First Impressions Mean Everything

The fear that accompanies that first day of school can be different for every child. It may be hard to express exactly what that fear is - being alone in a room full of strangers, being away from their comfort zone, where is the bathroom and how do I let my teacher know I have to go? All real concerns and despite our best efforts to reassure our children, sometimes it is just an experience they have to go through.

Dr. Ruth Peters, a clinical psychologist and regular contributor on the Today Show, weighs in on the fears that accompany the back to school anxieties. From Kindergarten, Tweens to High School, every phase and transition brings its own brand of coping with the unknown. Most of these concerns are based on the social aspects of the daily routine of the classroom, cafeteria, bus ride and recess. Talking with your kids with empathy can help discover and resolve some of the critical issues.

The challenges of academics, homework, the right clothes, even the right backpack cause apprehension as students approach the class room door. Talk to your kids and find out what is on their mind as the school bells begin to ring. That's What A Wise Grandma Would Do.

Lost and Found

One of my biggest fears is being lost. Unlike my male counterparts, I will gladly pull into the nearest gas station and ask without shame or embarrassment, Where am I?

Perhaps my fears are based on my lack of navigational skills. I am hopelessly lost when it comes to compass directions. I turn the map to face whatever direction I am presently heading which, in my mind, is always north.

On the other hand, I am excellent at giving directions. The writer in me provides touches of color, sign posts, scenic pictorial views to let the driver know exactly where they are or how to get back should they happen to lose the breadcrumb trail.

For years, I depended on a suction cup with a ball compass attached to my dashboard. My husband has tried to teach me which way is truly north. He insists I navigate using compass directions and relay information based on coordinates other than the little pink house with the white picket fence or two houses down from the maple tree on the corner.

Surprisingly, my eighty-year old parents decided that technology was the answer. Sitting next to the bonfire of candles on my birthday cake this year was a GPS, a global positioning system. This technical marvel relies on satellites orbiting the earth transmitting signals that can pin point your exact location. It relays this information to guide you to your destination, point by point.

Some of these modern mapping marvels, talk to you as they direct each turn of the wheel. From “Turn right in 100 feet” to “You have reached your destination”, your journey is detailed by a precise, often commanding voice coming from a little black box. Some GPS have names like “Tom Tom” but the woman’s voice in my cockpit is Majel. I named her after Majel Barret, wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. She was the voice of the computer navigational system on the Star Trek Enterprise. Since she went where no man had gone before, I thought it appropriate that she lead this woman through the highways and byways of Oregon.

Majel and I have a sort of love hate relationship. I taunt her by finding alternate routes or short cuts. Her voice becomes increasingly frustrated as her satellite positioning blinders continue to direct me to turn right…turn right…turn right. When she realizes that I passed on her recommendation, she hesitates for just a moment. She is not happy that I have chosen not to follow her explicit directions and replies in an annoyed tone, “Recalculating”.

Wouldn’t life be much easier from the cradle to the grave if we had a GPS to guide us through the tragedies? Turn right, turn right, turn right...but then being human, we would probably go left and that frustrated little voice would say “recalculating” in the hopes of steering us back on course.

What I like the most about Majel is her Go Home button. No matter where I am she recalculates and brings me to my favorite destination, home sweet home.

I must admit, I enjoy the banter and giggle mischievously when she has to recalculate. But I always follow her directions to the letter as she finds the way home. Because that is what a wise grandma would do.

Twitterfied!

Help! I’ve been Twitterfied, Tweeted and Retweeted. I have been Facebooked, MySpaced, and LinkedIn. I am followed and I am following. Welcome to the wonderful world of social networking!
Looking for old classmates, trying to remain on top of our techno game, and too old to cruise the bars, boomers have converged to reconnect and keep up with our kids and grandkids. From October 2007 to August of 2008, Facebook users increased by 179%. Just six months later that number jumped to 276% with users ages 35–54..
Twitter is a quick 140 characters telling your followers what you are doing at any given moment. Facebook and MySpace are more or less social scrapbooks where you can post bits and pieces of your life. It’s a virtual “Cheers” Bar where everybody knows your name and is always glad you came. LinkedIn is an online professional resume or dossier posting. It is a good place for people to network with other professionals in a given field or market yourself as an expert in your industry.
Hugh Delehanty, editor in chief and senior vice president for publications at AARP, is a self proclaimed Facebook addict. His recent article, Confessions Of A Facebook Addict, in the June/July AARP magazine, speaks to his personal journey through the mire of social media networking.
“What really got me hooked on Facebook, though, was the ‘friending’ thing, the addictive process of making new friends and reconnecting with old ones online,” Delehanty admits. “I was consumed by an uncontrollable drive to reconnect with everybody I had ever known.”
Everything in moderation, especially social networking. As for me, I prefer facebooking with the llamas out in the fields of Melrose, Oregon. The hawks tweet as they fly over the Callahan Mountains and my space is a bench by the pond watching it all. That’s What A Wise Grandma Would Do.

Simple Things

The journey of grieving has many twists and turns. It presents crossroads and fellow travelers. There are unexpected delays and few shortcuts. The path, although well traveled, remains uncharted.

Knowing that her great grandfather was close to the end, I told my granddaughter that his bags were packed and he was ready to go to heaven. She wanted me to ask him to say hello to her pre-school teacher who had died the year before. She thought maybe they could have a tea party when he arrived at heaven's gate. I did tell him. He died a few hours later.

It made telling my granddaughter easier, I suppose. I told her that Fa was so excited to hear about the tea party, he decided to go right away. This seemed reasonable to her.

"What will be on his headstone?" she asked. I told her that Fa wanted to be buried at sea since he loved fishing so much. There would be no headstone. This, too, seemed reasonable to her. Orville had chosen to be cremated but I did not think this was an explanation I wanted to tackle with a 6 year old.

The next day, she asked if Fa had been buried yet. I told her no. She wanted to know where he was. I replied, in heaven at the tea party. She said it didn't seem right not to have a rock or a stone on the beach, so we would know where he was buried.
"It's important to know," she said. I told her we would think about it and find someway to mark where he was.

On Fathers Day she sang Amazing Grace for him. Although he didn't know who was singing the sweet melody, his eyes lit up and a smile came to his lips. She wanted to sing it again for him. We will plan a memorial in a few weeks and promised her she could sing it for him then.

A fisherman, with nothing more than a high school sophomore education, is dearly loved by a small little girl, who for most of her life, he didn't know. Yet she remembers and wants to keep on remembering. Not through tears but through the simple things, a song, a stone - bookmarks to return to, a place to honor, a moment in time that says he was here.

The journey continues.

It's Who You Know

As we sat by my father in law's bedside, we wondered if he could hear us. He has been suffering through the ravages of Alzheimer's for the past decade. We knew that we were no longer names he could recall. I had become "that girl" and my mother in law was "his best friend". "Do I know you?" was often the question he reserved for his grandchildren and his great grandchildren were twinkles in his eyes but little more.

None of that really mattered, though, since we all knew him. We knew the fisherman who would rather be on a boat fishing than any place else on the planet. Unless it was working out his frustrations on the dents on a car. We knew the man who went to church each Sunday and McDonald's to chat with old friends every morning. The woman behind the counter at Taco Time knew his order, since he had been coming in for almost 20 years. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't know him. We often laughed that we had never been anywhere that someone didn't know Orville.

We sat by his bedside knowing that the time was near. He had cheated death so many times in the last couple of years, I suppose there was a piece of us that wondered if he wouldn't open his eyes. His signature remark when asked how he felt, was "with my fingers". We wanted nothing more than to hear him say it one more time.

Yet here I am filling out an obituary form, filled with facts, dates, timelines that seem devoid of the essence of the man we have lost. Though we never know the exact moment of our earthly departure, even if we have the luxury of knowing it is close, it is still a shock when that life exits this mortal coil. Within a half hour of his release, the life force that we knew was gone. From his skin color to the texture of his hair, there was no hint of his presence.

Through the tears, the paperwork, the phone calls and all the little details that follow in the next few hours and days, it is comforting to know that somewhere Orville is baiting a hook.

Ask A Silly Question

If curiosity killed the cat, it surprises me that there are so many children alive still echoing the age-old question “why?” You will lose the challenge by answering them. Your answer will simply lead to the next why, and undoubtedly, the next. Why? I don’t know.

My father’s response to our questions was “Look it up.” In those days, the encyclopedia was the information highway. Today, of course, the web is the blazing fast way to get information. My parents’ attitude was to teach us to be independent thinkers by reading to get the answers. Children today are pretty savvy at navigating their way through the maze of web based resources creating new and improved independent thinkers.

Questions Children Ask by Edith and Ernest Bonhivert compiled a series of questions on a variety of subjects. Children submitted all of the questions. Why don’t fish drown? Do I breathe when I sleep? Can a bird fly backward? And despite the age of the 1974 publication, there are relevant questions about why there are different kinds of families and who belongs to a family.

Between the swimming and the camping this summer, plan a Game Show Mania day. Have books and computers at the ready along with a list of questions and see how quickly your grandchildren can come up with the answers. Prizes can range from cookies for each correct answer (of course if the answer is wrong, they must forfeit a cookie) to higher stakes for the grand prize – a banana split!

Trivial Pursuit is available in a children’s edition and the Cranium series offers great ways to make questions and answers a less painful way to increase your grandchild’s knowledge and retain your sanity. Play a game of "when you chauffeur them to their summer activities.

You don’t need a teaching degree to mentor your grandchildren. You not only know things, you have lived in places and times in history that make you a living resource. One of the questions that our generation can certainly answer is “Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated?” One that readily comes to mind is “Where were you when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon?"

Offering our grandchildren fun and simple ways to explore learning, supports and develops their natural curiosity and intelligence. Summer vacation may be a time for slipping out of a desk and into a swimsuit but it doesn’t mean we should stop teaching them. Why? Because that’s what a wise grandma would do.

The Battle is Over, But The War May Have Just Begun

Technology - friend or foe? For years we have been under the delusion that technology will make our life easier. And yet research does not bear this out with the increase of stress disorders. Instead of working less, we work harder at accomplishing more. Why? Because technology makes it easier to do more in less time. 

For some of us the learning curve for the continual upgrading of computers, software, cell phones and even our appliances has either left us in the technological dust or swept us into a tsunami of wanting more. Now the ultimate technology battle has been won.

Since the debut in 1956  of the wireless TV remote, the same argument has been playing out in homes all over the country. Who is in charge of the remote? The truth is 91% of American households with televisions fight over the remote. And 12% of these arguments become physical. We now have remotes for just about everything in our technological world, from our music to our temperature controls. In the palm of our hand lies the control of our world.

Well, from the vision of two engineers from Australia, we will now be able to control these devices with the wave of a hand. We've been seeing this technology on the big screen as futuristic cops and crime investigators wave their hand in front of a screen to bring up information or pictures. With a few hand signals, you too, will be determining the channel, the temperature, the volume, even the lighting in the room. 

The new gadget incorporates a camera that can recognize hand signals and converts them into commands for the television. A clenched fist means start, a wave of the hand changes channels, pointing a finger selects and clapping hands turn it off.  No more looking for the remote as long as you know where your hands are. But I have to wonder if despite the winning of this battle, we have begun an even bigger war. 

Carpal tunnel syndrome seems likely to be the next major statistic or perhaps atrophy of the buttocks or legs, since we will no longer have to get up to turn on anything. Once we sit down, we can stay in one place and control everything around us. I do wonder what will happen to the 12% statistic of physical confrontation for the remote. With all that arm waving and clenched fisting, is it a far stretch to accidentally take a swing at your partner or sibling to regain control? Apparently this remote camera will be able to recognize its owner and is set for a dominant user. 

Technology - friend, foe or instigator? My siblings and I used to race to the TV and the first to get to the dial was the winner. Saturday morning cartoons were a mix of aerobics and sibling rivalry. More challenges in this technological warfare. I say let's give the remote the heave ho and return to fewer channels with more substance, more board games, reading a good book and taking a long walk after dinner. Then let's check the statistics again in a year. That's what a wise grandma would do.