, "You are smellier than elephant poop." Much giggling. Then he might say, "YOU are smellier than elephant poop and giraffe boogers on top." More giggling.
You get the idea.
So the other night we'd gotten rather far into it and I was running out of things to add onto the endless chain of smelly things (if you can't think of something you lose the game). Reaching into my historical TV commercial database I added "rhinoceros b.o."
There was a pause (pauses are allowed--it's once you start the retort sentence that you are liable to lose for lack of a coup de grace addition at the end). Then he said, "What's b.o.?"
Fair enough. I am not sure when I last heard the phrase--it may well have been before he was born, who knows? Being older than dirt as I am, I find the millennia tend to blur a bit.
So I explained that b.o. basically means armpit stink.
Another pause.
Then (bemusedly): "There's no 'b' in armpit."
I practically swallowed my tongue guffawing and snorfling.
Later I wondered why I thought this so hilarious. I think it's because Four is another of my children who I had to fight a teacher over. In first grade, Four wasn't reading. He didn't even know the alphabet in fact. This didn't surprise me, since he'd spent kindergarten in a progressive school that didn't believe in that kind of thing (they do teach kids to read--just not that way). So he went to the local public school as a pretty clean slate. His first grade teacher--new to the first grade; she'd transferred from high school teaching--was horrified, appalled, alarmed, and over that year increasingly frenetic and indignant at what she took to be my irresponsible attitude.
I just kept saying that his learning style had always been that he watched for a long long time, til well past the "deadline" in the official rule book for whatever skill it was (walking, for instance), then all of a sudden, he'd just be able to do it. Without intermediate gropings.
She just wasn't listening, was convinced that my attitude was borderline (or not) neglect, got the reading teacher to gang up on me, called me at home repeatedly. I finally had to get the Special Education Supervisory teacher to call her off of me.
The next year, I allowed some provisional testing. I still remember sitting at the low table with his classroom teacher, the reading specialist, a counselor, the Special Education Supervisor (bless her heart forever--she retired right after this and not a day goes by I don't think of her with gratitude), and a couple others. The reading specialist was the same one who'd ganged up on me the previous year. She hadn't seen the results, but she started in talking about deficit this and benchmark that and as she was talking opened up the folder.
Her eyes fell on one of the reading measures (I forget the acronym--this was an acronyminous meeting--har har).
Here's the delicious part: Her jaw LITERALLY dropped. I mean, I have read that phrase I don't know how many times in my life. I'd always taken it for a metaphor, or for a drama queen gesture favored by preteens.
But it dropped.
Kid's scores were in the high 80th percentiles.
neener neener.
So, I think, that's why I thought that armpit remark was so hilarious.
I'm not saying we can't be blindsided by a disability or a learning problem or a need for classroom accommodation or whatever. Of course we can. (Two's hearing loss is a prime case in point.) What I am saying is that sometimes, maybe most times, we really do know our kid.
And the good education professionals, the ones with experience with actual children, usually know this. The new ones, the insecure ones, the ones who are teaching from their egos rather than their viscera---they don't. It is something they have to learn. And they learn it not from books and tests and data tables: they learn it from our kids and from us.
If we are lucky. And if they are.
Oh, and yeah, in the game in question, I lost. I was trumped by the addition of goose farts on a hot day.
That's m'boy!
