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Who’s Afraid of a Red Giant?

Jul 20th, 2012 by

Lest I feel too smug about my maternal prowess, in the past week Simon has come to fear sleeping alone in a dark room. He had a few night awakenings last week, and then this Monday night he could not get to sleep until 10:30 and only then got to sleep when we gave up, put him our bed with me, and exiled Matt to the guest bedroom, AKA the insomnia room.

As self reported, the four things Simon is most scared of at bed-time as are below, immediately followed by my internal responses:

What if mummies are real?

Well now this is going to be easy! “Simon, honey, it’s just Scooby Doo! It’s pretend. Mummies don’t really run around and chase people. You just keep telling yourself that you know it’s not real.”

What if someone in the family gets cancer and dies?

Er…. Cancer treatments have gotten much better in recent years? People don’t always die? Zadie had cancer and he’s ok? Mom and Dad probably won’t get sick or die anytime soon? Not seeing a great way out for that one.

I’m scared about  when the sun becomes a red giant and devours the earth.

I got this one! “No worries honey, that won’t happen for 5 billion years or so. And by then, we’ll all be dead anyway.” Then again, maybe that’s not so comforting when you are five…

What if I can’t get my brain to stop thinking scary thoughts?

“It’s your brain; you tell it what to think.” Unless you have uncontrollable thoughts that is. Hm. Maybe ask it really nicely to stop thinking scary thoughts? Matt and I have decided that this is, in fact, the scariest of the four scary thoughts. How old before you can do hypnotherapy or cognitive behavioral therapy?

So, as you can see, my maternal prowess resulted in a total of 1 good answers out of 4 questions. Can’t wait to see what my hit rate will be when he’s 10 or so.

On the plus side, the kind folks at parenting science gave me lots of food for thought and strategies. Tuesday night, I promised a new fish within the week to keep him company in his room, read only funny and happy stories, offered to stay with him longer than usual, turned on his night-light for the first time ever, left his door open, demonstrated that nothing lurked anywhere in the room, reminded him that Daddy and I are both close by and won’t let anything happen to him, reminded him that he can tell his own brain that mummies aren’t real, did the math on the number of nights he’s fallen asleep without being scared (2098) vs. how many he has been too scared to sleep (1), and reassured him that I knew he could do this if he set his mind to it.

He was sound asleep by 9:10 and thankfully stayed that way. I don’t expect the issue to go away, but at least I can now appeal to previous success conquering fear.

Friday morning update: Monday was our very bad night. Tuesday I spent a good 45 minutes talking him down, but he did fall asleep by 9:10. Wednesday was nearly normal. Thursday night he had a few bad spells, often during the day, always about the sun devouring the earth. So I did a little reading. Some scientists think that as the sun becomes a red giant it will lose so much mass that Earth’s orbit will change and the blue marble will be flung out closer to the outer planets. Of course, the Earth will be uninhabitable in 1 billion years when the oceans dry up, and pushing Earth out towards Jupiter would render our ice planet incompatible with life, but I left that bit out. Nope, I just told him the first part and let him draw his own (incorrect) conclusions. He fell asleep, and that’s all I cared about.

 

 

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Best Summer Ever

Jul 18th, 2012 by

On the beach, earlier this summer

If I see one more ad or Facebook post reminding me that summer is almost over, I’m going to puke. The last time I felt this way was when I was the one getting ready to head back to school, only frankly most years I was ready to let go of summer and get back into the swing of things.

Not so this summer. After three years of sending Simon to KIP camp for most of the summer, this year I decided to send him to nature and sports camps for about half the summer. But really, it’s even less than that. Whereas KIP camp was Monday through Friday 9:00 to 1:00 p.m., half of the camps this year are Monday through Thursday, and none lasts past noon. Fully a third of his camp sessions are so short that I plan to take a book and find a coffee shop close by instead of driving home and back.

This summer’s camp-lite schedule was a conscious choice, informed largely by my wanting to relish time with Simon before full-day school begins and also by my desire to better map Simon’s activities to his interests than I have in summers past. I joked at the time that after a summer of so much togetherness, I might be crawling the walls, screaming, or begging JCPS to open school early.

My experience has been quite the opposite. On non-camp weeks, we’ve gone to soccer clinics in the parks and one-hour tennis clinics by the zoo nearly every day. We’ve played soccer in the back yard, and we’ve driven to a neighborhood public tennis court where Simon humiliates me on a regular basis. We’ve played card games and board games, read books about mischievous ducks and the planets, and explored trails in the parks. We’ve gone out for ice cream, cookies, and frozen yogurt. We’ve practiced a little (very little) reading and math. We’ve snuggled on the couch to watch soccer and Wimbledon together. We’ve had play-dates with our friends who aren’t at all-day camp all summer. We’ve strolled through the zoo several times. I’m still planning a bike riding trip to Bernheim forest.

I think Simon is having the time of this life, and I know I am. He’s good company: a happy kid who’s eager to stay active, old enough to have genuine interests, and young enough to still possess little-boy innocence. Heatwave notwithstanding, it’s been grand, and I’m going to be sad to see it go. Very sad. How long can I make the next four weeks last?

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Playing for the Cure

Jul 16th, 2012 by

to McEnroe-itis, that is.

As of a week ago, I was at my wit’s end trying to deal with Simon’s terrible on-court frustration and resulting terrible on-court behavior. That his unpleasantness was mostly self-directed did nothing to make it any more enjoyable from side of the net.

Today, thankfully, I played with a totally different kid. Barring epic recidivism, I attribute the improvement to the following three factors:

  • He’s better: You can’t coach height, but Simon can now hit from the back of court and get the ball over the net. In fact, he can hit from the back of the court and get it to the back of the other side. As of this writing, I have a better serve than Simon. He is better at every other aspect of the game.
  • He’s seen Mr. McEnroe: Matt showed Simon a YouTube video of McEnroe’s most famous on-court tantrums. He did not like what he saw one bit. And for the record, watching the tantrums wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be either. McEnroe is so good at making fun of himself now, that I almost forgot how cringe-inducing he was back in the 80s and early 90s. Today Simon placed a real premium on sportsmanship, with lots of thumb-ups, handshakes, and compliments coming from his side of the net.
  • He got to use his expertise: While Simon’s backhand continues to increase in strength, mine is falling apart. So today I had Simon run the drills. I put him close to one side of the net, placed myself on the center line on the opposite side, got in position, and had him pitch 11 or so balls to me. I did OK; we’ll see if this converts to any improvement when we’re both using rackets.

I’m sure I’ll see frustration bubble over again. It’s part of the game, and, I have learned, commonly seen in our otherwise gentlemanly and laid-back friend Barry. Still, today was a much desired move in the right direction.

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Summer Lovin’

Jul 12th, 2012 by

It’s happening again, this time at zoo camp. When I asked Simon if he made any new friends besides Mark, a boy he befriended on the first day, and Sasha, a friend from KIP who serendipitously ended up with him without any planning on her parents’ or my part, the report was as follows:

Well, there’s this girl Ella who always wants to be with me. She holds my hand all the time and doesn’t want me to play with anyone else. Today she was supposed to be paired with Sasha, but she wouldn’t leave me, so we had to work as threes. She kisses me, too. Today she only kissed me one time, but yesterday she kissed me a whole bunch. Our teachers tell us we shouldn’t kiss our zoo camp friends, just our moms and dads.

This would mark the summer continuation of a now-familiar pattern, that pattern being girls liking Simon and Simon not understanding what is going on. With school out for seven weeks now and only one girl at Louisville Nature Center camp two weeks ago, I had forgotten about this.

The other things that haven’t changed? The animatronic dinosaurs they took the kids to see were too scary for him, and he’s asking sufficiently difficult questions that his counselor, a kindergarten teacher, has brought in other zoo educators to answer them. Bright, timid, girl-appealing: That’s my boy!

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McEnroe in the Making

Jul 10th, 2012 by

Picture the scene: Simon and I are at what we call the two-minute tennis court, so named because it is located two minutes from our house.

“Man, why do I keep missing my backhand? What’s happening?”

“Are you using both hands?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you finishing up here, at your shoulder?” [the correct stroke is mimed]

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s your problem then. You have to follow through with the racket over your shoulder. And keep your eye on the ball.”

Can you guess who was/is who in this exchange? If you went to UNC between 1989 and 1992 or have kept up with this blog, you likely can. For everyone else, I’ll give you the last part of the exchange:

“Mommy, I think you need to take adult lessons with Mr. Fitzroy.”

I do; perhaps the fourth time at trying the game will be the charm. When Simon started playing tennis five weeks ago, I picked up a racket for the first time in 20 years and had at it. I was awful, but not as awful I was in college. With time and practice, I reached the point where I could hit *most* of Simon’s volleys back to him. By the time he began going to clinics at the Louisville Tennis Center, I joked that even I could keep up with a five-year-old if I practiced a lot. I figured I’d be good enough to play with him for at least another year or so.

I’m not, and we both know it. To make matters worse, Simon got to play with a great player just two days ago. We were out with Caroline and her grandmother, Jane. Jane is a life-long player and the mother of a once nationally ranked player (that would be Caroline’s father, Barry). Whereas I can return most of Simon’s volleys but cannot place them well, and Matt can return pretty much all of Simon’s volleys and place many well, Jane could get them all over and placed perfectly for a player of Simon’s size. Simon is fast and energetic, so his court coverage is terrific. But a child under four feet simply cannot hit a low ball in the far corner of a regulation court and get it over the net. They lack the height and power for that.

So there he was Sunday, running like a mad man despite a heat index of 99, nailing his forehand and backhand ground-strokes, sending a lob or two over the net, and even coming to the net to volley a few times. Intentionally or not, he’s started putting topspin on some balls. They had volleys that lasted up to 12 or 16 combined strokes. It was a blast to watch.

Fast forward to yesterday, and Simon was stuck with me, the worst player in the family. I sent over a lot of balls that were too low or too long for a kid his age to hit. The problem is, besides my being awful that is, that Simon will not let a ball go and will not accept “you are too short” as an explanation for failure. He wants to play like Roger Federer. When he is on the court, tennis is a matter of life or death for him, attacked with an intensity and tenacity I possessed for my GPA, Scrabble, and knitting, but never, ever for any sport. When I say “it’s a game” or “this is supposed to be fun” to him, he looks at me like I’m mad. Then he wipes away his tears of frustration, collects himself as best he can, and dives right back in as though his life were on the line.

I’m honestly flummoxed. Dragging him off the court just makes him more upset. Consistent efforts to change the tone only sometimes work. Yesterday I turned things around by changing the conversation; I had Simon diagnose my own problems, and then we did some drills where I threw balls to him. Tomorrow? Who knows what if anything will dial down the intensity. All I know is that I think I’m going to adult lessons in the park next week, I’m hoping Matt and/or Evie can get out there with him again soon, and I really, really hope that I can bribe/beg Barry into some lessons, in exchange for which I will happily play Barbies with his daughter.

The situation is rather humbling. Usually when I see kids hysterical over a missed stroke or strike, I assume they have crazy parents pushing them too hard. It never occurred to me that some of these kids were pushing themselves so hard at the tender age of five. Regardless of how long this phase lasts, I just hope Simon can summon a fraction of the same intensity for, say, calculus when the time comes.

 

 

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Schadenangst

Jul 8th, 2012 by

This is a disconnected post: a collection of related thoughts that have been rumbling around my brain for the last few days, obviously thematically connected but not quite coalescing. The closest I can get to any thematic unity is to say this is about schadenangst, a word I just made up. It’s a distant cousin to schadenfreude, only whereas the shame in the latter comes from taking joy in others miseries, the shame in this comes from witnessing the miseries of others and feeling anxious that the same fate might befall you.

My own schadenangst began at the end of the school year, when I learned that the parents of one of Simon’s school friends were divorcing. They married young, started their family young, and were faced with the physical and financial stresses that come from trying to balance work, parenting, and school at the same time. When I heard the news, all I could think was that this couple never had a chance to see how they’d function under normal circumstances and what a potential waste it was. And, of course, I felt for the child and worried about he might fare in the split.

Then, just six weeks later, came news of another split. I know this family better in some ways, but can only vaguely speculate about the stresses that wore them down.  They’re a young-ish family too, with their most recent child still a baby. This one hit closer to home. All I could/can think is that the baby will never know an intact family and that the oldest child, Simon’s friend, will surely miss seeing his father every day. I know that at this stage in Simon’s development Matt’s role is starting to overshadow mine.

But honestly, that’s piddly. Two days ago I saw an article about a woman arrested for wanton endangerment and aggravated DUI. She was pulled over at 3:45 a.m. for driving without her headlights on and swerving in traffic. She failed an on-site sobriety test, refused the blood test, and is now in a Louisville Metro corrections facility. But here’s the lede: Her 6-year-old daughter was in the car with her. And I know this girl because she played soccer with Simon this spring. The now incarcerated mom and I sat side-by-side many a Tuesday night, chatting about our kids, school, soccer, and other family stuff. What was she thinking? And who is taking care of the daughter now? (This woman was a single mom.)

All of which takes me back about three or four years to the most unimaginable thing to ever happen to our circle of acquaintances. Someone who briefly sang in Matt’s band was involved in a murder-suicide attempt. The guy shot his step-son, who thankfully survived, before turning the gun on himself and dying by his own hand. It took Matt and me quite some time to absorb that news.

How does this happen? I intellectually know some of the answers: youth and inexperience, unrealistic expectations, strained resources, depression, addiction, disease. I’ve seen some of these factors up close and should understand them pretty well. I don’t, but I should. And while I’ve done all I can to prevent some of these scenarios from befalling me (starting my family when I was older and more stable, monitoring drinking habits very carefully and looking for warning signs, finding a physical outlet for stress, living somewhere where I have a large support network, marrying a responsible and compatible person), there’s no guarantee that disaster won’t one day befall me or anyone else. There’s not even a guarantee that one day the neurons won’t misfire and turn one of us into someone new and unstable.

Our lives seem so tenuous when I look at the domestic trials around me, and I’m not sure in some cases if I should feel sympathy or anger. I guess it’s a little of both. I don’t have enough facts about any to fairly judge, but the temptation is there — not because I want to find fault with others — but rather because I want to know exactly what to not do to avoid following a similar path. I want to know if these folks saw their selves or relationships going off the rails before it was too late. And, if they had, what kept them from getting back on track.

So I’m back to my “shameful anxiety”. Shameful because it takes other people’s miseries and makes it all about yourself, but perhaps a smidge less shameful if one can find a way to make it instructive.

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Trouble with Testosterone

Jul 3rd, 2012 by

He’s starting to get aggro. For the last two months, a huge part of Simon’s leisure time has involved wrestling with Matt. He thrashes, kicks and punches (lightly), and generally never gives his dad a moment’s peace. In Hilton Head, Uncle Dan was on the receiving on the assault pretty much non-stop for the entire week and never once lost his cool. Matt and I think he deserved some kind of medal for not flipping out; he definitely earned his Uncle stripes!

This isn’t to say that Simon is getting violent. I know it sounds crazy, but all the thrashing and kicking is done with a smile on his face and no malice aforethought. He’s still lovely to animals, crazy about babies, and friends with girls. Simon doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he’s certainly getting much more physical in the way he wants to play—especially with boys or men— and he needs to learn proper boundaries.

And have I mentioned that he’s started to growl? When he gets worked up or is play-acting, we hear a more than occasional “grrrr” coming from him. It has a slight trill to it and has become a regular vocalization. Matt’s the one who noticed this change, and he’s also the one who remembers our nephew Ben doing the same thing at this age. When I think back to our earliest years in Ann Arbor, our friend Tim’s young son Ian exhibited much the same behavior.

It’s got to be a testosterone surge, right? The same thing that’s putting thicker hair on his legs, putting a little bit of muscle on his legs, and ever-so-slightly deepening his voice? I’ve read that hormone surges are a part of the fuel behind Middle Childhood, something we started seeing last summer. Back then, the changes were mostly cognitive, with some added coordination thrown in for fun. Now I think we’re about ready to put the serious “boy” in boyhood. I also strongly suspect that while I will stay in the picture and be Simon’s primary emotional and physical caretaker, that his increasing preference for his Dad, grandfathers, and uncles is the new normal.

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Beware the Brag Sheet

Jul 1st, 2012 by

There’s a paper in Louisville, The Community, that serves the city’s Jewish population. It features stories about Israel, news about happenings around town, and things like Bar and Bat Mitzvah and wedding announcements. Matt and I call it The Jewspaper in a rather mocking tone even though I still skim it, look over pictures from parties I’d never be invited to or want to attend*, and have even written an article or two for it.

A regular column in the Jewspaper is the “Newsmakers”, a feature in which proud parents, grandparents, and the occasional aunt or uncle writes in to brag about the accomplishment of their family members. It’s usually someone winning admission or an award to a professional society, someone joining a new law or accountancy firm, or someone graduating from college or graduate school.

I think I’ve only been in the Jewspaper as a subject three times, in the “Lifecycle” section, for my Bat Torah, my marriage, and Simon’s birth. I have dim recollections of mom wanting to include a notice for college or my master’s graduation, but I’m not sure if they ever got placed as I would have been against it. I’m generally against all notices like this for reasons that are hard to express. Yesterday’s glance at the “Newsmakers” column brought my reticence into focus.

Things start as I’ve come to expect, with a medical school graduation. They proceed on to friends who have opened a Jewish matchmaking service called JMom.com. I blanched at this one, embarrassed that it exists. Moving right along, someone has become president of the Toastmasters, and someone else had graduated high school. (We’re doing entries for high school now? Really?) And so the mundane collection of professional and pre-professional successes goes until the last entry:

Jeffrey Gettleman …. won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He has been the East African Bureau Chief for the New York Times for the past five years… The Pulitzer jury commended Gettleman for his ‘vivid reports, often at personal peril, on famine and conflict in East Africa, a neglected but increasingly strategic part of the world.’ … [H]is work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and GQ. He has also appeared as a commentator on CNN, BBC, PBS, NPR, and ABC, most recently on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and PBS’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. He was kidnapped outside Falluja Iraq, in 2004, and in eastern Ethiopia with his wife Courtenay, in 2007.

Accompanying this notice is a photo depicting a man who looks equal parts serious and dashing with Mr. Gettleman resembling a younger, more Semitic Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s Sebastian Junger, hottie journalist with chops, all over again.

Now this,  unequivocally, is newsworthy. As is the notice about two U of L researchers who just won a grant to continue work using electrical stimulation to help paralyzed patients stand and walk again. The rest is the news from Lake Wobegon, a place where we can brag about all of our above average children. It’s not that I fault folks for wanting to brag. I brag about Simon all the time! But perhaps restraint when it comes to published bragging is in order. Or at least an understanding that all accomplishments are not newsworthy. I’m thinking that if The Courier Journal would have charged you to print it, it may not qualify as news in the strictest sense.

Ideally, Mr. Gettleman’s impressive accomplishments will serve as a cautionary tale for all. Does your child’s being valedictorian (one of tens of thousands in the country) or finishing in 15th place in the county in the 1500 meter track and field event look a bit silly next to a Pulitzer Prize winner? If so, you just might want to save it for the next dinner party, bridal shower, or Bar Mitzvah (or non-commercial blog). And if you are not sure when that chance might come, you can find a list of such events two pages later in the very same paper.

*I certainly recognize most of the folks pictured; a few are fellow KIP parents, some are old classmates of mine, and three of the regularly featured members of the Jewish A-listers are Simon’s doctors and dentist. Plus, I am mysteriously drawn to the (to me) foreign world of society pages. When I lived in San Francisco, I spent many an hour in semi-serious consideration of The Nob Hill Gazette.

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Kindergarteners Prefer Blondes

Jun 27th, 2012 by

At least mine, as self-reported, does.

So we’re watching tennis today, some blonde woman I don’t know who used to be ranked #1 or close to it playing some brunette I also don’t know who’s an up-and-comer from Austria.

It’s match point for the brunette. She blows it. It goes another game or two. Another match point for the brunette. At which time Simon declares:

“I was rooting for the other woman.”

“Oh really, why?”

“Because she’s blonde. I like blonde hair.”

“What about me? And Bubbie? And Agotich? And Ruby?”

I’m throwing it all at him, trying to get him to TAKE IT BACK.

“Or Anyieth!”

“That’s right, Anyieth, too. See, you like dark hair lots.”

A ridiculous conversation, I know. But sometimes mommy doesn’t stay above the fray. Alas, Simon had a response for me.

“But most of my friends my age are blonde. Caroline is blond. Griffen is blond. Meredith is blond. Britt is blond. Baron is blond. Yeah, I really like blond hair.”

So there it is. My son is but a babe of 5 1/2 years, and he’s already decided he has a type. This is what I get for talking up the lovely Caroline all the time.

 

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Quotable Simon: Part Something or Other

Jun 24th, 2012 by

Time for more homeless quotes from Mr. Simon.  (“Mr. Simon” is TM my cousins Arnie & Jane.)

Upon counting his cousin Ben’s shots and calculating points at an arcade basketball game:

“I’m like a score-board”

On his preferred route driving home from his grandparents’ house:

“No, no, Daddy. Don’t stay on 64; take 264 to Taylorsville Rd. It’s faster that way.”

Said on the way home from grandparents’ house minutes after playing basketball there:

“I miss basketball.”

Said in the car on the way home from his last HYR soccer game:

“I miss soccer.”

Said while walking from tennis court to vacation rental house:

“I miss tennis.”

Said on bike on the way from the ocean to vacation rental:

“I miss the ocean.”

Said upon driving past golf course:

“When am I going to learn to play golf?”

Because, you know, the poor boy plays no sports at all…

And the pièce de résistance:

“Boy, mommy, the world got better after I was bornded [sic].”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you and Daddy got chicken pox, but after I was born I got a vaccine so I won’t get chicken pox.”

“Did you hear about that on a show today?”

“No, daddy told me about it one day when we were coming back from soccer or basketball. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Well it’s good that you remember that!”

“Yeah, you know what Mommy?  My brain never lets me down.”

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