Kiwiburn 2015

We just went on the best family camping holiday to date.

When I first heard about the "Burning Man" festival in Nevada, USA, it was through the videos on internet and an amusing episode of The Simpsons. It was something that I didn't even look into hard, because the ideals of the thing seemed intuitive to me. What I didn't know was that there is a regional event here in New Zealand called Kiwiburn.

It's said time and again in my parenting circles that "it takes a village to raise a child" and this festival really did feel like that. What happens when you get nearly a thousand hippies camped on a farm with a little forest, in the Central North Island of New Zealand, next to a river? Well a lot of it comes down to values.

The Simpson's episode warns that a Burn festival may not be "family friendly"... but a lot of that has to do with the family and their cultural ideals. Much of that which was cherished by the people at Kiwiburn were ideals that our family already held dear - freedom of expression, conscious decision making, explicit consent, creativity, collaboration, participation, having a go, taking reasonable risks, taking responsibility for one's actions, recycling/upcycling, gifting and rehoming, and basically cleaning up after yourself, making a contribution... and enjoying electronic dance music and tribal rhythms :)

At this stage of my children's learning voyage, it is shaped predominantly by the experiences social contexts we provide. Interacting with different people, in different contexts, people learn that certain things have a place and time, and Kiwiburn provided a fairly unique social context. We knew before the festival that this is an environment where people often greet each other by hugging and express affection openly and physically. We believe in a person's body being their own, and so we let the kids know well  before we even got to "The Paddock" that at Kiwiburn people often hug, but that if they weren't comfortable with hugging someone they didn't have to, they they could instead say "no thank you" or say "hi" and wave instead of going in for a hug. The fabulous thing about this environment is that the people knew that different people have different social boundaries, and that a person holding back is not an insult. Everyone was very accommodating of our kids and never pushed social engagement especially with our toddler, who they let engage on her own terms.

A lot of the things that the adults at burn events do will never be interacted with by children. One burner told me: "I bet they enjoyed seeing adults play. I see burns as giant playgrounds for adults." Some of the ways that adults "play" are not child friendly. Thankfully most of these they keep to themselves. My children are ignorant of most of the sexual habits of adults, but it's not like they haven't seen naked bodies before. Some people might find it particularly inappropriate to expose children to nudity, but at events like this there is a disconnect between nakedness and sexuality. A naked body is just as likely to be a canvas for body art. My children are used to seeing naked breasts. That's just how you feed babies. There were a lot of people in states of undress at Kiwiburn. Our kids didn't care.

I consider the lack of body shame to be a parenting success on our part. The children know that these things have a time and place, and they aren't going out in town wearing no clothes. They were clothed throughout the Kiwiburn event, buy they weren't phased by people stripping down to cope with hot weather, or to celebrate around a bonfire.

My kids got in and did. They took part, and were supported to take part. They were offered musical instruments, art and craft supplies, and opportunities. They watched as adults tried to do things they had never done before. They watched as people unashamedly messed up over and over again trying to rope walk, paint, do yoga, juggle, perform card tricks, or use a hula-hoop. They watched as people tried to improve their skills by practising the things they found really difficult saying things like; "Step back when I try this; I'm going to drop it because I'm really bad at this..." and "Just one more time! I think I'm getting better...". Taking part was more important than getting things "right". Making your mark was more important than making a masterpiece. Getting better, was better than being the best.

If there's one thing that an event like this has, it's a lot of people with a lot of energy. I was thankful to have my exhausting progeny be cared for by young people who felt that their energy was contagious. My kids socialised with people from toddler age to grey haired elderly people, who all listened to their fresh take on the world, and helped to contribute to their understanding of their world. They were cheered on as they dressed up like rock-stars, or had the supportive presence of other artists as they wrote their name in shared art space, facilitated as they collaborated with spray paint on canvases destined for a community art gallery, spotted as they climbed up towering artworks, or thanked for collecting pine cones for use as kindling in the drum-circle fire.

Kiwiburn has a tradition of gifting. "Burners" are encouraged to give each other gifts (without expecting money or favours in return). My eldest son was given many treasures, but the greatest was experience, and the one he remembers fondly was being given hand crafted items to redistribute to other people.

When asked what the greatest thing about Kiwiburn was his reply was: "MAKING FRIENDS!"

Cooperative / Collaborative Games

Our society has an overwhelming love affair with competition. Arguably, without competition we wouldn't have the impetus to improve, but putting ourselves in high risk situations actually shuts off the reasoning parts of our brain and makes us less good at clever problem solving. Babies don't learn to walk to be better walkers than each other. Our drives are there to empower us, and so are our relationships with others. As a society we grow strong when we know our own strengths and weaknesses, when we can build relationships with others, and we know our contributions are valued and we will get help if we ask for it. We don't need to strive for independence, or co-dependence, but rather, healthy interdependence. We are social creatures.

So here I am trying to get my children to play together. On the days when it is working they have an amazing synergy. The main thing they do together is playing with props - mainly Lego and toy cars. They create worlds together, most commonly recreating and combining different stories they have heard, from movies, videogames, YouTube casts, books, and personal experience. At times my eldest sounds like a cartoon super villain. They have teams of ninja battling zombies, and cars, rescuing princes and princesses, dragons, Pat and Jen, Hiccup and Camicazi... they get to be the characters and feel what being them is like, and wonder what if...?

As they get older I might get them into real "roleplaying games". For decades now people (well, nerds) have played games with paper and dice, and rules that standardise the beasts, powers, tools and threats, and the physical and magic laws of fantasy worlds in which they co-create stories together. Whether that's Dungeons and Dragons, or Vampire: The Masquerade, or pop culture spin offs like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, grown ups often need these rule systems because.. they are basically competitive. You can't have a struggle without something to fight against, whether that's quests, or your co-story makers, or the world officiated by your Game Master. Conflict is the essence of  drama.

For Christmas we got the family a copy of the game King of Tokyo. It's a relatively simple strategy game (that isn't completely random) aimed at 8+ age group. It's a cool game. With parents helping, my 7 and nearly 5 year old really love to play it, but they really need the assistance of a mediator. One of the things about my kids is that they are very close to the now. If playing short multiplayer video games like Pikmin 3 Bingo Battle has taught us anything, it's that, retrying a game over and over may give us the chance to win every now and then, but at the moment losing is huge. Losing against a game is one thing, but losing to a person is a tragedy, especially if the small person in question becomes a gloating maniac in their supreme domination of their competitors. As a child I hated competitive games, because I hated hurting other people's feelings when I won and they lost, and I hated losing, probably more than most people could understand.

I was lamenting on social media, the screaming rage of siblings desperate to play boardgames but unable to cope with it, and a friend of mine suggested getting board games that were collaborative rather than competitive ones. She sent me a couple, which was utterly awesome! Again, community is all about supporting each other like this, and as I have made friends on the internet over the years one of the bests things has been "paying it forward" and sending gifts to people. It's also lovely to receive.

I showed the games to my two older children and I noticed a few things happened.  The boys were only interested in playing Kakapo Rescue, because it was familiar subject matter to them. They knew what a Kakapo was, and the idea of the game was pretty easy to get across. They were really engaged with it and excited. They liked handling all the little pieces. They came up with strategies, and they were happy to follow my lead. They wanted to go again once the game was finished.

Unfortunately, for all the early enthusiasm, the game got boring quickly. When it got boring my older child decided to try making up variant rules to see how that would change the gameplay. This got me really excited. This guy is normally reactive to things rather than an instigator, so it's cool to see him pushing to play with new ideas and try new things. It has taken us years of working together to get to the point where he is prepared to take risks.

But since then they haven't got the game out again. It seems that there is just not enough appeal. I think their collaboration works better when there is an intrinsic reward, such as the excitement of a good story, understanding new ideas, solving problems or making good food. I wonder if they have already learned that board games are a competitive context and having a board game be non-competitive is weird. Or maybe, it would have caught their attention more if they were trying to survive a dragon attack or the zombie apocalypse....

Our Sundial

Yesterday A. was keen to explore his fascination with measuring time when I suggested that maybe we could make our own sundial. Thankfully the weather was on our side and we got all day sun, which is just more evidence of the fact that we are enjoying an early spring.

A.:  "We actually made a thing that goes around and around - a sundial.

We saw what the time was and we left a heater there so we could draw around the shadow with chalk.

We put the number of the hour with I and X so you could see what the time was. Next day I stood in the circle and I could see what time it was from where my shadow was.

Right now I can't seem to find my shadow so I can't do it."

It's really cool that he gets the ability to explore the features and limitations of his experiments. He knows that the clock on the computer works with electricity. We have little discussions about this and he knows that there is a battery inside the computer so that the computer can remember what date and time it is. One of our friends has a computer with a flat battery so the computer can't remember what date or time it is.

M. was keen to be hanging out with her family. She liked the idea of playing with chalk and also likes standing up next to the heater that we were using as a gnomon.

I like being in a community where our play can spill out onto the curb and it is refreshing to not need to gate my children in, though the property manager did suggest I bring it up with the landlord. I have worked with the boys since they were smaller than their sister so that they know to look out for cars, and not cross driveways where cars might be pulling out. In some ways it's easier to "baby proof" the babies than to try and make their play environment safe. It just means that you have to be present, and include them in the decision making process, make them aware of possible consequences,  rather than making unilateral decisions about their safety. They don't have full planning skills from a young age and have very little understanding of consequences, but the more they are involved in their own planning the better they get over time. The last thing I want is 9 year olds who can't cross the street unless I am there to hold their hands.

There are lots of things that go straight over A.'s head, but I see no reason to not mention them. We used Roman numerals for our sundial and he had not encountered them before. He may not know how it all works but it will look familiar to him next time he sees them on a fancy watch or clock, or in an Asterix comic or something. I can never plan for where he is going to encounter these things, but the more he gets shown the more chance he has of seeing connections between things, and I learnt when he was very small, that if things are familiar then they are "cool".

Settling in a new town

Community BBQ and decorating discussion :)

Networking with others and being part of family and the wider community has always been something that is important to me. Before I had children I was living in a flat in the same neighbourhood as where I grew up. I like to know who I am living near, so it was really nice when we moved into our new flat in Palmerston North and found an information pack for new residents including the names of neighbourhood community organisers and a how-to on building compost heaps. The boys and I took great joy in constructing our own compost bin soon after, helping to count, match and hand-tighten nuts and bolts, hiding inside the empty bin, and foraging for dry leaves and sticks to form a base for our compost pile.

We had been here a couple of days when the next door neighbour came over to introduce herself. I'd have ventured out earlier but my husband had come down with hand, foot and mouth and we weren't sure of the status of the children. Starting to go out and meet up with people has been put on the back burner since we got here for fear that we might transmit the dreaded lurgy.

The weekend after we arrived we were invited down to the corner for a BBQ and kōrero about a seat that has been built on the outside of the fence down the end of the street. We were invited to contribute ideas about how we should decorate it. The boys had fun climbing on the newly built seat, and A. discussed his ideas for the colour-scheme with neighbours from up the street. S. wanted to have ago at painting, and started to decorate the picnic table before anyone noticed. The paint was cleaned off before it had a chance to dry, and the neighbours were very understanding and saw the funny side of it.

The boys clearly loved being involved. They have often commented that they would like to go to another BBQ and mentioned how much they enjoyed our neighbour's banana loaf. Clearly the quickest way to a child's affections is through the stomach.

We are really looking forward to getting to meet and spend time with more people. Today I had the second request for us to go out and see someone, and now we are past the contagion we can start inviting visitors over. Our first (non-family) visitor is expected tomorrow afternoon!

Cross Post - a note from 2 years ago

I just now stumbled upon an old blog post from another blog I used to write. I wondered if I should copy and share it here and curiously checked the post date, and found today's date. "It HAS to be!" I thought. So a note from the past, posted 2 years ago (to within 15 minutes) 

Stop Picking on my Baby

"Ewww! You smell gross! Stop doing such yucky, stinky poos!!"

Today I asked someone to stop picking on my child. "How would you feel if you were sneered at and hassled because you had done a poo in your clothes, and you couldn't help it?"

Somewhere along the way people seem to have forgotten that when they are talking to a pre-verbal child, they are talking to a person. My 16-month-old child is not oblivious to derision. He understands when someone wrinkles up their nose in sneers of disgust, and he is powerless to do anything about it. But I'm not.

If there's one thing that has influenced my choice of preferred authors on parenting, it's my preconception that babies are people too. Authors such as Barbara Coloroso, Louise Porter, Alfie Kohn, Thomas Gordon... they are all quick to point out that relationships we form with our children are the real persuasive power that we have in their lives. They want to do as those around them do, and the only way they are going to learn how to treat others is by our example.

I once heard, anecdotally, that Japanese parents treat their baby as though they are a guest. Whether this is true or not is neither here nor there, but I liked the idea. A guest is assumed to be ignorant of local custom, is provided for, and is gently instructed how best to get on with others. They are treated with respect. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to pass this memo on to parents who talk over their children's heads, or say mean things to their little ones assuming that the child doesn't know what it means. Just because your baby can't speak doesn't mean they can't comprehend what you are saying, or what your body language is conveying.

Okay, so nobody is going to say it's bad parenting to pick up a child and say "you smell bad, darling... time for a change"... then again, if they are anti-nappies/diapers they might, but I digress... my point is that some parents and family members are not sharing a joke with their kids, they are making a joke at the child's expense. They seem to have forgotten one of the cardinal rules of play;

"It's not a good game unless everyone is enjoying it."

We teach this to 4-year-olds but somewhere along the way some people fail to engage empathy when dealing with kids. They lie to children to play tricks on them, they mock them in front of others, they laugh at them for not knowing or not being able to do things that they have no experience at. In schools this is called bullying, but it's the normal way to parent in many families.

A boy I once knew, aged about 7, was brought by his father to meet up with some people. They were all going to have PIZZA! He was overjoyed at being invited along to such a special dinner, and with his father's friends too! He walked in the door and was told "Sorry. You have to go home. You are too late. We already had the pizza without you." I remember the look of shock, disappointment, confusion and hurt in a child's face when others said "no no no....". He was feeling completely lost in an adult social situation with grown ups laughing at him ("you should have seen his face!! *haw haw haw*).

I have been criticised for being thin skinned. I don't like to use sarcasm or mean humour because I find it distasteful. I know that some parents jibe their children because they see it as important life learning. They think it is important for children to learn that this sort of thing is inconsequential. Learn to get over yourself. Man up. I'm okay with parents making decisions like this consciously, but in my perfect world, carers for our next generation ought to be reflective and thoughtful about the decisions they make, and too many people bully their kids not because they are making a mindful choice, but because they can, and it makes them feel powerful.

For now, the goal that I have decided on is that I will be truthful with my children. I will be kind and empathic with my children. I will be reliable and I will be fair and I will not beat them down with words. I will not always succeed in this. Everyone gets tired, or angry, or exasperated at times, but our aspirations are what keeps us improving, and in those quiet moments? My children are not "icky"... they just need my care.

Repaintable Rocks

 I have recently really embraced the mess that is painting. It was always something that I flinched at, but has become a lot more manageable now that I plan for the mess rather than trying to avoid it. Today we had a lovely sunny morning with practically no wind, so I cracked out the old "painting" shirts, threw down my long since defunct queen sized sheet that passes as a fantastic drop-cloth, and let the kids go mad with paint. It does help that the paint is water based, and washes off - in fact, that's part of the plan.

A couple of months ago the kids helped me paint a large rock with pink, all-weather, multi-finish house paint. The result? A rock that is always painted... even when the rain washes off the most recent decorations. S. was fascinated when he painted on our large pink rock with water based paint, and found that all the paint had come off in the rain overnight, prompting him to redecorate it all over again. To follow up on the theme of rocks that stay decorated, that can be used as great garden decorations, I recently took the children to the paint shop in Johnsonville to buy some test-pots in red and black so that I could paint a ladybird on a rock. We decided to take it for a test-drive today.

Egg cartons make great palettes. You can put a pile of paint into the different cups, and they can either be mixed together in the cups, or you can use the lid as a mixing tray. Today we had division of responsibility because all A. really wanted to do was mix colours, so his little brother did the actual painting, and he just made the colours look cool. Division of tasks is the best way I have found yet, to make sure there isn't competition over resources. When they are working side-by-side and on those few times where they can agree to who is doing what, it makes for only a few little conflicts, rather than the zillionth iteration of World War 3. My five-year-old is finally beginning to get sophisticated enough in his persuasion of his little brother that he doesn't create more conflicts than he solves.

A: "Mummy, look - purple and seafoam green!"

I've found the key to embracing painting for little kids is to focus on the process rather than the product. Whenever I unpack that thought I am taken back to the day I was naming and dating paintings at Playcentre and I asked S. what one of his pictures was. "It a painting!" he explained. Of course, Silly Mummy. "What is in it?" After assessing which painting it was, he explained "I mix with white!" This leaves me with the impression that small children aren't trying to represent things. They haven't assumed that a painting is "supposed to be" anything. That's a cultural assumption that they haven't been bogged down by yet. Freed from that presumption, they are open to playing with tools, texture, methods of getting colour or shade on things, mixing different media, asking questions, doing things impulsively and seeing what happens... "what happens if I use the back of the brush?" or even less sophisticated, "I'll push this.. ooOooh!".

"I'm a hand-print!"

My eldest boy is particularly risk-averse so it was great to see him actually experimenting with mixing colours today. He seems to like predicting what the colours will turn out like before he combines them but doesn't like to share his predictions in case he is wrong. He gets very invested in the outcome and if anyone gets in the way of his product he gets very upset. Thankfully he was over today's activity before his brother decided to combine all the colours and paint his hands so that he could make handprints all over the back step. Again I am thankful for the paints being water based because he decided to decorate the house too. A. asked if we could paint the house some time, and I said no, because it's not our house. Maybe when we get our own place he can paint his own room... or at least chose the colours. The temptation to paint blackboarding on the walls is pretty strong.

Smiley face and manawa (heart) by Mummy.

If I want a project to look awesome, I make it my own project so I won't feel let down if the kids "ruin" it. That's why I painted the ladybird by myself. I find that life becomes a whole lot more sane if I find a half a second for myself in amongst all the time I spend on my kids. Thankfully I'm the sort of person who delights in little things I can call my own. Today was Mothers' Day - a day that is supposedly a special day for me. Realistically, it's another Hallmark Holiday designed to throw a cloud of warm fuzzy feelings on the "Buy Things Machine" so we don't notice the guilt and coercion of consumer industry. Thankfully, all it was to me today, was breakfast in bed, courtesy of a husband who loves me, some warm snuggly hugs with my kids, and a chance to spend time at home with my family, doing what we do. Happy Mothers' Day!

Muffins!

Today I asked the kids what they wanted to do. My eldest son can not cope with self regulating his computer time.. in fact it stops all his self regulation at all and he becomes a lethargic, emotionally volatile, incontinent mess. So, after having ruled out playing on the computer, A. decided he wanted to bake some muffins.

I love baking with my kids because it's such a rich experience. Not only does it make them aware of how their food is made and where it comes from, but there are a pile of skills, from measuring and estimating, right through to the theory of how foods work together. Today we had a couple of challenges; cooking food the whole family can eat means making wheat-free / dairy-free / egg-free, and the regular recipe we use contained bananas, which we didn't have.

A. demonstrates the viscosity of gelled chia.
"It was really jelly-like, and it was fun!"

One of the ingredients that works well for us (for gluten-free, egg-free baking,) as a solidifying agent, that helps keep the muffin mixture moist, while at the same time helping it bind together, is chia seeds. The cool thing about chia seeds is that they are "mucilaginous".. or gooey when they get wet. We did an experiment today where we put some chia seeds in some water and it only takes a minute or two for them to turn into a jelly that is so gooey that you can hold the container upside down. A. Thought this was hilarious, and let's face it, chia is pretty cool.

We had to figure out what to replace banana with and A. decided it had to be something wet, squishy and sweet so he picked kiwifruit. I knew that this is a lot more acidic than banana so I added a pinch of baking soda to the mixture to cut the acidity a bit. He cut them in half and I peeled them and we popped them all in the blender with some freshly ground chia. We wanted oats, but we needed them to be moist so we soaked them. A:"this smells just like porridge."

I told him the measurements for the dry ingredients which he measured in and mixed to get out all the lumps. He preheated the oven to 180°C before combining the wet and dry ingredients and spooning them out into muffin trays.  He decided we should add chocolate chips and had to taste test a few just in case ("chef's privilege!"). He decided it would be a good idea to save at least one for Daddy when they were cooked because Daddy was at work. After we had made them Daddy called from work and asked if he could have 3 so we put them aside so that they wouldn't be devoured by ravenous children (and Mummy).

These sorts of opportunities are fantastic for my eldest, when we can get one-on-one time. This can be problematic because I have two other children also in my care. Luckily, one is very young and so she sleeps a lot, and the other is very good at entertaining himself, but today I learned the hard way that giving the more self sufficient child his turn on the computer while we bake is not the best strategy for keeping the older one interested in the activity. If there is a computer on in the house he NEEDS to be involved, which doesn't encourage him to enjoy what he's doing, but rather to frame an otherwise fun activity (that he requested!) as a distraction from the flashy lights in the other room. Not something I hope to repeat.

I wish I could have a muffin now... but they're all gone.

Plaster and Paint

My children are super lucky that we have friends and family who buy them things that we, as parents, might flinch from. For example, consider the logistical nightmare of organising painting for two boys on a rainy day... but it's well worth the effort. A. got a craft set for his birthday from his Grandma S. - to make a plaster car and paint it. I am super lucky that I have an involved husband who likes spending time with his boys. The first day involved making the plaster and there was enough left in the pack to make another car, but no other mold, so I had a hunt in the cupboards for some sort of kitchen mold and found silicone gingerman baking molds, so we used the leftover plaster to make S. a gingerbread man to decorate.

A day later the plaster was ready to paint. After  cleaning off the kitchen table and covering it in cardboard and newsprint, setting up a drop-cloth on the dining room floor, and dressing the children in "painting shirts" (some of my old clothes) they were ready to go. This all just shows how far my children have come. Now he is 5, A. is finally at the stage where he can sometimes defer gratification. He is focused on the product of his work and wants grand results. I was very worried that he was going to get upset if his car didn't turn out like the picture on the box so I was careful to try and help him frame his results so that he wouldn't feel let down. "The picture on the box is just one suggestion... you can do it however you want, really funny, or really cool, or even something like Vanellope's kart in Wreck-It Ralph! What matters is that it's all yours and you can do it how you want."

The boys had a great time under their father's close supervision, which was quite necessary as S. needs to be reminded to clean his brushes between colours to avoid huge blow ups when sharing paints with his brother. A., however was keen to let his paints dry between coats so that the colours would not all mix together. S. liked to mix the colours and started with black and added green and red and purple. It took two sessions on different days to finish the looks and only a little bit of help from Mum and Dad. The boys were very keen to make their projects look special so they insisted on adding glitter!

Projects like this are great for A. because they get him using his fine motor skills. He loves to decorate and customise but likes to have a clear idea of what he is creating, so it's a great way to get him used to making mistakes and not worrying about things being just-so. If he has unrealistic expectations he can be a perfectionist and can be so daunted by things that he doesn't try. Having Dad home to interact with is always a plus too. This month Dad is on late shifts so he often doesn't get home until the boys are ready for bed, so they have been having a hard time coming to grips with not having him home much of the time.

Having positive experiences like this let both the boys and me know that painting is not so difficult and it is rewarding for all of us.

Naming the Fish

On Tuesday I took the children to the after hours clinic so that A. could have his collar bone checked. While we were in the waiting room th boys were checking out the fish tank. "Mum come and look at this! I found a plecostomus!" I watched as a little fish suckered onto the glass and huffed it's way up and down searching for algae.

"Ooh! have you found our vaccum-cleaner fish?" said the receptionist as she came over to talk to us.
"It's a plecostomus..."
She rolled her eyes. "Or a whatever it is you just said..." she laughed. "I'd love one of those to clean up my place!" she joked with the kids.
The other receptionist came over to us "Are you naming MY fish?" she smiled.
"I was just showing the kids your plecostomus..."
"uh, Plick...?"
"For short" joked the other woman.
"Pleco, for short." I smiled.

I know that a lot of people don't think it's relevant or worth their time to learn about the world around them. Perhaps the names of fish is a "waste of time" to learn. Unless you are talking to people with an interest in fish you don't really need to have specific names.. you can always say "the brown one"... or "the one with the frilly tail". The problem comes when people get scared of things with big names.

One of my hopes for my kids, is that they will want to find out about things because they are curious. I don't want them to be turned off finding something out just because they encounter a big word. Big words are not difficult or scary, yet plenty of people hide them from children fearing that it is "over their heads".

Newsflash; EVERYTHING is over a baby's head. These are all things that people become familiar with through time and experience. To a small child every phrase is just a pile of syllables. People shorten words like "hippopotamus" and yet never hide words like"library", or "refrigerator". Many phrases that little children are familiar with are like giant words to them - "justaminute!" has no component parts to a small person. It's just a collection of sounds strung together. And yet by the time we are adults we freak out at words we don't know.. alien ideas... the domain of "weird", "difficult", and an indicator of "I can't".

When I was growing up my family loved words - my grandfather in particular. He liked the way they felt to say, and he collected knowledge like it was treasure. He liked to know the Latin name for anything you could point to. When I was about 5 years old I found a sea-snail shell and he told me it was a "struthiolaria"!

Struth-io-laria... feels great to say. I was raised in a family where words were a game. They were fun, and challenging and approachable. Something you can do. We had other-language words too. My mother was raised in Fiji. My brother and I we heard common phrases that were just long strings of syllables. Phrases with meanings, but no distinct words. We learned the words later.

And we had adult words, and science words, and our father would break them down for us. "Bicycle" was taken apart and it meant "two" "wheels". Instead of the daunting mess of syllables we had parts of words with their own meanings. When we look at big words, we see the familiar building blocks of meaning. I was reading a book in 2011 and saw the word "ichthyophagus" and thinking back to my "fishy-lizard" ichthyosaurus.. and my "flesh eater" sarcophagus... I pieced together "fish eater". Words are a fun puzzle if you know how to play the game.

I don't expect my children to love language the way that I do, but I don't want them to fear it either. I want them to be able to embrace new things and not put them the "too-hard-basket". So for now, we use language to get our point across. We discuss "micro-organisms" rather than "germs", and "plecostomi" rather than "vacuumcleaner fish" but sometimes we just refer to "icky stuff" or "the sucky one".