The Parenting Trap

My mom tells me that when she and my dad were on the way home from the hospital with their first child, they said, What do we do now? and started to laugh. What else could they do? They were Catholics in 1961, and somehow they were just supposed to know how to be a good parent.
They spent ten years having babies, then the next 47 trying to figure them out.
These days we are blessed and cursed with a wide range of manuals which will tell you how exactly you should raise your children. Many of the authors have degrees, and they all have children. I secretly wonder when one of their kids is going to write a “Mommy Dearest”-style tell-all.
I actually had the chance to ask that question the other day, but somehow forgot to. I was so pleased to have the chance to interview Jane Nelson, the author of the Positive Discipline series. She was delightful and warm, and we had a lovely conversation. I felt like I was tongue-tied, though. I kept stumbling over what I was saying, like I was confessing to a priest something I wasn’t sure he’d understand.
Though I can’t say I have succeeded in running a pure Positive Discipline household, Jane Nelson saved my life in a way. She gave me the ammunition to say that my children don’t have to suffer in order to learn. I don’t have to dominate them to be a good parent. She voiced my concern that I raise children not only to behave well now but to be happy and loving adults later.
Following her plan is very, very difficult. It is easy to fall back into “because I said so,” and “do it or you’ll suffer the consequences.” It’s not so easy to respect your child’s feelings, especially because children’s feelings are often so fraught with mystery and complexity. “I hate you” simply doesn’t mean the same thing from a child as it does from an adult.
And what’s especially hard about following her advice is that it often doesn’t look like discipline at all. We regularly let our children make choices that we know are not the right ones. We allow our children to state outlandish opinions. We let them wear clothing that they’re comfortable in. And we don’t make our son cut off his rat tail, er, long hair.
This reminds me, apropos of not much, that my favorite school photo of my daughter is when she was three. She was obsessed with her red rainboots, which she called her motorcycle boots. We arrived to preschool on picture day having forgotten to dress up, so the photo is of her in her favorite outfit. Yes, I do love to see her dressed up in pretty clothing, but every time I see her in her motorcycle boots and favorite purple shirt, it reminds me of the child I DO have rather than the child I sometimes think I SHOULD have.
That’s what it comes down to for me: a manual on parenting is useless if it focuses on creating the child that other people think you should have. If your parenting is all about making sure your kid doesn’t embarrass you, then exactly who are you parenting for?
I also reject the idea that parenting is all about making everything easy for your child. There’s a slightly tongue-in-cheek book review in the New Yorker about this phenomenon – make sure to read all the way to the end or you might think the writer agrees with the books she’s reviewing. Read it here
What it comes down to is that parenting is a balancing act. Sometimes we all get off balance. But if you fall off, all you can do is get back on again and try, try, try.

Da Vinci at the Tech

We went to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Tech Museum (http://thetech.org/) in San Jose last weekend. I had heard it was amazing, and I hadn’t really thought about preparing for it. I think the Tech would do families a good turn by posting some information about what kids should know going into the exhibit.
Both of our kids are interested in mechanics and building, so they had that going for them. Also, our son, as a toddler, had been to Italy and had gone inside the cathedral in Florence. He doesn’t remember it, but that offered us a link to the exhibit from the first room. If not for that, we might not have gotten further.
This is an exhibit heavy on “show” and light on “tell.” I have to admit that I felt rather stupid when we walked through the first large room of the exhibit. It was completely devoted to Filippo Brunelleschi and the dome of the cathedral in Florence. I finally had my “aha” moment when in the rather small, light print on a wall next to one of the items exhibited, they mentioned that da Vinci came to Florence to apprentice under Brunelleschi. I felt less stupid when my husband, who had gone to park the car, came up to me and said, “So why is all of this about Filippo Brunelleschi?”
The great strength of the exhibit is all the working small-scale models that they have of the many machines designed by da Vinci and others working on large-scale building projects of the era. The kids just loved cranking the machines and watching them go. Beside each of the small-scale working models is a full-scale wooden model (which is not operable). It was cool to have the hands-on ability to work the small machines, but we had to use our imaginations for how it translates to the large mechanisms.
I realized too late that although I’ve been planning to start on it, I hadn’t yet done a study of simple machines with my daughter. We’d done it with our son in first grade, when it was clear that it would be fascinating to him. (I’m guessing that if public school curriculum requires this basic study at all, it’s later when the kids won’t find it nearly as engaging.) But that was three years ago, and we had to refresh his memory on the go as we looked at each machine and how it worked. For our daughter, we had to explain how things like inclined planes worked as we came to them.
I think they both would have understood the beauty of these machines a lot more if we’d prepared them. Some suggested discussion topics: If you had to move a giant stone column from lying horizontal on the ground to vertical, not using modern machines, how would you do it? If you wanted to have a milling device that could change directions even though you only cranked it in one direction, how would you do it? If you made birds’ wings out of wood and canvas, strapped them onto your body, and jumped off a cliff, would you fly?
The overwhelming weakness of the exhibit was its lack of perspective about da Vinci’s art and the time he was living in. The Brunelleschi room did have a fair amount of information about the Renaissance, but it would be worth brushing up on the magnificent achievements of the era, and setting the scene for kids who haven’t studied it, before you go in. I found most of the posted information not very helpful (and it was printed in such small, light type on the walls that I had to wait in line to be able to put my face up to it to read it!).
A scanning of the relevant Wikipedia pages beforehand would help with the background. I’m guessing there must be a great website about the Renaissance for kids out there, but I haven’t found it. (Leave a note for me if you have!) I know the library is equipped with picture books. My kids have checked out a great book about inventors that we can’t seem to find the title of. But they have a couple of others that look great, one about Renaissance inventors and one about da Vinci inventions you can build yourself.
They recommend about two hours in the exhibit, which is a bit long for kids. Ours did fine (I think it took us about an hour and a half), especially because they knew we would go to the “design your own roller coaster” exhibit afterward! If you haven’t been to the Tech with your kids, I highly recommend it. It’s best for school-age kids, but there is plenty of interest for younger kids with a dedicated parent helping them.
And on another note: San Jose is the best place to get excellent Vietnamese food, which appeals to many a picky child. We went to the exhibit with bellies full of noodles and it was most lovely. Hanoi’s Corners, highly recommended.

Kids and Vitamins

This just in: vitamins aren’t good for you. In case you think I’m rehashing an old Woody Allen movie, read the New York Times – http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/news-keeps-getting-worse-for-vitamins/?em . In many of the studies they cite, taking vitamin supplements actually LOWERED the person’s life expectancy.
This is something I have a little disagreement about with many of my friends in Santa Cruz. I realize that many people here are into popping supplements for any and all ailments. Perfectly reasonable people who seem thoughtful shell out gobs of their money for supplements like Airborne, which claims to lessen cold symptoms. In fact, one such intelligent person said to me (with a straight face), “I took Airborne, but I guess I took it too late because I still got sick.”
It didn’t seem to occur to her that taking vitamins doesn’t have any effect on the progress of the world’s most common virus, which has resisted all other attempts to control it. Instead of blaming the company for making unfounded claims, she blamed herself for “not doing it right.”
The idea of “fixing” our bodies with supplements is based on a fallacy. The fallacy is that when foods or herbs contain a certain substance that seems to make our body healthier in the longterm, then it follows that condensing that substance into a pill will somehow do the same thing immediately. The problem is, in most cases this just isn’t true. Although eating a healthy diet is part of keeping your body strong enough to resist disease, taking doses (or even worse, megadoses) of vitamins doesn’t have the same effect.
The name “supplement” is key to the proper use of vitamins. If for some reason a person’s diet is missing an important nutritional piece, or a person’s body needs more of one particular nutritional element, dietary supplements can help. But taking vitamins doesn’t “fix” an unhealthy diet or lifestyle. And though being healthy can help keep your immune system strong, a cold virus is a wily thing.
What worries me particularly about the unquestioning use of supplements is how it affects kids. Since the supplement industry is unregulated, random tests find that contamination with heavy metals is pretty common. (See http://nccam.nih.gov/health/bottle/ ) Heavy metals are dangerous for adults; for kids they can have permanent negative effects. Add to that the effect of longterm megadosing in children – no one knows how this is going to pan out. Even vitamins specifically for children often have more than 100% of recommended daily amounts of vitamins. Yet the same people who are worried about buying only organic foods for their kids are filling them with these unregulated chemicals.
We all worry about whether our kids are eating a healthy diet. But in modern-day America, it’s more likely that your kid is getting too much of some things rather than too little. I was concerned, for example, when my nine-year-old just flat out told me he doesn’t like milk and he was no longer going to drink it. But given his diet, which is high in calcium-rich vegetables and cheese, and his lifestyle, with lots of sun exposure, it really isn’t a problem. Most cultures don’t give straight milk to older children, with no devastating effects on their populations.
I just saw a link to a great New Yorker article about over-parenting on a list I read. (http://tinyurl.com/6negrt) We are all so susceptible to thinking that we’re not doing ENOUGH these days. Everywhere we turn, an advertisement, book, TV show, or article is telling us that we can do more and more to “help” our kids be healthier, stronger, smarter, more successful. What parent doesn’t want the best for his or her kid? It’s really hard to resist this stuff.
And now that I think about it, I’m guilty as charged. I’ve been buying orange juice spiked with extra calcium.
Just in case…

Family Seeks Campatible Family

I have this idyllic vision of one part of my childhood that I’m hesitant to give up. The way I remember it, my family had a good number of something I’ve been searching for: compatible families. These are the families where the women get along, the men get along (assuming there are men involved), and the children get along. In other words, you can invite them over and no one is left needing to be entertained, the men don’t go home grumbling about having to spend time with someone they have nothing to say to, the children don’t end up hiding behind the couch. You know what I’m talking about, right?
I grew up in a pretty small Midwestern town which had a very insular population. My dad was employed at The Big Company, and my mom largely stayed home to take care of the five of us (though, being my mother, she did have lots of other interests). They made deep, long-lasting friendships there, and though my parents live in California now, they still keep in touch with their old friends and even visit each other. I love going through their mail around holiday time. They get cards from families I remember with photos of the parents (aging but recognizable), their children (impossibly grown up), and grandchildren.
For being in such an out-of-the-way place, the women my mom knew were smart, artsy, and fun to be with. My mother had given up her scientist training for raising children and teaching piano, and she and her friends kept themselves constantly busy with painting, weaving, musical groups, church duties, food co-ops — so many things that they wouldn’t have been able to do if they’d had jobs.
Like my dad, most of the men worked at The Big Company or in a necessary job that supported it, like medicine. I never paid much attention to the men or what they talked about, but I remember them being there when we had summer barbecues, toboggan parties, or weekends away at someone’s cottage.
There always seemed to be another family available for whatever activity we had planned. And if the kids didn’t get along, well, that was just life. I had a few awkward friendships with daughters of my mother’s friends, girls who didn’t go to my school. It was actually easier, in a way, that I saw them only in forced situations. We didn’t have to sustain the friendship on our own.
Living in California in the 21st century is a whole different experience. It seems so incredibly difficult to get families together – we all have such complicated schedules. And then, to find a family that fits with us: our kids don’t refuse to play with each other, the men don’t sit there trying to find something to say while the women get along fabulously, the children don’t turn out to be addicted to video games that we don’t allow in the house, and on and on.
How did this get to be so complicated? And what did my parents do right that we’re missing? My mother has revealed to me, though I thought that it was all easy for them, that in fact, they had similar problems. I have found out, now that I’m an adult, which husbands annoy my mom, which wives talk constantly about themselves so that conversation is stifled, which husbands just want to watch TV and drink beer.
The thing my parents did have was a lack of choices. A small town in the Midwest in the 60s and 70s didn’t offer a lot of freedom. They had to get along, and they would have gone crazy if they’d been too picky about their friends. Not only that, but they and their friends grew up together, having married, unlike us, at the beginning of their adulthood rather than well into it. They had their kids first…then figured out whether or not they wanted to be parents, and HOW to be parents. The men largely had careers, but the women ended up finding them in unexpected places, like my mother’s migration from chemist to historian.
My husband and I both had other serious relationships before we married, and we had children well after we’d come into adulthood. We chose to live somewhere smaller than I’d chosen as a single person, but still diverse enough to offer more than a small, isolated town. We’ve chosen not to send our kids to a neighborhood school, which isolates us further from the small-town conveniences my parents had. I’m happy with my kids’ schools, with the wonderful house we live in (bought at bargain prices long ago when we were childless!), and the friends we have, separately and together.
Still, despite the fact that I’m happy about our choices, I’m jealous of people I know who at least have been able to fit their family with one other. I still think back to when I was a kid and how my parents seemed to find it so easy to stick us kids in a room, or send us out into the woods to play, and go on with their adult lives. OK, so now I know it wasn’t so easy. But small town life did have some benefits which came with obvious costs. Though I’m not ready to trade in my life for my mom’s, I do realize that we’ve lost something, or at least made it that much harder to find.

Prepare to Read…then Relax

When my son was in first grade, he was in a mixed-grade classroom where the teacher worked within a progressive education model. (See alfiekohn.com for information on this.) She believed that in a rich educational environment, children didn’t need to be taught so much as experience a model of learning. Our son was a great achiever within this model. At age 6 when he entered the class, he wasn’t yet reading. I thought I’d done everything right: We’d read to him since he was tiny, he didn’t watch any TV, and because he was our first child and I thought I should, I even drilled letter sounds with him when he was in preschool.
Six weeks into first grade, he started reading. Not just Cat in the Hat. He started really reading…everything. When I complimented his teacher on how he’d improved, she said, “Oh, yes, reading, I haven’t really worked with him on that yet.” She trusted the environment, and the environment succeeded.
In other words, he was ready.
My daughter has a different story. She grew up in the same reading-rich environment, but her mother was a lot more tired and jaded! I hardly worked with her on reading, past learning the letters. Yet one day she started reading common signs on the highway, then she started to read signs on stores. She never read to us, but we started to notice that she was gleaning information that she could only get by reading. Pretty soon she started reading fluidly, at the age of four.
She was ready.
Imagine if my son, who now reads pretty much at an adult level, had been told that he was “behind” because he wasn’t reading anything by the end of kindergarten. (This is the kid who drove me CRAZY because no matter how often I pronounced the word “the” for him, he’d see it and say, “tuh-HUH” with this great effort!) In some school systems he would have been held back if he couldn’t read a list of sight words that some not-so-bright adult thought kids “should” be able to read at the end of kindergarten. What a waste of resources to hold back a completely normal, bright kid because he isn’t reading on someone else’s schedule!
Imagine my daughter in a standard classroom – what would the teacher do with her? One of the ways that teachers occupy kids who are already reading is to have them “help” the other kids. Since my daughter was never taught to read, I can imagine she’d find that exercise a bit strange. I know that when I was in public school, if I’d finished the work I was just left to my own devices.
I can promise you that this is NOT a winning strategy with my daughter!
The most literate countries in the world seldom require kids under seven to do any actual reading instruction. Our public schools, which are failing more miserably every year to produce solid readers and writers, are now cramming in reading earlier and earlier. Our testing system makes it clear that there is something “wrong” with a second-grader who doesn’t read.
Yet the fact is, except for when something really IS wrong (such as a learning disability), there is nothing wrong with our kids. Many of them (the “average” kid) learn to read between the ages of six and seven. But that doesn’t mean that ALL of them should or even can. Late readers shouldn’t be made to feel that something is wrong with them. Early readers are often ready for much more at a much younger age. That doesn’t mean they should have to sit around and wait for everyone else to catch up.
Education is a messy business that has nothing to do with a business model based on widgets. Teaching kids is an art, more akin to modern dance than selling cars. No real child is average. Teachers sigh with relief when they get a class that functions within the usual parameters, but that doesn’t happen that often. They’re always going to get the kindergarten non-readers like my son, and the kindergarten book-devourers like my daughter. Our system needs to be flexible and forgiving.
We need to relax a lot more and really pay attention to our children, giving them a rich environment in which we read with pleasure. We need to give them the time to appreciate the joy of using their mind’s eye instead of relying on video to create stories in their heads. We need to trust that they will learn, and let them be happy while they’re doing it.

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