Newsletter #40

How to see a child's gifts?

The Telepathy Tapes podcast is having a moment, have you had a chance to listen to it? One of the things it’s making me think of (among the many mind-bending ideas to ponder) is a nearly impossible parenting skill: to see your children’s subliminal gifts. Not the surface things that strangers notice or grade points observe. But the quieter gifts: intuition, listening, empathy, sense of smell, sense of direction…

reading in blankets, a March mood

Speaking of a sense of smell, the recent story The Woman Who Could Smell Parkinson’s (gift NYT article) tells about a woman who could accurately smell Parkinson’s years before people could be diagnosed scientifically. I was dismayed to read that she had learned to keep her extraordinary nose to herself as a child. Her grandmother had both encouraged her special gift (“quizzing her on different varieties of roses”) and discouraged her from bringing it up in general conversation. I have gifted noses in my household, and frankly, they annoy me. Who wants a smell report upon entering every new room? But reading this woman’s story, I realized a strong sense of smell was gift I could be gently nudging along and encouraging, even honoring, alongside the easier gifts of quick memory and piano practice.

I hope I can recognize my judgements about how convenient one talent is over another and set them aside quickly. Better to see the unique gifts in each member of our family.

Currently Reading Aloud

We are reading aloud a book called Exploring the History of Medicine and really enjoying it. It’s fascinating to read about the people who made our medical and scientific advances in history, many of them outliers and hobbyists in their field! There are a few true and false questions at the end of each chapter and everyone gets a chance to answer one question; a fun way to review. Chapters are short and thematically succient. It is listed for fifth, sixth and seventh grade but our third grader is also enjoying listening. I’m not sure how much the kindergartener is soaking up but she wouldn’t miss a chapter either.

Note this book is written from the perspective of there being a God creator. So any time someone featured believed in God, the author quotes their remarks on this topic.

Supper Club

Two popular recipes of late in my home…

+ Oven macaroni and cheese with cottage cheese, one bowl, one pan. I use a full box of pasta and add extra milk.

+Dorie Greenspan’s shepherd’s pie. The tomato & Mediterranean spices she adds to this make all the difference, but it’s still an easy recipe.

Ordered by mail

After leaning heavily on a Nuuly subscription to get through my pregnancy and early postpartum months (which was honestly the very best gift I gave myself after having given away all my maternity clothing), I’m slowly back to buying clothes to own again. This gingham top from Uniqlo has felt cheerful to wear and I love the gentle elastic pinch waist.

And a quote for you…(an autodidact is someone who teaches themselves)

I’ve been something of an autodidact ever since about the age of fifteen when I quit public school in order to discover poetry, Shakespeare, Homer, John Henry Newman, Dickens, Austen, and many others. I was dreadfully shy, and perhaps a move from Wisconsin to Oregon right in the middle of ninth grade didn’t help matters. But as one who had just started discovering the glories of Shakespeare and some of the language’s greatest authors, I was angered when my new English teacher replaced the reading of Great Expectations with a forgettable angsty novel, and then skimmed over Romeo and Juliet, assuring us that he’d give us “a Cliffs’ Notes version of it so that you’ll never have to worry about Shakespeare again.” I didn’t return to high school after that year. Instead, I took a year of self-directed homeschooling—a year which, I would argue, really helped to solidify my newly-discovered passion for literature—passed the GED when I turned sixteen and started community college the following autumn.

-Rachael Herrington, from a long post on Reading the St. John’s college curriculum. Thanks for linking to her, Henry!