More on semantics

Perhaps in my last post it seemed I was poking fun of people who say God directly spoke to them, but that was not my intention.  For as many different people as there are in the world, there are as many different ways for God to speak to them.  I only know what feels comfortable and real to me, and I've written about it.

Yes, this kind of language makes me feel weird.  It is not something I grew up hearing.  Now that I'm attending a Christian church, teaching at a Christian cottage school and, in general, meeting more people who are of different belief systems, I am hearing more of the lingo.

There are others phrases that I've heard that have strange connotations to me.  Hearing people speak of being "convicted" and of "testimony" makes me think of legal proceedings, not God.  The only reason "testify" in terms of religion doesn't completely catch me off guard is because I like soul music.

Like with the word blessing, though, my issue is also the overuse of language to the point that it loses its relevance and meaning.  I don't doubt that God speaks to people, but if God speaks to a person about a critical life decision but also speaks to him/her about what car to buy, I have a difficult time reconciling that God really speaks to people about both the very important and the minutiae of life.  I'm not saying it isn't real to them; it simply sounds weird and unbelievable to me.  But I don't know God's mind or how God works or anything other than what I feel/think and believe.

My middle schoolers are reading Dragonwings, and we discussed a phrase in the book in which one of the characters says "We see the same thing and yet find different truths."   I both agree and disagree with this phrase and how it relates to so much in life, especially religion.

I think people often see the same thing and see the same truth, but the language they use to explain the truth is very different which makes it seem like a different truth.

In the novel, the characters are looking at the stars and picking out constellations.  The Americans have different figures, names for the figures and stories behind the figures than the Chinese immigrants.  Ultimately, though, the truth is that the stars form pictures and we all, regardless of our culture or religion or age, learn moral lessons from the stories behind the stars' formations.

The core of the seed is the same.  We all have different names for the seed and the tree that it grows into and we do different things with the fruit it bears, but we all know it is a seed.

Getting morality/religion/God through the classics

Someone recently asked me about teaching literature, and before I knew it, I was blabbering about the depth of the writing and how much great, meaningful, existential stuff is there and blah, blah, blah.

After writing my post a few minutes ago on religious semantics, I thought about the service today, in which the minister discussed Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan.  The minister of family life spoke about how he found himself in the wilderness of Target, being lost and uncertain.  Every time they spoke of wilderness I thought of Victor Frankenstein, traipsing around the mountains, searching for his monster, figuring things out, struggling with God and Victor's own ill-fated attempts to play God.

When I think of many classic writers, they were often intellectuals who either didn't subscribe to any kind of belief or had serious issues with religion. Certainly not all were like this, C.S. Lewis being one who was well known for his religious/theological writings.  Perhaps this is why I feel such a kinship with them.  Perhaps their own stewing and wilderness walking, laid bare in the pages of their books, is where I feel most comfortable.

I am discussing The Count of Monte Cristo right now with my high schoolers, a book that is rife with issues of morality, forgiveness, death, resurrection, revenge, pride, humility, and God's power.  Reading it, thinking on it, researching literary criticism about it sometimes feel to me like an effort in prayer, of sorts.

An effort in figuring things out for myself, in language I understand and have no semantic issues with.  

Thinking things Lenten

Prior to today, it had been since early February that I made it to church with the kids so Lent snuck up on me.  The only reason I knew it was coming was from Facebook, the only place I ever find out what is going on culturally/socially.  Not watching televised news tends to keep a person one step behind the masses, which is not really a bad thing.

A number of people I know have given up Facebook for Lent, while others are giving up beer or whatever vice or distraction rings important to them.

I, however, do not ever give up anything for Lent.  Ever.

I very much remember in college fasting on Ash Wednesday(s) which made me, an already moody individual, feel like I was going off the chain.  A hungry moody person is the pits.

So much of my relationship with religion has been doing things I didn't want to do only out of guilt or pressure, and I have come to the place now where I think that is a really shitty way of trying to be a better person and forging a sense of conscience, morality and Jesus-like-ness.

I tend to live a pretty moderate life.  I don't drink alcohol with any great frequency. I don't smoke.  I don't spend money on purses or shoes or jewelry or going out to movies.  My time on Facebook tends to be pretty limited most days, unless it is a snow-day in which case FB acts as the barrier that keeps me and Child Protective Services apart (and that, no doubt, is a good thing).

If I did give up something, I would be doing it only out of guilt.  And I won't do that anymore.

For me to adopt things I should do instead of things I shouldn't do.....well, I try to do that anyway.  I try to be as nice and supportive of people as I can.  I try to be thoughtful and give to others of my time and talents.  If I gave too much of my treasure, I would be doing so out of guilt....and, to reiterate, I'm not following that path anymore.

I am a problem-child, for sure.

..........Seque.........

N asked me the other day if we are Catholic or Christian since a school friend of hers asked.  I said that I was raised Catholic, and we attend a Christian church.  I could have gone into much further explanation of how she is not an official Christian because she hasn't been baptized, that according to the "rules" I am the only one in the household who will go to heaven because I am the only one who has been baptized, although this would be Catholic heaven, and I can't speak to whether I would go to Christian heaven.  I could have explained how Catholic falls under the umbrella of Christian, that they are not mutually exclusive but to instead think of them as the brand names of belief.

But I didn't because she is 10.  I think so much of this is rubbish myself so why strap that to her back?

......Segue......again......

As an English teacher, I find myself getting bound up in the language of religion, a real sticking point with me sometimes.  I recently read this article, which I enjoyed and agreed with.  Feeling blessed or being blessed is the trend phrase of the moment, like "just sayin" or "I KNOW, right?"  As with those, I become very tired of "blessed" and its overuse.

Blessed is something done TO someone.  When I sneeze, someone blesses me.  If I went to service or mass, I would be blessed by the priest or minister.

Grateful/thankful is something experienced by us.  God does what God does, and we can be thankful for it.  But if God blesses my family with good health, is God then cursing another family whose child died of leukemia?

Without meaning to, the overuse of the word blessing has perpetuated the idea of the "haves" and "have-nots."

Yes, it is splitting hairs, but as teaching English again reminds me, so many of the words we use paint a picture that we may not fully understand.

To go along with this is my great dislike of the phrase "too blessed to be stressed."

I could go on and on (and I have, in this blog) about feeling like because of happenstance, being born in the US in the historical time I was born in to parents who raised me as they did, I am not allowed to feel whatever it is I feel at any given time.  As if having running water and food in the fridge makes me utterly immune to grief or despair or anger or anxiety or any of the negatives associated with just.simply.being.human.

To continue this discussion of religious semantics, another phrase that weirds me out is when people say things like "God spoke to me and told me...."

By saying "God told me to," it removes the individual's own free will from the discussion. Doing what God says is all well and good until and unless someone says "God told me to......hijack an airplane."  And this is why I have a problem with this line of speaking.  Too many people do (and have done) too many terrible things in the name of God.  So when I hear someone speak in this way, even though they are probably very good people who mean no ill by it, it makes me think they are Crusaders and generally pretty extreme.....and generally should be avoided.

It makes me want to ask (which I never do), does God tell you everything to do?  Did God tell you to paint your wall eggplant instead of fuschia?  How do you know it was actually God and not your own sense of self, your own desires which are strong enough that they might seem like God directly whispering into your ear?  Having OCD I know that just because something pings in my head 10,000 times doesn't mean it is God going, "Carrie, listen to me!!  Carrie, listen to me!!"  That is just my brain on its OCD rotation.

We are all guilty of thinking we know what God wants for us, which makes us all a little too big for our collective britches. I tend to believe God has bigger and better things on his omniscient plate than me and my piddly issues, and so for this reason, I have a world of uncomfortable feelings whenever I hear someone speak this way.

Sometimes it is laughable how hung up I get over authority, control and semantics when it comes to God.  It's not you, God....it's me.

Leaving it up to her

N is very much the child who wants to try new stuff.

She asked to try out for Future Problem Solving, and when she didn't make the team it was really no big deal.  I expected to have to console and coddle a bit, but there was no need.  She doesn't seem to wear her heart on her sleeve as much as her mother did at a similar age.

She received an invitation to try out for Written Assessment, and we were both surprised when she did make that team since most of the time 4th graders' scores do not qualify them.

Every Wednesday at the end of the day, she would go pick up her written assessment practice tests.  At first, she was all gung-ho and filled them out with enthusiasm.  I helped her answer the ones with which she wasn't familiar and even prepared some review sheets with definitions and such.

I found myself sometimes asking, "Have you gone over your written assessment sheets?" but I didn't want to drive myself and her nuts with badgering.  

Today is the competition, and yesterday she was all, "I'm so nervous.  I wonder how I will do?"

I just kept my mouth closed.

I wanted to lecture her on, "You've got to prepare and study if you want to do well," and all the other mom-things I could think of, but I didn't.

There are enough things I have to harangue her about, and I didn't want academic competition to be one of those things.  It is just not important to me and seemingly her as well.  Ultimately, she has to learn that to do well an individual has to plan and prepare.  It is her call, her choice, and she is the one who has to live with the consequences.

Although, given her glibness about making and not-making teams, I doubt she will be that upset if she doesn't do well.

It is me blogging about it, as I do other things that stay.on.my.mind.

Snow day #895,847,502,399

Yesterday was another snow day.

I handled it pretty well, mostly because I was miraculously able to get a telephone interview in for the article I was working on, finish the article, and receive lots of email praise from my editor (Ra-ra, Carrie you are awesome!).  I also made mulligatawny soup, pear cobbler and homemade french fries.  I finished two sit-upons that I'm making for G's kindergarten class to use in the reading garden at school.  I finished reading The One and Only Ivan (a kid-book that only requires minimal concentration).

(Ok, that telephone interview wasn't technically a miracle.  Mindless video games for children can be a blessing.)

I anticipated that today would be a snow day.
I braced myself for it.
I knew that if my district would cancel school based on the forecast of snow coming in 5 hours but no actual snow on the ground or falling from the sky, they would definitely cancel another day of school when snow IS on the ground, and the roads are middling at best.

Today sucks.
And it's not because of the children, per se.  They have hardly been irritating at all.

I've counted Girl Scout cookie booth money.
I've finished the taxes.
I've retyped all the passwords on a clean and uncrimped sheet of paper.

I have zero motivation.
I am bored, bored, bored.

There is plenty I need and want to do.

Like....

1. Read The Grapes of Wrath or Brilliant Blunders (but these are books I cannot read when children are around because I need to concentrate and extended periods of concentration are not something that happens when 3 kids are in the house due to near constant interruptions to fix a Lego or get someone a snack or find something that the child hasn't seen in 6 months and cannot accurately describe.)

2. Deposit cookie booth money at the bank (but do I really want to go through the hassle of badgering the children to "GET DRESSED MOTHAFUCKAS!!" (in my head) for something that isn't absolutely necessary and required by law....like school.)

3. Repaint the dining room furniture (which requires going out to buy paint with the kids (see #2 above) and uninterrupted time (see #1 above).

And I don't want to talk to the kids because I had Saturday and Sunday AND MONDAY, listening to them tell me things about the 19 American Girl dolls they don't actually have but think they may one day have and so these dolls are within the imaginary play repertoire which I find terribly confusing because I cannot remember what is actually real let alone keep up with things in the realm of the pretend.

I don't really want to have my child stick his fingers (which smell like butt) in my face and proceed to tell me, when I say they smell like butt, that he was scratching his butt.
This happened YESTERDAY.

I don't want to get anyone dressed in 17 layers of outdoor wear and have them come to the door, and BANG on the door, and have me fix a mitten or wipe a nose or get down a sled or make up food-colored water in spray bottles so they can paint the snow.
That was YESTERDAY (and every other of these snow days).

Call me a one-trick pony, but I'm finished.

So today at 10:39 am, I am still in my pajamas, teeth and hair unbrushed.  Beds are unmade.
The boys had Saltine crackers for breakfast because that is what they wanted, and I simply am too unambitious today to care.

I did take a load of laundry out of the drier, but I doubt they will be folded today.

Like every other parent in the midwest who is on their zillionth snow day of this school year, I beg of you Zeus, God, Allah, Yahweh, Indra, Rangi, and any other major or minor god of everything or weather in particular.....

Let this winter end.

Assessment results

This week I met with the psychologist to go over G's psychological test results.  I went in hoping for some answers, some definitive answers, but as is the case in parenting, there are very rarely clear-cut answers to anything related to one's child.

But really, how often are there clear-cut answers in life?

What we know with relative certainty is that G doesn't appear to have any learning disabilities or difficulties.  He rated average to above average in everything, with an IQ of 109.  His spatial skills were in the superior category.  Although his language skills were fine, they were well below his spatial abilities causing an imbalance of sorts in what his left-brain and right-brain can do or will do.

The psychologist said G is an enigma, to which I had to laugh.

He scores as likely having Asperger's, but he has virtually none of the communicative issues associated with it (blank facial expressions, not making eye-contact).  What we think is that his other sensory issues are strong enough to skew the test.  If it wasn't for his sensory issues, he wouldn't appear Asperger-ish at all.

Some of his intelligence scores and other behaviors the psychologist noted while testing him make him appear to have attention issues (ADD/ADHD), but in-school reports show no attention issues at all.

He doesn't appear to have issues with depression.  He does appear to have some issues with aggression and anxiety, but not severe enough to put him in the "danger" area, where the psychologist would see there is a clinical diagnosis needing to be made.

The psychologist said all this should make me feel better, and it does in that there is nothing glaringly amiss.  But at the same time, having a diagnosis of something would give me a better guide for managing G instead of feeling like I'm flailing and trying a little bit of everything to help him.  It would, if nothing else, give me a place to hang my hat (which is selfish, I know).

Basically everything I started to do with G in December/early January (periodically seeing a psychologist and starting OT) when I didn't know what was "wrong" or "not-wrong" with him is what I should be doing and what we should continue to do.

Some of G's issues may really and truly be maturity.  His brain appears to be ahead of his emotions.

Meeting with the psychologist was especially weird since on Monday I had had a conference with G's teacher.  According to her, G's reading skills have him "this close" to being recommended for the talent pool for kindergarteners.  I actually said, "No shit?" when she told me he is reading at an end of 1st grade/beginning of 2nd grade level.  Twice this year she has sent home notes about how he helped a classmate, offering kindness to them or looking out for them, a clear sign that he is very able and willing to be empathetic to others.  On Monday, she said because of this compassion, others in the class look to him as a leader.

An enigma to be sure.

In all honesty, I expected his IQ score to be higher, given the questions he asks and the things he thinks about.

Two Fridays ago, having just come from OT, he asked me in the car, "Mahee (how he says mommy), who will be our new mom when you die?"  The next day, we watched the Disney movie Brother Bear.  After it was over, I said, "Wasn't that a great movie about brothers?" to which he replied, "Yes, and truth and death too."

He is such a existential thinker, and though I don't hang with other 6-year-olds, it is hard for me to think that they ponder evolution and watch BBC shows on geological time with such interest as he does.

Of course, I also don't believe that an IQ score is truly indicative of what a person is or is not.  I know it is more than a little ridiculous to give even a minute's thought to his score, but I would not be a mother if there wasn't some snippet of parental pride affecting my thoughts.

So what to make of all this????

Keeping carrying on as we are....seeing the psychologist, attending OT, reading him child-appropriate books on anxiety to help him manage his worries, reading every parenting book known to man on "sensitive" children, and blogging here as a means of working through the challenges of raising my especially challenging (for me) but especially special boy.

Diez, Tiu, Dieci, Dix, Theka

Dear N,

Your 10th birthday is such a milestone.

For you, it is a season of newness.  Your body and mind are on the cusp of such great change as your hormones kick in and you prepare in another year to enter middle school.  You have grown so much in these ten years, and in another ten you will be, for all intents and purposes, a full-grown adult.

For me, it is a time of reflection, a looking back over a decade of mothering you.  As much as you have changed, so have I.

I am not the mother I was to you when you were an infant and young child.  In some ways, you had the best of me, a "me" your brothers have never and will never see.  More enthusiastic, more able to dedicate individual time, less tired, certainly more organized.

But you also experienced "uptight" me.....so worried that every little thing I did or didn't do would harm you.  I so didn't understand then how much of you was already "you" the instant you were born.  I didn't understand then that just being around, just being available to you when and if you want me, is so much more than being "in your face" and having quality time....whatever that means.

What a "you" you have grown to be.

I know you mostly see me being "nagging" mom or "grumpy" mom or "makes me do my homework" mom.  I don't usually let you know when I am being "studying your long thin fingers" mom or "liking that all you talk about is American Girl dolls because it means you are still a little girl even though I get tired of hearing about American Girls" mom.

I don't usually tell you how proud I am of you that you are one of the girls selected to work with the special needs students at your school because of your compassion and maturity.  I forget to tell you how glad I am to see that you have much more confidence in math than you did a year ago even though it will likely always be your "harder" school subject.   I have to remind myself to tell you how much I like it that you are so comfortable in your skin, wearing funky glasses without the glass in them just because you like how they look even though you don't need them for vision. I don't want to give you a big head or be a braggart, but I am so proud of you qualifying as the only 4th grader for written assessment.

Being your mom is such a huge privilege, and I am thankful every single day that I was blessed with you for my daughter.

Enjoy your 10th birthday events and activities!

Love,
Momma