Superman Spankings: A no-spanking alternative for tantrums and stuff

We’ve hit the stage of this covid business where all of the cupboards and closets I carefully reorganized and Spring cleaned at the beginning of the quarantine now resemble a family minivan after a road trip (those of us with respectable vehicles of course never strew food wrappers, toys and mismatching shoes all over them...cough cough). 

A friend in a FB group asked what to do about young kids who are struggling with life right now and having tantrums. I meant to reply, but then I stepped in an abandoned peanut butter and jelly sandwich, got called to fish a small pebble out of a young child’s nostril and found that one of the year’s important school books mysteriously disappeared. 

We do superman spankings around here. (which is really confusing to people because there is no spanking involved, but I call them that because they accomplish the same purpose and the name makes my kids laugh). I discovered a long time ago that non-verbal boys don’t respond well to long talks about feelings and emotions. In fact, for some kids and personalities it may be more selfish than just giving them a spanking and being done with it. I went down a rabbit hole of child development research about why spanking works and how it developed. I came to the very intellectual and high-brow opinion that it’s proprioceptive and vestibular input that helps certain types of kids respond well to traditional discipline methods. (Did I word that ok?) That’s when I came up with “Superman Spankings”.  All of the proprioceptive, physical input needed to help reset and calm the brain, without the current social stigmas and trappings that I would love to really mull over and discuss with someone someday without triggering strong dichotomous opinions.  

Anyway, here’s a tutorial for “Superman Spankings”.

Step one: See child is having a meltdown. 

Step two: Ask said child if they would prefer to sit down and reason like diplomats or fly about the room with a superman spanking. (note: length of conversation and choices vary from child to child.)

Step three: If the answer is the latter, firmly grasp the child's forearms and swing in a circle until you a) risk losing the child to centrifugal force. b) risk falling over or getting motion sick.  (note: does not work on children who are almost as big or bigger than you.)

It doesn’t always work, but it’s a well loved tool. Sometimes it even works on an irrationally angry child (note: the stock picture above is deceptively peaceful looking… and also missing the beach nazi who would stop and tell you to keep walking).

Now if anyone can tell me the best way to remove objects stuffed up nostrils, I’ll be forever obliged.

Coffee, slugs and a homestead

When you have all boys (or girls too...I have no idea), you can play a game in the morning where you pour your coffee and then try to dodge all of the flailing limbs, hugs, fights, parkouring and what-not with your coffee intact. It could be a slightly dangerous game if the coffee were hot, but “mom coffee” is never hot because it takes 3 hours to drink. It’s a perfectly safe game if perhaps a little hazardous for decorative pillows and carpets.

I listened to a podcast today that was talking about how we often outsource things to avoid the pain of dealing with it ourselves, and I think that’s part of what I’m dealing with when it comes to gardening. I don’t want to grow my own food, I want it to magically show up in the supermarket. Now that I can’t stand going to the grocery store, I’m more tempted to face the drama of growing my own food (even if it’s 1/23848 of what we eat… it’s the principle of the matter). It’s not easy though, something was eating my garden, so I dug out the diatomaceous earth from the bowels of the pantry and went outside to sprinkle it around my plants. To my horror, the flashlight revealed a scene akin to something from Stranger Things. My precious plants were covered in hundreds and hundreds of slugs all twisted around each branch and stem leaving slime, death and destruction.  Jim, Jamie and I picked them all off by hand and drowned them with salt. I think the experience may win as the grossest thing I’ve ever done. Only a few plants survived, but thankfully, I have a growing addiction to buying seeds off of home gardeners on Ebay so I’ve got lots of backup plants in various stages of development (sitting in things like milk and egg cartons because I refuse to go to the store). I just need to figure out what to do about the problem lest I allow the small slimy sociopaths to destroy more of my sweet baby plants. The DE seems to help a little, but not enough to deter them completely. Maybe as it gets warmer and drier here it won’t be a problem? 

We started out this whole Coronu thing with one pet turtle. Now our urban farm has expanded to include chickens, a pet boa, a beta fish, and a foster dog. So far everything except the snake contributes in some way. The fish fertilizes an aquaponics garden, and even the turtle water goes into the compost bin. In fact, if you count super tiny farm animals, we’re also the proud owners of a kombucha SCOBY, sourdough starter and a worm farm (although honestly, I feel more attached to the pepper plants that finally decided to sprout). 

Now I really never get to drink my coffee in the morning. 

Grocery shopping, Ducking at the yards arme and The Waltons

It’s been so long since I left the house, that when I had to drop the car off at the shop, Jim asked if I still remembered how to drive. We’ve been doing the social distancing maybe a little too successfully around here, because I had no idea how bad it was out there. Had to venture out to Costco today because I stocked up for two months in January and it was time to fatten the coffers or start hunting gophers and possums. Costco had a line down one side of the building and across a little street, but they were super organized and everyone was quiet and efficient. Walmart was a bit more like the jungle. San Diego passed a new ordinance requiring/strongly suggesting masks and so with all of the home-rigged masks there was a strong Mad Max vibe going on. At one point I backed up to let a man pass, and a lady started yelling at me because I’d violated her six foot space. I don’t handle yelling well so I’m happy to be back at home and have no plans to venture back out anytime soon. Pro tip though: If you’re having a hard time getting enough food for your large family with all of the “limit 1” restrictions, try a Business Costco. They don’t have any toys, or clothes or anything because they cater to restaurants, but your regular Costco membership still works and you can get things like a 50lb bag of flour for $17, a 40lb box of chicken for $38 and 50lbs of potatoes for $10 (you can also buy peanut butter, yogurt and pickles by the bucket, but I’m not to that level yet.) Bonus, no one will judge you for your full cart.

Over here in Chateau Ramsey, spring has come, the birds are chirping, kids are happy, healthy and sleeping better than they have in months. San Diego is experiencing it’s .2 seconds of lush greenness. I’ve been loving this slower pace of life so much, I spent a day consciously videoing little snippets so I could remember this stage of life. (although I can’t even remember which day it was…Tuesday? or maybe Wednesday? I’m not sure.) The kids and I made it into a Walton’s-style montage (see video at the bottom). Man-made calendars have ceased to exist for me, but I do know we’re due for a super moon (pink edition) in four days and that it’s supposed to rain two inches next week. Give me another month of quarantine and I will be wearing homemade clothes, dancing in the moonlight and canceling our internet service.

I’m spending my extra time at home editing my nanowrimo novel and writing a book for my middle boys. They love Diary of a Wimpy Kid, so I’m trying my hand at a historical version of it in hopes it will lure them into reading more. I’m starting with Columbus since that’s what CC will be starting with next year for Cycle 3. In reading through some original documents I found this list of punishments listed by the Santa Maria’s Marshall:

“The Marshall is to punish offenders and to see justice executed according to directions; as ducking at the yards arme, haling under the keel, bound to the capsterne or maine mast with a bucket of shot about his neck, or setting in the bilbowes.” 

It took me awhile to figure out that “ducking at the yards arme” meant “tying you to the front of the ship and letting you get dunked as the ship goes up and down through the waves”. And that was a mild punishment compared to the “haling" under the keel”.

So there’s your random trivia for the day. I’m off to feed my pet sourdough (we named it “Sandy”) and contemplate how grateful I am public officials haven’t implemented 15th century punishments for corona-violations.

Teaching Kids How To Learn

Sometimes I feel like Wendy with the lost boys around here, but it doesn’t really matter how you teach kids to learn things on their own as long as it gets done. If you’ve hung around Classical education circles at all, then you’ve read or heard about Dorothy Sawyer's essay titled “The Lost Tools Of Learning”.  (it’s a quick read and I highly recommend it). I’ll admit, I read and ingested the information while my kids were still in diapers and it seemed like a laughably far off abstract goal, but a worthy one?

Then I had one boy after the other who struggled with writing, reading and everything in between...basically poster children for those who do NOT do Classical education. My personality gravitates more naturally to the Charlotte Mason school of thought (and I still like it in theory and intuitively teach that way), but I was too unstructured of a mom to use it well. Classical Conversations is where we ended up, which is like the McDonald’s of the Classical education world. Franchised and systematized. Not going to lie though, it’s been a struggle. Nothing about homeschooling has come easy, last year Charlie memory mastered for the first time and it was through blood, sweat and tears. I googled ways to make things stick, I sat with him for hours, we tried all of the tricks. Over the years I’ve read enough books to fill a library on how to utilize working memory, how to work with kids with dyslexia, apraxia, auditory processing disorder, ADHD etc. One of these days maybe I’ll write my own curriculum with all of the things I’ve picked up from a hundred therapists, books and research, but for now… if anyone feels like they try to explain a concept to their child a dozen times and it’s not sticking, or if you’re in CC and have a kid who is struggling to memorize their grammar work, here are a few things that work around here. 

1. Flashcards with stick figures and pictures. This was the game changer last year. Last year I had to sit down and figure out where all of the holes and struggles were and then make up silly mnemonics and draw them onto flashcards or white boards. The three rules are: It has to be colorful. It has to be silly/funny. It has to be IN and ON the words themselves and not above it or beside it (i.e. “The Progressive Era” gets turned into a car with a giant ear riding on it). 

2. Laminate things that need to be memorized. Homeschooling moms are like Monica Gellar when it comes to laminators. We will laminate anything. We love laminating. It’s more satisfying than picking dried glue off your hands. Add some wine and a few friends and it’s my ideal party. Laminating memory work was the game changer this year. I let Charlie take it outside, on a skateboard,  in the mud, in the shower or wherever else. Since he’s an active boy, this is really what made the difference this year. But since he already learned how to memorize last year, it was a lot easier this year.

3. Cross the mid line. With younger kids you can do this with hand motions. With older kids, you either have to sit down with them and learn a bunch of Fortnite dance moves, or do those hand slappy things…  or bribe them. Whatever the case, taking a drink of water then breaking memory work into moves that cross the mid line really works. And don’t ask me why the water thing is really important, but it’s a scientific thing. 

I’m so proud of Charlie because while I dragged him through memorizing last year, this year he took ownership of it and did it himself. I remember when Jamie finally figured out how to memorize things and it’s almost better than the moment a kid is truly potty trained...almost.  

It gives me hope for Robbie and Will even though we’re still in the trenches. 

Amusing Links, plus the weirdest and stupidest thing I did today

Usually Mondays around here are busy and stressful, but since we’re in Neverland or Wonderland or maybe Stranger Thing’s Upside Down world, I tried to infuse some stress back into it by filling the house with the fresh scent of rotten meat and Chinese fringeberries.

I’m on day 3 of a migraine and I’m pretty sure Jim feels like he’s married to Professor Trelawney . Since word coming out of France and Spain is to avoid ibuprofen at all cost right now, I decided it would also be a good idea to avoid my alien powered, high octane migraine prescription as well. I call it yoga for the trigeminal-autonomic reflex pathway…. I’m trying to work with the pain, listen to my body, and not just medicate and power through at 100 mph like I normally do. It’s not going well. So far my “don’t hyperventilate and work with the migraine” plan caused me to make 4 lbs of rotten meatballs. This is not normal for me, I have poor eyesight but a highly tuned olfactory system. The fact that it took me a few hours to identify the weird smell as rotten meat cooking in my oven is something that never happens in this household. I indigently thrust a freshly cooked rancid meatball under Jim’s nose while he was trying to do his job on the front line of the current healthcare crisis, and demanded he smell it and taste it. He said it tasted fine, but he’s also known to eat moldy things and uncooked chicken, so he was no help. Thankfully I caught it before I ruined the entire batch of sauce… the sauce… as in the sauce that Jim’s late Italian grandmother taught me to make in order to be married to her grandson. The one that heals all woes and is the perfect quarantine relief food (and I almost screwed it up).

That was the stupidest thing I did, the weirdest thing I did was toss a bunch of Chinese fringe berries and dandelions into the vitamix. The kids are like Pavlov’s dog when they hear the vitamix’s jet engine ramp up in the kitchen. William looked at the gray sludge and asked dubiously what kind of smoothie it was. Robbie was the only one who cheerfully volunteered to try the fringeberry dandelion concoction, but it wasn’t for human consumption. I listened to a gardening podcast about not being irritated with pests, weeds, etc but instead work with nature instead of fighting it (noticing a trend here?). Our neighbor has a Chinese Fringe tree that dumps these olive berry looking things all over our flower bed and sidewalk. I googled it and they don’t compost very quickly, but they’re full of great nutrients, so I decided to work with nature and toss them into my vitamix and then compost bin. The dandelions were just innocent bystanders that got swept up with the tide.

My compost now smells very good. Apparently you can also pickle these berries like olives and eat them (which I’m adding to my list of possibilities if the grocery store stays empty).

I love lists of links, and in case you do too, here is my current list ( know they don’t look like links, because I can’t figure out how to format my squarespace skin, but I promise they’re all clickable)

1. 13 edible plants you can find in urban environments.

2. I wish our church would do something like this creative Russian Orthodox priest. Or at least keep the doors unlocked like the Catholic and Episcopalian churches.

3. A free book on rational thinking.

4. The most powerful fire engine in the world

5. A book review about President Hoover that is almost better than the book itself.

6. An ex Pickup Artist’s thoughts on how to pray.

7. And last but not least: The aforementioned Sauce recipe that heals all woes (or at least it does for everyone in my husband’s family)

I’ll just be over here enjoying pepper tree tea with some sauteed dandelion and pickled fringeberries. My liver has never been happier even if my head is not. The only thing I have left to do is install a bidet.

Stuck at home? My top 3 favorite toys (or rather, my kids' top 3 favorite toys)

Since impending d̶o̶o̶m̶ home time may be in all of our futures, here are my top three time-passers that are a much better use of your money than Costco’s toilet paper. Whenever it rains in Southern California (which doesn’t happen a lot), Jim foregoes the motorcycle commute and takes my suburban. (Note, it’s mine even though he technically paid for it..ahem.) My only other option is taking him to work at 5am and then picking him back up in the afternoon. While I wouldn’t want to complain about stumbling into some clothes and staggering into the car like an intoxicated teddy bear who stuck their finger into an electrical outlet (I’m not a morning person), if possible I opt to stay at home and let Jim take the car.

It was a pretty happy, peaceful, chill day around here, but that was probably because rain has an almost sedative affect on native Californians. So take this list with a large grain of salt.

1. These brain flake things. A friend brought them for William to play with and they were an instant hit. I picked up a few containers for Christmas and they’ve been the most used toy since then. Even the older kids make all kinds of weird ironman armor and laser wrist things. I don’t ask questions, I just duck when I’m told

2. Kinetic Sand. We have lots of different kinetic sand in the house, but this one is the favorite. I don’t think it has anything to do with the sparkles (which are sadly overrated and exaggerated in the picture) but because it’s the softest. Once you start playing with it, you can’t stop. Even adults have been known to pause in front of the sensory bin and then not move until forced.

3. The card game Rat-A-Tat-Cat. This is one of the few card games that even small children can play and it isn’t a form of slow torture for parents and older kids. Death by candy princesses and sneaky squirrels is one of the leading causes of parental demise. Also, if you have a kid who’s missing speech therapy, you can also turn this game into an impromptu session where you endlessly discuss the cool cats and nasty rats (the illustrations are hilarious). It’s won all sorts of awards, including a Mensa one, but I haven’t noticed it making my kids any smarter… granted, I haven’t checked and we may not be the best target audience. Still, anyone can play this no matter where they are on the IQ spectrum. We’re on our third deck.

Not that I’m hoping we’ll all get quarantined by the Coronu, but at least we’re prepared

…and there are plenty of leaves in the backyard if the toilet paper runs out.

Debate Tournaments and Watermelon Seeds

You know you’re getting old when a speech and debate tournament looks like this to you.

When I was a teenager, my cousins did speech and debate, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. They might as well have been James Bond. Now, with my own teenager doing speech and debate, it looks like somebody released a 354 member cast of Spy Kids. I thought the last three days were going to be relaxing…maybe get some writing done, read a book, get some coffee. Nope. It was non stop judging, filling out judging sheets, walking to the next place to judge, freezing, eating, more walking, more judging, more freezing (clearly I didn’t pack well for the yo-yo freeze/heat cycle that is a CA spring). I don’t really enjoy judging, because a) I don’t really know what I’m doing, b) there are some “technically correct” speaking tips/tricks that are super distracting to me, but apparently everyone else thinks they’re the bees knees, c) I really hate giving extremely subjective criticism to sweet kids who have clearly worked super hard. When you judge a round you get to put a little sticker on a giant board as a way to publicly shame you into doing your allotted work. But no judgment, it helps make the tournament work. I of course totally forgot to put my stickers up.

Jim held down the fort while I was gone. I got home to Will very worriedly jabbering about giant killer watermelons. Jim explained later: Will saw him eat watermelon with seeds still in it and was so worried his daddy was going to grow a watermelon inside him, he had been watching for warning signs with a wary sense of impending doom. The only way Jim could assuage his fears was to tell him that because he didn’t eat any dirt there was no way for the watermelon to grow. Crisis averted. Parenting win.

3 Ways To Spark Your Kid's Imagination

I actually shouldn’t be writing about this, I should be reading about this. Somewhere in my desire to not raise kids as legalistically as I was, we developed an electronics addiction in this house. I need a step by step AA level-esque game plan to kick the habit that doesn’t include never using electronics, and isn’t full of inspirational quotes. I need it to be practical and pragmatic. Does it exist?

In the meantime, this is what works thus far.

1. Put them to work. Trying to lure my children off of electronics never works. All of their toys are boring, there’s nothing to do and it feels like they sort of wade through life waiting for the next opportunity to get on electronics…even if that’s five days away. But if I assign mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and raking leaves in the backyard, they all do their jobs and then magically find plenty of things with which to entertain themselves.

2. Play by yourself. Adults don’t usually sit on the floor in a batman mask and start building a giant zoo out of magnatiles and play animals. It’s like catnip. (see previous post on how I get my children to eat their vegetables.) The same mom radar that allows babies to sense when a parent is trying to lay them down in a crib, is still alive and kicking at older ages. If you build it, they will come. Good luck trying to sneak away.

3. Turn off the router. Preferably have your husband turn off the router remotely from an app for the best Deus Ex Machina effect. If they start to read the instruction manual for the router, crawl under the house to see if the Cat5 cable is still intact, and hypothesize with each other on ways to fix the internet, then at least they’re getting language arts, PE and Socratic discussions done.

I wish these were my kids, but it will never be that green here. Ahem.

How to lose weight, find the bad guy, and cure the coronavirus

An oh so helpful list to enjoy over the weekend.

1. When people ask me how I stay so fit, I tell them it’s because I have four boys. They laugh, but it’s the gospel truth. I made myself poached eggs over curried vegetables for breakfast and got approx 1.2 bites before it was consumed by my ravenous children who beg for cereal and then act like they’ve never eaten five minutes after the dishes are cleaned and the food is put away. I have a current thing for stir fries. Stir fry with udon noodles…stir fry with couscous….stir fry with lentils. But doesn’t matter what kind of stir fry it is, I rarely get to eat it. I could put fried worms and rotten fish in my stir fry and all of my children would think it was amazing. I know it’s my own fault, but they’re so cute when they ask for a bite. The problem is there are four of them and a few of them have gigantic mouths. I guess I should be grateful they’re eating vegetables.

2. Part of the reason I don’t watch many movies or TV shows is because I am the most gullible and easily spooked person ever, and pretty much have to watch every scary-ish movie sitting in Jim’s lap, clutching him in terror (which he considers a perk…especially when we were d̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ courting). I need clues, big obvious clues about who to trust and who not to, which is why I was stoked to read this: “Apple won’t let bad guys use iphones in movies”. This may make me actually like iphones a little….hmmm…or not.

3. Approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women die from alcohol related deaths every year, which means that Corona (the beer) is more deadly than the virus (Thank you Owen for that one). I thought since my kids know their Latin, they would get a kick out of something being named “crown”, but no… they instead think it’s hilarious to pretend like they’re popping open a can and then clutching their throat and dying violently on the ground. I’m trying to nip such behavior in the bud, but it’s not going well. We haven’t been hit by the Corona virus, but we have had some lingering coughs here, and it rekindled my love for the Lobelia herb. Seriously works amazing on coughs, but tastes like death. My husband says that it cures your cough by making you never want to breath again. I use this one, but if you use it, don’t blame me if you sprout horns out of your tongue.

The healing tank, 9 boys & a girl, and an overgrown playhouse

Tall pine trees, a sturdy three story house riddled by woodpeckers and the only thing that’s missing are all of my siblings saying goodnight like the Walton’s. My parent’s home is like a Star Wars’ healing bacta tank…although it maybe shouldn’t be since my dad broke his hip on a broken beam over the garage when I was eleven, and my sister Liz and I raised and schooled our younger siblings in the overgrown playhouse in the backyard while our parents worked at building a house from the ground up like Ma and Pa Ingalls. (I’m trying to see how many of my favorite childhood movies I can fit in.)

It’s currently inundated with a zoo of boys (and one adorable girl who gave me my first Disney makeover). When Jim and Kevin were college roommates, I don’t think either one off them pictured this one day.