Vida

OK... right at this very moment Athena has lit a candle. For the
past 2 days she has this thing with holding lit candles and dripping
the wax into a plastic lid, touching the wick and the and hot wax.

I don't want her playing with it at all. If I'm here, like right
this very second, I don't mind, but she is the type to go grab the
lighter and light it up when I'm not here.

I don't want to mess this up, so before I say anything I want to know
how you all have handled the fire situation. Should I just let her
light a bunch of candles and be there with her until the need wears
off? go and buy her a bunch of candles so we can light them etc?
spill wax everywhere? or do I say "My job is to keep you safe" type
thing?

Vida
mama of Athena & Penelope (almost 8).

[email protected]

In a message dated 3/8/2007 5:49:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
vidamel@... writes:

I don't want to mess this up, so before I say anything I want to know
how you all have handled the fire situation. Should I just let her
light a bunch of candles and be there with her until the need wears
off? go and buy her a bunch of candles so we can light them etc?
spill wax everywhere? or do I say "My job is to keep you safe" type
thing?



As someone that was burned at 6 years old with Second and Third Degree burns
because I was playing with a lighter.. I would just make sure you say that
we are NOT allowed to light the candles unless I am with you.

Sandy
<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free
email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at
http://www.aol.com


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Sandra Dodd

-=-As someone that was burned at 6 years old with Second and Third
Degree burns
because I was playing with a lighter.. I would just make sure you say
that
we are NOT allowed to light the candles unless I am with you.-=-

Were you allowed, at 6, to play with a lighter without anyone with you?
Do you think a rule that says NO will keep a child safe?

Kids play with fire because they're curious. If their curiosity is
safely satisfied, they'll have no need to be sneaky. If you're right
there talking about safety and space and what's too near and what's
flammable, you'll make her safe. "Just say no" rules do not equal
safe; they equal sneaky.

-=-Should I just let her
light a bunch of candles and be there with her until the need wears
off? go and buy her a bunch of candles so we can light them etc?
spill wax everywhere? or do I say "My job is to keep you safe" type
thing?-=-

The effect of those questions in that order is to make it seem
you've already decided and you want us to back you up. It also seems
you've seen the edges but not the middle. I recommend this article:
http://sandradodd.com/balance

Taking the questions separately,

-=--=-Should I just let her
light a bunch of candles and be there with her until the need wears
off?-=-

The need will not "wear off," it will be satisfied. "The need" is
the need to learn. You should hope it never wears off.


-=- go and buy her a bunch of candles so we can light them etc? -=-

At a thrift store you could get some candles, probably several
assorted in a plastic bag for $3. That's pretty inexpensive for a
memorable half hour of learning.


-=-spill wax everywhere?-=-

Why do you think wax would be spilled everywhere? That doesn't make
sense. Find a cookie sheet or baking tray and put aluminum foil in
it and use that, or play outside on concrete, or on a patio or deck.
Set up by the fireplace, and drip the wax on firewood if wax is going
to have to drip. Or set the candles in pie pans.

Birthday candles are very inexpensive. You could stick them in
Play-Doh or modelling clay. Make a "cake" out of something like
that, or a mudpie cake. Wax dripping on mud isn't going to hurt
anything. Play-Doh's cheap.


-=-or do I say "My job is to keep you safe" type
thing?-=--=-

Is that your only other choice?
Your job IS to keep her safe, but not by depriving her of
opportunities. By providing safe opportunities.

Sandra

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Sandra Dodd

-=-For the
past 2 days she has this thing with holding lit candles and dripping
the wax into a plastic lid, touching the wick and the and hot wax.-=-

Find something metal.

Put a bowl of water near, so she can stick her fingers in that if she
needs to. Dripping wax into a bowl of water is VERY cool, though.
Maybe a metal pie pan with water. Try dripping wax into baby
powder. I made my boyfriend a little hanging sculpture with the wax
beads I made by dripping wax in powder long ago. You can string them
with needle and thread if you do it while they're still a little warm.

-=-
I don't want her playing with it at all. If I'm here, like right
this very second, I don't mind, but she is the type to go grab the
lighter and light it up when I'm not here.-=-

She's "the type"?

Not a cool way to refer to your own child.

Sandra




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Vida

wow... Sandra, I like your replies and your posts. You are quite a
challenge sometimes. In a medium like this it is very hard to
express everything the way I could in a RL situation. But here in
flat black and white emails that cannot always be. I am far from
being the "unschooling mom of the year", but, as I have stated before
I am re-connecting and through this group and much of your writings
and Joyce's as well, I am making progress. Sometimes when you are in
the process, questions come up as to how to handle specific
situations. In my current evolution I am afraid of my kids playing
with lighters and lighting candles when I'm not around. Part of
progressing is also being honest with what your feeling. Based on
this fear (them getting burned), and knowing that Athena still feels
the need (I agree that "the type"is a not cool way to talk about my
child and I thank you for that "heads up" ) to sneak behind my back
(another behavior that is quickly disappearing) I came to this group
to ask some basic questions.

I was looking for unschooling in action, so to speak, and ideas about
how other unschooling parents have handled the fire thing. Is there
a boundary line? She (Athena) is also very independent and wants to
do/try things without me around. She is already very comfortable
with fire and lighting candles and helping with the wood stove and
roasting sausages on our open fire pit outside. When I talk about
safety, and distance, and flammable etc she says she already knows.
When they were 5 we were outside lighting small grass fires and
putting them out with blankets, water and smothering them with dirt
and I let them use the small fire extinguisher. So in a very real
sense they do understand about fire. I am looking for approaches
that work. I understand the concepts but still have a hard time
implementing them in certain areas.

I also wasn't asking for your approval. Again, looking for ideas and
suggestion. It is true that as I re-learn and re-connect I analyze
and think more about how to react to something, trying to see if it
is knee-jerk or calculated, or if there is manipulation behind what I
want to say, or coerciveness or guilt. These are often hard to
recognize, and since fire is a safety issue I want to make the best
decision possible.

As far as dripping wax everywhere... Obviously you haven't seen my
house and how very lax I am about things like that. I do not live in
or keep one of those neat and tidy homes nor do I have furniture I
care about. My apologies for not clarifying that I meant"dripping
wax everywhere" as a fun thing to do... not necessarily all over the
furniture, but onto plates and trays and into water (great idea).

You have strong convictions based on real life experience. People
with strong convictions can come off as being hard. I don't mind
being the learner here. At first glance your email came off as
unnecessarily harsh. Perhaps it is, perhaps not. It doesn't really
matter. Personally I was never very good at diplomacy and much
prefer someone's true thoughts unpampered and not sugar-coated, as
yours are.

Your second reply was more along the lines of what I was looking for
and I will re-read your balance article. Thanks for the suggestions.

About finding a metal lid for the wax to drip into... wouldn't it be
cool to watch the plastic lid turn black and warp from the heat of
the candle flame?

Vida

Sandra Dodd

-=-When I talk about
safety, and distance, and flammable etc she says she already knows.
When they were 5 we were outside lighting small grass fires and
putting them out with blankets, water and smothering them with dirt
and I let them use the small fire extinguisher. So in a very real
sense they do understand about fire. -=-

If you talk about it conversationally, as you would with an adult
friend or a teen, you'll find out what she knows without telling her
again what she knows. So instead of talking about safety and
distance, ask her to help you set up a safe area. She'll tell you
what she's doing and why, and you can point out what might burn or
not. (Plastic isn't the best thing for hot wax, I think; I would've
said, had I been there, "Let's use metal.")

-=-I also wasn't asking for your approval. Again, looking for ideas -=-

This whole list is for discussing ideas, not for approvals. And when
I write to this list, I'm writing to hundreds of people, not to one.
There are people who have never posted a word who read every day.

-=-As far as dripping wax everywhere... Obviously you haven't seen my
house and how very lax I am about things like that.-=-

I don't have to have seen anyone's house to see the fallacy in the
idea that either you let her drip wax everywhere or you forbid the
activity altogether.

Sometimes when parents tent toward control it spills over in wanting
to control things like how I respond to posts. This list is a great
place to get unschooling-in-action feedback. And many years of "best
of" is collected here http://sandradodd.com/unschooling and at http://
joyfullyrejoycing.com/ and other pages linked from those two.

-=-About finding a metal lid for the wax to drip into... wouldn't it be
cool to watch the plastic lid turn black and warp from the heat of
the candle flame?-=-

Not inside the house, because it would stink badly, possibly cause
toxic fumes, and if plastic melted on furniture, or the counter, or
your child, that would be WAY, way worse than paraffin or bee's wax
either one. If you're concerned about safety, a plastic lid works
against the stated principle.

-=-At first glance your email came off as unnecessarily harsh.
Perhaps it is, perhaps not. It doesn't really matter.-=-

You're right. It doesn't matter. It was freely offered for the good
of the future of unschooling at your house, freely given by someone
whose children have played with fire for years and never been burned,
by a mom who still plays with fire, married to a man who chopped
firewood yesterday for an hour for a wood-burning hot tub and a
fireplace. We had a candlelit discussion here a few weeks back and
holly spent a couple of hours, another night, with another teenager
playing with the candle stubs making patterns in metal trays with all
the drippings from that evening.

If something I write doesn't appeal to one person, it's sure to be
useful to two or three others. There are 1361 members, according to
yahoogroups today. Probably half of them forgot they're on the list.
That still leaves a few to read and consider whatever comes through,
in light of making their own children happier. I'm satisfied with
the value and usefulness of the list.

There are other lists linked here:
http://sandradodd.com/help
The only other one I'm on is UnschoolingDiscussion, so if anyone
wants to get away from my tone or confidence, there are other places
to go where other unschoolers will probably say the same kinds of
things (if you're lucky).

Sandra

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Robyn L. Coburn

<<<< > OK... right at this very moment Athena has lit a candle. For the
> past 2 days she has this thing with holding lit candles and dripping
> the wax into a plastic lid, touching the wick and the and hot wax. >>>>

Jayn (7) loves candle play, and always wants to push toothpicks into the wet
wax pool and watch them catch and burn. She also likes carving into pillar
candles. She puts them out with a snuffer, blowing or putting a small plate
over the flame and then I light it again for her using a good sized butane
safety lighter - the wand kind that is designed for barbeques. We also have
a very cool hinged one that can be bent over to light candles at the bottom
of a container without burning one's hand.

What I do is ensure that the candle is on a safe and solid surface, and one
that would be undamaged by the few wax drips. Jayn is interested in the
effect of thick wax on fabric. If Jayn is going overboard, IMO, with the
number of toothpicks I warn her that she is likely to melt the side of the
candle. Periodically during the game I clean out the black charcoal bits -
another tool for art work.

Since our lighters are too difficult for her work yet, she still needs me to
do the lighting for her. That very simple method ensures that I am around
for all of this play. I have also told her I prefer to be there and so far
she hasn't objected. Actually she wants me there to be an audience for her
narrative about the game. I stay near sitting at the table with my computer
but don't "hover".

Usually she doesn't think of doing it unless I have lit a candle for another
reason such as the table centerpiece. Jayn likes to decorate the dinner
table by theme, and these have been great occasions to talk about
flammability and why we should not have the Barbie sleeve or the floral
blooms hanging over the flame.

We do have matches in the house too. Jayn has asked to light her own matches
at times, and what I did was ask her to do it in the bathroom where all the
surfaces are hard. She knows how to do it properly away from her but I
think having to do that herself was too much trouble because she swiftly
went back to asking me to light her candles for her. She has also dripped
wax from tapers and used a burning candle to light incense sticks.

I have ceased feeling the need to be present while she plays with her
incense sticks, partly because being too close to the smoke makes my eyes
sore. They tend to go out pretty quickly if she is waving them about and
making smoke patterns. She has used them to burn holes and lines in paper
for art work. Again this is something I ask her to do in the relative safety
of the bathroom just down the hall. The sticks we have just don't seem to
have the oomph to actually do more than make the paper smoulder and she
doesn't leave it unattended. So far she has informed me when she wants to
play (I light her candle) and then tells me when she is done and I attend to
trimming the candle wick if needed and put it away.

She recently experimented with pieces of wire held to the flame by a damp
paper towel. Insulation.

Jayn at 3 was very slightly burnt by a birthday cake candle. It was so
slight that she didn't even tell me about it, but just was wary around cakes
for a while. I didn't see it happen, but my friend on the other side of the
table did see it and finally told me about a year later when I mentioned
that Jayn didn't like candles - "Oh it's because she was burnt". HUh??? Oh
well she got over it, and there was no visible burn so I think she might
just have felt the heat rather than actually gotten in to the flame. We just
supported her preference not to have candles on her cakes for a year or two
and the fear faded.

There is a lovely moment in "Kiki's Delivery Service" when Kiki (13) builds
and lights the fire in the wall oven at the old lady's house. She says she
used to help her mother light fires all the time. Knowledge is a much better
safeguard than rules and denial. and the expectation of obedience.

Robyn L. Coburn

[email protected]

Set up by the fireplace, and drip the wax on firewood if wax is going
to have to drip. Or set the candles in pie pans.
***********
Go grab some pine cones and drip the wax between each...nub? leaf like appendage? try to fill up smaller ones, maybe add some glitter and place them in a bowl by your fireplace, use them to start fires later on. drip wax into a pan and then dip your finger tips in the cooling wax, let it harden and peel it off to see your fingerprints.
There is loads of fun stuff to do with candles and wax.
Elissa Jill
OTN:
Stitch of the Day Swatch
silk/wool blend tie front mini sweater
http://mystikmusings.blogspot.com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

About finding a metal lid for the wax to drip into... wouldn't it be
cool to watch the plastic lid turn black and warp from the heat of
the candle flame?
***********
Probably, but not as safe. I've dropped melted plastic before and it hurts alot more than a little melted wax does. it also takes much longer to cool, therefore it can burn more.

Elissa Jill
OTN:
Stitch of the Day Swatch
silk/wool blend tie front mini sweater
http://mystikmusings.blogspot.com/

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[email protected]

I've dropped melted plastic before
********
Oops! That should read, "I've dripped melted plastic before.."
Elissa Jill
OTN:
Stitch of the Day Swatch
silk/wool blend tie front mini sweater
http://mystikmusings.blogspot.com/

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Vida

On Mar 8, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> The only other one I'm on is UnschoolingDiscussion, so if anyone
> wants to get away from my tone or confidence, there are other places
> to go where other unschoolers will probably say the same kinds of
> things (if you're lucky).

I think I'll stay right here. Like I said, you have strong
convictions and I hope my replies don't sound like I'm trying to
control anybody's responses. What use would that be? Better to feel
challenged and look at why that feeling came up than to have
everything sugar-coated. Besides, lists where everyone agrees can be
very boring and worthless as far as any kind of evolution is
concerned. Anybody who wants to change needs people with confidence
and conviction that have already walked before them.

Asking her to help set up a safe fire place is a great suggestion.
Too much talking... or telling i.e. teaching... will only make her
defiant and defensive. This is the point in the process that I have
not yet utilized. First is recognition that what I was doing wasn't
working, then a study of my reactions and parenting ways, and then
making steps toward what I want (stop yelling, back off, say yes,
etc), and then there are fuzzy areas that I haven't been able to see
clearly.. like this fire example. Asking her to help set up the safe
place is a way to keep moving forward. Thank you. Maybe next time
I'll think to use the same approach on whatever comes along. That
would be evidence of further progress.

Vida



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Danielle Conger

> There is a lovely moment in "Kiki's Delivery Service" when Kiki (13)
> builds
> and lights the fire in the wall oven at the old lady's house. She says
> she
> used to help her mother light fires all the time. Knowledge is a much
> better
> safeguard than rules and denial. and the expectation of obedience.
>

And we all noticed that she was careful enough to closepin her sleeves
out of the way!

Sam built his first fire from start to finish in the fireplace the other
day. He's lit many fires outside and candles and helped to build the
fire, but this was "his" fire, and he was pretty damned proud.
Understandably so.


--
~~Danielle
Emily (9), Julia (8), Sam (6)
http://www.organiclearning.blogspot.com

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Connections: ezine of unschooling and mindful parenting
http://connections.organiclearning.org

Kris

When my children were very small they were just never alone, I was there for
every contact with flame and heat so maybe it was a natural progression. I
would tell them "hot" and even reach out to touch, the make a face showing
pain but never told them "no" or "don't touch". Both eventually touched the
"hot" thing, I was right there with cold water and lots of comfort. Both
children have been very careful with fire.

I asked them to please have me with them if they want to play with candles
or matches, so far they always have. They also show little interest in fire
and obvious respect for it's potential danger. Perhaps it's because it was
never off limits and/or because I never lied to them. I've met several
people who say things like "bite" when referring to fire or stoves, they
don't "bite" and maybe that sets the ground work for lack of trust.

On 3/8/07, Vida <vidamel@...> wrote:
>
> OK... right at this very moment Athena has lit a candle. For the
> past 2 days she has this thing with holding lit candles and dripping
> the wax into a plastic lid, touching the wick and the and hot wax.
>
> I don't want her playing with it at all. If I'm here, like right
> this very second, I don't mind, but she is the type to go grab the
> lighter and light it up when I'm not here.
>
> I don't want to mess this up, so before I say anything I want to know
> how you all have handled the fire situation. Should I just let her
> light a bunch of candles and be there with her until the need wears
> off? go and buy her a bunch of candles so we can light them etc?
> spill wax everywhere? or do I say "My job is to keep you safe" type
> thing?
>
> Vida
> mama of Athena & Penelope (almost 8).
>



--
The true measure of a person is how they treat those who can be of no use to
them.


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