IT'S A BOY!

Mr Green Jeans is proud to announce....It's a boy! In spite of the season, in spite of my grumblings, in spite of the snow, his pumpkin plant has flowered. The first flower is a male standing tall and proud, awaiting a neighboring female bud who is taking her own time. The paint brushes are ready...stay tuned.

THE BEST GIFT

A couple of days before Christmas, I went into hyper- aerobic preparation mode. Never did finish shopping, still had lingering reports to type, food to prepare and my home had taken on that college dormitory look. Family would be arriving in on Christmas Eve to stay with us and I felt tempted to put a “closed for renovation” sign on the Inn. I was nowhere close to ready and if I added back the hours that I would normally sleep, there were still not enough to accomplish everything. I had vowed earlier in the season to “let go” of the unimportant things; not to sweat the little stuff, but alas, I was gripped with the reality that too much big stuff had fallen away and that I never seem to get it all together.

The outside of my body worked swiftly and quietly but inside my head there was a raging storm of “to do” lists that kept growing. Cadence sat in the den quietly drawing. I barely recognized that she was involved in her own preparation for the season. I could hear her humming and singing in the background as I did my acrobatic multi-tasking; adding baking soda and salt here, adding to the grocery list there, counting gifts to be sure everyone was covered.

“Mom,” Cadence asked coming into the kitchen, hand held behind her back. “Where can I find a frame?”

I searched my mind to see if frame hunting would fit on my overflowing to-do list but I felt impending rupture in my brain and could not accommodate.

“Sorry honey, I just can’t.”

“Just tell me where and I will get it myself.” she persisted, not one to give up easily.

“Cadence, NO.” I heard myself say in a voice that was less than kind. “You’ll have to just make do for now. Everything is stored away and not easy to get to and I just cannot take time to do that now. I have way to much to do and no help and ….”

“Alright, never mind.” She said, in hopes if avoiding what she recognized as possible mother melt-down. “I’ll make one.”

“Don’t look.” She instructed as she stretched the cord across the counter for the hot glue gun; cardboard cuttings scattered on the counter and floor around her.

I bit my lip, moving to a different section of the to do list, wanting to shriek “Get Out of the Kitchen!” A short time later, she was gone in search of wrapping paper, leaving debris in her wake.

“There. She announced, smile of satisfaction spread smoothly on her face, “I’m putting this under the tree….it’s for you.”

Christmas morning came and Cadence was pulled by her stocking and the new gifts under the tree that Santa left. She dragged her teenage brothers from bed and they worked diligently on round one…the Santa gifts.

We reassembled after wrappings were collected, pastries served, coffee poured and bathrooms visited to the more relaxed part of the morning…family gifts. Cadence was beyond excited for me to open hers first. I removed the neatly wrapped package and I looked at the snowy drawing of the front of our home, snowman smiling and waving. My heart ached a little as I looked at the frame. It was backed with corrugated cardboard and the front mounted with thin strip of the same; four pieces cut exactly to size held together with clear glue adorned with the signature strings of hot glue gun.

I flashed back to the day she made it, feeling guiltily that I did not have a minute to hunt for a frame. I had let go of the wrong “little things” and the frame was like a reminder to me of the real priorities in life. I stared at the picture for a bit, commenting on the details and Cadence smiled the warm smile of giving.

“Wait Mom, you have to read the note.” She said, still wiggling with anticipation. The outside of the wrapping paper held a pocket made of the same paper, carefully taped to the front. I pulled out the note and received my best Christmas present ever.

Although I will never find a frame as perfect as the one she made, the gift of her words will be framed and treasured.

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE

I look at her sitting sleepy-eyed across the table, hair still messed with bedtime; it is eleven in the morning. I love the late night movies and lazy mornings of vacation. Having been awake for several hours and on my third cup of coffee, I buzz with the possibilities and requirements of the day at hand.

“Mom…” she yawns in protest to my impending monologue, “I just woke up.”

“I know and I’ll fix you some breakfast, but I want to talk to you about time. You know how during a busy week with school and homework and sports and play rehearsal we often find ourselves short on time? Sometimes we have to prioritize and look at what we have time for and what has to get done and decide to leave some things for later.” I tell her, moving myself closer so as not to lose her attention and I continue with my time management speech.

“Well, we had twelve whole days off which seemed like a huge chunk of time and we did a lot of putting off.” I tell her, looking straight into her big brown eyes. “First it was Christmas Eve, then Christmas Day, then the day after Christmas and time to relax and enjoy new things, then a play date and before you know it we were into New Year’s Eve. Well, believe it or not, we are down to an ordinary weekend left and there is a lot for both of us to do. I plan to pack up all of the Christmas stuff, but you need to work on finishing that chapter book and writing your review, so, I want you to make a plan for when exactly you are going to get things done in the next two days.”

Cadence’s hand rises like a student in school, “I know this is slightly off the point, but did Jesus have an older sister?” she asks.

I feel my hands slap against both sides of my cheeks in astonishment and close my eyes briefly. Managing this family is no easy task. I bite my lip as Cadence explains that packing up Christmas made her look at the nesting dolls in which the baby reminded her of Jesus. There are four. A mother, a father and one older sibling that is a girl. She just wondered about that....

I have been thinking a lot lately about the difference between convergent and divergent thinking patterns.

My step-father is a brilliant man and Doctor of Education. He had used terms some time ago to describe my first and last born: high creative, divergent thinkers.

I knew that they were creative and thought the term divergent simply meant different. I have learned a great deal since then.

Convergent thinking is an inward process that takes in various pieces of information, compiles and analyzes them and produces an answer or a solution.

It is the most common and natural thought process; the way that most of us learn.

It is predominantly the way schools teach.

Divergent thinking is an outward process whereby a piece of information serves as a stimulus that produces possible solutions to a problem, often stretching into the unknown or less obvious; sort of a springboard that fires ideas outward.

We teach our children in convergent patterns; doling out little bits of known fact or information that they digest and reproduce into a correct answer. Our schools try to take our convergent thinkers beyond their natural skill into a higher level of thinking, stretching their thought process by using their imagination to go outside of the box. Science is a great example with hypothesis and experiment. It is not a natural skill for most and is gently baited and enticed in order to get our children to take risks and push beyond. Programs like “Destination Imagination” use teams of students to problem solve using these types of thinking skills in competition with other schools.

It is a desired skill.

This pattern of thinking is used as enrichment to our convergent teaching.

For the child who owns this pattern, it is a deficit.

The child wired with divergent thinking as the dominant pattern of learning is known to have a “disorder” when in fact, they have a different order.

As teachers dole out pieces of information, which the majority of students collect and digest, it is inevitable that one of these pieces will serve as the stimulus that sets the divergent pattern into gear, firing off ideas or possibilities within the mind and during this array of fireworks, the teacher continues to dole out more pieces of information, missed by the divergent thinker. The result is that they lose pace with the class, often not knowing where they are supposed to be and missing important instruction.

For the adults doling out the information, this is exasperating and the child is called upon again and again to ‘pay attention’; an abstract phrase that to them means they are doing something wrong. They don’t, in fact, know how or why they aren’t “paying attention.” They don’t know what they are doing wrong and quite simply, they aren’t really ‘doing’ anything other than following their natural circuitry.

As parents and teachers, we attempt to “correct” the “problem” with typical strategies of reward and consequence, assuming that they can change this pattern. We assume this thinking pattern is willful.

Reward for success is the most basic of training techniques, successful in teaching even our pets to ‘sit.” Like other children, the DT child wants the reward, but time and time again fails to produce the required behavior. Slowly, they begin to see themselves as inadequate.

Consequences are a part of life and by middle school, not keeping pace results in many negative ones, highlighting the difference between the DT child and their peers; often publicly which over time, erodes their self esteem.

While we accept the wiring and thinking patterns of the convergent structure in our children, encouraging them to stretch beyond, the same treatment is not given to the divergent thinker, who is required, rather than encouraged daily to fight against what naturally occurs, being told they simply “must pay attention” and they must master this other pattern; a tall order for five, eight or ten-year- olds who barely understand the demand. We do not place the demand to self re-wire on the rest of the students.

Einstein knew well these struggles. He did not fit in the box. He failed at school. He failed at his ideas again and again. He persevered, much to our benefit, however not all divergent thinkers are so strong willed.

With my oldest son, striving for rewards proved pointless, mounting evidence to him that he simply was not capable of success. The hard line of consequences built resentment and he took defense in retreat. We continued to fight this battle, sanding his edges to fit this hexagon peg into a round hole. The casualty of this battle was his motivation. He simply gave up trying.

Out of desperation to see my oldest son thrive, I offered rewards, issued consequences and ultimately sought out the medical solution. I believed that if a child couldn’t focus his eyes, I would surely give him glasses and if there was a medical solution that would focus his brain, I owed him the same assistance. In fifth grade we put him on stimulant medication.

I thought at first that we had discovered magic. He was tolerable to the adults around him and the medication surly muted the firing of divergent thought. It toned him down to where he could sit through an assembly at school without bothering anyone and it made him easier to be around.

It also muted the very essence of him; of his creativity and his passion. He was able to methodically perform some rote tasks without the usual disturbance, but motivation did not recover. He did not thrive. He spent six years filling his body with a drug that disguised the wiring of his brain to others, but did not enhance his learning or change his design.

Halfway through his junior year of high school, he refused to take the medication. School for him became a place he had to show up, get by and get out. He immerses himself now in the places that he is brilliant; music and art and my prayer for him is that he finds a future path where those things can take him to success.

My youngest now faces the reality of her design. She, too, is a creative, divergent thinker. Unlike her brother, she is resilient and determined.

She is profoundly self aware.

She is aware of her strengths and weaknesses.

I now have clarity about my job as her mother.

My job is not to offer unattainable rewards or inevitable consequences, but to arm her with the knowledge that she is designed differently than most and to support her in the realization that she will have to work harder.

My job is to make her aware that only some people will get it and even fewer will accept it, but she must strive hard to achieve in spite of this adversity.

My job is to help her discover techniques that compensate for her weakness in the convergent structure of school and encourage her to hold fast to the gifts she has been given.

My job is to teach her that the wiring of her brain was designed by God with a purpose and perhaps that purpose will take some struggling to be realized.

Did Jesus have an older sister? I don’t know.

Is it possible? Certainly.

My faith teaches me that all things are possible with God and it seems He hard-wired that into some little brains. They believe in possibility and if we don’t convince them otherwise...

God only knows where they may lead us.

Thank you Bruce for you understanding and wisdom!

PLANTING THE SEED

I made an arrangment with my family when I first started my blog that I would show them pieces I planned to post before I posted them...only fair as they are the main characters of my life story. I have devieated at bit from this original arrangement, often not sharing the post until it has been posted. Such was the case with Mr.GreenJeans

My husband got quite a chuckle out of the post, but even better, out of the comments. He as been called things before in comments to my stories including my favorite "a boob" but this comment section describes him as "kind-hearted, a gem, a keeper and cool" and oh is he loving it! In fact, the very words have inspired the growth of his pumpkin plant and the little fella is now loaded with flower buds and sprouting its first tendrils.

Yesterday, he moved it to a real pot in a better window. Now he has sprouted baby tomato plants from promising seeds that defied the odds and sprouted within the parent tomato. Please...don't anyone suggest corn!

DIVERGENT AT THE DMV

Sitting with my seventeen-year-old at the Department of Motor Vehicles., I am amused by the thought that this is similar to watching a movie, however instead of watching on a screen, we are thrust into the middle of the scene. A young woman behind me shares loudly with her friend the ‘he said, she said’ drama of her recent break-up by reading the back and forth text messages between she and her estranged boyfriend. It is highly personal and she is highly unaware or indifferent to the fact that we can all hear her.

In front of us in the one hour line is a woman with her teenage daughter, here for the same purpose that we are; to take the written knowledge test for licensing. It is obvious that they are mother and daughter as they resemble one another and they chat quietly making sure they have brought all of the correct documents. They stand together for quite some time until the girl tires of standing and slips out of the line to find a chair to text message. She wears the usual uniform; UGGS and a North Face jacket, flashy new cell phone beneath her polished fingernails. Mom continues to stand, holding her daughter’s place in line. Her purse catches my eye; cranberry colored leather with pockets and buckles with a tear in the leather where the strap attaches to the bag. She is neatly dressed in jeans and a simple jacket, no distinct labels and tired black leather shoes. They had looked so similar these two women until this moment and now the distinction is clear between them; the giver and the taker.

After standing in line for at least one hour, we are shifted over to ‘the chairs’ where we await the calling of names in painfully slow order to step into the back to take the vision and written tests. Our conversations to this point have been few and bizarre. “Did you ever think about what it looks like inside the gas tank of a car?” Tyler asks me. “No.” I answer honestly, shaking my head. “Seriously think about it…” he continues, “Imagine if you could not see inside of a glass but simply put the liquid in and poured it back out when you drank, but could never see what it looked like inside…it would be weird, right?” He asks.

I stare at him for a moment wondering who thinks these things, but I know my answer. He does. Cadence does. Divergent thinkers. But do divergent thinkers pass driving exams? We see a girl emerging from the back with tight lips and frantic eyes that begin to leak failure down her cheeks. “I got six wrong.” she squeaks to her mom, pulling her coat from her mom’s arms and walking head-down toward the door. I think about the fact that Tyler has not once opened the manual for this test. He attended the 30 classroom hours at a driving school and said there was no need to study...he got it. We sit quietly for a while, he texting and I enjoying a baby across the room. I see another girl with the manual in her lap, flipping rapidly through the pages, taking in all that she could in her final preparations. “Did you even get one of those books?” I ask him. He nods. “Shouldn’t you review it?”

“I’m so sick of that book.” he answers without looking up. “We used it in those classes.” The gate opens from the back and a girl who looks younger than sixteen emerges, this one unable to hide her distress. Tears stream down her face and she rushes to her mother, “I failed.” She chokes out between sobs, “he said I didn’t ….” and the rest was lost as she pushed her way to the ladies room where her sobs were even louder. Ten minutes later, her mother followed her in.

“It’s not looking good.” I tell Tyler, “Are you going to cry if you fail?”

“Well yeah…” he answers as if that was a dumb question, “And then I’m heading straight for the Ladies room. Actually,” he continues in a pseudo-serious tone, “I never really pictured myself driving until I was twenty eight.”

“Twenty eight?” I ask him, my eyes wide. “Yeah. See, I don’t really need to drive. Right now I have my friends that drive and the bus and….you,” he shoots a dimpled grin, “and then I’ll go to college. I’ll live across the street from my classrooms so I won’t need to drive. Then when I graduate, I’ll get a job in the city and be able to walk to work. Besides, there are other means of transportation like bikes and skate boards and roller blades… huh…?” He nudges like he’s really onto something. “Think about how great it would be if there were no cars… it would be much better for the environment and everyone could rollerblade. We could replace all of the stop lights with disco balls and just think how much that would save in electricity. Then everyone would just dance at the intersections and there would be no accidents…”

“Tyler.” The officer in back calls. He is short and bald and looks like a Marine drill sergeant. Tyler hops up in his purple jeans, pea coat and converse sneakers; his long blond hair covering one eye and spiked earrings poking through. I have the urge to run behind him to remind him to push the hair out of his eyes on the vision test and not to answer his cell phone during the test but alas…I cannot help him. His world is filled with disco balls and roller blades and perhaps 28 is the right age for him to drive.

In about twenty minutes he emerges and sits next to me; no tears, no ladies room. He explains quietly that you need 20 out of 25 correct and once you hit 20 correct answers, the machine flashes and says “pass.” The ‘pass flash’ came after his 20^th question.

I guess the disco ball intersections will have to wait.