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Skills, Part II

Tuesday 08 May 2007

L is gaining increasing control over her hands -- so much so that she now can use her fist as a substitute when she's lost her pacifier.

I originally wrote this several weeks ago, then put it on hold for some reason or another. Now it's off hold, but I forgot to change "three months." As of today, she's just a little more than a week shy of five months.

Translation: we have a budding thumb-sucker.

Now, sucking a thumb is not bad. All parenting books I've read say as much. In fact, once L starts teething, our pediatrician informs us, it'll be better if she sucks on her thumb than on her pacifier.

But for some reason, whenever that cute fist goes partially into her mouth, K and I instinctively pull it back out and re-insert the pacifier.

Why?

After all, a thumb is much more convenient than a pacifier.

  • It never falls to the floor.
  • It never gets lost.
  • It never gets left behind.
  • It's readily available in the dark.

I suppose it's an unfounded worry that, by letting our little girl start sucking her thumb, she'll have a hard time later stopping. As she's only three months old, it's about like us worrying that she'll want to go to a school known more for partying than learning.

It's called "exaggeration."

Learning to say “Okay”

Friday 16 February 2007

For many of the young people in the program where I work, one of the formal goals that forms part of the forest of paperwork about them is "Learn to say "Okay.'" What that means in practical terms is fairly simple: many of them are unable to accept criticism -- broadly defined as anything even apparently critical of them or their actions -- of any kind from adults.

A scenario from not so long ago illustrates how many things are going on that can make it difficult for someone just to say, "Okay."

Two boys, in class, are doing something disruptive. Fidgeting with something, throwing it back and forth (maybe a jacket?) or something. I couldn't see clearly what it was, but it caught my attention and I deemed it a distraction.

"Hey, guys, stop doing that, please."

"Doing what?" one asks simultaneously with the other's plea of innocence: "I wasn't doin' nothin'!"

Now it really doesn't matter what they were doing. It really doesn't matter if they were doing anything at all. The best response to bring the whole exchange to an end, to prevent it from escalating into something more serious, to ensure not getting into trouble, is to say, "Okay."

"If you have a problem with that," we tell them, "you can talk to the teacher afterward. If you don't know exactly what the teacher is asking you to do, you can ask for clarification after saying "Okay.' But getting defensive, taking it personally, exaggerating it into a personal affront will only make the situation worse."

And so going back to the above scenario, I reminding the boys that one of the skills they're working on is simply saying "Okay" and moving on.

"I ain't sayin' "Okay' to something I didn't do!" one replied indignantly.

"Why not?" I asked. "In saying "okay' you're not admitting to guilt. You're not doing anything other than acknowledging that you heard and understood what the person in authority -- be it a teacher or not -- is saying."

"But I didn't do nothin'!" he protested.

"But that doesn't matter." I responded. "In protesting it, particularly in the manner you're doing now, you're not doing anything to help your situation."

"Are you telling me that if someone accused you of doing something..."

"Whoa, wait -- I'm not accusing you of doing anything. I simply asked you both to stop. If you weren't doing anything, then clearly I wasn't talking to you. Even if I was addressing you alone and said "Stop doing that" and you were behaving perfectly, the best response is to say, "Okay' and move on."

"Move on?! You're the one making an issue of this" he said, voice pitching upward into a virtual screech, eyebrows raised just enough to say -- inadvertently or purposely -- "You're an idiot for saying that."

"No, I'm using this moment to remind you of a skill you're working on and to try to get you to practice it."

The boy couldn't accept that saying "Okay" even if you're completely innocent is anything more than an admission of guilt. And to prove his point, he brings up a most fascinating example: "So you're sayin' that if you walking down a street and cops come up to you and say, "You look like this guy who just robbed a bank,' and arrested you, that you'd just say, "'Okay.'"

The discussion is starting to get less and less productive as we range farther and farther off topic. Or are we off topic? Is this how the boy equates all these things? I decide to play along.

"Yes, I would. Or at least I hope I'd have a cool enough head to say that."

"But you didn't do it. Are you saying that if they said, "You robbed this bank,' that you'd just say nothing, that you wouldn't tell them you're innocent? They'll take you to jail and what -- you'll end up spending ten years in jail for something you didn't do?!"

Right here, though I suspected it moments earlier, I realize the young man didn't have a firm grasp on the workings of our criminal justice system. And another thing begins dawning -- we're really getting off track. Does this help the young man understand the situation? Is he just trying, like so many of the boys do, to get me so wrapped up in a discussion argument exchange that it's just a matter of whoosh! blink! and the whole class is over? I decide, somewhat against my better judgment, to continue.

"Just because they arrest me doesn't mean I'll be spending ten years in jail. There's a trial first, and in the meantime, I can be released on bail. But think of what they say, what you hear on TV, every time they arrest someone." Almost together we recite the Miranda warning. Then I continue, "Now if I'm an idiot, I'll start blathering on about how I'm innocent and how I didn't do anything and then, in court, that will be used against me, because the irony is, it makes me look guilty. If I'm smart, I'll shut my trap completely until I can get a lawyer."

"But if you didn't do nothin'""

"Especially if I hadn't done anything," I replied.

Finally things are winding down, and a boy enters from the other group.

"Hey, Mr. S, let's ask him if he'd just say "okay.' 'Eric, if someone framed you.'"

And now everything is mixed up. Nothing is as it started. We're no longer talking about whether or not saying "okay" helps you in a situation even if the request is relatively arbitrary; we're no longer talking about whether or not saying "okay" is an admission of guilt -- we've moved off into the netherworlds of arbitrary, six-sixty-degrees-of-separation tangents that suck up time and accomplish nothing.

Or is it simply that he doesn't understand what I mean? Are all these scenarios that we've been bouncing off of each other identical to him?

In the end, he simply says, "Well, if that's a skill, I guess it's a skill I won't use."

And I think, "Okay -- we'll try again tomorrow."

Three Random June Thoughts

Tuesday 31 May 2005

One

June is finally here -- the month of our return. After four years in Poland, I’m moving back to America. After twenty-some years in Poland, Kinga is moving to America. Big transitions for both of us.

“You’re more European now,” she said last night, not commenting though on what I’m more European than. I suppose than I was. She mentioned the almost cliche change some Muslim men exhibit when, after marriage and returning home with their new wife, they suddenly revert to ultra Islam and become a new person -- much to the bride’s dismay. I suppose that’s what she meant -- more European than American, and her concern was about me becoming a fast-food bubba.

Two

In the process of packing, I found the old photos I’d taken before coming to Poland the first time, almost ten years ago now.

They were intended to be spare identification photos, though I doubt they’d suffice. Looking at them, I’m shocked at how much I’ve changed and how little I’ve realized that. I look in the mirror every day, after all, and so the changes -- receding hairline, more mature eyes, lack of the scars of adolescence -- slipped by me. I imagine that’s how it’ll be with Kinga as time passes. “What will she look like when she’s forty?” I ask myself, knowing the answer will still be “beautiful.” But it’s hard to imagine the marks time will make, and now I see it’s doubtful I’ll even notice until I look at our wedding album.

Three

Back to America. I haven’t been to the States in three years -- too-busy summers and a lack of money will do that to you. “Reverse culture shock” is something you hear about from time to time, and I’m wondering if it’s hovering there, a few weeks in the future. When I went back for the first time in 1998, after two years in Poland, the difference was profound. The quality of roads was something I’d totally forgotten about, so used to bumping along I’d become. The ability to understand almost everyone around me without trying felt almost like a dirty secret. “Do they realize I understand everything they’re saying?”

But most shocking was the choice -- fifty-seven varieties of everything. The entire row of paper products (paper towels, napkins, etc.) at Super Wal-Mart literally stopped me mid-stride. Channel after channel on the television, all in English. Restaurants for every conceivable palate and wallet.

And so I know the feeling of “My oh my” that awaits Kinga.