New Yorker writers are as coddled and spoiled as any writers in the history of the world.
Make her fish for crustaceans, like in the article.
Druckerman talked to a lot of French mothers, all of them svelte and most apparently well rested.
Wait, have we read this article before? Something like it, right?
Or in. Depending on where you stand.
And I think Paul Theroux covered this in The Mosquito CoastThe Mosquito Coast
3: We have. Is there anything we haven't discussed?
6: "I think about you when I go to the bathroom"
This must be an excerpt, I remember the exact lines about the girl who needed silverware and the French description.
3 is very young - a lot different to 6, even on the veldt. Do you have a yard you can turn her out to play in? Assign a small patch (literally a couple of square metres) to be "her" garden, give her a trowel and let her kill a few seedlings on her own. She could go through the motions of tidying her toys, though you'll obviously have to do it again...
Ah, that's probably why it's in the book review section.
It's about two different pieces -- the French book by Druckerman and the article in Ethos by Izquierdo and Ochs. The silverware story is part of the Ethos stuff.
Perhaps I have achieved enough distance that I can write about this more calmly, but I took a vacation with my French cousin and her four kids in December. In our presence, we saw the one-year-old fall down a flight of stairs, the three-year-old dart into moving traffic (scared the shit out of a van driver), found the same one-year-old down the block when my sister and the cousin went out for a walk (she hadn't known the boy was out for his own promenade and my sister and I were just glad that he had avoided the two open wells on the property). There was a whole lot of crying, some cuffing the older two girls, and a fully engaged battle of wills. There were moments when my sister and I were purely appalled.
That said, those kids honestly had fantastic manners, especially about sitting quietly for food to arrive. They were absolute troopers when it came to lengthy uncomfortable snack-less travel. (That said, the kids were clearly hungry a lot and would fall on our snacks like sharks. They never, but why leave your kids hungry for hours (like, bringing no snacks on a six hour train trip)? Why make your Californian cousins do all the snack providing, since that is how it will work out if we are buying bananas for our own boys and ourselves?)
After that trip, I have absolutely zero desire to use French methods to raise my (hypothetical) kids. The manners and self-control were genuinely impressive, but the crying and danger were far outside my tolerance.
"They never" should read "The kids never complained"
There are also books with titles like "French Kids Eat Everything!" Rule #1 for having culinarily adventurous children with perfect table manners: Be part of a millenia old culture that privileges these things above all others to the extent that they are enforced not just in your own family but everywhere including school and friends' homes and public park benches. Have everyone internalize "Snacking makes you fat."
14: The traffic fear was the one that kept me sweating.
The stuff about the parents who got their kids to do chores and then ended up doing five times as much work because the kids screwed up the chores and let a bear into the house (or whatever) reminded me of Witt talking about how volunteers are usually useless because they aren't there for long enough. Come on, parents, you have these kids for years. There's going to be a learning curve.
17: The older girls (my cousin's step-daughters) were fantastic at the table. Their patience for food was better than mine, because there were times when I was this close to saying "fuck this, I'm walking down the block for a snack to hold me over". They were great eaters. But then, I also saw the father cuff the younger girl for wasting food.
OK, here's the earlier post from February of this year. It was about an article by Pamela Druckerman (mentioned in this article) on why French mothers were superior. And it led to the "hateful" thread.
17: snacking *does* make you fat. And once you engrain the habit it's hard to get rid of. (Speaking as someone who goes and grabs something to eat every time I'm bored in my white collar job).
Yeah, I noticed that same thing, Cryptic Ned. My parents started me and my sister doing the kitchen clean-up at 7 and 5. My mom told me later that she re-did all the dishes the next morning for a year. But, my sister and I did all dinner clean-up until we left for college (my parents left that end of the house until it was done). So they got ten good years out of that training.
Things we make our 2.5 year old do, most of the time:
Clear his place when done eating
Put dirty laundry in the basket
Put shoes away when he comes in, wash his hands
But then, I also saw the father cuff the younger girl for wasting food.
"Eat your salad. Don't you know there are people developing Type II diabetes in Indiana."
19 and 23: I noticed that part too. I remember the burning hatred I felt when my mother declared it was time for me to learn to clean the bathroom, and the feeling of great injustice I wallowed in every week thereafter while I cleaned it. I am quite looking forward to inflicting such feelings on my own children.
The standard Montessori approach to teaching responsibility in 3 year olds is to focus on putting away your toys. You need to restrict your child to a small number of toys and have a little cubbyhole for each one. Each time a toy comes out of its cubbyhole, another toy must go in.
I believe you can pull this off if you hire a second full time nanny who specializes in promoting personal responsibility in three year olds.
Somehow clothes in the hamper hadn't occurred to us yet. That's a good one.
She'd be perfectly capable of brushing her teeth without supervision but she wouldn't tolerate the isolation. I suppose she could brush her teeth in the kitchen, but if we're nearby I suspect it would dissolve into the current situation, which is that we harp on her to do every last step, while she gets distracted by every possible distraction. Which is age-appropriate, to be sure.
19: Come on, parents, you have these kids for years.
I begin to hope not, some machine-like state bureaucracy could do better than many parents do these days. But yes, the object of having small kids do grown-up things is not to have them done right the first time.
19: This is right -- they screw up, but they eventually get adequate at doing things.
It does take a surprisingly long time. I remember as a kid being frustrated because adults were just handier than I was at almost any task, and now I'm looking at it from the other end. I'm not all that handy, but forty years of experience really does help, even matched against a fairly competent and sensible child. You give them something to do, and they often cycle through a couple of really terrible methods before getting to something sane.
I've managed to raise kids who aren't helpless, and are fairly self-reliant, but are still kind of spoiled-ish. Picky eaters (Newt more than Sally, but Sally some too), slobs in their own space (Sally much more than Newt), and not particularly proactive about general house chores. But they are helpful sometimes spontaneously, and generally if you ride them; Newt's a pretty good cook and Sally's functional for her age (like, she can fry eggs and handle a knife); and they cope reasonably well in difficult situations.
I remember the burning hatred I felt when my mother declared it was time for me to learn to clean the bathroom, and the feeling of great injustice I wallowed in every week thereafter while I cleaned it.
I think this is part of what irritates me so much about this article, and the earlier one - the implication that these noble kids from the Amazon don't resent their tasks. Yes, they might actually seek out ways to be helpful, but they might be utter turds in other arenas of life. Kids are kids.
My youngest sibling, recently turned 13, walked 6 miles home from a movie theater last week. Apparently she was counting on the 12 & under ticket discount to have return bus fare but at some point realized she couldn't claim the discount and be allowed into a PG-13 movie, and she's so used to getting around by herself it didn't even occur to her to try to get someone to come pick her up.
I have to run to be humiliated by a giant law firm, but I should talk about Samoan kids later. Incredibly competent for their age, down to very young. Also got hit a lot. I'm not really sure that you can get the one without the other.
than many parents do these days
These days, those days, every which days.
To continue 32, my question is, does this count as an independent-child success (she knew how to get home and did it) or failure (what a stupid thing to do) ?
33: Yes, one can get that competence without clobbering the kids. You just have to start them early enough so doing stuff around the house doesn't get a chance to breed "burning hatred" and passive-aggressive incompetence.
I'm not really sure that you can get the one without the other.
Hello? I can count the occasions I was hit as a child on the fingers of one hand, and by the age of 9 I was travelling around London unaccompanied, cooking a roast dinner (with reference to instructions in real time) and sewing buttons on my shirts. I think it's hard work, but it's not rocket science - my parents started from the presumption, "You can do this" and went from there.
The standard Montessori approach to teaching responsibility in 3 year olds is to focus on putting away your toys. You need to restrict your child to a small number of toys and have a little cubbyhole for each one. Each time a toy comes out of its cubbyhole, another toy must go in.
I've just had my obsession with putting things away into their proper places explained to me. I never realized it was a Montessori thing (but I did go to Montessori school until 1st grade).
35: Unless she had to cross three operating railroad tracks and run across four freeways in the worst part of town, I'd consider it a success.
You just have to start them early enough so doing stuff around the house doesn't get a chance to breed "burning hatred" and passive-aggressive incompetence.
I'd always had other chores to do, so I don't think it was that I wasn't introduced into it early enough. I think the trick more is to remain unmoved by your child's protestations about doing the tasks. My mother had this little line she would sing, "I'm a meeeeeean momma." It still annoys me to this day when I think of it. I have wondered whether I will sing it to my kids, and put the likelihood at about 50/50.
I've just had my obsession with putting things away into their proper places explained to me. I never realized it was a Montessori thing (but I did go to Montessori school until 1st grade).
I remember it from Montessori as a kid, too, and I have no such obsession.
I think maybe I should be sent to Montessori school now.
(I wonder what educational theory taught me "Just keep everything in one giant pile of shit in which you're scarily good at locating things.")
Then again, I was also not one to go for the passive-aggressive incompetence: I was perfectionist enough that if I had to do something, I would try to do it right. My sister would do a slapdash job cleaning her assigned bathroom, but that was general carelessness and rushing through rather than passive-aggressiveness. My parents ultimately made the rule that she had to spend at least 20 minutes on it.
(I wonder what educational theory taught me "Just keep everything in one giant pile of shit in which you're scarily good at locating things.")
I went to a Montessori at least for a little bit and that's my primary method too.
I wonder what educational theory taught me "Just keep everything in one giant pile of shit in which you're scarily good at locating things."
I think this is called 'leaving home', or on humorous t-shirts, 'the University of Life'. It's my belief that retaining the ability to find stuff in a giant pile of shit postpones the onset of dementia in old age and should therefore be encouraged.
My parents made us practice piano 30 minutes a day, until we graduated high school. It was an epic battle and involved a lot of lying, on my part.
Is anyone enforcing something like this with their own kids? I'm torn. Jammies is enthusiastic because he doesn't realize how relentless the resistance we put up was. I don't think I'm willing to go through what my mother went through.
I went to schools in which teachers were incompetent and mostly indifferent, and violence was daily and ubiquitous, and it's my primary method, too.
48: My parents forced me to make ten puns a day until I left home.
48: Have you tried it yet? At least some of your kids may not hate it as much you and your siblings did.
I read the article yesterday and shared it with one of my occasional appeals to send your children to my summer camp.
The hateful thing about it, which I missed the first time out because it wholly flatters me by comparing me favorably to other people's children, is that it observes a problem without hinting at the social context that produces it, other than a bit of generational psychology.
Today's parents are not simply worse, weaker people than their own parents, which you could infer. Helicopter parenting has arisen as the connections that produce "society" have grown thinner. There is less of a social world for children to explore in which they will be accepted but not parented. So their world is built only by parents, and it becomes one in which they are only children.
The line about how today's parents try to impress their children, rather than the reverse, resonated with me.
51: Our oldest just turned 3. Haven't tried it yet.
We'll certainly not kill it off before trying it, but I know a lot of people whose music lessons petered out after elementary school, when the fights ramped up.
(Part of it may have been my particular teacher. I sometimes wonder if I would have had an easier time with someone else.)
The line about how today's parents try to impress their children, rather than the reverse, resonated with me.
See, this did not resonate with me at all. Everyone I know rolls their eyes at their kids and is pleased with them, in healthy measures, but I can't think of anyone who is hungry for their kids' approval.
And plenty of these parents are helicopter-ish, or at least over-concerned with micromanaging stupid details, IMHO.
I started imposing a much more strict regime of minor chores with my 4 year old -- putting away toys in their right place, clearing your plate after dinner, "making" your bed in the morning, putting clothes in the hamper -- and the results have been super positive in a lot of areas. I think it's helped with feeling competent and independent, not like a burden. But it takes work to supervise.
postpones the onset of dementia
I'm kind of obsessed with this right now. I want more than another 30 years of a half-way functional brain. I started taking fish oil again (though googling reveals that that doesn't work). It can't hurt though, and it's good for my heart.
I mean, to enforce a chores routine on a very young kid, you do have to literally "helicopter" (i.e., hang out over them and tell them exactly what to do) for a while. It's a lot of work. It's not like a laissez faire, go and play on the rusty deathtrap like we did in the olden days parenting style is going to magically get them to pick up their clothes.
26: I was so hideous to my parents about mowing the lawn that they basically never asked me to do it. So yeah, that's pretty characteristic of my overall healthy acceptance of necessary but uninteresting tasks and duties. Thank god for this frequently ignorable job.
I went to schools in which teachers were incompetent and mostly indifferent, and violence was daily and ubiquitous, and it's my primary method, too.
Action High?
54: Yeah, I'm willing to believe that this is just my impression of imaginary other people's terrible children. I haven't really noticed it with my friends' children.
The anecdata are powerful. NYT reporter Jo/di K/antor shared it on her FB with a note about how several times a year she receives letters from parents asking if their very special child can intern for her. Really? You couldn't get the very special child to write the letter?
NYT reporter Jo/di K/antor shared it on her FB with a note about how several times a year she receives letters from parents asking if their very special child can intern for her. Really? You couldn't get the very special child to write the letter?
This doesn't surprise me at all. I get parents asking how their kid should apply to the program I administer. I take that to mean it's the parent who wants it for the kid, not the kid for themself.
That said, I wouldn't interpret the above to mean the parent wants to impress the kid. The parent wants to secure an excellent internship for their special snowflake, which is different. The audience to impress is society/employers/external, not the very special child.
57: Fish oil supplements prevent dementia by killing you first via stroke.
I'm really bored and can't leave work and can't bring myself to be productive.
You're not going to accomplish anything, so do the hookiest thing you can possibly do, with purpose and verve instead of guilt for not working.
As long as you can do it with purpose and verve.
Today's parents are not simply worse, weaker people than their own parents, which you could infer. Helicopter parenting has arisen as the connections that produce "society" have grown thinner. There is less of a social world for children to explore in which they will be accepted but not parented.
really well put. The decline of the extended family and functional neighborhood communities, the segregation of work from home, and the extreme specialization of adult work leads to an impoverishment of inter-generational interaction until it is overfocused on specialized 'parenting' interactions with just mom and dad (or maybe just mom).
several times a year she receives letters from parents asking if their very special child can intern for her.
Eh. It seems to me that this is only risible when the parents are nobodies. Otherwise it's how half the people in publishing and journalism got their damn jobs.
(Surely I've mentioned it here, but there was an article on publishing internships in the Times years ago where some dude said something like, "I like to hire the children of people I summer with. They know other languages and I know their values.")
Getting your kids jobs in journalism and publishing is self-punishing behavior.
The nepotism version of this is a very different conversation. If you have a social connection to someone, it's not outside of the bounds of the relationship to ask if you might have something for Junior to do. It's shitty, but there is no way in which asking people you don't know if they have something for Junior to do makes it less shitty.
Heebie is right that it has nothing to do with parents impressing their children -- that was me being sloppy.
PS: I got my publishing job because of my father. Oh, and my fancy media internship, too. (He was a bartender in a fancy restaurant.)
but I can't think of anyone who is hungry for their kids' approval.
Seems like I see a shit ton of it. Lot of people looking for external validation out there and often it extends to their kids. Man do I detest "ungovernable juvenile" calls. Parents, unless that kid has a brain deformity or something odds are your kid is shitty because you're shitty.
63: I guess that's a better way to go. I only take a little. There were some good studies on EPA and mood, but I'm not taking enough to get the full effects. And I guess that pregnant mothers need a lot of DHA (which you can get from algae).
I think 52 may be the most humane and constructive commentary on this issue that I've read.
71: I'm not talking about nepotism though. Or even social connections, really, although "important" people can always find some I suppose. There are people who can ask for things from people they don't really know and it's fine. Other people are climbers.
73: The people phoning in "ungovernable juvenile" are hungry for their kid's approval??
It's not like a laissez faire, go and play on the rusty deathtrap like we did in the olden days parenting style is going to magically get them to pick up their clothes.
Seems to help a bit to make them do calisthenics when they forget. Yeah, mine still forget pretty often but I think doing loads of pushups is also good for them so win win.
60: Action High?
Mostly Action Middle. I only went to 9th grade and then worked minimum wage jobs, slept 12 hours a day, and sat at home playing piano and computer games self-taught home-schooled for the remaining three years.
Thank you. Unsurprisingly, I'm drawing on conversations with B.Phd.
They have summer jobs at my company which are entirely filled by the relatives of upper management. They're not even cushy or high-prestige, but they are a first job.
I have mixed feelings about this, but my childhood was so bizarre and dysfunctional that it's not really meaningful to compare it to others. I don't think that parents should do all the asking for their kids' summer jobs. I do think that teaching kids how to ask for things, in part by modeling the behavior, is really important and something I wish that I had had.
The people phoning in "ungovernable juvenile" are hungry for their kid's approval??
Very often the kid who is supposedly doing horrible in school and won't do a damn thing the parent says still has a phone, a flat screen tv in their room, game system, etc.
Parents, unless that kid has a brain deformity or something odds are your kid is shitty because you're shitty.
Science!
83: Speaking of science and brains and Sifu Tweety... is "flow" really a real thing? Are there measurables associated with it?
For what it's worth,* my parents seemed never to be able to decide whether my brother and I had chores, and if so what said chores might be, or whether the delegation of housework tasks was entirely punitive.** As a result, my brother and I are not really housebroken in a "doesn't have to be reminded that the person who doesn't cook ought to wash the dishes" or "knows that 'That's dusty' isn't necessarily hostile."
I suppose the takeaway for "healthy" families is that it's very easy to get mad about how messy the house/kitchen/kid's room is, but that moment of anger probably isn't the time to decide that you little fucking shitheads are going to learn to clean this fucking place because I'm not your fucking maid and entertainment committee where are my cigarettes Christ I hate you so much I wish you'd never been born [front door slams].
Easier said than done, of course.
* Not much.
** As a rule, very angry and unhappy people should not be given the power to punish.
I do think that teaching kids how to ask for things... is really important
We had to cold call people at firms (to ask for samples that we could test) for a summer class I took. It may have been one of the most valuable lessons I've learned.
83 gets at a real point, which is that so many of these goddamn parenting "rules" -- on all sides of this debate -- are just made up bullshit by people who don't actually know anything systematic. Is your kid helped by your being attentive to their needs, or harmed by you failing to give them independence? Who the fuck knows, and the fact that Elizabeth Kolbert has read one article about some motherfucking Amazon tribe does not lend a firm scientific basis to her anxiety/annoyance about coddling children. Everyone has to figure out how to parent, and there is good advice and bad advice, but 98% of these articles are just so much nonsense, and people tend to default to (often false) memories of their own childhood experiences.
[All that said, I do think it's good to give out chores. I'm not going to pretend that's some kind of deep fucking principle, though.]
the person who doesn't cook ought to wash the dishes
See, the rule I've always followed is that as the person who made the mess (by cooking), I'm the one that should clean it up.
Really? You couldn't get the very special child to write the letter?
As always, this thread makes me vaguely depressed about how bad I am at networking.
But, here's a nice story about asking for an job.
Over the course of this past summer, I played in the NYU school yard with a young, thin, dark-haired Puerto Rican kid named Kenny Garcia, who was close to six feet tall. I later learned that his parents were separated and that he lived sometimes with his mother and sometimes with his father. He was seventeen and going into his junior year at Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He traveled to NYU by bicycle, cap turned backward, and often with a black friend and classmate of his named George. Kenny had a cousin named Junior who worked in admitting at the hospital, and he and George played in the games as well. There were times when the four of us were on a full-court team together, and I enjoyed playing with them. ...
Every so often I talked with Kenny about his future. He asked me how hard college was, and I told him that it wasn't so hard that he couldn't do it. . . .
... From then on, he and Junior and George would talk to me about the sports world, the Knicks, the Yankees, and the like. Then one day Kenny said, "Hey, Ira, can you get me a job at the Times?"
"We already have a publisher, Kenny," I said. "But what did you have in mind?"
"Mail room--anything to make some money," he said. "Jobs aren't easy to get."
I told him to send me a note about himself so that I could pass it on to the appropriate people. I told him to send it to me at the Times, but I didn't give him the address. I thought I'd let him use his ingenuity if he was truly interested.
Then we went back onto the court.
...
At the office I received an envelope with Kenny Garcia's return address. Apparently the kid was truly interested in getting a job at The Times. He had enclosed a handwritten note, carefully scripted on lined notebook paper. It read:
Ira, I am 17 years old. I am courteous, respectful, and puctuous [sic] young man who is eager to go out and dip into the real world. I consider myself a people person and someone with the ability to comprehend what's going on around him. I feel I am smart enough and responsible enough to handle anything that comes my way. Sincerely, Kenny Garcia
His address and phone number were written below the signature
A good example of how much of an impression a sincere, polite inquiry can make. If I recall correctly, he got the job.
As a result, my brother and I are not really housebroken in a "doesn't have to be reminded that the person who doesn't cook ought to wash the dishes" or "knows that 'That's dusty' isn't necessarily hostile."
I grew up with moderate chores enforced extremely diligently, and I'm a messy slob who can sort of get it together enough for Jammies to tolerate me.
84: I don't really know a hell of a lot about it. I know that you almost always see "streakiness" and significant autocorrelation in skill or attention-based tasks. It's also really hard to google.
19 and 23: I noticed that part too. I remember the burning hatred I felt when my mother declared it was time for me to learn to clean the bathroom, and the feeling of great injustice I wallowed in every week thereafter while I cleaned it. I am quite looking forward to inflicting such feelings on my own children.
I well remember sitting on the shower stall floor and reading as the bucket of dilute Mr. Clean grew cold next to me. Then mom would yell at me. She was so mean!
91, 84: My own hypothesis is it's that people have a learned skill in their procedural memory (i.e. well-practised tasks that they can do with little conscience intervention), and they sometimes get in modes where they put reflective, conscious thought on mute and then function superbly as a result.
sAll that said, I do think it's good to give out chores. I'm not going to pretend that's some kind of deep fucking principle, though.
I don't think any of it's deep or difficult. But it's not too hard to observe time and time again that 1. The parent of the kid is a giant asshole with no people skills and 2. The "incorrigible" kid is often apologizing and working on cleaning his/her room or something else useful within 20 minutes of me arriving. I see it with my wife's students as well. Kids who are failing damn near every class often will work in hers. We're not shithead whisperers or anything, it's just that a bit of things like firmness, respect, and not responding in kind go a long ways.
shithead whisperers
Laughing and laughing.
[I]t's just that a bit of things like firmness, respect, and not responding in kind go a long ways.
That's just nonsense. Insulting, abusive language, unpredictability and disproportionately, poisonously nasty personal attacks are the way to go. Best if you throw kids out of the house for a day or two now and then, as though you're running the hotel that you recurrently claim not to be running, as well. Keeps 'em guessing.
93: well, yes, that's how it is characterized in popsci. What I want to know is-is it real? I think I've felt it subjectively, but...
95: Me too. Also laughing at "a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush, and a quiet old lady who was whispering 'Shithead'."
97: It's not just spit-balling at the ceiling. There are definitely distinct declarative and procedural systems in the mammalian brain, and knowing how they compete with and complement one another would probably explain quite a lot about how we learn and experience our environments, including streakiness.
I'm not aware of any explanation of high-level human cognitive function that isn't controversial. The honest answer to, "is it real?" here will always be, "who really knows?"
I think about this kind of thing a lot. Nia, who turned six this month, wants to be able to cook and it seems different from the way Mara wants to cook because it seems like fun and she wants to do what I do. I suspect Nia was cooking (to some degree) for herself as a preschooler/kindergartener. I'm not going to let her at the stove, but she and Mara cut up watermelon and stirred macaroni and cheese and so on.
Oh, and heebie, you can add to the list serving herself dinner from a common plate at 3. We've let Mara do that with anything that's not too hot and not totally liquid and the spill level is not worse than it would be anyway. (Alex, on the other hand, could not eat a meal without knocking over his drink. He still got to serve himself, mostly, but I knew what I was getting myself into.) And kids are great at putting out silverware and napkins. There's even a song on the Signing Time video about food that's a reminder of where the silverware goes, though Mara gets mad that she can't sign while holding silverware.
(Oh, and I posted a "picture.)
||
During a May visit to the White House by the actor Will Smith and his family, Obama was quizzed by Smith's 13-year-old son, Jaden, about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. In an interview with the BBC, Smith recounted Obama's reaction to his son: "OK, I can neither confirm or deny the existence of extraterrestrials," Obama reportedly said from the White House Situation Room. "But I can tell you if there had been a top secret meeting, and if there would have been a discussion about it, it would have taken place in this room."
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Mara gets mad that she can't sign while holding silverware
Practice makes perfect!
103: I get mad if she pokes herself with a fork while trying to sign while I'm cooking. That might be one of those skills that has to wait until later. (She was totally bossy about trying to make Nia learn the ASL alphabet, critiquing her finger placement and whatnot even though her own is not fantastic. It was hilarious. I will someday ask you all my questions about language acquisition and why I think Mara likes ASL and why she has a hard time with commands about how to move her body. But not now.)
96: Rejecting the kids early on is a sound tactic that will pay off many decades later when they frantically seek your approval for how they treat you in your dotage or lovingly arrange your deck chair on the ice floe.
48: My parents made us practice piano 30 minutes a day, until we graduated high school. It was an epic battle and involved a lot of lying, on my part.
The music lesson experience with our kids was strenuous but OK, I think. ms bill worked hard to avoid the tugs-of-war and struggles that she remembered from her piano lessons as a child. As a complete non-musician I was cast in the role of occasional enforcer and gobsmacked "how did you do that?" admirer - the kids liked the idea of being able to do something that I couldn't do at all.
The kids' piano teacher (a seemingly stern but actually kind woman) wanted practices of about 30 minutes a day five or six days a week; ms bill said "about 20 minutes a day" four or five days a week, and the kids viewed this as a great parental grant of freedom. They started early in elementary school and we said they had to take lessons until they finished 8th grade. The idea was that they would get to choose whether to continue when they went to high school.
The piano is in our living room so it was apparent if someone hadn't practiced or if they were going through the motions. We relied heavily on positive feedback to keep them practicing - knowing what they were working on and asking about it seemed to help. But sometimes we just had to tell them to do their "Dozen a Day" exercises or to repeat something they weren't focusing on.
We tried to make a fun time out of recitals (also known as "piano parties") and would give the kids cheapo busts of composers after each one. The whole family would attend whenever we could; we would go out to eat afterwards. We told them that we would buy a Steinway for whoever plays at Carnegie Hall. Not too much danger of that.
After a few years we let them choose whether they wanted to take lessons over the summer. Inevitably they didn't. But we did go to music stores and have them pick out sheet music for pieces to play "for fun" during the summer. Inexpensive and they would actually would play a little over the summer.
My daughter stuck with piano lessons through high school and at her last piano party played an extended Mozart piece - her personal goal, of which I was unaware. She ended up really liking the stern-but-kind teacher. In high school she probably practiced between 20 and 30 minutes five or six days a week, but it was all up to her. She still will sit down and play to relax.
My son took piano lessons through 8th grade and told us that he was done. At the end he probably was practicing about 15 minutes a day four or five days a week and he was disenchanted. However, he asked to switch to electric guitar, and took lessons for a year or so (including summer) from a fellow who looked like a Metallica roadie but was an outstandingly patient and professional teacher. His guitar teacher (now playing for a touring theatrical production) had him practicing about 45 minutes a day on electric and got him to take up acoustic guitar, which he really likes and now plays for fun.
We bought used instruments, including our piano, on the advice of more musically inclined friends - my son saved up to buy a new acoustic guitar.
Bill, that is an inspiring description. I am sure I wouldn't have wanted to practice (although I was completely self-motivated about sports), but I deeply wish I were musically literate now.
"Unequal childhoods" is good on this issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Unequal-Childhoods-Family-Second-Edition/dp/0520271424/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
The modern upper middle class childhood leads to whinny kids. This doesn't happen with working class kids (or happen with kids 30 years ago). If what you as a parent really care about is getting your kid into a good college, your kid is going to be whinny.
Ditto to 39 almost exactly. Not quite London, but I'd walk to school (1 mile) from age 5, the library (2 miles or so) from about 6, and got the bus to the nearest major town (a bit under 4 miles) from about 7 or 8. I couldn't really cook until about 11 or 12, though. I've discussed before, my parents were fairly lassez faire (working class) hippies, and supportive, but there was no shirking responsibility or much expectation of being bailed out if you fucked up.
The general points about social changes making a less helicopter parenting style hard to achieve, are good, though. There is however, still a class element. I'm pretty sure my sister's kids are, in their way, more mature and responsible than a lot of the kids of my more middle class acquaintances, and that comes down to being still embedded in a somewhat different culture of parenting. It'll no doubt even out over time.
102: Super cute! I love the pictures of your area because it's so lush! Utah is such a dead looking place after May because of the dryness.
102: the gate climbing is so funny!
109: Some percentage of helicoptering has to be pinned on the mass media and our corporate overlords. They've figured out that the key to sales in the US is to create anxiety and then sell a cure. Fear for one's kids has been a staple of the local TV news since Etan Patz (and even before if anyone else here is old enough to remember Bobby Greenlease. My mother sure noticed that case)
106: would give the kids cheapo busts of composers
Bill, this rings bells for me: my parents did that for my recitals (which I generally scowled over, though I was secretly proud); the cheapo miniature bust of Beethoven is still around somewhere.
Everything described in your approach sounds right, from insisting on a certain number of minutes of practice per day, to your gobsmacked "how did you do that?" admiring stance, to the position established from the outset that the kid can choose freely as of a certain age whether to continue or not. The latter meant quite a bit to me (the established age for me was 13): a grown-up decision I will make by myself, no questions asked.
109: It'll no doubt even out over time.
I'm not sure I see why. Or maybe you mean that as the kids of the respective class settings grow older, they'll even out.
My children are not whiny. They simply have a very intense, albeit not well focused, sense of justice.
Going way back upthread, since I'm just catching up:
72: I got my publishing job because of my father. Oh, and my fancy media internship, too.
I'm curious how you feel about this now, oudemia.
I just made my kid sweep the floor. That ought to hold him for the summer.
Our kid has to deal with "no" all the time. She deals by screaming. There's been a lot of tantrums lately.
I'm curious how you feel about this now
I think if I got my big break because my dad was the favorite bartender to some bigshots, I would chalk it up to the American Dream and feel good about it.
120: Right. I sure wouldn't spend even a microsecond feeling guilty about it. Shit happens, so does good luck.
The this is only risible when the parents are nobodies in 69 got on my nerves. I don't know why oudemia keeps telling us about the people she knows and the places she's been and things she's won. It's weird.
I'll ban myself shortly.
Anyone who got a job through connections is obviously a monster. People should get ahead based on grit, hard work, and insufferable self righteousness.
122: Holy crap. Continue thinking super well of yourself!
Anyone who tries to get a job while being a nobody is laughable.
I'm out.
For tonight's rather crummy dinner after tumbling class and the splash pool, Nia separated sets of two slices of bread and a piece of cheese for each grilled cheese sandwich, sliced the sandwiches once they were cut, emptied the soup from a can into a pot and stirred water in, stirred the reheated mac and cheese she'd helped cook this weekend, and then set the table. Mara was outside coloring with chalk. I think both of these seem like old-fashioned kid activities, though the tumbling or swimming four nights a week is more modern.
I don't think that oudemia was endorsing that attitude, parsimon.
Good grief. Read the damn comment. I was defending the people Ms K/a/ntor was mocking. There are any number of people at whose phone call she would rush away to help -- even if she didn't know them. The parents making calls are risible -- to Ms K/a/ntor (keeping up?) -- only because they're "nobodies."
Newt's doing his own wash without being nagged -- he went to bed asking us to remind him that his wash was in the drier downstairs. It's not all that organized, though -- Buck or I will do his wash when we get around to it, he just does it sometimes anyway.
128: No, I wasn't following the Ms. K/antor line. So 69 was being sarcastic? I missed that.
130: Yeah, well, future reference: before being hateful maybe take a gander.
Why do you hate my business?
Holy crap, parsimon, that is a masterfully rude misreading of Oudie's comment.
131: Seriously, the Ms. K/antor line wasn't at all apparent as the thread developed, and the presentation in 69 did not indicate sarcasm. You speak often enough about the people you know and have met, and the places you've been, and so on (everybody loves playing the "Oh, I know that guy!" game with the NYT wedding column) that it really wasn't outlandish to read 69 straight.
I apologize for reacting as I do to some of your comments. I'll tamp it down.
Honestly -- quit while you're behind. "Sorry I totally didn't bother to read your comment before making an unpleasant personal attack, but you're so horrible that I was pretty much right to misread the way that I did."
You got to tamp down the gander
If you want to play the saxophone
135: Sorry. I did read your comment repeatedly, and I didn't see the apparent sarcasm. Overall it's a bad idea for me to speak in this manner.
You speak often enough about the people you know and have met, and the places you've been
Oh come on, parsi. Other people bragged about having been to Action Park, too.
138: Tweety's been crying jealous tears on your shoulder tonight, hasn't he?
"Please, can we build a Tarzan swing? Pretty please?"
The article kept reminding me of a statement attributed to Bill Cosby, that he had a hard time relating to his children because he never knew any rich kids growing up. I went to college 20 years ago, and plenty of the kids I met there didn't know how to cook for themselves or do their own laundry. So, I wonder how much of this perceived disappearance of responsibility comes from professional class people moving between class cultures. I mean, there have been some real changes in parenting styles and in kids' organization of time and space, but haven't rich kids pretty much always had other people wipe their assess for them been able to get out of household responsibilities?
I'm pretty sure that prior to my arrival in college I'd never done my own laundry, but I managed to puzzle it out.
I'm curious how you feel about this now.
I never learned how to do laundry until I was a week away from leaving for college. I got a brief lesson and was told that using bleach was likely to result in disaster.
Our current state of laundry doing is not exactly what you would want to teach anyone -- everything all mixed together, with towels and kitchen rags tossed directly into the washer to sit around until the next load runs, and then washing everything always on cold. We are clean but our dark garments are always linty and our light garments are getting a little dingy.
(And we carefully avoid wearing anything bright red or otherwise demanding.)
I have never really gotten beyond throwing everything together into the washer. Unless there's something that's really obviously going to bleed colors or get beaten up in the company of the other things.
Everything goes on warm, which I figure is a compromise. Why do you do cold?
My wife would use the rtfs-so system if she did more of the laundry and would be continuously surprised as to why her cold water delicate clothes were falling apart after six months.
Obvioulsy clothes washing training isn't simply class-based. I was just struck by the article's bit about the recent study that incoming students were (gasp!) more anxious about living away from home than the classes they hadn't started taking, which was somehow further anecdata about our fallen age.
Why do you do cold?
Easier on the clothes and keeps things a little more colorfast, so the dingifying happens a little less. I do handwash delicates, but mostly just don't wear them. That is, unless you count today's modern flimsy ladyteeshirts as delicates, because they are indeed quite fucking delicate, alas, damn them.
I have never really gotten beyond throwing everything together into the washer.
The next step is to select the appropriate cycle on the washer and start it running. Afterwards, dry the clothes.
Cycle?
149: Easier on the clothes and keeps things a little more colorfast, so the dingifying happens a little less
I'll keep that in mind. My housemate does laundry about 3x more often than I do, and his stuff is generally very dirty and of the jeans and tee-shirt and socks variety, so I got lazy. I have noticed that some of my clothes are falling apart. It might be the washing machine.
I have never really gotten beyond throwing everything together into the washer.
Yeah, me neither. Separating the whites from the coloureds just seems like an apartheid system for the laundry that also just seems like too much work.
Woolens should always be washed in the delicate cycle, mind you, and should probably not be put in the dryer.
Wait, you have to wash wool?
Well, far be it from me to gratuitously prescribe a set of arbitrary standards. Grow your own grass and fly your own freak flag is what I always say, and may a thousand flowers bloom.
(Actually, I admittedly rarely if ever say anything of the sort; and yes, you do have to wash wool every once in a while if you want it to be clean).
Especially if it's a woollen jumper that you've spilt your dinner down. Woollen nappy covers on the other hand were fine with airing and occasional re-lanolising.
I did my own laundry from 16 when I complained about my mum shrinking something. "Do it yourself then, my dear."
My kids seem to be mostly a bit more self-sufficient than their friends. (But we did carefully pick where we lived to help make that possible.) Which has its own annoyances, like Kid A getting home (on her bike) half an hour late last night. I was almost sure that it would just have been because her rehearsal over ran, but it was still worrying.
Am I the only person here who sorts their laundry by color? I would find that... disturbing.
I sort my laundry. Rather than washing my own clothes separately as a teen, I was expected to take on part of the overall responsibility: so everyone's whites went in one load. I think it took maybe 5 minutes for my mother to explain to me what cycles to use. (Towels etc long hot wash; white clothes short/gentle/warm;everything else short/gentle/cool. )
People I have met who didn't know how to do their laundry as young adults were generally ignorant by reason of sexism rather than overprotection.
97: Not only is Flow real, they can now directly induce it using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).
158 sounds about right. Sort to the point of avoiding immediate destruction, but there's no point in being obsessive about it.
Am I the only person here who sorts their laundry by color? I would find that... disturbing.
No, I do, too. But I have strange and arbitrary rules about which of the colored items (of which there are always a few too many for a single load) can switch to the white team. "Okay, you two things, because you're blue, which seems...uh, more like white. And, uh, you, old T-shirt, because you're old and done bleeding. Probably."
Whitish in one load, darkish in another. Short & cool cycle for either. No problem, no effort.
I re-wear clothes many many times, and avoid doing laundry, and then I'm fastidious about it when I finally do it. Anything that is in danger of developing deoderant-hard patches gets doused with vinegar on the underarms and sits first. Whites go on hot. Everything else on cold.
Jammies does laundry constantly. I throw socks and underpants in with his stuff.
Back to the Samoan thing I was saying, you can certainly get competent kids by our standards without hitting them. Samoan kids were on a different level of acting like reliable adults (in contexts where someone with authority they accepted expected them to. My math class was not such a context.)
This story is probably already in the archives somewhere, although I didn't find it on a quick google. One time in Samoa, I walked up to a little roadside store (they were built like newsstands -- you didn't go in to get stuff, you talked to a person over the counter who handed you what you wanted), and the person running it was maybe nine or ten. This wasn't weird at all, kids were left in charge of these all the time. I asked for a couple cans of mackerel, a loaf of bread, and a box of milk, and the kid was sort of vague and dithery about finding stuff -- not that slow, but confused looking. And then I paid, and the kid was a little weird with making change -- again, got it right, but had some trouble.
The difference from a normal Samoan kid, who would have been briskly efficient, was so big that I thought "Man, leaving a kid in charge of a store is one thing, but someone left a disabled kid in charge of a store? That's messed up." And then he said something for the first time, and I realized that he was ethnically Samoan, but he was a New Zealander, who must have been back visiting family or something. Hearing his voice changed my whole perception from "What's wrong with this nine-year-old kid that a simple thing like being left in charge of a small business is difficult for him?" to "Ooh, what a good job he's doing -- he gave me the right change, and found everything, and is just being a trouper about all the responsibility."
That kid was (from my limited interaction with him) a competent, independent kid by developed-country standards. But he was so far off a Samoan baseline for a kid of that age that I thought he had some intellectual disability.
Yeah --- in NZ of course you can't hit children for purposes of correction any more, which was not seen as a great change by a lot of the large Pasifika churches (alongside the introduction of civil unions, prostitution law reform, & various other exciting social engineering things).
in NZ of course you can't hit children for purposes of correction any more
What about just for a laugh?
[C]ivil unions, prostitution law reform, & various other exciting social engineering things....
Not mentioned: The need for action to control the growth of the vast migratory herds of Lord of the Rings fans, lowing as their neckbeards brush the greensward.
Well, uh. Maybs? Arguably given it is ``performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting'' you might get away with it.
S 59 of the Crimes Act is a bit of mess these days. What happens when your technocratic code becomes a battle ground for the religious, the social liberals, and the generally grouchy. S 59 (4) is the best for sheer dumbness.
167: you know we actually changed our fucking employment law to keep production of the Hobbit in NZ? It's a fucking disgrace, actually. Some execs from Warner or whomever came over (no doubt with some fancy Hollywood lawyers) and the PM just said yeah sure we'll just fix up that bit that says that independent contractors aren't if they aren't really and make it easier for you guys to generally be a not very nice multi-national.
Ugh. Sorry.
||
Speaking of NZ law: Kim Dotcom search warrants "invalid," mansion raid "illegal"
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169: Look, you want the spaz, dork and poindexter tourists or not?
That's what I thought.
So, conventional wisdom holds that if you hit your kids, your kids will grow up operating from fear, have violence as a means of problem-solving, find themselves in future violent relationships, etc. And I do believe all of that (more or less) holds in the US (except for Apo and Urple who are Americans). Does it hold somewhere like Samoa?
To be fair, not hitting your kids doesn't necessarily avoid all of those problems.
I was always told growing up to separate colors, of course, but over the years nothing ever bad happened from accidental mixing, even with new articles (I hardly own anything red, but there is some pink), so I gradually forgot about the rule and now I mix everything.
Has color-running been eliminated by modern detergents, or is this just extraordinary luck?
I think it's only a risk the first time you wash something, or if you've got a particularly hardy red pair of corduroys that bleeds every single goddamn time until I just stopped washing them altogether.
The reason I separate out is so that I can wash things on different temperatures.
And different amounts of churning.
Winkelmann's a babe.
Kim Dotcom's gone totally pop culture here --- I dunno if I told you all this before, but he got mixed up in a bizarre scandal with John Banks and put out this hilarious rap about the whole thing.
My mom would spank me, and I separate colors. You do the math, heebie.
So, conventional wisdom holds that if you hit your kids, your kids will grow up operating from fear, have violence as a means of problem-solving, find themselves in future violent relationships, etc. And I do believe all of that (more or less) holds in the US (except for Apo and Urple who are Americans). Does it hold somewhere like Samoa?
I seem to recall Lizardbreath discussing this very question in a years old thread.
The brain cells devoted to remembering that could probably be put to better use, but I suppose the same goes for remembering scenes from sitcoms that aired in 1982.
172: I think you overstate the level of cultural penetration of that meme. Do you not remember the level of *support* that weird family court judge got regarding the youtubed whoopin? There's a vast swathe of people who feel fine about using cuffing, spanking, etc. for child-rearing.
178: spanking causes apartheid.
172: The conventional wisdom is idiotic. I know lots of kids who were spanked and who grew up to be perfectly well adjusted adults. I also know plenty of people who were raised in various no-spanking hippy-dippy "raise them like Gandhi" households who turned out to be violent, including the only kid who ever hit me in anger. Kids aren't morons. A mild spanking delivered right at the time of the offense isn't going to make them live their lives as if they were in North Korea.
I have 4 baskets - light hot, light cool, dark hot, dark cool. My kids put their stuff in the right basket so hopefully they will learn to do laundry properly. I should set up some sort of electrified floor/sweet from a tube reinforcement system rather than just hit them.
I stopped sorting laundry by color in college, because of the hassle and the number of quarters required. I only recently realized how much lint could be avoided on dark corduroys and turtlenecks if I don't wash them together with pink sweatshirts. I just spent a lot of money on sticky lint rollers.
My three year old likes to take the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the laundry basket. She will sort them for me but if she does that she will insist on folding them herself, which isn't actually so helpful. I have her put wet clothes in the dryer for me, which doesn't save me any time, since the washer is a top-loader, but was good sensory practice when we started, and which she thinks is fun for some reason. I'm not ready to have her carry a plate half-full of leftovers to the kitchen by herself.
I've been told control issues are normal with three year old girls (and to nip it in the bud).
Though now that I just got my dead tree New Yorker in the mail, I can read the article.
re: 183.last
But hitting is more fun/tactical/caring. BTW, I thought I saw C waiting for the train the other day, wasn't sure whether to say hi or walk off grumpily pretending I hadn't seen him (so did that latter, due to shitty day at work and general antisocial mood).
I was just asked to peel a hotdog.
I used to peel hot dogs when I was a little kid. Also, hot dogs were the only meat I'd eat for a long time, according to my mother. Basically, I blame all my current quirks on a childhood wherein hot dogs played a clearly outsize role.
If they were the kind with casing, he might not have been just testing limits.
I had to do a moderate amount of housework, strictly enforced, from a young age, but I am a messy person. Of course, my parents and grandparents all tend towards hoarding, so I like to assume its a genetic condition, like flat feet and myopia. When I was little I loved doing domestic stuff, and would beg my mother to let me iron or vacuum or bake a pie. At 8, I decided I wanted to live off the fruits of my own labor, weaving my own cloth, growing my own food, making my own paper and building my own furniture (future plans involved farm animals). I made several pieces of "cloth" which eventually became potholders and a lumpy table runner, and a pair of sandals out of cardboard and elastic which fell apart when I wore them, and a lot of homemade paper journals. I also had a garden of out of control lettuce, and I would make cakes without a recipe until my family put their foot down over my production of flat, dense, underly sweet cake-like objects.
Starting at age 11, my mother gave me the choice of doing dishes every night alternating with my siblings or washing my own clothes. My ability to live as an adult picked up considerably when my mother decided that she was basically done with day-to-day parenting and housework when I was 16 (my mother went from a Swedish hippy Martha Stewart-like SAHM to a single mom working 60 hours a week, so I don't totally blame her). I ate a lot of terrible self-cooked meals cooked, including one week where I just lived on ice cream. Housework was a game of chicken, where things got cleaned by whoever caved in first. I usually did on vacuuming, and my sister and mother on the dishes. The bathroom got cleaned about half an hour before company showed up.
My early foray into domesticity + my mother going cold turkey means I am pretty good at the domestic arts and get annoyed with incompetence in that area (there is no excuse for shrinking/dyeing laundry!), but my room currently looks like a federal disaster zone.
Oh, and as a data point, I also went to a Montessori preschool yet have a cognitive inability to remember to put things away or even to close drawers.
Possibly time to remember the story about the woman who moved from NY to the South in the 1960s and honestly thought that the tables in the laundrette labelled "Whites" and "Coloreds" were for sorting your laundry on.