Miley Cyrus! Miley Cyrus! Miley Cyrus!

In 1912 and 1913, 25-year-old painter Marcel Duchamp scandalized first the Parisian, then the New York art worlds with his painting Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2. Now considered one of the most important paintings of the 20th century, Duchamp was mercilessly vilified and ridiculed.

When Frank Sinatra was a young artist, he outraged the establishment by the way he caused his audiences of "bobby soxers" to scream and swoon, finding himself banned from several venues. In 1965, Sinatra said of the up-and-comer Elvis Presley, "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." In 1970, Elvis said, "The Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music."

If you thought that Teacher Tom's blog was the place to get away from reading about Miley Cyrus, you were wrong. For those of you who don't know, the 20-year-old pop star has apparently outraged the entire internet by her performance on MTV's Video Music Awards on Sunday night. I don't really follow popular music any longer so it takes something really big to catch my attention and apparently this was huge! My Twitter feed, which is usually, embarrassingly, overrun with tweets about baseball and breastfeeding suddenly started filling up with comments vilifying and ridiculing "Hannah Montana," a character of whom I am aware since I'm the parent of a daughter who, when she was little, watched the girl's TV show.

So I watched the offensive video. After the first few seconds I started laughing and couldn't stop until it was over. I am, frankly, overjoyed that young people can still outrage old people. Good on her. I mean think about this for a second. I did a little research and discovered that she took the stage after Lady Gaga and before Kanye West: never in anyone's wildest dreams could we have imagined that she would be the most scandalous one on that stage, but being the youngest it was certainly her turn. I keep waiting to read some quote from Kanye accusing her of corrupting someone's morals or something. That would make it about perfect.

I'm not saying that Miley Cyrus is destined to be the next Sinatra, but I am saying that it is perfectly meet, right and salutary that young people outrage their elders, especially when it comes to art. You don't think it's art? Well, most people didn't think what Duchamp was doing was art either. Most people thought the Beatles were just making a bunch of noise. What I saw on that video was a dance, and not even the most sexual dance I've ever seen: that was Madonna's 1984 VMA performance of Like A Virgin. What made me laugh was how joyfully she pulled it off, sticking that tongue out of her mouth like a kind of crazy jester. She reminded me of Keith Moon kicking over his drum set or Ozzie Osborn evoking Satan, just having a grand time sticking a finger in the old folks' eyes.

What outrages me far more than a 20-year-old gyrating her young body, was that she was performing on stage with an older, married guy named Robin Thicke (of whom I've never heard) yet she received at least ninety percent of the criticism. Talk about slut shaming.

Oh, and what about the "example" she's setting for those young girl fans of hers? My own daughter is now 16-years-old, a former fan of her Disney Channel TV show, no longer a little girl. I asked her what she thought about Miley Cyrus. She answered, "I think she's talented and cool. I like her new hair, although I don't really like those top knot things she's doing." And about the VMA video: "It was funny. She's a comedic actress, remember? Of course it's not serious. That's what the VMAs are for. She's a performer trying to entertain people."

So good, she didn't mistake the performance for an instructional video on how to live life. I also don't expect her to start wearing those top knots. As an aspiring artist herself, I hope that she is someday in a position to really outrage her elders, including me.

And for all any of us know, Miley Cyrus could be the next Sinatra.

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Teaching Values

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.  ~James Baldwin

I don't claim to be a parenting expert.  I'm just a guy who has spent a lot of time playing with children, from that I've learned a little bit, and because of this blog people write me for my take on things. If there is any one thing that people write me more than anything else, it's something along the lines of, "I've tried everything and nothing works." I'm talking about universal parenting aggravations like getting kids to eat their vegetables, take a nap, or participate in household chores. And these are important things. Not only do we want our children to be healthy, rested, and responsible today, but these behaviors represent the values of good health and responsibility that, if we can only "instill" them, we know will serve our children throughout their lives.

While I try to be more sympathetic than this with individual readers because I know they wouldn't write to some guy on the internet wearing a red cape unless they were truly at the end of their rope, my answer to their dilemma is really quite simple: Quit trying.

You can serve children healthy food, but you can't make them eat. So quit trying.

You can put children into their bed, but you can't make them sleep. So quit trying.

And you can't make them clean up their room without the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment. 

So, I suppose I could reply to these parents that they haven't, in fact, tried "everything," because obviously they could come up with a carrot that is sweet enough or a stick that is painful enough that you can get a child to do what you want them to do, but I would never suggest that anyone consciously step onto the vicious cycle of reward and punishment. Rewards and punishments may appear to work in the moment -- the promise of ice cream may well motivate a child to eat a few peas; the threat of having toys taken away may well motivate a child to tidy up -- but human nature dictates that, being unnatural consequences, the value of the rewards and the severity of the punishments must be regularly increased or they lose their effectiveness. Not only that, but the lessons taught in the long run, to be motivated by the approval or disapproval of others, are certainly not what we wish for our children. Values must come from within; they are not imposed from without: that's called obedience an unsavory and even dangerous trait.

Whatever we publicly proclaim, our actual values (as opposed to the values to which we aspire) are always, always, always most accurately and honestly revealed by our behaviors. When we eat junk food, we demonstrate that we value convenience or flavor over eating healthily. When we don't get enough sleep, we demonstrate that we value our jobs or our hobbies or our TV programs more than rest. When we let our homes become cluttered and dirty, we demonstrate that we value something else over a well-ordered household.

No, the better course, I've found, when it comes to teaching values is to simply give up trying to make another person do something that you want them to do. If you value healthy food, then eat it. If you value being well rested, then sleep. If you value a tidy bedroom, then keep yours tidy. And ultimately, with time, sometimes lots of time, it will be your role-modeling of these behaviors that your child will come to imitate, not on your schedule, but one of his own, which is all we can expect of our fellow humans.

You cannot instill values in other people, you can only role model them. And while I've avoided mentioning them in this post, no matter what your priest, rabbi, pastor, imam, or guru says, this goes for moral values as well.

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Still Hiding In The Bushes

Jen over at A Path Less Taken recently posted an excellent piece about her experiences as the parent of teenagers. It reminded me of this post from a year or so ago. A year is a long time in the life of a teenager, but I'm happy to report I stand by every word. When people ask me, I still honestly answer, "I love being the parent of a teenager." I have so much more to say about our experiences together, but in the interest of privacy and respect, I won't publish most of it until she's much older. She has previously approved this piece, however, so I feel comfortable in running it again. 

This is a blog mostly about preschool aged children, but being the parent of a teenager, I'm here to tell you, as unlikely as it might sound to those of you with the younger kids, that's where they're all headed, god willing.

When my daughter Josephine was in sixth grade, she and a friend wanted to go to a dance, at night, in an all-ages venue. This wasn't the usual chaperoned school event, although I'd heard of the organization hosting it and knew nothing bad about it. On the other hand, I'd often walked by the place and been slightly taken aback by the scruffy looking teens hanging out there, although it was purely a reaction to their dress and hair, not behavior. I'd spoken with her friend's father so I knew we were all on board with the plan of us each driving, and our kids meeting up there. As we got close to the venue, Josephine asked, "You're not going to walk me to the door are you?"

"Well, how will I know you've hooked up with your friend?"

"We're meeting right out by the street. You'll see us."

"Okay."

"Thank you. Mama would walk me to the door. She'd probably try to come inside."

"Really? She would do that? I wouldn't do that."

She paused for a moment, then said, "No, you'd just pretend to leave me, then hide in the bushes." And sure enough, she was more or less onto my plan, which was to drop her off, park the car nearby, then spend my evening within a 2-block radius eating dinner and window shopping. It bugged her, but at the same time I think she also felt a little relieved to know that I'd be nearby, just in case. It's not that I distrusted her, I told myself, but rather that I didn't trust those other kids and what they might all do together. I often look back on that as my first real experience as the parent of a teen.

Probably the most common response I get from new acquaintances when I mention my teenager is something along the lines of, "That must be stressful," or "A challenging age," or just, "Good luck." It's a sort of culture-wide joke we tell about teens, one we all have the right to tell because not so long ago (or so it seems), we were all dopey, mopey, distracted teens ourselves. That this characterization doesn't match my experience as a parent so far, however, has started to really make me wonder over what we think about adolescents.

I genuinely love being the parent of a teen. I like her teen friends. I don't mind her messy room, her clothes, her hair, or even the fact that she seems to spend all her free time trying to expand her social world. In fact, I admire her persistence and energy, wishing I had a little more of it myself. Other parents bemoan the fact that all their kids want to do is "hang out," even forbidding it, worried that it's just a set-up for getting into trouble, and it is. But I think I understand it: after 15 years of being relentlessly on her parents' radar, being off it, just hanging out with friends out in the world, is enough of a unique experience all by itself.

And while I'll never come to peace with some of the "stupid" risks she's taken, and will likely take in the future, there's also a piece of me that knows, deep down, that she's going to do whatever it is she wants to do, try whatever it is she's wants to try, and the only say I really have is to give her my best, most honest advice, and love her. Indeed this is the bottom line truth for every parent, so if I'm going to do that job, I need to do everything I can to keep those lines of communication wide open, to not be overly shocked or punitive or despairing, but rather to have conversations about the real risks and rewards. I sometimes feel the pull toward putting the hammer down the way other parents do, to just say, "Because I say so." The world of drinking, drugs, sex, and driving, after all, has laid waste to so many young lives, but authoritarian parenting is far more likely to lead to the chaotic, chronic behaviors we label as delinquent. So while I attempt to walk the middle ground, when I err, it's on the side of permissiveness, starting with a desire to say "yes," if only she gives me time to think about it; time for us to talk about it; time for me to find a good hiding place in the bushes.

Sometimes after our talks, she decides to not take the risk after all. More often she goes ahead then later tells stories of being there with all her friends whose parents put their foot down in righteous opposition and now have no idea where their child was and what she was doing. The kids are all there taking the same "risk," but at least I know where mine is, equipped with my best advice, whether she takes it or not. 

I recently came across a fascinating article in National Geographic entitled Teenage Brains, in which author David Dobbs discusses teenaged brain development (which goes on into our early to mid-20's) in the context of evolution.

The resulting account of the adolescent brain . . . casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

These are the years when their brains and bodies are making the final preparations to leave the nest, to head out into that thrilling, dangerous world, and whatever we feel about it as parents, it is their destiny. As neuroscientist B.J. Casey puts it:

We're so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It's exactly what you'd need to do the things you have to do then.

I'll let you click over and read the entire article about the biology behind why adolescents take risks, seek novelty, and bond so passionately with their peers. It's all adaptive behavior even if we sometimes view it as quite the opposite. I walked away with a renewed admiration for the teenaged brain, but this is the part that stood out for me:

We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.

Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world's worst hazards and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and it's the parent's job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom -- knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent's own struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents' world but also the one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.

In the meantime, you'll find me hiding in the bushes.

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The Technology Of Treating Children Like Fully Formed Human Beings

I remember my first formal exposure to the "technology" of treating children like fully formed human beings -- and I often do think of it as a kind of technology in that it's the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. I'd previously been exposed to this technology via my daughter's preschool teacher, with whom I'd been working as a cooperative classroom parent for many months, but, as technology often does for the uninitiated, it just looked like magic, something Teacher Chris was able to do because she was Teacher Chris.

I was in one of Tom Drummond's classes at North Seattle Community College and he began to explain the ultimate ineffectiveness of "directive" statements. You know the kind, "Sit over here," "Stand there," "Pick that up," the sorts of adult communications with which most of our childhoods were filled. I had a small epiphany as he explained our assignment to us, which was to simply keep track of the number of directive statements we made during our next classroom day. And even as I had the epiphany that this was a part of Teacher Chris' magic trick, I doubted that it could really work, at least not all time, not for all kids, not for all ages. It was good that our assignment was simply about ourselves, about listening to our words, practicing using this new technology, not being burdened with the complications of having to make judgments about how the children were responding, just focusing on ourselves and the words we were using.

It felt incredibly awkward, then, replacing my directive statements with informative ones. For instance, instead of saying, "Pick up that block," I would try to make the more cumbersome informative statement, "I see a block on the floor and it's clean up time." One of the basic ideas, Tom explained, was that unlike directive statements which tend to shut things down, informative statements create a space in which the kids get to do their own thinking, make their own decisions about their own behavior, instead of merely engaging in the power struggle that inevitably emerges from being bossed around. It made sense to me even while it felt strange and artificial. It was true, I couldn't help but notice, that when I took the time to be informative, children were far less likely to push back rebelliously, and instead take a beat (which, I've learned means they are taking a moment to process the information you've given them) then pick up that block and put it away. 

I discovered, on my own, the truth of Tom's assertion that the ultimate weakness of relying upon directive statements is that, over time, they need to be escalated in intensity. I recall standing in our school's parking lot with a much more experienced parent as she yelled angrily after her kids, "Get your butts over here!" only to have them giggle and scamper away. When she grumbled, "I never thought I'd be the kind of parent who spanked her kids, but I'm almost there," I saw a glimpse of a place I didn't want to go.

And I still had doubts, even as I began to practice with my own preschooler, who soon detected the change in my approach and began to object to it as "teacher talk." I felt a little guilty, like a magician letting the public in on my trick, as I explained to her what I was trying to do. I remember my 5-year-old agreeing that it sounded like a good idea. She especially appreciated that I wouldn't be bossing her around, even suggesting she would be happy to help me by pointing out when I slipped up. I thought for sure that I'd ruined everything by letting the cat out of the bag, but if anything, the opposite happened. She became my ally in making "teacher talk" a more natural part of my day-to-day language until I've arrived at a point in my life when parents refer to "Teacher Tom magic." 

And still, despite all the evidence, despite all my ever-increasing expertise in using it, I was suspicious that the technology of treating children as fully formed human beings would stop working as they got older and more sophisticated. 

The father of one of my daughter's classmates was a high school teacher, a good one by all accounts; jovial, casual, humorous. I think I would have liked being in his class. As our kids approached middle school he explained his philosophy of dealing with teens to me: "Oh, I'm their best friend until they cross the line, then Bam! I come down like a house of bricks." By this time, I'd become quite confident in the use of my "teacher talk" technology when it came to preschoolers, had seen its effectiveness with my own eyes, had even customized it for my own use, but listening to this guy who everyone admired, I wondered if maybe I was, at least as a parent, going to need to adopt some of this "house of bricks" technique as my own. Well, here I am today, the parent of a 16-year-old, a kid learning to navigate all the regular high school stuff we worry about, and I've yet to feel the need to "come down" like a house of bricks. In fact, just as I did when she was 5, I find it much more productive to lay it all out for my daughter as honestly and informatively as possible, revealing my emotions, my dilemma as a parent, my concerns for her safety or her morals or her future or her reputation or whatever. No one makes great decisions all the time, but she's had a lifetime of practice, and most of the time she comes up with perfectly reasonable solutions.

None of this is magic. Like all technology it still works, often even better, when everyone knows how it works.

I've now finally come to a point at which I have complete trust in the technology of treating children like fully formed human beings. Indeed, it's a technology that works on all fully formed human beings no matter what their age and it starts with the assumption that I can never, whatever your age, command you into doing anything. My primary responsibility is to speak informatively, and to leave a space in which thinking can take place.

And still people say to me, "You're lucky. You teach privileged children," often insisting that there are some children out there who are so "damaged," who have had so little love or attention or whatever in their lives that they are somehow not ready to be treated as fully formed humans, that they need commands and punishment; that they need to learn obedience. I'm left with nothing to say, of course, because they're right in the sense that I teach the children I teach, and without a classroom of older, more damaged kids with whom to experiment, I have nothing but "Sez you!" on which to fall back. Still, I will say that much of the damage probably comes from being either abused or neglected, neither of which will be repaired by being bossed around.

This brings me around to an article I want to share with you, especially those who doubt this technology, who tend to dismiss it as "namby pamby" or "weenie," even if they are just shadows of words that haunt you when things aren't going well with the fully formed human beings with whom you are interacting. This is a long article about a high school that its principal describes as "the dumping ground," one that was once run by gangs. It's a story about how "punishing misbehavior just doesn't work. You're simply adding trauma to an already traumatized kid." It's the story of how magically this technology is working when applied to poor, disadvantaged, abused, and neglected kids.

The first time that principal Jim Sporleder tried the New Approach to Student Discipline at Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, he was blown away. Because it worked. In fact, it worked so well that he never when back to the the Old Approach to Student Discipline.

If you have any doubts, and even if you don't, this is the article to read. There's a lot great information in here; science about how and why the technology works, even on the most "hardened" kids. If you're already a devotee of this technology, it's still worth the time. This is not written to tug at the heartstrings, but it did mine. I found myself tearing up over and over at the epiphanies of teachers and students, at how they had to overcome a lifetime of believing in the myth of "tough love" and "punishment with dignity," at how the "magic trick" is being revealed to the kids themselves making them experts in their own "recovery." It's a story of teachers and children learning to use this technology together to change their lives, one they all say "is just the beginning." It's my story as well.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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"Winning" An Argument

At a backyard barbecue yesterday afternoon an older woman named Carlita, her own children close to my age, not knowing anything about me or my profession, launched into a well-practiced monologue on what's wrong with kids these days, the centerpiece being that they are no longer taught to respect anything or anyone. We've probably all heard this one before. One of the examples she gave of how we're letting the kids down was how sloppily teachers dress for school. In her day, the young women wore skirts or dresses, "nylons," and heels ("clunky heels, but heels"). 

I let her finish most of her piece, although stopped her from going into a full-on diatribe about how horrible teachers are by admitting that I'm a teacher myself, one who works in torn jeans and t-shirts. I then agreed that children aren't as respectful now as they were back in the olden days. This, I've learned, is one of the keys to "winning" these sorts of cocktail party disagreements: start by finding something with which you can agree, then give them something with which they can agree right back. Humans might like to disagree with one another when we're all sort of anonymous, but when we're face-to-face most of us crave agreement.  So I said, "Of course, respect is something you have to earn no matter how you dress."

Oh yes, she agreed with that wholeheartedly, echoing, "You have to earn respect." This was our starting point, then: kids aren't as respectful as they used to be and that respect has to be earned. 

I'd earlier learned that she had, that morning, been driven by one of her sons up to Seattle from Vancouver, Washington, three hours to the south, where she had lived in the same house for over 40 years, so I figured what I was about to say next would be something else with which she would readily identify: "I think one of the biggest problems is that too many kids are being raised without their grandparents around."  

"When we were growing up," I continued, including her as a peer, "our parents could count on grandparents to help them out, or even aunts and uncles, but families today are so spread out. I think it leads to a lot of parents feeling isolated and alone with their kids, especially when they live in a suburb." I waved my hand to indicate the backyard in which we were sitting, "And then their spouses head off to work in the city each morning leaving them all alone with the kids.

"What are they going to do? It's mom and children all day long. The kids grow up as the center of mommy's universe, so why wouldn't they grow up to believe everything revolves around them?" We then chatted back and forth about the value of multi-generational families, of how grandparents are always ready to jump in, of how 12-year-old girls (cousins and older siblings) once served as mommy's helpers, and how vitally important it is for kids to be loved by as many people as possible.

We were nodding and agreeing by this time, kindred spirits. That's when I said, "I feel sorry for these moms who don't have their extended families around. So many of them don't have a proper support system. They never get time for themselves and many of them don't even realize how much they deserve it. They think that's what being a parent has to be: always putting their needs after their children's. Kids notice everything. They come to believe that this is the way it's supposed to be. It's hard to learn to respect others when you've learned that your needs always come first."

She got it. "Exactly!"

"My wife and I were lucky to have two sets of grandparents within 20 minutes of our home. They were always willing to watch their grandkid for a few hours or a weekend or a week. Not only is it great for the kids to spend time with other adults who love them, but it shows them that sometimes mommy comes first. I think that's what we're talking about. We want kids to learn respect, but it's a two-way street. When we were young, we tended err too much on the side of respecting the adults. Now maybe we err too much on the side of respecting the kids. We're all human beings here: we're all worthy of respect and it starts with respecting ourselves.  

"At school the kids know that sometimes their needs come first, but just as often mine do. I respect them and they respect me. Sometimes we do what they want to do and sometimes we do what I want to do. I think that's the only way anyone has ever earned respect."

"Exactly!" she said again. By now, she was entirely on my bandwagon, so I huddled up with her, we two thoughtful people out there in lawn chairs, and in a conspiratorial tone, said, "You know what drives me crazy? Obedient kids, because they grow into obedient adults."

She chuckled with me, "Don't I know it."

"I want kids to question my authority. I want them to challenge me." I was now talking about the opposite of the kind of "respect" Carlita had originally spoken about. I told her about how I teach kids to think for themselves, how I don't want them to take my word for anything I can't prove, how our school trusts kids to make their own rules, how our whole democracy would be better off if we raised our kids to be rabble rousers. By the time we were done, she had, at least for the purposes of our backyard party conversation, always been an advocate for a progressive, play-based education, and a parenting style of mutual respect.

As we wound up our conversation, I said, "I guess if you want kids to show respect, you have to respect them." Then I left her with my favorite James Baldwin quote: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." 

Carlita said, "I'm glad to know there are still teachers like you. It gives me hope for the future." 

We both laughed when I replied, "Even if I don't wear nylons and heels?"

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Unnatural Consequences

When our daughter Josephine was a young 3-year-old we purchased expensive front row seats to attend a classical music performance. It wasn't a special "family" performance, but she had become a fan of the late Vladimir Horowitz via video and this concert featured, not Horowitz of course, but an up-and-comer that many said had great potential. We were all excited for it, and in Josephine's case, probably too excited: she simply couldn't stop talking, even once the performance began.

When my whispered urges and cajoling didn't have the desired effect, my embarrassment mounting, I turned to threats: "If you don't stop talking, we'll have to leave." When that didn't work, I went the punitive route: "If you don't stop talking, we'll have to leave and you won't get to chew any gum for three days." She was very into chewing gum at the time.

As we eventually packed up and slinked out of the concert hall, I was fuming. In contrast, Josephine seemed, frankly, happy as a lark. I said, "We had to leave that expensive piano concert because you couldn't stop talking. It was ruining the show for everyone." I'd never resorted to punishment before, but in the moment, to this inexperienced and agitated parent, that seemed like the proper course. I wasn't even sure she knew what the word "punishment" meant. I said, "You are going to get a punishment. I told you if you kept talking you wouldn't get any gum for three days. We had to leave, so no gum for three days."

This got her attention, "Why?"

"Because you were talking in the concert."

"Three days is too long."

"I told you that if you didn't stop talking you would get a punishment of no gum for three days."

"Why?"

"Because you were ruining the concert for the other people."

"But I like chewing gum."

This conversation went on like this all the way home. Me trying to draw the connection between no gum and talking in the concert, while she just wanted to talk about no gum, completely unable, it seemed, to comprehend what one had to do with the other. Yes, she understood that you can't talk in a show and understood why we had left. That's what I wanted our conversation to be about. She, however, was only interested in talking about gum, why it had to be three days, and why her dad was taking it away, apparently completely baffled by this entirely unnatural consequence.

That was our family's first and last foray into the world of punishment. I think we got lucky. The lesson I learned was to not buy expensive concert tickets for a young 3-year-old: being able to sit quietly in the front row isn't necessarily in the skill set of young children.

We stuck with the three day gum punishment because we didn't know what else to do. Every conversation we had during that enforced hiatus would turn to the subject of gum. Not long ago, I reminded my now 16-year-old of this episode. She remembered the punishment, but nothing else, which didn't surprise me at all.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Some Notes On Personality

Back in the 80's, during my years working for The Man, the entire office had an afternoon off for a kind of personal development seminar at which we all took the well-known Meyers-Briggs personality test. Afterwards, we discussed the results in small groups. I was the only one in my group not surprised that I fell into the classification of introvert. I remember my assistant manager saying, "This test is crap. You're the most extroverted person I know." 

The pioneering psychologist Carl Jung was the first to popularize the concept of extroversion-introversion during the early 1900's, a notion that has become a centerpiece of just about every personality theory out there. The terms are commonly used as synonyms for "outgoing" and "shy," but that's a misunderstanding of the concept. The basic idea, as I've taught myself to understand it, is that those with the personality trait of extroversion tend to get energy from being with the other people, while introverts tend to get their energy from being alone or with only a few intimates. 

I live with a pair of women who are classic extroverts. They come home from parties, temple, work, and school with bright eyes, chattering, enthusiastic, and in general seeming "all filled up," ready to make phone calls or turn around a do something else. I come home from those same places, places where I talked and laughed and engaged at least as much as they did, but I'm all emptied out: I crave the quiet time to sort through what just happened, to muse, to fantasize, to veg out, to tank up. In other words, I love all of you, but you take it out of me. 

This blog has become one of the places I get filled up. I can't exactly say I enjoy the process of reflection, but I do crave it, nevertheless. I've always done it, of course, even before I became a teacher, going over my day, reveling in things that went well, trying to figure out what I could have done differently when they don't. My extrovert wife, who is quite often my sounding board, used to say, "Stop obsessing," and it would draw me up. Am I obsessive? I don't think so. I think of obsessiveness as a largely destructive trait, one I associate with perfectionism, or a mind that just won't shut off. It's never felt that way to me. I might not always like it, but I really need to mentally process my day. That's what gives me energy.

Some people think of extroversion-introversion as a continuum with the majority of people falling somewhere near the middle (ambiverts). Others, Jung among them, believe that we all possess both traits, with one being dominant, but that there are times when the less dominant side is expressed. 

I'm in the second camp, judging from my own experiences. It's become clear to me, that one of the reasons I am a teacher is that I'm a true extrovert when it comes to spending time with young children. They fill me with energy. I often drag through my early mornings, preparing for the advent of the kids, but once they start arriving it's like a switch is thrown and when our days together come to an end, I find myself wanting them to go on. I often stay too long afterwards, chatting with parents, horsing around with kids, not wanting it to end. And once they're all gone I pass through a period of loneliness which explains why I so often leave the classroom a mess until the following morning -- I just don't want to be there in the quiet building without the children, while in the rest of my life, alone does not equate at all to loneliness.

I've found a few other places in my life where my extrovert side expresses itself, but none so much as my time with the kids. 

We all live with these two sides of ourselves, as do our children. It's important, I think, as adults in the lives of children to make an honest study of them, to understand when and where their introversion and extroversion are expressed. And perhaps more importantly, to recognize that they are not us. The excitement you feel about the lights of the carnival may strike your child as a chore, one that requires summoning up the enthusiasm that comes naturally to you. The peaceful evening at home toward which you looked forward, may loom in your child's mind as grim loneliness, especially after a day of tanking up with the other people.

I often say that school is the place where we practice being together, which is why I don't particularly value having a lot of nooks and crannies where kids can be on their own, at least for extended periods of time. Whether we are gaining energy or spending energy in social circumstances, it's only through experience that we can come to better understand ourselves. While this time might be harder work for the introverted child, the aftermath is often harder work for the extrovert.

Of course, personality is far more involved than this, and although I've not seen any data, I suspect that our fundamental personality type can actual grow and change as we gain experience in life. I know I'm a far different person today than I was 30 years ago when I last took the Meyers-Briggs test and I've seen young children over the course of their 3 years at Woodland Park transform themselves, while others are just more sophisticated versions of who they were at 2. 

Personality is not a fixed thing. And all the tests that purport to measure it really are crap because each one of us defies categorization throughout our lives. There is always a danger that terms like "introvert" and "extrovert" become labels to conveniently and inappropriately slap on other people. Still, if we understand that the concepts describe nothing more than a point in time for an individual, they can give us a framework for thinking about personality, especially the personalities of the other people with whom we spend our time each day, including the children in our care. And every tool that helps us reflect on our relationships with others is a good one.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Kids In The House: Alternatives To Punishments Or Rewards

Embedded below is another of the short videos I made for Kids In The House. In this one I give my thumbnail sketch of why we try to avoid relying on rewards and punishments in preschool.

          

           

If you are interested in further reading on my blog about the ideas behind this video, you might want to check out some of these previous posts:

A Reaction to the Leash
Natural Consequences
Seven Things To Say Instead of "Good Job!"
The Language of Command
Spoiled Brats
Clean-Up Time: It's Not My School, It's Your School
Learning Responsibility
Teaching Values
The Gift of Motivation

And if you don't like what I have to say on the topic, head on over to Kids in the House where you'll find thousands of other videos from parenting and education experts who may speak more directly to you and your parenting or teaching style.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Learning Responsibility

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." ~Declaration of Independence

Our Pre-K class starts its Tuesday afternoon by eating lunch together, each child bringing something from home to eat. I take note as they arrive of their lunch boxes and bags: "I see you have a fire fighter lunch box today," or "I'll bet you have sushi in that bag." 

It's clean-up time and most of the kids, most days get to work when I announce it by

beating my drum and singing our clean-up song. I ask the adults not to help, at least

when it comes to things the kids can do themselves. We are learning what it means

to assume responsibility, but it's hard when grown-ups (as you can see in this picture)

do it for us.

Often, a child will arrive at the table without a lunch and I'll ask, "Where's your lunch?"

"Mommy has it."

"Why does mommy have it? Is she going to eat it?"

"No, I'm going to eat it, Teacher Tom." They think I'm clowning around, but I'm not. I answer matter-of-factly, something like, "I carry my own lunch."

I love this picture in which the adult is sitting with her hands in her lap, probably making

informative comments like, "The trains tracks go in this box," or "I see my friends picking

up the blocks."

By the end of the school year, all of these kids will have assumed responsibility for carrying their own lunches, taking their lunch box from their mothers' hands of their own accord because that is what we do in Pre-K.

When we're doing this right, we're not even asking the children to clean-up. They are

doing it because it is clean-up time, not for approval, not to make someone happy.

It's simply what we do. That's how one assumes responsibility.

We all want our kids to be responsible: we want them to carry their own things, to dress themselves, to pick up after themselves. We nag them when they don't do those basic things we know they're capable of doing. Or maybe we're more sanguine, shrugging our shoulders and doing it for them, not up for the battle of wills this time. Still, we know they're going to have to learn it sometime. We see what's in store for them if they don't. We fear they'll show up in the world as some sort of entitled prima donna, going through life expecting others to do everything for them.

Adults sometimes get caught up in getting these things done quickly, but that's an

artificial condition. Doing things correctly sometimes takes time. For instance, we need

to make sure we are putting the right things in the right places, comparing them to what

is already there. This is not necessarily where I think these keys ought to be, but it is

where the children decided they ought to go, together, in a place up off the floor.

Even enlightened parents try rewards (e.g., if you get yourself dressed, you get hot chocolate) and punishments (e.g., if you don't pick up your coat, you won't get hot chocolate) and they can appear to work for a time, but the external nature of the motivation makes it a temporary fix, one that stops working the moment the reward or punishment isn't present. Some of us try the route of natural consequences, but who among us can abide a messy bedroom longer than a child? They easily outlast us, their standards being much lower, and besides they possess the knowledge that Aunt Milly will soon visit and that mom will do it for us in the flurry of housekeeping that always precedes the arrival of guests, often muttering something like, "This is the last time . . ."

We show that the sensory table is closed by covering it with this orange

cloth. He found an item on the floor that goes in there and 

assumed the responsibility for putting it where it belongs. It
was closed, but he knew he had the right to re-open it.

I told people this holiday season that the gift I most wanted was that they take a $20 bill, find the most unapologetic street person they could, and hand it to him with a cheery, "Merry Christmas!" fighting any temptation to place conditions on its expenditure. I'm certain that none of them, even my most liberal or most Christian friends, took me up on it. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't do it myself.) Many of them asked, "Why would you want that? They'll just use it for booze." Most informed me that the money would do much more "good" if funneled through a responsible charity where it would get spent on things they need like food, clothing, and shelter.

Yes, there are some things we're not ready to fully clean on our own, 

but that doesn't mean we can't be responsible for doing what we

can to make it a little easier for the adult who will take it from here.

Irresponsibility, the unwillingness to take responsibility for oneself, at least according to our own standards of what that means, be it a clean room or clean and sober life, grates on us. When it's our own kids, we grudgingly do it for them, telling ourselves that "this is the last time." When it's an irresponsible adult, even the most nobel of us hold back, not wanting to "encourage" them, thinking somehow that our $20 will just perpetuate their bad choices, their profligate ways, their degeneracy. 

It's what we want. And that's really the challenge: the conceit that we know best.

We live in a society of rights as well as responsibilities and one of those rights is to not live up to other people's standards of responsibility. In our self-righteous quest to teach lessons, we forget that responsibilities, like rights, are not something we learn, but rather something we assume. And the two, rights and responsibilities, go hand-in-hand: they don't exist independently, but rather emerge from one another.

Assuming responsibilities together is the foundation of community

.

All of us, pauper or king, are born with the three rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence, in what I consider to be among the most perfect sentences ever written in the English language: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

"Life" has certain requirements that we are bound as parents and as a society to provide, among them food, clothing, and shelter. To that I would add such things as medical care, clean air, and physical touch. These are the rights every child already has to the degree that our families and society lives up to their promises, because to do otherwise is to deny this unalienable right.

Responsibilities are not chores to be undertaken reluctantly, but rather part of the joy of

being together.

"Liberty" is more challenging. Rightly or wrongly, our laws recognize an age (or ages, in the bizarre practice of granting voting rights at 18 and drinking rights at 21) at which his right of "liberty" is fully granted. This is equally challenging for parents, who with good reason fear their inexperienced child, if granted full liberty, will make dangerous, even life-threatening choices, so we must, for a time, limit it in the name of sustaining their first right of "life," at least until they're old enough to assume the full right of liberty. But at the end of the day, most of us are able to grant that all adults, whatever their station in life, have an equal amount of unalienable liberty. 

It's through the right to pursue happiness that responsibilities emerge. This is the part of the promise of democracy in which we acknowledge that we must engage with one another, accommodate, share. School is the first place most of us get to practice this right and experience the responsibilities that go with it.

As I assume my right to pursue happiness within a community, for instance, I must also assume the responsibility of following its rules: not hitting or taking or screaming in someone else's ear. As I assume my rights, I also assume the responsibilities that come with community property like sharing or taking turns. As I assume my rights to freely play and explore, I also assume the responsibility to help clean up those things when it's time to move on to something else.

These are not things I assume because I've been nagged into it. I do not assume them because of some external reward or punishment. I take on those responsibilities because "that's what we do in Pre-K." Responsibilities are not the consequence of my pursuit, they are a part of my pursuit.

If my pursuit leads me to join a church, I take on the corresponding rights and responsibilities to live according to its creed.

If my pursuit requires me to have a job, I take on the corresponding rights and responsibilities of fulfilling its obligations.

If my pursuit causes me to have a family, start a charity, organize a party, or buy a house, I also assume those rights and responsibilities.

If my pursuit requires me to stand on a street corner and panhandle, I may assume few responsibilities, but I also assume few extra rights beyond those that are unalienable. (For the sake of this argument, I understand that I've set aside the realities of homelessness and poverty, and am stipulating for a moment that living on the streets is a "choice.") 

I've written often here on the blog about how the children of Woodland Park, even our youngest members, take on the responsibility of cleaning up the classroom. Each time I do, people write me, asking what I do about the kids who "refuse" to help. And it's true, there are always on any given day, a few kids who opt out altogether. What I do about them is nothing other than to not allow them to interfere with the community project of clean-up. I say, "We're putting that away," when they continue their play. I say, "That is closed," when they try to get out a new toy. I reply, "We're cleaning up now," when they try to engage me in conversation. You see, participating in clean up is one of the responsibilities that comes with the right of being a member of our community and you simply are not a full member unless you take that on. It's what we do in Pre-K.

That still doesn't answer the question of how to get the kids to carry their own things, dress themselves, or pick up after themselves at home. But I do know that responsibilities are not things into which one is commanded or shamed, rewarded or punished: that's called obedience. Responsibility emerges only from the unalienable right to pursue happiness.

I am the parent of a teenager now, not legally an adult, but no longer a child. I've noticed that the more rights she assumes, the more responsibly she behaves. That's what we do in a democracy.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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