(no subject)
Today I brought Asher to my tennish-year Reed reunion, because, hey, I had to bring him somewhere.
While we were there he had me explain two concepts: some schools let people live at them, but only the students, which led him to declare in favor of a preschool that would let him and his parents and his friends and their parents all take up residency, which petition I referred back to his mom as a likely supporter; and college is a school for grownups.
As usual, his interrogation got me trying to reply with a worldview's worth of well-reasoned sociological critique, then laughing my way out for lack of any actual knowledge. There's no therapist better than a three-year-old for asking open-ended questions uncritically until you've got access to your whole complex take on something. He'll say "Why? Why? Why?" until we reach equilibrium at my answering "Yeah, seriously!" On questions of culture, we get there pretty fast, and it's a lucky thing for the kid: when he asked me why putting water on his arms helped cool him off, he wound up looking around at the air all wild-eyed, trying to see substances that his senses aren't built to perceive and which wouldn't stand out anyway because they're just what the perfectly normal world was always made of ALL ALONG -- which might be a bad habit in a mind that panics over the more suspenseful pages of Thomas the Tank Engine stories. On questions accessible to physical science I figure I can help him build some developmentally appropriate self-soothing mechanisms in the forms of logical positivism and 19th-century tech, but I don't plan to go there in the cultural realm: his current most pressing social question is "Why can't I take off my pants and underwear in public", and his parents and I are trying to stop him from answering that one by direct experiment and observation, at least for now.
Then we went and hid in the canyon alone together. We played at relocating snails and trying to catch water striders on the floating leaves of plucked jewelweed. We played for a long time. We took turns distracting each other with delights, so that by the time we walked his little bike up to broad public campus daylight and had him piss in some semi-secluded bushes by the Sports Center it was time to be back on the city bus already.
We raced across campus as quickly as we could, and he bikes at my running speed now, but it still wasn't quick: more delights. Construction equipment! Walls built for writing on in Sharpie! Posts that wiggle in the ground! Grass! Okay, Asher, one more thing, here, I'm texting your mom that we're late, okay: look at this. Oh, you'd rather look at that? Well, oh! Look at that!
People were obstacles and sources of compliments, by turns.
We passed the psych building and Asher asked what it was for. "That's where students at this school go to study how minds work," I told him.
"I already know all about minds," he told me. "I learned about them in preschool. Preschool is a college for kids."
"What did you learn about minds in preschool?"
"We learned to look inside our minds. Here, look inside my mind!"
"I can't. What did you see inside your mind?"
His voice took on a guru's cadence. "A great spinning ball of fire!"
This kid is having a particular style of life. If you ask what I'm doing these days, I won't mention it because it's been a constant for almost four years, but I ought to tell you: helping give a particular kid a particular style of life.
We didn't talk much with anyone else, though, so nobody asked. I'm reprieved until tomorrow.
While we were there he had me explain two concepts: some schools let people live at them, but only the students, which led him to declare in favor of a preschool that would let him and his parents and his friends and their parents all take up residency, which petition I referred back to his mom as a likely supporter; and college is a school for grownups.
As usual, his interrogation got me trying to reply with a worldview's worth of well-reasoned sociological critique, then laughing my way out for lack of any actual knowledge. There's no therapist better than a three-year-old for asking open-ended questions uncritically until you've got access to your whole complex take on something. He'll say "Why? Why? Why?" until we reach equilibrium at my answering "Yeah, seriously!" On questions of culture, we get there pretty fast, and it's a lucky thing for the kid: when he asked me why putting water on his arms helped cool him off, he wound up looking around at the air all wild-eyed, trying to see substances that his senses aren't built to perceive and which wouldn't stand out anyway because they're just what the perfectly normal world was always made of ALL ALONG -- which might be a bad habit in a mind that panics over the more suspenseful pages of Thomas the Tank Engine stories. On questions accessible to physical science I figure I can help him build some developmentally appropriate self-soothing mechanisms in the forms of logical positivism and 19th-century tech, but I don't plan to go there in the cultural realm: his current most pressing social question is "Why can't I take off my pants and underwear in public", and his parents and I are trying to stop him from answering that one by direct experiment and observation, at least for now.
Then we went and hid in the canyon alone together. We played at relocating snails and trying to catch water striders on the floating leaves of plucked jewelweed. We played for a long time. We took turns distracting each other with delights, so that by the time we walked his little bike up to broad public campus daylight and had him piss in some semi-secluded bushes by the Sports Center it was time to be back on the city bus already.
We raced across campus as quickly as we could, and he bikes at my running speed now, but it still wasn't quick: more delights. Construction equipment! Walls built for writing on in Sharpie! Posts that wiggle in the ground! Grass! Okay, Asher, one more thing, here, I'm texting your mom that we're late, okay: look at this. Oh, you'd rather look at that? Well, oh! Look at that!
People were obstacles and sources of compliments, by turns.
We passed the psych building and Asher asked what it was for. "That's where students at this school go to study how minds work," I told him.
"I already know all about minds," he told me. "I learned about them in preschool. Preschool is a college for kids."
"What did you learn about minds in preschool?"
"We learned to look inside our minds. Here, look inside my mind!"
"I can't. What did you see inside your mind?"
His voice took on a guru's cadence. "A great spinning ball of fire!"
This kid is having a particular style of life. If you ask what I'm doing these days, I won't mention it because it's been a constant for almost four years, but I ought to tell you: helping give a particular kid a particular style of life.
We didn't talk much with anyone else, though, so nobody asked. I'm reprieved until tomorrow.