As many of you have probably noticed, I'm mainly posting over on Twitter these days. I've also removed people from my Twitter list who don't post (on the assumption that they're not reading either). So if anyone on Twitter is not posting but still reads all the time, let me know.

As some of you know, I am singing in a choir called The Waltham Abbey Singers. We are singing Robert Parsons' First Service (think Anglican mass) on Sunday November 16 at 7:30 at St. Clement's Episcopal Church (901 Portland Ave. St. Paul).

It's free, and whatever you think of Anglicans, their music is beautiful. You should come.

Why do people assume that children only play with members of the same sex? I just ran into someone who was apologizing to a neighbor because "We only have girls," and they couldn't set up a playdate with a boy who was close in age. The kids are five years old!

kalikanzera Just posted something mentioning overthinking, and, well, it made me think.

I've never understood what "overthinking" is. I've been accused of doing it, though. "Just say what comes into your mind," people tell me. Or "Just do what you feel." Neither of these is very helpful to me. In Myers-Briggs terms, I'm a really strong thinker. Feelings often come only after I think about something and figure out how I feel about it. I know this can be hugely confusing to feelers who tend to have feelings first and then think about them. There isn't anything that "just comes into my mind." I don't feel like I'm a pot overflowing with stuff that I have dammed up all the time. It's not a matter of just removing the dam and letting things spill out. Things have to be picked up and looked at and analyzed before they come out in any way. There's not much to come out unless I think about it.

So back to overthinking. Does overthinking mean thinking instead of feeling? That doesn't seem right to me; thinking and feeling are both good and important, and I don't know why feeling would necessarily be better than thinking. Does overthinking mean analyzing things? I can't figure out what's wrong with analysis; I like it and it helps me understand myself and others and the world. Does overthinking mean obsessing about something to a degree that makes you unhappy with your life and unable to make decisions? I can see why that would be a bad thing. But why is that overthinking? Isn't that obsessing? Is there a difference?

I have the feeling that the people who accuse me of overthinking will look at this post and say, see, you're overthinking now! Because, after all, I'm trying to figure something out that seems obvious to a lot of people. But it's not obvious to me, and how else can I figure it out?

Edit: resolute tells me overthinking is a term used mainly by Myers Briggs feelers.

Underwater Adventures is a really cool aquarium. We love going through the huge clear tubes and watching the fish swim overhead.

But must they put "Pirates" and "Mermaids" on their bathrooms? The first time I saw this I stood for several minutes thinking "WHAT?" Then I realized pirates were supposed to be male and mermaids were supposed to be female. Then I started my internal rant about gender stereotypes. Why can't boys be mermaids (or mermen, I suppose)? Why can't girls be pirates?

If anyone is moved to join me in complaining about this, here's the place to do it: http://www.sharky.tv/inq/asksharky.htm

These days almost everyone knows someone who homeschools, and most people don't bat an eye when I mention that we're homeschooling. Not very long ago, though, many people felt compelled to give unsolicited advice when I mentioned homeschooling. And the most common piece of advice was "It's a bad idea; the children will not be socialized." I'm pretty sure that a lot of people still think this; they just don't say it out loud.

( My views on homeschooling and socialization )

from resolute ( meme )

This morning we went to Nickelodeon Universe for the first time. NU is the new amusement park inside the Mall of America; it's been expanded since the days when it was Camp Snoopy.

K is becoming a thrill ride junkie, and will go on anything they'll let her on. So we rode the Splat-O-Sphere together. It pulls you up 60 feet and then drops you. And then it does it again. And again. I kept trying to prepare K for the fact that the ride might be scary, and she listened with that "Mother, I'm fine" expression that children get. But there was a nine year old that got off crying just before we got on, so I was a little worried. I needn't have been, though. K loved it. She also went on the flume and GhostBlasters, a haunted house ride where you shoot at ghosts.

M is more cautious about rides (I was at his age too; my parents took me to Disneyland and then I didn't want to go on the rides). He jumped inside the huge pineapple jumper, and rode the Blues Clues cars that go up and down when you press the buttons.

Resolute kindly watched the kids drive the kid bumper cars (M was put out that people were bumping into him when he was working on his driving) while I went on the Rock Bottom Plunge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpongeBob_SquarePants_Rock_Bottom_Plunge. The important part of this ride is the part where you climb vertically and then go back down vertically, as you can see in the photo. That was fun. Otherwise the ride isn't all that thrilling, though it has several upside down loops and twists. Those aren't so much my thing. I like big drops and "air time," that feeling of weightlessness you get on some rollercoasters just as you reach the crest of a hill. I was pretty happy to have gone on it once though.

I skipped the Avatar Airbender. Imagine a huge skateboard doing a half pipe 60 feet up while you sit in a spinning chair on it. It looked fun, but my tolerance for spinning rides has, to my disappointment, decreased as I've gotten older. I commiserated about this with other people my age in the lines.

As M gets to the age where he is more like a communicating human being rather than a baby, I have noticed something about the way men and older boys interact with younger boys.

The older boys and men that M meets out in the world have a serious, "let me introduce you into the world of maleness" attitude when they talk with M. They listen carefully to what he says, and try out conversations about traditional manly pursuits (vehicles, weapons, technology). They act as mentors. In some ways they're more careful and attentive than the women who interact with M. They take him seriously, and he responds.

Women and older girls seem to generally interact with both young boys and girls as nurturers. They play, talk, and help when things go wrong. They instruct in manners and social norms. But there is very little weighty mentoring going on.

Men and women even use different terms when talking to kids. Women use kids' names or terms of endearment (Sweetie, Honey). Men talking to M rarely use his name, and they certainly don't use terms of endearment. They call him Dude, Sir, Buddy.

Resolute thinks this is related to the assumption that most care of young children is done by women in our culture. By the time kids get to be four or five or six, men start having to pass on male cultural traditions that kids do not necessarily learn in the same way from women. Women don't have that same experience, because they've been taking care of kids all along. Or if they haven't, there's a cultural expectation that some woman has been caring for the kids. So girls are not, at a certain age, inducted into being female in quite the same way boys are inducted into being male. Women don't have a sense that they have to make up for lost time when girls were cared for by men and didn't have much training in what it meant to be female.

Along with this seems to come an awkwardness in the way many men and older boys often interact with young girls. For the most part men aren't encouraged to be nurturers with young children. And there's no culturally appropriate mentoring role to slide into instead. I've noticed that men often aren't sure what to call young girls. They can't say Dude, or Buddy. They don't usually use names. Mostly they don't call young girls anything. In fact, I rarely see men interact with young girls at all, unless they're fathers. I suppose this is in part related to fears about sexual abuse allegations, which is unfortunate, because it seems important to both young girls and boys to have both male and female role models.

Gastric brooding frogs raise their young in their stomachs http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/emerging/frogs/images/fig1.jpg

Unfortunately, it looks like they may be extinct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric-brooding_Frog

The kids are taking a Monday morning class at Leonardo's Basement http://www.leonardosbasement.org/. This is one of the coolest places ever. You walk in the door, go down to the basement, and there is . . . well . . . stuff. Wheels, wood, metal, tools, feathers, cardboard, motors, pianos, magnets, spools, plastic bits, nails, bells, boxes, tape, screws. You name it, and it's probably there. Other projects that were sitting around waiting to be completed included a set of armor, an organ, robots, every kind of sculpture imaginable, and at least one Rube Goldberg machine. And speaking of Rube Goldberg machines, here's a video of one that someone at the workshop built: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh0etTSI9Dg.

There are only three kids in the 4-5 year old class, including my kids. W, the teacher, gave us a tour of the workshop, showed the kids where the tools were (the only things she told them not to touch were the utility knives. The four and five year olds were using saws and drills and assorted other tools generally associated with children well over the age of four.), and asked them what they wanted to build. K and M decided on airplanes. So W gave them a few suggestions, and showed them how to measure and cut wood for the body and wings, and hammer the pieces together. They started work on rollerblade-wheel landing gear, which will have to be completed next week. Also, M wants to glue missiles to his plane with a hot glue gun.

The planes look like the kind of thing you'd expect small children to create. But the thing is, the kids did most of the work themselves. The grownups helped a little with design suggestions, and with sawing and hammering when the kids got tired or weren't quite strong enough. But overall the kids designed and built them. And the kids run around the shop freely, looking at things and experimenting with stuff.

Maybe if I'd learned these things when I was four, I'd be better at building things today. I'm hoping my kids will learn that they can make lots of things by themselves if they learn how to work at it, and problem-solve, and try new ways of doing things if the first ten ways didn't work. The t-shirts at the place say Design<-->Build<-->Test (all in a circle with arrows leading back to the beginning). Leonardo's Basement is made for that.

Last night there was a spider party.

What do you do at a spider party?

1. Look at spiders.
2. Look at more spiders.
3. Look at still more spiders.
4. Observe the many spider decorations in the house, including the string of 21 tiny Christmas stockings, each with the name of one of the family's tarantulas on it.
5. Hold spiders ("The faster they move, the more you should hold still.")
6. Supervise small children holding spiders.
7. Win a door prize. She's an Oklahoma Brown tarantula, http://animal-world.com/encyclo/reptiles/spiders/OklahomaBrownTarantula.php and her name is Shelob.
8. Take home goodie bags filled with gummy spiders, toy spiders, and spiderman candy.
9. Place Shelob's cage in the children's room ("Pleeeaaaassse can we have the spider in our room!?")

Many caterpillars are camouflauged very cleverly as bird poop:

The giant swallowtail: http://www.ragamuffin.com/GST%20harness.jpg

spicebush swallowtail: http://muskogeephoenixonline.com/blogs/MollyDay/uploaded_images/spicebush-swallowtail-butterfly-caterpillar-744344.jpg

eastern tiger swallowtail: http://www.duke.edu/~jspippen/butterflies/cat070826-1710millis.rdz.jpg

viceroy: http://www.frw.ca/albums/Insects/P1030414_RJ_03_Beare_Borrowpit.jpg

Does being in charge of the household laundry mean that the person is also in charge of throwing away broken hangers in closets?

I just dropped K off at a birthday party. Now, K is blessed with social skills. She is an extrovert, and plays equally well with boys and girls and kids of all ages. She's polite, and she picks up on body language and tone and the sorts of things that make social interaction easier. So even though she didn't know anyone except the birthday girl at this party, and the rest of the kids seemed to know each other, she ran off happily with the group.

But I noticed some things, watching the kids' social interactions. For one thing, this was the first all-girl birthday party K has been to. All girls, all the same age, and all in party dresses. My eyes got kind of wide, though I suppose five is the age this starts to happen. I'm wondering if soon, my kids will mostly only have same-sex and same-age friends until junior high or high school or whenever it starts to change again.

I also noticed that K, so far, is not afraid of social interactions. She is friendly and kind and welcoming to everyone, and she expects that in return. I remember being that way too, when I was very young. But then, in first or second grade, I learned that being open and welcoming and friendly was risky. The risk of rejection and cruelty and meanness was high enough to make me wary. And somewhere along the line I learned to be very cautious about each new social interaction.

It's sort of sad to think of K acquiring that cautiousness. It's so good to watch how unafraid she is right now, and I hate to think about her becoming afraid and wary. I'm not sure if it's inevitable or not, or if homeschooling will make a difference. I remember it being a pretty universal thing; it just wasn't possible to socially survive without being wary. And I wasn't all that much of a social outcast. I was a geek, but I always had plenty of friends. Maybe there are some people who manage it better. Maybe being an extrovert helps. Maybe some people are just more resilient.

In any case, as a parent, you send your kids out in the world and hope for the best.

I keep reading news stories where parents are criticized for leaving children alone at home, or letting them wander around the mall without an adult, or play in the neighborhood without parental supervision. And I'm confused about what I perceive to be big changes in this since my childhood.

I remember starting to play out in the neighborhood alone around age six. Staying home alone around age nine. Going to the mall with friends at age ten or eleven. Babysitting other kids at age eleven or twelve. But so many parents seem reluctant to let their kids out alone at all. I've talked to people who won't let their ten year olds walk to school.

I know people are afraid of kidnappers and child molesters and goodness knows what else. But the risk of these things seems very low to me. All the statistics I've read seem to indicate that the rate of this sort of crime is actually lower than when I was a kid. And there seems to be another kind of risk in never letting children out of your sight. How will they become independent and self-confident without the opportunity to practice doing things on their own?

K will be five this week. We let her go out alone to deliver birthday invitations by herself to the neighborhood kids. I did watch when she was going out and coming back to see she crossed the one (not busy) street safely, and looked out the window a couple times to check on her (most of the houses were within sight of our own). We had a talk before she left about how to handle any situations that came up. She came back proud and happy.

Now, K is pretty mature for her age. M is 4 1/2, and he's definitely not ready to go out by himself yet. But it won't be too long before he's ready too. I'm wondering how to balance my views of this with what appear to be different expectations these days. I remember that the police were called because a ten year old was at the Mall of America alone, and I was thinking, what trouble is he going to get into at the mall at age ten? I would let my kids go to the mall at that age.

So. What do people think is reasonable? When are kids ready to do things alone?