Music, Language, Food, Nature, Art.

As I contemplate Ada's life with me as her Mother, I've stressed about one thing more than others:

How will I teach her? 

Recently I've started to realize that this, in my case, is the wrong question. Right now in Ada's Life I see in her one persistent revolving trait. She wants to be like me.

Is it normal that it's taken me this long to figure this out? 

About a year ago when I started to do home school related activities, I tried to come up with a lot of crazy ways that I could teach Ada things. First and foremost, her letters. Ada had been drawing on our walls since she realized that pencils and pens make marks and recently she had moved to drawing squiggly horizontal lines. I made an awesome magnetic chalk board to fiddle with. And the kitchen was constantly filled with Sesame Street Alphabet songs (I may or may not know all of them by heart). All these things told me it was time to play with drawing the letters. So we talked about A for Ada. We started playing, me drawing the upward and downward slopes, she finishing with bar across. It didn't take very long until she was drawing A on everything and pointing out every A and drawing the cross bar on any letter or image with a triangle without a cross bar, thus making it into an A. We went on to D, so we could write her name and U because I thought it would be a good idea to make a word that she would know. UVA, Ada's then favorite fruit.

Then something happened. Ada no longer liked drawing letters. Everytime I moved to the chalk, Ada would run away because she didn't want to do that. She was past it. She knew how to draw her A and she was done. She didn't even want to sing the fun monster songs very much anymore.


It seems like this happened every time I have came up with a brilliant idea for how we could get from one leapfrog of learning to the next. Ada eventually rejects what it is she's being taught.  From drawing letters to pushing shapes through holes, to dressing herself and potty training.

The best piece of advice I was ever given was from my sister of five children. Not all of them were potty trained perfectly. She certainly had her share of struggles in that area, which is why I knew she knew the difference. On the subject of potty training, she told me simply, do not pressure them.  Somehow I was able to leave the pressure out of potty training, but Ada could feel it in other aspects of my mothering. She could feel it simply because it was there. I wanted her to learn those things. I spent a lot of energy everyday trying to incorporate learning modules into the fun things we did, and the not so fun things. Somehow I let slip how important it was to me that Ada learn these things. But being a three year old, the only thing Ada wanted to do was play.

We tried going to a play group to see if she wanted to play with learning games with other kids, we even hosted it at our house a few times and I loved the other women that taught it and seeing how their kids reacted to structured learning. They and their children are the kind of people who probably do well in public school because they have such amazing Mothers. But every time we would go, Ada was much more interested in the toys and exploring the house than she was with the organized play that was taking place between the teacher and the other kids. So play she did. I have gradually done less and less of those semi structured activities and for a long time I've felt guilty about not doing them. And so my question, word by word, flies out the window until only this is left:  

How will I teach her?

I've accepted the fact that my way of teaching, the way I've always thought worked well, always gave me success with kids, was flawed. I recently read something in The Big Book of Unschooling, by Sandra Dodd, about the nature of learning and how learning requires only one person. Teaching, in fact, only requires one person, and does not guarantee learning, if you happen to have a pupil. I understand that if I am to parent this independent minded child, there's not necessarily teaching involved. What I need to do is facilitate learning. To do that I need to think about who Ada is and how she learns, how she enjoys life, what does she want?

Do As I'm Doing.

Another thing that happened last year was that I joined a book club.  I decided that if I wanted Ada to want to read, she needed to see how much I loved reading; as in Books. After all, what I do on the computer isn't reading. I push buttons, the buttons make sounds and there are pictures that become videos for her to watch. Books though, as I intentionally read books in front of her, text books, novels, nonfiction, poetry, suddenly I saw a flame in her mind as she brought up her own books from her room to 'read' while I read mine lounging on the couch.

Helping Hands

One of Ada's very first words was Help. Help, by throwing random sometimes edible things into the mixing bowl. Help by chopping the Lettuce. I've  gotten better at letting her help as well as organizing my kitchen and work space so it can be accessible and safe for her, so I don't have to tell her no when that's what she wants to do. I often find her, when the house feels too quiet, standing on her stool cutting a random vegetable she has retrieved from the fridge or pouring her cup of milk into the sugar and mixing it around very methodically, with an intense look of 'I'm doing something important' on her face.

Another thing that Ada has shown an outward interest in doing is something we do as a family at least once a week. I have a basket in our living room that is full of sound makers. Shakers, a bongo drum, harmonica, all beaten up and/or passed along from the thrift store, but in perfect working order. We can all be happy making nose on the shakers and tambourines until we pull the guitar out. It was given me by the most dearest of friends and I have over the years learned a few tunes. I don't play as much as I'd like and every time I do, I end up going to the same few songs that I already know well and it's a family event. Which means it doesn't take long before someone is hurt because the other is playing the guitar and Mom and Dad are busy trying to keep the guitar in one piece.

Yesterday at the store Ariel took the kids to the toy section while I went to the fabric. Ada found a guitar. In fact, she refused to leave the guitar on the shelf. Every one of the ten times we put the guitar back, she snuck back to retreive it and contantly made sure it was STILL in the cart. We didn't buy it. Then last night we were playing drums and dancing around like the fools we are, when Ada asked to get the guitar out. I played a bit, Ariel played a bit and then Ada sat down on on a short seat with her legs at just the right angle to allow her small arms over the guitar. She started to play and sing. Not words, not a tune, but a song; music. So sad my camera was out of batteries. It was sublime, I tell you. 

Other things Ada loves are wearing dresses with pretty bows, flowers, sewing with me, pretending with her dolls, cutting hair, digging in dirt, pulling leaves off plants, Painting, Taking Molly for walks and throwing the ball, and lots of other fun three year old things.


So this is Ada's curriculum over the next year, give or take, change or not, depending on her wishes. Singing and playing the guitar, Making a dress with Mama, Helping Mama cook, Nature Walks, Painting (sometimes structured, sometimes not) Quiet time in her room with Mama reading to her while she plays, as long as she is happy. 

This is Mama's curriculum over the next year: Find Ada a guitar, Read books aloud to Ada and Nahuel and let Ada and Nahuel see me enjoy my own books. Go to the library, let them choose out their own books. Play the guitar more, with Ada and Nahuel. Take nature walks and go camping more often. Enjoy the garden, set apart a garden plot for Ada and Nahuel to sow seeds and water them and watch things grow.. Sew Ada lots of pretty things and let Ada help. 

Me Eats + Three

Sort of the point in this whole red neck blog is that I've never really known whether something I do fits with what is expected of one human by another. I don't necessarily want it to fit and I don't necessarily want to know if it does. And so my life is just one big awkward human moment, I just try to enjoy it. But there are some things that are common to all of us humans. We all, for one, eat. But what we eat and why we eat it, that comes from innumerable places as we go our merry way on this planet. It differentiates us and it defines us. I don't feel fully qualified to say much regarding the ethics of food. But Michael Pollen sums it up pretty well in The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I've never been extremely concerned about the health factors either. It seems pretty simple as long as I am eating real food (again, refer to above links). We all have our special ways of going about this human act, but my kitchen is my own and I am on a quest to find a happy balance for my family and, like I always tell Ariel, make sure we live to be one-hundred-and-eleven. 

With myself, two kids, and an Argentine, food at our house is a constantly changing adventure. Not because we are trying dangerous and daring things, but because you just never know what to expect. One day Ada's favorite food is corn chips, the next she won't touch them...that's life with a three year old. I've pretty much stopped planning meals around what they will and will NOT eat because, well I love to cook, and every time I make something specifically for THEM and something about it isn't JUST right (pretty much every time) it's like a cold wet blanket in the middle of January. But I do want to make things that they LIKE and I want to make things that will teach them what food actually IS (Wonder Bread NOT being included in this category). Since I've stopped trying so hard to please them and just focused on making good food, it seems like they've eaten more and better.

Food at our house is also an ongoing test in the human ability to adapt. We have two entirely different food cultures that we are meshing. I guess that could be true in any household. Having an Argentine in the house, there's pretty much no way we could ever go vegan or vegetarian. But I must give my carnivore a little credit (actually, alot) for the ways in which he's adapted. We usually eat meat once or twice a week, and very rarely red. In 'his' country, they eat red meat once or twice a day and fluffy white bread is the only kind of bread unless you happen to be diabetic or have high cholesterol. Some time I'll blog about a traditional Argentine Asado. It'd be worth the risk of disgusting most of the people who read my blog.

For all of the adaptation Ariel has endured, there are a lot of things we elect to do the Argentine way. For their love of meat, they use their vegetables very creatively and frequently. No meal is complete without a salad of greens, simple or complex. Rarely served with a bottle of salad dressing, rather some variation of vinegar and oil. Yams are eaten savory, with herbs, in stews and purees, not with marshmallows on top. Coming from the land of high fructose corn syrup, Argentine food to me is about cleansing your taste buds and filling them with simple goodness. In the beginning of our marriage, learning to cook for him was a labor of Love. In our first little apartment (which I was afraid to leave for fear of being mugged) I basically spent five months experimenting with six ingredients (literally that's ALL I did). Simply potatoes, garlic, white flour, onions, eggplant, and eggs I stole from my mother in law's chickens (Yes Lucia, it was me).  I bought cheap vegetables when I could, but for the most part that was it...until my Mom came to visit. She can attest to the fact that it WAS a pretty bland diet. When she came down for my wedding, she brought with her peanut butter and for the first (and last) time in my life I enjoyed 'American cheese'. It was nice because it didn't need a refrigerator and we didn't have one anyway. We were VERY poor.  The art of simple food arose out of necessity, but I have always had kind of an obsession with making something out of nothing. Many of those somethings have turned into very disastrous, inedible substances (each specific awkward instance is recorded very well on the walls of my brain and if you remember one of them yourself, I've probably retold the story laughing my guts out, more than once), but I keep experimenting. Cooking for my family still is a labor of love, though toned down and quite a bit less romantic with two kids.

Argentines follow a strong Italian tradition. Going beyond the ingredients, it means taking the time to cook and then, the time to enjoy food together. One of the ways we do things 'Argentine' style is that we eat 'Almuerzo' instead of dinner. Almuerzo is at the same time as lunch, though not to be compared in any other way. It means we spend a fair portion of time together in the middle of the day. A huge part of Argentine culture is about just enjoying one another's company over a meal, and 'Almuerzo' is always followed by drinking yerba mate unless there is something of THIS world that keeps us from it.  It is, in effect, ingested group therapy. If you are ever invited to drink yerba mate with us, it's only because we value you and want to validate you as a human being. That just what we do when we drink mate. That's not to say that there won't be a healthy share of brutal honesty along with a good amount of political discussion, also unavoidable parts of Argentine culture, but mostly, it's about talking. I attribute drinking mate with Ariel to why we are such good friends, because we are very different creatures. But taking the time, brings us back to the same place every day, together. It's also important that we spend time together with the kids. They drink mate too. But it's not about the mate, its about learning how to communicate and value each other. And this way they don't starve to death if they didn't like what we ate for almuerzo.

My biggest challenge with feeding my family (Argentine included) is teaching my kids about food. Though every day I doubt whether I am capable, I WILL teach my children that green food is good and that food is about people not just what you do and don't put in your mouth. So there you have it. That is part of the food culture at OUR house. I would love to hear about YOUR food culture. Why do you do things the way you do?