The Case for Having Kids

Here's an interview with author of a new book “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”. Read the whole thing, but I agree with all these suggestions to make parenthood more enjoyable:

1. While parents often lose sleep for years, getting kids to sleep through the night is not hard. Real experiments confirm that the Ferber method — let your baby cry in his crib for 10 minutes, briefly comfort him, leave, repeat — works wonders.

2. Improving kids’ behavior isn’t hard either. Experiments confirm that clear, consistent, mild discipline — like putting kids in the “Naughty Corner” — works even on difficult kids. The problem is that if parents stop imposing discipline, kids soon revert to their old tricks.

3. If neither you nor your child enjoys an extracurricular activity, stop doing it. If the alternative is a little more TV or Xbox, that’s O.K.

4. Supervise less. Lenore Skenazy’s Free-Range Kids makes the case better than I ever could.

Parental Happiness Rationalization

Parents Rationalize the Economic Cost of Children by Exaggerating Their Parental Joy:

...Despite their tales of professional sacrifice, financial hardship, and declines in marital satisfaction, many parents continue to insist that their children are an essential source of happiness and fulfillment in their lives. A new study ... suggests that parents create rosy pictures of parental joy as a way to justify the huge investment that kids require.

...In an earlier time, kids actually had economic value; they worked on farms or brought home paychecks, and they didn’t cost that much. Not coincidentally, emotional relationships between parents and children were less affectionate back then. As the value of children has diminished, and the costs have escalated, the belief that parenthood is emotionally rewarding has gained currency. In that sense, the myth of parental joy is a modern psychological phenomenon.

US Parents Too Soft?

If you are a new parent and want to be freaked-out about the competitive nature of parenting, read this essay from the Wall Street Journal:

...A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover,• have a playdate• be in a school play• complain about not being in a school play• watch TV or play computer games• choose their own extracurricular activities• get any grade less than an A• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama• play any instrument other than the piano or violin• not play the piano or violin.

... when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

.... rote repetition is underrated in America.

...I once (called my daughter) garbage ... when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early....

...Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." ...

...Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child....

... the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

-This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua

In response to this on their parenting blog:

....My parents... were very low pressure. There were few mandates to do homework, get As, or practice our instruments for my brother, sister and me. ...we were in school plays, were allowed to watch TV until we “were blue in the face,” my mom jokes, and we attended plenty of sleepovers and playdates. Our kitchen was so stocked with junk food (and our TV had so many cable channels) that some of our friends preferred to hang out in our basement as we were considered a “fun house.”

So how did my parents’ laissez-faire parenting style turn out? My brother, sister and I all enjoyed school, got top grades and went to Harvard or Yale. Although I was never great at music, my brother and sister became top-notch musicians, and my sister even sings professionally. The three of us are doing just fine career-wise in financial services, journalism, education and music....

Perfect Parenting

"Someone I know tells me that in the mornings, while making breakfast, packing lunches and laying out clothes, she organises an art project for her children. An art project! This sounds impossibly idyllic – imaginative, engaged, laudable. And yet, is it just the slightest bit mad as well?" - Katie Roiphe in Slate

Advice from 'America's worst mom'

There is a new article by Lenore Skenazy. You may remember her when she made a big splash in the news when she let her 9-year-old ride the New York subway home alone. I liked her story, but in the media frenzy that followed she was labeled America's worst mom.

On the Today Show she went on the air to be lectured by a parenting expert. The expert said she could have given her son the same experience by following him, or making him go with a group of people. I really wish she HAD replied this way:

“Well, how is that the ‘exact same experience’ if it’s different?” I demanded. “Besides, he was safe! That’s why I let him go, you fear-mongering hypocrite, preaching independence while warning against it!”

She further commented:

I really think I’m a parent who is afraid of some things (bears, cars) and less afraid of others (subways, strangers). But mostly I’m afraid that I, too, have been swept up in the impossible obsession of our era: total safety for our children every second of every day. The idea that we should provide it and actually could provide it. It’s as if we don’t believe in fate anymore, or good luck or bad luck. No, it’s all up to us.

I also love her observations on TV. I have been known to refer to the nightly news as "Fear TV":

When we watch TV, we have to remind ourselves that its job is to terrify and disgust us so that we’ll keep watching in horror. It is doing an excellent job on both fronts.

She started a blog called Free Range Kids on the topic. I recommend the article and the blog.

On the same day as someone shared a CNN Post about a Toddler walks two blocks to reach medical help for her father. I love the contrast of this story, to all the fear-mongering. It boggles my mind that a 3-year old could have the presence of mind to do that.

Mother and Son Interview

An animated interview of a mother and her boy, who has Asperger's.

Q&A from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

From Story Corps.

The Simplicity of Saying Nothing

My new method of raising children: "say as little as possible". Leave them to their thoughts. They have adults talking at them all day. Give them some peace.

Idle Parenting = Happy Childhood

Refreshing article that may become a movement:

We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
We pledge to leave our children alone
That should mean that they leave us alone, too
We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
We drink alcohol without guilt
We reject the inner Puritan
We fill the house with music and laughter
We don't waste money on family days out and holidays
We lie in bed for as long as possible
We try not to interfere
We push them into the garden and shut the door so that we can clean the house
We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
Time is more important than money
Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
Down with school
We fill the house with music and merriment

Humans Are Cooperative Breeders

...according to sociologists who study this stuff;

...gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not.

Human beings evolved as cooperative breeders... a reproductive strategy in which mothers are assisted by ...“allomothers,” individuals of either sex who help care for and feed the young.

Our capacity to cooperate in groups, to empathize with others and to wonder what others are thinking and feeling — ...probably arose in response to the selective pressures of being in a cooperatively breeding social group, and the need to trust and rely on others and be deemed trustworthy and reliable in turn. Babies became adorable and keen to make connections with every passing adult gaze. Mothers became willing to play pass the baby....

...Other anthropologists have made the startling discovery that children have entertainment value, and that among traditional cultures without television or Internet access, a bobble-headed baby is the best show in town.

Santa Claus is coming and the kids are getting greedy...

With a week to go till Christmas, the opening line to one of my favorite Christmas songs comes to mind. "Santa Claus is coming and the kids are getting greedy". It's a song called Christmastime by the late Larry Norman. If you never heard of him, he is considered the father of Christian rock, but don't hold that against him.

The entire song is a lament about Christmas from Larry's perspective, I am sure you are familiar with the "put Christ back in Christmas" theme. But that is not the focus of this post, it would not fit with the theme of this blog. I want to focus on the opening lines. So this post isn't about the religious aspects of Christmas. I value them, and hold them important, but my focus is on the wider cultural Christmas.

As a new father (it's the boy's second Christmas) I am concerned about what he will learn about Christmas from his parents and extended family. I think the holiday season quickly spirals into more of Giftmas than Christmas. At the risk of giving the post TOO much of a soundtrack, local musician Ben Gulley's song I WANT MY PRESENTS is not a bad reflection of what the holiday can spiral down to. (I don't know how to link directly to the song, so you have to click on it in the music window.)

So, I have some ideas of what I will try to do to prevent this, but I am curious what approach and suggestions others have. Again, I am not looking for the religious aspects, I know what I will teach him of the story of Christmas, and many folks will have different approaches depending on their religious views, including Hanukkah, Kwanza, and other winter solstice festivities. The fact is, we are in a culture where Gift-Getting is a big deal. As the second line of Larry's sing laments "They know it's in the store because they seen it on the TV".

Our first strategy is to plea with the grandparents, uncles and aunts to go easy on the gifts. We are not Mr. & Mrs. Scrooge on this, but we are committed. This has been only moderately successful to date, but at the boy's age, it is not a huge issue. Frankly he is still in the stage where a wrapped box of tissue paper would be one of his favorite gifts. And importantly, we are setting the precedent on presents.

My next strategy, when he gets old enough to understand it, is an idea I have stolen from friends in the past. I plan on having him select at least one of his old toys to give away to a charity. I like the idea of him giving away something of his own to people who are more in need. Obviously at 18-months he can't process that yet.

The other idea is an extension of the last. I don't feel giving away his used items is quite enough, so I look forward to when he is old enough to go shopping with us for gifts for needy families. You know, the ornament on a tree program.

So what have you done for the holiday season?

Oh, and you have to at least click on the Christmastime link to see the album cover. It wasn't a Christmas album, and was released in 1972. Hey, they did the cover without Photoshop.

Beta Moms

I just heard the term Beta Mom, for the first time. Not that we spend a lot of time thinking of our parenting methods, but Alpha Mom is not our style. My son is developing in different ways than I had intended, but he seems pretty happy. His life is not a completion of mine. It is his own.

Our children are people—not projects. We get to the finish line.
It’s OK to chill out a little bit and let your kids be independent, and individuals, and revel in who they are.
—René Syler, former CBS TV news anchor and author of Good-Enough Mother: The Perfectly Imperfect Book of Parenting

How about you?