Hey Parents, Let's Talk About Sex

"The message to parents is, you need to 100 percent read your child's text messages, follow them on Instagram, follow them on Twitter," prosecutor David Freed said, according to ABC 27 News.

So, it's not cool to teach kids about sex and relationships in school.  It's inappropriate to look at social-emotional regulation or power relationships via empathy in classes, 'cause that's too much like committing sociology.  

For their part, parents don't want or even have to prepare their kids for independent relationships and sound, contextual choices; why, they just have to stalk them on social media and send them to their room if they say or so something that makes the parent uncomfortable.

Which is an approach that leads to scandalous stories like this one in the first place.  Makes for good copy, but does a poor job of preventing the problem.

Parents don't need to micro-mange their children; they have to parent them, which means teach them the skills they need to succeed in healthy fashion (including where relationships are concerned) on their own.

Quit maligning the kids these days - just remember who it is they're learning from.

Curing Creationism: The Devil is in the Details

Dinosaur fossils don't come with tags on them telling us how old they are, where they lived, what they ate, or how they died.  We have to figure that out from a few clues we find.

But because we never have all the evidence, different scientists can reach very different conclusions, depending on their starting assumptions.

Very true, this.  People have  a habit of believing that which validates pre-existing beliefs.  If you believe the Bible is literal truth, for instance, you're going to look for facts that prove you right and question those that don't.  

If you believe in or against global warming, it's a simple matter to cherry-pick arguments that support you and refute any criticism as bogus science.  If gay people, Jewish people or Africans make you feel uncomfortable, you can find all sorts of evidence to validate those feelings - especially when you hold doggedly to your starting premise.

Which is the thing about science; science is study, not validation.  The whole point is to develop and challenge starting premises, rejecting those that don't fit.  That's how it came to be that religious men like Charlies Darwin or Copernicus found themselves forced to question certain premises of their faith told them were unquestionable and challenge the status quo.  

They weren't intentionally being rebellious; they were simply following the evidence.

How do we know a person is sick?  There's no label that pops up on the skin with a written description of an ailment, but there are symptoms that can be readily identified and, thanks to a massive body of study, attributed with general accuracy to specific illnesses or afflictions.  This is called diagnosis.

Where does the illness come from?  Can it be cured?  Does it pose a risk to others?  Before we had scientifically researched diagnosis systems, people relied a lot on assumptions.  These assumptions were believed to be gospel for the simple reason that if it was true before, it must surely be true now.

We have historically tended to err on the side of reactive caution on this front - lepers were sent away to colonies and supposed witches were burned at the stake.  Infidels and barbarians have been kept outside the kingdom with firewalls of various compositions.

The same holds true for economic prescriptions; if an economy has lost its luster, as ours has now, use common sense - shrink government, cut taxes, reduce organized labour supports and allow companies to produce the same goods at a lower cost so as to compete with other jurisdictions that produce goods at low cost, like Bangladesh.

The same equally holds true for crime - tougher punishment, greater restrictions and longer sentences are the way to go.  In this sense, prisons serve the same purpose as leper colonies or insane asylums of old.

This sort of approach doesn't follow the evidence and revisit original assumptions - it relies on traditional wisdom and gut instinct.  If you know the Bible is the literal truth, then anything that refutes it is wrong.  If you know that the world fits into neat categories of good and evil, with tradition, the free market and individual independence firmly in the good column and progress, centrally coordinated social service and government in the evil column, your choices are pretty easy, aren't they?

Which brings us back to health.  

Really think about it for a second - traditionalists of any kind work very hard to present the threats of opposing ideologies as almost virus-like in nature, with the faith, leader or belief system the only tonic to protect against this threat.  As such, they hammer home their message as often, as loudly and as pervasively as they can.  At the same time, they try to reduce the flow of contrarian information.  

This quarantining against challenging information generally involves creating closed communities and either excommunicating or locking away challengers, as well as the removal of contradictory information.  This last, in its most extreme form looks like book burnings; in its more subtle manifestations, it looks like killing the census, closing libraries and generally staunching the flow of data to the people.

When time was, people didn't have a lot of access to information; we didn't know about germ theory, principles of physics, meteorology, metallurgy, etc.  Like other animals out there, we had nothing but instinct to go on - until we learned to be curious.

Through curiosity, we began to question, to experiment, to make mistakes and learn from them.  One can only imagine that our distant ancestors thought of fire as an uncontrollable force of nature and looked at beast and plant as things that existed in an unchanging state.  But we've learned to control fire and we've mastered the science of domestication, haven't we?

So too have we developed all the fields, specializations and organizational capacities that make human civilization possible.  

None of this would have been possible if we hadn't learned to question - or better phrased, developed the ability to question.  Which is hard to do when individual survival is your every-day focus.  

Through collaboration, we develop safe spaces and specialization.  Collaboration requires proximity and trust, however, which means some common purpose and shared rules must be established.  New challenges emerge that require further cooperation, specialization and innovation to solve.  It goes on and on.

Back to healthcare again.  Have you ever gone to the doctor's office and been given a prescription without an explanation as to what the activity or medication is actually going to accomplish?  What does the doctor tell you?

Have you ever wondered why cleansing rituals, particularly in relation to the consumption of food, are so common in religions, or do you assume it's just what God demands? 

If you accept that God has a plan and that there are mysteries that are simply beyond the ken of man, there's no need to ask questions.  Accept traditional wisdom and carry on.  It's basically the same thing as letting the doctor tell you what to do without asking why - the next time something goes wrong, you'll be back to see the doctor again.  And there's always the chance that the doctor is wrong.

When we begin with the assumption that humanity was better off before, that inquiries are heretical and spend our time defending tradition, we are trying to inoculate ourselves against the virus of knowledge through inquiry (i.e., science).  By placing absolute faith in any leader, we abdicate ourselves of the responsibility to understand the why behind the what and learn how internalize those lessons.

Before there was germ theory, public healthcare and the welfare state, there were religious ablutions and the call for charity.  "Love thy neighbour" was the first crack at diplomacy.  Depending on your starting premise, you can look at a lot of the content of the Bible or any religious text as setting ground rules for good behaviour in a social context, much like a parent will tell their children to eat their vegetables and brush their teeth before that child comes to understand the value of doing these things.

With time, children learn the reason behind the rules and in some cases, recognize how certain regulations either were poorly formed or may be past their best-before date.  

Good parents encourage their children to ask why, because for them the goal isn't to maintain constant mastery over their offspring but to provide a solid basis of personal growth and then encourage independence.  

Some day, after all, it'll be up to those kids to prepare their own children for the world they will eventually live in.

Creationists and fundamentalists of any kind can defend the literal interpretation of their holy scriptures 'til kingdom come and insist that complete submission to the word of their deity is the only path to salvation.  

I think they're starting with the wrong assumption.

If our ancestors had thought the same way, well, we'd be never have left our parents' house, as it were, nor developed all the skills, tools and innovations that have made civilization possible.  Were it not for the printing press, for instance, how far do you think Christianity or Islam could have spread?

Inquires that follow the evidence and challenge traditional thinking aren't blasphemy, undermining the written word of any divine figure.  Living a prescribed lifestyle in unwavering fashion honours no father.  The role of parents isn't to restrict their children but to empower them.

They can open the door, as it were - but it is always, always up to us to step through.

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

  Luke 11:9

If You Are a Leader, Teacher, Manager or Parent, You'll Probably Enjoy This:

The best way to lead, always, is by example.

Train a Parent, Spare a Child

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

By BRUCE FEILER

Published: January 13, 2013

SOMEONE asked me recently what my New Year's resolution was as a parent. Without thinking, I said, "more creative bribing."

 

I find the issue of bribing children - or to be more precise, the giving of blunt, uncreative rewards for desired behavior ("If you just stop kicking that seat in front of you on the plane, I'll give you 10 minutes of iPad time"; "Clean your room this weekend, I'll give you 10 bucks"; "If you use good manners at Grandma's house, I'll let you have an extra brownie") - to be one of the more nagging challenges of being a parent.

 

On one hand, I've read a small library of articles that have laid out with undeniable persuasiveness evidence that giving children tangible rewards - from money to sweets to an extra hour before bedtime - not only doesn't work in the long term, it actually has a negative effect on them. As early as the 1960s, Edward Deci, then a psychology graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, showed that when external rewards are given, subjects "lose intrinsic interest for the activity." More recently, Daniel Pink, in his best-selling book "Drive," reviewed four decades of research and concluded that offering short-term incentives to elicit behavior is unreliable, ineffective and causes "considerable long-term damage." (The main downside: People perform the task merely to get the reward; when the reward is removed, they stop doing it.)

 

So I got it: bribing is bad. And yet I, my wife and nearly every other parent I know resorts to this tactic with appalling regularity. As one father said to me recently when we were discussing our approaches to parenthood: "My philosophy is simple: threats and bribes."

 

So what's a beleaguered parent to do? I reached out to some of the harshest critics of bribing for tips on making my resolution come true.

 

THE TALKING CURE Dr. Deci, now a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said the biggest problem with tangible rewards is that they actually work, at least in the short run. "If you want somebody to do something, and if you have enough money, you can get them do it," he said. "Practically anyone, practically anything."

 

But with children, he pointed out, since you are trying to get them to do the behavior "more or less ongoingly for the rest of their lives," the technique will backfire unless you're prepared to offer the same reward every time. "You don't want them coming to you when they're grown," he said.

 

Dr. Deci recommends a three-step alternative. First, be clear about why what you're asking them do is important. Second, be interested in their point of view. "If it's something they hate doing, acknowledge that, tell them you understand it's not fun, yet the reason they need to do it is as follows," he said. Finally, communicate in a way that's not controlling. "Don't use words like 'should,' 'must' and 'have to,' " he said. "All of those things that convey to them you're a big person trying to push around a little person."

 

MAKE IT A GAME Alan Kazdin, the director of the Yale Parenting Center, said the problem with incentives is they focus too much attention on the desired result instead of the behavior that leads up to the result. "You can't throw rewards at behaviors that don't exist and get them," he said. "If someone says I will match your retirement fund if your perform a flamenco dance right now, my reaction is, 'Great, but it turns out I can't do that.' You have to develop the behavior very, very gradually."

 

For example, if you want your children to eat more vegetables, he said, instead offering them $10 to do so (a technique I once stooped to, I confess), he suggested turning the process into a game. First, take the pressure off by telling them they don't have to eat vegetables now but just keep them on their plate. "You tell them they're probably going to want to eat vegetables when they're older, because there's a nice little challenge in there," he said.

 

Then you offer a point to whomever can put the least amount of vegetables on their fork. The next day you have a competition for who can touch the fork to their tongue and you escalate from there. "The research is very clear," he said. "Choice is related to getting compliance in any behavior, but psychologists distinguish between real choice and the illusion of choice. Real choice doesn't make a difference; it's the feeling of choice."

 

SWITCH FROM IF-THEN REWARDS TO NOW-THAT Mr. Pink said the problem with bribing is not the rewards; it's the contingency, which is a form of control. "Human beings have only two reactions to control," he said. "They comply or they defy. I don't think most parents want compliant children, and I don't think they want defiant children. They want children who are active, engaged and motivated by deeper things."

 

He recommends replacing what he calls if-then rewards with now-that rewards, meaning the prize is giving spontaneously and after the fact. "Let's say your kid's room is a complete, utter mess, and you say, 'Fred, you really need to clean your room, or you're not going to be able to find anything,' " Mr. Pink said. "And maybe Fred does clean his room and really works hard at it. There's no harm in then saying, 'You did a great job. Let's go out for a milkshake.' "

 

Mr. Pink cautioned that after-the-fact rewards should be given sparingly, as they can quickly turn into an entitlement.

 

PRAISE IS REWARD ENOUGH If you do give rewards occasionally and unexpectedly, what type of rewards are best? Is there a preferred choice among money, treats or quality time? Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, said while there is no empirical research to suggest a qualitative difference, she recommends having children pick the reward rather than the adult foisting it on them. "It feels more integral to the process and gives the child a sense of ownership."

 

Having said that, research clearly suggests that praise is usually a sufficient reward, she said. Dr. Dweck suggests parents make their praise specific, and focus on the process the child went through to achieve the behavior, not merely the behavior itself. "You could say, 'I really liked the way you waited patiently for me to finish my phone call, because you understood that phone call was important,' " she said. "Or, 'I really liked how you expressed gratitude to Grandma, just like you appreciate it when I thank you for doing something for me.' "

 

I was surprised and, frankly, relieved that all the experts I spoke with said it's O.K. to resort to old-fashioned, blunt rewards on occasion. If you simply must get that child on the plane or it will take off without you, or if you absolutely need that child to stop misbehaving so you can speak to the doctor, go ahead, bribe away. As Dr. Deci told me, "If you're under a lot of stress or in a bad place, then having a conversation at that moment is not going to work."

 

But, he emphasized, don't let the situation end there. "You need to sit down the next afternoon when everyone's calm, talk it through from both sides, then discuss ways so the behavior doesn't happen again," he said. "Always use the blow up as a learning moment the next day."

 

And that, in the end, may be the biggest lesson of all. While my New Year's resolution started out as a way to get better results from my children, the real person I needed to retrain was myself.

 

Bruce Feiler's latest book, "The Secrets of Happy Families," will be published in February. "This Life" appears monthly.

Christina Blizzard: Education Hypocrite

 

 

For some youngsters, the only thing that gets them out of bed and off to school is the notion that there’s a basketball practice at the end of the day.

 

 

Cognitive Dissonance: The state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g. ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

 

 

Christina Blizzard thinks Full Day Kindergarten is bad.  To her, FDK is a luxury that carries a whopping $1.5 billion price tag and comes at at time when it's not business as usual any more for Ontario's economy.  She has referred to FDK as full-day babysitting.  What's more, she has made it clear she believes becoming a parent shouldn't be a lifestyle choice.  Children, after all, aren't fashion accessories.

 

Tell me if I'm wrong, but what I get from this is that parents need to be responsible for their kids and shouldn't expect the public dollar to support the out-of-school care for their children.  If you're going to be a parent, you should be accountable for the well-being of your own child.  Right?  

 

Unless, of course, Blizzard is talking about extra-scholastic activities, traditionally referred to as "extra-curricular" because they aren't part of the mandated curriculum (and are therefore voluntary).  These are things like basketball practice that give kids motivation to get out of bed in the morning. 

 

While it's wrong for parents to expect the public sector to provide full-day babysitting to their kids on the public's dime, when it comes to after-school time, it's the teachers who are using students as pawns in their battle with government over the Putting Students First by suspending extra-scholastic activities.  Teachers, according to Blizzard, are focused on the financials, not the kids. 

 

So, when it comes to FDK, the government should focus on the financials and not be paying for daycare; that's the parents' job.  When it comes to post-school activities, though, the teachers are wrong to focus on financials and should be doing the parent's job of providing extra-scholastic activity for their kids.

 

These two positions are not in agreement.

 

But there's more:

 

My children suffered through the strikes and bans on extra-curriculars during the Mike Harris years. A whole generation of young people had what should have been a fulfilling school experience turned into a spiteful standoff that put them in the middle.

 

Were her kids the ones yearning for after school basketball as a reason to get out of bed in the morning?  If that's what it took to get her children out of bed, why should public sector teachers be responsible for motivating them?  Many Jewish parents are happy to pay to have their children educated according to their beliefs.  If it's commendable for some parents to pay out-of-pocket to ensure their children are educated according to their beliefs, shouldn't parents who want their kids to play sports after school be willing to pay for them, too?  This includes teachers who are parents; I know many a teacher that still pays for daycare while they're providing extra-curriculars to other people's kids. 

 

In fact, when you pay for private after-school activities, you help create jobs and support the economy.  When you expect the public sector to pick up your slack, you deny private-sector opportunities and add to the burden on the public purse.  Finance Minister Dwight Duncan suggested this very thing when, asked who was responsible for Ontario's massive deficit, he said “It’s everybody’s fault. We’ve all done this.”
 

But Blizzard disagrees.  "Well, count me out, Dwight. I have no comfy government pension. I don’t make it to the Sunshine list of $100,000 earners. Speak for yourself."  It was the fault of teachers, unions and government that her kids didn't have a fulfilling school experience; she's not on the sunshine list so perhaps can't afford cushy after-school activities.  But it's the fault of people not her that we have a deficit; people like single mothers looking for government to give them welfare to care for their kids.  Care for their kids during the day, that is - not after school.  That's clearly different.

 

You can't have it both ways, Ms. Blizzard.  You can't object to parents having the choices they want to make for their children disregarded if they expect someone else to take responsibility for enacting those choices.  Either parents are individually responsible for the well-being of their kids or society is a collective effort that we all have to take responsibility for. 

 

Which is it?

 

 

Respect, Consequence and Success

"I'm accountable to people of faith, and people of no faith. I'm accountable to all parents, and I think the fact that I know we have something in common as parents -- we want to make sure our kids are accepted and respected for who they are."

   - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty

As the GSA saga has unfolded, it’s come as no surprise that the “respect adult authority” meme has been bandied about.  Thomas Cardinal Collins has suggested Premier McGuinty isn’t respecting the moral authority of the Catholic Board Trustees.  Not mentioned is that the Board doesn’t seem to be respecting the moral authority of their own teachers, who are in favour of empowering youth to choose a name for their association that suits their objectives, even if it uses the word “gay.

More than a couple commentators have thrown out “spare the rod, spoil the child” – suggesting that allowing our youth to define themselves and engage in conversations about how to understand and get along with their own individual peers is somehow watering down their moral fibre.

On public transit I hear teenage boys talking about respect and how they aren’t getting it or what they could/should do to get it.  Lots of song lyrics carry the same message.  Despite the negative impact on mental health, productivity and the bottom line of this approach being applied in workplaces, employer/employee respect is still perceived as a rock that rolls uphill rather than a reciprocative interaction.  Jason Kenney made a compelling argument that the Liberal Party of Canada was not respecting the New Canadian community and taking their votes for granted to devastating effect (for the LPC).

Here’s the thing: these folk who want “their” youth, “their” employees or “their” constituents to do as they’re told; the people who talk derisively to politicians or planners who disagree with them or refer to their staff as “dead wood” don’t really give a rat’s ass about respect; what they care about is dominance.  Respect, they see, is something received, not given.  These adults will yell, stomp their feet or ask aggressively to get their way – in essence, throwing tantrums, or bullying to quash challenges to their perceived authority.  Sometimes this leads to one partner tucking it’s tail between its legs and backing away.  More often than not, it results in escalation, serving nobody’s best interests.  Where do our kids learn such behaviour?  By watching us, is how.  That’s the example we set.

When you tell a child that they have to do as they are told, period, you are attempting to undermine their position, which will almost always be legitimate for them and might actually add value to a conversation.  I have a 4 year-old who challenges me all the time; he will seek clarification on a position, offer alternatives and will make some pretty decent arguments on his own behalf. 

My wife and I actively encourage this behaviour; it helps him develop critical thinking, to get into the head space of the person with whom he is speaking and teaches him resiliency.  This also makes him more proactive and collaborative – my knows how to stack the deck in his favour.  It’s both cool and a little bit disconcerting to watch a 4 year-old lay out multi-move strategies, but I always proud of him for it.  By showing my son respect, by giving him skin in the game and a stake in the end result, we’re preparing him for a life of success and contribution in the real world.

Employers may feel they have no responsibility other than wages to their employees – they are tools to be leveraged for labour, nothing more.  When you don’t respect your workers, though, you not only atrophy their capacity to make you money, you actively push them away.  Same thing with any team, any constituency – the whole is only as strong as the weakest.  In a social environment, you don’t get very far by culling “weak links” – instead, success comes from empowering each of your team to reach their full potential.

People like Thomas Cardinal Collins might be uncomfortable with the word “gay” – a latent  homophobia for a word that, when time was, meant happy.  They might feel that allowing students to use the term in Catholic schools (the Church’s schools, apparently, not the students) makes them uncomfortable and is therefore disrespectful  to their moral authority.  What they’re really doing is passing the message on that the Catholic Church doesn’t respect the views of youth, which is not a wise image to portray.

Poor Catholic Church Board has backed themselves into a corner.  They need a way out of their untenable position.  Here’s some advice they can turn to from within their own cannon that will make it easier for them to do the right thing:

People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."

Mark 10: 13 – 16

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18: 2 – 6

 Such is the nature of belief systems.  I would be happy to sit down with them, hear their arguments out and together, we could come us with a comprise that suits both our interests and allows us to move forward.

Because that's what true, mutual respect allows.