MamaStories

I don’t know what to think of these (scroll down on the page to the 3 YouTube videos). 

They are trailers for a program on Belgian television called “Blocks,” a popular trivia and tretris combination game for adults. The message at the end translates to: “Life without blocks is not worth living”.

The channel they were made for in the end declined to broadcast the trailers because they were too confrontational. However, they won the Silver award at the prestigious Promax/BDA-festival in New York.

They made me cry (I couldn’t even watch the third one), but I also couldn’t help laughing. They’re like watching bloopers but with (even) more guilt, because the kids are made to cry, for a commercial purpose no less. Still, they’re irresistable…

What do you think? What does it do to you?

I am looking for a board game type of game:

1. something that is fun (duh!)
2. that is “conceptual” in that it requires concept-formation, forward-thinking, memorization, etc.
3. that can be played in a group
4. that is appropriate for a clever and patient 22-month-old.

The social aspect is very important: I feel she needs and would welcome something interactive with other people  (so none of those “I’ll read to you” or “I’ll play with you” machines), and even children (she is still a very parallel player with kids her own age. For closer interaction needs the kind of directed attention that only adult and older kids can give her.)

We engage in a lot of play together: we diaper her bears, “clean” the house together, build towers with blocks and Wedgits, etc. But I am looking for something less physical, something that will bring us together in a more cerebral kind of space. 

I love to see concepts “light up” in her – like they were already there, in her brain, and they just needed to be switched on. This morning, for instance, I asked her: “What is the difference between Mama’s arm and Baba’s arm?” (which she likes to pinch when searching for that ever-elusive sleep). She thought for a couple of seconds and said: “Hairy”. So she understands the concept of “difference”.

This game should allow us to discover and exercise such cognitive skills like matching, spotting differences, concentration and memorization.

We do that when we read stories together, when we go through “spot the balloon” kinds of books. But we now need a game in that it should allow her to manipulate the events, move things around, which will give her sense of decision, of realization of her own change-making capabilities.

As such, it should also make her aware of the consequences and responsibilities of that kind of power, and make her more foreward thinking, more calculative, with plans of action, etc.

You know what I mean, right?

Board games, of course, is what comes to mind first, but most of them are beyond her as yet. There is one that sounds promising, though: the Goodnight Moon Game. Has anyone tried it?

Or am I asking too much? Should I just design our own boardgame?

Oops! That’s quite a statement! Let me explain.

“You’re setting a bad example.”

Years ago, on a visit to Belgium, we went for a stroll in the city (Antwerp) with my mom and dad. At a corner, the walk sign was red, but there were no cars, so after stopping to make sure, I stepped onto the street. My mom immediately pulled me back, and my dad tutted.  But it’s not like Belgians are sticklers for the traffic rules, and we jaywalk all the time!

My mom pointed to the other side of the street: waiting at the curb stood a family with two small kids.

“You’re setting a bad example.”

When the light turned green and we crossed, I apologized to the parents. They nodded forgiveness, this once.

Here in America

I think back to this event almost every day, when walking here, in America, around Coolidge Corner. Amie walks now – she doesn’t like the stroller much anymore. At the corners I go down on one knee  and point to the light, drawing her attention to the signal, and explain what it means. It is very obvious what I am doing, yet as we’re engaged in this (possibly lifesaving) didactic exercise, tons of others – adults, adults with children – walk past us…

“You’re setting a bad example!”

Can the Americans who are reading this explain this to me? Was it like this when you were kids? Do you think this kind of disregard ( (I mean specifically to do with the WALK sign) is, somehow, a meaningful part of the culture? Is it just inattention? Does it tell you something about how you regard children? Any thoughts would be helpful to me, because I just can’t figure it out.

My apologies for the internet hiatusses – hiati – hiatii…?

Potboiling

I have been hard at work on The Potboiler – the adventure novel that will earn us enough money to move out of the suburbs onto a 1 acre piece of land… 

Ph.D.

This sudden spurt of energy was released by my decision to quit my Ph.D. program. Yes, I did it! The decision was a long time coming. What a neat construction that is, I hope I got it right; but “quit” is such an ugly word…

In any case, I have known for a long time that I don’t want to be an academic. I don’t like the atmosphere (interpersonal, social, political), I don’t like the rules (I keep on imagining things, which is not allowed), and I just can’t compete (I admit that).

The reason I took so long was typical conservative thinking: I’ve put so much work into it, so many years of my life; I agonized so over all that classes, the endless papers, the back-breaking exams… I only have the dissertation to go, why can’t I just get on with it!

That was just it: my argument for getting on with it was solely the past. Once I realized that that dissertation and the piece of paper that would result from it did not figure into my future at all, that they were not instrumental to my “getting on with it”… it was easy.

(I was also galvanized by a post by Gina on Cauldron Ridge Farm, on which I commented at length and rather wildly!)

Amie

Amie is now asking for things with the formula: “Mama, please may I…” I love this charming behavior but am worried she may take too much upon herself. For instance, last night, her sippy cup spilled and soaked our mattress, and when we noticed she cried: “I made a mess!” so sadly, so disappointed in herself – while it was really my fault, because I hadn’t closed it properly, which of course I proceeded to explain to her.

I do hope to return to some more regular blogging soon, because it keeps me sane after a day of frenzied potboiling.

Amie’s painting of 15 May 2007

I wrote a review of some of the interesting theory about children’s drawings. It briefly considers pre-representational drawing, but the meat of it deals with representation:

• realistic representation versus symbolism representation
• the tadpole formula for human figures
• children’s body-images: do we look like tadpoles to them?
• the possible sources of such distortions
• how a child proceeds to draw, e.g., top to bottom, left to right, head first, arms last
• constraints in children’s cognitive and technical skills, “tool boxes”, and experience
• some remaks on the role of education

 Enjoy!

Just published a review on Suite101.com of Gaia’s Garden, the book that led me to Holmgren’s Permaculture. I  tremendously enjoyed reading Hemenway’s book and I hope the review does it justice.

I also hope that, once we have some land, I can put the permaculture way of gardening into practice. I might have to revisit the review at that point.

We found a house for sale, quite a whiles west of Boston but close to the commuter rail, that we might go and take a look at. It’s 1500 sq.f. (too big, really, but maybe we could close some of it off during winter) and 0.95 acres of land. With that plural, “0.95 acres” sounds like it is more than “1 acre”. We can’t afford it, really… but it would be so sweet.

That picture, again…: the tensions.

We are looking at them, intensely, but they have their backs to us, unaware, busy. They are public now, in all their nakedness, but their interaction is most private, hidden from us. The mother is washing the child (a foot), but no one (but the jet of water) is washing her. The water isn’t heated, but there is soap.

And what is most fascinating is the place: a simple platform of rough planks in a margin between an old clapboard house and a forest. It isn’t so much a margin, as an overlap, of wildness and civilization. They overlap, they don’t contradict. The house is made of old wood, and one imagines the waterpipe is slowly rusting away.  The forest is held back from them – though it already encroaches upon our view. The act of washing is animal and human (soap).

Upon this sea of generality (nature, culture), the platform floats like a lifeboat for individuation: those drops of water, that little toe, those breasts. This mother washing this child. Medieval philosophers forged a wonderful word for such intense individualness: haecceitas, literally: this-ness.

This is the best kind of image: it includes everything, and everything in it is alive with tension. But what counts in it, we can only look at it, and never claim as our own.  The only way we could know, or feel, or even imagine the one thing, this thing, that goes on there, would be to do it.

Twice this week (already) I’ve apologized to visiting friends about the state of our place. I never used to do this. It’s even my policy not to do this: I’d rather play with Amie, read a chapter of a good book, or write a couple of lines, than obsess about the dust bunnies floating free under my sofa.

My mom cleaned every day. Every day with a bucket of suds and a mop. At least the entire first floor (which spans about the surface area of our present apartment). The windows on the first and second floor were washed every week. The third floor got cleaned every month, even though no one went up there, until I took it over in my early twenties.

I used to like the smell of bleach and window cleaner (none of that stuff is allowed in my own house). The stone floor would still be shining wet and my dad would come in from the garden in his slippers, which he wore to mow the grass, dragging grass and mud across the floor. It upset me more than it did my mom.

They’re still living, just the two of them, in that +3000 sq.f. house. But my mom doesn’t clean like that anymore.  Except, I suspect, when we go there on a visit. Or maybe it is that pervasive general memory that I have of a house smelling of clean: I project it onto the factual place, which might be dusty or gritty, just a little bit, in the corners, along the edges…

Shall I do some cleaning today? Put aside the book and the blog, the journal and the laptop?