7 Quick Takes Friday: March 23, 2012

 

1.     So….I helped coordinate a lecture with one of my ‘fascinating people’--Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore. Both his talk and the dinner afterward brought up lots of great topics, which I’m sure I’ll be commenting on ad nauseam in days to come. But in the meantime, I’ll just say that he used and commented on this New Yorker cartoon. His first instinct was to think “Wow, how myopic this goldfish mother is to think her kid can be anything—they're in a fishbowl!!” But now he thinks being in a fishbowl has something to recommend it in terms of personal happiness since we're in a world with an overwhelming number of choices….

2.     Breakthrough with my oldest daughter!  C has a great work ethic and enthusiasm, but she was having real problems with her piano playing because she was racing through her songs as she practiced them and making the same mistakes over and over again. She has a hard time with criticism, too, so when she’d have her lesson she’d get upset with her teacher, too. Sigh. So I offered her a challenge. I told her to play her piece through—it took her 5 minutes. I offered her money (OK, bribed her…) to play it in 6 minutes…then in 7 etc. until she got all the way to 15 or so. It has really changed her attitude! And after the beginning she stopped caring about the bribe. It’s really shown me, again, how turning a stressful situation into a game or challenge is immensely powerful --and game-changing! I started this 3 weeks ago and I am still seeing the positive effects in regards to attitude and performance (and no money has been involved since that first week).

3.     On a similar note, I recently read a book I heartily recommend. (It’s so good that after taking it out of the library and finishing it, I am going to buy my own—Big Spender that I am).  It’s the Whole Brain Child. Basically, it helps you understand your child’s brain development better and gives you parenting strategies that both help you recognize what’s happening in your kid’s head AND help him break out of behavior that isn’t working for him and you. One of the things it encourages you to do is to talk about difficult situations that happen to your child, and to “reflect and redirect”—to share or reflect your child’s emotional state and THEN try to redirect them to more constructive behavior. I have to report some success. My unreasonable two-year old seemed quite fascinated—and somewhat soothed—when I talked to him (post facto) about how upset he was that we were leaving his friend Thomas’s house and how I understood how mad he was and how I, too,  wished we didn’t have to go….

4.     One step forward, one step back. Oldest daughter C is also a voracious reader (a good thing), but it’s really hard to keep on top of what she’s reading…and I don’t have the time to vet everything myself. So I/we are constantly on the hunt for age-appropriate series that are either a) wholesome/good or at least b) not offensive or creepy. Amazing how much garbage is out there….

5.     My generous mother recently gave me two beautiful oilcloth tablecloths which I really love (we are both suckers for a lovely oilcloth). Two days later, a spaghetti stain was plaguing one of them. Desperate to find a way of getting it out, I went on line….to see a whole hoard of others with the same complaint (who knew?!). The only thing that seemed to work for people was hanging the oilcloth in the sun since the sun bleaches out stains. Who knew?! As a city girl, I had NO IDEA about these fringe benefits of the sun.It’s really made me rethink the line-drying option. If the sun can bleach out stains that are beyond the power of oxyclean, I need to explore this!

6.     Some of you may have seen the WSJ article a month ago—or the backlash—on why French parents are better. (If not, here goes:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read) Too much to talk about, as usual, but one central feature was  that French parents (apparently) direct their children with greater authority. I think any parent recognizes the difference between telling your kid to do something and telling your kid to do something with that look and with follow-up. I think it’s true that too often we Americans (myself sometimes included) don’t take our own authority seriously enough. Recently I was at a meeting when a mother left when her son acted up. She and the rest of her family left the gathering.  That kind of commitment is challenging at first but it really pays off. And usually you don’t have to follow through so many times before your kid starts to really get it.

7.     On a random front, I was doing pretty well in avoiding colds this winter- cum- spring until two weeks ago when I got zapped with a really nasty head cold. I’ll spare you the TMI details, but it’s been ugly. A friend suggested a Netipot and I got one yesterday. Amazing! The difference is really astonishing. I am not prone to testimonials, but I feel sorely tempted in this case. 

Are You Sure You Want That? Choices, Strategies, and Happiness...

I just finished reading The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz (if you’re wondering when this supposedly-busy mom reads things like this, it’s at the gym, while on the bike--go figure). Schwartz teaches Psychology at Swarthmore College, and has a lot of great insights. The basic thesis of the book is that, for most people in our society today, choice is everywhere. And while choices have brought us many benefits, many of us are overwhelmed with choices an awful lot of the time. As a result of our overwhelmed-ness with choice, we have more difficulty making decisions (often feeling paralyzed when we have to choose); feel less confident and happy with the decisions we do make; and are generally less able to focus on the things that matter most to us (since we're so busy figuring out small things). He also speculates about the rates of depression in our society being related to (ironically) the amount of choice that people have. I find most of his points persuasive and compelling, and he makes some practical suggestions for breaking out of the habits that modern consumer culture tends to encourage in us.

One of the issues involved is how we approach the choices we make. Essentially, there are two types of people when it comes to choosing things: Satisficers and Maximizers (terms first coined by Herbert Simon in the 50’s). Satisficers approach purchases, etc., by looking to see if a given thing satisfies a set of criteria. Once they find something that does meet those criteria, they purchase (or decide). Maximizers, on the other hand, are always searching for "the best"-—with the inevitable problem of figuring out what that is. The more options that surface, the more possibilities (real or imagined) emerge, and the more difficult it is to choose. When maximizers do choose, the options they didn’t go for tend to stay in their minds, torturing them with imagined better-case-scenarios. Satisficers regularly report higher levels of satisfaction, and have an easier time dealing with decisions in their lives. Most people are a mix of strategies, but tend to lean more towards one strategy or the other. Schwartz suggests that the plethora of choices available to us tends to push us into habits of maximizing that are not helpful to anybody in the long run. At the end of the book, he incorporates some strategies for learning to satisfice more often, and for making easier, more happy-making decisions. He points out that it’s important for maximizers to realize that satisficing *is* maximizing, in that satisficing will make you a happier person with more time for the things, and people, you love.

The paradigms he introduces have a huge array of applications, but I kept thinking as I read the book how much it applies in my life. Funnily, I don’t have a problem satisficing when it comes to many of the big things (getting married, children, etc.) but I can become overwhelmed with choices about what to have for dinner or what shoes to buy my kids. When it comes to our children’s upbringing, too, there is an unbelievable pressure to maximize, which may explain a lot of the insanity out there. Just talking to a friend today, we discussed how the decision about whether, where, and when to send your child to pre-school can seem like a life or death decision. I suspect that we all need to take a big dose of sanity pills: we need to clarify for ourselves what the criteria that NEED to be met really are, and stop sweating the small stuff that goes into unhealthy (and crazy-making) maximizing.