Monday memories.

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce

Dearest has a lot to answer for when it comes to Ditz; half her genes are his after all. And then there is the little matter of the play dough.


Ditz is only one of 5 & when she was small the other 4 were at the little island school. Of those 4, 3 were labeled ADD, a different 3 were kinesthetic learners, 1 was was labeled gifted but so sorry, we don't get funding to extend him so he is terribly, terribly bored & all of them were falling through the gaps in the system.


In an effort to address the pit falls in the education system I was doing a lot of teaching at home anyway. In an effort to address the pit falls in the system I accepted a part
time job teaching remedial reading at the school. I also taught remedial writing &, wait for it, remedial math!


I would tuck baby Ditz in a sling & I would teach & help out in my children's classrooms. If you want to keep your kids in school never, ever help out in their classroom! It absolutely destroyed any belief I had that the school knew what they were doing with my kids, never mind anybody else's.


Baby Ditz's grow & eventually Ditz was relegated to a playpen on the verandah while I taught. Later on she would very occasionally spend a few hours in the pre~school classroom. Not very many because she would march out at home time with relief written large on every pore of her being & announce crossly that the classroom was *noisy & naughty*. She had no intention of ever being confined permanently in such an awful place. It gave her a raging headache & she would swan round pale & wan for the rest of the day, quite unlike her usual exuberant self.


Being the nong I am I figured if remedial reading worked so very well on children of average intelligence who had somehow missed the reading boat it should work just as well on a rather bright little 4 year old who was susceptible to chocolate bribes & we began our homeschool journey.


There was just one little drawback to this journey; while I worked someone needed to watch Ditz. Often that someone was Ditz's daddy, Dearest.


Now Dearest's idea of watching a 4 year old was to switch on the telly but because I had firm ideas on the sort of viewing allowable for a 4 year old he only had one channel to choose from: the ABC. ABC viewing at that time of the morning ran in 1/2 hour segments of upper primary math, secondary school science, beginners French [at uni level], world geography for middle primary & English grammar. No wonder that child's learning is so uneven.


I would come home & be relegated with some very odd facts or go to teach a lesson only to find Ditz was somehow well past it & her first few years of homeschool were something of an erratic adventure & ominously easy.


I only worked one or two days a week for a couple of hours; barely paid for the petrol but it wasn't about the work so much as it was about making a difference for my kids. So I would rush round frantically each morning getting Ditz & I ready because Ditz had to have a bribe [snack], paper for drawing, lego & puzzles available. She would follow me out to the car tears streaming down her face & wave bye~bye until she couldn't see me any more. Then she would happily go inside & watch t.v with her father.


What I didn't know was that sometimes Dearest had to lie down for his bad back & that pretty much left Ditz unsupervised. In the event of an emergency she knew where to find her father & for company she had the cats, though both were more than a little wary of Ditz.


When Ditz heard the car returning she would rush out to greet me.


"What did you do?" I would ask.


I never expected, "I made playdough!"


I was more than a little surprised. Artistic endeavours with his kids have never been Dearest's thing. In fact I didn't even know Dearest knew how to make playdough.


"Really?"


"It's purple. Come & see."


Ditz dragged me by the hand into my house. A vision of white greeted my stunned eyes. Flour drifted over all the bench tops & down the hallways. Virulent spatterings of food dye splattered the white but Ditz had made playdough! Golly gosh, Ditz had made playdough. All on her little ownsome Ditz had made playdough. There was just one question still unanswered in my mind.


I took a shuddering breath & asked it. "Which recipe did you use? Cooked or uncooked?"


Ditz rolled her eyes at me. She's always been good at that.


"Uncooked of course. I'm not allowed to use the oven, remember?!"


I remembered all right. I was just surprised Ditz had.