Are the French better parents?

A new year and a new parenting formula! Last year we were told that the Chinese way was better and this year’s hottest parenting methods come from the French via Paula Druckerman in her book Raising up bebe. I haven’t read the book, but read her article in Wall Street Journal. Does this not strike you as ironic, that as per authors of parenting books,  parents in China or France do such an excellent job without ever having read a single book on parenting, and those in the USA have no clue despite the market being glutted with books on the subject. And so we go write more! If you stop and think, maybe the problem is not of having enough advice, but too much of it, that makes us question our values instead of following our inner compass. 

One country’s parenting way in not better than other’s. What is common among any of the “old” countries is that parents there still have a deep sense of their roots, and that combined with the local culture, guides the way for them. If there is a magic formula that produces wonderful children, it is parents with a clear vision of what kind of adults they want their children to grow up into. Ms Druckerman, a helicopter parent by her own admission, went from New York to Paris and was amazed at the fact that the parents actually had some long term goals for their children that they followed up on. They saw themselves as the means for their children’s success instead of wringing their hands in exasperation of having no control on what their children did. French parents actually exerted their parental authority! Ms Druckerman could have as well gone to a small mid-western town in the US, or any other country in the world and made the exact same discovery. “How mid-western US parents are better than neurotic New York parents” doesn’t make a very good book title though. 

The problem is not that American parents are bad or that the French have discovered a secret sauce. It is not at all culture specific - parents who misguidedly look for a secret formula, some magic recipe in a book that will help them parent better, have already ceded their inner authority to be the best guide for their children. 

In most other countries of the world, parenting is driven by culture, not by research or parenting books. Parents are guided by a deep set of values imbibed form the culture they live in and the culture as a whole instills these values in their children. Sometimes parenting is driven simply by “what will people say”, because the culture clearly defines right and wrong. In India, where I grew up, a child would get a dressing down for making her parents look bad in front of neighbors and extended family by behaving badly. It was very deeply instilled that your behavior reflects on the entire family going back many generations, and you better not mess that up. My parents did not learn that from a book.  They did not have to explicitly teach it either - we met enough role models daily to emulate from.

America is a different country. Individual is more important than the collective family. The country is a melting pot, and there is no set of uniform cultural values that we are judged by. Here we raise our children in an isolated environment. We rarely meet our neighbors or extended family, so that constant threat of somebody watching and judging is removed. This isolation also mean that neither the parents nor the children see any regular real time role models to emulate. And lacking our own inner compass, we go trudging through books and newspapers to find that magic formula.


On a side note, it is bizarre that WSJ is the new outlet for parenting advice - even the 'tiger mother' article was published there!

Tiger Mother

The "Tiger mother" has been the target of everyone's hate in the US. Not having read the memoir or the controversial Wall Street Journal article, I did not want to write a knee-jerk reaction, based purely on what I read in the media. I have finally read the article, and now feel ready to express an opinion.

I am well aware that in here the terms "western" and "Chinese" parents refer to stereotypes. There are many bad parents in the east and many good parents in the western society. This is more of a general discussion of parenting values most common in each culture.

Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with most of what Ms Chua had to say. She says "What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences." I absolutely agree - you cannot enjoy something unless you are accomplished at it. To get really good at something you have to go through a phase of absolute frustration and boredom where you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again until it clicks, and it is a rare child that will be willing to work through that on their own. Most will quit. However, if the child does work through that frustration, and attain mastery, the experience will forever be a source of self-confidence to help work through other difficulties in life. Many such successful experiences, stacked together will constitute resilience and perseverance - qualities very hard to instill. I also agree that western parents are often too concerned about their child's self-confidence, not realizing that "there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't." Confidence comes from true accomplishment, not false praise.

In all the criticism of Ms Chua, there seems to be an underlying assumption that she does not love her children. Do only lax mothers love their children? I would argue that a mother who is willing to let go of short-term gratification that comes from her children liking her the next day, in favor of their long term success, loves her children even more. Ms Chua talks about cuddling and hugging her children. She is not all tough and no love. How the techniques used by Ms Chua affect a child depends heavily on whether the child feels loved, whether she realizes that her mother truly cares for her and will do anything for her. If Ms Chua had her daughter practice "The little white donkey" for hours, do not forget that Ms. Chua was right there with her for all those hours as well. She didn't just threaten her child, leave her with the piano and go shopping! Not many parents have that kind of staying power and would have resorted to bribing and then eventually given up. You have to care enough about your child's future to spend that kind of time with them, and I am sure that the child can see that caring in their day to day life. As Ms Chua says "For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly." I know many women from eastern countries who give up a social life, stay on in bad marriages and sacrifice luxuries, just so that their child can become a successful adult with a secure future. Whereas many western mothers use the mantra "happy mothers make happy babies" to justify all kinds of ill-advised behavior.

As far as academics go, the constant effort these days in schools to make learning "fun" and, then providing all kinds of external motivations to get the ever distracted children to learn, annoys me no end. The purpose of education, especially the kind taught up to middle school, is not entertainment, but is to establish a basic foundation on which higher education can be based. If you don’t have arithmetic down in elementary school, and your parents don't care enough to ensure that you do, there is an extremely small chance you will ever be able to study advance math or engineering. Basic education - reading, writing and math is a lot of boring drill work. It is a myth that children will not do anything unless it is "fun". They will surely not, if left to themselves, but working with parents with the right attitude and who set correct expectations, you will be surprised what children are capable of. By setting the misguided expectation that learning should be "fun", we end up making school seem even more boring. Have you ever met a child who did not enjoy rising up to a challenge, meeting it, and basking in the glow of that success! However, helping a child through boring work and sticking with it until they get it, is hard work. In my opinion, efforts to make learning "fun" are really grown-ups way of copping out hoping that maybe children would just learn on their own.

In criticism of Tiger Mother, many have pointed out that despite all their academic accomplishments, eastern children often lack leadership skills. That has less to do with parenting skills and everything to do with assimilation. Social skills are learned from parents by osmosis, and unlike math there is no easy drill to instill those. Immigrant parents are not comfortable in the western society and usually have a hard time relating to and socializing with westerners. As a result their children lack that skill and pay the price in the work environment. They still get much ahead in the workplace because of their accomplishments, than the lack of assimilation skills would allow, and that is credit to their work-ethic and their parents' hard work.

Yes, I agree that this sometimes goes to the extreme, with too much being expected of children, and absolutely no freedom to fail. You can't set high expectations and then leave the children to fend for themselves through them. You have to be there helping, encouraging, guiding and pushing, as necessary. And then be eventually ready to back off.

My children barely watch TV and have no video games. I rarely take them out for "entertainment". We do go for movies, and to fairs and museums but I am not their perpetual activity-planner. They are not paid for chores and no disrespect to elders is tolerated. The only time I buy them non-essential items (toys, trinkets, etc.) is on their birthdays. This does not mean that my house is run like a military camp, or that my kids are not loved or praised, or a parent doesn't sit with them for hours to listen to their worries. They know their parents will be there behind them all the way, but they have to hold up their end too. Does that make me a "Tiger mother". Maybe it does.

Seeingly harmless words

I am swearing-impaired and and cannot mouth anything worse than an occasional "damn". I am not a so-called "prude" but I dislike swearing. As a lover of words and and the power of language, I find swearing to be simply lazy and feel we can express ourselves so much better if we stay off swear words. Add to this the fact that I can't help but think about meaning of a word and conjure images of it, every time I use it and being around swear-words is just not a pleasant experience for me whether I or somebody else around me uses these words.

Even people who are not as hardcore word-fanatics as I am, have limits as to what words they will use in front of children. The notorious f-word and all its derivatives come to mind. And yet I am aghast that people will use words such as "bummer" and "sucks" not only in the presence of but in conversations with little children, and eventually end up teaching children to use them. Do people really not know what those words are implying? I guess not, otherwise I just don't see how they do not land in the same category as the f-word.

Confidence and Ignorance

Mark Twain said "To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence" and it is shocking how true that is. In my search for a new job, I have put out a concerted networking effort to connect with local tech business community. And very quickly I have arrived on a set of people who are trying to establish themselves as "experts" in job search or personal branding. I sat through a webinar on this and got ingenious advice such as "polish your shoes when attending an interview", "highlight what makes you unique" and "target your pitch to the person you are talking to". D'Oh! Do these people really believe that they are bringing some value here or have something unique to offer. Are they really that ignorant? Ignorant or not they present themselves with complete confidence and say really generic things as if they were offering great insights, and go about doing this with great passion. Do other people not see through that?

OK, so I am not sure how much money these people are making, maybe nothing compared to an intelligent educated professional, and for them this is better than being an administrative assistant at an office to make the same kind of money. I am still surprised that they are even out there trying and thinking this will work. I have been through graduate school and have worked with and met brilliant people, yet as Sarah Plain proves, all you need to succeed is confidence and some dumb luck, more than intellect or wisdom. Something to watch out for as we raise kids, and remember to teach our kids to not assume somebody is smart or good or whatever, just because they say they are.

I, me and myself

In a comment to my last post, my friend Valerie asked "I am curious what helped *you,* personally, to make it through the Indian educational system as a thoughtful person rather than turning into a mindless TV-watching robot"

If I didn't know Valerie better, I would have said she was mocking me but knowing her, I know she is asking a genuine question. I am well aware that I generalize, and paint all Indians with the same brushstroke, but I am a part of them, and I know they are such wonderful people and I want so much more for them - more happiness, more satisfaction, more wisdom, and hence I nag.

There is a justification I commonly hear as people make the same choices for their children, as their own parents made for them - I was raised this way and I turned out to be fine, so I will do the same. I, in fact, continue to think that I did not turn out fine at all and that is what makes me want to do something different. My parents did not push me to over-achieve but I was ambitious and competitive so I went for it anyway, and the whole system was designed to reward that. I have a lot of interests but no well-developed hobby because there was no time outside of academics to develop it. Even in my studies, I acquired knowledge to pass exams with high scores, but did not necessarily learn anything. I spent my youth chasing degrees and growth at jobs, and did not take time to experiment with alternative options. Now that I want to do something different, I find I am too old, with many responsibilities and no appetite for risk. This has left a hollow space inside me, that I do not want my kids to have when they are my age.

So the answer to your question, Valerie, is that my own sense of inadequacy is what drives me to chart out a different path for my children. And I don't want much TV because it leaves an even bigger hollow space in my time - I can spend an hour playing tennis or watching TV, and the former is so much more satisfying that it is an easy choice.

Kumon and the ugly monster

If you visit a Kumon math center, you will find it chock-full of children of Indian origin who start at age 4 and are doing algebra by the time they are 10. I cannot decide whether starting children in Kumon at a young age is the best way to build a strong foundation or the surefire way to teach them to hate math early. One thing I am sure of is that many parents have brought their children without any such thought - all they hope for is for their child to get ahead in the academic world because their reference point is the survival-of-the-fittest academic world of India. This saddens me because that world often produces academically brilliant people who haven't a clue about what their passion in life is and never know what to do in their free time besides watching TV. There aren't many other choices in India, but it does seem rather bizarre to be applying the same model in the US where there are so many options available.

I had resolutely decided to never enroll my children in Kumon until the American education system completely failed me. By end of 4th grade my daughter was still doing additions by counting on her fingers. It turns out that the school system does nothing to instill basic math skills that are the building blocks of further learning, unless parents do drills a home. I am well aware that knowing your math facts and times tables is not proof of intelligence or analytical abilities, but it is a skill as necessary in academic life, as being able to read is. The last person my daughter wants to take instruction from is her mother, so I had no choice but to enroll her in Kumon to get the basics right before it was too late. It was amazing what a difference two months of rigorous drills made. She can now whip through one hundred division problems in under three minutes.

And then the other day I discovered another more important reason why most children at a Kumon center are Indian. I ran into a friend at Kumon whose daughter is same age as mine. I noticed that the other girl was at level G whereas my daughter is at mere D and this monster raised its ugly head in me and took hold - a feeling of inadequacy that my child wasn't equally advanced and a desire to push her more to get her higher, and to enroll the younger one right away. My conscious mind had to beat that monster hard and remind me that the other girl has been doing this since kindergarten and mine just started, and get back to thinking about the bigger picture. So now I wonder how many children are at Kumon just because their parents' saw other children doing better than theirs. Oh my! Her 4 year old can recite the 9 times table, I better get in my child in there too!. Sigh. Will the Indian community never leave that ultra competitive world behind us no matter how far we get away from it?

More tricks of indirection

Bedtime has become another daily struggle in my household. This problem comes back at regular intervals to haunt me with new and creative forms. I repeat again and again that I will turn the lights out at such and such time. If they get in the bed before that they get reading time until the lights are out, and that my kids consider a big reward. Yet, I find myself tagging behind, repeatedly reminding them that their time is almost up, and still they dawdle. They will get involved in time-consuming activities such as rearranging all their stuffed animals, and then keep begging for "one more minute". Needless to say this is very frustrating, esp late in the evening when I am running a short fuse.

Tonight, just because I simply felt incapable of tagging behind without losing my temper completely, I picked up a kitchen timer, set it to fifteen minutes and said "I will come back to turn out the lights when the timer tings". They asked whether they can read if they got into bed earlier than the fifteen minutes and I said "of course". Then I walked away.

The results couldn't have been more different! The girls were in bed quickly, and there was no more imploring for "one more minute" when I turned out the light. They have a digital clock in their room so when I say lights are out at 8:30, it is not that I am leaving them clueless - they have an easy way to check how they are doing with time. Somehow, the tick-tock of the kitchen timer coupled with the countdown effect seems to have been a better persuader.

The bigger question is what kind of technique do I need to invent to keep myself using this new found wisdom, and not regress back to nagging the kids!

Power of indirection

You would think that if past ten years of mothering experience would have taught me anything, it would be that children do not listen to their mother, and that if you want a child to do something the last thing you want to do is to straight-out ask them to do it. It has never worked, at least not with my children. And yet, that is the method I employ most - "Please pick your clothes off the floor", "No, no, no...do not stuff them under your bed", "The laundry hamper is right there!", "YOU KNOW WHAT I AM GOING TO DO - JUST THROW ALL THESE CLOTHES IN THE TRASH BECAUSE THAT IS HOW YOU TREAT THEM. WHY IS IT THAT I HAVE TO KEEP ASKING YOU THE SAME THING EVERYDAY!" As you can see that the only thing I achieve is convincing my children that their mother is a banshee.

This problem was magnified once summer break started. Being a a big believer in the power of unscheduled time, and having the luxury to work from home, I have let the girls roam free for most part except imposing restrictions on how much time they spend with electronic media. I, however, have basic expectations that they will brush their teeth and take a shower every day. I would also like them to practie their musical instruments daily. My only "educational" goal for this summer was to teach the girls to take care of themselves so that they don't grow up into adults whose beds are forever rumpled with clothes piled high on them, and whose normal method of storing their belongings is on various piles on the floor. I do believe that there is a 'baseline' to everything in life - what we think is 'normal'. Girls who grow up seeing their mother being abused often assume that certain amount of abuse is normal in a relationship. I hinted at this in my last post as well that girls who see their mothers doing all household chores automatically assume all household chores when they get married. I grew up in a house where all beds were made every morning. To this day, I cannot sleep in an unmade bed. Even on the rare occasion that I do not get around to making my bed in the morning, I make it just before getting into it which seems ridiculous but then most of our actions are controlled by our subconcious mind. Coming back to the point, my hope is that by the end of the summer break the girls will make their beds every morning, keep their room and bathroom neat and do their own laundry which also includes putting clothes away in their dressers.

These "chores" shouldn't take more than an hour during the day, and I and the girls had agreed on these. Yet, trying to get them to do them was driving me insane. I kept requesting and reminding them often, and driving myself insane in the process. I am firmly against giving children any kind of reward for doing their share for the family, so I did not have money as a motivator. Then I remembered a tool I had used years ago when I had initially started imposing restrictions on TV time. When the girls were preschoolers they were allowed an hour of TV time a day (That sounds a lot when I think about it now). That hour was represented by a circle, divided into 12 sections each representing 5 minutes. I drew this on a whiteboard attached to the fridge every morning. After the girls were done watching TV, even for a few minutes, we filled in the sections for the time used up. Whenever the girls wanted to watch TV, I would say "check the chart" and the chart would tell them whether they had used up their daily quota or not. This method worked beautifully because it wasn't I who was telling them not to watch TV, it was the chart. After a couple of weeks of frustration with the chores during the summer break, I remembered this, and started to make a "to-do" list on an index card for each girl. Every morning I handed them a checklist with items such as "brush teeth" and "make bed" on it and it was amazing how well they took to it. They enjoyed doing their jobs and checking off the items on their list. When we struggled with getting everything done a few days in a row, I asked them how we should solve the problem and they came up with a wonderful solution. The suggested that once the tasks were done to my satisfaction, I was to sign off on the list. If the list didn't get signed off one day, the following day the list had to be completely signed off before they would be allowed to watch TV. This seemed fair. It doesn't seem like a big change - instead of verbally telling them what to do, I give them a written list, but the outcome couldn't be more different. Wow!

Breaking the cycle

This past weekend my family found itself in the midst of a hands-on live nature display featuring snakes. We were encouraged to hold and handle the non-poisonous snakes. We thought this to be a great opportunity and all of us (one after a little encouragement) proceeded to hold and admire the snake. They were beautiful creatures, and feel very smooth and cool to touch. I took pictures of my daughters holding the snakes and posted them on Facebook, and the main theme of people's comments was about how brave my girls were. Bravery is a word I do not throw around carelessly, and given that the whole incident was rather matter of fact for us, I was surprised that handling snakes was considered that unusual. I know most women go eek at the sight of the smallest of creatures. I have always seen that as a conditioned response - we see other women in real life and in movies act like this so we automatically start behaving that way. Somebody has to break the cycle! I make a conscious effort to not freak out at the sight of a bug in front of my children - not that I am inclined to except at the sight of a certain centipede, but subconscious is a very strong thing. Now I have two girls who don't go eek and maybe the cycle will be broken.

Talking of cycles there is another one that I am trying to break. Growing up, my mother did all the household chores. Even us children were not expected to help, and although she complained sometimes she never asked for help. Consequently I grew up not knowing much about cooking or doing laundry. Strangely though, once I was married I took on all the housekeeping chores just as my mother had, and I know she was doing what her own mother had done. Having to do all these chores without knowing how to do them coupled with the responsibilities of a full-time job drove me right out of my mind. And yet it did not occur to me until recently that I should ensure that my daughters do not fall into the same trap i.e. not learning to take care of themselves and thinking that as the woman of the house they should do all the chores. The cycle must be broken! TO this end I am making an effort to ask for help and letting my husband do chores such as washing dishes, and have started expecting the girls to do their own laundry and keep their environs in order. Given how tedious it is to stay after kids asking them to pick up clothes off the floor and teaching them how to fold clothes and organize their drawers, I am not surprised that my mother did it all. I swear, I could get it all done faster and with much less aggravation if I did it myself, but I have to keep the long term goal in mind. Break the cycle!

Children are so inconvenient, at least in America.

I read an opinion piece about how a CNN story about little children in airplanes kicked off a storm of arguments in the comments area on the CNN website. That piece got me to another blog post, written by a woman who usually writes about her cats, but took a break to whine about how her already terrible flying experience was ruined by an ill-behaved child, and how she wanted to punch both the mother and the baby. I wasn't even done being horrified when the post ended and I was in comment-land, and all the comments lauded the post as 'funny' and completely agreed with the fact that parents of crying babies ought to be put in jail or something akin to that.

We can, of course, argue about whether it is possible to comfort a crying child hundred percent of the time. After all, babies do unpredictable things such as crying uncontrollably and pooping in their pants. We can also argue about whether a mother is 'bad', if she is paying more attention to her child, and is more concerned with keeping her child happy rather than some snarky stranger shooting her ugly looks. We can definitely talk about the sense of entitlement one must feel to be thinking that her cats are worth telling the whole world about yet declaring that little children ruin her flying experience in the cheapest section of the plane.

I do a lot of international flying, and even my children notice how much friendlier people in other countries are towards them. At foreign airports, the security personnel smile, even joke, with my children as we pass through security. Flight attendants in foreign airlines carry my bags if I am carrying a child and help the children with their carry-ons. En route, if my children are asleep during a meal service, the flight attendants offer, on their own, to pack away a meal for the sleeping child so that she has something to eat when she wakes up. When my toddler fidgets, I get fewer nasty looks from international passengers on a twelve hour trans-pacific flight, than I do from Americans in a two hour flight.

What I am reminded of, again, is how child-unfriendly America is. We have the fanciest of malls and department stores here, and yet you will not find a child-sized toilet or sink in them. Look through housekeeping magazines, filled with pages after pages of pictures of beautiful homes, but you will not see a child or even a place where a child could feel comfortable. Children and their possessions are completely isolated in the child's rooms and you can get lot of advice on how to keep the children and all their stuff perfectly ensconced in that one room, and how to make rest of the house your 'sanctuary'. More and more houses are designed with a 'split plan' - parents' bedrooms on the opposite side of the house as the children's bedrooms so that you can get as far away as you can from your children, while still being in the same house. Images of adults having a good time are completely devoid of children; the message, that for a family to have fun, parents and children must be separated is repeatedly broadcast in ads and other media images.

I hate to promote a commercial venture, but you just have to step into a foreign-designed IKEA store to have this starkly put in perspective - they have a childcare center, child-friendly bathrooms and meals, and they sell their sofas with pictures of children bouncing on them. I dare you to find even one American furniture seller's catalog with a child anywhere near the living room furniture. A dog, maybe, but no children. As if, children don't live in American living rooms. The side-affect of all this is that, subconsciously our feelings of what a home, a vacation or fun, should be gets altered and then our life becomes unfriendly to children too. At such times I like to remember something my friend passed on to me "remember you are raising a human being, not managing an inconvenience."

Feeding children

Now and then I read some book on feeding kids, or watch a movie such as Julie and Julia, and get completely inspired to introduce my family to new, interesting foods to only be reminded of the reason why I keep making the same five recipes again and again.

Food is a very cultural thing which, of course, is no new revelation, but I am always surprised by how much our food choices are shaped by the culture around us. Most children growing up in India, see images of Indian foods everywhere - in ads, in movies, pretty much anywhere food is displayed. Even the ads for Lays potato chips stress their spiciness. The children subliminally start associating an enjoyable meal with samosas and choley. They go to a wedding or a party, and see paneer and chicken masala as the main course, with gajar halwa for dessert, and that for them defines a feast. When I take my kids back to India, and they attend a feast, they refuse to eat anything there because it all looks alien. Of course, it is instantly assumed that one, I have raised completely Americanized kids who have not been taught anything about their heritage, and second that my children find the food too spicy. Both assumptions are wrong. The simple reason is that in my girls' minds a feast will forever be associated with a big roasted bird in the center of the table with mashed potatoes and gravy on the side, and not little pieces of vegetables and meat floating in a savory sauce. An excellent dessert is a pie not grated carrots cooked in milk. They watch their American cartoons, and ads and subconsciously absorb that a fun, tasty snack to drool over is not a Samosa but a big juice cheeseburger. Although, I cook Indian food almost daily, given the context of our lives even my kids sense that, this is not what most of their friends eat.

I am also reminded of reading the book "What to expect the first year", and how everything in it made complete sense when I initially read it. If you always feed your kids brown bread, they will love brown bread and find white bread tasteless. Of course! Two children, and ten years later I have acquired enough wisdom to know that just isn't true. Oh yes, I fed my kids brown bread for years and yet, the first time they tasted a PBJ sandwich made with white bread they exclaimed how delicious it was, and declared that is how they want their sandwich from now on.

This week, out of sheer frustration arising from packing the same Ham & Cheese sandwich for lunch everyday, I once again embarked on trying to introduce my girls to some different foods, that could also be lunch candidates. The first dish I made was Polenta squares. This had been rejected before but I decided to give it another try. They loved it, ate quite a few for snack and I happily packed it for lunch the next day with some marinara sauce and ranch. It was brought home uneaten. Sigh. Apparently it tasted good only when freshly made. I tried a few more things for the rest of the week and all were rejected, and as I stood there wondering aloud what to make for dinner my older one suggested "let's make lasagna. I know it is delicious". It is important to note that this child has never had lasagna before and I haven't made lasagna since she was born! I had lasagna noodles on hand, and I scraped together enough ingredients to make a spinach lasagna. It was a great success! Now this defies all explanation.

Twilight revisited

I have written about the creepy aspect of this book before, but there is another part that has been bothering me even more over time, especially because the book is targeted at teens. Twilight is once again a story romanticizing the "bad boy". Edward Cullen, the hero of the book is charming, handsome, controlling and really dangerous. He could just crush Bella, the heroin to death, if he wasn't careful. He is, of course a vampire, so there are other ways he can hurt Bella too. He stops himself from hurting his lady-love by sheer exercise of extreme self-control, because he loves her passionately and wouldn't dream of hurting her. We all know too well that in such relationships, either the self-control or the love eventually falls by the wayside and the girl gets hurt.

Young girls in their formative years, and I have seen 10-11 year olds reading this book, can really get caught up and admire the father-figurish Cullen who protects and controls Bella's life. The parents of these girls however need to talk to their daughters about the inherent dangers of such relationships in real life, and how the dangerous and controlling types might not be the best choice for a partner. Otherwise the Rhiannas of tomorrow will keep going out with Chris Browns because we keep glorifying the "bad boys" and say nothing about young women making bad choices.

Is reading good?

I recently finished reading the book Twilight, the first book in an extremely popular series about a romance between a vampire and a teenage girl. I hated the book. There is the usual problem systemic of the romance novel genre - weak plot and average writing. However, I also found the book quite disturbing. The vampire, although he looks like a teenager, is in fact almost 100 years old. His body hasn’t aged but his mind does have all that experience, and there he is – romancing this 17 year old girl. Not only that, he comes to her room to watch her sleep without her knowing this. To me this was not romantic, but quite creepy. This brings up two issues in my mind.

First is the concept of romance itself. I will admit that romance has never been my genre. In high school, a lot of girls used to read these romance novels, so I tried some too. Most of these were terrible. It is not that I am too cynical to believe in love or romance, I just don’t buy the version that these books try to peddle. I can enjoy books with love stories - I just require that they be well written with interesting and complex characters. Somebody once said that Women only love "love" i.e. women don’t fall in love with a person but with the fact that, that person loves them. That might explain the popularity of romance novels among women. But doesn’t that just continue to perpetrate the delusion?

The second issue is whether I would let my daughter read a book such as Twilight. I have often been presented with the argument that whatever gets a child to read is good enough. Parents of children who are on the internet all the time say “Well at least she is reading!”. But I wonder - does reading just for the sake of reading provide any value once we are beyond the stage of teaching a child how to read? Presumably a teenager knows how to read, so should her habit of reading romance novels be encouraged using the argument "at least she is reading”. Aren’t we forgetting why reading is glorified in the first place? Reading books is useful because it expands one’s horizons and encourages new ideas. That is why we want children to read. Do romance novels serve that purpose? To me it seems like they contract rather than expand the mind. So should we let children read anything, just because they are reading?

Pediatricians

Over the Thanksgiving break I met a young pediatrician at a friend's party. She was freshly out of her residency and into motherhood with an almost two year old daughter. Child rearing was the obvious topic of conversation. She shared that her daughter takes hours to go to bed and wakes up many times during the night. The doctor has all kinds of advice coming to her from older women in her family about what to feed the child, how to handle the sleep issue and how to treat common childhood ailments. I was stunned as to how clueless the young mother seemed about things such as discipline, sleeping etc. In fact, not much different from how I was with my first child but somehow I was expecting a pediatrician to be more aware. After all, aren't we always advised to consult our pediatrician when in doubt. I did receive very good and wise advice, and immense support from the first pediatrician I consulted for my babies. I still remember and use his wise words. Now that I think of it, all his advice wasn't really coming from his medical degree. It was the advice of a man who had spent 40 years of his life working with children and had seen it all. The medical degree did not give him the knowledge about child rearing, just the opportunity to be with many parents and children, and to learn from them.

This got me wondering if we should seek our pediatrician's advice on child-rearing matters, or consult them strictly for medical issues. What do you do?

Character and dignity

I came across this article and was reminded how much I admire dignity and character in a person. These are ephemeral qualities, hard to describe or measure, but easy to recognize. The question arises, can these qualities be cultivated? Can I do something now so that my children grow up to be dignified adults with character?

As suggested in the article, George Washington sought to change external habits to “shape inner morals”. Certain acts define graciousness or dignity, and a place to start would be to ensure my children always do them whether they want to or not; simple things such as greeting people, and saying proper goodbyes.

The other aspect of dignity is mysteriousness, or rather restraint in what personal information you reveal to others. In this age of Facebook, when all our friends are intent on telling us everything from what they ate for lunch to what Crayola Crayon they are, restraint seems like a much harder thing to teach kids to value. Add to that our pop-culture where the society is obsessed with the worst of people, and value of dignity becomes even harder to teach. After all, the people who acted insanely during the health-care reform town-hall meetings got to come on TV and express their opinions, whereas nobody noticed the people who asked reasonable questions.

The other problem the ubiquity of so called “real people”, with the help of TV and other media, creates the feeling that it is fine to behave in an undignified manner because others are doing it too. Milgram proved with his social experiments that people are capable of doing nasty things just because other people are doing them as well. The way current pop-culture is going, there are no good role models left for children. Maybe the thing to do is to actively cultivate friendship with the type of people that can be good role models for my kids. Then they can do what the “crowd” does.

As far as building character goes, a major contributing factor is hardship in childhood. In comfortable middle-class families like ours, hardship is hard to come by. What parent wants to deliberately put their kids through hardship? As a friend said, “it is crazy that you are worried about lack of lack”. The other ingredient for character seems to be strict discipline. Discipline is a hardship, in the sense that kids aren’t allowed to just do what they want. We parents however are overloaded with too much information about how to achieve discipline. Should the children be paid for doing chores? If punishing for bad behavior too negative, then isn’t rewarding for good behavior same as bribing? How much praise is too much?

What is a parent to do?

Survival of the Fittest

I just saw this video on YouTube, and it got me wondering why is it that we don’t see a lot of original art coming out of India. India has a large population and an ancient tradition of classical forms of art, and yet you have to really strain hard to think of original artists – A. R. Rahman, M. F. Hussein and that’s it! I cannot even imagine a performance like this in “India’s got talent”. India has a huge film and music industry, yet most of the films are rehashed and adapted Hollywood scripts. Fittingly, there is no award distinguishing between adapted and original screenplay in the Indian "Oscars". The music directors for these movies are too smart to plagiarize from popular songs from big artists so they look for “inspiration” in smaller markets such as Turkey and Thailand and lift music from there.

This brings me to an article I read today about how babies can very quickly internalize the concept of probability and discover new mechanisms, just by exploring. The article stresses, however, that this type of learning best happens when babies are given freedom to explore and experiment on their own. Most babies and young children in India do not get this freedom and I think this is what ends up in stilted creativity as they grow older.

Anybody growing up in a country as populous as India, has to compete for resources at every stage of life – nothing comes to those who wait. If you don’t push through, leave aside getting a seat on the bus; you will probably not even get on the bus. If you stick to driving in your lane and politely try to pass others, you probably won’t get anywhere. Unless you excel in school in some way, you will be starved for teacher’s attention. Unless you perform, and perform really well in school you will not have any kind of a career. This is the lesson you learn at every step – life is very competitive and it starts early. Even a small block party held in the neighborhood to celebrate a holiday will have some kind of competition for kids – poetry recitation, some sort of race etc. and only the winner gets a prize. Only success is rewarded and recognized; not perseverance, not hard work, not originality – only success. You do not have the freedom to fail, and learn from it. There are no second chances. To see how endemic this has become in the culture you only have to visit a “Chuck-E-Cheese” type game parlor. There you will see the store workers as well as parents helping each child to win as many tickets as possible so that they can get a big prize in the end. This is what brought it home for me finally as I had to keep telling surprised store workers to back off. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want them to help my child win big!

This is the reason that parents start teaching babies the alphabet, the multiplication tables and seek out academic programs by the time the kids are 3, to give them a heads up later. It is easy to find math and zoology classes for 4 year-olds in India! There is no room or time for exploration – learn your facts so that you can ace that interview for a good elementary school. If you don’t get there in the first try, you don’t have any more chances. And if you don’t get in a good school, your chances in life start dwindling right away. If you don’t do well in your 10th grade finals, you lose the chance to ever study math and science in the grades ahead. There is no room for and no appreciation for creativity, and definitely no time for discovering and indulging in your passions. Most kids spend 2-3 hours every day after school in classes to help them perform better at school. Only winning matters – and this is instilled early and often.

My intention is not to insult my roots, or the system that got me where I am today. But I do think it is time to take some pressure off the children because it seems to just keep growing. Mention this to any Indian and they will point out how Indians win math and science competitions world-wide, and thank you very much, but it is a great system. Why do Indian kids win spelling bees and geography bees – not because they are any smarter but because their parents grew up in a culture where winning competitions and memorizing facts are the tickets to success. Most Indians follow successful careers in the US, but do they ever follow their passion? Do they ever blaze a new trail in their field?

There is some upside for a system like India’s. Children learn early that you don’t get anything for just showing up, you have to perform. I have never seen kids cry at a competition in India because they didn’t win. In the US we seem to have the opposite problem where kids think themselves too entitled. I have had 8yo burst into tears at birthday parties here because they didn’t win musical chairs, and only got the basic “goody bag”, not the special prize. The American public education system has so much focus on leveling the playing field, and catering to the average that exceptional kids often feel left out, unappreciated and bored.

Is it even possible to create a perfect system?

Good and Great, and knowing the difference therein

As summer vacation rolls along friends have been sharing pictures of the past school year – preschool graduation, Kindergarten graduation, 5th grade graduation and so on. I have a continued sense of unease with such ceremonies.

It used to be that graduation was a special event marking the point in your life where you are finally on your own, with some accumulated skill and a degree to help you get a job, a symbolic leaving of the nest marking transition to adulthood and hence an event worth celebrating. Bigwigs come to lecture you about their wisdom and you listen in your funny hats and archaic gowns, feeling pride and an amazing sense of hope. Somebody somewhere decided to spread that around - why not make it special for everyone! And now I have to sit through a kindergarten graduation! By the time a child reaches college she has already been through a dozen so-called graduations with much pomp and ceremony, and the graduation from college means nothing. Yeah, the president is speaking but I am going to show up in my bikini! In the process of making little things special we have destroyed the importance of a truly special event. I am guilty of this too because by letting my kids ice cream whenever they want, I have robbed them of the childhood joy of going out for ice cream.

Even if my own child is in KG, the graduation ceremony at the end still means nothing to me. The kid has barely started and has not yet achieved anything. I am all for praising children and providing positive feedback, but I do say “great job” when a great job is done otherwise “good” will suffice. If I fawn over them with “great great” with every step they take, what am I going to say when they truly do something “great”?

Can good sense be taught?

I was recently watching this special report on CNBC about how we got into the current economic mess. The cause of the mess seems to be basic human flaws – greed, lack of judgment and jumping on the bandwagon. If Tom was making money flipping houses then, Jerry wanted to too. People knew they were making bad loans but they still continued to make them. A factory worker never stopped to think "can I really afford this house, ever?".

I felt this anxiety during the housing boom too – the prices are going up, we should buy soon. My husband, however, kept saying that the house prices are rising too fast and don’t make sense, and held off on buying a house then. And I used to think the best decision in life he made was by marrying me! I am really impressed by his judgment, skeptical mind and the fact that he never felt the need to do what everybody else was doing.

Now I wonder, if judgment can be taught? Can we take active steps now to teach our kids, and not just mouth the words but actually instill the fact, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Can we teach them that we don't have to keep up with anybody, and buy a fancier car just because our friends have one? Or is it just nature - some are born with it and some are not.

As festive as I wanna be

Each year I bemoan that Indian holidays come and go, without much fanfare. On Diwali, the stores are decorated with scary Halloween stuff, if anything, and there is no sign in the air that Diwali is even around the corner. Not being religious, we rarely go to the temple, consequently we are not very well connected with the local Indian community. As kids grow, I am afraid about losing traditions and they are indeed growing up very fast.

This year I went out and made an extra effort. I took half the day off on Diwali, and nagged my husband to hang lights on the house. I made mithai and festive food, decorated the house, got dressed up and ensured that the kids dressed up in new clothes, and lo and behold Diwali day felt quite festive to me! Over the weekend, we invited a few friends, had good food, danced, gambled a bit, and it felt even more festive. OK, so it took a lot of extra effort and I am still doing dishes from the party but it really felt like a holiday this year. My lesson in this very Gandhian - Self-reliance. My current environment isn't supporting it but with a little effort Hindu holidays can be as festive as I want them to be. I feel all aglow! I am sure you are wondering why it took me this long to figure something this simple out.

More Milestones

We achieved some more milestones

The girls no longer want me to read to them at bedtime. This wasn't a sudden move but rather started with one of them wanting to finish whatever she was reading earlier, instead of listening to what I was reading, and then slowly transitioned into both of them reading their own books. We still read together for half and hour before bed, but the difference is that we each read our own books. This day had to come but I feel a certain twinge of loss.

The girls are going to school on their own consistently. It has become matter-of-fact - a peck on my cheek, an airy "bye mom" and they ride off on their bikes. I no longer follow them five minutes later. Here again my instinct is to go with them but I think it is a necessary step in independence. I have to really hold myself back.

They are both finally sleeping through the night. Finally! One has always been a poor sleeper and we have tried to teach her good sleeping habits at various stages of life. Invariably she ended up in our bed at night which was fine until a couple of years ago. Now that they are older, our bed is not big enough to accommodate the whole family. If the kids came in bed, either I or my husband had to find another spot to sleep. We made another attempt to get the kids to stay in their beds and surprisingly not only did it work, it was a fairly painless process for all of us. Phew.