BeTwinned

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

Daddy reading to Djuna
and Dinah

I had the opportunity to meet movie producer Bonnie Arnold the other day at a press junket for the upcoming DreamWorks animated feature Over the Hedge (very cute movie, funny, well worth seeing … best for kids who can handle the loud, raucous scenes and the scary bear, very effectively voiced by Nick Nolte; I’ll link to the feature I’m writing when it comes out on May 19, the day of the movie’s release).

Bonnie Arnold produced Toy Story, one of my all-time favorite movies. For having produced such a classic movie, she didn’t appear to have too many secrets of success. She really had one message: tell a good story, and try to work with other people who want to tell a good story too.

In journalism school, learning to tell good stories is a recurring theme. Years ago, in the early 90s, when I was learning to teach kids how to read, it was all about story structure and how kids come to us primed for enjoying and retaining the basic structure of a good story.

But seeing my kids learning to love a good story is more thrilling than seeing it as a writer or as a teacher.

My daughters Dinah and Djuna, 2 1/2, both love to “read” their books. We have truckloads of books and magazines in the house for them to enjoy, and we are starting to appreciate our local library now that the girls don’t run up and down the aisles, giggling wildly. My husband and I read to them at every naptime and bedtime and every time they ask during the day.

They both read stories from memory, as so many kids do. Djuna almost always starts off her retellings by saying, “One day … .”

From a reading specialst’s point of view, this amazes me and proves everything I learned in my teacher’s training. Kids do come with a knack, an instinct, for internalizing story structure.

“One day … ” is the beginning of every story. First, the scene is set, and then “one day” brings you to the problem in the story — that specific day when everything is different from all the other days before it, as in: One day, Miss Gulch came and took Dorothy’s dog away from her family …

And, then, recently, I heard Djuna start to insert a new word into her memory retellings — meanwhile. This excited me even more. Meanwhile! A great transitional word, a word that introduces a plot complication, as in: Meanwhile, as Dorothy ran away from home through the countryside, a great storm was brewing.

When I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher, I often had parents come in and look to me for solidarity when they would turn their noses up at serial books like Nancy Drew mysteries or Bobbsey Twins books, or any number of other formula pulp fiction for kids. (These parents wanted their kids to be reading only high class literature that could guarantee admission to Harvard.)

I was never an ally for these types. I lived and breathed Nancy Drew as a kid, and I still managed to become a successful adult. And now, I firmly believe that anything that reinforces story structure, even if it’s bland and predictable — and sometimes, because it’s predictable — is great for kids to read.

Predictable story structures, complete with their one days and their meanwhiles, are what give children the bedrock they need to deal with more complicated literature, as in: One day, Hamlet returned from college to find his father dead and his mother remarried to his uncle. Meanwhile, people were seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father out and about in the castle …

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

We didn’t tell Dinah that she had to go to the doctor until this morning — the morning of the appointment. She had to go for her year’s follow-up to see if the teeny hole in her heart muscle had closed up or whether we’d need to come back next year for another check.

It occurred to Dwayne and I that Dinah and Djuna hadn’t been apart in ages, probably since Djuna went to the hospital over a year ago when she had pneumonia.

The parting went OK — it actually seemed as though both Dinah and Djuna were excited to be alone with a parent. They said goodbye to each other cheerfully enough, and off we went.

Once at the doctor’s office, we waited over an hour to get in. But it was fun and different to hang out with Dinah on her own. I am so used to interacting with both of them at the same time.

At one point, we called home, and Dinah chatted with her Daddy for a minute, and then I suggested to Dwayne that he put Djuna on the phone. When Dinah heard her sister’s voice on the phone, she was thrilled and stunned.

“It’s Djuna,” Dinah said, sporting an enormous smile. The sisters had a little conversation, and both Dwayne and I were touched by their affection for each other.

After the doctor’s appointment — and after hearing that the little hole had thankfully closed up, like most do — I took Dinah to the bookstore, and she picked out a Thomas the Tank Engine book. I asked her what book Djuna might like, and she immediately said, “George and Martha,” naming two subtly hilarious hippos in the children’s stories by James Marshall.

Dinah picked out the George and Martha book she thought Djuna might like.

Once together again, Dinah and Djuna hugged and hugged. Djuna showed Dinah the flowers she had picked for her, and Dinah showed Djuna the book she had chosen for her.

So many moments in the day I am reminded of how great it is to be betwinned!

About TwinWatch @ BeTwinned

by Diana Day

My daughter Dinah sat dutifully on the white line with a bewildered look on her face, looking around for the other kids.

Only moments before, the dance teacher had said that class was over and that it was sticker time. So Dinah made her way to the place where the teacher had asked the kids to sit the previous week — the white tape line. But this time, the teacher let the kids gather round her in a big bunch to collect their stickers.

Dinah reminded me of myself in that moment so much that my heart almost burst. The obedient good girl, so intent on following what she thought were the directions, didn’t see that it was all different this week.

I remember so many times in my childhood where I was bewildered like that, so focused on doing the right thing that I ended up missing all the new directions.

I started worrying about the upcoming Easter Egg Hunt in our town, our first hunt with the girls. I was concerned that Dinah would have an experience like the white line, where she would so lose herself in the technicalities that she’d miss the whole egg hunt. My friend suggested that I bring a couple of plastic eggs in my pocket to surreptitiously stuff in Dinah’s or Djuna’s baskets if the need arose.

Hopefully when my daughters are older I won’t be so willing to stack the deck to avoid hurt feelings. Instead, I’ll hopefully be able to let moments just be, figuring that I’ll be there to hug, hold and talk about sad things that have happened.

Hopefully.

But my husband said we’d be fine without an egg stash, so off we went to the hunt, baskets in hand, tempting fate.

Luckily we live in a terrific little town where the volunteer firefighters’ association does the deck-stacking for the parents so they don’t have to do it themselves.

The park was absolutely loaded with generous piles of donated candy, enough so no child could possibly go home empty-handed. Dinah and Djuna hunted like seasoned pros and came home with baskets filled up.

A good time was had by all.