children

Local Expert

At school, our 9-year-old is currently studying the hsitory of human civilization from the late stone age through to the bronze age. The other week, the class was split into three groups, each of which was tasked with researching a different piece of megalithic architecture:

One group researched Stonehenge, because it’s a pretty obvious iconic choice
Another group researched the nearby Rollright Stones, which we’ve made a family tradition of visiting on New Year’s Day and have dragged other people along to sometimes
The final group took the least-famous monument, our very own local village henge The Devil’s Quoits

Dan, wearing a black t-shirt with the words "Let's make the web a better place" on, sits with his back to a standing stone. Four more standing stones can be seen stretching away into the bakground, atop a flowery meadow and beneath a slightly cloudy but bright sky. — Love me some ancient monuments, even those that are perhaps less authentically-ancient than others.

And so it was that one of our eldest’s classmates was searching on the Web for information about The Devil’s Quoits when they found… my vlog on the subject! One of them recognised me and said, “Hey, isn’t that your Uncle Dan?”¹

On the school run later in the day, the teacher grabbed me and asked if I’d be willing to join their school trip to the henge, seeing as I was a “local expert”. Naturally, I said yes, went along, and told a bunch of kids what I knew!

A group of schoolchildren in a mixture of white and blue shirts, and with most wearing sunhats, sit on a pile of rocks alongside a ring ditch and listen intently to Dan. — I’ve presented to much-larger audiences before on a whole variety of subjects, but this one still might have been the most terrifying.

I was slightly intimidated because the class teacher, Miss Hutchins, is really good! Coupled with the fact that I don’t feel like a “local expert”², this became a kick-off topic for my most-recent coaching session (I’ve mentioned how awesome my coach is before).

A young girl, her hair wild, sits at a kitchen table with a laptop and a homework book, writing. — I originally thought I might talk to the kids about the Bell Beaker culture people who are believed to have constructed the monument. But when I pitched the idea to our girl she turned out to know about as much about them as I did, so I changed tack.

I eventually talked to the class mostly about the human geography aspects of the site’s story. The area around the Devil’s Quoits has changed so much over the millenia, and it’s a fascinating storied history in which it’s been:

A prehistoric henge and a circle of 28 to 36 stones (plus at least one wooden building, at some point).
Medieval farms, from which most of the stones were taken (or broken up) and repurposed.
A brief (and, it turns out, incomplete) archeological survey on the remains of the henge and the handful of stones still-present.
A second world war airfield (a history I’ve also commemorated with a geocache).
Quarrying operations leaving a series of hollowed-out gravel pits.
More-thorough archeological excavation, backed by an understanding of the cropmarks visible from aircraft that indicate that many prehistoric people lived around this area.
Landfill use, filling in the former gravel pits (except for one, which is now a large lake).
Reconstruction of the site to a henge and stone circle again.³

Ultrawide panoramic picture showing a full circle of standing stones under a clear sky. The dry grass has been cut back, and the remains of a campfire can be seen. — It doesn’t matter to me that this henge is more a modern reconstruction than a preserved piece of prehistory. It’s still a great excuse to stop and learn about how our ancestors might have lived.

It turns out that to be a good enough to pass as a “local expert”, you merely have to know enough. Enough to be able to uplift and inspire others, and the humility to know when to say “I don’t know”.⁴

That’s a lesson I should take to heart. I (too) often step back from the opportunity to help others learn something new because I don’t feel like I’m that experienced at whatever the subject is myself. But even if you’re still learning something, you can share what you’ve learned so far and help those behind you to follow the same path. I’m forever learning new things, and I should try to be more-open to sharing “as I learn”. And to admit where I’ve still got a long way to go.

¹ Of course, I only made the vlog because I was doing a videography course at the time and needed subject matter, and I’d recently been reading a lot about the Quoits because I was planning on “hiding” a virtual geocache at the site, and then I got carried away. Self-nerdsniped again!

² What is a local expert? I don’t know, but what I feel like is just a guy who read a couple of books because he got distracted while hiding a geocache!

³ I’ve no idea what future archeologists will make of this place when they finda reconstructed stone circle and then, when they dig nearby, an enormous quantity of non-biodegradable waste. What was this strange stone circle for, they’ll ask themselves? Was it a shrine to their potato-based gods, to whom they left crisp packets as a sacrifice?

⁴ When we’re talking about people from the neolithic, saying “I don’t know” is pretty easy, because what we don’t know is quite a lot, it turns out!

Some Days the School Run is Easy

A video, in which I rant about the challenges of carrying two-childrensworth of school gear while dragging our dog, herding somebody else’s dog, and trying to stop the kids from fighting. Some mornings it’s easy. Today… it was not. Also available on YouTube.

Full transcript of the audio (except for the ocassional snorting sounds of our noisy Frenchie as she snuffles about in the background):

The morning school run is never effortless. But some days it’s easy.

Today was not one of those days.

It’s a Wednesday. So, for some strange reason, that’s the heaviest-laden day. And so, with the eldest child on her bike and the youngest on his scooter I set off, pulling the dog, and carrying a PE kit, two book bags, two water bottles, and a guitar.

I should have realised early on that today wasn’t going to be a day that the universe smiled on me when the dog immediately ran off into a ditch to take a dump and I had to clamber down into the ditch with a poop bag to fill it.

But while I’m coming out of the ditch I discover that the youngest child has zipped off up ahead in an effort to ram into his older sister and in doing so has inevitably flipped himself over the handlebars of his scooter and is now lying, crying, in the middle of the road.

So I go over to him dragging the dog and carrying a PE kit and two book bags and two water bottles and a guitar and a bag full of poop and as best I can, carrying all those things, console him and eventually, with some encouragement he’s able to get back up and carry on walking to school, but says he can no longer scoot, so I have to carry the scooter.

Now I’m dragging a dog and carrying a poop bag and a PE kit and two water bottles and two book bags and guitar… and a scooter… and that’s when the oldest child manages to throw the chain off her bike.

Now she’s had little experience, in her defence, of the chain coming off her bike. And so she does the absolute worst thing possible which is tries to pedal as hard as possible to solve the problem which makes it much worse. By the time I get there the chain is royally snarled between some of the sprockets and their housing, so I put down the guitar and the bag of poop and I hand the lead to the younger child so that I can try to unpick the older child’s chain from her bike, getting myself covered in oil.

And that’s when I notice the commotion up ahead. There are some workmen who are rebuilding the wall outside Letterbox Cottage, and – up ahead of them – barking furiously, is a small dog. This dog is Lovey, and she belongs to a friend of ours. And she’s probably the best example of whatever the opposite of nominative determinism is. Because Lovey is a truculent little bitch. Lovey is a tiny small yappy dog who will start a fight with other dogs, try to see off workmen (which is what she’s doing at the time), and she’ll bark at passing cars. And right now she’s running free, unattended, in the middle of the road. And one of the workmen says to me, “Oh, do you know who’s dog that is?” and I have to admit that yes, I do.

So, dragging our dog and carrying a PE kit and two book bags and two water bottles, a guitar, a scooter, and a bag of poop, I have to help round up this lost dog, who – if it gets too close to our dog will start a fight – and get it back to the house where it lives.

So the younger child and I manage to succeed in our mission and return this lost dog and get back on our way to school and it’s there that we finally catch up with the older child who’s gotten bored and cycled ahead. And when we catch up to the older child with me dragging the dog and carrying a PE kit and two book bags and two water bottles and a guitar and a scooter and a bag of poop… she looks up at me and says, “Ugh! You took your time!”

Suffice to say, it’s a good job I Iove those children.

Normal for Children

Lacking a basis for comparison, children accept their particular upbringing as normal and representative.

Kit was telling me about how his daughter considers it absolutely normal to live in a house full of insectivorous plants¹, and it got me thinking about our kids, and then about myself:

I remember once overhearing our eldest, then at nursery, talking to her friend. Our kid had mentioned doing something with her “mummy, daddy, and Uncle Dan” and was incredulous that her friend didn’t have an Uncle Dan that they lived with! Isn’t having three parents… just what a family looks like?

Dan, wearing a black jumper, sits on a green chair in a brightly-decorated bedroom. On his chest, a 2-year-old girl has fallen asleep, clutching a woolen yellow blanket and with her thumb in her mouth. — You don’t have an Uncle Dan? Then where do you nap‽

By the time she was at primary school, she’d learned that her family wasn’t the same shape as most other families, and she could code-switch with incredible ease. While picking her up from school, I overheard her talking to a friend about a fair that was coming to town. She told the friend that she’d “ask her dad if she could go”, then turned to me and said “Uncle Dan: can we go to the fair?”; when I replied in the affirmitive, she turned back and said “my dad says it’s okay”. By the age of 5 she was perfectly capable of translating on-the-fly² in order to simultaneously carry out intelligble conversations with her family and with her friends. Magical.

When I started driving, and in particular my first few times on multi-lane carriageways, something felt “off” and it took me a little while to work out what it was. It turns out that I’d internalised a particular part of the motorway journey experience from years of riding in cars driven by my father, who was an unrepentant³ and perpetual breaker of speed limits.⁴ I’d come to associate motorway driving with overtaking others, but almost never being overtaken, but that wasn’t what I saw when I drove for myself.⁵ It took a little thinking before I realised the cause of this false picture of “what driving looks like”.

A boxy 1979 white Ford car, number plate DSS 657T with a badly dented and somewhat corroded front wheel arch on the drivers' side, sits empty and parked at the side of an otherwise empty asphalt strreet. In the background, under grey skies, a city skyline can be made out with houses, tower blocks, and a church steeple, on the other side of an arched river bridge. The leaves are early-autumn coloured: mostly greem, but with some brown appearing and a handful of bare branches exposed. — How my dad ever *managed* to speed in this old rustbucket I’ll never know.

The thing is: you only ever notice the “this is normal” definitions that you’ve internalised… when they’re challenged!

It follows that there are things you learned from the quirks of your upbringing that you still think of as normal. There might even be things you’ll never un-learn. And you’ll never know how many false-normals you still carry around with you, or whether you’ve ever found them all, exept to say that you probably haven’t yet.

A small child, sitting on the floor, uses a mobile phone to watch a cartoon of two people struggling to pull a fishing rod. A feminine hand with brown-painted nails and rings on two fingers reaches in to offer the child a minature model of a human brain. — I wanted a stock image that expressed the concept of how children conceptualise ideas in their mind, but I ended up with this picture of a women offering her kid a tiny human brain in exchange for her mobile phone back. That’s a normal thing that all families do, right?

It’s amazing and weird to think that there might be objective truths you’re perpetually unable to see as a restult of how, or where, or by whom you were brought up, or by what your school or community was like, or by the things you’ve witnessed or experienced over your life. I guess that all we can all do is keep questioning everything, and work to help the next generation see what’s unusual and uncommon in their own lives.

¹ It’s a whole thing. If you know Kit, you’re probably completely unsurprised, but spare a thought for the poor randoms who sometimes turn up and read my blog.

² Fully billingual children who typically speak a different language at home than they do at school do this too, and it’s even-more amazing to watch.

³ I can’t recall whether his license was confiscated on two or three separate ocassions, in the end, but it was definitely more than one. Having a six month period where you and your siblings have to help collect the weekly shop from the supermarket by loading up your bikes with shopping bags is a totally normal part of everybody’s upbringing, isn’t it?

⁴ Virtually all of my experience as a car passenger other than with my dad was in Wales, where narrow windy roads mean that once you get stuck behind something, that’s how you’re going to be spending your day.

⁵ Unlike my father, I virtually never break the speed limit, to such an extent that when I got a speeding ticket the other year (I’d gone from a 70 into a 50 zone and re-set the speed limiter accordingly, but didn’t bother to apply the brakes and just coasted down to the new speed… when the police snapped their photo!), Ruth and JTA both independently reacted to the news with great skepticism.

Note #21196

I bought Zach Weinersmith‘s Bea Wolf for my kids (9 and 6, the elder of them already a fan of Beowulf). It arrived today, but neither of them have had a chance to because I wouldn’t put it down.

My favourite bit is when Bea and her entourage arrive near Treeheart and the shield-bearer who greets them says “Your leader sparkles with power and also with sparkles.” The line’s brilliant, clever, and accompanies the most badass illustration.

I’ll give it to my kids… eventually. But if you’re looking for a book recommendation in the meantime, this is it.

Note #20578

Kids: We want porridge for breakfast.
Me: How do you want it?
Kids: Surprise us.

Presenting… oatmeal, honey and sultanas with a toasted marshmallow.

Dog; Person [Video]

This video accompanies a blog post of the same title. The content is basically the same – if you prefer videos, watch this video. If you prefer blog posts, go read the blog post.

Also available on YouTube and Facebook.

Dog; Person

This blog post is also available as a video. Would you prefer to watch/listen to me tell you about not being a “dog person”, but still loving one dog in particular?

I am not a “dog person”. I’m probably more of a “cat person”.

My mum has made pets of one or both of dogs or cats for most of her life. She puts the difference between the two in a way that really resonates for me. To paraphrase her:

When you’re feeling down and you’ve had a shitty day and you just need to wallow in your despair for a little bit… a pet dog will try to cheer you up. It’ll jump up at you, bring you toys, suggest that you go for a walk, try to pull your focus away from your misery and bring a smile to your face. A cat, though, will just come and sit and be melancholy with you. Its demeanour just wordlessly says: “You’re feeling crap? Me too: I only slept 16 hours today. Let’s feel crap together.”

A calico cat on a red ledge against the white outside wall of a building, shadowed by leaves, stares into the camera with a grumpy half-closed-eyes look. — “I hate Mondays. Also any other day of the week with a ‘Y’ in it.”

So it surprised many when, earlier this year, our family was expanded with the addition of a puppy called Demmy. I guess we collectively figured that now we’d solved all the hard problems and the complexities of our work, volunteering, parenting, relationships, money etc. and our lives were completely simple, plain sailing, and stress-free, all of the time… that we now had the capacity to handle adding another tiny creature into our midst. Do you see the mistake in that logic? Maybe we should have, too.

Ruth, in the background, watches on as a French Bulldog puppy jumps up at her two children, a girl and a boy, in a wood-floored hallway. — The kids were, and continue to be, absolutely delighted, especially our eldest who’s been mad about dogs now for well over half her life.

It turns out that getting a puppy is a lot like having a toddler all over again. Your life adjusts around when they need to sleep, eat, and poop. You need to put time, effort, and thought into how to make and keep your house safe both for and from them. And, of course, they bring with them a black hole that eats disposable income.

A French Bulldog puppy sound asleep on a doormat. — Sure they’re cute when they’re asleep, but the rest of the time they’re probably destroying things, pooping, or both. *#PuppyOrToddler?*

They need to be supervised and entertained and educated (the latter of which may require some education yourself). They need to be socialised so they can interact nicely with others, learn the boundaries of their little world, and behave appropriately (even when they’re not on camera).

Even as they grow, their impact is significant. You need to think more-deeply about how, when and where you travel, work out who’s responsible for ensuring they’re walked (or carried!) and fed (not eaten!) and watched. You’ve got to keep them safe and healthy and stimulated. Thankfully they’re not as tiring to play with as children, but as with kids, the level of effort required is hard to anticipate until you have one.

An 8-year-old girl in a flowery pink dress lies on her back in a meadow of long dry grass, laughing with her eyes closed. On her belly, Demmy lies, looking up towards the camera with her tongue hanging out. — Whether you’re a human pup or a canine pup, there’s fun to be had in leaping out of long grass to pounce one another.

But do you know what else they have in common with kids? You can’t help learning to love them.

It doesn’t matter what stupid thing they’re illicitly putting in their mouth, how many times you have to clean up after them, how frustrating it is that they can’t understand what you need from them in order to help them, or how much they whine about something that really isn’t that big a deal (again: #PuppyOrToddler?). It doesn’t even matter how much you’re “not a dog person”, whatever that means. They become part of your family, and you fall in love with them.

Under bright blue skies and in a green field, Dan and Demmy stare into the camera. Dan's flushed from the heat and wearing a purple-and-rainbow "WordPress Pride" t-shirt; Demmy's tongue hangs low and she's clearly panting. — Panting and too hot from a long run under the hot summer sun, but loving the opportunity to get out and enjoy the sights and smells of the world. #PuppyOrDan?

I’m not a “dog person”. But: while I ocassionally resent the trouble she causes, I still love our dog.

Dan Q found GC8QB2N INWT #12: Cleverest Crow?

This checkin to GC8QB2N INWT #12: Cleverest Crow? reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Continuing our reverse-order explore of some of these caches closest to our accommodation for the week. Little 5-year-old John found this one and came proudly out from its hiding place with it in hand. TFTC.

Logbook very wet, hard to sign.

Lichfield

We took a family trip up to Lichfield this weekend. I don’t know if I can give a “review” of a city-break as a whole, but if I can: I give you five stars, Lichfield.

Maybe it’s just because we’ve none of us had a night away from The Green… pretty-much since we moved in, last year. But there was something magical about doing things reminiscent of the “old normal”.

Dan and the kids in a bed at a hotel. — “I’m so excited! We get to stay… *at a Premier Inn*!” At first I rolled my eyes at this joyous line from our 4-year-old (I mean… it’s just a Premier Inn…), but it did feel good to go somewhere and do something.

It’s not that like wasn’t plenty of mask-wearing and social distancing and hand sanitiser and everything that we’ve gotten used to now: there certainly was. The magic, though, came from getting to do an expedition further away from home than we’re used to. And, perhaps, with that happening to coincide with glorious weather and fun times.

A balloon artist wearing a unicorn on her head makes sculptures for children. — Socially-distanced balloon modelling turns out to work, not least because you can hand one of those long balloons to somebody without getting anywhere near them.

We spent an unimaginably hot summer’s day watching an outdoor interpretation of Peter and the Wolf, which each of the little ones has learned about in reasonable depth, at some point or another, as part of the (fantastic) “Monkey Music” classes of which they’re now both graduates.

And maybe it’s that they’ve been out-of-action for so long and are only just beginning to once again ramp up… or maybe I’ve just forgotten what the hospitality industry is like?… but man, we felt well-looked after.

From the staff at the hotel who despite the clear challenges of running their establishment under the necessary restrictions still went the extra mile to make the kids feel special to the restaurant we went to that pulled out all the stops to give us all a great evening, I basically came out of the thing with the impression of Lichfield as a really nice place.

Dan in Lichfield city centre, deserted early on a Sunday morning. — Take social distancing to the next level: do your urban geocaching at the crack of dawn.

I’m not saying that it was perfect. A combination of the intolerable heat (or else the desiccating effect of the air conditioner) and a mattress that sagged with two adults on it meant that I didn’t sleep much on Saturday night (although that did mean I could get up at 5am for a geocaching expedition around the city before it got too hot later on). And an hour and a half of driving to get to a place where you’re going to see a one-hour show feels long, especially in this age where I don’t really travel anywhere, ever.

But that’s not the point.

Ruth and the kids eat breakfast — The buffet was closed, of course, but these kids were made for an “all you can eat” breakfast.

The point is that Lichfield made me happy, this weekend. And I don’t know how much of that is that it’s just a nice place and how much is that I’ve missed going anywhere or doing anything, but either way, it lead to a delightful weekend.

Spy’s Guidebook Reborn

When I was a kid of about 10, one of my favourite books was Usborne’s Spy’s Guidebook. (I also liked its sister the Detective’s Handbook, but the Spy’s Guidebook always seemed a smidge cooler to me).

So I was pleased when our eldest, now 7, took an interest in the book too. This morning, for example, she came to breakfast with an encrypted message for me (along with the relevant page in the book that contained the cipher I’d need to decode it).

Usborne Spy's Guidebook showing the "Pocket code card" page and a coded message — Decryption efforts were hampered by sender’s inability to get her letter “Z”s the right damn way around.

Later, as we used the experience to talk about some of the easier practical attacks against this simple substitution cipher (letter frequency analysis, and known-plaintext attacks… I haven’t gotten on to the issue of its miniscule keyspace yet!), she asked me to make a pocket version of the code card as described in the book.

While I was eating leftover curry for lunch with one hand and producing a nice printable, foldable pocket card for her (which you can download here if you like) with the other, I realised something. There are likely to be a lot more messages in my future that are protected by this substitution cipher, so I might as well preempt them by implementing a computerised encoder/decoder right away.

So naturally, I did. It’s at danq.dev/spy-pocket-code and al l the source code is available to do with as you please.

Key 4-1 being used to decode the message: UOMF0 7PU9V MMFKG EH8GE 59MLL GFG00 8A90P 5EMFL — Uh-oh: my cover is blown!

If you’ve got kids of the right kind of age, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the Spy’s Guidebook (and possibly the Detective’s Handbook). Either use it as a vehicle to talk about codes and maths, like I have… or let them believe it’s secure while you know you can break it, like we did with Enigma machines after WWII. Either way, they eventually learn a valuable lesson about cryptography.

The Bobstacle Course

For “School at Home” this lockdown, this 7 y/o’s PE teacher challenged her to “build an obstacle course”.

Also available on YouTube.

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk, as told by the kids via paper puppets. With thanks to Robin for direction, camera operation, editing and – I’m guessing – creative consultancy.

Also available on YouTube.

Having Kids In Our Poly Triad by Sara Valta

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Sara’s back! You might remember a couple of years ago she’d shared with us a comic on her first year in a polyamory! We’re happy to have her back with a slice of life and a frank n’ real conversation about having kids in her Poly Triad relationship.

This sort of wholesome loving chat is just the thing we need for the start of 2021.

…

Oh Joy Sex Toy

Start your year with a delightful comic about the author negotiating possible future children in a queer polyamorous triad, published via Oh Joy Sex Toy. Sara previously published a great polyamory-themed comic via OJST too, which is also worth a look.

Why children stay silent following sexual violence

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Kristin Jones (TED)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the messages we send to our children about their role, and ours as adults, in keeping them safe from people who might victimise them. As a society, our message has changed over the decades: others of my culture and generation will, like me, have seen the gradual evolution from “stranger danger” to “my body, my choice”. And it’s still evolving.

But as Kristin eloquently (and emotionally: I cried my eyes out!) explains, messages like these can subconsciously teach children that they alone are responsible for keeping themselves from harm. And so when some of them inevitably fail, the shame of their victimisation – often already taboo – can be magnified by the guilt of their inability to prevent it. And as anybody who’s been a parent or, indeed, a child knows that children aren’t inclined to talk about the things they feel guilty about.

And in the arms race of child exploitation, abusers will take advantage of that.

What I was hoping was to have a nice, concrete answer – or at least an opinion – to the question: how should we talk to children about their safety in a way that both tries to keep them safe but ensures that they understand that they’re not to blame if they are victimised? This video doesn’t provide anything like that. Possibly there aren’t easy answers. As humans, as parents, and as a society, we’re still learning.

Further watching, if you’ve the stomach for it: this Sexplanations episode with Dr. Lindsey Doe and Detective Katie Petersen.

I got married and had kids so you don’t have to

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

…

I’m sure that the graveyard of over-optimism is littered with the corpses of parents who planned to help their children learn self-moderation by showing them the wonders of nature, but who realized too late that fields of wheat don’t stand a chance against Rocket League. I’m hoping that we can agree that computer games are good, but other things are good too, cf fields of wheat. I don’t want to have to sneak in my own gaming time after my son has gone to bed. I also don’t want to be a hypocrite; at least, I don’t want Oscar to know that I’m a hypocrite. Maybe we can play together and use it as father-son bonding time. This might work until he’s ten and after he’s twenty-five.

…

Robert Heaton

Robert Heaton, of Programming Projects for Advanced Beginners fame and reverse-engineering device drivers that spy on you (which I’ve talked about before), has also been blogging lately about his experience of Dadding, with the same dry/sarcastic tone you might be used to. This long post is a great example of the meandering thoughts of a (techie) parent in these (interesting) times, and it’s good enough for that alone. But it’s the raw, genuine “honesty and dark thoughts” section towards the end of the article that really makes it stand out.

Footnotes

Footnotes