Bathrooms of Faust
Kathryn forgot homework this morning, and her mom made a bargain: she brought the homework, and Kathryn agreed to learn how to clean a bathroom this afternoon. Other bargains of the day: yesterday, Kathryn earned a chocolate bar (a big one) for going a week without putting hair in her mouth; our neighbor watched both of the children while Elizabeth and I went to a parent-teacher conference with Kathryn's main teacher. Thanks, Betty!
posted by Sherman Dorn 4:47 PM
Thursday, March 29, 2001
I will not tell anyone the Dragon Club password.
(Dictated to his dad.)
posted by Vincent Griffith 5:55 PM
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
Rewards for reading? (Diatribe below.)
Vincent received the last of his certificates for a free small pizza from a national chain today, and he and his sister decided to go tonight instead of wait for the weekend (when they could use the "pizza bar" buffet line). This promotion for the chain gives certificates for free pizza to children who either read ten books in a single month or (in the case of kindergarten students) have their parents read them ten books in a month. It's a self-reported list, and Vincent was delighted each month to get his free pizza. (Guess who paid for the other food?) Kathryn received them a few years ago (she says in kindergarten, I think in first grade), and she proudly wore her medallion today.
On the other hand, Accelerated Reader-type rewards for books (including this marketing-tool-disguised-as-doing-good) has the potential for serious side effects. Elizabeth and I know a child who resists reading for her own purposes because reading in school became a game of getting Accelerated Reader points, and she just does not like reading fiction very much. She is certainly willing to read non-fiction books, but she encountered very few at her reading level last year. I do not agree with Alfie Kohn that all rewards are deleterious, but I am highly skeptical of the value of Accelerated Reader. (The quizzes also are incredibly superficial, in my experience.)
posted by Sherman Dorn 8:04 PM
Monday, March 26, 2001
Dear family members of mine,
I wonder if any of you would like to come to Florida to visit me. If you do, call us on the telephone.
Love,
Kathryn
posted by Kathryn Dorn 8:11 PM
Arguing over bathtime
I have a never-attempted modern retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" in my head (I know—Walt Disney got there first, but mine is different) that starts, or would start, "Arguing with a nine-year-old child is humiliating, for the parent." I wrote that in my head long before I had an eight-year-old child, and I was right. I don't have to bathe my eight-year-old, but I do have to bathe my five-year-old, and washing hair has got to be one of my least-favorite activities (below cleaning up after a child's being sick). I don't argue with Vincent over baths, usually, because he showers for the days he doesn't get his hair washed, and he is kind enough to me to cooperate with hair-washing. Correction: He is very kind to me with that cooperation.
I think all of the transplants will survive except the several-year-old penta. Darn; I like pentas. Time to start some cuttings. We're getting a nice butterfly garden out front, though, to add to the big one out back and a small one along a fence. The jasmine vines are in bloom, as are the new feijoas we bought, which turn out to have startlingly vivid red-and-white flowers that are edible. One neighbor's child says it's like cinnamon gum. The raspberry and blackberry canes that are new will be producing some fruit (more on the raspberry than the blackberry this year), as will the small lychee. Kathryn's mango survived the cool winter we had, as did the sugar apple. I think I like perennial fruit gardening better than annual vegetables, because I can ignore them more often.
posted by Sherman Dorn 7:43 PM
Where have all the checklists gone?
The mission was to review the Walker Problem Behavior Checklist from 1983. Since I had just finished reviewing the Leiter Non-Verbal Intelligence Test, which dates from 1952, I saw no reason for concern in the sixteen or seventeen years that had elapsed. The reserve room did not have the test, which doesn't mean much, but Buro's Mental Measurement Yearbook didn't mention it either. The only Walker I could find in that search was the Walker-McConnel Scale of Social Competence and School Adjustment. Well, it seems that test, published in 1988, has gone out of print and Buro's had planned to delete its reviews in 1997. Why could I find the review in 2001? Why do these poor checklists have such a limited life span? Why are cranberries full of pectin?
Elizabeth Margareta Griffith
posted by Elizabeth Margareta Griffith 7:24 PM
Sunday, March 25, 2001
Heading back to school
(Well, for the children)Elizabeth and I have been back at the University of South Florida for a week now, but the Hillsborough County schools had their vacation a week later, so we juggled our schedules last week while Kathryn and Vincent were on break. Tomorrow they return to school—a relief to everyone, which is good news (since it means the children enjoy school).
posted by Sherman Dorn 7:45 PM
