We spent the day at a state park with a lovely beach a few weeks ago. Shortly after arriving, my four-year-old, Amelia, set to work. She used a little shovel to haul sand until she’d dug a hole as deep as her shoulder. Then she ran down the sandy slope, high-kneed through the shallow water to fill a bucket, and sprinted back uphill to slosh it all into the pit she’d created. Over and over and over she did this—a cardio workout of such intensity that it would almost definitely kill me if I attempted more than three passes. I watched her with an anticipatory satisfaction gleaming in my eyes.
I love exhausting my children. I love taking them to places where they can run wild and setting them free to do so. I love letting them frolic until they’re so tired they seem a little drunk. I love plopping them, limp and liquidy, on the couch in front of the TV at the end of a long, busy day, and, for once, not feeling guilty about it (“they need to decompress!”).
I took relatively easily to parenting. As easily as one can take to anything that uproots, unmoors, or utterly changes nearly every aspect of your life as you previously knew it. But the thing I chafed against most then—and continue to now, with a four-year-old and an eighteen-month-old—is the relentlessness of the labor, the grind of Sisyphean chores that must be completed lest the entire rickety clown car that is our life fall to pieces once and for all. Load unload load unload load unload load unload. (The dishes, the laundry, the bags, the car.) Nurse pump wash nurse pump wash nurse pump wash. Meal plan grocery shop cook cook cook cook cook cook OH MY GOD DIDN’T I JUST FEED YOU.
My girls are wild, tumbling rivers of energy and exuberance, and giving them opportunities to flow unchecked is one of the joys of my parenting life. It’s also uniquely satisfying. In a season of life where the task list endlessly refreshes itself and the demands seem, by nature, unsatisfiable, realizing that my kids are really and truly done, even for just a little while, is a particular, visceral triumph. I did it! I exhausted the inexhaustible. I stemmed the tide. I made the boulder hover in place for a little while. I get to stand on top of the mountain (for, like, three hours).
Wishing you all a week of vigorous hikes, trampoline jumps, and uphill sprints.
What Question Do Teachers Get Asked Most Often, And What Do You Wish Parents Asked Instead?
As the school year gets underway and assignments start to accumulate in the grade book, the most common question I get, by far, is “What can my child do to get her grade up?” In particular, parents often get in touch asking for extra credit or chances for kids to redo graded assignments. What I wish parents would ask instead is: “What do you notice about my child’s reading, writing, and thinking skills?” In other words, I wish parents would ask more about the root causes and rationale for the numbers they’re seeing, rather than looking for a quick fix to change the number.
Here’s the rest of my answer on Slate!
Recommendations:
Hands down, the most useful, small investment/big impact item I’ve purchased recently: the Old Navy Graphic Jelly Bikini Bag. Drop the soggy suits in here when you’re finished swimming and (most) post-pool/beach/lake unpleasantness* will be solved. It takes up minimal real estate amongst all your stuff, but fits multiple suits (we’ve stashed four suits—two adult and two kid—in it at once). It never leaks, so you won’t find everything you own has become clammy and damp by the time you get home. It never gets slimy or smelly. It does its job perfectly.
* It cannot prevent an unholy meltdown over the presence of sand in one’s car seat. Sorry.
This is not a recent purchase, but rather the Old Faithful, ever-present, don’t-even-bother-taking-it-out-of-the-trunk item in our household: the Grand Trunk parasheet. It’s a beach blanket/picnic blanket/anywhere-you-might-want-to-sit blanket, and it is perfect. It’s made of a silky soft parachute material that comes in multiple attractive colors, doesn’t retain much heat in the sun, shakes completely clean of sand and grass, and is machine washable. It’s 7’ x 7’ when unfolded, but bundles up very compactly into a sewn-on drawstring pouch. It has corner pockets to stuff sand into so it doesn’t scrunch up or fly away. I will tell you again: it is perfect.
Guess what? Jock Jams, volumes 1 and 2, are available on Spotify, and you will be pleased to find that it slaps just as hard as it did when you were hanging out in the bleachers getting hyped to watch your boyfriend of seven hours play power forward in the sixth grade basketball home opener against the rival middle school from two miles away. My kids have requested to bust it down to “I Like to Moomin Moomin” every day for the past week.
I’d never heard of flyball before some combination of search terms led me to the many, many YouTube videos of the sport being played. From the North American Flyball Association:
Flyball races match two teams of four dogs each, racing side-by-side over a 51 foot long course. Each dog must run in relay fashion down the jumps, trigger a flyball box, releasing the ball, retrieve the ball, and return over the jumps. The next dog is released to run the course but can't cross the start/finish line until the previous dog has returned over all 4 jumps and reached the start/finish line. The first team to have all four dogs finish the course without error wins the heat.
The videos from Crufts (a dog show and event held annually in the UK) are great to watch with your kids! They’re high quality, fifteen to eighteen minutes long, and super fun. My 18-month-old enjoys them on the “many dogs, running fast” level, and my 4-year-old understands and is engaged by the nature of the relay race.
I picked up the Veronica Speedwell series purely by chance when the covers caught my eye from a library display, and then proceeded on a bender of reading all four books in less than two weeks. I’m not even much of a mystery reader, usually, but the central mystery of each book wasn’t the primary appeal for me. Veronica, the protagonist and investigator, is witty, feminist adventurer, outspoken and unapologetic about how much she loves sex (though I’m not sure she ever uses the word—‘horizontal refreshment’ and ‘the erotic joys’ were my favorites of the many euphemisms). The books are funny, brimming with lavish, transporting descriptions of the people and places of 1880s London, and sparking with romantic tension between Veronica and her partner in detective work, Stoker. They have to do with parenting in that they are an extremely delicious and complete escape from parenting.
That’s it. See you next Monday!
Questions? Need recommendations? Want to give recommendations? Email me! Extracredit.newsletter@gmail.com.