Today was the last day of A+'s week-long
wheel-throwing afternoon summer camp at Parkdale
Pottery in Toronto. She's focused on wheel
throwing at the moment, not hand-building. It's
hard to find pottery wheel lessons for 9-year-olds
because of strength and safety concerns. A+'s been
doing the all-ages 2-hour wheel-throwing workshops
at Clay With Me independently around once a month,
and she's also tried painting premade pieces. It
felt like a minor miracle to find a half-day camp
focused on just what she wanted.
Before the workshop, A+ wasn't sure about trying
out a different studio, since she'd gotten
comfortable at Clay With Me. She settled in
quickly, though, and even took charge of packing
her snacks and getting her clothes and apron ready
for the next day. It was great to see her grow
more independent.
A+ likes to work with smaller balls of clay so
that they're easier to centre and handle. In Clay
with Me workshops, she usually asks the
instructors to divide a ball in half. Because the
Parkdale Pottery camp was for kids 8-12 years old,
the clay balls they provided were the right size
for her hands, and the instructors also
showed the kids how to prepare their own.
The first three days focused on wheel throwing.
The instructor complimented A+ on her centreing
skills. She's gotten pretty good at bracing
herself so that she can form the puck right in the
middle. She also learned about adding attachments
by scoring the clay and adding slip. The fourth
day was about refining and trimming, and the fifth
day was about glazing. She enjoyed learning how to
marble her pieces with interesting blue-and-white
swirls, and I enjoyed her description of the
process: layering the underglazes, then swirling
them around to create the design. This was the
first time she was able to trim and glaze her own
pieces, since the Clay with Me workshops are
one-off sessions where the pieces are all finished
with a clear food-safe glaze. Parkdale Pottery
will fire A+'s pieces with a food-safe glaze too,
and we'll pick them up in a few weeks.
When kids finished early or wanted to take a
break, they explored hand-building, drew circles
with markers on paper attached to pottery wheels,
worked with beads, and played the board game
Trouble. The instructors did a good job of
managing the occasional squabbles.
Looking at other students' work on the shelves and
the instructional posters on the wall, I saw
interesting ideas that we might try in future
workshops. (Gotta make a face vase…)
The half-day summer camp was from 1 PM to 4 PM
from Monday to Friday, and it cost $250+HST. There
was a full-day option, but A+ wasn't interested in
hand-building. I think the half-day was worth it,
especially since I managed to squeeze in about 2
hours of consulting every day even with setting
aside time to bike back and forth. We're gradually
transitioning to the phase where she wants to
learn about things I can't teach her, and paying
for clay workshops is a great way to access
people's specialized expertise and equipment. I
don't know how many kids there were in the camp,
but A+ was happy with the teacher-student ratio
and felt like she had enough time to get whatever
help she needed.
From her previous workshops, we've collected a
good selection of little ice cream bowls and
saucers. This camp will add a few more saucers and
tiny bowls. It might be a good idea to learn how
to make little treats (maybe chocolate truffles?)
that we can place on the saucers for an
extra-special birthday gift. ("Wrapped in plastic
and tied with a bow?" she asks.)
Next steps: We'll probably continue with the
Clay with Me workshops, since A+ likes the studio
and is comfortable with the process. I also want
to explore a little handbuilding with polymer clay
and air dry clay, and some sketching to imagine
pieces. Maybe she'll get into that too. When we
come up with pieces we really like, we can do one
of the handbuilding workshops at a pottery studio
in order to make a food-safe version, or consider
a clay-at-home package (Shaw Street Pottery) that
can be fired. When A+ turns 10, she'll be old
enough for the wheel courses at places like Create
Art Studio and 4cats. They generally schedule
their teen wheel courses on weekdays, though, and
a weekend would probably be better for us.
A+ wants to do this summer camp again next year.
She prefers unstructured time and plenty of
afternoon playdates, so it'll probably be just one
week, like this year. We'll see when we get there.
Plenty to explore. It's nice to have a craft, and
maybe this will be one of hers.
9 PM on a schoolday, time for me to nudge A+ off
to bed. A+ is clicking through the Stardew Valley
wiki, slurping up all sorts of trivia that she'll
probably trickle into our conversations. There are
two pieces of homework left to do, one with quite
a few slides to complete. And drawing. She's not a
big fan of drawing assignments. "My hand is
tired," she says.
I try to be calm and supportive. I wobble.
Could've done this earlier, I think. I manage to
keep myself from saying it. I teeter, noticing
myself mentally fast-forwarding decades ahead. Oh
no, she's not going to get the hang of doing
things that she finds boring, she won't develop
study skills or executive control, she'll cram
through all the classes she can coast in, and all
of it will come crashing down in university when
she might actually need to buckle down and study.
She's 9! She's a long way from university.
I'm learning to embrace my anxiety and appreciate
how it tries to keep us all safe. This feeling
makes sense. I want to help her avoid mistakes,
especially when the feedback cycle is long and the
results of choices will only be seen much later.
But anxiety gets in the way of parenting. If I let
the fearful part of my brain take over, I'll
inadvertently teach her that mistakes are
catastrophic rather than just ordinary Tuesdays. I
want to hold her steady, but the wobbles are how
we learn.
It's somewhat manageable now, when we can talk
about these things openly. A+ can laugh off my
worries ("Mom, you're fretting again,") and W- can
remind me to slow down when it runs away with me.
He's usually pretty chill about all this. It'll be
harder when the cognitive rewiring of puberty or
menopause turn ordinary conversations into
minefields right when the stakes get higher. The
more I tighten my grip, the more star systems will
slip through my fingers. (There I go again with
catastrophizing.)
Besides, I want to help A+ avoid the paralysis of
perfectionism or self-recrimination. I want her to
be able to experiment, and to pick herself up and try
again if things don't work out the first time
around. To do that, I need to learn to change my
perspective from being anxious about mistakes to
seeing the opportunities for re-takes.
There are many things I can't teach A+. Some
things can't fully be taught, they can only be
learned, like how to balance the clay on the
pottery wheel. Sometimes I don't even know what
the right answer would be, like what kinds of tips
work for her particular brain. Some things change
over time and she'll need to change with them,
like how to adapt to life's situations. She'll
need to learn how to learn instead of relying on
one fixed answer.
Fortunately, life comes with so many opportunities
to practise. The Toronto public school calendar
has 187 instructional days, so she gets plenty of
chances to manage her homework and get feedback.
The repetitive nature of things used to frustrate
me when it came to my tasks (always more dishes to
wash, always more clothes to fold), but it's good
for learning, especially while the stakes are low.
It's her experiment, I remind myself. About half
the time, she doesn't even want my help. ("I can
do it, Mom.") She's sensible enough to try
things out on small experiments instead of scary
ones: shopping at the grocery store on her own,
not skydiving.
There's plenty of stuff for me to learn while she
learns. When I get the urge to correct her work
("How does that line up with the rubric?") or nag
her to get her work done, I tell myself:
Is it really a problem? The teacher isn't
expecting her to completely master all the
skills, and the teacher is in a good place to
give developmentally-appropriate feedback. I can
let her experiment with how much work she wants
to put into things, and she can see what that
results in. Despite all my twitchiness about how
she puts off her daily homework until 9 PM, she
still manages to get things done. Judging from
the frequent reminders her teacher gives the
virtual class, she's probably ahead of the
curve. So maybe it's not a problem.
Whose problem is it? Something might not be my
problem. It might not even be her problem. She
reads during class time, for instance. Sometimes
she misses something that can't be figured out
from just the homework slide deck. Maybe that's
partly her experimenting to find the right
balance between attention and stimulation. Maybe
that's also partly a consequence of how school
is designed to go at the group's pace. Not
entirely her problem.
The more I let go of the small stuff, the more
experience she'll be able to draw on for the big
stuff. I hope she'll get the hang of thinking of
life as mostly series of little experiments, and
to notice when there's a bigger choice that needs
more thinking because it's more long-term. The
more she decides, the more confidence we both
develop in her decisions.
This reminds me of how kids learn how to bike. The
popular approach uses training wheels to prevent
falls. The idea is to gradually raise them as the
kid improves, but I usually see kids pedaling
along (perhaps slightly leaning over to one side)
to match the slowness of parents' walking. It's
hard to balance when you're going slow. But
pedaling isn't the hard part. Balancing is, and
you develop balance by balancing. Maybe that's a
little like how I get tempted to rescue A+ from
the results of some of her choices, but letting
her try things is how to help her learn.
A+ learned how to bike using a balance bike
instead of using training wheels. When she was
two, she toddled along on a Strider, which was
light enough for her to manage. Eventually she
figured out coasting. She was proud of being able
to do it on her own. Then we upgraded her to a
Cleary Gecko freewheel bike, with proper
hand-brakes and everything. After a few attempts
with us holding her under her armpits, she was
ready for us to steady her with a hand on her
back, and then for us to be close, and then she
was off on her own. She fell and skinned her knee
many times, developing an appreciation of pants
for protection and ice cream for comfort. The more
she biked, the more she learned how to notice that
feeling of being slightly off-balance, and the
better she got at correcting it. Now we can bike
on the streets together.
You can't learn how to bike if the training wheels
are always on, or if someone's always holding you
steady. It's okay to wobble and fall and get up.
You learn that you can survive a skinned knee, and
so you keep going.
Sometimes, when A+'s in the middle of a meltdown,
I have to remind myself not to try to fix it in
the moment. That doesn't work, anyway. Just take
the loss and try again next time. Sometimes, once
we've both calmed down, I ask A+ to imagine
rewinding back to a situation so we can play it
out a little differently. Sorry, I meant to say
this, not that. Would that work better? Next time.
Not mistakes. Data. Just another step in the
journey.
Getting better at getting better helps me, too.
I've been practising piano, making steady progress
through the Simply Piano app. I've been playing
for about four months now. I took piano lessons as
a kid, but not to any serious extent. Back then, I
got bored with the simple exercises I had to do.
Now I feel slow, snail-slow, but I can savour the
way my mind is beginning to get the hang of
things, knowing that it will take me many tries to
get the hang of it. I'm starting to be able to
look at the notes and remember the phrases,
imagine what the next sequence will sound like
before I play it, and notice how my hands move to
make it happen.
When my fingers wobble on the keys, I slow down
and try again. There's no point in berating
myself. If my mind keeps hiccuping or my fingers
keep stumbling, I can think: ah, is this because
I'm tired, or because I want to do something else,
or just because I'm learning and it takes time to
get the hang of things? I'm getting better at
figuring out when I should probably call it a day
so that I don't practise mistakes into my muscle
memory and when I might benefit from just slowing
down the segment.
I still stumble through pieces I've successfully
played before. Remembering is hard. But I'm
getting better at being patient with myself,
accepting that it's because I'm still in the
middle of the journey. It's not a mistake that I
should grump at myself about. It's just part of a
re-take. This is what learning looks (and sounds)
like. Of course it doesn't start out perfectly
smooth.
Here's me learning Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca",
with the app providing accompaniment in the
background. It's not perfect, but it's progress.
・・・・・
We were at the playground. I ate the remaining
crackers in the snack box because I thought A+ was
done. Turns out she was saving them for later. She
was very upset. I apologized and promised to ask
next time, but she was too far gone to hear.
That was a tough moment. A+ was already
emotionally off-balance because the playdate
hadn't gone as well as it usually does.
Discovering I had eaten the crackers she was
looking forward to was the last straw. She
dissolved into tears. I snuggled her and settled
in for a long wait. I think: Where's the line
between comforting her and coddling her? Does my
anxiety teach her this is too hard to handle?
We're not quite at the point of being able to
shrug off mistakes. I remind myself that she'll
learn what she's ready to learn.
Looking around while A+ drenched my left shoulder,
I noticed a skateboarder on the park road. Maybe a
man in his thirties? He was trying to jump his
skateboard over a low concrete lane divider. He
had been at it for a while before I noticed. Most
times, he was able to clear the divider, but the
skateboard slowed down too much on the other side
and he had to jump off. On the seventh try that I
saw, he landed back on the skateboard and rolled
on for a bit. Success! He tried again and failed.
Four more failures before his next success. One
more attempt–another failure–and then he called
it a day. I'm sure he'll be back at it.
A+ continued to cry. My phone buzzed, reminding me
that we probably wanted to get going before the
rain in the forecast. I carried her as I picked up
our bags and put them in my bike. Eventually I
needed to gradually ease her off me. She curled up
in the bucket of my front-loader cargo bike, still
crying. I tucked the towel around her like a
blanket, buckled her bike into the tow-bag, and
walked the bikes home. She fell asleep.
A wobble, a fall. But I'm sure we'll be back at it
too. (And we did; the next day, she was happily
playing with her friends again.)
・・・・・
It's hard to be in the moment. Sometimes the
moment sucks. It's hard to be far ahead in the
future. It makes decisions feel too big. Do-overs
make things just the right size. If we can get
good at shrugging off the inevitable failures and
treating them as data so that we can sketch out
ideas for the next experiment, I think that'd be
pretty cool. Instead of "Oh no!" or even "Are you
sure about that?" (what kid likes to be
doubted?), I can lean towards, "Hmm, let's find
out."
As predicted, we had another late-night homework
situation. This time she had a headache and wanted
to go to bed, homework unfinished. I was able to
let go and just focus on snuggling her in. The
next day, after morning routines and without any
nagging, she did the homework and submitted it.
Late, but done.
There'll be another bedtime homework session,
I'm sure. I have to trust that even though I want
to shortcut the learning for her, she's got this.
She's figuring things out. If we stumble, that
just helps us practice for next time, and there
are so many opportunities to try again. The wobble
is not the obstacle, it's the way.1
Related: The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday's book on Stoicism; the title rephrases this thought from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "… and that which is an obstacle on the road
helps us on this road."
Sewing together with A+ is helping me learn so
much about making and re-making, and about saying
yes.
I'm not good at saying yes. Sometimes it's because
I have no idea how to make something happen, and I
don't want to overcommit. Sometimes it's because I
don't think something will be practical or
worthwhile. Sometimes it's because I want to spend
the time or money on other things instead.
Sometimes I don't know how to make it something
that she can help with. But A+ asks with shining
eyes, and I'm learning, slowly, slowly, to say
yes. I'm beginning to trust that the mistakes
don't matter as much as the memories do.
A+ has always had ideas about what she wants to
wear. At five, she was all about floor-length
dresses. I sewed her A-line dresses in comfortable
cotton Lycra, peasant-style dresses that matched
my tops. I also made a knee-length swim skirt for
her. She liked it and requested a floor-length
version so that she could twirl and twirl and
twirl at the splash pad. She wore it into the
wading pool too, enjoying how it swirled around
her, trapping air under the skirt and marvelling
as it ballooned. The following year, she asked me
to attach a bodice to it to make it a dress. I
turned the knee-length skirt into the bodice for
the floor-length dress, took out the stitches that
had previously narrowed the then-too-large waist,
and it was good for another year of twirling.
When she was 6 and in the throes of a Cinderella
obsession (we read through 50+ variants of the
story from the library), I made her a powder blue
charmeuse ballgown with a full-circle skirt
supported by the petticoats and tutus that she
layered with abandon: 19 layers of tulle in total.
She loved curtsying and twirling with that whole
shebang at the pretend tea parties she hosted at
the playground, and it survived the washing
machine surprisingly well.
A+ is nine now and has long outgrown the ballgown,
which has been stashed in the closet until I
figure out if it's going to become a skirt for her
or for me. But she still wears the A-line dresses
from years ago, which now reach her knees instead
of her ankles. She still likes fanciful clothes. I
made a floor-length light blue dress so that she
could wear it to her cousin's wedding. She picked
out some ribbon for the waist, a lace trim to
place near the hem, and some ribbon flowers as
embellishments, and she asked me to sew a hooded
cloak with a ribbon closure. After the wedding, I
trimmed the dress to knee-length and re-sewed the
lace close to the new hem so that she could wear
it while biking to the playground.
Inevitably, she's beginning to grow up. Her fancy
is tempered by a few nods to practicality:
knee-length skirts because they don't get in the way of riding her bike
she likes stretchy fabric more than woven fabric
skorts are great for doing cartwheels or hanging upside down.
We prefer to buy fabric in person so that she can
feel the fabric on her skin. At the store, A+
zeroed in on a sheer floral print organza that she
had seen on a mannequin in the window display.
"The organza doesn't have a border," she said. "We
can make it a circle skort." She's learning to
think about the characteristics of the fabric and
what we can do with it. She matched the sheer
floral organza fabric with a peach
polyester-spandex from the swimwear section and
the right colour of thread from the basement.
This will be the fourth warm-weather skirt this
year. We make little tweaks each time, as she
learns more about what she likes to wear. Here's
the progression so far:
For her first summer skirt this year, I made a
lavender knee-length rectangle skirt with
scallop-edged embroidered mesh over bridal
satin, gathered at a 1:2 ratio. She liked the
dressiness of it, but 1:2 turned out to not be
enough ease for cartwheels, so she changes into
something else when she wants to be more active.
The second was a mermaid scale skort made from
the swimwear fabric I ordered last year, based
on one of the purchased skorts she liked. It'll
be her new swim skirt.
The third one was a purple skort. I changed it
from side seams to a single back seam so that
it's easier for A+ to tell the difference
between front and back.
I love being able to change things based on her
feedback. We've browsed nearby clothing stores and
bought a few pieces, but she rarely finds things
that she really likes. Her last pick from the
store was a peach skort with a matching top. I
removed the waist elastic from the top because she
doesn't like elastics, and now it's good to go.
It'll be the model for the new skort, I think: a
non-stretchy skirt with a stretchy fabric used for
the shorts. This time she wants a knee-length
circle skirt instead of the mid-thigh length of
the commercial skorts. Easy enough - just a matter of
drawing a bigger circle.
I appreciate how all this experience re-making
things makes it easier to say yes to A+'s ideas.
For example, the hat I sewed for her last year is
starting to feel a bit small. I cut pieces for a
new bucket hat using the free AppleGreen Cottage
pattern that I'd previously used to make two other
hats for her and one for me. This time, I wanted
to make the outer layer from the floral canvas
left over from reupholstering long-gone dining
room chairs and the inner layer from the linen tea
toweling that we decided not to use in the
kitchen. Midway through the process, A+ asked me
if I could make the hat pointy instead, like a
witch's hat. I put the brim pieces together,
sketched out a quick quarter-circle, sewed the
outer layer, and tested the fit on her head. Then
I used the inner brim layer to cover up the seams,
finished with some topstitching, and it was good
to go. I figured that if she changed her mind and
wanted a flat hat, I could easily make one from
the scraps, or I could even modify this pointy hat
to put a different crown on it.
Sewing is becoming more enjoyable and less
stressful. I worry less about making mistakes
because I've learned how to recover from many of
them. Sometimes something's more of a loss, like
that lavender floor-length cotton dress with a
split organza overskirt that she wore a couple of
times before it was declared too uncomfortable, or
the scraps that she cuts up when trying to fashion
a dress for her doll. That's fine, fabric is
tuition for learning.
A+'s becoming more adept, too. She's no longer
limited to standing still for measurements,
fetching pieces of fabric, or other make-work I
could think of to keep her busy while I sewed. Now
she can get the sewing machine to wind the bobbin
and she can thread the needle. She can sew
straight seams and stop when the machine makes an
unexpected sound. She can turn straps right side
out and unpick seams when we make mistakes or
change our minds. She knows it isn't just a matter
of how a fabric looks, but also what it feels like
and how it moves. She's gradually learning what
she likes and what she doesn't like. And if I have
the temerity to remind her how to do something
("Make a 'p' shape with the thread when you put it
in the bobbin case"), I get a glimpse of the
teenager she'll become ("I know how to do it,
Mom.").
We're getting better at seeing the clothes as
their component parts: patterns, fabric, pieces we
can recombine. "Can you copy this, but without
sleeves?" she asks, and I figure it out. Looking
at the yardage left, I can start to think: ah, I
can squeeze a matching training bra out of this
part, and I think I have enough here to make a
top, and this rectangle is large enough for a
headband, and I can turn these scraps into flowers
while I'm waiting for her at a playdate.
I'm learning from all her requests. By myself, I
tend to settle into comfortable routines. In 2015,
I made 18 tops based on the Colette Sorbetto woven
tank top pattern, eventually taking advantage of
Hacklab's laser cutter to precisely cut the fabric
so that my notches lined up every time. When I
find something I like, I make it again and again.
A+'s still figuring out what she likes. We're
learning so much.
Sewing for A+ is a time-limited opportunity, and I
want to make the most of it. There are only so
many clothes I can sew for her. Eventually she may
want to wear the same things as everyone else, or
eventually she might be comfortable doing all the
sewing herself. Eventually she'll be off on her
own life. Maybe the ballgowns will turn into
skirts or camisoles, and from there into headbands
or scrunchies.
・・・・・
Re-making echoes through our past. My mom tells me
this story of how her mom sewed, and how their
family was poor. My mom rarely got a new dress, so
when her mom sewed a red dress for her, that was
special. She wore it until the bodice couldn't fit
any more. Her mom undid the seams, sewed a new
bodice onto the skirt, and gave the dress back to
her. She wore it until the skirt was all worn out.
Her mom undid the seams and replaced the skirt. My
mom said to her mom, "Does this mean I have a new
dress now?" This was not the only dress my
grandmother made for her. My mom also tells a
story of how one time she hovered by her mom's
sewing machine, impatiently waiting for her mom to
finish sewing the dress that she was going to wear
to a party that day. My grandmother must have also
worked on re-making, on learning how to say yes.
My mom didn't make clothes for me, but she passed
on the stories.
All this reminds me a little of two picture books
we borrowed from the library. My Forever Dress by
Harriet Ziefurt and Liz Murphy (2009, video) shows
how a grandmother extended and transformed a dress
as her granddaughter grew. Something from Nothing
by Phoebe Gilman (1992, video) retells the Yiddish
folktale about Joseph's overcoat, this time with a
special blanket that gets worn down and
transformed into a jacket, a vest, a tie, a
handkerchief, ending as a fabric-covered button.
The button gets lost, but it turns into a story.
Of the two, I liked Something from Nothing more.
I liked the lighter touch it told the story with,
and I liked the reminder that cherished things can
be turned into stories.
A+ was in the kitchen, making a grocery list on an
LCD writing tablet. She wanted to buy apple sauce,
yogurt cups, and mac and cheese. She wanted to do
it herself, with her own money. W- will walk her
to the store, let her loose, and meet up with her
in front of one of the aisles. "Mama, you can stay
home," she said.
Challenge: She wanted her own bag for groceries.
Her backpack was too small. I rummaged through the
reusable bags hanging on the coat hooks. There's
this cotton tote we got from an event, but the
straps are too long. When she put it on her
shoulder, it threatened to fall down. When she
carried the bag by its straps, the bag dragged on
the floor. I shortened one strap to see if she can
hold it then. The body of the bag itself was too
long. I sewed a seam across the bottom. Now it's
the right height for her. I shortened the other
strap and serged the bottom seam to make it neat.
She wanted a pocket for her purse and the KN95
mask that she'll wear in the supermarket. W- was
almost ready to head out. "Give me another five
minutes and I can make her a pocketed bag," I
said. He waited. I opened up the scrap from the
bottom, sewed the edges together in the other
direction, turned it into a pocket, and sewed it
to the top hem of the bag. A+ pronounced it
perfect. She tucked her purse, mask, and shopping
list into the bag, looped the straps over her
shoulder, snugged the bag under her elbow, and
headed out into the world.
・・・・・
I still sweat my way through figuring out how to
sew what she comes up with, but it's good for me.
I make and re-make so she can have things that fit
her ideas, and so that she can dream of more.
She's learning that her ideas matter. It can take
several tries, but we can make them happen
together. Someday she'll make and re-make things
all on her own.
This post was inspired by the June IndieWeb Carnival theme of Take Two.
This week A+ said she wanted to play a farming
game, so we went through this list of farming
games on Steam and she picked Stardew Valley. I
bought it for CAD 17 under her Steam account. She
got pretty good at finishing her homework before
playtime. After some fiddling around, we managed
to figure out how to play 3-person local co-op
using our old PS3
controllers.1
The first game we played used the basic farm
layout and shared money. I realized that sharing
all the money wasn't working out so well for me
about two game weeks in because I was always
reminding A+ to buy seeds before she splurged on
gifts, so we started a new playthrough with
separate money. A+ decided to pick the meadowlands
farm layout, which meant starting with some
chickens.
We now have a mayonnaise maker and four chickens.
It's summer and I have a variety of crops growing.
W- sometimes drops in to do some fishing or help
out around the farm. We probably won't make it to
the greenhouse bundle this year, but maybe next
year. She'd been looking forward to getting a
kitchen and trying out some of the recipes, so we
saved up for it and worked together to chop down
lots of trees.
Stardew Valley feels like a good rainy day
activity with A+. It's a cozy place to practise
making decisions and working together.
A+ can get competitive and envious, which can get
in the way of her having fun. Sometimes she gets
envious because I've been leveling up in farming
and she hasn't yet. When that happens, she becomes
more motivated to help out around the farm.
Sometimes it's harder for her to channel that
frustration into growth. At the trout derby, she
got grumpier and grumpier. First it was because W-
had caught a rainbow trout and she was only
catching trash. Then, when she caught a rainbow
trout, she was grumpy that W- had caught a rainbow
trout with a golden tag and she hadn't gotten one
with a tag. "I'm never going to catch anything,"
she grumbled, eventually spiraling into a lump on
the couch. To her credit, she kept trying for a
while instead of rage-quitting, so that's progress.
I chatted with her about it the next day, when she
was well-regulated. "It doesn't have to be a
competition, you know," I said.
"Of course it was a competition," she said
matter-of-factly. "It was the trout derby."
Apparently this competitiveness and sensitivity is
pretty common and totally not out of place for a
9-year-old, especially since she's an only child.
Common approaches include:
Stopping the game when whining starts, in the
hopes that eventually the kid will learn to
avoid whining: I'm not sure about this approach
with A+ because I think she might benefit from
some more help and support learning these
skills.
Team sports and a structured environment: This
doesn't quite feel like a good fit for us, but
I'm glad it works for other people.
Switching to more cooperative activities: I
couldn't redirect her from the trout derby
because the time-limited event was too
fascinating. We had to take the loss and try
again another time. This, too, is a fish on the
line; sometimes it escapes and there's nothing
to do but to accept it and fish again.
There's a lot we can learn together in the
process of working on day-to-day things. I can
put A+ in charge of most of the harvests, and
she's getting better at minding the mayonnaise.
I think A+ likes mining with me (I'm in charge
of fighting monsters), and we can probably also
chop some wood together. Maybe she'll enjoy
collecting the eggs and petting the chickens now
that there are more of them, especially since
one of them is called Hei-hei. Then we can fish
when we're in the mood for fishing, farm when
we're in the mood for farming, and so on.
Getting used to losses by playing lots of
games: Fishing is good for this. It's easy to
start trying again, and there are plenty of
little rewards along the way. Once we can cook,
we can use meals like chowder to boost her
skill.
I love it when games gently help me notice ways
I can grow as a person. I want to get better at
focusing on processes, not
outcomes.2 It's neat to see this in contrast.
At the moment, A+'s attention focuses a lot on
outcomes. She thinks about things like upgrading
to kitchen or getting to a certain level, but it's
harder for her to focus on the steps that will get
her there. I notice there's stuff for me to work
on, too. I struggle a little with trying to make
sure I have seed money if I let A+ take
care of harvesting and selling (somewhat alleviated now
that I've got chickens and corn), that I can get
everything watered before bedtime, that I've kept
some of the produce back for bundles or quests, or
that I'm making progress towards a silo before
winter. I can also practice focusing on
processes, not outcomes.
I know my job isn't to maximize the farm's profit.
Maybe my job for now is to water the farm so that
A+ can enjoy the harvest. Doesn't that sound like
some kind of parenting thing I can work on
learning in my bones… I know grown-ups are
better at delayed gratification than kids are. I'm
better at the grind. If she can enjoy a bit of the
harvest and figure out if she likes it, then we
can back up a little. Maybe she can water a small
part of the field, and then grow from there. Maybe
I can make her a little 1x1 patch with the
season's fastest-growing crop, and then expand
every time she gets it all the way to harvest.
Tiny habits, right?
Also thinking as a grown-up, I can stagger the
planting of 4-day crops like wheat so that there's
always something for her to harvest.
There are other little ways we can use game
mechanics to practise life skills. We can
occasionally check the traveling cart for quality
sprinklers, which will give us a reason to keep
track of the days and save some money for
opportunities. It would be great to practice this
with virtual money before she needs to deal with
real money.
I can also invite A+ to go mining and then use the
copper to upgrade the watering cans. It's a
multi-step process (copper ore, wood, coal, copper
bar, upgrade), so it makes sense that I can handle
that better than she can. She can focus on one
step at a time and slowly get the hang of how
everything comes together, just like when she was
learning how to solve the Rubik's cube. It's also
like the incremental independence she's growing
into in other parts of her life. My job is to
support her so that she can learn at the right
level: not too hard, not too easy.3 Someday, after
many many runs through this kind of process, she
might even get the hang of creating those
sequences for herself or finding people who can
help her. Small steps to lifelong learning.
And when I start to get fidgety about how we play,
like when she doesn't accept any of my invitations
to do something (chop wood? carry water?), I can
repeat: process, not outcome. It's okay for her
to stand around waiting for the shop to open while
I water the farm. She's excited, she's focused on
the very next step towards her goal, and that's
good for where she is. It's okay for things to
take a while. I want to keep the process fun. The
fun is the important part.
Also, there's this whole thing about taking time
to talk to people, remember what they like and
dislike (… or look that up in the notes), give
them gifts, celebrate their birthdays, and so on.
Right. There are even clear benefits for doing so.
Plenty of things to get better at. =)
Stardew Valley seems like it would be great for
practising these things. The general advice from
the community seems to be to take it easy and not
rush. Don't worry about making it to
certain milestones by certain times, just have fun
together. We've been playing for only a few days,
but I have a feeling there's much to learn over
the next few years.
I love strewing ideas in front of A+ in case
something catches her interest. A rich source of
in-jokes is the word
"antidisestablishmentarianism", which I introduced
to her when she was… what… maybe 3? 4? and
which she decided to master with her usual
determination. Sometimes, when she's in a "Mom!
Mom! Mom!" phase, I joke about changing my
preferred name so that she has to say
"Antidisestablishmentarianism!
Antidisestablishmentarianism!
Antidisestablishmentarianism!", which always gets
either a laugh or a groan.
One of A+'s friends is a 4-year-old. She was
playing the copying game with her, the one where a
kid repeats everything the other person says.
Whenever A+ wants to wind the game down, she
confidently rattles off
"antidisestablishmentarianism" and that's the end
of that.
I didn't want A+ to rest on her laurels, of
course. I introduced another word:
paradichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. That piqued
A+'s curiosity, so I told her about DDT and I
shared the limerick I learned it from.
A mosquito was heard to complain,
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"
The source of his sorrow
was paradichloro-
diphenyltrichloroethane.
A+ got the hang of the limerick within a few days.
Apparently, she's already shared it with her
teacher and her nature club counselors. I think
she's even been coaching the 4-year-old through
saying it syllable by syllable, so perhaps there
will be two of these word geeks someday.
Since A+ liked the rhythm of the limerick and she
also likes math, I looked up this other fun
limerick, which is attributed to Leigh Mercer:
A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.
Small words, but fun to play with too.
For our next steps, I want to get the hang of
saying
"pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis"
and "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"
(although sesquipedalophobia is the more common
term).
We also pun about whatever she's interested in. At
the moment, it's all red panda all the time,
thanks to her enjoyment of Turning Red. ("Which
animal loves books?" "A well-read panda!") We love
alliteration and rhyme. We change the lyrics to
her favourite songs. I had a hard time sitting
down and playing with A+ when she was smaller, but
now we've got so many words to play with. This is fun!
What's the use of these things? Mostly to tickle
our brains and make each other smile, but also
maybe the tiny chance of bumping into someone else
who happens to overhear it and who chuckles out of
recognition. There are people out there who like
to play the kind of way we like to play, and
she'll find her tribe someday.
The IndieWeb writing prompt for April 2025 is
renewal.
One of the things that I struggled with in the
early days of parenting was the repetitive nature
of my day. Every two- or three-hour cycle brought
the same kinds of tasks: nursing, diapers,
snuggles, sleep. Nothing could be crossed off a
to-do list, nothing stayed done. Nothing built up
towards tangible accomplishment, or at least, not
for me.
There was change. A+ grew by leaps and bounds. One
day she could only roll in one direction; the next
she could roll every which way. My job was to take
care of the foundation so that she could grow, to
take care of all the repetitive tasks so that she
could have all her firsts.
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
I don't claim to understand this fully yet, but I
remember reasoning: these things had to be done. I
signed up for them. Every day we still need to
take care of ourselves and others. Some people
make major lifestyle changes and forgo a high
income in order to shift to a contemplative
monastic life with the same kind of cycles. I can
do it where I am. Maybe I can even treat them as
moving meditations.
I recently finished reading The Courage to Be Disliked (Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi, 2013).
Part of the book talks about seeing life as a dance:
Do not treat [life] as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. … Life is a series of moments, which one lives as if one were dancing, right now, around and around each passing instant. And when one happens to survey one's surroundings, one realizes, I guess I've made it this far. … With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.
Thanks to that tide of ever-renewing tasks that
engulfed my day in the beginning and is only now
beginning to calm, I've been slowly learning to
let go of the desire for my own forward motion. I
circle, and circle, and circle, and that's okay.
I'm settling into the rhythm of our days, knowing
that the beat will change over time. Sometimes I
look up and I'm surprised at how far we've come.
… Aaaaaaand now I've got Dancing Through Life in
my head. I definitely fall on the side of
overthinking things more than swanning my way
through life, but maybe I can learn more about
relaxing into it.
Another comforting thought, this time from
Meditations for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman, 2024),
about how we don't have to do something
extraordinary:
The first is that it simply need not follow, from
our cosmic insignificance as individuals, that our
actions don't matter. The idea that things only
count if they count on the vastest scale is one
more expression of our discomfort with finitude:
accepting that they might count only transiently,
or locally, requires us to face our limitations
and our mortality. … Instead, you get to pour
yourself into tasks that matter for no other
reason than that nothing could be more enlivening,
or more true to the situation in which you find
yourself.
My life is still mostly full of the everyday
rhythms, but that's okay. I don't change diapers
any more, but there are still dishes to be done
and snuggles to snuggle. When W- offers to do the
dishes, I can say, "Thanks, I got it, I enjoy this
part." In between, I'm slowly reclaiming time to
do my own accumulation of progress. I'm even
beginning to be able to write about life. Now I
feel more at ease with the undirectedness of it,
the little steps in my own dance.
• • • • •
Sometimes, of course, we stumble during the dance.
Life with A+ isn't always smooth. Sometimes I
(figuratively or literally) step on her foot.
Sometimes we're out of sync. Sometimes we have a
bad day. I'm learning that I don't have to feel
too guilty about it, or try to fix it right away, or
worry that I've permanently messed things up.
Today, I can take the loss, the failure. Tomorrow
is another day, another renewal. We can try
something else then.
Besides, there's no point in trying to sort things
out in the moment, when people are dysregulated.
Better to take notes and figure out what to
experiment with next time. There's so much to
learn, and that's good.
This is probably something I'm going to need to
remember when we head into adolescence, for at
least as long as there are tomorrows I can share
with A+.
• • • • •
That's the last aspect of renewal that I wanted to
touch on: how parenting is helping me (re-)learn
and examine all sorts of things. The skill of
figuring things out together. The lessons that A+
is taking at school. The things I find fun. The
hang-ups I've been carrying within me since my own
childhood, and how I can untangle them. The parks
and playgrounds and libraries in the city. The joy
of sunshine. The way seeds sprout and perennials
return in the garden. Everything is new all over
again.
This is probably something I'll want to learn as
much about during my kid-phase so that I can still
enjoy it in my post-kid phase. I think the people
who age the most gracefully are the ones who keep
wondering, learning, and enjoying life, both
familiar ground and the new opportunities that
arise. I'd like to be one of those people. Renewal
isn't just about going back to a previous state,
like an axolotl regrowing a lost limb. Even with
the rhythm of the same steps in this dance, I can
find myself in new places, and I myself am
changed.
me: I want to remember what this is like,
celebrate my progress so far, and look ahead
maybe other parents who also find themselves
still figuring out playfulness
Achievement unlocked: I made A+ giggle so much that she started hiccuping
She had had a case of the mehs. After a little
bit of empathizing, I flung myself over her and
declared that she wasn't going anywhere, I was
just going to snuggle her. It was my evil plan. I
cackled a little, and then asked her for tips on
proper cackling. Was it "MwahaHAha, or MwaHAhaha,
or MWAhahaha?"
She said, "Meh."
I rolled with it. "Meh heh heh heh."
Ah, there, a little giggle.
I hammed it up some more. "Meh HEH heh heh heh."
More and more cackling, until she was giggling
continuously. She giggled so much that she started
hiccuping.
"You're so funny," she said between sips of
water.
That might be the only time I'll hear that from
her, so I'm immortalizing it in my blog. And yes,
correlation doesn't mean causation, and n=1
anyway, but I'm still going to take the win.
Play didn't come easily to me
I didn't quite know what play could look like for
us, in the early days. Some parents seem to
effortlessly break out silly voices or play
pretend with toys. In the beginning, that felt
awkward, even though I'd grown up with my dad
telling captivating stories complete with sound
effects and gestures. As a new parent, I often
felt tired and my mind kept sliding away. It was
easier to let A+ take the lead, and to focus on things like supporting and documenting. That was probably
the right call for both of our personalities. From
time to time, I come across parenting articles
that even recommend this approach of letting the
child do most of the directing. Serve and return,
that's all, I just needed to keep the rhythm
going; when A+ leads, I can focus on responding. I didn't even have
to do it all the time; I could be a good-enough
parent.
When A+ was interested in stacking blocks, I felt
my job was mostly to observe and narrate
appreciatively, and also to help tidy up. When she
was fascinated with the water table at the Science
Centre, my job was to bring dry clothes to change
into. When she started building with LEGO, I
helped her find pieces, but I didn't really spur
her on with build ideas or roleplaying. When she
moved on tea parties, I accepted my share of muddy
teacups and sand cupcakes. At 9, A+ mostly likes
to sing, play Minecraft, and make up stories with
me. That's something I'm more comfortable with.
If you meet the child on his level and mostly
watch what they’re doing instead, it’s still an
act of love and attention without being such a
draining experience.
I never quite felt comfortable staging those
playacting dramas that would probably have helped
A+ develop better social skills, like pretending
one doll has accidentally bumped another one so
that we could explore apologies and acceptance. I
probably wouldn't have been able to get it past
A+, anyway; she's pretty good at sniffing out when
I'm pretending to play instead of playing pretend.
Resources
I was pretty worried in the beginning. The first
six months of A+'s life were a bit of a blur, with
quite a few diagnostic exams and follow-up
appointments at Sick Kids Hospital. She went under
general anaesthesia a couple of times, so I was
extra nervous about the possible impact on her
growth.1 It's hard to be playful
when you're tired and anxious. Anyway, it was just
what's got to be done, so we focused on figuring
out how to mitigate the risks by enriching her
environment. I applied to the Healthy Babies
Healthy Children program, and we got approved. We
regularly met with a nurse and a home visitor who
helped us keep track of A+'s development,
suggested relevant activities, and gave me
feedback on my interactions with A+. (My notes)
I still wanted to learn more about play. We went
to libraries and EarlyON child and family centres
for songs, storytime, and free play. One of our
favourites was the EarlyON centre at Indian Road
Crescent, where Ms. Lesley was basically how I
imagine Mr. Rogers or Calypso: kind, appreciative,
and wise. I reach for her voice in my head when I
want a model for how to talk to kids.
Thank goodness for Bluey, too, which not only
demonstrated a whole trove of little games that we
could play, but also helped me imagine more
playful parenting with the examples of Bandit and
Chilli. Bluey's totally a parenting show disguised
as a kids' cartoon. A+ often suggests playing
games from Bluey, like:
Bandit's version of Follow the Leader: kids hide right behind leader, leader complains (from Daddy Putdown)
Come Here / Go Away: played on the swing, where the humour also comes from the complaints (from Daddy Putdown)
I also borrowed all the books on play that I could
find, like Playful Parenting (Lawrence J.
Cohen, 2008) and Play (Stuart Brown, Christopher
Vaughan, 2009), because of course I'd try to learn
about play from books. Might be time to reread
them, come to think of it.
Figuring out our types of play
Thanks to all these different resources, I found
lots of ideas to try. Experimenting helped me
gradually figure out the things that resonated
with both A+ and me. I liked the music classes
that A+ and I went to when she was younger. We
also read and read and read. I couldn't quite do
the cheerful patter I sometimes heard from other
parents, but songs and books helped me fill in the
times when I didn't have much to say to A+. I
found another little form of play to share with
her, changing the words in a book or a song so
that she'd laughingly correct me. She started
talking at 18 months, a little on the late side of
normal, but quickly expanded her vocabulary. (Also
totally fine now.)
It wasn't all cerebral, of course. A+ liked the
vestibular stimulation of swinging, so we spent a
lot of time at the playground. She also likes
climbing and hugs, so I boost her up to monkey
bars and I snuggle her for as long as she likes.
A+ likes to dive deeply into her interests, and I
like to go along with her. Over the years, I've
learned a lot about sharks, Rubik's cubes, Star
Wars, and Minecraft. That's our kind of play, too.
We have some running jokes now. For example, on
learning that nurse sharks might possibly trick
fish into a false shelter and then ambush
them,2 we had fun imagining a nurse
shark holding a "Definitely not a trap" sign. This
sketch doesn't quite have the shark pointing
upwards, but it was fun anyhow.
I'm learning a lot about play from life with A+.
I'm learning that it can look different from
person to person. I tend to have a quieter type of
play, and that's okay. Also, if I don't feel like
playing a particular way, it's good to say so. We
can usually figure out something else, or I can
figure out what I need and then check in again
when I'm ready.
I'm upfront about still figuring all of this out.
I think it's good for her to see that. Sure, it
would make more sense for fun to be natural and
effortless, but this is the kind of person I am,
so I've got to work with what I've got–and that's
enjoyable too, in its own way.
One of the things that's been helping me is seeing
A+ also learn about and accept her own play
preferences. At the playground, A+ often takes a
break when her friends play a shrieky sort of game
like tag. She knows she doesn't like those kinds
of games, and she can find other things to do
until her friends move on. She usually comes and
hangs out with me instead. Sometimes we go play
one of our own games. Then she heads back to check
in with her friends, and they all go off to play
something else.
It's fun watching A+ figure things out. When she
had a hard time settling down at bedtime the other
night, she suggested taking turns reading a book.
I agreed, of course. I'll always say yes when she
offers to read out loud, and reading out loud lets
me play our old game of changing things up. "I
knew you'd say yes to that," she crowed. She's
learning to offer games we both like.
We're both learning about ourselves through play.
Reading about play personalities, I think: ah, my
dad was a joker, even towards the end of his life;
one time he stashed an ice cube under his tongue
to prank the nurse who came in to check his
temperature. My sister's a bit of one too with her
witty rejoinders. A+ might be a storyteller
considering her fascination with story variations.
I might be a creator, considering my list of
crafty hobbies and the fun I have tweaking Emacs.
Play is fun, and fun is great for self-knowledge.
Some things that seem to be working for us for now
Physical play: Pretty good way to get her out of
a grump. I can challenge her to tackle-hug me:
she'll try her best to push me over and collapse
on me with a hug, then I'll try my best to wrap
her up and prevent her from escaping. I can carry
her on my back and whirl around. I can lift her up
to the chin-up bar.
Bubbles: We like bubbles. We even make our own
giant bubble mix following the guar gum recipe on
the Soap Bubble wiki. We've decided not to bring
giant bubbles to the park when there are lots of
kids around, though, because then we tend to get
swarmed by other kids and it's a little stressful
for A+. It's something to enjoy at small
playdates.
Wordplay: It's fun to come up with puns and
variations on songs. She's getting pretty good at
it too.
Drawing: Silly faces are fun and easy to make.
Pictionary is also good.
Singing: Good way to get in sync. We like to
sing songs from Disney movies and from Wicked.
There's a fair bit of research about maternal
singing3, and
entrainment4 might have prosocial
effects even for older kids. Besides, music is fun, and we can do it pretty much anywhere.
Robot: Lots of chores get done by the Chore-Bot
9.0. A+ is amused whenever I'm a hug-bot. She also
likes it when I'm a scientist or engineer
investigating the functions of this mysterious
device that seems to be powered by hugs.
Minecraft: Inside, we play in Bedrock if I've
got the patience to reboot out of Linux and into
Windows, or Java if we want to play in the world
we share with W+. A+ likes to start up new worlds
to try out different ideas or add-ons, so I'm
slowly learning how to be less attached to any
particular world.
Our shared Minecraft experiences even help us pass
the time at the playground. We often play pretend
Minecraft. I don't mind being the odd grown-up
who's pretending to mine for iron or run away from
skeletons. I think A+ enjoys rescuing me from the
predicaments I make up for myself. ("Oh no,
there's an Enderman! Aah! Don't look at it!"
"Here's a pumpkin I carved!")
Stories: A+ loves making up stories related to
Disney or Star Wars characters. Sometimes we use
the fortunately/unfortunately structure to
improvise a story, and sometimes we just pile
things on. When I'm tired, it's hard for me to
imagine enough to improvise, but I'm glad that I
can explore some of her "what if" questions with
ideas translated from fanfic. She also does a bit
of LLM-prompting of story ideas, and she includes
those in some of our bedtime improvisation as
well.
Looking ahead
I've got maybe a year or two of A+ wanting to play
with us before she focuses on playing with other
people. I'll take that however it looks: screen
time when that's what she feels like, park time
whenever we can. I'm not terribly worried about
screentime. I know that it can take a while to get
her outside, but then she wants to stay at the
park for as long as possible. It's easier to get
her outside when we have playdates, which we
schedule fairly regularly. When it's just me, we
go with the flow.
Here's what I'm keeping an eye out for to help me
get better at playing with A+:
Managing my own patience: It's a lot easier to
play when I'm well-rested, I'm not fretting, and
I don't have an unfinished task hogging my
brainspace.5
Seeing the invitation properly: "Can we play
together?" means "I want to connect with you."
So does "I'm bored bored bored bored bored."
Building our play vocabulary: Bluey is totally
research, yeah, that's why I'm watching it.
There's also paying attention to the little
things that A+ and I are curious about or enjoy.
The more things we try, the more ideas we can
combine.
Young nurse sharks have been observed resting with their snouts pointed upward and their bodies supported off the bottom on their pectoral fins; this has been interpreted as possibly providing a false shelter for crabs and small fishes that the shark then ambushes and eats.
Results showed that 38 dyads spontaneously engaged in social game routines. In these dyads, both playful singing and rhyming were positively associated with dyadic gaze synchrony, while only playful singing was also positively correlated with affect synchrony of the dyad. These findings suggest that rhythms, in general, may have important implications for the establishment of interpersonal synchrony in infant-caregiver dyads. However, musical rhythms seem to be particularly emotionally-salient and thus attune both interactional partners to the affective content of their social exchanges.
A variety of studies have revealed that synchronized movement, both musical and otherwise, can affect attitudes and cooperative behaviors toward one’s co-actors.