We are what we feed? Kids, Taste, Nutrition, et al…

Back when we were growing up, whenever my mom wanted to steal some of our food with impunity (I guess she was above the “Because I’m your mom” defense…), she would always tell us she wanted to test our food to see if it was poisoned. My nephew, while attending an affluent nursery school in Manhattan, routinely tried the same trick on his hapless peers who regularly brought their chef -parents’ sushi and other delicacies in their lunchboxes. Only, unfortunately, the teachers in charge didn’t quite have my family’s sense of humor and mistook his grubbing tendencies for an actual fear of death. We all got some good laughs out of that one.


But I am easily provoked by food. Last month’s “Anti-Foodie” article in The Atlantic and recent comments by a friend have raised some big questions for me about what we feed our kids: at home, and in their lunchboxes. While the Atlantic article focused on our cultural fixation with upscale food I can witness to the fact that “trash food” is equally kicking in other circles that I am equally likely to frequent (By trash I mean processed things that have, in all likelihood, need never have been touched by human hands directly). My friend Maria works in a VERY upscale private school with a clear educational mission and a program for 2-year olds. She noted that the kids whose parents are foreign always have such “nice food” while the American kids tend to have bad stuff in their lunchboxes. Pressed further by Inquiring Mom, she explained that the foreigners tend to have leftovers for lunch: fish, meat, rice and so forth, while the Americans are more likely to have Lunchables. What’s striking to me about this is that it betrays a fundamental question of importance: the majority of the moms at this school are not financially challenged. And while they may be pressed for time, their financial situation generally means that they have nannies or other helpers who could assist them with making food for their kids if that were a priority on any level. But clearly, it’s not.

Why don’t they—we—care? And what should we care about when it comes to our kids’ food? For those of us with more than one child, and whose resources are more seriously limited than the parents at my friend’s school, there are competing interests:

1) Speed (Food that’s quick and easy to prepare)

2) Appeal (Food that kids will eat happily)

3) Affordability (Food that, uh, we can afford)

4) Healthy choices (Food that’s good for kids)

5) Affection (Food that shows love --this may sound dumb and peripheral as a category, but how else do you explain sandwiches cut into heart shapes?)

What’s absent from this list, naturally, is “sophisticated” food, though I am definitely in favor of trying to expands our kids’ horizons with food. It’s good to teach them to be open to life via their mouths as well as their hearts and minds. I’m torn on how to prioritize the list, though. I want to show my children that I love them in the kind of food I give them, both in quality and kind, but the realities of time and money put some serious constraints on all of us.

Here’s where I’ve come down on lunchbox food: I try to give a) something decent but easy and affordable: chicken noodle soup/ simple sandwich/pasta with butter and cheese b) some easy fruit or veggie (baby carrots/applesauce/Clementine orange and c) some small treat: “fruit” snacks/ small chocolate bar/ pudding.

At home, my mission is bigger…but more on that later!

Lessons from a Superior Chinese Mother (Intentional or Otherwise)

I should note that there probably isn’t much point in reading this post unless you’ve read Amy Chua’s by-now infamous piece in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
(or unless you at least plan to read it). I should mention that Chua herself has expressed some reservations about the piece; she’s suggested that Journal strung together controversial pieces instead of presenting the full picture. Apparently, her book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is (despite its title), more nuanced, and depicts a parenting journey not evident in the WSJ piece. Of course, the controversial nature of her article has pushed her book up the bestseller chart. So I’m not so sure she’s sorry about their spin.


Two weeks after its publication in the WSJ, the piece has so many comments (thousands), my browser times out trying to load them all. Comments abound in the blogosphere , but the dissonant chord that it’s struck with so many people seems to get at the heart of some of our controversies over parenting: controversies that we acknowledge (like self-esteem building) and those we don’t (like the role of ‘success’)

Lest I go on forever, I’d like to focus first on where I admire Chua and/or agree with her. She is clearly a strong and committed mother. She is willing and interested in what she sees as the best interests of her children and she is really down in the trenches, working with them in hands-on way. She’s not preoccupied with being her daughters’ “friend” or being liked by them; she wants to make them into what she sees as better people. That may sound like I’m trying to be nice to her, but too many parents use a vague idea of consideration and respect for their children’s personalities to justify their own slackness. To be honest, I respect her toughness on many levels; it’s a sign of character and resolve; I sincerely wish I were as tough as she is (in some ways). She sees the limitations of self-esteem, and I agree with her when she says that our (“Western”) approach to making kids feel good about themselves is misguided. She says about Chinese parents that “[t]hey assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently”-which makes fundamental sense to me.

Many people have focused on Chua’s name-calling of her children and her rigid parental restrictions (no TV, no sleepovers, no school plays). My reading of the article suggests the name calling fear may be a bit overplayed –while it’s clearly part of her MO, one could adopt her general approach without the name calling.


But there are three big things that strike me as fundamental problems with the Tiger Mother Method (TMM). Namely:

1) TMM’s view of freedom . Chua says in her piece that “Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences.” She seems to deny the fundamental autonomy of her children. Lurking under the surface here is the possibility of an interesting discussion regarding children’s freedom. Freedom doesn’t mean license, and we need to see that. But she seems to see her kids as machines. Sophisticated, complex, machines, that don’t cooperate; and the managing of which requires greater skills on the part of the parent. But on this point, she is missing something fundamental. You can’t simply ‘override’ your children’s own desires and preference. They are not machines—or dogs, for that matter.

2) TMM’s vision of the parent-child relationship. Interesting, this is one of the only places where Chua addresses her husband’s view of things (not sure what this says about their relationship…) Her husband sees parents as owing everything to their children because they foisted life on them. Chua believes, along with other “Chinese parents” that kids “owe [their parents] everything.” Call me a crazy Christian, but I see both parents AND kids as owing life to Someone Else. A Someone Else who orders ideas of debt, freedom, and responsibility rather differently.

3) TMM’s vision of success. I rather suspect that this success thing is part of the reason that Chua has been so controversial. The idea of readily quantifiable success as the fundamental measure of all things permeates our society and the very air we breathe. It is the basis of Chua’s confidence in her own skills: her girls (or at least the older one) have been SMASHING successes. Can’t argue with that, can you? I mean, if this whole crazy “Chinese parenting” technique gets your kid playing at Carnegie Hall and admission into Harvard, it MUST work, right? I acknowledge how hard it is to put up a coherent argument against this—and yet, most readers have an instinctive sense that there is something wrong with these priorities, above and beyond our own limitations and laziness as parents. Though I disagree with Chua’s idea of success, I know I can’t easily eliminate it as a frame of reference. But in the end, is admission to Harvard really the most that we want for our kids? Aren’t some of the great “success stories” of recent years some of the same people being blamed for the economic recession we’re in now. God help us if there’s no more to life than that kind of success.

The Values of Useless Gifts. Part I: Why Bother at All?

At this time of year, thoughts and deeds naturally turn to gift giving, and I realize I have a lot of thoughts on the subject. Too many to condense into one post unless I subjected you all to a totally bizarre mish mash…So I’ll cut to the chase: gift giving can sometimes feel like a fundamentally frustrating enterprise. You go out, you make a lot of effort to buy things for people who all too often don’t like them. This is hard. After all the trouble, the recipient doesn’t like or doesn’t need your gift—or not really. I was confronted with this drama not so long ago when looking for a present for a friend. At my stage in life, most presents for my friends aren’t really *necessary*--almost no one expects them. I found something that I really liked—but was a more than I had intended to spend. So I got to thinking...Would she really like it? Would she appreciate the sacrifice that purchasing it for her entailed for me? Maybe she wouldn’t like it. Maybe I should forget the whole thing. Maybe I should just forget the whole thing and buy something for myself.....

That’s where I stopped. Too often, we make gift giving all about ourselves. About the recognition and respect we want others to give us because we bought them something great. But it can’t be just about that.( I am not a big fan of the concept of gift giving as a form of tipping or financial exchange, while I recognize the importance and relevance of those in certain cases.) Giving a gift also sends a message to myself: I value my relationship with this person enough that I am going to buy something that requires a sacrifice on my end. A sacrifice of my time, energy, and money. That sacrifice may not be ‘worth it’ in terms of the gratification I’ll get by seeing their appreciation. But it’s worth it in principle for myself—to remind me that I love people enough to sacrifice for them, even when they’re not always grateful.

I often think of the famous “Gift of the Magi” story by O.Henry, where a poor couple each have one treasure in the world: the husband his watch, and the wife, her beautiful long hair. The husband sells his watch to buy hair combs for his wife, while the wife cuts off her hair and sells it to buy a chain for his watch. The story ironic, but not tragic—which makes all the difference. You could look at the situation as a terrible waste: neither of them gets anything for their pains. But that’s not true—both of them see that the other was willing to part with what most precious. That most precious thing was still less precious than the other person.

Isn’t that something worth remembering on the day before Christmas?

Can You Really Succeed if You’re Young for Your Year? Outliers of Various Kinds….

Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers is a great book, and its author has a quirky sort of genius. A number of Gladwell’s points have peculiar relevance for parents and parenting—peculiar because Gladwell doesn’t talk about parents and kids much at all directly. I’ll start with the most obvious: Gladwell’s piece on the fact that the vast majority of players on Canadian National Hockey Team have birthdays in the first quarter of the year. This is, in essence, because hockey is a very important and competitive sport in Canada; it requires (unlike basketball) the use of a space that’s not easy to come by (skating rink); and the cut off age is January 1. The basic argument is that what starts out as a minor developmental advantage due to age ends up getting magnified every year: the slightly better kids get a lot more attention, thus making them better players, which makes them more likely to be selected the next year…and so on.


Some of these realities are hockey-specific, but not all of them. School districts with Talented and Gifted Programs select in a somewhat similar way (rarely do kids get second chances to play in, say, middle school). This often motivates people to hold a child back who’s on “the cusp” --or even just at the young end of his grade. This is especially the case with boys. A friend living in (very affluent) Westchester County, NY, told me that she’s facing pressure to hold back her son whose birthday is in the middle of the school year. The pressure is from other parents, since so many are keeping their kids at home for an extra year to give them an edge. I faced all this myself when dealing with my oldest daughter. She has a late birthday, as does her sister two years her junior. I didn’t like the idea of my girls being one year apart in school when they were two years apart in everything else. So for me, deciding for one was like deciding for both. In my search to figure out what was best for her I was amazed by the total lack of explanation. Every time I talked to someone about it, they told me to hold her back. But they could never give me a single good reason! As I often said to people, if we say it’s better for every child to stay back in these cases, the problem is the curriculum!


But Gladwell would probably be keeping his son back. And I see where he’s coming from: there are distinct advantages to being a big fish in a small pond. But I wonder if, in our pursuit of success that we can measure, we’re missing other factors. My sister in law has two brothers who were both young for their school year, both of whom went on to be real leaders in their time at the Naval Academy. The disadvantages of being young seemed to have worked to their favor in some way (something which Gladwell recognizes in fascinating detail elsewhere in Outliers.


There is a former student of mine who is a great counter example—I’ll call him “K.” K is the youngest of his family’s four sons. K is a bit on the young side, and his mother was undecided about what to do with him. She had a friend with a son whose birthday was close to K’s, and she decided that whatever her friend did her son, she’d do as well. The friend’s mom had her son start school; and so K did,too. K would seem like a prime candidate for bitterness over all this: he was a serious competitive swimmer in high school, and he (arguably, anyway) missed out on getting recruited as a result of his age. He probably could have gotten into a better college than the one where I teach (which is good, but not Ivy League material)—with all the advantages that represents—if he had been a grade behind.

But K isn’t bitter. Once he started college, he stopped swimming—and freed up a whole lot of time! An Electrical Engineering major, he’s about to graduate, and is poised to get a very good job in a time where jobs are scarce. And he doesn’t miss swimming at all.

How do YOU measure intelligence? (The “Tin-foil Standard” is my choice.)

So we all know there are kinds of intelligence. There is the traditional IQ test, but of course, everyone keeps talking about alternate measures of these things, since IQ alone doesn’t seem to be a big predictor of success and other relevant factors. I was reminded of this particularly recently as I was reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers (more on that to come!). Gladwell talks a lot about the discrepancy between IQ and success and has some very interesting things to say on the topic which I’ll come back to. But, in thinking about these things, it seems to me that there are a number of things to look for:

a) Interpersonal intelligence (“emotional” intelligence and so forth).

b) Creative intelligence (ability to use things for unexpected purposes).

c) Patience and work ethic (ability and willingness to take the time and care to do something right).

d) Intuition (a sensitivity to subtle things in the environment, whether that’s people or things) that allows for insights that others miss.

All these things are all important, and helping ourselves and our children develop our capacities in all these directions seems like a very worthy goal for parents. But sometimes, too, we want to have a sense of what kind of raw material we’re working with. When it comes to sheer, instinctive genius, I like to focus on the (seasonally appropriate) “tin foil standard.” It only works with very small children, but it clearly shows when there is greatness to come. The basic premises are these:

a) All children like candy

b) Many forms of candy come in tin foil

So….the smarter the child, the younger and more readily s/he recognizes that tin foil is something to be sought after and prized and, eventually consumed (though, hopefully, AFTER the removal of the foil itself). So what if tin foil is pretty and shiny and babies always try to eat things? If your baby tries to suck on a piece of tin foil at a very young age, s/he clearly has genius potential.

So: What’s the youngest age at which you’ve seen a kid go for a Twix bar? Or what’s your gold standard for intelligence? (Inquiring Mom wants to know…..)

Is this one precocious? Not sure yet.....



Finally, the Validation I've Been Waiting For!

One of the things that has always been clear—and funny-- to me is how we all tend to seek new items that reflect the opinions we already hold. So, I seem to remember the article that reports stronger immune systems in households that clean less frequently much better than the article noting how frequent, serious, handwashing helps prevent the majority of colds. But the sweetest moment of personal validation came recently, as I was searching the internet for pictures of haircuts. Now, before I get to the punch-line, I will note a couple of important things for the unfamiliar:

1) I have three daughters (my son’s the baby)

2) People seems to take a perverse pleasure in making irritating comments to mothers of daughters. Stuff like, “Just wait til she’s a teenager!” is frequently heard as someone peers over the side of a stroller or crib. There’s also the standard, “Uh-oh, that’s going to be expensive!” The most direct approach is taken by many, “Girls are so much harder to raise than boys.” And there is also the seemingly well-intentioned comment, which is particularly irritating to my husband (since it’s addressed to him), “She’ll have you wrapped around her finger.” (Just like her mom, haha).

So, now, I reveal my family’s recent moment of glory (forget about my doubts about “Science”).
Studies have shown it: ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE DAUGHTERS. I’ll say it again, in another way, in case it wasn't clear from the caps: Highly attractive people have a MORE than 50% chance of conceiving daughters. Scientists speculate yadda yadda. You get the drift. Validation.

Never mind the fine print—despite my new short haircut, I am feeling über attractive. Hope you are, too!

http://www.allure.com/beauty/blogs/reporter/2010/11/do-attractive-people-have-more.html

Crime, Punishment, and "Natural" Consequences

I’ve read a number of parenting articles, books, and so forth that recommend “natural” consequences for children’s misbehavior whenever possible. Advocates suggest that it’s best for children to understand that their failings have real consequences—not just punishments made up by their parents. Your job as a parent is, thus, to avoid “inventing” consequences, and allow your child to learn (reasonably) from what happens naturally when she makes a mistake or chooses unwisely. So…if your child insists that she doesn’t want t o wear a coat outside, go ahead and let her go out without it. She’ll learn when she gets cold, the idea goes. It makes a lot of sense to me in general. The more a child becomes aware that her actions change outcomes, the more likely she is to adjust her behavior when she discovers that it results in an unpleasant reality. If a behavior is truly dangerous (i.e. crossing a street without looking), then you should—ahem, naturally—intervene. But otherwise, try to allow natural consequences to take effect. Wherever possible, disciplinary measures should be natural. So if your child breaks a window, rather than sentencing him to his room for a week, he should try to earn money to pay for it; try to apologize to the people whose property he damaged, etc.

But…(See--it’s not only our children who raise objections!)


The difficulty I have is in fully understanding and applying this theory to complex, everyday reality. I will allow my kids not to wear a jacket if they don’t want to—though I will generally warn them that I think it’s a bad idea, since it may get chillier later in the day. Likewise, if they take excessive (but not insane) risks on the playground, I’ll let them. But often, letting nature take its course is a complex arena—and one that always entails rather significant intervention from yours truly.

Take the other day. My eldest child (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty), came home without her reading anthology. An anthology which, among other things, includes a glossary in the back. She had to write the definitions of a series of words. But, sans glossary, that was a bit tricky to do. Undaunted for once, I reminded said child that she had a dictionary she could use. She got it right out and started looking. Only, she doesn’t know how to use a dictionary, and I had forgotten how many steps there are to using one. Fortunately, there were only about 5 words, but they took what seemed like a lifetime, after reviewing alphabetical order, the use of guide words at the top of the page and so forth. While this may be encouraging her to understand the natural consequences of her actions, it seemed to place more of the burden on me than many other scenarios. This is fine if it’s actually helpful to her in the long run, but it reminds me of how complicated it is to understand what “natural” is—let alone what it means in practice (a theme which is frighteningly close to my dissertation topic….)