Economics behind safety

In some ways US is one of the most safety-conscious nations. I am now getting used to it but when I was new in this country and on a holiday people said to me "Have a safe holiday" as opposed to a "happy holiday" or a "fun holiday", I used to find it very strange. I have always felt that the safety thing is often overdone, and it has purely been driven by companies not wanting to get sued.

Thus it was with much interest and sense of "A-Ha" that I recently read a chapter of the book Freakonomics. The author states that most of the safety issues become a lot more prominent, and you find all kinds of seemingly non-commercial promotion of those issues, as soon as there is a product to sell that keeps us or our kids "safer." For example, only a nominal number of lives are saved by car seats. Kids are definitely more safer in the backseat, as opposed to riding in the front seat on somebody's lap but beyond that car seats don't save that many lives. On the other hand, a lot more kids die by drowning in home swimming pools. Now there is no safety product to save kids from drowning - what you need is a watchful adult. So you see states rushing to pass laws to require car seats and booster seats, but the issue of water safety hasn't gained any traction over the years. Just wait until a company has some kind of device to sell that can prevent kids from drowning, and all of a sudden it will become a big issue and legislators will be passing laws to require its use.

I am one of the parents who insists my kids use a booster seat in the car, now that they have outgrown their car seats. The usage of car seat has been so instilled in our heads by the "experts" and studies, of them, I am sure, financed by the car seat companies, that going without a car seat seems very very wrong. My 7 year old has been resisting her booster of late because she sees her classmates riding without them, in the front seat no less, and here she is being required to sit in a booster. After this article I have been thinking that maybe I can let her go without a booster. I don't think she is getting to ride in the front seat anytime soon, though, because as it happens having kids in the backseat does keep them safer.

Color coded holidays

Today is St. Patricks' day holiday and once again I am reminded of Americans' curious way of color-coding all holidays. I am guessing it is an American thing, because it seems to be too bizarre to be, say, European culture. Every American holiday has a color associated with it - Christmas is red and green, Hanukkah is Blue and Silver, St. Patrick's day is green, etc. You can tell what holiday is approaching just by looking at the color of decor in a shop window. It is as if the Bible gives specs for the HSV value of the exact green to be used because the Christmas green is very different from the the ST. Patrick's day green! I am a Hindu and given our pantheon of Gods, we can celebrate a holiday almost every week of the year if we like, so I understand holiday symbols and icons but I don't get the colors. I am guessing the color-schemes were introduced and promoted by the marketplace to induce people to change their home decor and such with each approaching holiday, and sell more products as a result, but it is even more curious how whole-heartedly the colors have been embraced by everyone. It could be that because most American have long been removed from the native culture these holidays originated in, they do need specific colors and icons to celebrate the holiday. Just as unable to be completely submerged in the Diwali atmosphere, I chooses a few icons and rituals to celebrate it. To my kids Diwali probably means nothing more than those few icons, and will eventually celebrate Hindu holidays in the same way signified only by a certain color, food or icon.

Cuteness

My hope for my girls is that they can go beyond physical appearance, and focus on something deeper. To that end I consciously make an effort to not talk about appearance, or about whether they are looking "cute". The media does enough to focus on appearance as it is.

However, I do want my girls to look nice - clean faces, neat hair and occasion-appropriate, clean, unfaded, somewhat coordinated, clothes. You know, the basics. If I am going out I do brush my hair and apply lipstick, but I never did that in front of the kids or drew their attention to it. Most days I just let them wear whatever they want.

Unfortunately this has backfired in the sense that my kids have no sense of appearance. As a mother I think it is my responsibility to teach them about grooming, but I am still not sure how best to approach it.

A few days ago we were going for dinner to a friend's house, I asked the kids to get dressed and one of mine shows up in her favorite faded sweatpants that she has grown out of so they ride up her ankles, hair sort of brushed but definitely needing pinning or something because she is growing out her bangs, and I knew in a few minutes she is going to have hair all over her face. The second one has a bit more clothing sense but what she was wearing was way too dressy, and also made her sister look even worse. sigh.

So finally I broke down and addresses the "cuteness" question. The girls put up a fight when asked to change, and I ended up saying "Don't you guys want to look cute!" There goes my whole not-focus-on-looks plan out the door. I reasoned some more "Don't I let you do whatever you want with your hair and clothes most days? When we are going out you have to wear what I say. I know much more about looking nice as I have been in the world for many more years than you." Then through many more arguments, negotiations and tears I managed to get the girls looking, I hate to say it, cute, and we finally arrived at the dinner party an hour late.

Later in the week I helped the kids pick out a few "going-out" outfits and had them put those separate from rest of the clothes, and off-limits for school. I also made the rule that when going out they have to take my advice - I give them a couple of choices and that is what they wear. Same goes for hair. They still put up a fight, but at least they look nice when we go out.

Since then we have had more talks about how people judge you on your appearance, and how that is not right but that is how the world is etc. All this doesn't sit right with me though, and I am still wondering if I could have handled this any differently.

Dinner conversation

Here are some recent dinner conversation at our house

DD 2: Where do babies come from?
Me: From mom's tummy.
DD 2: I know, but how do they come out of mom's tummy?
So I tell her where they come out from and her eyes widen in shock and amazement and then she responds..
DD 2: Can I choose to have my babies come out of my mouth instead?


Another day. We are eating pork chops, broccoli and pasta for dinner. The older one has just read a book with some stories about cats.
DD 1: I can't believe cats eat birds, the intestines and all the bird droppings in it. ew disgusting!
DD 2 (putting a piece of pork in her mouth and trying to say something to match the above statement): I can't believe we are eating something that came from a chicken. ew disgusting!
DD 1: From pigs, silly, pigs!
DD 2 (eyes wide in amazements) : What? Broccoli comes form pigs?!

I have imposed strict fines (deducted from their daily quota of screen-time) for infractions in table manners, also a reward if they can finish their meal with decent manners, so we have much less wriggling and jumping out of chairs every few minutes to fetch another spoon, and much more interesting conversations at dinner these days. Not sure if the above are appropriate for a meal-time but I'll take these over whining about food any day.

Disappointments

I was at child's birthday party and it was pretty standard. There were party games, some kid won but all kids got prizes so nobody got to feel special and nobody got hurt. In a way it is good that we are not instilling this winning and losing streak in little kids. I grew up in an ultra-competitive environment and I don't think that was healthy at all.

On the other hand I think that this "everybody wins" attitude is setting up our kids to never learn how to handle disappointment. As parents we need to teach our kids that bad things happen, we feel hurt but that is not the end of the world and life goes on. In real life, somebody, in fact, wins and somebody loses, and kids can learn that in birthday party games where the stakes are low, and the hurt small. Unless they go through little disappointments, they will never know how to handle them and also that this is a part of life.

Yesterday we got my daughter's favorite meal - McDonald's. After we got home we realized that a mistake was made in the order - not only did she not get a "girl" toy, they gave her the wrong food. She, of course, collapsed at the table crying and my first instinct was to say "let's go back and get this order sorted out." It wouldn't have been a big deal as we had no other plans that evening and not far to drive. Then I thought maybe here is a lesson to be learned - in checking your order and in learning to "make do". She cried, and that was very sad, but then she recovered and it wasn't so bad after all. Tough love, huh!

I hate CNN

I don't watch TV and don't subscribe to newspapers preferring to get all my news online. Everyday I visit the websites of BBC news, New York times and CNN to see what is going on in the world. CNN's headlines are always about kids dying or being abused or being thrown of a bridge or something equally ghastly. It is horrible. At this very moment the headline at BBC is about a top al-Qaeda militant being killed and what is CNN leading with - Britney Spears' hospitalization! Oh I hate CNN. Wonder what people who watch CNN On TV think.

Gifts

Gift-giving and receiving is something that has been on my mind lately. For one, Christmas was not in so recent past and and secondly, my kids' birthdays are around the corner. It really irks me these days that people ask everybody, even little kids, what they want for a present. The kids describe what they want, down to the exact model and brand name and then get that exact thing for a present and everybody is happy. No awkward moments when a present is opened and we don't have to teach the kids about being gracious. Quick fix, instant gratification and life-lessons be damned. My kids are no exception. They believe that they have the right to tell everybody what they want and they will get it. It has now started bothering me enough to do something about it if all I am doing is ranting on my blog!

Presents are a privilege and not an entitlement. They are completely the gift-giver's prerogative. It, of course, behooves the gift-giver to put some thought into the matter and maybe try to know the receiver a little better. I think questions such as "what your interests are" are alright but that is where it should stop. By buying them the exact thing they want we adults deprive ourselves of an opportunity to broaden our kids' horizons, to show them something beyond their narrow field of vision. One of the best gifts my daughter ever received was a subscription to the Ladybug magazine. She did not even know the thing existed, and was disappointed when she saw that present because all she seemingly got was a card that said that she will be getting a magazine in the mail. That was three years ago. She still remembers that the subscription was a gift and looks forward to the magazine every month. Now that is what gift-giving is about. Why are we forgetting this and letting our kids hand us a shopping list before every Christmas and birthday. It doesn't smell right.