My Kid is Talking to a Tree, But He Ain’t Got Nothin’ on Me

10/01/2009

Muns. Case. Corny. And She.

These were the names of my imaginary friends. At least that's what my mother claims. I'm not certain where I got the names from, but I suspect it had something to do with my father complaining that people were nutcases or songs were corny.
 

Not sure about She but, given that I am one, that's probably its origin.

But don't worry. I'm not still hanging with my four made-up pals (at least not in public). We were tight, carrying on long conversations back when I was three, four, five years old. Whenever someone knocked on the door, I'd announce that it was one of these four characters, and my mother would play along and answer the door.

 
My aunt had similar delusions. When she was a kid, she used to play with pretend buddies Panicen and Pee. Panicen even used to get her own placemat, knife, and fork at the dinner table. Poor Pee didn't because she was only a baby.

Given this odd family history, I shouldn't have been surprised when my three- (almost four-) year-old son Punk recently claimed that the wall stole his cookie—or when this past weekend he struck up a conversation with a tree.

Yes. A tree.

It was pretty basic, as conversations go.

"Hi tree. How are you?"

According to Punk, the tree said it was fine, and, in turn, asked after Punk's health.

So while my younger twin, T-Rex, is asking endless questions of me, my older one is interrogating a tree.

Now, I am all for the boys getting in touch with nature, which is challenge enough in our asphalt 'hood. But chatting with inanimate objects? I'm just not sure. I mean, if an adult was seen yakking with a shrub, there would likely be some speculation that they're a couple tacos short of a combination platter.

(Plant freaks who name their houseplants and talk to them to coax growth get a free pass. And you know who you are.)

But, being Punk's mother, I, of course know that he has no shortage of tacos; heck, he's got extras. I should be more worried about me and my aunt—we actually talked to stuff that doesn’t exist. So, time to do some investigating.

According to old-school thinking among psychologists and psychiatrists, imaginary friends are rare and could be cause for concern, possibly indicating problems like insecurity, timidity, and withdrawal. Even the famous Dr. Spock advised seeking help from mental health professionals if a child was too immersed in pretend friends.

Popular movies have stoked this sort of thinking. First there was Drop Dead Fred, who haunts a troubled girl into adulthood. Then came Don't Look Under the Bed, where the imaginary friend turns into the Boogey Man. And then followed Hide and Seek, in which an evil figment of a girl's imagination goads her into bloody violence.

But in the world of child development, scientists' thinking has done a 180. Imaginary friends are common—about 30 to 60 percent of people report having had them between ages three and nine—and they also benefit kids, find psychologists like Marjorie Taylor and Stephanie M. Carlson. Among other things, pretend buddies can:

• Fuel kids' creativity and imagination.
• Help kids become better conversationalists and more empathetic and emotionally responsive.
• Foster narrative skills that aid kids' reading later on.

That said, we parents shouldn't be duped by imaginary friends either. I know how much T-Rex likes to blame his various messes on Punk; just imagine how handy an imaginary friend could be for that sort of scapegoating.

"No mommy, that wasn't me who pressed the alarm button on your key-ring and called the cops. That was the Bellycoaster [a T-Rex invention who surfaces when tackling his parents]."

Uh. No. Imaginary friends may great for stimulating the imagination, but they won't be taking the fall in our house. I'll be happy to open the door for them, though, or set out an extra plate at the table.

My biggest reservation: If either of my kids gets into imaginary friends as much as I did, to the point of giving four different ones goofy names, they might be at risk for turning into as big a whack-job as their mother. God forbid, they might even try to make a living as a writer. My one comfort is that at least neither one is left-handed.

What's 'Endangered'?—You Have to Get Up Close and Personal With It to Get It

09/24/2009

The balding, nerdy-scientist guy on TV was doing a love dance with a whooping crane. He ran alongside it, chest puffed out, bobbing, weaving, throwing sticks, and well…whooping. The bird did the same back to him. If she'd had hair she would have been flipping it.

 

It was clear—this was chemistry. Frat guys across the country would be envious.

 

Watching it with my three-year-olds the other night, I had to ask, "What the ffff…I mean heck, is going on?"

Cut to the next clip, from 1982: Johnny Carson was asking this same scientist, the ornithologist George Archibald, pretty much the same question. Archibald answered that male whooping cranes did nothing for his crane-love, Tex. Only Archibald's mating dance could jangle her hormones intro producing eggs, one of which hatched into a male chick they called “Gee Whiz,” the first whooping crane ever born in captivity.

It was a victory that helped bring back the species from the brink of extinction, and the reason why Archibald was featured on this Science Channel program, "Jane Goodall’s Heroes."

Still, noted the narrator, though the whooping crane's numbers have grown to about 400 today, from 15 in the 1940s, the bird remains endangered.

One of my three-year-old twins, Punk, turned his head, looked at me. "Danger?" he asked.

"Not danger. Endangered." I was glad he was watching.

I've been putting on educational TV for grown-ups lately, trying to swap it in for some of the screaming kid TV that’s driving me and my husband up a tree. It's been hit or miss, so this was good.

But now Punk asked the killer question.

"What’s…N’dangered?"

Oh man. How do you define endangered to a three-year-old?

"Uh. Well. It's when a species of animals or plants that lives on Earth…gets in danger of…not existing anymore. Like it might be gone. Soon."

Response from Punk: Blank stare.

Well of course. Why would he get it? He has no context.

To Punk, "wildlife" is the sparrow or pigeon he sees on a city street during the walk to school. Luckily he hasn’t seen any of the alley rats. Yet.

As a kid, my context was different, rich. For one thing, I was born—and until age nine—raised in South Africa. For another, my dad is a wildlife nut, and were always road-tripping to one exotic African nature park or another. Half the wildlife documentaries I see on TV, I think, yeah, I was there.

And we lived in Cape Town, a city right on the tip of Africa that, with its jagged mountain peaks, cliff-side coastal drives, and sprawling white beaches, is arguably one of the most awe-inspiring places on the globe.

This is going to sound disgusting. But on an average weekend morning there my father would say, "So what should we do today? Go to the beach? Climb a mountain? Tour a vineyard? Drive to Cape Point and see the fynbos [indigenous South African plant life]? Go to Boulders and cavort with the penguins?"

Tough decision. Somehow we always managed to choose, and it was always an adventure.

But one day, the adventure was different, and for me, life-changing.

The night before, my father announced we are going on a quest to find…THE RED DISA. He had me right there. I mean, the name alone is right out of film noir.

What was it? A flower. But not any flower. A rare and endangered flower.A tri-petal orchid whose habitat was being depleted by agriculture and development, but that could still be found in the craggy crevices of Table Mountain, Cape Town’s flat-topped natural wonder.

The next day, by God, we were going to climb the mountain and capture ourselves a red disa—on film. I stepped out in our back garden, looked at the mountain jutting straight up to the sky, its sandstone edifice ghost-lit from below. Finding a tiny little flower up there seemed hands-down impossible. Which made it all the more exciting.

It’s about a four-hour haul to the top on rocky, crumbling trails, populated, as it turned out, by puff adders (grumpy, poisonous snakes), among other ominous creatures. Didn't matter. Aside from pausing every so often to swoon at the ridiculously gorgeous view of Table Bay below, we were focused.

And then one of us—don't remember who but it had to be my father; he would have known where to look—spotted it. A positively blemish-free specimen of The Pride of Table Mountain. Nodding in the breeze. Basking in a beam of sunlight that infiltrated the shadows.

We were quiet. Transfixed. We just stood there and watched as my father photographed it from every angle.

And I wondered, why has it come to this? That a flower gets so wiped out that it retreats to the crannies of a mountain too harsh and rugged too build on. It's about as pathetic as a middle-aged man doing gymnastics in hopes of coaxing a bird to reproduce.

Right in front of me was the definition of endangered. I didn't need any more explanation than that.

So now, I need to do the same for Punk. Can anyone tell me—where can I can take him on a quest to find a whooping crane in its natural habitat?

Free to Explore the Great Outdoors

07/08/2009

It had been a long, traffic-heavy car ride to Chincoteague Island, with the usual “are we there yets?” getting more frequent and shrill with each mile. So when our car finally crunched across the shells and stopped in front of the waterfront rental, three-year-old Punk snapped off his seatbelt. We opened his door, and he sprang out, jack-in-a-box-style.

He was off like my miniature dachshund, scurrying across the rolling grass, down to the water’s edge on his skinny little bandy legs, with my husband and the family-greeting-crew in hot pursuit. Figuring Punk had more than enough adults to tend to him, I began unloading the car, with our other three-year-old, T-Rex, “helping” me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Punk run onto the jetty, dip his hands in the water, then sprint back out to the lawn to gather rocks and shells. “Plop, plop plop.” He’d pitch the objects into the water, thrill at the splash, then run back for more, shouting, “OH! Look, look, look, Wocks!” He soon enlisted T-Rex in this game, and I headed back inside with another armful of baggage.

It wasn’t long afterward that I heard a screech of pain then, loud, insistent sobbing—the sound of a Punk who’d hurt himself. Marveling that we already had a crisis just 10 minutes after arriving, I ran out to investigate.

To call Punk accident-prone would be an understatement; this is a child who’s not entirely certain where his feet are in relation to his head, let alone all those body parts in between. You can’t really blame him: His head and feet are enormous, and he’ll likely take a while to grow into them, like a puppy does. It’s quite charming and adorable the way he lopes along—sort of an off-kilter waddle punctuated by stumbles and veerings this way and that.

But, unfortunately, his complete neglect of where his feet are results in a lot of spills. And during this particular one—on a neighbor’s lawn—he hit his face on a log, grazing it from nose to lip.

We carried him inside to calm him down, clean off the blood and slather the wound with antibiotic cream. Then I made an executive decision:  To let Punk go right back outside to play and explore more. I had made my own decision to unplug and enjoy the outdoors on this trip—adults need to play too—and I wanted the same for the twins, who spend so much of their time confined to our postage-stamp row-house in the hood. There is no big yard for them to run around in—only rush-hour traffic out front and a rat alley out back.

This, I figured, was the chance for all of us to get some much-needed outdoor exercise. But I didn’t want to tether the twins to me; I would keep them in sight, but give them space to explore. And that is exactly what they did, with enthusiasm: They spent hours playing the rock-throwing game, kicking a soccer ball, catching crabs off the dock with their cousins, and digging in the sand.

Both boys were bursting with excitement when a jellyfish and an eel tugged at the chicken bait. They shrieked in delight when “a big mean cwab” escaped, skittering down the dock. And they mustered the nerve to dip their feet in the ocean for the very first time.

I have never seen them so happy. It shouldn’t be surprising. There’s a movement afoot to get kids to play outside more (amazing; remember when we didn’t need a movement to make that happen?)—and proponent Web site Nature Rocks cites studies showing that kids who explore outdoors are less stressed and develop confidence and social skills. But, of course, there are those who don’t approve of kids wandering free range, investigating their world. 

Our beach neighbor was one such curmudgeon.

One evening, Punk scuttled off on one of his reconnaissance missions, with me and his nine-year-old cousin following at a respectable distance. We stepped up our pace when we saw him crossing into the neighbor’s yard, and began calling to him to come back. Too late. The neighbor-lady had stomped onto her balcony, screaming, “Get OFF my flowerbeds, NOW!!” Honestly, there wasn’t any flowerbed to speak of—just a few scraggly boxwoods. But we got Punk out of there pronto, sending him back where he could explore undeterred.

To our amazement, the next day our disgruntled neighbor posted a series of “No Trespassing” signs along her property line. “Well,” we huffed to one another. “It’s a good thing three-year-olds can READ!”

The last evening we were there, Punk said, “C’MON mommeee! Let’s go catch a big mean cwab! First we need the net, some shicken and a shring.” “And,” added T-Rex, “a bucket!” Armed with this equipment, the two of them marched down to the dock with purpose. They were so focused on their task, I don’t think they even needed me there.

It wasn’t until we were driving home that T-Rex took note of the scab that had now been on Punk’s face for days.

“Hey,” he said. “There’s blood on Punk’s nose.” To which his father replied, “That’s not blood. It’s a scab, so Punk’s nose gets better.”  T-Rex considered this. “So did a log bite him? Is that why there’s a scab?” “Well, no,” I said. “It was more the other way around. Punk fell and hit his face on a log. But you know what? He didn’t let it stop him.”