Not usually a sign of child abuse

I know two different young mothers who have had neighbors think that they might be abusing their children because they have heard small children yelling for extended periods of time from these mothers' homes. I can only imagine that the worrying neighbors were childless and thus ignorant of some basic childrearing know-how: some children are extremely noisy and contrary sometimes and most children throw tantrums at some point. Not all children, certainly, for temperaments vary widely. Moreover, some children have diagnosed issues such as autism or ADHD that go along with uncontrollable tantrums.

I don't take child abuse lightly. By today's standards, my father was unquestionably guilty of child abuse. He spanked repeatedly and harshly--even quite young children--and sometimes with hard objects. We lived in terror of his arrival home after work because if anything was messy--a common condition of a house with many young children and a busy mother who was rather uninterested in cleaning--he would often yell at and possibly spank the first child he lay eyes on. (Ironically, he didn't realize why we ran from him and would sometimes ask, "Where is everyone? Why isn't anyone here to greet me?" Sad, isn't it? He was abused as a child, too.)

When I look at signs of child abuse, I don't see "children scream a lot" listed as a sign. Sure, parents screaming a lot can be emotional abuse. Also, age-inappropriate or sudden tantrum behavior can be a danger sign of abuse. But, in my experience, mere "children scream a lot" is a fairly good indication that the children are not being directly subjected to abusive behavior because the children do not live in terror. Let me say that again for emphasis. They don't live in terror. Living in an abusive situation is living in terror. It's the opposite of the security and care that a child hopes for and should be able to expect from his or her parents.

My father successfully terrorized us into being model children (at least, when he was at hand). We didn't throw tantrums. He would have never put up with us screaming for long periods of time. A harsh spanking would have put a stop to that kind of behavior right away. We were meek and scared and obedient. The neighbors suspected that things might not be great at our house, but the signs of abuse were not obvious. We were even forced to end spanking sessions by telling our father that we loved him, yet under those desperate words of love, gasped out to make the spanking end, were hurt, frightened children who temporarily hated yet quietly did as commanded.

So, well-meaning neighbors of the world, please keep looking out for the children you know. But please be aware of the probability that young children screaming for what sometimes seems like forever is more likely an indication that they feel comfortable enough to yell at their parents than it is a sign of an abused child living in terror.

Home for the Holiday

We have a norovirus or similar bug running through our family which is causing pain, distress, general yuckiness, and an end to most of our Thanksgiving plans with extended family. We know at least two other families dealing with it this week, but based on the timing, it's unlikely we all got it from the same place. Sometimes these things really do just "go around," and it's nearly possible to avoid them (but it helps if the toddler hasn't been messing with the dishwasher settings so that the dishes don't get properly cleaned).

Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are less effective against norovirus, so wash your hands before eating!

Developing skills

I'm so proud of dd10. She just posted pictures from a field trip to the Denver Zoo that she took herself! They are on her blog here. When she first started her blog, she would dictate her entries to me and I would type them for her, editing as needed for clarity and accuracy. She's been learning to type this year, and now she types her own entries. She appreciates the wavy red lines in Blogger that tell her when a word is misspelled, for her spelling abilities are still developing.

She isn't pleased with how her photos look on the blog, so I showed her how to use a photo editor today to crop and compress photos. I hope she uses that skill soon.

Good for a lot of laughs

The commentators here are hilarious, what with their ignorance of how to convert from the imperial system (miles instead of kilometers) and jokes about different kinds of football and being "shaken but not stirred."

I laughed so hard I cried.

Landing on a Comet

We went to a local museum's event to celebrate the landing of Philae on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. We heard afterward that they estimated they had only a 22% chance of the lander successfully making it onto the comet's surface. Yet they did it! With technology that is already ten years old!

Although the lander ran out of power (it ended up in a place where it couldn't access enough of the sun's rays to recharge itself), it sent back interesting information. The comet appears to have a dusty, rocky surface with a layer of very hard ice under that. Also, the lander detected organic molecules. And because it's in a shady spot, it will last longer than expected as the comet approaches the sun in 2015. Here's hoping Philae wakes up then and gives us some more interesting data!

Discovery Geometry

Back in college, I tutored math for three years. I quickly came to hate the discovery calculus that a few of the honors calculus classes were experimenting with. The students--good ones, these were honors students--often had no idea what to do and were needlessly frustrated. If "discovering" calculus on one's own were so easy, it wouldn't have taken until Newton and/or Leibniz in the 17th century for humanity to have come up with it.

This past week I've been helping a teenage boy who's being befuddled and deeply discouraged by his discovery geometry textbook. It makes the students figure out the "conjectures" and then requires them to apply the just-introduced conjectures in all kinds of novel, thought-provoking ways. Such a method sounds like a math prodigy's dreams come true. But I think it's terrible for average or below-average math students.

This boy has attention issues and Asperger's traits, so class lectures--where the conjectures get explored, explained, and supposedly compiled by the students into their own little reference notebooks--are less effective for him. This is a kid who, if he doesn't immediately know the answer to something, looks off in space, starts scratching at the side of his calculator, or enters numbers into the calculator without having a clue as to what mathematical operations should be done. His mom has worked hard with him; one year she pulled him out of school for two periods and "home-schooled" him in math. Under her tutelage, he did two years worth of math in just one. He seems bright enough and his attention issues disappear when he knows how to attack a problem. Discovery geometry is just wrong for him.

The mom corresponded with her son's teacher about the problems he is experiencing due to the book constantly hiding necessary information (formulas and such, the kind of things I grew up seeing inside the covers of my math books as ready references). The teacher responded by saying that some kids thrive and some kids struggle, but the book is in the syllabus and it's what he is going to teach. Great for the kids that thrive! And terrible for the kids that don't! Math is not a one-size-fits-all-endeavor, and when it becomes clear that a kid needs a different approach, that approach should be adopted.

When tutoring him, I've taken to letting him use a very basic geometry reference sheet like the one below:

http://stufiles.sanjac.edu/thea/theamathreviewforwebsite/geometry.gif

It's done wonders for his confidence. He can actually get through some problems on his own now. And he's not doing mere "plug-and-chug" work. He finally has an inkling of what he is expected to do and can go at it. Anyway, I'd rather see him doing "plug-and-chug" exercises correctly than cluelessly entering numbers in his calculator in flailing attempts to solve problems he doesn't comprehend.

I don't know yet what math text our family will use for geometry. Dd10, the oldest, only just started BJU's Math 5. BJU has a great incremental "mastery + review" elementary math program that has been pleasant for our family to use. But because of my math background, I'd like for my children to have more extensive experience with constructing proofs, and those are rather out of vogue in K-12 math. One thing is for sure: no matter what we end up doing for geometry for my Aspergery eldest, it won't be "discovery geometry."

Personhood and Extremes

When I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I was so excited. I was only a few weeks along, somewhere between 6-8 weeks. In my excitement, I started telling friends and coworkers of my pregnancy. Then I miscarried. I realized I was miscarrying while at work at the US Embassy. I had to go to my supervisor and tell him I needed to leave work because I was bleeding and likely miscarrying. In my shock, I told my husband to stay at work while I went to get checked out. How I wish I had told him to come with me. When the person giving me an ultrasound started talking clinically about my "threatened abortion," I felt awful. My baby was dying or dead already. Based on the final diagnosis of "blighted ovum," my baby never even got past the point of being a fertilized egg. And, oh, sitting alone on a bench in a foreign hospital and crying, how I mourned my child that was not.

I share this to put into perspective something: I voted against the "personhood amendment" yesterday in Colorado's election. It goes too far. I marked "no" with sadness in my heart because I don't condone abortion generally. I certainly don't think public funds should be used for them except in extremely rare cases. I think that a fertilized egg is a form of human life. It's life, and it's human. I'm not sure what else we can call it without dispensing with our standard biology definitions.

But the hard truth that pro-life organizations and politicians must grapple with is that a woman's body is inseparable from a growing pre-born child for nearly six months. Respect for individual rights mandates that we permit a woman to do things to her body that might harm her baby without punishing her for it. There is no way to have a personhood amendment without then putting extreme athletes/coffee abusers/anorexics/homebirthers/obese women/etc. at risk of prosecution for murder.

European countries regulate abortion more than the USA does. We are actually rather extreme in the USA as to what abortions we permit. But the answer is not to swing back and declare a fertilized egg a legal person.

To think aloud a bit, perhaps abortion should be treated legally in a fashion similar to suicide. No one could physically help a woman terminate the life in her, but they could still sell a mother the chemicals she wants to ingest to end her hosting of a forming life and monitor her afterward for complications. We permit gun sales all the time, despite the proven link between gun ownership and suicide. Individual rights are important. Why not allow over-the-counter sales of abortifacients and birth control? Let the individual woman decide what she wants to do to her body, including her uterus. Science has come far enough that most desired abortions could be done via medicine due to how early morning sickness tells most women of their pregnant state. If an abortion requires physical dismemberment or poisoning of the fetus, then perhaps we should accept that the baby is far enough developed that the mother's individual rights no longer outweigh its rights.

Sensitive

For memorization these past two weeks, I planned to have dd10 and dd7 learn the first stanza of "Der Erlkönig."

German:
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

English translation:
Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He has the boy well in his arm
He holds him safely, he keeps him warm.

It is a well-known German poem by Goethe that tells of a boy dying after being attacked by an elf king, while his father rides like mad trying to get the boy home safe. It was set to music by Schubert, which made it even more well-known. Here's a great shadow puppet version of the song:

They started memorizing it with no complaints. Pleased to have found such a lovely, artistic rendition of the song, I then showed this video to my girls. Once dd7 saw it, she no longer wanted to memorize the poem. It was too sad for her.

She's memorizing "Bruder Jakob" ("Are you sleeping?") instead.