The value of hard work

We all have a responsibility as parents to teach our young children the value of hard work.  Of course we all want them to succeed in their goals and become self-reliant, so they can fulfill their dreams and so we can be proud of them, or if for no other reason, so they don’t mooch off us in our old age.

In the past weeks, some politician or other has claimed that 47% of the American public pay no taxes and have no appreciation for the value of hard work.  He didn’t use the phrase “shiftless and lazy” explicitly, but many of us heard those unspoken words.  Oddly enough, that 47% figure corresponds almost exactly to the proportion of Americans who have told pollsters they’re voting for the other candidate.  Of course both candidates have supporters who pay high taxes and supporters who pay none.  In truth, we should probably attribute only a small fraction (closer to 4% or 7%) of the non-payment of taxes to the laziness and faulty character of the poor; some is due to old age, low incomes, illness, disability, or even to the greed or faulty character of rich who exploit loopholes and off-shore tax havens to avoid paying the taxes they owe.

Without getting into a political discussion, I think we should consider this question of why some people might not know the value of hard work.   The truth is that many of us, including middle class people, never learn the value of hard work until late in life, if ever.  Why is that?

Consider the young person who devotes hours to perfecting jump shots, back flips, double Axels, or guitar solos, only to receive no recognition, or to be excluded from the team or the band.  Consider the student who puts hours of effort into every school project and extra credit report and still doesn’t get grades as high as classmates to whom straight As come naturally.

Consider the workers who have two or three minimum wage jobs and see little of any rewards for their efforts.  Suppose your mother gets  up to catch a 6:00 bus every morning so she can ride across town to spend all day scrubbing floors, yet she still doesn’t bring home enough money to pay the rent on a decent apartment, plus utilities and health insurance without using food stamps, and she can’t afford to buy a functioning car or even good shoes for you and your siblings.    Suppose that what she does bring home is an aching back, chapped hands and knees, and stories about these other women she works for who can spend all day driving around in their SUVs shopping, who have closets full of shoes, and who can’t be bothered to scrub their own floors.  

Consider the family with a two hundred year legacy of working  involuntarily without pay for a paternalistic master who kept all the wealth they created and never recognized them as adult human beings or allowed them to pursue dreams of their own.

Consider the child with parents who have never encouraged him to work hard nor acknowledged his efforts.  Consider the child who never has the opportunity to get his or her own way, even at winning a game or choosing a favorite dessert.

One need not be economically disadvantaged to lack drive.  Indeed, some of the most diligent among us are people trying to overcome hardships.  Often children who grow up with all the advantages are the laziest among us. 

I have recently come to the realization that my own parents didn’t particularly help  me understand the importance of working hard.  My mother (who worked very hard at a low-paying dead-end job) frequently told me I was uncommonly clever, which only taught me to believe I was somehow more entitled to rewards than people who were merely average, by virtue of who I was and who my relatives were.   Yet studies show that in countries where children test higher in math than American children do, they learn to value hard work (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning, http://www.tdl.com/~schafer/Asian.htm).  Children were given impossible problems to solve, and instead of giving up right away and saying “I quit.  It’s too difficult for me” they saw it as a challenge and kept working on it for a long time and trying to figure it out. 

Perhaps we need  to remember that what matters most in life is not who we are, which is something we cannot control, but what we do with our lives, which is something we can control.   Better yet, perhaps we can impress that on our children by valuing their efforts and their achievements.

 

Do you read to your children?

Do you read to your child? I wrote in this blog last year that parents should read to their children, and that post has been my most popular one so far.  Perhaps you followed my advice, and perhaps now your child is a reader. YES!

Congratulations!  So  you may be thinking “Since my child can now read, it’s time to stop reading aloud, right?  NO! 

Elementary school children love being read to in class by a teacher, classmate, visiting parent, or local celebrity.  My high school students loved having me read to them.  Book group members and public radio listeners love listening to authors read from their work. Parents enjoy spending quality time with their children over a favorite book, and children enjoy it, too.  So by all means, keep up the regular nightly bedtime story ritual for as long as you can.  It will

• help develop comprehension skills so your child can get good grades and be a success in school and life 
• help strengthen your relationship with your child 
• give your child an opportunity to ask questions about matters you don’t ordinarily discuss during the day 
• give your child an opportunity to hear unfamiliar words pronounced aloud, and
• expose your children to your own childhood favorites, the old classics, or those “forgotten” books that they probably won’t discover on their own or through a recent library school graduate.

Reading is about much more than decoding the symbols on a page.  It is about nothing less than thinking itself.  Even a child who has "cracked the code" can grow intellectually by discovering new ideas and new vocabulary, by learning how to recognize plot patterns or style, make predictions, detect bias or irony, and develop cultural literacy and critical thinking.  I could read Charlotte's Web in second grade, but I could not have tackled Sherlock Holmes on my own even in fourth or fifth grade.

There are plenty of books your child might be able to read on his or her own.  Yet there are even more books that might still be too much of a challenge.  Informed teachers could tell you each child has two different reading levels, the independent level and the instructional level.  A normal fourth grader might be able to pick up and read second or third grade level books for pleasure without help, something that will not hurt a child and that can provide useful practice, even if that child’s test scores demonstrate that fourth or fifth grade level materials are most appropriate in a formal reading class at school, with a teacher who knows how to teach.

With a parent, grandparent, older sibling, or other person reading aloud, a child can experience books and stories beyond his or her instructional level.   Books written for seventh or eighth graders might frustrate even a bright fourth grader, and if parents wait for children to read these books in seventh or eighth grade, homework, sports, video games, The Mall, or even more popular newer books might prove too much of a distraction and prevent that from ever happening.  

So what books are good to read?  I would leave children alone to discover books like Twilight and Uglies for themselves, and since series books are so popular, it makes sense to let children read volume 2 or 3 or 40 independently after introducing the first one.  Books written in the 1800's or even mid 1900's might be trickier or more tiresome for modern children to tackle on their own, and they often deal with more innocent subjects than more recent books, which should make children feel more comfortable reading them with parents.  The classics, like mythology, folklore, Robin Hood, and fairy tales were written for inter-generational sharing.  As I mentioned before, anything that you yourself loved as a child would be good to share with children.  Detective books can also be good.  Of course any good children's librarian would be happy to suggest books that might work well for your family, and I will post a list if people express an interest in one.

I would like to thank Jen Robinson, for the picture above. 

You can't always get what you want, part 2: Avoiding power struggles with toddlers

One of my most vivid childhood memories was of going to the A & P with my mother and wanting one of the big boxed dolls they displayed on the top shelf above the food in aisle 8.  I don't remember whether I whined and acted up and gave my mother grief, but of course these beautiful dolls were way too expensive for my parents to buy, so I never got one.  I did get one doll I loved and played with for years, and I did learn to forgive my parents for not getting me a big beautiful doll from the A & P.  As disappointing as my childhood was, I knew I had it better than the millions of children around the world who went to bed hungry every night or whose lives were ravaged by war, disease, and oppressive political regimes.   Yet I have seen plenty of small children over the years carrying on in the grocery store whining and begging for toys and special treats, and I began to dread those trips to the supermarket that I would have when I had my own children.  

Here are some of the possible responses to a child who pulls a big loud embarrassing I WANT IT! tantrum in the store:

• "No you don't, so shut up!"
• "No you don't, so shut up! [SLAP!]"
• "Yes, of course you do, and Mommy loves you, so she's going to give it to you--Yes she is!--because nothing is too good for Mommy's wittle pwecious!  Dis world just wevolves awound Mommy's wittle pwecious--Yes it does!"
• "I understand you want it, but if I refuse to spoil you by giving in to all your demands."

Which answer do I recommend?   None of the above.  

If you don't give in to a child's demands, it's best to give your child a good reason.  There are some very good reasons to say no:

• We can't afford it.
• We don't have space for it in our house.
• I don't approve of it, because it's stupid or against our religion, or harmful for you, or of bad quality, or manufactured under unfair conditions by a company I'm boycotting on moral grounds.
• Your grandmother and I already have secret plans to surprise you with one on your birthday. (But you probably can't tell your child that.)

And there are bad reasons:

• I don't believe you're good enough to deserve it.
• This is going to be one power struggle I insist on winning, so there!

Sometimes  it's useful to go beyond the "Because I'm the Mom, and I say so" argument.  Doing so helps a child develop thinking skills and respect for the intelligence of both of you.  Additionally, sometimes it's useful to understand why the child is asking for something.  It could be: 

• because the child truly wants the toy
• because the child wants your attention
• because the child wants you to recognize and respect his or her feelings.

In other words, getting the toy might not be the real issue.  Your child might be satisfied with 

• "I know you want that.  It does look like fun, doesn't it?  And I'm sorry, but I can't get it for you today."  

That approach can work with a lot of other things in life, too:  

• "I know you don't enjoy buckling into your car seat, but you don't have a choice about it."
• "I know it's cold out here.  The weather is one of those things we can't do much about.  Fortunately, the bus will be here soon, and it will be warmer."
• "I know you wish it wasn't necessary to get your tetanus shot, and it makes me sad to see you stuck with needles, too, but it's the only way we can protect you from a disease that's even worse, and it will be over quickly." 
• "I know you loved that book, but the library needs it back today so somebody else can have a turn to read it.  Let's try to check it out again soon, all right?  Or should we buy our own copy?"

As for treats and toys from the store, you can avoid or reduce the likelihood of conflict if you plan your shopping trip in advance and find a way to negotiate with your child.  It's called being proactive.  We'll focus more closely on grocery shopping soon.  To keep it simple for now, discuss expected behavior in advance and work out a deal.  You want your child to avoid embarrassing you in front of strangers, and you can use a simple reward system to keep the child in line.  It's more effective than punishment.  Perhaps if a child follows the behavior rules you spelled out, like 

• stay seated in the cart, 
• keep hands off merchandise, 
• use your "inside" voice in the store, and only polite, pleasing tones 

through the entire shopping trip, (remember, don't stand up, don't grab, don't talk, don't whine will not work as well)  then you can let the child have a small treat (under $1) as a reward for good behavior when you go shopping, and hopefully it will be a healthy one.  If, like me, you serve a sugary dessert only once a week, then your children won't imagine they're entitled to candy every day, and you can try using cake or cookies as a special reward to encourage the behavior you want from them.  Or you can give them a reward that's not some material (nor fattening) thing.  

If it's something larger and more expensive that your child really wants, you may be able to work out a long term plan.  Perhaps you had thought about getting something in that basic price range for Christmas, but you hadn't found the perfect gift yet.  You can tell an older child (probably not a two or three-year old) that instead of twenty $1 treats, he or she can collect some kind of "good behavior" points for twenty weeks and earn a $20 prize. It might not be a surprise, but a child will feel more satisfied with a gift that's earned and not arbitrarily bestowed from out of the blue.  Children need to learn delayed gratification some day, so you may as well work on that now.  I haven't actually seen big toys in supermarkets since I was a girl, but if your child wants some kind of special treat advertised elsewhere, you can still use shopping behavior as part of your plan.  
  

And remember that the best things in life aren't things.  Sometimes a hug, a smile, an "I love you" or "I was very proud of you today" or some lap time with a good book is worth a hundred little shiny trinkets or a thousand candies.

You can't always get what you want, part 1: Parents have right, too!

The summer after we married, my husband introduced me to his cousin, who had a brilliant system she used with her children when they were little.  Rena lives in New York City, so although she and her husband were financially comfortable, they had a small place without a tremendous amount of space for toys.  In contrast, my brother in New Jersey had more space, and the toys were taking over, squeezing them out of house and home.  I resolved that I was never going to let that happen in my house.  

(photo source: LifeasMOM )

When visiting my brother and struggling to find a seat not cluttered by my little nieces' blocks and doll furniture, I wondered how much longer their family would be able to stay in their house with the growing mountains of clutter, and when my brother and his wife would begin standing up for themselves and put a stop to the expanding mess.

As I already mentioned, my husband's cousin Rena had a brilliant system that I decided I would have to put in place when we had children.  Rena's children had rooms where they could keep their toys, but they had severe limits on how much of the family's common space they could take up with toys.  There was an entertainment center, étagère or whatever you want to call it in their living room, and the two children were allowed to fill no more than two shelves of it at any given time with their toys.  If they wanted more toys than would fill it, they needed to first give away something old to make room for the new toy.  Rena and her husband love their children, but the children were not the only people in their house.  They felt, and rightly so, that they and their adult friends who came to visit should be able to enjoy each other's company in an environment not dominated by children's messes.

I can't claim that my daughters managed to keep their rooms tidy.  For that, we tried buying clear plastic bins to organize the toys on the shelves, and we labeled them with pictures of what belonged inside (markers, doll stuff, building blocks, etc.).  They learned the fundamental principles of putting things away at Montessori preschool, but unfortunately, we removed them from their excellent Montessori program so they could start at their K-8 elementary school with the rest of the class.  Keeping them in Montessori longer might have reinforced the idea of taking responsibility for their things a bit better.  I might also have done a better job resisting the temptation to give them so much.  Both my husband and I grew up without many toys, and even though I tried limiting our collection to top quality educational toys and not a lot of cheap plastic junk, I probably was more materialistic than I should have been, maybe because of my own parents' austerity when I was a girl.

Fortunately, my bedroom has a large closet.  When the children failed to put away their toys after sufficient warning, I confiscated stuff and put it in my closet.  Then I could save myself the hassle of shopping for new toys by eventually giving the confiscated toys back for birthday or holiday gifts.  If the children couldn't take better care of them the second (or third) time around, I gave them all (the toys, not the children) to charity.  

I can't claim I found the perfect solution to the messy bedroom problem.  However, Rena's system of keeping the toys under control, at least in those parts of the house where I like to hang out, proved very effective. 

     

In defense of teachers

Tomorrow is the first day of September, and for weeks I’ve been seeing school supplies on sale in the stores.  What does that mean?  It’s back to teacher-bashing time!

To tell the truth, the teacher-bashing season began very early this year.  Our new governor has done everything he could to portray teachers as lazy overpaid parasites and thugs with no interest in children and to turn the rest of the taxpaying public against teachers.  For teachers in Wisconsin and other states hit by the budget-cutting pandemic, this will be a tough year.  Many have chosen to retire rather than return to a hard job that has fewer rewards than ever.


As children, we had little exposure to any adults at work except for teachers.  We have no reason to deal  with marketing executives, tax attorneys, research biologists, insurance adjusters, or tool and die makers on the job.  As a result, we sometimes grow up separating adults into those who are our parents, those who are our teachers, and perhaps a hazy class of "all others" who don't hold much interest for the normal six or seven-year-old.  Some people might choose to be teachers because they lack the grades or the imagination to become anything else, but most people who go into teaching do so because they care about children.  A mathematician who could teach at the university level or go into business on Wall Street, but chooses instead to work for a fraction of the pay teaching eighth graders is not (now matter what some mischievous eighth graders may believe) an enemy of children.


Teaching is a job that not everybody can do well.  Some individuals seem like natural teachers, and some struggle.   Even people who have what it takes to be great teachers have problems at first.  It takes good training and lots of support.  If you're not happy with your child's teacher, remember that he or she has a job most people would never chose, and you'll do your child no favors by encouraging disrespect.   Demonizing our society’s dedicated educators does not do our society’s children any good.  By declaring war against teachers, we send children the message that education is not an honorable pursuit, and the children will suffer the most devastating casualties in that war. 


We compare today's teachers to those we remember from the mythical "Good Old Days" and hold them responsible for solving so many problems our grandparents never knew.   Yes, high school students were more disciplined a century ago than they are now, but why is that?  A century ago, most children quit school by fourteen or sixteen and went to work on the farm or in a factory, or even started families.  A century ago, teachers were allowed to paddle children or send them home without facing legal ramifications, and children had a "healthy respect" for their elders' power.  A century ago, the moral values of our local communities had more influence than television or popular culture.   A century ago, we didn't have the same bewildering smorgasbord of child-rearing philosophies fighting against each other and competing for our loyalty.  


We may all remember one sainted self-sacrificing teacher we had when we were children and wonder why they can't all be like that now.  Perhaps she was a nun who took vows of chastity and poverty, or perhaps she was the old maid or widow who devoted herself to educating children for forty years to support herself.  Or perhaps she was a happily married woman with no lack for money but felt a need to do something useful with her time.  But the truth is that many teachers in the "good old days" were incompetent and left the profession as soon as a better job or marriage proposal came up.  Otherwise, the stereotype of the bad teacher would have never developed.  Today's schools do hold teachers to higher standards than at any time in the past.  We need good teachers now more than ever, but we are not going to attract our best and brightest to the profession by putting them down and cutting their pay.

Public vs. Private

I care about my children, as I’m sure other parents care about theirs, and I want what’s best for them.   As someone who cares about education in particular, of course I want mine to get the best possible education.  And I love my own children better than anyone else’s children, so doesn’t that mean I want their education to be better than everyone else’s children’s education?  No, it does not.   We cannot say “all that matters to me is my own family, and nobody else.”

I posted a link yesterday to a video about some of the people behind the crusade against public schools.  Wisconsin was the first battleground in the privatization wars, even before the current attacks on public school teachers here.  The people who have tried taking control of the government here have tried pulling some of the same stunts in North Carolina.  There are even some people who support their efforts.  The argument these people continually offer is that parents who care about their children need to take them out of “government controlled” schools, which are failing them, if they want them to get a quality education, and put them into private schools instead, at the taxpayers’ expense.  People who don’t have children in public school shouldn’t be taxed to support these institutions, they say.   It’s not fair to make families pay for two educational systems when they’re only using one. 

Having sent my children to private school for a total of thirty child/years (37½ if one counts preschool) before sending them to public high schools and universities, I can certainly understand these parents’ point of view.  I would certainly have loved having help from the government with their tuition, especially since my daughters didn’t attend the local public elementary school.  

But saying “I shouldn’t have to pay to support a school unless it’s my own child’s school ” makes as much sense as saying “I shouldn’t have to pay to support a fire department unless it’s my own house they’re saving ” or “I shouldn’t have to pay to support a police department or judicial or prison system unless it’s my own mugger they’re arresting and prosecuting,” or “I shouldn’t have to pay to maintain roads I never drive on or parks I never visit.”  The public schools are there free for every family to use.  Our city, Milwaukee, has some excellent public schools where I would have loved sending them, but I wanted them to receive religious instruction that they could not have received in public school.  Parents who prefer to use other schools, as my husband and I did, make that choice freely, and choices come with responsibilities.   Because we chose a private school, we faced our responsibility and paid the tuition.  We did not ask the taxpayers to do so, because we knew it wouldn’t be fair to punish them for our family’s choice.

Whether one has children or not, public schools are an essential institution in one’s society, and good public schools are in everybody’s interest.  A business owner wants employees capable of doing their jobs well and consumers with high enough incomes to afford the business’s goods or services.  Property owners want their neighbors to be sufficiently well educated that they could afford to buy their own jewelry and electronics and not think of stealing from others.

Assuring that other people’s children receive good educations helps my family.  My children all love books and music and movies.   They have a personal interest in assuring that other people’s children learn to write well, play music well, and make good movies.  My children want to have decent homes and modern transportation infrastructure so they can get to work.  They have a personal interest in assuring that other people’s children grow up to be good, well-educated architects and engineers.  My children sometimes get sick.  They have a personal interest in assuring that other people’s children become excellent, well-educated physicians.   My children plan to live in a state with a government.  They have a personal interest in assuring that other people’s children grow up to be wise and capable legislators.

My children don’t need to compete with your children for academic honors.  My children will lose nothing if your children win.

Got the Picture?

One bit of advice I wish I had followed when my children were young was to take more pictures.  It was always such a pain keeping pictures organized in those days, but today, with all the digital technology available, one no longer has any excuse not to take pictures of everything your child does.

And I do mean everything.  Yes, I did get all the sappy shots, getting on the school bus the first day of kindergarten with the adorable little plaid dress, family vacations, holidays, birthday parties, graduations . . . well some of them, at least.  


What I would advise most of all is to get pictures of each child with each friend.  Take one every year at each birthday party.  Send a copy of the birthday party picture along with each thank you note.  Likewise, you should get a picture of your baby in each new baby outfit that came as a gift from a friend or relative and send that along with the thank you note, because no giver of an adorable little baby dress will be able to resist seeing how adorable the recipient looks in the gift she bought.  Ideally, the relative should appear in the picture, holding the baby.  When your child is a senior in high school, he or she may need a baby picture to put in the high school yearbook.  Be sure you have a respectable selection of pictures from which to choose (and not just the one of your child in the bathtub!) so your teen won’t be able to accuse you of never having cared about him or her, and there you .

Then save as many pictures as you can of each friend and relation, and when your child has a bar mitzvah or a Quinceañera or graduation party or a wedding reception, or when he or she retires, you can trot out all these pictures again and make a slide show or video to show as entertainment.  All your guests will love seeing pictures of themselves and each other from ten or twenty or fifty years earlier, and you’ll have a better party, with people being able to laugh at how geeky they looked in second grade or what funny hairstyles people wore twenty years ago, or how young Aunt Jennifer used to look back in those days.