Category: Uncategorized

Leilani has a lot of stuff. To me it’s overwhelming.

I counted 78 T-Shirts in her closet, together with about a dozen on the clothesline, a few folded in a box, and a few strewn across her room that’s about 100. I bought 8 of them over the last 3 years, 2 camp T-shirts, 2 preschool T-Shirts, and 4 school T-shirts. Maybe I am indirectly responsible for the one she got at the Hanalei run, because I signed her up for it.

And I did not push back and tell the givers she has enough and to find a better use for them. When I try to get her to give up some of them I get about 3 to give away and she ends up in tears and I end up stressed. (“This is a souvenir from …” “… gave that to me” “This was …’s T-Shirt and I really like her” “But this comes from Millbrae Nursery School”). Sometimes it’s easier to get her to let me cut it up for the quilt she is trying to make but not always (and there are a lot of prospective quilt pieces around too.)

You would not believe how that closet sometimes looks when she searches for one of them in a hurry, and how long it takes me to hang them up again, arranged by color so she can find them most the time. Or for how long she cries while I force her to pick it up herself.

Shorts, dresses and skirts are just very slightly better and she has more socks than anyone else on Kauai. She could probably go for 3 months without me doing laundry if it was not for a lack of underwear. Oh, and also, after 2 weeks she runs out of stuff she really wears…

On toys it’s just as bad. There is one doll that is being used, but in the doll-box are 3 more, all complete with their clothes and stuff (purses, doll-dressup, diapers, magic wands, hats…). When she looks for that one doll about 100 small pieces come out of that box. I tried putting the unused ones in ziplock bags but periodically a friend takes everything out again.

She solves 300-500 piece puzzles now, and often re-does her 100 piece puzzle. But she does not give up anything that has more than 20 pieces (“The unicorn is so beautiful and I remember how happy I was when I got it.”)

And Barbie. In California everyone had them. Although Andy and I had agreed to disallow them, I caved in early. (“Look, it has wings, it’s fairy Elina not Barbie…”) and we let Leilani have a few fairies and their husbands. And clothes and bicycles and mermaids and horses (by now 3) and a flower-fairy-house and a car and carriages and furniture and now a doll-house.

Some kids don’t play with Barbies, as their moms gave good explanations what is wrong. They dump all the Barbie stuff their well-meaning relatives give them to Leilani and hope she gives them a good home. The other Kauai kids, who just are forbidden (and probably don’t understand what their moms mean by “disturbed body image”) bring their Barbies too and dismember them here, but that’s a different story.

When the huge Barbie box didn’t close anymore a few months ago I forced Leilani to give up 2 of them. After this Birthday we have 3 more again.

With books we are surprisingly organized, even though she has about 1000 (we buy them used). She used to have about 700 3 years ago, but many of them were cardboard books, and they are now gone. The very thin reading-starters are leaving at a good rate too. Everything that leaves the house has been read at least twice. I can find at least the 300 favorites within less than 5 minutes, most of them in a few seconds, but I’m seldom asked, as Leilani finds them herself. She has read (or been read to) 2/3 of the books, and I’m totally fine to keep a few books on nature, animals, geography, planets etc. that are not age appropriate yet. 10-15 of the books come out each day, but at the very least the end up in stacks sorted by language, and often Leilan puts them back in the shelf usually even at the right place.

Almost all of her friends collect the Schleich Bayala fairies and mythical creatures. They can play for hours with the dragons and fairies and dark elves and unicorns … So far they all lived on a shelf, arranged to a scene or at least looking like a theater cast coming out after the play for standing ovations, but after this birthday she has so many that I decided to make her 2 new boxes for them (As a birthday gift :-) At least they are small, pretty, easy to pick up and guilt free… but now with all the wish list accounted for (birthday and Christmas) she will have enough of them too.

She is now willing to give up the dinosaurs, and the matchbox cars, but I’m a bit reluctant, they don’t come out often but if they do it’s usually because a boy is visiting who is not interested in all the girly stuff, and Leilani is very protective about her Legos and Snap Circuits (and rightfully so with all the small parts).

I could go on, but then again… who wants to read it.

I am shuffling websites around, and many of them will go down (and probably not come back up on their own)

If you notice (before me) that the blog is down I’d appreciate a phone call or at least an email.

Happy Thanksgiving, happy change of registrar, happy DNS pointing.

I explained our monetary reward system on this blog before. The regular reward is still a quarter, but… there are also a few high price items now.

When we were in Austria and Andy was not, I wanted to have an evening with my family. It was bedtime. I offered 2 Euros to Leilani for going to bed by herself. Seeing her reluctant expression my mom quickly raised to 5 Euros. Leilani demanded my iPhone (loaded with prime / unheard audiobooks) on top of it and the bedtime routine took less 10 minutes for me, instead of an hour. We repeated this once in Austria for the same price.

Friday, Andy and I had dinner guests without kids here, and afterwards we played the game Kaua’i-opoly (as in Monopoly, only Kaua’i-themed). Again, I offered the 5 – just Dollars instead of Euros, Leilani demanded the iphone, and went to brush her teeth. (Andy was a bit shocked at the price when he found out).

The next morning Leilani decided she wanted to donate the money for the defenders of wildlife to save the wolves. As usual I matched her donations 2:1 and happily wrote the check for $15.

Generally people are very accepting, but I know some questions my judgement. I just found this article.

Summer Larsen, who teaches the fourth grade at Declo Elementary, is being criticized for the way she allowed students to behave after asking them to assess their reading goals. The students came up with incentives to accomplish the goals. Students who met their reading goals would be allowed to draw on the faces of those who did not reach their goals. The students who fell short of their goals could choose to either skip recess or allow other students to draw on their faces. Of the 21 fourth-graders involved, nine did not meet the goals, six chose to be drawn on, and three chose to miss recess. Some of the students chose to draw goatees and mustaches on other students.

One parent said, “Not only was my son punished with bullying, but the other students were rewarded with bullying. They’re being taught that bullying is OK.”

Some parents didn’t have a problem with what happened. “I’m just one of many parents who stand totally behind Summer Larsen and her teaching methods and what she does. We think she is a wonderful teacher, and we want to see her stay at Declo for many years,” said Carla Christensen.

Not only do I think the punishment is absolutely inappropriate, how can they punish kids for not learning to read at the prescribed level. How can a teacher of so many years still believe all kids develop according to “no kid left behind”* standardizations? How can they not realize some very intelligent kids just are a little behind in one area and see that they excel in another? Punish the kids for who they are, what they are, how they develop, their natural limitations?

In a culture that allows public shaming of school aged kids (standing at street corners with a sandwich sign “I am an idiot”… “I stole” … or worse), tries to teach creationism as an alternative to, or even instead of evolution, allows corporal punishment in schools that leaves “welts and bruises” this seems small by comparison, but it worries me that this seems to be what parents support and request.

* yes I know that’s supposed to be obsolete now, but it seems it’s still practiced.

What started as an email to parents about the “new and improved” crafts event turned into an un-mailable rant. I’ll keep it here for now. I’ll discuss it with Leilani. I don’t dare to show the parents directly. I guess it could be viewed a bit passive aggressive to leave it here, but if you find it and see it I apologize, I mean it as a reminder for me and Leilani. I also think maybe I can word it in a way that’s I could still mail it, as we would really like to have these events again if not for…

Some of you remember my crafts evens. I know all the kids who were there do, because ever since they stopped, almost than a year ago they keep asking, when we’ll restart them.

I thought about it. What would it take?

1) Timing. I had one event where the first kid was picked up less than 1/2 hour than the last kid arrived. Kids were routinely 45 minutes late, this does not work for a 2 hour event. If I’d restart there would be a window of 30 minutes before the event (“playdate”) to drop of, and 5-10 minues late might be OK occasionally, but not more.

2) RSVPs: I had 2 events with more than 3 RSVPs where nobody showed up. I had 6 kids once when I expected 2. It does not work, because I need to set up. I need accurate and timely RSVPs.

3) Clean up. Frequently parents interrupted the cleanup by whisking the kids away, or distracting me. I need the glue off the floor and the paint off the brushes before they dry, it’s also not good for the kids to be left off the hook. Same for the potlucks or shared dinners that sometimes, spontaneously happened afterwards. I loved them. I did not enjoy having the entire cleanup for a party of 10 people between me and Andy half the time.

4) Sharing / helping / reciprocating: It was a free event and the materials were free to cheap, and I always paid for them myself. But it would be nice if I had a little help. Somebody has to go to the store for just that one bottle of green paint or glue, not always me. Often the setup was a bit of work, and it would have been fun to have an adult help for 15 minutes or 1/2 an hour. Also, Leilani loves to go to other people’s houses, for play dates, sleepovers, baking, gardening as well.

5) Siblings / younger kids: The crafts work for an age range. Younger kids are more work, because they dump their smoothie into the beads more frequently, and because they need a lot of extra explanation, and they get frustrated if they can not do certain tasks, or have to do alternative crafts. It takes too much time away from the kids I actually want to work with.

I stopped there, before the list was finished. I knew each of the parents tried at least in one or two of the list-items above, or had good reasons why they couldn’t or would do what they did.

I assumed things could not change. I hope I get more optimistic and try :-)