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Laboring To Connect The Brains

November 19, 2009

The brain is a funny quirky creature.  I say “creature” because mine, at least, feels, often, like a separate being.  Separate from what?  I’m not exactly sure.  The self?  The soul?  Itself?

Maybe a more accurate description is that the brain (again, mine) seems often to be divided into (at least) two parts—the watcher and the doer, the judge and the experiencer;  the witness and the defendant; the onlooker and the looker.

I don’t mean to suggest though that one side is active, and the other passive.  Or that one is more analytical.  I have to confess that I haven’t analyzed the division that closely;  I’ve noticed that both sides seem to be fairly emotive.  They both crave and fear; recognize damage, pain, desire, joy.   Though my brain, at least, has notoriously unscientific notions of the causation of any of these shadows and bright spots; it tends to assign causation to external circumstances, happy or traumatic events, of which it can sometimes remember only the vaguest inkling.  Even so, outside factors are somehow a less troubling causative factor than the darker inks of genetic blueprints.  No one likes to feel that they are going to end up exactly like their aging parents.  Even when they very much admire their aging parents.  (In case you are reading this, did you get that last bit, Mom?)

Then there’s the whole subject of absorption.  By absorption, I don’t mean, escapist fascination (surfing the Internet for news about Robert Pattinson, for example.)  I’m talking about what it is that makes the brain click into gear.  And I don’t mean function, I mean, hum. What is it that makes the watcher and experiencer close ranks, the brain and the self interlock?

My first answer for this (at about Union Square, since I am writing on the subway) is work, preferably creative work.   I feel a bit like a character in a Chekhov play (Uncle Vanya, specifically), when I think about the importance of work, especially, of course, engaging work, work that one likes.

But, as the train chugs towards Grand Central, I realize that the category should be enlarged.  That it isn’t just work that pulls the selves together, but effort, intense effort, labor.

Which makes me suddenly realize why I have wandered onto this topic in the first place.  Because for me, the most intense experience I’ve ever had of the coming together of brain and self, watcher and doer, judge and experiencer, was some years ago on this very same date shortly after 1 a.m. when, after forty hours of labor (as in childbirth), I realized that a part of me could really not hang back, lurking in some cranial synaptical view chamber (as if behind a one way mirror).  This was around the time that the words “fetal distress,” and “push push push the baby” surrounded me, some in an Irish brogue.

The watcher/witness simply had to jump in; all parts of the brain and self were on immediate urgent call; there could be no holding back.

Everything worked together quite wonderfully, as it turned out.

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Virtues of More Than One Child

November 4, 2009

Many years ago, tomorrow, my beloved second daughter was born.  It was the day of the New York City marathon.  This caused me some consternation (aside from the labor pains) as my hospital and I were on opposite sides of an East River whose bridges were filled with runners.

The wonders of any child (especially this particular daughter) are too many to encapsulate in a blog.  But her birthday has made me think of several generic reasons why it is great to have more than one child, even in the crowded, and very expensive, world of New York City.

Here are some:

1.  Having more than one child allows you to practice your mediation skills.

2.  And exponentially expand your ability to multitask:  yes, you already know how to hold, change, nurse and bathe a baby, now you need to be able to do all these things with one hand.

3.  It saves you trips to Good Will.

4.  And also allows many rich opportunities for genetics research.  (How can two children who are (a) both so wonderful, and (b) so alike, also be (c) so completely different?)

5.  You get to develop your inner policeman/Solomon through enforcement of the rules of (a) democracy, as in whose vote wins this week’s movie choice, (b) boundary lines, as in whose half is whose of the stroller, room, subway seat, mother’s lap, computer, and (c) good fellowship as in who must be dragged along with whom to the soccer game, playdate, doctors’ appointment, chorus concert….

6.   There are twice as many plates of leftover food to inattentively scarf down.  Who said you needed a girlish figure?

7.  Or sleep?

8.  It usually takes a least two children to make a decent Mother’s Day breakfast.  (One to flip the pancakes, the other to arrange flowers on top of the pancakes.)

9.  More importantly, with two kids around, there’s almost always someone around who either (a) needs a hug, or (b) is available to give it.  (This person may be you.)

10.  You are not likely to worry (at least for some years) that you’ve never run a marathon.

Whether you have one child, or more than one, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon or at link from ManicDDaily home page.

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Halloween’s Over- Candy Remains

November 1, 2009

Halloween’s over.  How to handle all the candy your kids have collected?

Suggestions:

1.  Fight with them about it at least three times a day for the next couple of weeks.

2.  Steal some to recycle in Christmas stockings.

3.  Eat it yourself.  (Hey, you’re looking out for them.  Isn’t that what parents are for?)

4.  Carefully substitute small boxes of raisins for the more disgusting items.  No, wait—raisins are terrible for their teeth.  Chocolate’s better.   Chocolate?   You’re substituting chocolate?

5.  Actually, that’s not a bad idea.  If you’re going to eat their candy yourself, you’ll probably really enjoy that chocolate.

6.  Keep it from the dog.

And, while you are feeding your inner child, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon, or at link from ManicDDaily home page.

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Further to Sheepish On Halloween – The Candy Thing

October 31, 2009

Since writing my last post – “Sheepish On Halloween” (https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/sheepish-about-halloween/), I have been told that I was a bit of a Halloween monster for allowing my 2-year old daughter to “lose” her pumpkin of Halloween candy.  (Okay, I added the “bit of.”  I was called a Halloween monster, plain and simple.)

I’ll admit it.  I was a macrobiotic for a couple of years in my life (whole years!)   Even after I softened that stance, I bought brown rice by the burlap sack full.  I ground some of my own wheat to make yeast-free bread.  (I guess you could call it bread.)   Seaweed was not unknown in our household.

This made the whole process of Halloween, especially in a traditionally Italian part of Brooklyn and not some new-agey PC rice syrup neighborhood, extremely trying.

I did give her candy to replace the lost pumpkin-full.   (Yes, my substitutes may have included carob.) However, life and children have a way of loosening even the tightest resolves, i.e. parents quickly lose control.

Here are some of the later rules I made regarding Halloween candy:

1.   You can eat all you want but ONLY on Halloween night. This has the disadvantage of turning your childen into bingers.  It has the advantage of limiting tooth damage to one night.

2.  After Halloween, you just have one piece a day until you run out (in our society, meaning into the next year.) This encourages restraint,  but keeps the candy in focus as a problematic treasure for a very long time.   Forget about teeth.

3.  I give up.

Last note–if you have canine family members, keep a close watch.   A lot of sorting of candy tends to take place on the floor;  bags are frequently left at bedside;  even the most loving kids are too excited to be truly careful; chocolate can be lethal for dogs.

Once more, Happy Halloween.

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Sheepish About Halloween

October 31, 2009
Sheep

"Sheep"

I have a checkered history with Halloween.  It started when I was a little girl and my overworked mom took me to a late afternoon dental appointment at the end of October.  Unfortunately, this end-of-October date was “Beggar’s Night,” which, in my childhood state, was the traditional night for trick or treating.  Even more unfortunately, the late afternoon dental appointment turned into an evening dental appointment due to the discovery, during tooth cleaning, of one or more cavities.

As the clocked ticked, I slipped into despair.   I remember walking tearfully out to a cold empty parking lot, the day’s remaining light already slimmer than a dim yellow ribbon.   When we got home, and it turned out that all of my neighborhood friends had long since come and gone, my mother jumped into quick, guilty, action.  She pulled out one of her one of her favorite evening dresses (a black wool one with puffed fur sleeves), and converted some kind of round bin that my brother had once used as a Crusader’s helmet into a black cat’s head.

This unfortunate Halloween imprinted several resolutions into my brain which only blossomed fully in motherhood,when I was determined not to be the cause of similar angst:   (1) never make your child a dentist appointment in the month of October;  (2)  avoid cavities; (3)  make your kid’s costume in advance;  (4) make your kid’s costume; and  (5) if you don’t sew, convert other clothes.  (I never got over my admiration for the way that my mother threw together what turned out to be quite a glamorous black cat’s costume, once I took off that medieval helmet.)

These resolutions had mixed results for my own children, especially for my oldest daughter.  (Oldest children often get the fullest brunt of parental ideology.)    I don’t really need to go into the cavities part other than to say that I allowed that child on her first Halloween (at age 2) to conveniently lose her pumpkin of Halloween candy.  (Yes, this was horrible horrible horrible and I have since tried to make it up to her with a great deal of Swiss chocolate.)

The costume part is better. I believed that children, even very young children,  should participate in the making of their costumes.   The strangest example was the sheep, a costume that my oldest daughter “decided” on when she was 3.  (I think it may have started as a lamb, and I say “decided” in quotes, because I suspect that I had some hand in the idea since the sheep costume had a puffiness suspiciously reminiscent of my black cat fur sleeves.)

Our/my brilliant conception was a huge white sweat shirt upon which my very small daughter glued cotton balls.  Many many many cotton balls.  I made a hat, with ears, out of white cropped panty hose, also covered by my daughter with cotton balls.

It made for a very cute, very “woolly” sheep (if wool were cotton.)   Of course, it’s true that  “sheep” was probably not the first thing that came to people’s minds seeing her.  Halloween does not generally bring sheep to mind.

The sheep outfit was intended to be comfortable.  Unfortunately, instead of that cold Beggar’s Night of my youth, it was an unseasonably warm, drizzly afternoon.  Cotton balls get very very heavy when drizzled on.  And hot.

It’s hard to be the oldest child.

Happy Halloween.

In between tricking and treating, check out 1 Mississippi, by Karin Gustafson, on Amazon or at link on this homepage.  (Thanks.)

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Father Sonnet

October 1, 2009

The last few days I’ve written about parenting–engaging young kids and encouraging “make-believe”–and sonnets.  So today, I thought I’d combine all subjects.  (I don’t mean the “make-believe” comment to refer to the religious aspects of the poem, but the bedtime story.)   The sonnet is Shakespearean in rhyme scheme (and attempted meter.)

My Father

My father knelt beside my bed; his round head
reflecting the bedside lamp with the look
of lighting within.  “And the genie,” he said,
“came out of a big blue jar.”  Not from a book
were the stories he told me at night.
Always of genies who were big-blue-jarred
and did fairly little, only the slight
magic of minor wishes, often ill-starred.
Though the stories were just a warm up to
the bedtime prayer.  “Our Father,” that would start,
then straight out head for “hallowed”, “trespass” too,
unknown words, to me a spell he knew by heart,
invoking, croakingly, a wished-for will
that the blue genied jar could never fulfill.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

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Re Jane Brody- Benefits to Parents of Engaging Child With Talk

September 30, 2009

Thinking today of Jane Brody’s article in the September 28th New York Times, “From Birth Engage Your Child With Talk”.  The article discusses the importance of parents and caregivers talking to their infants and young children, rather than tuning in to their cell phones, Blackberries, and iPods (and tuning out their young charges.)

As Brody points out, the benefit to infants from having their parents talk to them is pretty clear (i.e. they learn to talk.)

What Brody doesn’t discuss are the benefits enjoyed by parents from such exchanges.  Here are a few I came up with:

1.         Any parent taking the long view realizes that he or she should take full advantage of any time period in which the child willingly listens to them.

2.         Even more valuable is any time period in which the parent is allowed, even smilingly applauded, for repeating him or herself.   (Babies are rarely heard to complain: “Mom, I heard you already.”)

3.         Babies are among the few people (outside of talk radio audiences) who greet nonsense talk with glee.

4.         Babies will laugh at even your stupidest jokes.  Babies will especially laugh at your stupidest jokes.  (Subtle plays on words tend to fall flat unless (i) you do too, and (ii) it’s something like “shoe”, “atchoo”, and “shoo!” said to the cat.)

5.         Babies like to hear you sing.  Babies love to hear you sing.

6.         Pointing things out to babies – the red rose bushes, the white clouds, the blue rapidly oncoming car—makes you notice such things as well.  A distinct advantage over cell phones.

7.        While it is true that a baby, if screaming or vomiting in the car seat, can be a significant distraction to the driver, studies have yet to show that they increase accident rates by 23 times.

8.         Babies’ super-active brains are hard-wired to learn language (and many other things).   As a result, they are probably the “smartest” conversationalists you’ll ever have even if relatively silent;  they take your  words literally to heart.

9.       Most parents really do want a child who can talk to them some day, even to say “Mom, I heard you already.”  (Another person to call on the cell.)

10.     Babies don’t charge for roaming.

If you have a baby, or know one, and want something to read to them with numbers and elephants and whimsical (sorry!) watercolors, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above or on Amazon.

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Finding Out That My Good Parenting Skills Were All Make-Believe

September 29, 2009

An article by Paul Tough, in The New York Times on September 25th, called “Can The Right Kinds of Play Lead To Self-Control?” brought me to a dramatic  realization.

 I have terrific kids;  they are tolerant of others, and though not automatonic, stiff, or repressed —they are kids—they have been patient, co-operative, and self-controlled pretty much since passing the bounds of young childhood.   All these years I’ve been (secretly) congratulating myself on my parenting.  I knew I wasn’t particularly schooled in parenting, and I’ve never actually thought my parenting out that much—still I privately believed that the results (i.e. my children) must demonstrate some innate maternal skill.

 Now it turns out that all these great qualities in my children are primarily due to the fact that they played loads and loads of make-believe.

 And, on top of that, even though I’ve sometimes characterized myself as a bit of a single parent, I really do have to give a bunch of credit to their dad, who was terrifically good at fomenting imagination games, particularly if they involved blocks or little playmobil figures.  (He is someone who had a couple of thousand toy soldiers as a boy, so he was extremely practiced in the set-up of forts, installations, whole towns, and any other type of miniaturized construct.)

 After reading Tough’s article, in fact, I’m not sure I deserve much credit as a parent at all.  I will protest that I did supply the occasional comic voice in many games of make-believe.  (Usually I played a rather duncelike- compulsive figure, Mr. Potato Man, who was represented by a small plastic snoopy dog with a sack of potatoes plasticized to his back.)  I also talked stuffed animals, provided tea sets, watered down “tea”, and had certain of my own playmobil and block skills.  (It wasn’t all their dad.)

  And, when there were no actual toys handy, I supplied puppets made up of my talking hands and one forearm.

 But, frankly, my main pratical, measurable, contribution was to turn off the TV. 

 Since TV did have to be on some of the time, I made our TV as unattractive as I could, for as long as I could,  retaining antiquated and very small television sets.  (I remember my mother, horrified, to hear my daughter proclaim after watching a well-known program at her house – “I didn’t know Big Bird was yellow.”)

 Finally, I was blessed to be able to arrange long periods of time (i.e. summers) in beautiful places where there was no TV at all.   (I realize that not everyone has such phenomenal luck.)

 The result was a great deal of make-believe.

 I really do believe that TV, and now the computer, can be insidious for developing minds.  (I won’t even go into the problems discussed by Jane Brody today in the article “From Birth, Engage Your Child With Talk” about the distractions electronic devices provide to caregivers.)  

 Yes, there is often something good on.  A program that is ostensibly enriching, educational.

 But it’s still not the same as playing “sick baby” with leaves for medicine and pine cones for shots, and, if you’re lucky, a younger sibling who (for a short time at least) is willing to lie still.

 It’s not even as good as “Mr. Potato Man.”

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The Burden of Childhood Specialness – Firefly

September 20, 2009

I really am almost done with writing about The New York Times September 14, 2009 article by Alfie Kohn, “Mind:…” about the hazards of parental praise and punishment.   (You may be sick of it too.)

However, one fellow mother and blogger recently commented on the issue of praise as discussed in the article and my posts.  She found it hard to think of praise for children as problematic.  (Sorry, I’m oversimplifying her comment.)   She worried that not praising children might cause them to feel bad, particularly in the context of praise given to others.

I didn’t mean to condemn all praise for children!  But I do think parental praise can become problematic when it conditions a child into a reliance upon a sense of specialness.

Yes, of course, every child is special.  (Unique, God’s creation, like a snowflake, etc.)

The specialness I am talking about is not a child’s uniqueness so much as his or her “bestness,” “gold-star-ness,” “very very good-girlness or boyness.”

A security blanket of parental praise, especially combined with precocity, can be a potent combination for a child.  While the parent, in praising, may mean simply to acknowledge the child, and perhaps, excite and exhort him or her into making continued efforts (and, unwittingly to continue being a great reflection of the parent), the child may confuse this specialness as a condition for parental affection, and even for his or her own validity.

As the precocious child grows up, the child’s sense of specialness can shift from glow to burden.  The world has many many many special people.   (Thankfully!)    Someone who is used to the repeated confirmation of their sense of specialness by well-meaning, compliant, eager parents may have a hard time achieving plain old contentment (i.e. sufficiency) as they move into a heap whose top can hardly be seen.  The failure to feel special may feel like failure itself.    (My fellow blogger, kindly commenting, suggested self-awareness could help with this;  but feelings are feelings; they are not always mitigated by rational thinking.)

Anyway!  I realized today that I had a poem about this very issue:

Firefly

As a child, I was told that I was a star,
whose brilliance would light up the world like a jar
filled with fireflies.  In the place I grew up,
we’d crouch in dark grass, catching them in the cup
of a hand that they quickly transformed into heart,
a roseate, luminescent, star part.
From palm, we would pour them into our glass,
so we could catch more, faster than fast.

Then, everything changed. Maybe it was the time
when the man I had loved would no longer be mine,
or when all the freedom I’d anticipated
could no longer be fully emancipated.
Jobs couldn’t be quit, hours must be put in,
the soiled re-washed, the fanciful shut in.
My erstwhile fresh talent now seemed like old rot,
I had to be happy with what I had got.

Now, when I think back to that life as a star,
I see less of the firefly, more of the jar,
the air holes on top we made with a pick
used to pry nuts from shells, a sharp metal stick.
It tore holes that were cutting, jagged beneath,
and could easily pierce an insect’s bright sheath.
I think of those holes, the sharp underside
that ceilinged that glow, that unreasoning pride.

(All rights reserved.  From Going on Somewhere, by Karin Gustafson – available on Amazon.)

PS – I am relinking this post to Victoria C. Slotto’s blog liv2write2day, to answer her prompt about singing one’s self.

PPS – for a much more lighthearted view of young adulthood check out my comic teen novel, NOSE DIVE.

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More on Conditioned Parental Love- The Magic Flute

September 19, 2009

Still thinking about the New York Times Article “Mind:  When Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do As I Say’, by  Alfie Kohn (published September 14, 2009) now in the context of Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), by Mozart.  (I saw a dress rehearsal today of the Met’s wonderful production, designed by Julie Taymor.)

The story does not make much sense:  there is the romantic prince hero, Tamino, and the pragmatic everyman hero, Papageno, the conniving, deceptive, alluring, mother, the Queen of the Night, and the wise but endlessly testing father figure-cum-holyman-cum wizard guy (with a very deep voice) Sarastro, and too, the beautiful soprano Pamina who is a bit of a pawn swapped among them.

There is much that is supernatural:  the Queen’s helpers who in Taymor’s production sport oversized (almost Mayan looking) mask faces; the Three Spirits, little boys in underwear with bleached spiked hair and long wispy beards, who ride on a puppeteered flying bird, the birds themselves, dancers with flamingo heads, and ballet-slippered stilts.

There are slaves and betrayals and endless, seemingly arbitrary tests of character, meant (a) to purify the suitors, and (b) to separate the wheat from the chaff—that is, the strong, manly, silent types from chatty pragmatic everymen but more importantly from deceptive wiley women.  Wisdom and love, and some really great robes and headgear, are the prize.

While the story highlights the importance of steadfastness, bravery, self-discipline, the ultimate savior is music.  The power of music is represented by the magic flute given to the princely Tamino (oddly by the bad Queen of the Night), the magic bells or glockenspiel, given to Papageno, the pure songs of the Spirits.  But, overwhelming all of that is the sublime, beautiful music of the opera itself, composed by Mozart towards the end of his life.

This time, watching the opera, looking at the subtitles, trying (a teeny bit) to make sense of the story, I could not help but think of the New York Times article about parental love, and the effects of negative and positive conditioning, particularly, negative conditioning;  described in the article as parental withholding of affection to make children mind.

Die Zauberflote, which, of course, is in German, is a model of positive and negative conditioning (mainly negative).  Love is repeatedly withheld, both by authority figures, and even lovers themselves; punishment is meted out. Papageno, at the opening of the Opera, gets a padlock attached to his lips to teach him not to tell lies;  the Queen of the Night curses her daughter to make her try to kill Sorastro;  Tamino himself, must withhold affection from Pamina to pass his wisdom test;  the wizardly Sorastro says that vengeance does not live in the temple of wisdom, but also orders his bad servant, Monostatos, to get one hundred lashes; Papageno is threatened with a life of bread, water and imprisonment if he doesn’t give his hand to the withered old lady who is the disguised Papagena; Papageno is also nearly struck by lightening for chattering;  and even Tamino’s whole testing regimen is a bit of a punishment, arising from his original distrust of Sarasto and allegiance to the Queen of the Night.

It’s hard to come up with the positive conditioning–it’s mainly there in the form of false promises, I suppose, the promises of the Queen of the Night in particular.  (Praise and offers of rewards which should not be believed.)

In short, the path to love and wisdom and truth winds in and out of punishment, withheld affection, and artful alluring deception.   It’s a path that can only be negotiated through discipline, and with the help, the wondrous, miraculous help, of music.

Okay, it’s a cliché.  (And yes, I did see Amadeus)  But I couldn’t help thinking of the young Mozart, practicing the harpsichord  under the stern eye of his father, then overcoming all obstacles in his path (the crowned heads of Europe, but also that very same father) with the marvelous music he played and created.

In the opera, there is a bit of an exemption from all the discipline for the less high;   Papageno, the everyman, who says he doesn’t need to inhabit the exalted halls of wisdom for happiness, but is content with a glass of wine and a little turtledove wife, has slightly lesser trial.  These are passed by energy, good humor, loyalty, and, of course, the miraculous power of music;  in this case, the magic glockenspiel.

I sure wish I had one.

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