It's amazing how easy it is to mess up the moral of the story!

[elfs]

For the past five days, Omaha has been teaching Yamaraashi-chan to ride Metro by herself. Omaha has taken her everywhere on the bus, to the library, doctor's appointments, haircuts, since it is her only mode of transportation, but we weren't sure how much attention Yamaraashi-chan was paying when she did. We made this effort to help her get to school on time without having to wake her at 6:00am, which is unholy for me, much less for a kid. In the winter time, that's nearly three hours before dawn! An extra 45 minutes is a blessing, and that's what we were trying to buy with Metro. When I was her age, I was taking Metro regularly to bookstores, the movies, and the mall. That was back when malls had video arcades, which made them legitimate places for kids like me to hang out.

For four days, Omaha rode with Yamaraashi-chan the entire route, showing her the steps to take, how to take them. On the last day, Omaha had Yamaraashi-chan do the route herself, telling Omaha what steps she would take and so on.

I love my kid. In way too many ways she's a very smart kid. But if there's one thing she lacks it's self-confidence. I see this very much as a consequence of her early upbringing, and it manifests itself very clearly. So on her first day riding the bus alone, she missed her stop. She apparently totally freaked out, and with tears in her eyes begged the driver to help her. She gave the driver her mother's phone number (not mine, not Omaha's), and... we're not sure what happened next, but Yamaraashi-chan made it to school eventually. Apparently a Metro supervisor at the next transit center gave her a ride in his truck.

So that ends that experiment. Yamaraashi-chan has learned that passive-aggressive works, and unfortunately she's still young enough that people take pity on her and don't recognize it for what it is. It also means that another opportunity to teach her think for herself has ended in failure.

This is really kinda frustrating. We've been working hard to teach her independence, to "free range" her as the expression goes. We've sent her and Kouryou-chan down to the store two blocks away to buy things like bread and milk for dinner, but if everything isn't exactly like what the script says she freaks out and cannot handle it. That's why we send them together: Kouryou-chan has the self-assurance to ride her bike high and low through the subdivision, but Yamaraashi-chan is objectively frightened of going anywhere she's never been before, facing any problem she for which she doesn't have a script. She's at the age where we should be able to leave her alone for long enough to run to the grocery, but whenever we run through the house emergency procedures ("What do you do if there's a fire?" "What do you do if the toilet overflows?" "What do you do if you smell something really bad?"), if we add some new problem to it, she says "I don't know" and just freezes up. She doesn't think to solve the problem. Someone else will solve it for her.

Sigh. She really needs to unlearn that. Someday, her mother's not going to be there to solve her every problem, and neither will I.

---

Since Omaha had taken Yamaraashi-chan this week, I've been dealing with Kouryou-chan. She's not too hard to deal with, though, getting her through breakfast and making her lunch and all that. After her carpool picked her up, I drove to the Park'n'Ride transit center near my house because the bus that goes by my house to the transit center doesn't run by for another forty minutes or so, but there's an express leaving the transit center in ten.

I had a pretty good day at work. Figured out the internals of XUL node addressing, and hooked up a Python interpreter to do it for me.

I rode the bus home. I took the express, which turns into the bus that goes right past my house, so that was good. Omaha and I sat down and had a long talk with Yamaraashi-chan about all the things that went wrong, and what we were going to have to do now to deal with it. It wasn't an easy talk, but it was better than not having one.

After we were done talking, Omaha and I went back out into the living room to discuss what had happened. I looked out the window and noticed something odd. "Omaha, where's the car?"

I'd left it at the transit center's Park'n'Ride lot. I'd missed my stop.

We told Yamaraashi-chan about my stupidity, and then for practice brainstormed alternatives. I could wait until tomorrow; I could bike there; I could take a bus there; I could call a friend who'd help me. lisakit lives just a few blocks away. "I don't want to impose on Lisakit," I said. "She's a good friend, but that would be imposing."

More in bemusement than anger, I looked at the schedule. A bus was coming in five minutes back to the transit center. I ran for it.

It took only about ten minutes to reach the transit center. I got off the bus and found my car.

I'd forgotten my keys.

Okay, you all can stop laughing now.

Since Omaha couldn't help me-- she had the kids and can't drive anyway-- I took a deep breath and called Lisakit anyway. After she was done giggling at me, she kindly agreed to swing by my house, grab my keys, and bring them to me. I bought her dinner to show my gratitude.

Man, I felt stupid after that.

But while I was sitting on my car, I did have a good idea for another Bastet story, this one involving hemp rope and fortune cookies and ivolucien's house.

Comments

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

*giggle* Sorry. Thanks for sharing your human moment.

I was a kid much like your daughter. And my problem wasn't that I couldn't think. I was an excellent student and I did great on pop quizzes and that type of thing. But off the script? Synthesis of information? GAHHHHHHHHH.

Don't know what her issues are. I was terrified of giving the *WRONG ANSWER.* Nothing, no humiliation, no punishment, no being told I was a wuss was worse than being wrong, than giving the wrong answer. That would mean I was stupid, and stupid (and wrong) were lethal/suffocating forms of bad. As in "mommy and daddy will be so disappointed I won't have a chance for them to love me" kinds of bad. *I* would be wrong. Don't know if that makes any sense, but it was a paralyzing fear.

My parents made mistakes on rare occasion. But I didn't have that option.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

hee hee hee hee... oh, jeez.

Well, at least (a) you had your *cell*, and (b) you didn't freeze up...

Poor kid. That one's gonna take a long time to undo. At least it's fall now... no impending summer to unlearn what you'll be trying to teach her.

[urox.livejournal.com]

You have mentioned before about Yamaraashi-chan's difficulty with paying attention. Perhaps things might be helped with indirect keys? Like if she has an ipod, playing the "bus set" such that once she gets past a certain song in the set, she needs to pay attention to her stop coming up?

6am: (smiles just slightly) 6am was when I had to be *at* school by for my last two years of high school. Drill team the first year and an early start class the second. Just wait to see if she gets into swim team. ;)

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

Actually to my eyes it looks like a perfect example of how things can go wrong and how a person can calmly think about the issue, find a number of solutions, and how to choose among those solutions.

OK, maybe you didn't feel quite so calm sitting at the Park and Ride without your keys, but you were still able to deal with it.

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

...refuses to ride a bike, frightened of new places, misses a bus stop she ought to know well, loses her family in crowds, prefers known places and scripts, no self confidence...

Is it vision issues, subtle ones? Has she got depth perception and peripheral vision? Because I could see how being asked to solve problems and synthesize her environment with senses she simply doesn't have could make her throw up her hands and give up. I could be totally barking up the wrong tree, but if I'm not, perhaps the navigation techniques of the vision-impaired (maps, counting, asking drivers to tell you when it's the right stop) would be more useful to her than the navigation techniques of the normally-sighted.

I'm likely completely wrong, but I grew up with people with invisible disabilities, and it rather reminded me of it.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Metro-riding training needs to be much, much, much longer - and with a peer (or peer-like person) rather than a parent. Some kids just kind of check out when they are not actively on-the-spot.

FWIW, using her phone was a pretty good strategy (although using it passive-aggressively, to make you look bad to the co-parent... ...not so good.) One kind of has to sigh and add that to the list of things one does: "if you slept here, we're in charge - call US for rescue FIRST." (We had to phrase it that way once.)

Is there any way the school district could help out with the use-the-bus skill? Even by putting a high-school "big sister" on the project (which could work for community involvement credit for the high schooler)?

And kudos to Omaha for doing the Metro-training with Y-C. That's important, and your family is the SECOND one I've heard of that does it - mine was the first. All the other parents I know seem to be able and willing to ferry their kids around to all of their activities (except the ones they can walk to), by car, and continue to do so until the kids have their own licenses. Doing it all by car seems like bad parenting, maximizing the hassle factor and leaving the kids dependent far too long; it almost forces them to be passive. And that passivity steps up and bites them in the face, just as you described above.

In short, you & Omaha are in my golden-roster-of-child-raisers.

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

All kinda strange to me. I was riding buses all over San Francisco and the surrounding area when I was maybe eight, sometimes after dark. I don't remember Mom or anyone walking me through it, though perhaps she did.

Of course, I don't take my eye off my five-year-old for more than a second now that the shoe's on the other foot....

- E

[(Anonymous)]

Re: asking the driver to inform you

As someone with a visual impairment I can say my experiences and those of the visually impaired person who gave me training in mobility are that bus drivers fairly consistently don't remember.

I did hear of a device being tested that will alert you of which stop you're at, but I never heard anything more about it sadly. This would probably be so useful for both visually impaired and non visually impaired, just set it to the right stop and let it buzz you when you're there or something.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

You're such an airhead. ;p

Thanks for feeding me. Didn't realize how hungry I was.

[marketeer]

Do you think she called her mother because she was reluctant to disappoint you? I can see myself thinking that way when I was her age.

My husband has left the car at the subway parking lot and taken the bus home numerous times.