Make it from Scratch - Scratch @ MIT 2012

The kids, over the last year and a half or so, have become prolific "Scratchers," members of a growing online community using MIT's Scratch programming platform. My son had learned several other programming languages before a recommendation for Scratch had been passed my way. So, when he became interested in what looked to me to be a dumbed down version of much more complicated programming he was already doing, I was a little nervous.

Why was I nervous? I think that person in me with eighteen years of formal education was concerned that he would lose skills he had gained using something so simple. It seemed akin to building things with Duplo when one had been building complicated robots with Lego Technic.

He would quickly show me that I was absolutely wrong.

Not only did he continue to work on projects in C#, JavaScript, and other languages, he figured out to do some pretty powerful stuff using Scratch. He created a game which can be downloaded onto two computers using the Mesh functionality, which allows playing over a network, so it even includes the ability to chat. He's experimented with both physics and math simulations, as well. He was inspired by other users to created his own operating system using Scratch, which he called OllieOS. He even embedded it in his website (although it's still under construction, he tells me).

Not having to worry about semicolons and right parentheses freed him up to really tinker.

In the process of all that tinkering, he came up with a list of things he would improve in Scratch. So, I asked Monika if she knew anyone on the Scratch Team, and she got us hooked up with Karen Brennan. We did an interview on Skype with Karen and another graduate student from Harvard, Mylo. It was less of an interview and more of a one-hour Scratch geek out. My son and daughter had so much fun, and ever since then, the Scratch Team has been elevated to celebrity status in my kids' minds (my husband joked that Karen Brennan is my daughter's Justin Bieber). Just a few months later, we had the opportunity to see Karen speak at a Donnell-Kay educational discussion, "What Matters and What Counts in Education" held at the Denver Botanical Gardens.

So, when Karen recommended we attend the Scratch @ MIT 2012 Conference, we immediately knew what we would be doing in July. This conference was designed for educators, but did have a handful of kids in attendance. It was really the perfect conference for someone who is trying to change education, surreptitiously or not. And I say that because all around me were the people in the trenches; I could feel the awkward adolescent nature of this revolution. There were plenty of discouraging things happening, alongside plenty of inspiring ones. There were over 400 attendees from 31 different countries.

Here are quite a few highlights from the conference:

• My daughter and I attended the "Physical-Digital Chain Reaction: WeDo and Scratch" session, where during the course of three hours, we created a giant Rube Goldberg Machine, which passed a bouncy ball through the physical and virtual space of nine computer stations (computers from all over the world -- our neighbor's computer had entirely Japanese Text). We used the Lego WeDo sensors and motors to interface with Scratch, sensing when we received the bouncy ball from our neighbor on the left, and then passing a ball to our neighbor on the right, after it crossed through the Scratch program on our screens. That's my daughter and I counting to start the machine.

• My husband and son attended the "Diving Deeper With Scratch 2.0" session, which I assume was intended for more advanced users to discuss technical aspects of the upcoming Scratch 2.0 release. Whatever went on in that session got our son really excited to attend college someday. Apparently he asked a lot of intelligent questions, and then got to share some of his hard work with people who could appreciate it! One of the people attending that session was Mariana Ludmila Cortes, the President of One Laptop Per Child in Mexico. It turns out she is a homeschooler, too!

• Karen and Mitch Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT were the first Keynote session. For those of you who are unaware, the Logo programming language and the idea for Lego Mindstorms were born at MIT, under the direction of Seymour Papert. I wish I had taken notes, but if I had, that probably would make my blog post longer than necessary. :) Suffice it to say, everyone was pretty pumped after Karen and Mitch discussed the history of Scratch and how it has made its way into schools around the world, influencing the development of computational thinking in our next generation.

• Joanne Barrett of the Out-of-Door Academy in Sarasota, FL gave a 5-minute Ignite talk entitled "Getting Computer Science into the Curriculum" -- the most important points being that the focus on learning standards is crowding out time for technical education (a theme we would see repeated many times during the conference). I honestly thought I heard her say that Florida was dumping STEM education in 2013-2014, but I can't find any references to that online, only references to the University of Florida axing its Computer Science Department. On a more practical note, she said that getting students to understand the x/y axis was the hardest part of getting them going in Scratch. Here is a little game that shows the concept pretty well.

• Barbara Manchee from Pittsford Sutherland High School in Pittsford, NY discussed promoting self-directed learning in her classroom in her presentation "Creative Thinking thorough Game Design and Multimedia." She said that using an ice-breaker activity helped students to loosen up and feel comfortable exploring. She advocated use of video tutorials and Scratch Cards (see links on her web page).

• In "Design-Based Learning, Computational Thinking, and the MIT Scratch Curriculum Guide" Judy Hoffman, Melissa Nordmann, Russ Clough, and Tyson Spraul discussed their experiences using the newly released Scratch Curriculum Guide. While I tend to avoid using curricula myself, it was clear that the Scratch Ed Team had put a lot of work into developing this 70+ page curriculum guide for use around the world, and that it had been used quite successfully by Judy, Melissa, Russ and Tyson in their classrooms. My impression was that the curriculum fostered creativity and enjoyment, while simultaneously introducing basic programming skills. Each teacher's experience has been preserved on the Scratch Ed website -- just click on the teacher's name above.

• Stephen Howell from Ireland, Nobuko Kishi and Manabu Sugiura from Tsuda College in Japan and Anders Berggren from Sweden wowed us all by demonstrating Scratch's new ability to interact with the Xbox Kinect using the plugin Kinect 2 Scratch that Stephen made for his son. The Japanese team held workshops at their women's university, using pairs of students that created games during the workshop which was several hours long. Here's a tutorial that Stephen put on Vimeo.

• A poster session capped off the first day. These geeks really enjoyed connecting with Wolfgang Slany, Austrian creator of Catroid, a version of Scratch for the Android phone, chatting a bit with Brian Harvey, from UC Berkeley, programmer of "Snap! A Grownup Programming Language Based on Scratch," Alessandro Colombi from Brazil, creator of the PicoBoard Simulator, and peeking over shoulders at Kazuhiro Abe, Tomo Niimura, Koji Yokokawa, Kazunari Ito, and Daisuke Kuramoto's NanoBoardAG, a less expensive alternative to the PicoBoard, which quickly sold out!

• Friday started off with a bang -- the Keynote Speakers were Connie Yowell, Director of Education for U.S. Programs, MacArthur Foundation, and Jan Cuny, Program Officer, National Science Foundation. According to Cuny (referencing the Bureau of Labor Statistics), one half of all STEM jobs in the year 2020 will be in IT, and two thirds of the *new* STEM jobs will be in IT. Cuny believes that pretty much every discipline will require a foundation in computing in the future. Currently, only 19% of students take an academic computing class in high school. About 20,000 high school students take the Computer Science AP Exam each year, compared with 240,000 who take the Calculus Exam. Most schools have something called "Computer Science" in their coursework, but in most schools, it is not programming, it is keyboarding or word processing. Most of the funding for STEM classes is targeted at middle and high school grades, but kids have usually chosen a technical field by the time they are in 8th grade, so in that sense, the educational system is missing the ball. Well, that's just the beginning of a very interesting talk which delved into the topic of Badges, as well.

• A resourceful team of people from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, Margaret Low, Philip How, John Rendall, and Marie Low, gave a great presentation called "Sensing Our World." There was a huge turnout, and only an hour of time, but in that hour, we learned how to use the PicoBoard along with an index card and pencil to make a slider control in Scratch. Other controllers made from household materials are listed on their website. An important concept discussed in this session, as well as in the poster presentations is that touching the real world with programming makes it more enticing to new learners. There is something magical about interfacing with reality; perhaps that is why robotics programs have become so popular, with computer science lagging behind. But, the really profound thing about this group of individuals was the approach they have taken. They have set up a network of volunteers that go into schools in their area, and create these educational opportunities for the students there. Really, they just barge into the school and ask them for a time when they can use the computer lab, educate the teachers about these things, etc. I found it very inspiring -- rather than resting on their laurels, lamenting the fact these skills are being overlooked in the schools, they are providing the opportunities for the kids who may want them in after school programs. It's a lot like what Ken and Liz Rayment are doing in Loveland, CO with their non-profit company, Action-Works, which has brought robotics to all but two schools in our district. It's a testament to the power of community.

• I didn't get to attend the session on "Getting into the Digital Music Game with Scratch" run by Jesse Heines and Gena Greher from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, but my informant (Dianne O'Grady-Cuniff from Virginia) said it was also spectacular. All of the resources needed are on the website. But the other interesting tidbit Dianne shared with me is that because of the grant money they acquired, Jesse is able to refund educational expenses for any tech educator who brings along a music teacher to their workshops!

• Saturday morning was a Keynote session I think a lot of people were eagerly awaiting. Several teachers, students, the STEM Coordinator and the Superintendent from Ramapo Central School District in Hillburn, NY presented on their experiences using Scratch in their STEM curriculum. The students shared their projects, including the difficulties and triumphs they encountered while making them, which elicited a lot of delight from the audience. Ramapo's motto is "Educating for Personal Excellence." They had quite the impressive STEM curriculum for their 2nd-4th graders, including multiple units from EiE and NSF for each quarter. Overall, I left this session feeling thankful that kids were getting to experience these sorts of things more than once a week or once a month (as I did in Gifted and Talented special sessions in Elementary School), but still feeling a bit unsettled about it, particularly when one of the teachers displayed her rubric for assessing the students' Scratch projects. I think a lot of my son's projects wouldn't have been given a very good assessment using the litany of requirements contained on her rubric. For one thing, he very rarely uses sprites he draws himself. But I certainly wouldn't place less value on what he has learned through his experimentation with Scratch because of that.

• After that, we attended the Show and Tell session, which was a lot of fun. First, user randalpik shared his very detailed cat and mouse game, Basement Showdown. Then my daughter, puppypaws, showed the wolf drawing tutorial she made. User warriorbunny shared a fish simulation she made. Some Japanese middle school students shared hotsoup's project, which models natural human movement. Japanese users masaishi and kyrie0513 wanted to share a mesh game they had made, but for some reason, the network in the Events Space wasn't supporting mesh at the time. My son, who is knector, shared a game he had made called Fruit Scratch, which worked with his web cam. (You can't see it on the website, because it is only on Scratch 2.0, which hasn't been made public yet). He ended up showing it because the first project he made vanished into the ether due to a bug when he saved it, and the second one used mesh (we figured out watching the Japanese folks struggle unsuccessfully to get their mesh project working, that he needed to think quick and show something else).

• And, it turned out that the mesh not working enabled us to connect a bit with Junya Ishihara who helped start the first Coder Dojo in Tokyo. 

That was really all just the tip of the iceberg, but we sure did have a lot of fun! The atmosphere at the Digital Media Lab was so hopeful. Sure, there was a certain amount of frustration, but I think, for the most part, there was a shared feeling that we're on to something really promising, and I've never seen such a gathering of people so dedicated to changing the future. I wish I could bottle that inspiration and share it with everyone I know.

Mylo made a video of his impressions of the Scratcher Space, the area where the Scratchers tinkered which was played during the Closing Keynote, and you can see it here. You might see someone familiar, and his creation in Scratch 2.0, around the middle of the video, if you pay attention.

Well, those were my impressions at the conference, but you can delve in deeper:

Mitch and Karen shared their impressions on the MIT Media Lab Blog.

The Conference Twitter feed, Flickr photostream and Storify.

Matt Arnold's Storify and blog.

Kim Wilkens' blog.

History in context

My daughter has developed a keen interest in the lives of others. It began, I think, when we took a trip to Washington, DC, and in the National Air and Space Museum, we were fortunate at the very beginning of our visit that day to catch the start of a docent's tour, at a plane built by the Wright Brothers. The charismatic older gentleman then took us over to the beautiful cherry-red plane flown by Amelia Earhart, described the woman's bravery, and Lucy was simply captivated. At the end, after hearing the story of the Mars Lander, we went over to the gift shop to see what was there. It was there she spotted it -- the Doring-Kindersley biography of Amelia Earhart. Up until this point, at just seven years of age, most of her reading revolved around cartoons like Garfield and Peanuts, children's fiction novels in the Warriors series, and any book about dogs.

My parents, with whom we had traveled, and Erick and Everett, all had things they still wanted to see. But since it was my third journey to the museum, and Lucy's feet had long ago exceeded their quota of steps for the day, we headed to our rendezvous point within the museum and waited for the others. It was only a few seconds after finding a place to sit that she eagerly pulled her new book out of the bag and began reading.

Sometime in the next few days, we went to the Lincoln Memorial, and naturally, its gift shop, a tiny little closet of a place, hid many biographical treasures, as well. A biography on Lincoln himself, from the same series of books I mentioned before, was the treasure found there.

We didn't have a lot of time to hang out at the place we rented near Union Station, but when we did, she was reading. Some mornings, it was difficult to get her to leave, as she was busy reading her "bio-graffies."

When we went to the National Museum of American History, which had wonderful things like the original Muppet Puppets, we saw a wooden boat -- The Gunboat Philadelphia -- which had been sunk in Lake Champlain during the Revolutionary War, and had been in Brigadier General Benedict Arnold's fleet. I'm never sure exactly what she is thinking when we are traveling through these very educational, yet fun, and sometimes overwhelming, places. But standing there, reading the sign at the bow of the Gunboat, she announced, "Wow. So this ship was sunk about 100 years before Lincoln was President." I think I've only done two pages of Singapore Math with her in her entire life, when she was about five years old, so her proclamation came as a huge surprise to me. Somehow, she has picked up this ability outside of the context of endless math drills.

A segue -- I loved that museum. I hated history as a teenager. Learning it was a requirement to apply to the prestigious universities I once wished to attend. In the early afternoon, I simply was not able to force myself to listen to the stories told by my teachers. If the lights went down and a movie was shown, I took the opportunity to take a nap, almost every time. Trying to read those dry textbooks at home after a long day of school didn't go much better. In fact, my focus and attention were so poor during those classes, although the rest of my grade point average was excellent, at some point during every history class I took, I risked passing with a "C." Apparently, what I did learn stuck pretty well, because when the kids ask me questions about history, I am usually able to give them an accurate answer (I always double-check, because I'm just not confident in that area). History, to me, is much easier to learn in the context of something meaningful.

So, when we got down to the basement of the museum, and I got to see the plastics revolution in the 1950's, and the advent of the Birth Control Pill (which I like to call "The Bitter Pill") in the 1960's, coupled with the atomic bomb, and all the things made from coal tar (toluene, trinitrotoluene or TNT, food colorings), I was in Nerd Heaven.

A trip to Washington, DC was more educational for me than many years of schooling, with regard to learning about history. This was my third trip, but it was my first trip in the context of owning my learning, and having some life experience under my belt. It was my first trip in the context of being an adult, having to pay bills, actual taxes, and really seeing suffering that happens in the world.

Most of the great learning experiences there are free -- the monuments and the Smithsonian Museums -- but there are a few which cost a pretty penny that are worth the price. The International Spy Museum was out of this world. Now, I was a big fan of Agents 86 and 99 when I was a kid, and read all the Encyclopedia Brown I could get my hands on, and geeked out on Mulder and Scully as a young adult, but this museum brought my appreciation of spies and spy technology to a whole new level. It's clear that the spy industry drives technology, for one thing. But it's also interesting that espionage has been a huge part of history. (I would love to write more, but I don't want to spoil anything, in case you decide to go).

Another great, but not free, museum to visit is The Newseum. Admission gets you in for two days, and if you're not with little kids, you will need two days to see it. I have a few journalist friends, but never really thought about how important journalism is. If you are even reading this, you are so lucky. There's a big map in the museum showing which countries have uncensored internet, for example, and those countries are few and far between. The fact that I can write this blog, which in many ways has information which flies in the face of the American Educational System and Medical Establishment, is amazing. Forget about TV news and newspapers -- the next time you complain about the partisan news establishment, imagine living in China.

Continuing my segue, we were there on the weekend that the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was opened. Erick and I took an evening after seeing the Kennedy Center with the rest of the family, to walk around and see all the monuments at night. I think we walked four miles that evening. We met the family one last time to see the Einstein Memorial in front of the National Science Foundation, and the kids sat on Einstein's lap. Then, we forged on.

Since my last visit to DC, with the National Young Leaders Conference in 1991, a monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been installed, inscribed with his quotes from a time the nation faced similar problems as it does today. How could we have forgotten? How?!

We got to walk through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial the night before the opening ceremony. We could hear James Taylor rehearsing (which sent chills down my spine, as his album was the one I chose for Lucy's birth), and walked to the brightly illuminated area, filled with African Americans from all over the country, many crying, taking it all in. Earlier in the day, we had heard Al Sharpton giving a speech at the base of the Washington Monument (which was closed for repairs from the damage during the earthquake) on the President's American Jobs Act. It felt like we were witnessing history in the making. Again, these things Martin Luther King, Jr. said... how could we forget?!

All that to say, for less than the cost the federal government pays a local school district to educate one child for a year, we took four people to Washington, DC, and had a profound educational and cultural experience. Perhaps it is not worthwhile, though, because nobody has tested us to see if we learned the required bits.

This spring I was feeling a little stir-crazy, and took a trip up to Avon, CO for a week with the kids. The plan was to drive right up there, settle in, and do whatever it was the kids wanted to do. But as I was driving west on I-70, nearly at Genessee, I was suddenly overwhelmed with nostalgia, and took a detour. As a kid, we regularly drove up to the mountains, not because we were skiiers, but because my father worked for the Colorado Highway Department (before they changed the name to the Colorado Department of Transportation, or CDOT) as a bridge designer for 33 years. He designed the retaining walls in the Glenwood Canyon, which keep the mountain from sliding down onto the road. He designed or checked the designs of all of the bridges in that corridor. So, we stopped to see the Buffalo Herd Overlook, and then went to see Buffalo Bill's Grave. Unfortunately, the museum itself was closed, but the gift shop was open!

"Oooh, Mom! Maybe they have some bio-graffies!"

Yes, they did. They had Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. Lucy woke diligently each morning before the rest of us, to read them. I was very surprised to find her laying on the sofa, reading. I never asked her to read those books. She wanted to read them. When she saw that I was awake, too, she would share what she had read.

"Mom, Annie was adopted by this person who promised her mother that he would put her through school, but he didn't!"

Before our trip, she had decided she wanted to be a journalist. She carried a notebook with her, and write down everything we did and said for the first day and a half.

We made sure to stop on the way home and catch the museum on its open day. I didn't know that Buffalo Bill was the first comic book superhero.

She hasn't exhausted her enthusiasm for learning about people and history yet. We watched all of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s genealogy shows on television -- Finding Your Roots, Faces of America, and African American Lives 1 & 2, and the NBC show, Who Do You Think You Are? After watching those shows, she was so interested in learning about the history of families that she wanted more shows, and we started watching a genealogy show on Brigham Young University Television called The Generations Project. She still enjoys that show, even though it's about everyday people, rather than celebrities.

We ended up visiting a local homeschool curriculum store and discovering a series of historical fiction books about regular people throughout history, called Dear America. She has read about a French Slave in Nova Scotia, traveling on the Oregon Trail, and is currently reading about the voyage of the Titanic.

We watched all of A History of US on Netflix, and when that was done, she wanted to watch biographies. Last week, after watching National Geographic specials about the White House and the Presidents' Photographers (which ended up being an extension of an exhibit we saw at The Newseum), we watched documentaries on Nancy Reagan, and then on Jimmy Carter. The next day, she wanted to watch two two-hour long documentaries on John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. She had exhausted my patience. I could no longer pay attention. I didn't know how she could possibly want to watch any more. I wasn't sure she was actually getting anything out of them anymore.

Many of the topics covered, even in the children's versions of these biographies, are very serious. I do not censor what my children read; for one thing, I am not able to read books as quickly as they do. For another, I have no dreams of protecting them from the "Real World." I don't want there to be too many surprises when they finally leave this nest. I would rather help them navigate these difficult topics while we are close, and use them to help grow our foundation of trust. I want them to know that no discussion topic is off limits with us, that our love is unconditional -- that we are a safe place.

Her brother had recently read Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Economics: Microeconomics, and since then, the Cartoon Guide to Economics: Macroeconomics had been released, so I got it (along with a huge stack of other books) for him to read. He still reads a lot of Peanuts and Garfield when he doesn't feel like reading "more serious" subjects, but as soon as that book on Macroeconomics came, he read it. Not having studied economics myself, I asked him the morning after he read it, what the difference between micro- and macro-economics was.

"Well, microeconomics is like personal finance and businesses. Macroeconomics is like countries and planets," he explains.

"Oh," I said, "Well, what's something interesting you learned from reading those books?"

"The government can help control the economy by raising or lowering taxes in a recession."

"Really?" I said, thinking of the current economic climate in this country. "What does the government need to do right now?"

"Uh, I don't remember. I may have to read it again."

And then, right on cue, Lucy came into the doorway of the kitchen from the next room, where she was listening, and said, "Well, when the government lowered taxes when Ronald Reagan was president, it *created* a recession."

<Ba-doom-boom, ching!>

She has since given me a list of about nine more biographies she wants me to procure.

Magical freedom

Here it is already... November. Wow. How did that happen?! That last post I just went ahead and published, written in July, was the last time I had enough focus on any one thing to actually write about it.

I guess this means I'm doing well. I feel better than I have felt in a long time. I do feel a little scared to write that, lest the bottom fall out of my wellness... but anyway, I have felt well enough to get entrenched in several large undertakings. These undertakings are large enough that I actually don't have time for them all! But I do love them each enough that I flit back and forth between them, not certain to which I should give priority.

Obviously, however, the kids are the first priority. That goes without saying. They have been immersed in playing Minecraft with each other and with their father. I was nervous about allowing them to play this online game, since I lifted restrictions on screen time for them about a year ago. We used to make sure that we didn't plug in until after 3:30 pm each day -- my rationale being that kids who go to school don't get to have unlimited screen time. Also, most of my homeschooling friends have pretty stringent limits on their kids' screen time. But, when Everett became passionate about computer programming, and would tell me with great delight about the next program he was going to implement when I was tucking him into bed, I wasn't going to be the gatekeeper to happiness anymore.

And, it's really amazing how much he has flourished in that time. Both kids have. This morning I surprised him with two new O'Reilly books -- Head First HTML 5 Programming and Head First Web Design. He became interested in HTML 5 back when he had first implemented his website and wanted to know how to get some of the programs he had designed in Python on his website. Back then (earlier this year), there were no books on HTML 5, and it wasn't for certain that HTML 5 would even become standard yet. We found the limited information that was available on HTML 5 at the time, and made it available for him. So, he was so excited to see that HTML 5 book there this morning. Perhaps it is a bit selfish of me, but I love seeing his enormous shining eyes and genuine smile when I've figured out just what to get to feed his desire for learning. It's a high I can't really describe.

Naturally, all of this has been trickling down. The desire to learn independently, the enthusiasm, the recognition of endless possibility. Lucy has been pursuing her own passions, as well. She has been actively participating in MIT's Scratch Community making animations, developing her drawing skills, connecting with friends, and just today, she made her first WordPress blog post. The kids are constantly chatting with each other, dreaming of new collaborative designs for Scratch or Everett's web site. Sometimes the negotiation becomes quite heated, and that's when I realize they are not only really passionate about these things they are doing, but they are developing valuable teamwork skills for the future. Lucy has even been composing stories with a local friend using chat.

Even I have been inspired by their willingness to take risks and explore technology. In a fit of frustration with my homeschooling group's current communications platform, I designed not one, but two different forums for testing -- the first one used phpBB, which was pretty easy to set up (with a tiny bit of hand-holding in the beginning from Everett) and then after wanting to learn more about forum engines, I discovered yet another one (Simple Machines Forum) and implemented it within just a few hours. I can't tell you how empowering that was. I turned some anger and frustration into a potential solution. And even if my group is not interested in using those platforms; I am still happy to have had the experience of getting to learn how to make them!

Even the challenges we have faced in computerland have been useful. Everett created a site called MyDog: Blog About Your Dog as a subdomain on his website. He figured out how to do all of it himself. He programmed it all using PHP. Not long after its release, it was found by SPAM bots. :/ What a way for a kid to learn about prescription drugs! First he started deleting the SPAM posts manually, one by one. I asked him if maybe there was a faster way to get rid of them, since there were hundreds. And just with that suggestion, he knew he had to create a search algorithm in his MySQL database to get rid of all the errant posts. At that point, he didn't know how to keep the posts from being entered onto his website in the first place, so he disabled posts to MyDog. :( For a while. He knew that he had to figure out how to enter a captcha code to eliminate bot posts, so then he implemented that. His remaining issue is that the text is too small, so it can be very hard for humans to tell what the pass code is to enter a post. Maybe he'll get that changed someday, when it seems important to him.

Because of this passion about computers, we do have trouble getting outside enough. For various reasons, we didn't make it to the park as much as we have in years previous when the weather was cooperative. Our yard is small and our house is large and comfortable. I got a basketball hoop on Craigslist, hoping the allure would create hours of sweaty fun. A skateboard and all associated safety gear has also entered our house. But alas, the new territory of creation on the internet isn't matched by the beauty of the outdoors. Yet. I know from experience that many opportunities that present themselves, sometimes just do so at the wrong time. It never ceases to amaze me that just when I think, "Oh, I guess they're just not interested in that..." I'll see them experimenting with it. Patience certainly has its rewards.

We did have a nine-day long hiatus from the computer. We took a trip to Washington DC with my parents, and it was nothing short of magical. Nine days was not nearly long enough. It is worth a blog post of its own, for sure. I'll comment simply on the relationship between the lifestyle we experienced there and our health, for now. We walked miles every day (we did not have a car), and we ate lots of wheat and vegetable oil, I am sure. And it didn't seem to affect the kids at all. It was sunny for the majority of the time, we got to breathe iodine-rich ocean air, did not have the challenges of high elevation, and were constantly moving. It was a little difficult to eat enough, I think, for the number of calories we were expending. I say that because I would be hungry upon waking (which is not normal for me), and would feel extremely nauseated if I didn't eat breakfast right away. This didn't seem to be a problem for anyone else. I have my ideas about why (hmm, what is something that I do all the time that neither my kids or husband do?).

Anyway, the hiatus just proved to stimulate creativity in all of us. Walking along the streets of Washington DC, surrounded in history, my family brainstormed about a world they would then create in Minecraft upon returning home. They wanted to re-create the impressive Metro system we took daily. They wanted to generate copies of the monuments. They came home and made a dream city, together.

Does it get any better than this?

Damned if I do, damned if I don't

For many people, this won't be new news. But for some folks who have had the cost of healthcare largely hidden from them through exceptional coverage provided by employers, it's hard to understand exactly what kind of crisis the rest of the nation is dealing with. I certainly didn't understand what the big deal was, anyway.

When I was pregnant with Everett, we were lucky enough to have the cost of that pregnancy obscured through coverage with Kaiser Permanente in California. We had no deductible, and no co-pay for office visits during my pregnancy. It was the magical kind of care I was fortunate enough to have through my childhood, and up until my graduation from college and marriage, then, with a $10 co-pay.

Living in the Colorado Springs area, pregnant with Lucy, we had health insurance with Guardian. It had a $200 deductible. Despite the enormous amount of complications I had during my pregnancy (polyhydramnios, then oligohydramnios, then hypertension, and partially abrupted placenta), and twice weekly visits to the maternal-fetal specialist from 20 weeks onward, the whole thing only cost us $200, that we could see. I kept all my Explanation of Benefits (EOB) forms from my pregnancy; they totaled just over $25,000 including delivery. It was certainly not the kind of cash we had laying around as young adults with a toddler, two car payments, a mortgage, and a financial setback from relocating to Colorado. No, sir. At least with this company, I was receiving statements, so rather than the cost being thoroughly invisible to me, I had an idea of what the initial and negotiated charges were.

When we moved to Northern Colorado, Erick's new employer offered several different healthcare options, through United Healthcare. One plan would cost us a significant amount of money every month, but would have a low deductible. Another plan cost less each month, but the deductible was $2000, and the company would contribute a significant amount to a Health Savings Account each year. Little did I know, when we chose the higher deductible plan, the extent to which it would change our view of healthcare in the United States.

Even before that time, I had seen a physician who dealt with kids on the Autism Spectrum for Everett and I. I wanted to know if these food intolerance issues we had (we were having significant issues with gluten, casein, soy, corn and egg, and they were very real) were reversible, and I was hoping to find a physician who would help us figure it all out.

I did find one, an M.D., who was covered by our insurance! Happy day!! No, wait. Only office visits were covered, because guess what? There is no such thing as food intolerance, according to insurance companies. In fact, I would discover through networking with other families dealing with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), that very few lab tests, vitamins, pharmaceuticals or even therapies helpful to those afflicted with ASD are covered by insurance. Practically none, in fact.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. When we moved to Northern Colorado, it was a sudden and distressful move -- not a move by choice, at all. Erick had been laid off suddenly (as was the custom with this particular employer, and they were laying people off in that fashion for about 18 months before it was his turn, and shortly thereafter, the office was closed), so we had to quickly find other employment, put our house up for sale, and move. Nevermind that this was actually his second position in Colorado; the previous one had been for a very small company with a very high turnover rate, which he had left seeking security.

I had grown up in the very house my parents purchased in 1969. They still live in that house. Everything was very secure. We didn't live a particularly glamorous or shiny life there, but it was secure. My parents only purchased what they could pay for with cash, and they're still pretty much like that to this day. Maybe they sheltered me from any economic stressors they may have encountered, but I'm under the impression that economically, raising kids in the Reagan era and having government jobs, they didn't worry how they were going to pay the mortgage if one of them lost their job. I don't think they ever had to worry about losing a job, in fact.

So, upon moving here, I freaked out a bit. Okay, I freaked out a lot. While we were trying to sell our house, we attempted to live apart for a month. At the time, Everett was 4.5 years old, and Lucy was 16 months old. House showings were a nightmare; and keeping the house clean -- fergeddaboudit! So, we got the cheapest, smallest apartment we could find in Northern Colorado, in order to reunite our family, and keep our home in show-quality condition around the clock. As I stayed in that apartment, though, my mood sank. All my friends were in Monument and Colorado Springs. There were many friendly people reaching out to me up here, but my mom had told me that I would make my best and life-long friends through my kids when they were babies. Would I ever live somewhere long enough to have true friends who would really understand me?

I turned to the internet and became fascinated with alternative medicine. The only place I had space for a computer in the apartment was in the galley-style kitchen, so I would stand in the kitchen while the kids watched TV and played in the living room, the other side of which was only 8 feet from my computer in the kitchen. I kept a food diary and religiously avoided all my problem foods -- so I was eating tapioca bread, nut butters, jelly, chocolate chips, and green energy bars most of the day, all while nursing my toddler. I lost so much weight that I got down to a size 6 -- even in high school I was a size 10.

I sank into a deep depression, crying much of the time. I felt dizzy a lot, and I was having trouble remembering simple things like to pay the bills, or even my name. I had no patience for my kids, and I was constantly worried. The internet wasn't helping me figure out what was wrong. So, I found myself a therapist.

So, do you think our insurance plan covered mental health care? Bzzz. Nope. But with the state of my mental health at the time, $100 a week seemed necessary, so I went.

Around the same time, the physician I was seeing recommended an environmental toxin screen for me. It came back from the Mayo Clinic showing extreme levels of organophosphate -- yep, like the pesticide -- and barium. I was pretty much eating all organic, so I couldn't figure out why my levels would be high. My sister the doctor said that if they saw a patient come into the ER with organophosphate levels as high as mine were, they would be concerned for the patient's *life.* With all the weight I had lost recently, I became certain that I was detoxifying a life-long burden of pesticide, and I began taking fistfuls of vitamins to aid my detoxification every day.

I began seeing a local physician (an M.D.) who was also covered by my insurance, but who practiced holistic medicine. I decided with the abnormal test results I had, and my frightening symptoms, I needed to be under the care of a local doctor. I felt that I was having symptoms of stroke (loss of memory, inability to speak, dizziness and flashing lights). He diagnosed me with visual migraines, but ran some ordinary tests (which, at the time, were covered by my insurance). I found out that I had very low cholesterol, which is interesting for two reasons: low cholesterol is a predisposing factor for hemorrhagic stroke, and women with visual migraines are more likely to have a stroke. Ironically, my cholesterol level and weight at the time would make the insurance company overjoyed, despite the fact I had never been that sick in my entire life.

Fortunately, we lived in the apartment for about five months, and as soon as we moved into our house, things started to get better. I started incorporating more animal fat into my diet to raise my cholesterol and protect me from the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. While moving out of the apartment, we found that the dryer vent was not vented to the outside -- it was venting into the apartment all winter. I would find very soon after moving into our new house that I would only have migraines when running the dishwasher, doing the laundry, or being exposed to certain chemicals, and after switching to environmentally-friendly detergents (and doing some other nutritional interventions I will cover in other posts), I would never have another migraine, and my mood steadily improved.

It wasn't until last year, five years after all this happened, that I had an AHA! moment, and figured out that my organophosphate poisoning was probably from the Tide laundry detergent fumes we breathed for five months in that apartment. The Environmental Working Group would help clear it up for me.

And, that pretty much sealed the deal for me doctoring myself. I had a couple more failed attempts at getting help from physicians, but ultimately, I've had to do the work myself.

Nonetheless, the issue of insurance was still an issue. And, in 2009 when Erick's job in Northern Colorado would become defunct through closure of his division and sale of the intellectual property he had helped to develop to a Malaysian company, it would become a huge issue for us.

In 2008, when Lucy was going on four years old, and my health had mostly recovered, I became obsessed with the idea of having another baby. Obsessed enough that we would get an SUV in case my hormones got the best of me. With my first-dog-baby aging, I decided to see if a puppy would quench the desire for a baby. He did.

I had more than just a $2000 deductible to worry about when it came to the possibility of pregnancy. Erick's company had been downsizing in a significant fashion, even before he was hired. The speed at which it was happening made us unsure if they would even continue to have a facility in our town in 18 months. (They're still here, but not in much of a glitzy economically-stimulating manner). And, after all the complications I had during my pregnancy with Lucy, I found out that my hypertension had not been due to preeclampsia. I had never dumped protein in my urine (a hallmark of preeclampsia). What was discovered through ultrasound and confirmation by dye contrast CT is that I have a small right kidney. After ruling out various causes for my kidney to be so small, it was determined that it was damaged by an old infection. So, the likelihood of my super-duper nutrient-dense clean and healthy diet allowing me to have a non-life threatening pregnancy was, um, small at best.

Compounding the health-related financial woes was an incident in which my dear sweet Lucy put a bead in her nose on her brother's birthday. We took her to Urgent Care, where we were told they would be unable to remove the object ("And anyway, we have a three-hour wait. Take her to the emergency room."). While the emergency room here in Northern Colorado is uber-fast and friendly, with excellent service, a one-minute foreign-body removal from the nasal passage of a three year old costs $1200. According to a physician I know, I could have removed it myself by covering Lucy's empty nostril and blowing into her mouth. Apparently we had done this when she had put an eraser from a mechanical pencil into her nose the year before. Why didn't the people at Urgent Care know this?

Fortunately for us, the closure of Erick's division did not require another move. It did require a new adventure, though! We are self-employed, and have the luxury of learning about health insurance for the self-employed. Yep, here's where all that "pre-existing condition" stuff really matters. We have a new deductible -- much higher, at $5800. Basically, it matches the amount we can legally add to our Health Savings Account annually. And, it does not cover pregnancy. In the state of Colorado, legally, insurance companies only have to cover complications due to pregnancy; however, when my policy was issued, it contained a rider EXCLUDING any pregnancy complications I might have related in any way to hypertension.

And so, we decided our family was complete. Or at least, the insurance company did. A minor outpatient procedure finalized the decision.

Lucy would, shortly after our policy was issued, slip on the floor in the breakfast area and get a concussion, so we learned that an emergency room visit and CT scan cost $2400. I also learned that the leading cause of emergency room visits in children under the age of 18 are falls. A trip to Urgent Care to ensure that a sprained ankle is just a sprained ankle is $500 (that one's on me). And, most insurance is not covering orthopedic supplies these days (they make me sign a waiver at Urgent Care). And, because neither the doctor's office nor Urgent Care casts broken arms, we still spent $1000 bouncing back and forth between Urgent Care, the family physician and the Orthopedic Center trying to avoid the emergency room.

These things wouldn't seem so expensive if we weren't already paying $6000 per year for the insurance that isn't really covering these events.

Last year I found out that if I tried a low-carb diet (getting into the health insurance company's elite weight range), and it leaves me feeling yucky, I could spend $600 to have my B-12, Thyroid and Vitamin D levels checked. I didn't forget the important stuff -- you know, the cholesterol levels -- for another $155. Because the doctor was trying to be helpful, some other B-vitamin tests were recommended -- and yes, those did prove helpful -- but they were another $250. I was thinking maybe these were part of the "Preventative Health and Laboratory costs" that would be covered under our insurance plan, but eleven months after they were all run, right before tax-time, to boot, I got the $1005 bill from the laboratory!

So naturally, I'm not sure whether or not to be happy that I can afford my terrible health insurance. I have multiple close friends whose children qualify for government medical programs, and who themselves have no healthcare coverage, and, even with the government assistance, that is a terrible position to be in. Still, it feels like when it comes to health insurance and my pocketbook, I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't.

In seeming celebration of my decision to doctor myself and save the doctors for emergencies, this April, United Health Care sent me a letter notifying me that by law, now, in the state of Colorado, they must cover pregnancy. Thanks.

The staff of life, Part 1

Nothing smells quite as good as bread baking in the oven. I just had a delicious slice of homemade bread, made from wheatberries I ground myself, kind of as an experiment, but also as a reminder.

Back when my life was all diapers, playdates and naps, I first got caught up in the whole health food craze. Craze is really the best word for it; you don't have to go far on the internet or in the health food store to hear illogical ideas about which wholesome food is going to put your life in jeopardy next. Even before that, though, Kaiser had taught me about avoiding refined flour and sugar, so I was always out the outlook for a good loaf of bread which didn't contain white flour.

So when the opportunity presented itself to learn how to make bread from wheat in its purest form, I was all ears. My initial attempts to make bread yielded either flat or crumbly loaves. It was so frustrating. I borrowed a hand-crank grain mill from my mother-in-law, and I could grind about a half cup of flour in 5 minutes (I think -- it's been a while). Eventually, my entire operation would radically advance in technology with an electric grain mill and high-capacity mixer, allowing me to make five loaves of bread beginning from the grinding of the grain to their exit from the oven. I would make five loaves of bread once a week, and sometimes some of those loaves would become cinnamon rolls or pizza. Many times it was hard for us to not devour the first loaf right out of the oven.

The benefits of using freshly ground flour include the following:

1) Reduced cost. After the initial investment in equipment (of course), the cost for the wheat is about 27 cents per loaf, and a 50 lb bag of wheat yields about 83 loaves of bread. One pound of wheatberries yields about 4.5 cups of flour, and it takes 10-12 cups of flour to make 5 loaves of bread. These calculations are based on $22.12 for a 50 pound back of wheat, not including shipping.

2) Increased nutrition. Most of the nutritional benefits of eating wheat are from the germ, which is stripped from the grain in industrial milling because the germ oil goes rancid rapidly. The germ contains the full complex of B-vitamins, but according to the woman who taught me (and multiple internet sources), 90% of the nutrition has oxidized and been broken down within 72 hours of milling.

3) Reduced toxins. Have you ever read the label on a loaf of bread at the grocery store? I cannot even find a loaf of bread at my closest local grocery store, Safeway, which does not contain azodicarbonamide. In fact, even the breads baked in-house contain it because it is part of a dough conditioner that is put directly into the flour they use at the store. When I first discovered this, nearly eight years ago, there was very little information about it on the internet, except that it was an industrial foaming agent used in the manufacturing of plastics (like baby food jar seals), and had been banned in the United Kingdom. It is now banned for use in Europe and Australia.

So, I happily made my own bread, which contained just freshly ground wheatberries, water, yeast, honey, sea salt, Vitamin C and canola oil. We ate it at pretty much every meal. Grilled cheese sandwiches were an almost daily staple. Everett seemed able to tolerate cheese, even though milk and yogurt gave him digestive trouble.

In the early part of my pregnancy, I was very good about making bread weekly. Then, I developed sciatica, and it had been weeks, or perhaps even months, since I had made bread. We were eating out more and more, and during one trip to the chiropractor in Denver, we ate at my favorite restaurant (wide spaghetti and meatballs), and Everett and I both got a terrible case of food poisoning, which lasted nearly a week. I had been seeing a specialist during my pregnancy because I had polyhydramnios, which turned out not to be a result of a structural abnormality in the baby (thank goodness). After that week of food poisoning, however, I started losing amniotic fluid at a very steady rate.

I was placed on bedrest for a week at 30 weeks of pregnancy, and had visits to the maternal fetal specialist twice a week to monitor my amniotic fluid levels. I was told to drink at least 96 ounces of water per day, as well, and doing so didn't really seem to work, so I switched to an electrolyte beverage, and that did seem to work, with respect to the amniotic fluid. However, at 37 weeks, my blood pressure elevated again, and I was put on bedrest for that week, at the end of which, I had labor induced.

During one of my trips to the specialist, I had a friend watch Everett. She took him to McDonald's and got him some milk with his Happy Meal. When I came to pick him up, she was holding him in her lap, and he was crying in her lap. She explained that he just randomly became afraid in the Playland, and refused to play in there, crying and screaming. It was very much unlike him, and she was a close friend and neighbor who we saw very often, so he was comfortable with her. I took him home, and he was strange the whole evening. I actually had a high school friend come visit from out of town with her daughter, and he was totally bouncing off the walls (typically he was a pretty calm kid, though he had anxiety, he was not high energy). The entire evening he was loud, violent, his pupils were fully dilated, and his cheeks were bright red. I could not get him to listen to me or calm down at all. It must have made quite an impression on my friend (or my reaction to him did, because I really wasn't sure what to do), because I didn't hear from her again for several years. It was amazing to me that just drinking milk could cause him to have that kind of reaction. It had to have been the milk that caused the reaction; we ate at McDonald's at least once a week at that time, and had never had that kind of reaction before. That was my reasoning at the time, anyway.

In fact, before we eliminated milk from his diet, besides frequent illness I did have trouble getting him to acknowledge me, even though he was calm. He would kind of zone out and have a far away look in his eyes. Also, he frequently had bright red cheeks, and slept fitfully, waking if I wasn't right there next to him, and when he woke, he usually did so crying. He always sweat when he slept, leaving a moist spot where he lay his head.

After that episode at McDonald's, I was very concerned about him. I had him evaluated by the school district, and he was classified as having auditory, tactile, vestibular, oral, and visual sensory integration disorder. At 27 months of age, he knew all of his letter sounds, could count past 30. At that time, nine years ago, kids that young weren't getting Asperger's diagnoses (according to our family physician), but the school district Autism Team was entertaining the possibility. They came to see him at his gymnastics class and during a playdate, and ruled out Asperger's. Apparently, he was too social (even though it was difficult to get him to look me in the eye). According to the speech therapist, he had the vocabulary and speech of a seven year old, and she could see nothing wrong in that respect. However, she did suggest that we try removing gluten from his diet.

Okay, here it was again... gluten being a potential problem. But, I made bread every week, and according to traditional and historical wisdom, it was the staff of life! How could it be hurting our health? I would wait until absolutely necessary to make such a change. Instead, I would focus on eliminating all food chemicals from our diet after reading the book Fed Up with Food Intolerance by Sue Dengate (see also The Feingold Association).

Absolutely necessary came sooner than I thought it would. Lucy was born, and her reflux was worse than Everett's. It was not manageable with Mylicon (simethicone). I was already on a mostly dairy-free diet, but just even having a taste of dairy caused her to projectile vomit after nursing, and choke in the night. Soy would be a problem for her as well. I would try a trial without gluten, just for myself, for a couple of weeks.

The first time I had gluten, not only did Lucy's reflux return (she didn't even spit up once during the day when I avoided casein, soy and gluten), but my hands were achy, and I was so exhausted for the next 48 hours. Also, I would get pain in my right kidney, much like I had toward the end of my pregnancy with Lucy. So, there it was. I had to avoid gluten.

It was a lot easier to avoid gluten for Everett now that Lucy and I had such immediate and devastating side effects. The benefits that we saw from eliminating dairy with him just got better. His attention span increased, he was calmer, the wet spot from him sweating in the bed disappeared, and he stopped gagging at every meal. Many of his sensory integration issues (tactile, oral, auditory, vestibular, and visual) would disappear on a gluten-free, casein-free and salicylate (food-additive)-free diet.

Which of course, begged the question, WHY?!

As the Yo-Yo Bounces

Part 1:  The Early Years

In the past few, oh, maybe 6 or 7 years, I've developed a certain notoriety in my community. I'm never sure whether to think of it as a good or bad thing. See, I'm obsessed with food. Yes, I'm obsessed in the sense of always looking for something good to eat, but also obsessed in the sense of making absolutely sure that I'm making the right food choices for my health and that of my kids. I wasn't raised like that at all. This isn't some sort of fancy I have to occupy my time. No, the reason is because I teeter on the brink of health and disease.

I'm a canary in this coal-mine world. I've had symptoms of allergy, arthritis, cancer, chronic fatigue, depression, diabetes, hypertension and hypothyroidism, and that's just A through H. Every time I've gone to the doctor to get things under control, throw in the towel, get a prescription, my lab results have been normal. There's a certain sense of relief that comes with normal lab results, but also a growing frustration as I struggle with those symptoms. It's a frustration that keeps me reading, gathering knowledge, and questioning everything.

How did I get here? I ask myself this question all the time.

When my mother was growing up, she was regularly fed things like liver and cod liver oil. She grew up in poverty (the daughter of a painter and a bookbinder), but from what she has told me, it sounds like her parents did an exceptional job feeding her. Perhaps it was the way most baby boomers were fed; her parents were older, born near the turn of the 20th century, before vegetable oils and hydrogenation became commonplace. As an adopted child, she was fed formula made with PET evaporated milk. In fact, back in 2003 when Erick's mom gave me my copy of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, my mother marveled that there was a published cookbook containing real food.

Due to a blizzard in Brooklyn, my dad was born in an uncomplicated fashion at home, without a medical professional in attendance. He was the youngest of four children and grew up in a very small town in upstate New York. His mother shopped at the local co-op, and when they could afford it, they had raw milk from the local dairy. He also was not particularly privileged; his father was a brick mason, and his mother was a nurse.

Neither one of my parents needed orthodontic intervention, and grew up with perfectly straight teeth. Neither needed glasses until they were in college. Their parents did not need these things, either.

My mother, however, was not allowed in the kitchen, so she did not know how to cook. A couple years before having me (her first child), she was diagnosed with Graves' Disease (which is ironic because Graves was her maiden name) -- autoimmune hyperthyroidism. She took antithyroid medicine for some period of time before I was conceived.

She had an uncomplicated pregnancy. When the time came, she had a four-day long prodromal labor.  She was turned away from the hospital multiple times before she was admitted. After being in labor for so long, she was given narcotics, and I was delivered by forceps. Unlike many babies in the 1970's, I was fortunate to be breastfed for the first year of my life. She claims that I immediately slept through the night. Maybe that's true (uh, narcotics!), but my parents are deep sleepers, so I doubt the reality of that claim.

There were a lot of Cheerios in my infancy, starting around six months, and continuing well through high school. We were purists and did not put sugar on them. My mom didn't "do" baby food. She had a baby food grinder and took it with her everywhere. To all the restaurants, I mean. She didn't cook -- so that meant we ate out several times per week. McDonald's was a treat; typically we went to sit-down restaurants. I had favorites at each restaurant and never deviated in my order. Paisan's (an Italian restaurant on Colfax) was the wide spaghetti with meatballs. Village Inn was the barbecue, bacon and cheese chicken sandwich with fries for lunch or dinner, french toast and hot cocoa for breakfast. La Bola was the chicken chimichanga. There was a Domino's Pizza around the corner from our house, so we had plenty pizza.

At home, our fare was pretty simple. I remember really liking braunschweiger sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise.  I would not eat whole wheat bread. No way. My mom always bought a loaf of Roman Meal bread for herself -- that's what she had eaten growing up. Another regular meal was tuna fish tacos, which was simply canned tuna with melted cheddar cheese made in the microwave. My mom made spaghetti with meat sauce quite often, which I detested (those noodles were terrible compared to that freshly-made pasta at Paisan's). A favorite meal was Fettucine Alfredo, made from a mix. My parents would kick it up a notch by adding shrimp (which my sister would hoard before passing the bowl to the next person at the table). We ate very little in terms of vegetables. Dad hated them.

I loved to "cook" as a child. When I say "cook" I really mean "bake." I was about seven or eight years old when I made my way around the kitchen. My favorite thing to make was a brownie recipe out of my mother's USDA cookbook. It called for shortening. We went through that stuff like gangbusters, because I made those brownies all the time. Maybe once a week.

I remember feeling pretty sad for my friends, because their parents seemed overly concerned with making them eat "healthy food." I remember walking to the bus stop with a friend who had to pack her own lunch (she was one of three kids at the time), and her mom had strict rules that she have a fruit or vegetable in her lunch box. I don't remember any rules like that for me -- and most of the time I did not pack a lunch, unless Spooky Spaghetti was on the menu (I swear one time mine had a maggot in it). I liked many of the school lunches, and I particularly liked the chocolate milk (If you don't want your milk, I'll drink it for you).

We didn't have candy around the house. And we very rarely had pre-made cookies or desserts in the house. The only sugary cereal we ever had were Golden Grahams, and those were an occasional treat. There was no alcohol, either, and my parents, at that time, did not drink. They were teetotalers; their fathers had both been alcoholics.

We didn't play outside much; I grew up in a house with a small yard near a busy one-way street, surrounded by rentals. We watched a lot of television. Many of my friends' television time was limited.

I was in ballet class until I was about eight years old. It was not too long before I noticed I looked different than the other girls. I remember the dance teacher complaining that I would not suck in my "tummy."

In first grade, I got glasses. I was the only kid with glasses, until junior high, when I had a quick relationship with the other kid with glasses.

When my teeth came in, I was missing a central lower incisor.  I never did get lower wisdom teeth.

I sucked my thumb until I was eight, so we always blamed my giant overbite on that.

I was the first girl to get breasts in the fifth grade. I remember being singled out during P.E. that year, being told that I was overweight. I probably went home and made a pan of brownies after school that day.

My sister was always thin. She still is. She ate all the shrimp. I ate all the brownies.

Genetics, my arse.

Time to just be

I didn't start out being an unschooler, but have evolved that way during the process of homeschooling my nine-year-old son Everett, and six-year-old daughter Lucy. My husband and I are frequently the recipients of such comments as, "If my kids were as smart/motivated as Everett, maybe I could unschool, too." Now Lucy is starting to become the subject of such remarks, too. Both of them learned to read at a fairly young age, and my approach was similar with each, but more relaxed with the second, as I suspect it is with many homeschooling families. With both, I waited for them to want to learn to read -- and did use some recommended curriculum from The Well-Trained Mind. Unlike the hours and hours spent in the classroom, this took just a few sessions. They had picked up most of what they needed, I believe, through our recreational reading time together. We would go to the library each week and check out 50-75 picture books, on average. Our "school" consisted of reading perhaps a dozen of them per day, which maybe took an hour or two. So, when it came time to study phonics (after interest was expressed in learning to read), it was a matter of a few sessions. One of the things I have done with both of them is to try, to my best ability, to follow THEIR LEAD. That meant (and still means) that if they are showing signs of frustration, I STOP. I give them a LOT of time to do whatever it is they want to do.

My kids have pretty much unrestricted access to everything in our house. It can get pretty messy. I do limit TV time and much screen time, now that they are older, to after 3:30 pm. I wrestle with this because the TV does have some wonderful information, but I do it because I figure if they were in school, they wouldn't be able to watch TV all day. I want them to be doers and thinkers, and not just passive recipients of information. They shared some interesting phases, despite being three years apart in age. They both went through a period where they were obsessed with Garfield comics, and that was all they would read. They both created their own comics, and spent hours drawing them. Actually, they both still love visiting the Garfield website.  This stimulated a need to spell words correctly. For some reason, they both cared about having words spelled correctly, though neither my husband nor I have voiced any concern over that matter. For a while, when they asked, I would just go ahead and spell things for them. Then, after a while, I decided I wanted to know how *they* would spell words, so I started asking how they thought the words should be spelled. A very large percentage of the time, they would spell the words correctly.

My husband and I both attended public school and played the school game very well. We were Teacher's Pets, if you will. We both enjoyed *learning* so much that we attained graduate degrees in our respective fields (his in biomedical/electrical engineering and mine in molecular/neurobiology). So, periodically, typically at the beginning of the school year when all our fellow homeschoolers are planning for the coming year, we "start school" too. It's so difficult not to believe that the kids will be missing out on something HUGE by not attending school. Each year, I make an elaborate plan and collect curricula that I feel will be fun and not leave any gaps in my kids' education. For several years, I had Everett doing a spelling curriculum. It was never difficult enough to challenge him. In our state, homeschoolers are required to give standardized tests, or receive an evaluation from a credentialed educational professional every odd grade, starting in third. I thought I would go the latter route, but instead decided that we would go ahead and try the standardized test -- there was no reason for any stigma to be associated with it in my child's mind, because whether behind or ahead or "right on track" (whatever that is), we'd probably just continue doing what we've been doing all along -- letting him learn what he wants when he wants. Well, he scored a year ahead in math, and in 7th and 8th grade for reading and language proficiency last summer, upon "completion of 3rd grade." The most "school at home" we have ever done has been about two hours a day for one month a year (typically October). Everything else is field trips, reading anything and everything we can get our hands on, exploratory play with friends, lots of origami, and simply living life. This year, when I had my annual homeschooler freak-out, I purchased a 7th grade spelling workbook for Everett. Finally, he indicated, it was fun and challenging. All indications are that my daughter is following the same path.

When I say that my kids want to read anything and everything they can get their hands on, I mean it. They read pamphlets from the veterinarian's office. They read instruction manuals from products we purchase. They read comics. They read honest-to-goodness literature. Everett reads nonfiction books (novels) about mathematics and theoretical physics. Lucy reads books about dogs and wolves. I make it my job to provide as many of these opportunities as humanly possible. I spend hours on Amazon.com going down rabbit holes, pursuing their interests for them. It's only a matter of time before they do it for themselves. I try not to shun or censor any subject. If we come to something difficult when we are reading together, I plod through it, and at the next convenient juncture, we discuss it. I want them well-armed for the world outside these walls. They can figure out how to multiply 33 and 157 themselves, and I'm sure they will, when they need to.

Maybe what I have said so far is unremarkable in comparison to what you have read elsewhere, or with respect to your own experience. I certainly hope it is, anyway! I feel like what is to follow should be, perhaps, a bit more unique.

As I mentioned earlier, Everett likes to read books on pretty heavy topics, as well as instruction manuals. His father is an electrical engineer by profession, and I do a lot of independent research on the computer during the day. So, we have a lot of computers that are on and logged in to the internet around our home. My inlaws were computer consultants, and day traders. My own father is a civil engineer. Lots of computers. Lots. I'm not sure how it happened, but around the time he was four years old, he started showing us features of the operating systems we were using. Purposefully. Things like, "If you want to reorganize your desktop, go here in the menu."  He loved to make artwork using Microsoft Paint. Then, he wanted to know how to use Adobe Photoshop, but due to some technical difficulties, we couldn't get it to run on his computer, so he had to learn to use GIMP instead. I showed him my Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers one day after he read Understanding Exposure when he complained about wanting to learn about how to take good photographs. He transferred all the knowledge from learning Adobe Photoshop to GIMP. Easily, and without any help from me or his father. He learned how to make animated GIFs.

In my Amazon.com rabbit hole search of early October 2009, I found a book for kids on computer programming, called Hello World:  Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners. He had been expressing more interest in computer programming, so I purchased it. The recommended age was for 10+, but I knew from personal experience that kids as young as 8 years old could learn computer programming (I had learned BASIC at that age). He devoured the book. He was ripping out programs left and right. He was obsessed. When he finished with that book, he designed and wrote his own virtual pet program. Then, he announced that he wanted to learn HTML, so that's when we started getting the Head First books published by O'Reilly. He has gone through them in this order:  HTML & CSS, PHP & MySQL, Object Oriented Analysis & Design, Javascript (at which point he announced that he needed to learn HTML5, so I got him a more 'grown-up' resource book), Ajax, Design Patterns, and then Java. He was able to discuss some problems he was having with a PHP design on the phone with his uncle, hang up the phone, and fix his problem within 15 minutes, much to the amazement of his uncle and his parents! Just a few months ago, he helped his father design a graphical user interface (GUI) to help control and display images from an array of 14 digital cameras.

For the homeschool science fair last April, Everett wrote a summary of the first program he conceived in Python, called Virtual Dog.  The dog has to be clicked to keep it fed, hydrated and emotionally healthy.  He wrote a short explanation of computer science for newbies.  Through working on that, I helped him learn PowerPoint to make his presentation board, and now he uses it to create animations of potential game designs.

As you can imagine, as parents, it is hard to keep up with it all. He participates in our local school district's Innovation Lab program, where he meets with an 11 year old who is interested in learning computer programming. I looked for a computer camp for him, but what was offered at the local university for his age didn't look like it was advanced enough to merit the cost. His father and I recognize the benefits of him having his own learning agenda. It's been important for us to really know him, and have an open dialog with him, so we can effectively help provide opportunities and inspiration for him. And, he needs lots of time to just BE. This past October was probably the last month of school he'll have under my direction. I felt so terrible during the whole thing -- even though he never complained and enjoyed most of what we had to explore during that time -- I just kept thinking, "If he owned this time, what would he do with it?" Something amazing? Absolutely.

My kids are fortunate enough to have their own computers. They use Google. They use it when I'm not looking.  When my daughter Lucy was four, she hopped on my husband's computer and Googled her own name when neither of us were present. I heard, from the next room, The Beatles singing "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." I thought my husband was in there with her, but he was upstairs in the shower. When I came in to check on her, she was watching a version of the song, with William Shatner dubbed on top, on YouTube. While on the surface, that sounds like just a funny story, I learned a lot from her. See, my son is very safety-minded and shy, never wanting to 'break rules' and somehow he comes up with rules of his own. He's very concerned about the feelings of others, and not stepping on toes. My daughter, however, is a free spirit. If she is hungry, she gets what she wants from the refrigerator or cupboard. At least once a day, I hear a stool sliding across the kitchen floor, and I know that means she was hungry. When she was only two years old, she would get a tin of oysters, then go get a fork, and bring them to me, saying, "Mommy, I want some kwabs."

I have been careful to point out to her brother how her free spirit and resourcefulness feeds her happiness. I think this is starting to sink in with him. More and more, when he has his time on the computer, I find him searching forums, hunting for algorithms and bits of code. Google has become his tool as well, for growing as a computer programmer. He is not afraid to use his father's graduate-level texts to help solve problems he has.

For Christmas we purchased a website for him. I've never seen him so delighted. I told him between present-opening sessions, when not much else was going on. He already had his website all organized on our local network, so all he had to do was upload it to the web server. A quick lesson in FTP (file transfer protocol), and he was live within 15 minutes. Everything on the website is his own original work. While his website may seem rudimentary, as I mentioned before, so much work and research has gone into it. It was his own idea that he put only unique programs he conceived on the website; he has gone through many exercises written in the books he used to self-educate. But somehow, somehow, he knew that it would be better to include his novel work.

It is amazing to me, when kids have TIME and SPACE they can call their own, what they invent. When we are too busy for too many days in a row -- running errands, visiting the library, having play dates -- it really wears on us.  It wears on Everett the most. He turns inward and becomes grouchy. Ultimately, it's always because during his time away from his passion, he's developed a huge queue of projects he wants to do or concepts he wants to investigate. Typically, the next time he gets several hours or days to himself, he has a giant burst of productivity and learning. I'd put it on order of what a typical kid attending school learns in a semester or a year.

If you are on Facebook, you can become friends with TSD Innovation Lab.  Monika Hardy, the woman pioneering Open-Sourced Learning in our school district, takes videos of the kids involved, so there are some videos of Everett and Lucy on the profile page.  Lucy attends every other week or three.  She is learning to train dogs there from a high-schooler who is training guide dogs for the blind.  There are videos of Everett from last week where he discusses the web browser he programmed as well as some of his favorite web browser topics with Monika and his friend.

I feel so fortunate to have stumbled upon the path to true learning pleasure with my kids.  If we can help inspire anyone else, it would be an incredible honor.  If you want any other information about how we do things, please feel free to contact me.