A sigh of relief
Aug 28, 2003 Homeschooling
Noah’s reading is finally coming along. Some of my readers may recall that Noah’s reading (or lack thereof) was really worrying me. Doing some research on the developmental range of readers helped as did talking to other parents.
I remember when Noah was 9 months old and really not interested in solids. He also started walking when he was 8.5 months old and all of that busy mobilization slowed his weight gain. His pediatrician was concerned that Noah was falling off his growth curve early and basically got me panicking. I spent two frantic weeks trying to get a baby totally focused on walking to sit and eat food he didn’t want. I bought new foods, steamed them carefully, tried to make them enticing and cried when he wouldn’t eat them. Then I got online to find out what other moms of “picky” eaters were trying. You know what I found out? Lots of 9 month olds don’t eat. Really. Tons of ‘em. If that many babies weren’t eating, I figured, it must be normal and so I quit worrying. That’s how I came to feel about reading.
On Noah’s t-ball team (5 to nearly 7-year old boys) there is a range of reading but most of them aren’t reading much if at all. Parents react in different ways — some get their kids tested, some sign them up for special summer programs, some shrug and say they aren’t that concerned. I think that the ones with 5-year olds in tutoring programs are worried prematurely but then if I didn’t have the luxury of working without a state-mandated curriculum, maybe I would be sending Noah to classes, too. In any case the way I see it is that if the majority of boys Noah’s age aren’t reading or aren’t reading much, then it must not be a very big deal. In fact, it must be normal.
Still it’s a lovely thing to see him reading. He’s also trying to spell words that he hears. He’ll sound them out under his breath, trying to figure out how they might be written.
I need to remember this. I need to really keep a hold of this lesson: Noah will do the things that he needs to do but in his own time. He’s smart and he’s focused but he’s also fiercely independent. If I leave him be, provide lots of opportunity, and keep his environment rich with quality tools, he’ll be fine.
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Tags: Noah
Noah said:
Aug 27, 2003 Parenting
“When I’m a 101 I’m going to say to you [and here he dons a screechy old lady voice], ‘You young whippersnapper! You didn’t let me watch tv!’”
He’s arguing with me because he wants me to let him watch television right now at 9:30pm instead of tucking him into bed and reading him the next chapter in our book.
“Mommy,” he says in his normal voice. “Actually when I’m 101, are you going to be dead? Probably, huh?”
He doesn’t seem too broken up by this. Probably it’s just too cheery envisioning a future when I won’t be standing in the way of all of that tv.
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Tags: Noah
Blogging
Aug 27, 2003 Writing
On the very small insecure-writers list (find the button to join in the right hand column there), we’ve been talking about blogging and what a help it can be for a writer. How ironic, then, that hot on the heels of my enthusiastic emails supporting blogging that I’m feeling a bit burned out on it right now.
A big chunk of my malaise has to do with realizing (yet again) that you all are real people reading this. I forget that a lot of the time and that makes it much easier to babble on here or there.
Well, I’ll muddle through. Eventually I’ll land back in audience-denial. I always do.
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Why I love blogging
Aug 26, 2003 Writing
Because I get to “meet” commentators and go visit their blogs, which are often useful, entertaining and inspiring. Check out this one: Meditations on Life And Writing. I’ll be spending a bit of time there, I think.
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Storytelling
Aug 25, 2003 Writing
We went and saw Seabiscuit yesterday; it was very good. The acting was absolutely wonderful.
It got me thinking about narrative. I’m having trouble organizing my chapter outline for the proposal. The outline isn’t set in stone and it’s very likely to change under the guidance of an editor but I need to hammer it out as best I can to make clear what exactly I’m going to be trying to do in this book.
I want it to be about infertility the way Seabiscuit was about horse racing: not so much.
Bear with me here; I’m trying to work this out.
I’ve got some hurdles to get over, the biggest being that infertility books generally don’t appeal to non-infertile people. I am working on how to make the topic (crisis) universal. Everyone has life crises; mine happened to be infertility. The story is not that I couldn’t have another baby, it’s what I did when that happened.
It’s also hard not to make it sound like one big whine. Listen, I felt pretty whiny at my lowest but people don’t want to listen to whining. In my experience, a lot of people find it very difficult to be supportive when someone is trying (and failing) to have a baby; why would they want to read a book about it when they can’t do more than give a sympathetic shrug in real life? You know and I know that the inability to have a baby is life-shattering and people know it in theory, but confront them with pain and some of them say, “Well, be grateful for what you do have.”
I have to overcome that attidue in the book.
Most infertility memoirs I’ve read tell the story from diagnosis to baby, making the getting of the baby the crux of the story. I don’t want my book to be about that because it turns out that the baby was not the point. The baby, it turns out, was separate from the journey to get the baby.
The other thing is that we didn’t get very far into treatment. The heavier treatments (IVF) open up a whole new world of storytelling possibilities. Medicine is interesting for one and infertility medicine creates a host of topics that go beyond the actual process. The decisions that people make when they’re using reproductive technology are fascinating and when the story is told right, you get a glimpse into a world of ethical and moral values that is enlightening and thought provoking. What people will do to get a baby is heroic, really. Me, I didn’t get past clomid and an IUI so I don’t have much to say about that, leaving me with a pretty ho-hum medical story. May as well get the focus off of that entirely.
Anyway, I’m trying to tell a story with infertility as the vehicle to tell it and I’m trying to figure out exactly what story I’m telling and how to tell it without letting the infertility overwhelm it. I’m getting closer, I think. Brett listened to me ramble yesterday and he thinks I’m getting a bit closer, too.
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Tags: Brett, clomid, Infertility
