What's In A Name?

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In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, 

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

A couple of months ago Grams and Grandad were visiting Our Little Princess and her parents for the weekend. She's about to turn two years old and is talking pretty plainly now. We were sitting at the dining room table having dinner and somehow got on the topic of names for private parts, specifically what parents teach kids to call their private parts.

I would like to point out right now that our son-in-law reminded us that this was hardly proper dinner conversation, but, as usual, we were not deterred.

I was one of those moms who was determined to teach my kids to call it what it is. And I did try. What I didn't take into consideration is that they would be influenced by other kids and other adults.

My daughter arrived at her own terminology. Instead of vagina, she called it her pooch. I have no idea where that came from. It has been suggested that perhaps it came from a Spanish-speaking child care worker, but I'm just not sure.

When he was very little (under 3), instead of penis my son called it his pee-pee. As he got older, the terminology evolved into the usual slang words.

In thinking about this topic I realized that I've heard some strange terminology over the years.

• I know a grown woman who calls it her "cookie-wookie."
• I know a young woman whose parents actually taught her to call it by a four letter slang word that starts with "c" and ends in "nt." If I had said that word, my mother would have slapped me in the mouth.
• My brother-in-law and sister taught their boys to call their penis a "stem."
• The term "va-jay-jay," used by both Oprah Winfrey and Grey's Anatomy, is my all-time favorite. It just makes me giggle.
• I've heard little boys call it their "bat."
• I've also heard male anatomy referred to as "sausage."

This is by no means a comprehensive list. It's just a few that stand out in my memory.

By the way, the preferred terminology for Our Little Princess is "lady business." What can I say? My kids are Saturday Night Live fans.

What did you teach your kids about terminology for their body parts? And, just as important, what terms did they arrive at on their own?

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

Grams was distressed this week to hear on the news that some cities are limiting trick-or-treating to children under 12 years old. In our neighborhood, children have always trick-or-treated well into their teens and I like it that way. Kids and teens are in such a hurry to grow up that I love to see them acting like kids for a few hours on Halloween night.

When our kids were growing up, Halloween was much anticipated and details were planned for weeks if not months. Kids and adults looked forward to it. Our neighborhood has always excelled at Halloween, often throwing huge block parties. Yards were decorated, candy was purchased, costumes were planned, games were set up in driveways.

Our neighborhood costume contest circa 1986. Katy is the punk rocker in blue and Nick is the cowboy. Nick won best costume that year.

As the kids got older costumes progressed from ballerinas and cowboys to punk rockers and zombies, but that didn't bother me in the least. It's a normal progression and part of growing up. These block parties provided my favorite memories of Halloween. Our neighborhood was alive with kids and teens running around and having good clean fun.

Usually by 9 o'clock the kids would be off the streets back safely in their homes. About that time, the adults would gather at the corner house with bottles of wine or margaritas and spend an hour or two sharing a few drinks and a laugh or two. Then we'd all head inside to tuck the kids in.

We continued to participate for a few years after our kids left home, but it made me sad because I missed the fun times we had with our kids. So, although the neighborhood still has a big block party, we usually choose not to participate. We usually go out to dinner and a movie for Halloween. This year, we're planning an early dinner at P.F. Changs and then we're going to a live performance of The Rocky Horror Show. We've seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show dozens of times on television, but this will be our first live production. I can't wait for Dammit Janet, The Time Warp, and Sweet Transvestite.

Happy haunting to all of you!

This post about a Halloween of the past is linked to www.thesitsgirls.com. By the way, I also want to tell you the “Tiffany is Pretty” although I'm not sure exactly how that ties in to this post. ;)

The Substitute Diaries

Grams spent the last two days substitute teaching in second grade. I love kids this age. They're still young enough to be wide-eyed and innocent, but they know how they SHOULD behave in school.

Substitute teaching has reinforced for me that I don't remember much of the math I learned "back in the dark ages" in school. It's also shown me that math is taught vastly differently than it was when I was a kid. We weren't even encouraged to count on our fingers. These kids are taught to use tools like hand signs, rhymes, songs and charts.

For the past two days we worked on learning how to use a "hundreds chart." Basically, a hundreds chart is similar to a number line (which is what we used). Students learn to add and subtract by moving left, right, up, or down on the chart. When you move left and right you add or subtract by one. When you move up and down you add and subtract by ten.

Keep in mind that many second graders don't know which direction is left and which is right. And although most of them know how to count by tens, doing it on the chart was beyond their comprehension. With a couple of them, I felt like I was banging my head against the wall. I thought I had made real progress with all of them on the first day, but at least five of them didn't remember how to do it on the second day. I worked one on one with all five of them and I think the last one finally grasped the concept on the very last problem.

This class has three or four little boys who are "a handful." They challenged me several times yesterday with their behavior. In fact, they pushed the limits of my patience at every opportunity. One of them got in trouble with the language/social studies teacher and had to sit-out for the entire recess period. In fact, yesterday the entire class had to sit out the first five minutes of recess because they were too noisy in the cafeteria. Grams is NOT a fan of making kids sit out at recess. I think they need to burn off their excess energy. If they've misbehaved, they should not sit out. In my opinion they should run laps or at least walk, not just sit silently at a table.

I took a different approach today. I started out the day telling the class that I expected better behavior today. I took the challenging students aside and gave them positive reinforcement and encouragement. Before they left my classroom to go to language/social studies, I made it perfectly clear that I expected better behavior today.

The result was that, in my classroom, their behavior was vastly improved. The other teacher expressed that they were not as well behaved in her class, but there were no major infractions and no one had to sit out for recess.

Then they went to lunch! Teachers take their lunch break while the students eat lunch under the watchful eyes of the cafeteria aides. Then second graders go to recess and the teachers meet them on the playground. I was the first second grade teacher to arrive on the playground today, the others were only a minute or two behind. But, when I arrived, another teacher was leaving the playground with three boys in tow ... two from my class and one from another class. It seems that a fist-fight had broken out as soon as they got onto the playground.

As we supervised the remainder of recess, several more pushing and shoving incidents occurred among the second graders. From this point on, for the rest of the day they were noisy, argumentative, and difficult.

When we went back to class, we moved from math to science. The science lessons this week were about magnets and compasses. We showed them some Bill Nye, The Science Guy videos on the subject. We had several different examples of magnets and lots of items to test for magnetic attraction. The kids loved this part and handled all the materials carefully. They shared and passed them around without any troubles or complaints. It was fun for them and for me.

I love the rush I get when I see a class really enjoying learning and when I see one kid finally grasp the lesson I'm teaching. I really do love it, but this day wore me out. And, here's the best thing about being a substitute ... I don't have to work the next two days unless I want to ... and I don't want to.