Learning about grief

As I muddle along through this lifelong, lifewide learning journey, I find that the toughest lessons are the ones about being human. About human experience.

A friend of mine recently lost her sister to cancer. She had been doing very well, and then suddenly she was gone. My friend and her family are grieving. This is the normal way of things. Hard as it is to deal with, this is how we more or less expect it to happen. Which is not to say that it's neat and tidy. Far from it. But it's more or less 'the norm'.

Another friend miscarried twins and then, just as she was coming to terms with that loss, lost her father. Once again, her sense of loss was in step with the loss itself (although some of her friends considered the extent and duration of her grief over the twins to be self-indulgent, and broke contact with her). On Facebook and Twitter, she started discussions about the different models of loss and grief, and the stages one goes through.

But that got me to thinking about the times when the grief is out of step with the loss.

I recently learned that a friend of mine from college days died of drug abuse (I haven't had all the details) about 15 years ago. The fact that I only learned about it now is an indication of the fact that we had lost contact. But we were friends, once. So I found myself... 'grieving' is perhaps too strong a word, but I did experience sorrow, about 15 years after the event. It felt odd being out of step with the people who shared the news with me. They had been there at the time. They had grieved when it happened. For them it is a healed wound. For me, the process is just beginning.

It made me think of the experiences of one woman I knew whose (widowed) mother had dementia. Whenever she visited the nursing home, she found her mother anxious to get home to prepare her husband's dinner. Initially, she would gently remind her mother that her father had died many years previously. But the staff at the home advised her against this approach. They explained that, because of the dementia, every time she heard the news was like the first time, and the grief was sharp and present, rather than a memory. Instead, they suggested that she simply reassure her mother about her late father's dinner requirements and move on to other topics.

On Friday, I learned that another friend has terminal lung cancer (note the ubiquitous cigarette in the photo in the link) and lymphoma . Although we are Facebook friends, it has been many years since we were the sort of friends who spent easy hours in each other's company, and who performed musical revues together. I will probably never see him again. So, although he is still alive, I find that my grieving process has already begun.

Grief is a slippery thing. It doesn't colour inside the lines, and it doesn't progress as it should. Just when you think you have a handle on things, something happens to open that Tupperware cupboard, and it all comes tumbling out. It was fully ten years after my maternal grandmother's death before I stopped thinking, "I must ask Granny..." She was the person to whom I turned with all my questions about cookery and needlecraft. Even twenty years after she was gone, I made a mess trying out her Christmas cake recipe and was in floods of tears because I couldn't ask her what I had done wrong.

Being human is very complicated, very messy and somewhat unpredictable. But we insist on coming up with models to try to tidy it up.

If you're grieving today, whether it is in step or out of step, whether it is appropriate or not, and even if your friends have utterly lost patience with your inability to 'pull yourself together', consider yourself hugged.

Psychomotor learning

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a freezing hour and some change on the side of a very muddy rugby pitch watching my son's team take on the team with the worst reputation for dirty play in the league. It was a good, hard game which threatened to spill over into violence a few times but never quite did.

I was struck by a few things about the learning involved in a psychomotor activity like playing a sport.

There is unavoidably a fair amount of behaviourist learning that goes on. Twice a week the team practices for a couple of hours. Over and over and over again, they practice the drills. Pass this way, kick that way, tackle this way, lay the ball off that way. Again. No, not like that. Like this. Again. Better. Once more. Now you're getting it. Again.

And last week, my son enjoyed the fruits of this kind of learning when he scored his first try. He was running down the left wing, following their outside centre (who is one of the most gifted young players I have ever seen). Alex had the ball and was running, whippet-like for the try line. My son was exactly where he should be. Alex got tackled. The ball popped up and my son picked it up beautifully and dotted the ball down for a try.

Torv's perfect take

He was in the right place at the right time and, thanks to the drills, he did the right thing. He told me afterwards how it 'all just came together'. He had been prepared for exactly this eventuality. He saw the point and the benefits of the drills and will work at them all the harder now.

He believes.

Yesterday, I was chatting on the side line to one of the coaches (the father of the prodigy, Alex), who pointed out that my son needed to develop his skills at 'looking for work'. I explained that he had come rather late to the game of rugby, and was still learning the ropes. The fact that he makes the team with gaps in his knowledge is testimony to the fact that he has a lot of raw talent, but it needs to be developed. The coach promised to help him in this area and offered to get his son on the case as well.

Shortly thereafter, he stepped up to the line and yelled to my son, who was close by "Torv! Look for the inside ball." Torv looked for the inside ball. A little while later, he could see that the other team was preparing to kick the ball out to touch right where my son was standing on the left wing. In these situations, there is the possibility that the winger could hoick the ball out of the air and start a run for the try line. André yelled, "Torv! Get ready for the kick!" Torv got ready for the kick.

Because he really wants to improve, and because he has high regard for the coaching he gets, Torv responded to this touchline guidance.

And my face lit up like a beacon.

All that coaching, all those drills? That's the 'just in case' learning that you have to have in place in a psychomotor situation. But those calls from the touch line? That's 'just in time'. That's embedded learning, that is. That's learning while doing.

And it works.

What a happy geek I was: on a Sunday afternoon, watching my 17 year old son and his friends demonstrating the outcomes of two different approaches to learning and taking a 20:15 victory in the process.

Learning about learning through cooking with children

I recently started a cookery blog, the reasons for which are explained on the blog itself, should you be interested. Obviously cooking is about cooking and learning is about learning. So it's easy to keep the two blogs separate. Unlike with my two Twitter accounts (one professional, one personal), I am unlikely to find myself double posting something in both places.

However, a friend of mine recently asked me to post recipes that would be possible for her to make with her children. This prompted a post on my cookery blog - the first non-recipe post - that would almost do just as well on this one. In fact, I have almost certainly mentioned some of its content here before.

The core of the matter is that, when my children were little, they used to act up in the supermarket during the weekly shop. Yup. Just like anyone else's. And I hit on this idea to keep them from getting bored. Each week, each child was given a £5 budget to buy the ingredients for a meal for the family. They then had to make this meal one evening. They were allowed to ask for as much assistance and advice as they liked, and I handled anything hot or sharp, under their direction.

When talking to parents about cooking with kids, I always remind them of two things:

1. There will be mess. Lots of mess. Accept that and deal with it...afterwards
2. They won't do things as quickly or as well as you could. Get over it. Don't be tempted to take over from them. They will learn far more from doing it imperfectly themselves than from watching you do it brilliantly.

And you know, this is true of just about any learning experience, regardless of the age of the learner. The first time around is almost inevitably going to be messy. If the goal of the experience is only a nicely turned out whatever-it-is, then the mentor/teacher/guide/manager/whoever is going to want desperately to step in and make it pretty, make it right.

But I'd suggest that's a short-sighted goal.

Next time, you want the learner to be able to do more on his/her own, surely? You want to be able to step gradually backwards until the point comes when you can quietly step out of the picture altogether on that particular recipe/task and know that it will be done as it should, with the added personal flair of the individual who now owns the task.

And let's notice, too, that I didn't take my kids to a different room two days before and talk them through how the dish was going to be prepared. I didn't even demonstrate it for them. We did it together. In real time. And some of the results were disastrous. But that's okay... because we all learnt as much from them as we did from the successful meals. Maybe more. Probably more.

Some of the disasters cost us money. That is inevitable. But the £5 budget wasn't for the meal. It was for engaging my kids. It was for providing them with the opportunity to achieve something. To do something that was a real contribution to the day to day business of the family. And it was cheap at the price.

The sense of accomplishment each child had as the family sat down to a meal he had prepared, was priceless. And, of course, they had to explain to Dad exactly how it had been done, because, of course, he was desperate to know. And, of course, Mom's contribution was talked down and their own was talked up. Which is as it should be.

Learning isn't something that happens in a classroom. It is something that - like life - happens while we're making other plans. All. The. Time.

But we have to prepared for the mess. We have to be prepared for imperfection the first few times.

We have to get over ourselves.

We also have to realise that it isn't enough to just speak a thing and expect it to have results. On which note, I'd like to steer you towards this post by the Goldsmiths.