Chess dad Grady Dunn of Norfolk, Va., attends sessions at the Norfolk Initiative for Chess Excellence (NICE) where he focuses on positive parent coaching tactics with his daughters Gianna, 8, facing the camera, and Pria,10. (Lisa Suhay)
Parenting a chess player may be harder than playing the game
This weekend at Super Nationals in Nashville, Tenn., the biggest event of the year for scholastic chess competitors, parents there will be offered something that’s never been discussed at the event before: how to be good sport parents and coaches. The free seminar will not only address the ins and outs of raising a good competitor, but also how to choose a coach that’s best for your child.
Super Nationals, a quadrennial event like the Olympics, will host more than 5,000 kids from 47 states plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, coming from a total of 1,541 schools, according to Robert McLellan, a spokesman for the US Chess Federation based in Nashville. Those children will attend with either an anxiety-ridden parent or professional chess coach by their side.
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Even Alexandra Kosteniuk, the 12th Women’s World Chess Champion who herself began a chess career at age 5 admits that parenting her daughter Francesca, 6, through the process is very daunting.
“It’s a rollercoaster to see her play,” Ms. Kosteniuk said during a phone conversation from Nashville as she prepared her little girl to compete in what will be the child’s first Super Nationals. “It’s very hard for me to stop myself, not to intervene because at that age children don’t always play pieces correctly or remember all the rules.”
I now have this wonderful mental picture of the absolutely runway model-worthy Women’s World Champion pacing a few yards away from the tables, destroying her manicure, much in the way I do when one of my own sons compete at anything.
That makes me feel better as a sport parent because it tells me that becoming a parent levels the playing field between the famous and the average sport parent. Technically, chess is classified as a sport, covered by ESPN, and subject to the same kind of governance as other sporting bodies because it’s played in teams. Chess has coaches both good and atrocious, too.
The Chess in the Olympics Campaign says that there are at least 605 to 700 million people worldwide who play chess — that's more than the entire population of US, Russia, Mexico, and Japan combined, or 8.6 percent of all humans inhabiting the Earth. There are 8 million registered chess players representing over 160 countries. On the Internet, there are as many as 200 million people playing chess.
The thing that’s really important with chess is not the trophy but the win-win educationally for a child.
“I run a school in Russian and I can say without hesitation that you take a child, any child, and teach them chess and I promise you one year later this is a completely different child in many ways,” Kosteniuk says. “You see a child learn critical thinking, better overall life judgments, and confidence. It is that prize we should want as parents for our children most of all.”
Speaking of what sports parents want, Chess parents are just as notorious for outbursts as those in soccer, Pee Wee football, and any other sports where the worst in us emerges as the parental protective mechanism kicks in and merges with the thrill of battle haze.
“In seven years of Super Nationals we have had three physical fights break out,” says Bill Hall, executive director of the US Chess Federation. Only one was between children, the others were parent on parent. “Sometimes parents live a bit vicariously through children, and of course there’s a certain level of emotion when someone is talking about your child. Parents reach a heightened emotional state, to say the least.”
Mr. Hall himself was a chess player and is the parent of players as well and said he’s very glad to see the seminar that’s being given for the first time in the event’s history by Daniel Rensch of Tonto Village, Ariz. Mr. Rensch is a parent, former Individual National Scholastic Chess Champion twice over, and creator of the world’s most highly trafficked chess websites: ChessKid.com and Chess.com. According to Rensch, “ChessKid.com has just shy of 7 million members and is ranked No. 1 in the world for traffic by Google and Wikipedia.”
“I am going to talk about the importance of focusing on the student and getting results versus being results-oriented,” he explains of his seminar approach. “In chess it’s common for a child’s coach to be their parent, but whether you are the coach or are choosing one, you’re looking for the same basic approach.”
The same theme emerges when speaking with Kosteniuk, Hall, and Rensch, and that is that a child needs a coach who doesn’t tear the child down emotionally, berate, verbally, and in so doing kill their confidence and passion for the game.
“Choose a coach or choose to be the coach who finds tools that make a great player,” Rensch says. “Don’t focus on game results because we can’t change results.”
Rensch offers chess parents and coaches the same basic points:
- No more “Winning is everything” because it isn’t.
- Don’t replay a lost game immediately afterward or at the tournament.
- No critical growth teaching while a child/player is in an emotionally charged state. It may be taken as criticism even if it isn’t intended that way.
- Do focus on making sure the child has eaten, rested and is focused.
When it comes to tips on choosing the best chess coach for your child, Rensch’s rule of thumb is: For players with a rating under 1,300 or 1,400, find someone who will simply stimulate a child’s love of the game. For higher ranked players he says it’s a harder call, “There are people who know the game and people who can teach the game. Finding one who can teach chess can be difficult.”
Hall adds, “I recommend you go and observe a coach teaching a child who is relatively the same age and level as you child. See the interaction for yourself because ultimately, you will know who you feel good about for your child.”
Ultimately, Rensh says parents should review the relationship between child and any sports coach via regular discussions between parent and child about how that coach makes them feel.
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“If you start early and get your child into the habit of talking regularly about the coach and how they feel then as they get older it will become natural for the child to share feelings and concerns with you,” Rensch says.
So when you’re out there in the chess field the moral is play nice and your kids will too. It’s not about us, but them — and no matter who we hire to coach them in a game, we are their life coaches leading by example.
Citizen scientists and professional astronomer team up for a night of stargazing during the weeklong Winter Star Party in the Florida Keys in February. Citizen astronomers have always helped chart the night sky alongside the professionals. (Rob O'Neal/Associated Press)
Citizen science: How families can contribute to real science
What do early radar images of hurricanes, handwritten ship logs, and backyard rain gauges all have in common? More than you might think.
Each of these types of meteorological records represents one small piece of our global climate history. They all hold clues as to how our climate might be (or might not be) changing. And each one offers an opportunity for average citizens of all ages to make meaningful contributions to science.
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For many kids, science class means slogging through textbooks, memorizing the discoveries of others, and performing pretested experiments that come with preconceived answers. On the other hand, citizen science projects can offer kids the chance to not just study science but also actually participate in and make a real contribution to science outside the constraints of the classroom.
Citizen science is certainly not new. The Audubon Society has called on amateur birders to conduct its annual Christmas Bird Count since 1900. For centuries, backyard astronomers have recorded their observations of the night sky, helping astronomers map the galaxy.
Today, many scientists are calling on everyday citizens to help understand the scientific issue of the century, global climate change.
When trying to develop a solid picture of the current climate, climatologists have to look at not just large weather patterns, but at individual microclimates. As the old saying goes, “Rain doesn’t fall the same on all.” Farmers and skiers can testify that hail and snow do not either. Piecing together detailed precipitation maps takes an extensive array of data, far beyond the existing weather monitoring infrastructure. So, rain networks around the country have turned to everyday citizens, families, and classrooms to collect and report rainfall measurements.
The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, (CoCoRaHS) coordinates local volunteer groups in every state and parts of Canada with sponsorship from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
CoCoRaHS participants commit to spending a few minutes each day recording measurements taken from rain gauges, or plastic cylinders used for measuring inches of rainfall, placed outside their homes. Volunteers later upload their data to the CoCoRaHS website. The tasks are simple enough that even children can participate with minimal adult assistance.
In the process, kids get practical experience that reinforces several concepts taught in science class, including taking precise volumetric measurements, following consistent protocols, and organizing data.
Unraveling climate change requires not just an understanding of what is happening right now, but also of historic climate data. Fortunately, citizen scientists have collected weather statistics for centuries. However, much of that information must first be teased out of some unlikely places.
Researchers at Boston University recently plotted observations made in flower journals by Henry David Thoreau, the famed existentialist writer, philosopher, and naturalist, against temperature records to reveal the correlation between the onset of spring and bloom time. The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal PLOS One earlier this year.
Not all of these kinds of records are as manageable.
The British Royal Navy holds extensive daily records that date back to the middle of the 19th century. These detailed logs include wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure, and wave height around the world and across two centuries. Researchers at OldWeather.org have acquired millions of pages of handwritten logs and need help processing them.
This data holds valuable information about oceanic and arctic weather patterns. However, before climatologists can properly analyze these records, someone has to transcribe them into a digital format that computer modeling programs can read.
That’s where everyday citizen scientists can help.
Volunteers can sign up with OldWeather.org and pour through scanned images of ship logs. Since the site’s initial launch in 2010, citizen scientists have helped to transcribe over 20,000 log pages, an impressive number but still only 14 percent of the pages waiting to be recorded.
To help break up the tedium of data transcription, OldWeather.org has made the project something of a game. Volunteers can join a specific vessel, focusing on logs from a particular journey. Volunteers sign on at the rank of cadet. As they complete additional pages, they earn promotions. The volunteer who completes the most pages for that vessel becomes the captain of the ship. Those who continue with the project consistently soon find additional rewards hidden within the logs.
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Sailors recorded much more than weather data in these log books. As volunteers sift through several pages, stories begin to emerge. Some logs detail the effects of the Spanish flu. Others talk about new pathways opening up in the Arctic as ice formations changed. Many detail happenings of the ship’s daily life, from reprimands for drunken sailors, to the tragic loss of a ship’s chocolate stores that were swept overboard. For kids and adults, these kind of stories help bring history to life.
These are just a couple of the many projects searching for citizen scientists. Meteorologists at the Cyclone Center need volunteers to help classify early infrared and satellite images of hurricanes in order to help understand if current storms are more intense than historic storms. Biologists at Nature’s Notebook need amateur naturalists to submit observations of phonological data, such as first leaf out, bloom time, bird migration, and insect emergence. Many more projects can be found on the Citizen Science Alliance website.
Mike Rice, Rutgers men's basketball coach, was fired today by athletic director Tim Pernetti after ESPN released a video documenting Mr. Rice's abusive coaching habits that went viral. Parents of small children to college aged young adults need to be weary of coaches who, like Rice, gain control through violenc (Rich Schultz/Associated Press)
Mike Rice fired by Rutgers, Pernetti: Parents, tell kids what bad coaching is
When Rutgers men's basketball coach Mike Rice made the decision to be a violent, verbally abusive bully to his players, he got fired and in doing so blew a big hole in the wall of coaching to let some badly needed sunshine in on behavior our kids think they need to suffer in silence. Parents are ready to put coaches in the same glass housing we keep our teachers in and by doing so, make them stop throwing stones at our kids.
ESPN released a now viral video showing Mr. Rice at practice throwing one Class-A tantrum after another: shoving, grabbing, and kicking players, hurling balls at their heads, using profanity, and demeaning players’ sexuality with homophobic slurs.
At first, according to ESPN, Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti suspended the coach for three games and fined him $50,000 after he first saw the video in November. He said he chose suspension rather than termination even though both options were on the table. Today the coach was fired and others in the profession are openly tagging the coach as a bully.
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Eric Murdock, who worked with Rice told ESPN, "What this guy did the last two years is criminal -- it was criminal." During the two years he worked for Rice, Murdock said he and the assistant coaches repeatedly urged the coach to try to control his anger with players. "Bullying players made him feel better," Murdock said. "If he made a kid feel miserable, he was able to sleep at night better, even though the kid is going the other way and he's not going to be as productive.… He has real anger-management issues. He can't control his temper.… I can't believe that anywhere else in the country it is worse than this -- it's the absolute worst."
Rice reminded parents that coaches should be viewed through the lens of teachers and limited in their actions in the exact same way. Since we don’t stop being parents when our kids turn 18, we should not stop being outraged and taking action when an influencer like Rice teaches them to be bullies in sport.
I say this as a sport parent whose son, 19, is on the varsity crew team at Virginia Commonwealth University with some great coaches. He works like a man possessed to be an asset to his team because they are his “second family.” He knows the difference between a coach barking orders, a harsh criticism on his time or stroke versus bullying and physical abuse. The reason he knows these differences is because we have been through other sports, like swimming and soccer, where coaches took to bullying players and we took to another sport when the behavior remained unchecked.
Apparently we were not alone in our bully coach experiences, as Steve Horan, a girls’ basketball coach of 20 years and founder of The Sports Parent Network in Richmond, Va., told me in a phone interview this morning.
Mr. Horan had just seen the Rice video 45 minutes before my call and said that he was horrified but not surprised at all by the coach’s behavior.
“Coaches in our schools and at the college level get away with doing things to our kids inside the locker room and on the court that no teacher would ever be allowed to get away with,” Horan says. “It’s clearly a bullying relationship, physical and emotional abuse. A teacher would be fired. In the professional environment, you would be sued for behavior like that in the workplace.”
Horan ultimately believes in forgiving a coach's sins, but only when they come with something more than a hand slap like Rice's suspension. He agrees with Pernetti’s decision to fire Rice.
“We need a paradigm shift in coaching in our schools across the board need to re-examine how they choose and evaluate their coaching staffs,” Horan explains. “We need teaching and coaching programs for coaches. We have a lot of coaches who are just not emotionally equipped to handle their competition anger.”
Looking at Rice, I see someone who cannot distinguish between what it takes to lead a team versus the need to feel as if he is in control of the players.
Horan has a guideline for making that determination and it’s the TLC Rule. In Horan’s case TLC does not mean “Tender Loving Care” but “Teach, Lead, and Compete.”
“If we are teaching life lessons through sport, then as coaches we must stop and look at the bullying relationships we are creating with players and what lesson or message that is sending to everyone not only on the team but out in the stands,” Horan explains.\
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Tell your young athlete this: A verbal push is fair game, but character assassination is a deal breaker. No coach or teacher has the right to verbally attack a player’s: character, sexuality, appearance, race, religion, nationality, or physical appearance (i.e. mocking unalterable features like a birthmark, not physical fitness level).
“Also, anything physical, hitting, kicking etc., is completely out of the question,” Horan says. “No way is a coach ever to lay hands on an athlete in either an abusive or sexual way. No way. Never.”
We didn’t stop being parents the day our kids turned 18, and anyone at a college or university sport program who tells us to shut up because our kids are now legally grown-ups is making a bad call. When our kids are out of college and in the “real world” we can stop calling plays, take that step off the field and just cheer them on.
Maria Sibylla Merian illustration of a rose. Ms. Merian was a notable illustrator of insects and plants. She took her two daughters along with her into nature and hooked them onto her unique mix of art and science. (Wiki Commons)
Maria Sibylla Merian: Inspired her love of nature and art in her daughters
The life of Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th century German-born naturalist, entomologist, botanical illustrator, and divorced mother of two, paints a vivid picture for today’s parents on how to get kids into science using art. Ms. Merian, the subject of today’s Google Doodle, makes the process of engaging kids in science as simple as stopping to sketch the roses, and the aphids as well.
Today we call involving children in science via art a STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Math) program. Merian was probably the very first STEAM-powered parent and others in her field today still emulate her parenting as well as artistic and scientific techniques.
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“What made her work unique and important is that she not only illustrated the plants, but the insects as well,” says Wendy Hollender, who once headed up the New York Botanical Gardens’ Botanical Art Program and still teaches there. “Technically her [Merian’s] work was beautiful, but more important, she was really the first to include the insects and their relationship to the plants.”
Born April 2, 1647 in Frankfurt to a family of Swiss heritage, she was encouraged by her stepfather to take up the genteel art of painting. However, in 1660 she began to paint images of insects and plants from specimens she had captured. She kept specimens and studied their life cycles becoming one of the first archivists of the natural world. She did not quietly sit and paint pretty pictures as was expected of a woman in her era, but rather turned painting into a passion that paid the bills and served to educate her and her daughters.
After getting married and later divorced from Johann Andreas Graff, according to the J. Paul Getty Museum website, Merian continued to paint and teach painting. The Getty site states, “By 1686 Merian had left her husband and moved with her two daughters and elderly mother to a religious community north of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.”
As a mother, Merian brought her daughters Johanna Helena and Dorothea Maria into science via art, taking them out to her garden to collect specimens for study and as subjects for their art. Eventually their collective work was displayed at The Getty under the heading, “Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science.”
“Enterprising and adventurous, these women raised the artistic standards of natural history illustration and helped transform the field of entomology, the study of insects,” says the Getty website.
I love the fact that this woman back in the 17th century altered the image of women who fainted at the sight of a spider, redrew the boundaries for her children, and continues to inspire moms to do the same things with kids today.
Years ago, my mother-in-law, an artist and fan of Merian’s work, gave me the book “Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots,” by Sharon Lovejoy to encourage me to share my passion for gardening and botany with my boys. She included sketch pads and charcoal pencils with the gift.
Our perennial family favorite is to grow moonflowers and on summer nights to draw the blooms and, more importantly, the hummingbird-size moths that come out to feed on the nectar in the moonlight.
Hollender, recalls her own uphill battle as a mom trying to replicate Merian’s parenting success by trying to get her son and daughter, now in their late 20s, interested in botanical art. “I took them out on nature hikes, collecting flowers, and we all drew them afterwards," Hollander recalls. Now her daughter, Abby Goldfarb, teaches gardening and farming in an elementary school in New Mexico in a program funded by Americorps. Her son Jesse Goldfarb works for One Acre Fund in Rwanda.
Her parenting achievements, Hollender says, had roots in her role model, Maria Sibylla Merian. “In the end everything we did together actually did get them into careers in science, art, and botany in one form or another,” Hollender adds.
Despite the advent of high resolution photography, the skill of the botanical artist is in high demand, according to Hollender who just surpassed her Kickstarter goal of $25,000 to put out a volume on foraging and feasting: a field guide to natural food, with a final sum raised of $115,026.
Hollender says the details Merian pioneered in her work, like detailing how a leaf attached to its stem, became standards relied upon by those trying to correctly identify plants.
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“What that told us was that when people need to identify a plant, they would much rather turn to a detailed and architecturally correct drawing than a photograph,” Hollender explained.
What the story of Merian and her daughters tells me is that with April showers come May flowers and all the bloom-seeking bugs that can bring modern parents back in time to an old school way of connecting our kids to a STEAMy future.
Heidi Klum saves drowning son: The supermodel saved her son from a riptide on vacation in Hawaii and, in doing so, set the bar impossibly high for other parents just trying to be good to their kids. But hey, being good to your kids is good enough. March 2013. (Chris Pizzello, Invision/Associated Press)
Heidi Klum saves drowning son: Supermodel supermom vs. the good enough mother (+video)
As parents we strive to be great at the job, but seeing a flawless, sun bronzed Heidi Klum wade into the surf in a bikini and save her son, plus two nannies from a riptide would give David Hasselhoff an inferiority complex. How often do we believe we need to be supermodel supermoms and is being a good mother ever good enough?
Heidi Klum and her family were on vacation in Oahu, Hawaii, Sunday when her oldest son Henry, 7, was caught in a dangerous riptide, as were two of his nannies, reports Entertainment Tonight.
The photos are a cross between a dramatic Disney movie moment and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
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Vundermom just made lifting a bus off your kid — via hysterical strength (that supposed superhuman strength rush parents get when offspring are in mortal peril) — passé by lifting an ocean off her child.
"We got pulled into the ocean by a big wave. Of course, as a mother, I was very scared for my child and everyone else in the water,” Ms. Klum told ET. “Henry is a strong swimmer and was able to swim back to land. We were able to get everyone out safely."
I love it. It’s the most inspiring story of the day, but then I had a look in the mirror, at the unfolded pile of laundry and the fact that last time I took the kids to the beach I ended up in the hospital after being hit by a longboard.
I was able to find some solace in little paperback I’ve been reading called “Good Enough Mothering,” by Elaine Heffner, a psychotherapist and parent educator in New York City and senior lecturer of education in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her blog is full of answers.
“I see mothers trying to be perfect. ‘Good enough’ doesn’t feel good enough. How did that happen?” Heffner writes. “Perhaps, deep down inside we all wish life could have been perfect for us as children, and so we are too ready to agree with our children that we should be able to make life perfect for them. But we can’t — and that makes us feel guilty.”
I am pretty certain that the day I first became a parent, along with those magical mommy instincts that hit my system like a freight train, came a bigger freight train, loaded with guilt.
“Feeling guilty seems to be a normal condition of motherhood. So let me assure you that feeling guilty does not mean you are guilty,” Heffner writes. “Those feelings do not mean you are not doing a good enough job.”
I wish I could have gotten this woman on the phone because I suspect I could talk to her all day. I know I’m gonna have to sit down and finish her book.
Although, I admit, seeing all the books out there on how to do what’s “right” as a parent can make us feel like the ways to do something “wrong” have us beaten before we start.
I think that Klum and I actually have a lot in common, none of it in the bikini department. We both adore our children and want the best for them. OK, her best is Oahu and mine is the lawn sprinkler, but I would battle the most savage hose leak to save my son.
Being a great parent isn’t about how you look while saving your child, or even your ability to do so, but the fact that you would, without hesitation, do all you were able to make that save. Sometimes our “all” entails watching our child like a hawk and shouting for the Baywatch look-alike to run into the riptide.
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I’m fine with that because ultimately parenting is not at all about me, or how I feel about it. Parenting, good parenting, is about raising a child who feels loved, safe, provided for to the best of our ability, and is educated.
A perfect example of a parent with nothing at all tangible to give is the mother of Chess Phenom Phiona Mutesi who is raising her kids in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, with no running water or electricity.
She is an amazing mom because she is doing all she can for her kids. While her daughter walks three miles to school daily with her few books in a blue plastic bag and has missed years of primary school education due to lack of money, this is still a great mom. Why? Because this mom, despite all odds against her, has continued to give her kids hope and spiritual support — and she has fed their ambitions.
Let us not praise our children, at least, not all the time for every little thing and especially when it's not appropriate, says Judy Bolton-Fasman. (Photo from 'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men' by James Agee.) (Walker Evans/Wiki commons)
Let us not praise our children: Well-intentioned puffery won't boost school success
My name is Judy and I am a praise junkie. That is, I blanket my children with lavish compliments like, “You are the smartest, you are the best, you are second to none.” It turns out that I haven’t been doing my kids any favors with these endearments. In fact, there’s a raft of research over the past couple of decades that shows that unfocused praising of children puts a significant dent in their self-esteem.
Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, has been at the vanguard of studies about kids and praise. Dweck’s research grew out of a pattern that has been tracked for over 20 years — gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) were very unsure of their academic abilities. This perceived lack of competence caused them to lower their standards for success and to underestimate the importance of putting in effort towards a goal.
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But I’m not the only parent out there praising away. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s crucial to tell their kids how smart they are. My highly unscientific poll puts the number of fellow parental praise junkies out there at closer to 100 percent.
Why the constant praising and what do we do about it? I suppose we praise to reassure our kids and ourselves that they are not only wonderful, but also resilient — able to handle any challenge that comes their way. But in truth constant assurance has the opposite effect. The proof is on the ground. Ten years ago Dweck sent four research assistants into fifth-grade classrooms throughout New York City. The assistants administered a series of puzzles to two control groups randomly divided. The children in one group were praised for their intelligence as in “You must be smart at this.” The other group was lauded for their efforts as in, “You must have worked really hard.”
In the next round, the two groups were asked to choose between a difficult or easy test. The results were astounding. Ninety percent of the children who were praised for their efforts chose the harder test. The majority of kids praised for their intelligence chose the easier test. Commending a kid for his intelligence not only made him shy away from exerting effort, it also made him risk-averse.
The phenomenon of praising a child too often goes back to the 1969 publication of thePsychology of Self-Esteem. That landmark book asserted that high self-esteem was essential to a person’s well being. The notion trickled down to our kids; criticism was out and praise, even if it was undeserved, was now in vogue. I can remember soccer games that my children played when they were little where goals were not counted and every kid got a trophy. I was thrilled for my children, but was I and the other well-meaning adults around them doing the right thing by eliminating competition?
Dweck doesn’t think so. Her research has uncovered that high self-esteem is not necessarily connected to good grades or career success. It doesn’t reduce alcohol abuse or reduce violence. But Dweck isn’t advocating to jettison praise altogether. She found that fine-tuning praise, so that it’s specific and sincere, was very effective. To that end, her research further demonstrated that kids over 12 were suspicious of general praise from a teacher and took it as a sign that they weren’t doing well in class.
Fear of failure is another conundrum that results from overpraising. A well-meaning parent may gloss over a child’s failure by encouraging her to do better next time. The subtext of that message is that failure is so unacceptable it can’t be acknowledged. A lot of the psychology literature shows that responding to failure by trying harder instead of walking away from it suggests that there is more than willpower at work. Encouraging a child to do better next time can rewire a brain to respond more positively to failure. And a brain that learns to try harder instead of giving up is not as dependent on instant gratification. Nothing will short circuit the brain’s response to failure faster than frequent rewards—it’s a sure fire way to set up a kid’s brain for an actual addiction to constant incentives.
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So what have I done about my own praise addiction? It seems to be less toxic than I thought. My praise and criticism of my children’s performances in school has always been nuanced. But yes, in the long run I think almost everything they do is great. For example, the other day Anna asked me what I thought of an article she wrote for her college newspaper. I told her what I specifically liked about the piece. But I’m not completely cured. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she forgot to insert a couple of commas.
Joan Rivers, left, and her daughter Melissa Rivers in New York. Ms. Rivers' humor oftentimes comes at another's expense. How are kids supposed to pick up the subtle differences between a barb and a tease? (Dan Hallman/Associated Press)
Joan Rivers and April Fools: Teach your kids the difference between funny and hurtful
Society encourages wicked little untruths to make fools of others on April Fools' Day for the sake of a laugh, but attacks comedian Joan Rivers for telling the unvarnished truth and hurting the feelings of wealthy public figures. Today is a good day to take a moment to examine the mixed messages we send children about truth, it’s temporary suspension, and when jokes go too far.
This is the day, April Fools' Day, when little kids try to pass off Cheerios as “Donut Seeds” and foolish employees lose their jobs because they thought it hilarious to advertise the boss’ job in the local newspaper. It’s what I like to call Judgment Day, as in good or bad, your judgment is put to the test. It’s also an important day to fine tune parenting on truth, lies, and what’s not funny and why.
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For Ms. Rivers, and comedians in general, Judgment Day is every day because they judge the world and their remarks either make us laugh, or want to throttle them. Dealing with very young kids isn’t so very different from working with comedians because kids are straight shooters and hilarity often is the result.
I recently stumbled across three vital questions, first asked by comedian Craig Ferguson, that I now ask myself regularly in order to keep out of trouble. I keep a printed copy taped beside my computer, by the phone, and on the white board in the kitchen. Yes, I need it that much and so do my kids.
It reads:
Does this need to be said?
Does this need to be said by me?
Does this need to be said by me, right now?”
For comedians, the answer is always a resounding “Yes!” to all three questions. For kids, we need to tell them that the answer will generally be, “Nope.” Now I’ll tell you why that is.
Art Linkletter made his early career by asking children basic questions and getting funny, honest, politically incorrect answers on the show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Yet, we really don’t celebrate honesty when a child tells grandma on the phone, “I really don’t feel like talking to you right now because I’d rather play with the cat.”
I was raised in New York City under the code of, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” However, I now live in the South where you can verbally kill someone with kindness and a smile. As author Isaac Goldberg once said, “Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way.”
Of course, the vital difference here is the intent of what’s said. Is it mean, or does it mean well? Rivers has always claimed her japes are well intentioned and that the celebrity victims aren’t bothered by the attacks. That seems unlikely. Maybe they’re just telling that socially correct little white lie and need to tell the truth about how celebrity bullying makes them feel.
It really does become a vicious social lie-cycle as people hide the truth about hurt feelings in order to avoid further conflict with the one inflicting the emotional pain. If you are a celebrity and someone says you’re “fat” and justifies it by adding that your wealth and celebrity make you “fair game,” perhaps it’s time to let the truth set you and others free. What is the real tangible difference between a kid in the school yard calling a girl “fatso” versus one wealthy celebrity doing so to another?
When my neighbor, also my doctor, sees me out jogging and says, “Good to see you finally addressing the weight issue. Good for you!” she gets points for honesty, but now I jog in the other direction, away from her house. That actually happened. Ultimately though, I know the doc means well and since I’m her sole audience, I take it in stride. In fact I stride a bit harder, and it makes it that much easier to avoid the next donut.
I love Adele and wince every time Rivers skewers her or anyone else on weight issues. I’m not laughing, but I must admit she’s telling the truth, even if it is with what feels like a malevolent spin.
Rivers is called “mean,” but when you take a closer look, she’s being just as shockingly, flatly rational, and straight in her observations as any child.
“Mom, that kid on TV told his mom she’s fat,” My son Quin, 9, said with indignation. “I would never tell you that even if you are fat now because it would hurt your feelings. That’s why I never tell you.” That little feel-good moment happened over a month ago, but it was both unforgettable and motivational.
Quin, while unintentionally funny, is not seeking a career on the stage and needs the three question guide so people outside our home don’t think he’s being intentionally unpleasant.
On the one hand, I like it that comics don’t have a three-question axiom, because I think there's a place for honest people who annoy us with their candor, keep it real, and get us to lighten up. While we may dislike honesty about our body image, it is necessary in small doses.
Just watching Rivers and her daughter Melissa, on their We TV reality show “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows best?” gives insight into a no-holds-barred approach to parenting, grand parenting, and life in general. Rivers is true to her own unvarnished style with her own family.
We get angry at Rivers and those like her because they tell us the Emperor has no clothes, or that the ones they’re wearing make them look like something the cat dragged in. And in doing so they remind us just how much we like to fool ourselves and others.
What Rivers really does is work toward freeing us of our lying addiction with a spoonful of lemon rather than sugar. Hearing the truth isn't always sweet, yet it does make others laugh when we make a face at the bitter taste.
Rivers forces us to recognize and deal with that truth through the lens of humor. Reality check: That’s what comedians do, but perhaps as society has evolved, we are outgrowing the pleasure we once took in meanness.
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When the host of HLN’s Showbiz Tonight took her to task about making a Holocaust joke about an Oscar night dress worn by Heidi Klum, Rivers, who is of Jewish ancestry as was her late husband, answered, “That’s how we get through life. If you laugh you can deal with it. Done!”
In the final analysis we get the same conclusion that comedian Steve Martin came to in the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen" when his daughter pulls a nasty prank on Ashton Kutcher’s character by soaking his underwear in meat and then releasing the dog on him. “Funny, but wrong!”
Pedro Quezada, a New Jersey man, holds a $338 million check above his head March 26. Quezada owes $29,000 in child support. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
$338M Powerball win shows odds stacked against kids who need child support
What are the odds that New Jersey's $338 million Powerball lottery winner and father of five, Pedro Quezada, turns out to be wanted for failure to pay $29,000 in child support? While it was a 1 in 175 million chance of being the only winner of the massive Powerball jackpot, there’s a significantly greater chance of being one of the 11.5 million cases of custodial parents reportedly in need of child support from former a partner who is in arrears.
The Passaic County Sheriff's Office told CNN that an arrest warrant was issued for Quezada in 2009. He has five children ages 5-23 and owes a total of $29,000 in back child support, spokesman William Maer said. It is not clear which children the payments are for. Quezada's son, Casiano, said his father has hired an attorney and is "working through it."
By owing $29,000, Quezada is just $1,000 away from being part of the top 11 percent of arrears delinquents in child support owed, according to information gathered from the Department of Health and Human Services.
In fact, for 13.7 million custodial parents on child support, there are 11.5 million cases of non-custodial delinquency. As of 2011, 12.5 million custodial parents with child support orders are owed more than $100 billion in the United States, according to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Child Support Enforcement. Around 70 percent of arrears owed nationwide is owed by noncustodial parents who have little or no reported income and thus is largely uncollectable, OSCE data shows.
My worry is that Quezada’s win, against all odds, will reinforce the fantasy deadbeat parents may have of winning back a child’s respect and trust after years of non-support.
Again, CNN reports Quezada’s child support situation came to light after a routine post-win debt check by state officials. The fact that he can now afford to support his child should not be considered a happy ending or an excuse to gamble with dollars that should be given to care for our children.
We have no idea if this father was able to pay and chose not to or if he was a victim of the bad economy, struggling to make ends meet. However, it does make me worry that deadbeat dads will continue to gamble away their money on a 1 in 175 million chance, rather than make payments in meager sums with cash that comes with 100 percent federal backing.
This is about more than money because support comes in intangible forms too. A dad who isn’t able to pay for his child’s upkeep, but offers even as little as the $2 he might otherwise spend on a lottery ticket, becomes an instant winner to his child.
On the other hand, a child who frequently sees a parent pumping dollars into a lottery or other form of gambling gets the message “Dad is playing games with my future.” The lottery is after all, advertised as a game, colorful, themed, and non-toxic to society.
I do not see any of the aforementioned as true in the case of deadbeat parents slapping money on the counter for tickets on the 1 in 175 million chance they might someday win their child back via money.
Even if a child never sees a deadbeat parent buying a ticket, or laying cash on the table for a bet, the perceived absence of moral support and constant wrangling many endure to try and get that aid from the other parent affects a child’s sense of worth. We’re not talking about buying affection, but rather showing that a child is the priority for that parent.
As a child of my dad’s second marriage and a part of his second set of kids, I grew up in such a household of scrimping, anger, bitterness, and doubt.
My mom struggled to support two kids after a divorce from a man who already had two children before that marriage and who never paid child support. I remember him calling, and my mother taking the phone away and telling him he could talk when he had paid. Also, I remember his fury at her transferred to his kids and he'd tell us we “cost too much.” When he didn’t get custody he felt we were “her kids” and thus “her responsibility.”
I wonder how many children hear those kinds of bitter words, driven by a bad economy and a broken love? My estimate would be even more than 3 in every 25 children.
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Nobody’s going to stop selling lottery tickets any time soon, it's not going anywhere. However, parents who are in arrears of child support aren’t going anywhere positive either by buying tickets when $2 could at least be a down payment on a child’s trust and hope.
We owe it to our children to stop playing the odds by showing them we’re trying our best to take care of them, one dollar at a time.
'Bright Young Things', Victoria's Secret's ad campaign, received unwanted attention after a dad's critique went viral. Here, Alessandra Ambrosio poses during the launch of the company's swimwear line, March 12. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)
Victoria’s Secret ‘Bright Young Things’ ads make parents ask: Just how young?
In the United States, Victoria’s Secret is emblazoning girls’ bottoms with salacious phrases, while in Japan an ad agency is enlisting young girls to wear temporary tattoo ads on their thighs. Both are advertising campaigns by nature and the bottom line is that parents are talking about the need to take this issue much more seriously.
Victoria’s Secret may say publicly they are not purposefully advertising to young girls, but as parents we are pretty adept at spotting a falsehood, and this is one of those times that we need to agree with the characters in HBO’s Game of Thrones and repeat their stock phrase, “Words are wind.” After speaking with the dad who prompted a boycott of the stores I realize the bottom line is we don’t want people writing on female’s bottoms at any age.
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The company posted on its Facebook wall, “In response to questions we recently received, Victoria’s Secret PINK is a brand for college-aged women. Despite recent rumors, we have no plans to introduce a collection for younger women. 'Bright Young Things' was a slogan used in conjunction with the college spring break tradition.”
The furor began March 22 after Rev. Evan Dolive of Texas posted an open letter on his website chiding the lingerie retailer for its “Bright Young Things” line. He believed that no matter what the company line may be, the undies are aimed at tweens with phrases like “Wild” across the butt. Dolive is the father of two, one is a daughter age three.
Dolive wrote: “I want my daughter (and every girl) to be faced with tough decisions in her formative years of adolescence. Decisions like should I be a doctor or a lawyer? Should I take calculus as a junior or a senior? Do I want to go to Texas A&M or University of Texas or some Ivy League School? Should I raise awareness for slave trafficking or lack of water in developing nations? There are many, many more questions that all young women should be asking themselves … not will a boy (or girl) like me if I wear a "call me" thong?"
Meanwhile, in Japan, a PR agency called Absolute Territory PR is enlisting young girls to wear temporary tattoo ads on their thighs. The service launched in July 2012 and immediately boasted 1,300 walking billboards. To become a paid human thigh billboard requires: being a female over 18 with more than 20 connections on an SNS (Twitter, mixi, Instagram, etc.). To get paid, you have to wear a temporary tattoo for eight hours or more and post pictures of it to your SNS in at least two different places.
When I spoke with Dolive on the phone about the Facebook posting by Victoria’s Secret he said, “I’m not surprised. That’s really what I would expect them to say. But they’re talking out of both sides of their mouths here since their CFO made it very clear what he’s after.”
Dolive is referring to a Business Insider report that quoted Victoria’s Secret Chief Financial Officer Stuart Burgdoerfer as saying at a recent conference "When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be? They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do at Pink."
“That’s the magic of PINK,” Dolive repeated in disgust. “Fine, let’s say 'Bright Young Things' is aimed only at college girls and then start the discussion from there about why we should not pressure girls into unattainable standards and believing that their worth is defined by their underwear.”
He adds, “I‘m getting calls and letters from parents who tell me that their middle school-age daughters come home asking for underwear from the PINK line because when they get changed for gym class they realize the popular girls are all wearing that line.”
Since posting the letter, Dolive says he has been deluged with responses from every nation, “I’d say that over 95 percent were fully in support with only a few telling me if I didn’t like it I just shouldn’t buy it.”
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Dolive agrees that not only will he not buy it, but according to the emails and reactions to his letter, many other parents are going so far as to call for a boycott. That’s because his argument jibes with that of many parents who feel children are pressured to grow up too fast and it’s up to the parents to boycott, write letters, and put the brakes on marketing panties in candy colors and elementary school typefaces.
Amanda Cole Hill, mom of a daughter and local PTA activist in Norfolk, Va., saw and then forwarded Dolive’s posting to me. When I wrote back and said I’d be blogging the topic and asked for a comment she was quick to respond. “From what I have read they changed their tune when the backlash occurred and said it was meant for college girls,” Hill said. “But initially it was for high school. Nonetheless, I don't think anyone needs underwear that says ‘Call me.’ Seriously? Call me?
Cinderella's fairy godmother, played by Victoria Clark in the Broadway production, comforts Cinderella, Laura Osnes. Ms. Clark flies around at the end of a cable for the role, despite a fear of heights she's tempered, somewhat, through roller coaster outings with her son. (Carol Rosegg/Cinderella)
Cinderella fairy godmother, Victoria Clark, on how to mom-up and ‘let go’
As parents we often wish we had a magic wand, but Cinderella’s fairy godmother, played on Broadway by Victoria Clark, says that even with a magic wand, the job’s not all that easy. The actress is petrified of heights but overcame them for the role, largely as a lesson to her son about pushing our boundaries and to show him that parents really can feel joy, despite all our complaining and bossing.
Ms. Clark stars as Marie, the fairy godmother in the Broadway musical revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Cinderella." She told me during a phone interview from her New York apartment that the first time a stage technician suspended her from the cables at the Broadway Theater he told her, “Just let go. Don’t touch the cables. You HAVE to LET GO or you can’t really fly!”
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Now I want that on a T-shirt with a fairy pointing a magic wand at a kid whose helicopter parents are keeping him/her grounded by doubt and worry: “You HAVE to LET GO so they can fly!”
I digress. Back on Broadway, Clark was eyeing the technician and telling him flatly, “I can’t do this. No. No, I really can’t.”
However, this is the mom who, in order not to disappoint her son Thomas Luke “TL” Guest, now 18, took him on rollercoasters each summer, riding them with her eyes closed. She and her husband divorced when TL was four years old, leaving the child to “commute” between parents. Therefore, time together doing “normal family things like going to the amusement park” as mom and son became mission critical. She wasn’t going to spoil it by grounding them both.
Despite her rollercoaster ride experiences, the prospect of being suspended by cables above the stage, while saddled with a massive pair of wings, was nearly too much for Clark to cope with.
Add to that the stress of the mom of an only child seeing her son is about to graduate from high school and head off as one of the top NCAA soccer drafts. It seems her entire life, personal and professional, seems to have come down to “letting go.”
Clark had come to a crossroad in the middle of a Broadway stage. “I really wanted to be this particular fairy because she’s so temperamental,” Clark mused. “In this production, the fairy godmother is rather emotionally challenged, coping with wing issues, transportation problems to solve, and the disappointment of clients who are stubborn and deny help.” Sounds like kids to me.
Because she’s been burned before, the fairy godmother actually tests Cinderella before she decides to give her the gift of her help. She comes to her in disguise as a bag lady to see if Cindy will really be kind and deserving. “Also, since the fairy has been around as a bag lady, she knows what it is to be overlooked and discarded.”
The part was just too good, and Clark knew her son was aware of just how badly she wanted to keep it. While the prop wand held no real magic, her passion for showing her son how to fight fear to win a dream must have some special power, because she decided to mom-up, put on her big girl wings, and get flying.
Clark even learned to enjoy flying, but only after several weeks and occasionally flying into trees on stage. Clark explained, “I just realized that I really can’t do anything about it. If a cable breaks there’s a backup cable and after that there’s nothing I can do but hope for the best and enjoy the experience.”
She said her son is delighted. “The first time he saw me he laughed himself right out of his seat in the theater,” she added. “He and his friends come to numerous performances just to see me enjoying something that scared me.”
“I think children love to see their parents have fun and be happy,” Clark said. “Being happy in front of your children is such a good example because too often we are just saying we’re tired.”
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She added, “I try to set an example that if you love what you do and are persistent you can succeed.”
It would seem that despite divorce, a latch-key life for her son, odd hours, and her job hanging by a wire, Clark has managed to rewrite the fairytale of motherhood to give herself and her son a long run of happy endings.
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