How to Help Your Child Be Brilliant and Happy

Marla was off and, uh, hanging out with the kids.

Excellent, excellent.

Yeah, new normal.

So what's, what's news with Alana this week?

Um, her reading keeps getting better. Uh, she's getting more and more confident. It makes sense to her. I tried to find a book. Last time we spoke, you said to get a book that has like one word in each page to give her the sense of of personal accomplishment to finish the book. And I wasn't able to quite find a book that had words where she could sound out, or where she could sound out all the words. But what we do is that, you know, we look at it, and if I see there's words that don't have too many exceptions, or silent letters, or G-Hs and sounds that make no sense to her based on what she's been told about the sounds of the letters, she reads them. She takes big pride in it. We started reading, we started doing math on paper instead of on our fingers. Wow. So I've got a sheet here, I wrote simple equations and I'm teaching her how to read them. She knows the plus and minus sign, the equal sign now, so she's able to read 2 2 and then she goes 4. So that's really good, I feel like, you know.

Yeah.

I always struggled with math, so I hope she can do better.

Oh yeah, well she, so it sounds like she's got it solid on her fingers, basic, Addition and subtraction is solid on her fingers?

Yeah, pretty solid. Like, she'll— so for some reason she's regressed on taking away, like minus. I don't know why. I feel like she wants to give us the right answer, but feels like the faster she gives it, the better. She doesn't really believe us when I say it's all about how you do it, not if you get it right, you know?

Right, right. Well, it's a process. Again, there's this delicate balance between kind of being enthusiastic and supportive, but also not, not trying to go too fast. And so So you back off a little bit and she'll be fine. One of the nice things about being so far ahead of the game in so many ways is, you know, you can kind of stretch her wherever she can stretch. And if you need to back off a little bit, that's totally fine too.

Right. No, for sure. And we're trying not to put pressure or anything. We're just teaching her. But besides that, Alana has just been wonderful. She's amazing with her brother. We took her to the zoo the other day in the afternoon. She was there for 4 hours. Didn't ever ask to be carried. I didn't carry her. It's kind of sad actually. The first time we went out for that long and she just walked like a trooper the whole time. Just pretty amazing.

But just going back to math, do you think conceptually she gets the idea of addition?

Oh, definitely. Definitely, and I think she gets subtraction. It's just, she gets excited and she wants to get the right answer and she kind of reverts to doing addition because we did addition with her first for a long time before subtraction. Got it.

So, I was just gonna say, other than fingers, obviously, there's things like cookies and things like that, addition and subtraction where it's tangible and she really wants to get it right.

Right. Well, she has to get the math right, otherwise she doesn't get her vitamins. So we've got that riding on it, you know.

Got it. How about games? Any updates on games?

I have not played Set since our last talk, unfortunately. I have it in a bag over here and I carry it around with me whenever we go places and I just haven't had the opportunity. We did play checkers. We played checkers. And I did what you said, and I actually took away a whole row. And so she had 3 rows and I had 2 rows. And she won the game. And she was very excited about it.

I bet.

But she was so sweet. Like when I explained to her why she had more players than me, that I was letting her have an advantage. She's like, oh no, no, no, no, let's just play. Like, I was like, no, no, it has to be this way. She's doing better. She's turning into a little shark in checkers. She looks for the jumps.

Yeah, well, yeah, and then the next thing is maybe she'll see it as more fair if every time you lose, you get to add one checker. And then, then, you know, can kind of go up, go up until you can beat her with whatever checkers you've got. And then of course, when you beat her, then you lose a checker again. And hopefully she can kind of really get into that.

Yeah. We'll find that checker handicap. Oh, the other thing is that we've been playing Chutes and Ladders because, and now she knows how to count to 100.

Wow.

Yesterday we were on her scooter and we're in a parking garage and there were painted numbers on the ground for each space, 81, 82, 83. So I scoot over, I say, what's this number? She goes, 8 and 1. I'm like, how do you say it together? 81. She doesn't really get that it's, a separate number of 81, but she knows how to say it together, and that's all from Chutes and Ladders.

Yeah, but she can count all the way to 100 whenever she wants?

No, but when she sees the numbers together, she knows the pattern, 20, 30, 40, 50. I'm sure there's a word for what that pattern is.

Have you done counting on fingers and toes so she can get, kind of gets a visceral sense of 20?

No, but she can count to 20, 25.

No problem.

In Spanish anyway.

Okay.

Thanks to her half-day preschool.

And have you been hanging out with Jordan and his kid?

Oh, we hung out once, 2 weeks ago. We hung out all day at Balboa Park. We went to the science museum, and Alana and Odin, is his name, had scooters. So they scooted around and went to the science museum, and they became fast friends. I quite like Jordan and Jen. I feel like I could learn a lot from them. So we're hoping to hang out more in the near future. We talked about doing a school or something, and we're definitely on the same page there. Just have to figure out what it is.

Yeah, a few more people and you can start a little school, basically.

Absolutely. So we're definitely excited about that. Odin's a great little person, and Alana called him her new best friend, which is high praise. It's high praise.

How many best friends does she have?

Only a few. Years ago, years ago, a couple years ago, she, uh, would be at the playground, and every time she got to the playground, she'd say, I want to go make a new best friend. It took a while to understand that you don't always make new best friends, that sometimes kids are mean, that sometimes you don't make friends at all. And, you know, there was some painful letdown there for her. But she's got, you know, 2 or 3 friends that she would refer to as a best friend. Estella, maybe a girl from school, Naomi.

Yeah.

And that's it.

So what about writing? Does she write numbers? Does she write anything?

Yes, she does. She knows how to write all the letters. My wife has for many, many years now taken time to have Lana do handwriting class, essentially copy big A, little a, big B, little b. And she can draw her numbers.

Can she write her name?

Yeah, oh yeah, definitely, long time.

Very cool, very cool.

I'm not sure if she's right-handed or left-handed. She can write serviceably with both. Seems to be right-handed taking over.

You know, one perspective is, you know, maybe there's just a natural, and there are people who are ambidextrous, and you know, I think of schools as forcing, you know, in the old days they really tried to force people be right-handed, right? And sometimes I think it, you know, gave left-handed people all kinds of issues because of that. So yeah, a nice thing about doing it your way is, you know, whatever.

Yeah, we're still working on it. It's pretty clear that her right leg is dominant.

Aha.

Her right arm, I think, is dominant, but she throws pretty well with her left. She can do chopsticks with both hands. Like, I take her hairband and wrap it up such that, you know, you can use chopsticks. And so she does that with both hands, just like her mom. Marlo can use chopsticks equally well with both hands at the same time. Marlo can feed herself and feed a kid. It's pretty impressive.

How about scissors? Does she favor right or left for scissors?

Right.

Okay, probably she's right-handed and it's just a matter of settling into it.

Yeah, when she plays the ukulele She has it left-handed and that seems— and she strums better with it. So I'm not sure why. I'm still letting her play however she wants, but—

Have you talked to her about how some people are more right-handed and left-handed at all?

Yeah, we have. I told her that I am left leg dominant even though I'm right arm dominant, thanks to jumping out of a moving bus when I was 14 and getting run over by a van. But I write left-handed. I'm not ambidextrous, I'm just cross-wired. As multiple people have told me in my life.

And do you regard that as having been a disadvantage or not necessarily?

I definitely think it's a disadvantage. A clear disadvantage. The only advantage, and again, I think the reason why my left leg is dominant may have more to do with being run over by the bus and having a knee injury to my right leg when I was 5 or 6, as opposed to I'm truly cross-wired. 'Cause I write left-handed, And that's always been the case. But I'm right arm dominant, so I'm not really sure why. But the only time it ever helped me is when I figured out that in wrestling, it was a big advantage to have my strong arm lead with my left leg, my strong leg in the back. Kind of had the best of both worlds.

It's a special wrestling advantage.

Yeah.

I'm just thinking, I do think that you guys are just doing such a great job with Alana. Do you find that there are any friends or family that cause interference in terms of how, or does your network, including your family, all interact with her pretty much exactly the way you want them to interact with her?

Well, we don't have any family in San Diego, so we only see family when we're in Hawaii or elsewhere on the mainland visiting them. So for better or worse, Alana and Logan don't have a lot of influence besides us. There's the babysitter who, you know, 9 to 15 hours a week depending, and the babysitter's family, and they're a wonderful family. Alana may pick up a couple of odd habits here and there. They eat candy, we don't, so Alana's had candy there, and you know, that's fine. It's also the first place Alana also learned how to eat Mexican food properly, like how to roll up a tortilla in her hand and scoop stuff with it. But mostly, I mean, oh, go ahead.

You know, one of, you know, Magat and I want to create a school in Senegal, and one of the challenges in terms of training, you know, training teachers there is there are all sorts of norms, you know, there are still a lot of families where it's routine to—

there.

And You know, I grew up, my dad hit me, you know, it's not that long ago it was normal here. So we don't want to make it a big deal. On the other hand, if you really care about these things, you know, it's easy to jump into subcultures where things you don't want to happen are still normal.

Right.

And, you know, that's one of the problems, you know, because we can't live in a total bubble. And I like the fact that, hey, she eats sugar there, whatever. Yeah. At the same time, you know, you can imagine some things, shaming and blaming and guilt and anger and aggression and, you know, sorts of things where even really nice people sometimes, you know, they haven't kind of addressed those sorts of issues yet.

Yeah, Alana is terrified of what— I mean, she watched someone get a very, very mild whack on the butt after her cousin disobeyed her parents and played out in the street, in a busy street, could have been hit by a car, very dangerous. Her cousin got a well-deserved, aside from the peaceful parenting angle, slap on the butt. And it was by no means over the top at all. And the look of horror and fear on my daughter's face as she looked at her uncle, who's a wonderful man. Like, Alana, she's never been hit, right? She doesn't think that's right. She's never been put in timeout. She'll go and sit with her cousin in timeout in solidarity. Until she's like forced to move.

Very sweet.

You asked a very good question, and you know, does she pick up good habits and bad habits? And certainly she picks up habits from other people, but that's part of life. It's a good thing she has to learn, and learning to filter what's good from bad is something we do at home, and we talk about things. All in all, we're lucky because we don't have family here, so for better or worse, our children reflect ourselves. On the other hand, there's a lot that I wish that— I mean, she picks up a lot of good things from her family, much more good than bad. I really value, especially Marlo's family. My family's kind of spread out now. It's a very small family. Marlo's family is a very big, happy family, and they're all concentrated on two islands. So it's relatively easy to see them all in one sitting. And Alana learns a lot, and she learns a lot about Hawaii and about Hawaii's unique social mores and whatnot. And Marlo and I are both born and raised there, so we tend to fall into that category. I feel like it helps Alana understand us a little bit better. We'll see.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's just another reason to consider starting a school, or, you know, because occasionally, you know, occasionally kids run into other kids who have been sadly raised.

Yeah.

Or just, you know, hit too hard sometimes.

I mean, from—

if you're too fanatic about all of a sudden, you call everything abuse. I think that's not fair either. The behaviors, the routine in some families, it is matter of habit and so forth. Just kind of one of those— you guys, again, think you're doing a great job, then start to look at the instance and see what you can do there.

Right.

Well, I'm thinking we should probably call it a day. For today, to keep it short. And congrats. I didn't get to ask about Logan, but we'll catch up on him soon.

Oh, he's good, no worries. Thanks a lot, Michael. Take care.

Okay, thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye.