Neighborhood-Kids All Local. All for Kids. All the Time.

So, here’s a way to get your kid’s bedroom cleaned up: let her paint a wall after she cleans it. And we came up with this even before Randy Pausch died on July 25. In case you don’t know, he was a computer-science professer at Carnegie Mellon University with pancreatic cancer who advocated, among other things, letting your kids paint their bedroom walls. I didn't find this out till after he died and after painting the wall. And all at once, the wall feels bigger now than a mere painting project. It feels like a tribute.

Leah was so stoked about the idea, she spent a whole day—and I’m not kidding—going through her stuff and putting it away or sorting it into one of three bags: recycle, toss, give away. Suddenly we could see the floor. And she admitted she actually liked it that way. Till now, she’s always maintained she prefers her room “messy” (read: disaster zone). I'm telling you, Randy (is that too familiar?) must have been onto something with the bedroom painting. 

We went to the paint store and she chose all shades of blue swatches, and when we got home she taped them up on the wall and studied them for a day. She settled on a deep cobalt. “I want to paint polka dots on top,” she said. Polka dots? Right away I was wondering about the work involved, the days of drying time, but she had it all figured out. “We’ll sponge them on. It won’t take long.” Martha Stewart would be proud.

Two days later, her wall was blue. We traced chalk circles around a plate, and we sponged lime green, white, and turquoise polka dots. (The latter two from our basement stash.) After the paint was dry, we wiped off the chalk marks, and she had textured polka dots that remind us of snowballs.

She loves it. It did turn out well, I must say. We made a good team. Me, the work horse, Leah, the visionary. Best of all, she has become room-proud and doesn’t let clutter build up (which, now that I know about Randy, kind of pales as the point).

Ty is inspired and is asking when we can paint his room in polka dots. All the walls, not just one. I’m still waiting for him to start tidying the clutter.  But we may do it anyway just to honor Randy's memory. 

I was informed recently that I am the only mom Ty knows who doesn’t allow her child to play teen-rated computer games (he's eight, for Pete's sake). Teen, huh? Somehow I doubt that, but so be it if it’s true. (He must have known his argument would go nowhere because he hasn’t bothered to broach the subject again.)

I haven’t told him, but I really think we’d be better off with no computer games at all. In this day and age, though, cutting off the compute games is like taking away the telephone—in other words, it’s a fact of life for most families. And unfortunately, I went down that road awhile back, though I’ve drawn the line at video games and the now ubiquitous Wii.

But I’m currently reading Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, a compelling examination of what happens to our children when they don’t get outside enough. And not just outside, but outside in natural settings, the likes of which our urban (and suburban) kids don’t have ready access to anymore. Not because it’s not there—at least in Bellingham—but because we won’t let them go there on their own.

According to Louv, our kids are suffering because of it, both physically and mentally. We all know childhood obesity and diabetes are at an all-time high, but Louv also argues that our kids aren’t doing as well emotionally. Nature, he says, inspires wonder, creativity, and open-ended play. Organized sports aren’t a substitute because, well, they’re organized. And yes, they get kids moving, but only for a prescribed amount of time.

I also just learned about Green Hour, founded by the National Wildlife Federation. Green Hour promotes the idea that we need to get our kids outside for an hour a day, preferably more. I am both heartened and depressed by the concept. Heartened because promoting unstructured outdoor play can only be a good thing. Depressed because I think it’s sad that we have to prescribe it. When I was growing up, being outdoors was just part of my day, and getting from point A to B on my own initiative, whether I walked or biked, was part of being a kid.

But besides being too structured these days, we also live in a culture of fear. We know too much about scary crimes against children, even if they occur five states away. I’ve heard it said that statistically we are no worse off, crime-wise, than we were in the 70s when most of us parents were kids.

And yet while I'd love to let my kids go play alone in a creek, I can't quite let them. I do know too much about toxic waste and I've seen too many homeless camps. But I’m thinking a lot about nature these days and how to get my kids in it more often. Green Hour gives you a list of items to take along to make the most of your time (magnifying glass, bird guide, etc.) and also lists hazards, such as snakes, bugs, and heat, to prepare for, depending on where you live. Personally, I don’t plan to give it too much thought. That’s the whole point.
 

So now, rather than try to explain in a delicate way what rape means (The R Word), I have to explain to my 11-year-old why a woman would go to such lengths to fake an assault (here's the latest article in The Bellingham Herald).

This news was the buzz in our house last night, and Leah was deeply perplexed. I went online to read the Herald article, with Leah reading over my shoulder, and then we read it again this morning in the paper. For my part, I feel relieved to know we don’t have a couple of violent guys out there targeting female runners. (Not that women are totally safe now, but at least the threat feels less immediate.)

Leah, however, was not only not relieved (because it was never personal to her in the way it was to me), but she couldn’t reconcile at all why a woman would do this to herself. The questions went on and on. “But how can she still believe she was assaulted if she wasn’t?” “Where did she actually run?” “What did the dogs figure out?” “What kinds of wounds did she actually have, and did she do them to herself?” “Why would you hurt yourself on purpose?”

Most of my replies? “I don’t know. We’ll probably learn more in the days to come.” I did not go into the fact that this happens to women often enough—she does not need to know yet—or that for every woman who fakes it, there are ten who don’t (don’t quote me on that number—I have no idea what the stats are). But we did talk about mental instability and the difference between being mentally disabled and mentally unstable. We talked a little about the possibility of mental illness, but it only perplexed her further—she has no frame of reference for understanding it, and she just couldn't conceive of the power of the mind.

Then came a question I hadn’t considered: “What does her family think?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, it would be terrible for them to get the news that this had happened to their daughter. They would have been really worried, and then to find out she faked it all must have been embarrassing for them. It must have made them mad.”

Huh. Yeah, of course that would have been terrible, and yes, now maybe embarrassing. I hadn’t stopped to consider it from her parents’ perspective.

I’m sure the incident will be all the talk among the fifth graders at school today. I will be curious to hear what other questions come home with Leah.
 

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week about the incident at Squalicum Beach. It’s been on my mind as much as anyone’s because I’m one of those independent types who likes to run alone, and Squalicum Beach happens to be my regular running route. I’ve been running there for thirteen years, in fact, with not a single scary moment to my credit. Of course, I’m not running right now because of my healing ankle, and part of me is relieved. Also angry. For myself. For the doubt I now feel about running alone.

But what’s on my mind even more than my own safety is what this means to my ten-year-old. I have been thinking about this incident with Leah in mind for lots of reasons—her future safety as a woman, her safety now as a child, and whether she worries about assault happening a lot to women. But mostly I’ve been thinking about the R word.

Leah reads the paper every morning, you see. And there was the Herald issue last week with the huge headline announcing the rape, and my first thought after seeing the headline myself was okay, here we go. Partly because of the headline and partly because Leah had told me kids were talking about the incident at school, and right away I could imagine gaggles of girls hovering together, talking about rape and what it is. How some of them might know and others mightn’t and the definitions—inaccurate or accurate—that would fly. Bottom line: I want to be the person who tells my daughter what rape means. Every mom I know feels this way.

When Ty disappears upstairs to get dressed, I ask Leah if she’s read the paper.

“Yes.”

“Did you see the headline about the woman running at Squalicum?”

“Yeah.”

“That she was raped?”

“Yeah.” And then, “What does that mean, anyway?”

Right there, I feel a hitch in my motherly goal to share my explanation. She doesn’t know what it means. Maybe she doesn’t need to know. But then the thought of those ten-year-old discussions at school remind me of why I had decided to have this conversation.

But I keep it simple: “It’s when someone forces you to have sex against your will.” I know I’m not conveying in that explanation the issues of violence or power or that it’s really not sex at all, but it’s all I can think of as an explanation for the mechanics of rape. I wait to see if she reacts or asks more questions.

“Oh.”

Huh. Okay, I guess that’s all she needs. I weigh in that moment whether I should go farther, but I decide not to, reminded once again that kids let us know what they need to know. Her response is an indicator of what she needs in this moment. Not much. When she needs to understand this idea, this word on a deeper level, when she grows old enough to understand the act behind it for what it is, old enough to learn to fear it, she will seek deeper meaning. I wish she didn’t need to know. 

Several days later…

I ask Leah if kids are still talking about Squalicum Beach at school. “Oh no,” Leah says, “No one’s talking about that anymore.”