Discovering Nature

I was thinking, after yesterday's post, about how we discover the nature of things. Particularly the nature of the young child. I used to wonder how it was possible for my great-grandfather, who was a math professor, to be so unobservant as to misunderstand infant dependence for selfishness. To think that the crying new born even knew that her mother was exhausted in the next room.

And I can now see, with knowing that the idea was not original with him*, but rather a part of the dogma of his ancestors' religion, how that came to pass. Because, when you start out, as anyone before the age of science pretty well did, with a belief that God has already given you the answer to this, you see the events in the world in that frame. The baby whose crying deprives his mother of sleep is seen to prove that babies are selfish and the idea that the baby only knows she is hungry and has no way to feed herself or ask politely will not occur.

But, when you have science, you observe the events without the frame, and you can see more clearly. Maria Montessori, who was the first woman physician in Italy, studied children as part of her internship**. She watched them with as little a priori theory as she could. As she developed materials, if the children did not learn from them as intended, she did not blame the children but changed the materials or the method. She gathered a great deal of new information about the way children learn.

Jean Piaget was a student in a Montessori school when he was young. Later he wrote a paper on marine biology that was so impressive the society to which he had submitted it invited him to present it. He wrote to decline, because the meeting was being held past his bedtime; he was only 8.

It is no wonder that Jean Piaget revolutionized the study of young children. Where Montessori had studied three year olds, Piaget studied his own children from birth. He watched them, he played games with them to see at what age they could perform certain mental tasks.*** Like Montessori, he looked at them with an eye as free from preconception as it was possible for him to have. He became, not only a developmental psychologist, but also a Montessori teacher. Any students who worked with him had to take Montessori training before they began. As a Montessori teacher, one of my major tasks was to sit and observe the classroom when the children were busy. It is that observing with as little prejudice as possible that leads to new knowledge.

* It wasn't just the idea -- when I read Fischer's book, the example he used and the words were exactly what had been quoted to me from Great-grandfather Upton.
**Because of her gender, she was assigned to work with feeble minded children. That work led her to further develop educational tools for them, some the creation of others, some her own. When her impaired students tested out at age level with normal Italian children, the authorities in both medicine and education were impressed with what a great job she had done. Montessori was appalled that normal children were being so poorly taught that her students could do as well as they did and went on to apply the materials and methods she had used with six year olds to normal three year olds. Montessori approached this work in a new way partially because, before she studied medicine, she studied engineering. How lucky for children that her father indulged her intellectual curiosity.
***It was Piaget's work that showed that one reason babies demand to be fed right now is that they have no sense of time. Now is all there is. When a baby is hungry, he is starving to death, he has always been starving to death, and he will always be starving to death. When the baby can wait the few moments his mother needs to pick him up and feed him, he has learned about time.

Portrait of Jean Piaget courtesy of Robert Kovsky; Maria Montessori courtesy of Edith Stein. This is my favorite picture of Montessori; it shows her as the young woman who was sent to speak to the issue of women's suffrage in Italy. She was chosen because feminists were, then as now, dismissed as ugly women who couldn't find husbands. Montessori so obviously was not.

Change of Mind

There is an experiment they do with young children*. The experimenter shows a closed Sweeties** box to the child and asks what is in it. The child answers, "Sweeties." Then the experimenter shows the child that the box is full of paper clips and asks the child, "Before we opened the box, what did you think was in it?" And the young child answers, "Paper clips." People used to think that answers like this meant the child was lying. However, that is not the case. Up to about three or four (I wish I could remember this more exactly), a child is not able to think about thinking. Which means the child can't think about having been wrong about what she thought. So, she honestly can't remember thinking that there were Sweeties in that box, since now she knows that there are paper clips. You get the same answer for the same reason if you ask the child what someone else will think is in the box. Again, if the child still thinks it is Sweeties, that's the answer you get. If the child knows it is paper clips, that is the answer you get.

When the child knows that she used to think there were Sweeties in that box and now she knows better, she has made a major leap in type of thought.

A similar change in thinking ability happens when the child "looked me right in the face and defied me!" We've all been there. Dad is out weeding the garden and the toddler decides to help. Everything is fine until the toddler reaches for a tulip and Dad says, "No! That's a flower. Don't pull the flowers!" And the toddler looks right in his face and pulls it. Again, what is happening is not what people think is happening. To understand this, we need to put it in sequence.

Step one, the baby is eating candy and offers some to Mama, who says she would rather have a carrot, and Baby gives her candy. Because Baby doesn't understand that people can want different things, and Baby wants candy, so Mama must want candy. Step three is, Baby offers candy, Mama says she'd rather have a carrot, and Baby gives her a carrot. Now Baby knows people can want different things. That "defiant" moment where he looks right in your face and does the thing you told him not to? That's the moment he figured it out. He is watching your face to see if his hypothesis is right and you really don't want him to pull that tulip (pick up the cat by the tail, bite his brother). This is a major developmental milestone. Baby should have a party to celebrate this incredible step he has taken. And, usually, he gets punished for defiance.

* I was going to give you the exact age, but I looked for it on the Internet for 45 minutes and couldn't find it.
** A brand of candy in the UK.
Picture copyright Notcot Inc.

In A Blink

Julie has posted This Too Shall Pass on her blog.

I remember one day, my MIL was rocking Maya to sleep, and one of us said, ‘we don’t want her to get used to being rocked to sleep all of the time’ (my MIL watched Maya a few days a week for us, and would rock Maya to sleep at nap time every day)…my MIL replied that we would miss these times, that they grow up so quickly. You know what? She was right.***My mom said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s grow out of it by the time she’s 35.” Her way of telling me that this too shall pass. And you know what? It did.

And, as often happens with Julie's posts, it got me thinking about when Julie was 5 and Richard was 7 and I really wanted time to pass. Richard was having a hard time learning to read, and Julie was still in night diapers. I really, really wanted these two "problems" to be finished. And what I didn't realize was that these were situations, and only problems if I deemed them to be. And that at the same time these two minor annoyances were going on, some pretty wonderful things were also going on. They were both living home, both funny, both smart as whips, both loving, both well behaved, both helpful around the house. They hadn't yet hit adolescence, which is hard for the child even if the parent does remember surviving it. They weren't confronting many of the ways that life doesn't live up to its PR yet.

Two or three times a day, we ate together. We spent the evenings and weekends together. We played board games and cleaned house and went on picnics and to movies and the fair together. They told me so much about their lives. I still read them stories. We loved and laughed and filled our lives with each other and animals and Alaska. We went berry picking and made jam and planted a garden and . . .

And when Julie no longer needed night diapers, and Richard was a good reader, many of the days of that delightful existence had passed. There were fewer days ahead of us as a family that lived together. Fewer berry picking days. Fewer trips to the lake with the canoe. Fewer Monopoly games.

All of it passes. Instead of wishing part of it away, I wish I'd treasured it more. Because, it all passes in a blink.

Attacking Fat Kids

I was not a fat kid. Until I was 12, when my mother decided that since we were the same height we should be the same weight and put me on a diet to lose three pounds, I never thought about my weight. Well, when I was ten and 5 feet even and 100 pounds even, I thought that was kind of cool and tidy, not because of how slim I was but because the numbers made such a fine pattern -- age, height, weight all at the tipping point. Actually, in those halcyon days, I was rather pleased with how I looked. Except for the freckles. There was a time there when I wanted to get rid of the freckles. But, mostly, I really liked how I looked. I had auburn hair and brown eyes and enough sense to know that was freaking great. There might have been moments when I would have liked to be glamorous, but mostly I was content with my Girl Scout looks. I was, after all, a tomboy, and so glamour would not have suited me very well. Even if I had it, the scabs on my knees, the sunburn on my nose, and the snarls in my hair would have moved me out of that category.

So, I have no personal experience with being teased for being a fat kid. Actually, I have no personal experience with being teased about my looks at all and never while I was in school, up through graduate level, did any of my classmates or teachers mention my size or act like I should be any different than I was. But I remember how fat kids were teased, even back in the 40s when I started school and the "obesity epidemic" was far in the future, even in the days before there was a weight loss industry to sell us all on the idea that there is something wrong with our bodies and they have the magic cure that we only have to pay them for to enjoy. Even then, fat kids had it tough.

Today, fat kids have a much harder row to hoe. Preschoolers, shown pictures of various children which include children of all races, some handicapped, and asked which child they would like for a friend don't choose the fat kid. Even preschoolers are so afraid of being fat that some of them are putting themselves on diets. Four year olds, instead of beaming with delight when they see themselves in the mirror, have started sucking in their guts.

The other thing that my personal history and the reading I've done in the last ten years have taught me is that once you become obsessed with your weight you are in for hell. Eating is a self-conscious act. You hesitate to be the first one who admits to hunger, because as a fat person you aren't entitled to be hungry. You don't go to the pool because people will see just how fat you are. You try everything you can think of to get rid of the "extra" weight. And, since our body sizes are pretty well determined by our genes (want to be thin? have four thin grandparents.), if the weight comes off, it comes back on again. Eventually, you gain back more than you lost. There is one study UC Berkeley, 2004 that suggests that the younger you start to diet, the fatter you will become. The same study found that the more diets you've been on, the fatter you become.

Now, if you were a weight loss corporation and if you had no ethics beyond the bottom line, what would be the best way to build yourself a permanent customer base? Yep, get the kids to start dieting at younger and younger ages. Since it doesn't work, convince them rebound weight is their fault until they have messed up their metabolisims beyond hope and they are caught.

Personally, I'm just enough of a skeptic to think that there is no accident that the focus has been aimed at childhood obesity. First, you set the level so low that only the truly frail don't qualify, and then you hype it all over the place.

Sandy Szwarc, at Junkfood Science has recently posted a number of articles dealing with this subject.

In Such a deal, or is it? Sandy talks about a workplace wellness initiative that targets not just the weight and life style choices of the employees, but also of their children.

IBM has teamed up with Weight Watchers, a fellow member of the National Business Group on Health. It’s easy to see how Weight Watchers will benefit by such compulsory participation of 128,000 IBM employees in a Weight Watchers’ branded program...one that will simultaneously bring up an entire generation of weight-absorbed future customers. But IBM has not disclosed what’s in the deal for them. Even if such a program worked, by the time any health benefits might materialize, the children will long since be off on their own and no longer on their parents’ insurance plan.

The money may be enough to coerce some workers let their employer decide what their family eats, where and when they eat, and how often they exercise and what type of exercise they do. But using children is especially insidious, because what isn’t being said is that this childhood obesity program is an experimental pilot project with absolutely no evidence that it will prevent child obesity, let alone improve their children’s health. In fact, all of the evidence to date has shown similar programs to be ineffective for improving children’s health — such as changing their blood pressures, glucose tolerance, fitness, ‘cholesterol’ levels or rates of childhood illnesses — or change long-term obesity rates. But they do leave young people vulnerable to body-image problems and life-long dysfunctional relationships with food and eating.

Sandy looks at the results of two long-range studies on obesity programs for children at One size childern.

Although both studies found null results, the authors suggested that more intense and continuous interventions might be necessary.

But, of course, doing more of the same won’t work, either. Nor is it surprising that no obesity prevention or weight intervention program to date has been able to demonstrate effectiveness in changing obesity rates among children or teens long-term. That’s because, as we know, the science has shown for decades that the natural diversity of sizes among kids, as in adults, isn’t about what they eat or the exercise they get. Thin kids may eat like horses, while fat kids like birds and it doesn't much change their natural sizes in the end. As a group, fat and thin eat the same. No dietary or activity factor among children explains the differences in their sizes.

In Fat camps for tots, which looks at the new British idea of sending toddlers and babies to fat camp to learn good eating habits, and perhaps take off a little weight while they are there,

Let’s look at the evidence in support of such claims and interventions for babies and toddlers:


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Remember the Scholastic magazine? The one we got in school that was full of grade appropriate information and just for us? The one we still see in the doctor's waiting room? Well, it ain't our Scholastic anymore, folks. Sandy looks at the shameful use to which this once benign icon of childhood is being put in This is scholastic achievement?

From the “What are they teaching our children?” file comes another school-based childhood obesity initiative with no sound basis in science. Worse, it teaches children to fear healthful foods they need and teaches prejudices against their heavier classmates.***Many parents and grandparents remember Scholastic publications as educational, inspiring and fun ways for kids to learn about the world. This is not the Scholastic they remember.***The Food Detective game invites kids to click on the “AFD Case Files” of various “Suspects:” children who are supposedly behaving badly. The fat little 10-year old girl is Emily. The game tells kids that Emily is fat because “she eats too much and needs to learn portion control.” The food detective sets up a security cam in her house “to catch the culprit in the act” and she is shown gobbling nonstop a table of fattening foods and a chart shows her eating a whopping 4,550 [kilo]calories.

We could stop right there, of course, as the evidence has shown time and again that fat children eat no differently than thin children to explain the natural differences in their sizes. This game does nothing but teach children to condemn fat children for gluttony, while instilling the harmful false message in fat children that they must be eating “too much.” But the calories being ascribed to the 10 year old fat girl are beyond absurd and illustrate just how uncredible these lessons are. According to NHANES, 6-11 year old girls eat an average of 1,889 kilocalories a day (plus or minus 43 kcal) and the “educational message” in this game bears no resemblance to the facts.

Other children’s “Case Files” promote equally unsound and prejudicial messages. A heavy little boy named Michael is called a “sofa loafer” and his fatness is blamed on spending too much time on the computer and playing video games and eating bad foods. Another popular myth of fat children. And a little boy, Cole, is supposedly a weakling because he eats junk food. You get the idea.

And finally, You're fine just how you are. and read her touching post on trying to be what you are not. The Allan Faustino T-shirt graphic, left, is enough to break your heart.

Runaway Carmen

In 1962, while I was being an early hippy in Berkeley, I had an apartment about a mile from campus, where the coffee houses and bohemians were concentrated. We all worked at minimal jobs, enough to pay the rent and buy groceries and books and go to movies. Life was exciting and different and new. There was a sense of community among the young people exploring this lifestyle. Lots of people lived in communes, although I didn't. There was a lot of back and forth visiting; we were all too young to hang out at home for the evening. Our social circle grew rapidly.

And one of the people who dropped in occasionally, pulling pandemonium in her wake like the tail of a comet, was Runaway Carmen. Runaway Carmen came from one of the eastern states; it was a matter of pride to her that her family had come over in colonial times and were still in the state they had first settled in. I'm not sure if her family had means at that point, but they certainly had for long years of the country's history. I think that Runaway Carmen was about 14 at the time. Periodically she would run away from the expensive finishing school her parents had, as she said, "imprisoned me in this time" and head for Berkeley. On hitting town, she would run for cover to the homes of the hippies that she knew from previous visits. The police, having received notice that she was on the loose yet again, would watch for her. Instead of picking her up, they would follow her from one house to another, raiding the unlucky householders as she went out the back door. People would desperately call each other, "She's in town! Get out!" and the recipients of the phone calls would flush pot and call friends and try to get out of their house before she led the narcs to the door.

Although I did meet her at the home of a mutual friend, she never knew where I lived and so never caused me anything but amusement. I was playing a computer game and listening to Hair the other night, and I got to thinking about her. And I got to wondering. If people had been more open in those days, if child abuse had been talked about, if we had been just a little older and more aware, would we have recognized that there must have been some reason behind the deep unhappiness that drove her from one coast to the other in an ever futile attempt to find a place where she felt safe. I wonder if she ever did find a safe haven.

Photos: Campenile, virtual traveler; toilet, Fun, Facts, and Trivia

Historical Halloween

Until this year, Maya attended Montessori schools. When she was six, and other years as well for all I know, they had historical Halloween. Children were to come dressed as real people and explain who that person was and what they had done.

Maya's first choice was to be "Mary, mother of God*". Julie and Ted explained to her that she couldn't do that. "But," she asked, "you said that Jesus was a real person. So Mary must be a real person."

"Yes, she was a real person. But it might seem less than respectful for an atheist child to dress as Mary for Halloween.**"

Maya considered that gravely, and decided to be Pocohontas. When Maya practiced her presentation for her parents, she explained that "Pocohontas was a princess who was born in India."

And here we have a picture of Maya as Pocohontas and her friend Chanel.

* Which would have made me God's great-grandmother. An odd thought.
** Although, it obviously is ok for someone to dress as Mary, since they sell this costume.

The Toddler Laws of Property

1. If I like it, it's mine.




2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.








3. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.








4. If it looks just like mine, it's mine.








5. If I think it's mine, it's mine.

Preventing Youth ViolenceThoughts on Boys and Elephants

At Down With Tyranny kininny discusses an op-ed piece by Bob Herbert on Senator Barack Obama's recent speech in Chicago concerning violence among and against school children -- 32 children have been murdered in Chicago in the last school year. After discussing various means that the government can use to address this, Obama is quoted,

"There is only so much government can do." There is also a need, he said, "for a change in attitude."

The senator talked about the young men and boys who have gone down "the wrong path." And he said one of the main reasons they are wreaking havoc and shooting one another is that they had not received enough attention while growing up from responsible adults.

I attended a training in the development of the adolescent brain recently. And the trainer discussed just this issue.

When young men grow up with strong men in their community and family, they have a confidence that the community is a relatively safe place. No matter the poverty or crime level or danger, these young men know that there are older men who will defend the community. It is not up to the young men to lead in this defense, although they are willing to join in. This is illustrated beautifully in the TV show "Everybody Hates Chris." Chris's father is one of only three fathers living with their children in the neighborhood, but the presence of these three men, as well as the shop owners and other responsible men serves to keep the violence at bay, although there is certainly enough crime.

When there are no protective older men around, the young men know that it is up to them to be the defenders, and they do not have the maturity or experience to handle it correctly. This premature responsibility that has no decent role models to fall back on results in extreme violence. The young men become hypervigilant and defensive. They tend to see threats where none exist, to over react to the beginnings of a threat that more experienced men would be able to negotiate, to take as their pattern the idea that the best defense is a very violent offense.

The adolescent brain matures from back to front, with the sensory and then the action centers becoming proficient early in adolescence, and the pre-frontal cortex, center of mature judgment, not attaining full development until the early to mid-twenties. The tendency is to concentrate on the part which has most recently matured and which can now be used efficiently and effectively. Which explains why most teens are more interested in computer games and skate boards than in politics. It also explains why young men without the influence of older men around tend to become aggressive.*

This is why some armies recruit young child soldiers -- they will be very violent. This is why neighborhoods without fathers become gang battle grounds. This is why 32 children have been murdered in Chicago in the last school year.


* It was when the presenter reached this point that I leaped pulled myself out of my seat, waved my hand in the air with that "Oh, Teacher, call on me!! Call on me!!! I know! I know!" fervor and when called on, cried out in a joyous voice, "That explains the elephants!" A few years before, Richard told me about this, where a group of adolescent male elephants were introduced to the Pilaneserg reserve in South Africa, where they became an unexpectedly aggressive menace. They began by killing a tourist and then a tour guide. Then they turned to rhinos, killing over 40 in under two years. First adult female elephants were released in the park, with no results in the behavior of the young males. So then adult males were introduced. As soon as each of the adult males had encountered each of the adolescents, the aggressive behavior stopped.

"A possible scenario," says elephant behaviourist Robert Slotow, "is that it's the older males disciplining the younger ones."

But that had never felt like a satisfactory explanation to me. Why, I wondered, would adult male elephants care what happened to the rhinos? It's not like they had a treaty.

How much more satisfying to look at it from the violent boys model. The original attacks had happened because first people and then rhinos had approached the young males too closely. The attacks on people stopped, because we communicate with each other and the word went out that these elephants were dangerous to approach. However, rhinos don't communicate at a distance, and so they continued to cross the hypervigilant boundaries that set off the adolescents. Since elephants live in herds of females and young males, introducing adult females would not affect the aggression -- neither would expect that the females would protect males old enough to be living outside the herd. When the males were introduced, the young males were surely aware of them and uncertain of their safety from them. Once each adolescent had met all of the adult males, they knew that they were in no danger from them, and also that these elephants knew what to do about rhinos. They knew they were no longer the defenders.

Parent & Child Wall

Do click the top two photos to enlarge.

You may have noticed that I really like parents and children . I have posted a number of YouTubes with the parent/child theme.

When I worked as a parenting coach, I made home visits three days a week, and then the rest of the week clients who worked downtown would take an odd lunch hour once a week and come to my office. Over the years I ended up with pictures of various parents and children (most of them animals) on the wall behind me.


I called it my parent and child wall. Here you see two of my pride pictures. In the top photo, we were in Safeway, and Maya threw her little arms around Julie's neck and planted a smackeroo on her cheek. In the picture to the right, Ted and Maya are laughing at something and the mirroring of their posture is so perfect! The same angle of the head, the same laugh. The focus on each other with such love.

And, if you look behind Maya, you see me with my camera reflected in the mirror -- how my hair has whitened in the last ten years!

Here we have a mother Panda and cub, in a pose that is remarkably like the Yu'pik mother and child below.

There were a lot of other animal pictures on the wall -- horses, cats, wolves, ducks, polar bears. It rather startled me, about four years into this wall when I saw an old Fugitive tv show and a boy who had been deserted by his parents had a wall of animal parents and young in his room. It was so clearly what he needed so badly.

Since I watched that show when it was first broadcast, I wouldn't be the least surprised if the idea hadn't been knocking around in the back of my head somewhere.


A Yu'pik mother doesn't use a cradle board; she sticks the baby down the back of her parka and cinches a strong belt around her waist. Usually they carry the very young baby nude and when they feel her start to make the movements that mean she is about to wet, they hold her out so she doesn't wet either of them. Since they wear their parkas fur side in (for warmth) this is important. These mothers are very sensitive to what their babies are doing. When the child is old enough to be let down indoors, they are dressed.

This is actually the picture that started the wall; a client gave it to me before Julie was even pregnant with Maya.

The Yu'pik baby has an advantage on the Panda -- she doesn't have to stay awake and hang on.



And this is the second picture that went up on the wall. I really love this. Giraffes are such lovely animals, and the affection here is so touching. Well, I'm a sucker for mothers and babies, so of course it is touching to me.

And, if anyone tells you that silly misinformation about giraffes not being able to bend their knees, please note that they do that just fine.

Most of my clients were women, but not all. I not only worked with some couples (and once a mother, father, and step-father), but also with fathers alone. Some of them were single fathers and some non-custodial.

With most animals, it is the mother who raises the young. And with the wolves, dad helps but you can't tell by looking at a photo that it is the dad.

Which is what made the picture of Ted and Maya and this one so really good. No way to not know that this is the father lion. Fathers are important and they need to be encouraged and acknowledged. As with all of these pictures, you can see that this father is besotted on his child, who approaches him with utter confidence.

Mother and Child

Go. Ya Gotta Go. Now.

Flea at One Good Thing Is running a
Contest: Humiliating Moments In Parenting that you just must go visit. Take a box of tissues, because you are going laugh and laugh. Take the time to read all of the comments. Some of the ways small children have managed to embarrass their parents are just priceless.

What are you waiting for? Go. Laugh. Lower your blood pressure.

Nathaniel

The other day I had lunch out and the bus boy kept smiling at me. Finally I remembered him -- I used to visit his family when I did parenting coaching. His son, Nathaniel, was just 15 months when I first met him. He was a tall, sturdy little guy with black hair to his shoulder blades and snapping brown eyes who chugged around the apartment in his diaper, exploring and laughing and helping any adult who would allow it. We made friends the first time I visited, and stayed friends from then on.

I was sent in to help families after the social worker had been there. Social workers in Juneau don't necessarily dress formally, but they do wear darker colors when they do investigations, with brief cases and hard shoes. When they leave, having examined every facet of a family's life and given a judgment to the parents that can be quite threatening, the parents are often frightened and traumatized. I was supposed to come in after this, develop trust with the family, and begin to move their behavior in a positive direction. So, I found that applying the principles of "Dress for Success" to my target audience, wearing coordinated denim pants suits and a Smokey Bear watch and carring a denim bag with a Tweetie Bird applique pocket and an umbrella with a duck head helped put people at their ease. And the kids loved it. Little ones would stand on my lap every week when I came and examine my watch and bag, talking to me about Smokey and Tweetie. That quieted their parents' fears even more.

So, I was used to Nathaniel clambering up the minute I sat down. For a couple of weeks he would say, "brella, brella" and I would answer, "Yes, Nathaniel, umbrella." One day, he climbed up, put his little arms around my neck, leaned forward so I could feel his soft baby breath on my cheek, and whispered, "umbrella, umbrella, umbrella."

And I knew, any man who wanted to win my heart was going to have to compete with a little Tlingit boy with laughing eyes and a soft voice.

Chores

As a parent, getting the chore thing right was vitally important to me. There was so much tension as I was growing up around chores, as mentioned in Melmac Dishes and In A Nutshell II and IV-a and Binocular Vision that I had no intention of reliving that from the other perspective. It had been bad enough that I had left home at 16 to live with my great-aunt and Forrest had left home at 17 and worked his way through his senior year of high school. So, when Richard was still crawling around the floor I started researching this subject. I majored in child development and later went on to get my masters in Montessori education, and I read everything I could get my hands on, observed parents and children I knew, and thought about it a lot. The result was a coherent theory that I then continued to test, refine, and build on.

Children are motivated by two positive needs. They need to be loved and appreciated for who they are, even when they are naughty. And they need to contribute to the family. Children who don’t contribute, who have no chores, who aren’t allowed to help, feel insecure. This lack can lead to bad behavior, as children try to get undeserved attention to compensate for their fear that they don’t actually deserve any.

There are a number of goals to having a child do chores. One is the need to contribute. Another is the need that parents have for help a family is a unit that relies on its members -- Julie and Richard knew that our family could not get along without their help. What they did was important to me.

Another goal is teaching children skills for when they are grown. Whereas I learned a limited number of "girl" chores, we started with a list of things that have to be done around the house, from making beds and putting clean clothes away to planning meals, shopping, cooking, and occasional maintenance items. Over the years both kids had the opportunity to learn and be responsible for each skill on the list. When I was growing up, once you got a chore it was yours until you left home. My kids moved on to more complex and interesting things.

Children try to help at a very young age. When Richard was about nine months old, Daddy asked him to bring his empty bottle to the kitchen, and Richard walked around three walls of the room, holding on, got the bottle, and walked it back the same path. He was so proud to be able to help. When Maya was 15 months, she regularly helped Julie unload the silverware from the dish washer. If we don’t let children help us at this age, we are setting our lives up to fight about chores in later years. If you think about it, there is almost always some part of the task your child can help you with. (I have a friend who let her border collie carry in the meat, and he never pierced the shrink wrap. If a dog can do it, so can a child.) And if you tell him he is too little or too young, you undercut his self-confidence.

Just because a little one helps, it doesn’t mean he is ready to have that task assigned. Until the child is about five, it should always be voluntary. You can certainly ask, but you mustn’t be disappointed if your child has something more important right now.

It is also important to recognize that little people can’t meet adult standards. Richard decided at three that he wanted to make his own bed. And he did it himself from then on. I would have insulted him no end had I stepped in and corrected it. Every week when I changed the sheets, we would do it together, which gave him ample instruction in how to do it. For a long time, he slept in a pretty messy little nest, but he was proud of it.

One thing I remember resenting about my chores when I was a kid (among a myriad of things I resented about them) was coming home from school and being expected to do chores while everyone else was enjoying themselves. I didn’t like being off on my own working. And I well remember visiting my Aunt Marvel in the summer and how she and her two daughters and I would clean the house together and absolutely love it. Seeing how fast we could get done to go out and play – all of us, Aunt Marvel included. Children enjoy helping their parents. And when my kids came along, that is what we did for a long time. Clean up common areas before we went to bed, dishes after eating, and the main chores on Saturday morning, followed by a family outing.

I would never pay a child to do their regular chores. No one pays me to cook dinner or clean the bathroom or change the cat box. And keeping their own bedroom clean is self care, like brushing their teeth and taking a bath. It doesn’t count as a contribution to the family. Chores benefit everyone.

Since I didn’t pay my kids to do their chores, I couldn’t’ take their allowance away if they didn’t. So, I had to fall back on logical consequences. When they didn’t put their clothes in the hamper, I didn’t wash them. When Richard didn’t put his dishes in the dishwasher, I put them in the refrigerator overnight* and fed him off them for breakfast.**

I always tried to let the kids have a say in which chores and/or when they did them***. The more input the child has, the more likely he is to go along with the program.

* He had to learn, but I didn’t want him to die of salmonella.

** One reason I have more Richard discipline stories is that Julie would watch and see what happened when he did something. If there was a negative consequence, she didn’t repeat it. This was true with natural consequences as well as logical ones. What good, she asked, is an older brother if you can’t learn from his pain1

*** That was, of course, ahead of time. Deciding when we were waiting for the chore to be done that tomorrow would be good enough was not an option.

Children and Money

I was visiting Disgusted Beyond Belief and encountered the excellent post Educating one's child on economics and it started me thinking about allowances.

When I grew up, money was a taboo subject. It was not talked of in any but the most general terms. In “genteel” families it was almost not discussed at all. You didn’t discuss how much you had, how much you earned, how much you needed, or how much something cost. I have no idea how any of us learned to deal with it. Indeed, as I remember it, my early excursions into money were not unlike my early excursions into that other taboo subject, sex. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and some of the results, although funny in retrospect, were horrid at the time. And, it’s not something that you can grow up without understanding; this is a culture that runs on money and if you can’t manage it you are in real trouble.

So, when I had kids, I did some research on the subject. I knew some general principles from being a Montessori teacher. I knew that to teach a skill you break it down into component parts and set up practice with each one. I also read Haim Ginott’s “Between Parent and Child” and agreed with his statements about money. In the first place, in a family everyone gets a share of the resources. There is a roof; we all stay dry. There is food; we all eat. There is love; we all are loved. There is respect; we all are respected. There is money; we all get some of that as well. Secondly, the purpose of an allowance is to develop proficiency with money. As adults, we will need to earn money and then manage it. As children, we need to learn these skills separately.

I began giving Richard and Julie an allowance when they were six. Since then I’ve been really impressed with the idea of giving an allowance as soon as your child, when offered her choice between a nickel and a dime, chooses the dime. Allowances grow with age. They start out small, to be used for fun, given weekly. Later, when the child can get through the week on the allowance given, she is ready to have money doled out further apart. The ideal of learning to budget month-to-month is high school level; and if your teen can’t do it at first, going back to weekly and then semi-weekly is a good idea.*

How much allowance to give depends on what you can afford, which does not mean that if you are extremely rich your child should get a huge allowance, but rather that you should not give more than you can comfortably manage. What do you expect the child to do with this money? If it is only for pleasure it will be less than if it is to include school lunches. What is customary in your child’s peer group? Make certain that there is understanding between you and your child about all of this.I don’t believe in advances; children shouldn’t learn to live on credit. They shouldn’t get extra “just this once” and they shouldn’t get their allowance taken away as a punishment for anything.** They can’t learn to manage it if they can’t predict when and how much they will get. It is certainly alright, if a child needs extra money, to allow the child to earn it. Richard and Julie sometimes earned extra by doing each other’s chores and being paid for it. Sometimes I would pay them to do something I normally did. They got odd jobs in the neighborhood, with their grandparents, at the local pizzeria and horse stable.

When Julie was 12 I was going crazy going from store to store with her to try on clothes. When I mentioned this to my secretary she told me about her daughter’s clothing allowance. Wonderful. I started giving my kids a clothing allowance. Julie learned the most important things. She learned not to save forever for one pair of fashionable jeans.; not to buy things that weren’t well made; to check and make sure they covered what they were supposed to cover; that if a blouse didn’t go with anything she owned she wasn’t going to wear it. She is, to this day, a wise shopper.

Richard bought a belt with his clothing allowance the first month, and after that he couldn’t figure out what clothes he needed. Finally he asked if he could spend his on books instead of clothes, and since that fits my values, I agreed.

At 16 their allowances ended. They knew when they began that would be the case. At 16 the law said they could work. Julie got a paying job at 14, just so to be ready. Richard learned to live on minimum money, and did Julie’s chores so she could work. Both were fine outcomes as far as I was concerned. Eventually he wanted computers and games and speakers and things that required a real job, and eventually he got one.

I would suggest, that since when kids get jobs their grades tend to drop, you consider that. If either of my two had been poor students, I would have continued allowances.

* Remember, it is important for a child to experience success in the acquisition of skills. In a Montessori classroom, all lessons that don’t end in success are ended by going back to a previous successful level. This is not to give a false sense of self-esteem, but to prevent reviewing the incorrect solution between lessons.

** I’ll talk about what to do about chores soon. For now, don’t pay them to do them and don’t not pay them if they don’t. If you are already paying them for chores, wait a couple of days for my chores post and if you agree with me, you can change what you are doing. Tell the child why and she will learn what people do when they learn new things.

First Day

On Wednesday, Julie posted about Maya's (long ago) first days at child care Seperation Anxiety. She was reminded of this because of reading Ms. Mama's post about her child's first days of child care, I'm Sorry.

Both of these children have had a hard time. Crying. Not wanting their parents to leave them. Despite the fact that their parents had visited day care with them ahead of time, the little ones have been heart broken when they were left.

It reminded me of when Richard had his first day of child care. He was about six months old when I went back to work. I had found this wonderful woman who lived in my neighborhood and cared for two older children and a 100 year-old blind woman and we had gone to her house and visited for a couple of hours on two or three occasions.

Come the first day, we get to Mrs. Johnson's house, she opens the door, Richard turns and reaches out his little arms to her, she takes him, he snuggles up to her and ignores the fact that I'm leaving. Well, I had wanted the visits to result in his not being unduly upset. But, he didn't have to be such a heartless little beast about it.

Conversation With Boys

The semester has wound down, and projects have been completed by the teens I work with. The final project was to take a few teens to fourth and fifth grade classrooms, do a review of why drinking is a bad idea for teens, and then have the students write letters to this year's crop of graduating seniors asking them to not drink at graduation parties. Last Friday two of the teens came in and we stuffed envelopes and mailed the letters. Since we needed some room to spread out and I got a pizza when we were finished, we set up in the staff lunch room.

It always amuses me, how teens act in situations like this. These two were boys and hard workers. But, two 14 year old boys working with one woman, don't talk much. I would try to start a conversation, they would give minimal answers, and silence would again reign. If this had been girls, you would have heard us out in the hall, but because it was boys, various co-workers kept coming in and being surprised that anyone was in there.

One of the questions I threw out was what they were going to do for the summer. One is going to Seattle to visit family. One is going to summer school. "Why?" asked his friend. "Got a bad grade in lit." "Bet you got an A in math!" "Yes," was the modest reply. At this point I decided to join in with "That's no surprise, you obviously understand math very well."

Of course, he wanted to know how I knew and I answered that I had seen him helping one of the girls in the group with her math a couple of times. "Yeah," he said, "she has a real problem understanding some of the concepts." "What impressed me," I answered, "was that it wasn't just that you understand the math, you also know how to explain it so she can understand it. That's a real skill."

His eyes lit up and he gave a wonderful smile and said, "I've got a skill!"

Later, I gave them their evaluations and the other boy read his, gave a shy smile, and told his friend, "She says I'm willing to work outside my comfort zone!"

It so easy to hold up a mirror that shows a child the best parts of themselves. I wonder why people don't do it more often.

Motherhood Is Universal

Filmed on 18th march 2006 in "Ouwehand Zoo" in the Netherlands.

She knows she's supposed to teach this child to swim, but she just can't resist one more hug. And who would have guessed that the Dutch for Aaahhhh was aaahhhh?

When I look at this, I find myself thinking about how much we have in common with all peoples and all life. We absolutely understand this polar bear mother and her behavior. We are moved by it. The Dutch are moved by it. Not only do we respond the same way to our babies as the bear does, we respond to our response to her in the same way the Dutch do. We know why she hugs her baby, we remember hugging babies ourselves, we remember being hugged by our parents ourselves. And all of it touches us in the deepest corners of our hearts.

When we are all so very much alike, how do we hate? How do we kill? Of course we defend our young, they are so precious to us that we must. But how do we not see that the young are always precious to their parents? How do we wage war? How is it possible that our mutual love of our children, as well as the unlimited other ways that we are alike, is not enough to bridge the chasm between us?

I don't know the answer to these questions, and I wish I did. I do know that we must figure it out, because it is probable that the only road to safety for our children is the safety for all children.

Venturing Out on Her Own

Sometimes it is the hardest thing in the world to allow the young to try things on their own. And yet, a Mama has to do what a Mama has to do.

I well remember many of those firsts -- first steps, first time crossing the street alone, first day of school, first date. And the worry of what could happen to my little hostages to fate.

I remember that it was easier the second time round with the early firsts -- Richard had taught me that Julie would survive her first steps and crossing the street. And it was harder the second time round with the later firsts -- Richard had taught me that romance could break a young person's heart.

With the early firsts, the young look back at Mama and make sure not to venture too far from her; her presence makes them bolder. With the later firsts, they don't want her around. After all, if you fall on your diaper, Mama picking you up can be comforting. But, when you get dumped, Mama picking you up can make you feel worse.

Julie once dated a young man who she had been interested in for a while when he was Richard's friend. And when he dumped her, Richard let me know so that I could be sensitive to her feelings. Knowing that at her age she needed to know that she would live through this and she needed to keep her pride, I arranged a little staged ricochet information at dinner that night. My friend Linda came over, and she said that something she had overheard on the bus that day had reminded her of the first time someone had dumped her and how she had "known" that she would never have another boy friend and she was unlovable and how upset she had been, and we talked about those feelings for a very short while, and ended with laughing about how six weeks later she had been involved with a totally different guy and wouldn't have taken the first one back on a bet.

The thing we need to be sensitive to is that the first time teens get dumped is the hardest. They don't know that there will ever be anyone else. What if there really is only one true love for each person and they have just blown theirs? As Julie told me several years after this, the reason they call it a crush is because it crushes your heart. The second time, at least one more person has been interested; they know they aren't going to die of the pain.

Kid Safe

Saturday was the Kid Safe Fair. Parents took their kids and there were displays about health and safety. The hospital had a table with nformation about diabetes. There were tables about vision and hearing. There was a car that parents could use to learn to correctly attach the specific car seat they owned. Smokey Bear and Eddie Eagle were there teaching forest fire and gun safety.

My agency had a table with information about tobacco and alcohol.TATU (Teens Against Tobacco Use) is also sponsored by our agency and they had that ugly bottle of tar and lots of facts about what tobacco does to lungs. They didn't have their usual pig lung display, because we didn't have enough space, but many a time I've sat at the other end of the table while they show how the healthy lungs inflate and hold air and the smoked lungs don't. That bottle of tar, by the way is the amount of tar that a person who smokes one pack a day get in their lungs in one year.

The teens I work with brought the Fatal Vision Goggles and traffic cones. We set up an obstacle course, and then people put on the goggles and tried to walk it. Parents tried. Their kids tried. One 18 month old toddler came over a couple of times and, very intently, picked up the cones one by one and stacked them.

Juneau being a small town, I saw people there who I used to work with on parenting issues. I saw their kids -- older now, some babies who are now teens, some middle schoolers who are now adults with babies of their own. I got hugs and my co-workers were bragged to about what a good job I did. My teens did a wonderful job of explaining things to little kids, helped at a few other tables when ours was quiet -- one young lady even did a stint as Eddie Eagle.

In Praise of Blue

Tuesday's Juneau Empire ran an editorial from the San Jose Mercury News on the op-ed page called "Don't let kids grow up 'red'; anti-tax ideology hurts health" I don't know who the writer was, but he did a bang up job.

It seems that children in red states, with an anti-tax, anti-government ideology, are more likely to suffer from poor prenatal care, early death, child abuse, and teen incarceration than children in "blue" states.
***Ten of the top 11 states on the list [the child vulnerability index] are blue states. No fewer than 24 of the 25 bottom states are red states.
***a child in the overall bottom 10 states is:

• Twice as likely to die by the age of 14.
• Seven time more likely to die from abuse or neglect.
• Twice as likely to be living in poverty.
• More than twice as likely to be incarcerated as juveniles.

The well-being of the nation's children matters. The investment blue states make in their children not only pays off ultimately in lower medical bills and less need to provide social services, but also creates a higher percentage of productive, well-educated members of society.
The nations red states should be red-faced about their disgraceful health care response. Their selfish practice of being unwilling to part with tax dollars to help guarantee their children's future is in direct opposition to the American values they so often claim to cherish.

Is there anything else we need to understand? Perhaps it is time that we stopped thinking of taxes as theft and something that we all need relief from and start looking at them as an investment in the quality of life. They support our children in ways that individual families usually cannot. They support our elders in ways that we can't, and don't usually want. They build the roads and keep the libraries open and the firetrucks rolling and the schools open and the water purified and running and the sewage treated. They eradicate mosquitoes around standing water and prevent any one person from fishing out the lake. They keep hospital doors open all day, every day, so that we may have care. They run the suicide hot lines and the poison centers. They patrol the highways and send a cop to protect you from that odd looking man who is trying to break down your door.

And, if they do all of this for me, a private citizen who just uses a few of the many resources provided by taxes, what do they do for major corporations, who need airports and roads and waterways open to ship their goods, weather forecasts to help plan the next distribution schedule or growing season, courts to enforce their contracts, and an educated employment pool to work in their offices? Taxes are part of the cost of living, and it seems to me that the people who use governmental services most are not single moms who might be on welfare for a time or need medicaid for their kids, but the big corporations who couldn't get goods to market without the transportation routes provided by tax money and would have no recourse when a supplier didn't give them what they need without the courts to enforce contracts.

And, as we can see by the article in the San Jose Mercury News, those states that don't recognize this are not only falling behind, they are allowing their children to be left in the dust -- assuming their children live beyond the age of 14.

In A Nutshell follows.