Umbrella Swords and Monster Turkeys

I want to use this post to capture some of the anecdotes my wife and I have shared recently on Facebook, starting with this one from her. The boys are 8 and 6.

"[Younger], it's okay to change your mind and tell the truth, if you didn't the first time. Telling the truth won't just solve the problem; it will make you feel better too."

-- [Older], not knowing I could hear him from the other side of the house.

So often it's hard to know if any of the things we try to teach them are sinking in, so it's amazingly reassuring to hear something like this.

It's hard to walk the fine line between teaching them independence and reassuring them we will always take care of them.

Earlier this week it was time to leave for school one morning. [Younger] went into the other room to put his shoes on. After a minute, he called, "Mom, my shoes are too tight!" [Spouse] and I looked at each other and started problem solving, then heard him follow up with, "It might be because I have two pairs of socks on."

And this is the one who is the more natural problem solver.

This is simply a feel good story.

It's probably no surprise that reading has always been part of our bedtime routine. Last night, the boys were self entertaining and we were letting them stay up late. They were in our bedroom, so as I walked through I grabbed the book I'd just brought home for [Older] to practice his reading and told them when they were ready for sleep [Older] could read bedtime stories to [Younger] for a change. I wasn't actually serious, but they took it and ran with it. [Older] came out later and proudly told us he had gotten [Younger] to sleep.

This morning he asked me, "Why haven't you ever told me it's so much fun doing [Younger]'s bedtime?" And just now [Younger] told us they don't need us for bedtime anymore because [Older] will take care of it.

In the comments, [Spouse] added - [Older] told me today "I'm a grown-up now because I put [Younger] to bed last night. I read him to sleep, then I got him a stuffy, and then I kissed him on the forehead while he was sleeping!"

Watching them grow really can be amazing.

And sometimes unexpected.

Had an unusual moment of pride tonight. While we were waiting for the start of his piano recital, [Older] noticed the fold on his program wasn't quite straight so he fixed it. "Ha!" I thought. "He's just like me."

Such a simple thing, yet not.

Another one from my wife that's a comment both on their behavior and some crazy weather we had for a day.

I was driving the kids back from [piano practice] tonight. They rolled down the windows and insisted on playing pirate ship because the car was rocking back and forth in this ridiculous wind!

I'm sure playing pirate included lots of yelling and wildness.

While I highlight the special moments for their significance, this is much more our everyday normal.

Last night, the boys decided to play by themselves while [Spouse] and I watched a movie. Their latest game has been using their baby blankets as capes, shields, and swords to wage imaginary battles. They retreated to the bedrooms to do so.

So we watched with lots of background noise. Shouts, grunts, slams, apologies. Every once in a while, one would noisily chase the other into our space and we'd tell them to take it elsewhere.

On one such trip, [Younger] was by himself. We tuned him out as he paced behind us, mumbling under his breath. About the time that we realized he was psyching himself up for another round, we heard him mutter " . . . defeat him once and for all . . . " as he headed back down the hall.

On another, he glanced at the TV and asked, "What's he holding in his hand? Is that a sword?"

"It's an umbrella," [Spouse] responded. A very open, overhead umbrella in use for rain. From It's a Wonderful Life.

It was an evening of epic imagination.

How does that one line from Macbeth by Shakespeare go . . . Is this an umbrella which I see before me?

And this more recently:

Tonight [Spouse] and I were watching Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. [Younger] woke and stumbled into the room, so we paused the movie on this moment. In the middle of our conversation getting him back to bed he blearily asked, "Are they fighting with two-handed swords?" Um, no, they're fighting with their hands.

Swords are everywhere.

Ah, yes, our literate lawyer who will find a technicality to win any argument.

[Spouse]: "[Older], stop overusing that word."

[Older]: "But 'literally' is literally the best word."

Though always with humor and self-awareness.

His interpretation of the assignment is so very [Younger]. Umbrellas are swords and turkeys are monsters.

Speaking of monsters, this tree . . . 

That's all of the personal anecdotes I have today. The rest are from other things I've consumed lately or bumped into on my feed.

I love this list of types of communication from Amber and Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz:

• poetry
• picture books
• opera
• the internet
• television
• smoke signals
• whispers in the night

( . . . for instance . . . )

If I remember right, that list comes from Hermes. Here's more about the book from my 5-star review:

Fascinating, impressive, and surprisingly accessible. A historical story set in (and around) ancient Athens that is thoroughly Greek in both its content and its style. Two young protagonists from wildly different backgrounds, one noble and one slave, who never actually meet in the flesh. Most of the book in verse. Gods and others adding commentary. Images of faux historical artifacts with archeological descriptions interspersed throughout. Through the relatable tales of these two well-drawn characters, readers learn what life was like in their world. Just excellent.

Sometimes I like Mark Manson and sometimes he goes in a direction I wouldn't, but I really like this bit that he Facebooked recently. It brings to mind much of what I've previously shared about empathy and vulnerability: "It's an amazing trigger within human nature, the minute someone acknowledges their flaws, not only do we tend to forgive them, but we actually come to admire them."

The quote/image was accompanied by this short commentary:

Most of us spend a lot of our time trying to hide our flaws. We want to be liked and admired and be the coolest kid in the room.

Paradoxically, it's the acknowledgment and open exposure of our flaws that attracts people to us and makes us exude confidence. When we're willing to admit our own shortcomings, we not only show others they can trust us, but that we have the self-awareness to move through the world well.

Also, fun fact: this works with yourself. By admitting your own flaws to yourself, you will come to love and respect yourself more. Don't believe me? Try it at home, fuckface.

Mark Manson

Speaking of empathy and vulnerability:

“Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”

― Haruki Murakami

Yes.

I haven't included much about the covid pandemic lately, but there are new developments, most about the new omicron variant.

A Tantalizing Clue to Why Omicron Is Spreading so Quickly

The omicron variant multiplies about 70 times faster inside human respiratory tract tissue than the delta variant does, scientists at the University of Hong Kong report. The variant reaches higher levels in the tissue 48 hours after infection.

We have now met one of Delta's Children.

I've been seeing two main themes in covid news lately. The first is renewed worry because of this variant. Higher infection numbers. Hospitals and healthcare once again overwhelmed by too many patients. Calls for increased safety measures.

The second is removal of safety measures due mostly to pandemic fatigue. Local political bodies removing mask mandates early. Successful efforts to legally challenge vaccine requirements. And people going back to business as normal regardless of new variants and spreading infection.

So much contradiction.

This beautifully captures an aspect of pandemic life.

Jean L. Kreiling

TIME IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

With half our faces covered, and six feet

from most other sources of body heat,

we navigate “new normal” in our own

germ-fearing bubbles, freakishly alone

or feigning human contact via screen,

as months of tragedy make dread routine.

Our past and future both grow vague. The counting

of days confounds us, as the death toll, mounting

obscenely, renders numbers both abstruse

and cruel, and new variants reduce

the quantity of breaths we each might take,

how many years we each might get to make

a life, a home, a work of art, a dent

in our to-do lists. We cannot invent

a kindly clock, and it’s not a surprise

when time turns blurry: it both creeps and flies,

it twists into unmeasured shapes, it flouts

the laws of physics, and threatens redoubts

of certainty and order. Has it been

six months, a year, or two since you were in

a restaurant, a plane, a concert hall?

Since you shook someone’s hand? Can you recall

when you began to forego pedicures?

Like sci-fi movies, this weird life obscures

the clock, the calendar, reality

itself, and though we are apparently

the stars of this film, we’re oblivious—

the ending certainly unknown to us,

the plot a murky, convoluted mess;

the running time is anybody’s guess.

—from Poets Respond

December 21, 2021

So much unknown.

This very much describes our kids and the parenting philosophy we try to implement. It's ever so reassuring to read.

Why Your Kid’s Bad Behavior May Be a Good Thing

Many children today feel more comfortable around adults, and they are more willing to challenge them and speak up when they feel the impulse.

Although this spiritedness sometimes looks unsavory, child psychologists say the shift is a good thing. It is a reflection of how safe and loved children feel and how much trust they have in their parents.

“It can manifest as kids being a bit more assertive and opinionated, and maybe even more argumentative, and I think that the challenge is to not interpret that as a bad thing, but as an important and necessary process,” said Emily Loeb, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies how parenting shapes child development. When children feel safe and loved, they are better able to “find their voice and figure out the world for themselves,” she added. . . . 

Kids don’t blossom when they are afraid of their caregivers. Fear-based, authoritarian parenting — when parents are extremely strict, punish their children harshly for defiance and say things like, “Because I said so!” — is linked with myriad negative outcomes in kids. Children of authoritarian parents are at an increased risk for anxiety and depression, exhibit more disruptive behavior and are more likely than other kids to have low self-esteem, studies have found.

“The science says that over time, fearing your parents makes you less confident in yourself and more in need of external validation,” . . . 

One of Dr. Loeb’s recent studies, which followed kids from ages 13 to 32, found that children whose parents were psychologically controlling were less academically successful and less liked by their peers in adolescence compared with kids whose parents were not psychologically controlling. As adults, they were also less likely to be in healthy romantic relationships. Other research has linked parental psychological control with antisocial behavior and anxiety in kids. . . . 

Ultimately, what the research suggests is that harsh, strict parenting does not sow the seeds for healthy development; it does the opposite. In the short term, sure, kids might be better behaved. In the long term, children suffer. . . . 

This is not to say that children don’t need rules, limits or consequences — they certainly do. So-called “permissive” parenting can pose problems, too, and has been linked to child self-centeredness and poor impulse control. . . . Boundaries and rules are crucial for healthy development, she said. But parents don’t need to manipulate their children’s sense of identity or punish harshly to uphold them.

Indeed, research overwhelmingly suggests that what parents should strive for is a middle ground, “goldilocks” approach known as authoritative parenting (as opposed to “authoritarian” parenting). These parents have high expectations of their kids and set strict limits, but they are also warm and respectful with their children and sometimes willing to negotiate. Research shows that children of authoritative parents perform better in school than their peers, are more honest with their parents and are also kind and compassionate.

Our kids must feel extremely safe and loved based on how much they argue and negotiate. But glimmers of growth into maturity and self-regulation show through.

This is just playful silliness, but I love it.

Is Santa Claus a God?

The nature of the Santa Claus myth bears some striking similarities to the gods of many religions. 

The most obvious similarity is that Santa is believed to have magical powers, such as being able to fly around the world and visit innumerable houses in very little time. He also has other supernatural beings in his service, including elves and flying reindeer. Like all god beliefs, he comes with an explanation for why we don’t actually see him: He comes at night while everyone is asleep (the department store “Santa” being an interesting exception to this tendency). 

But the most interesting similarity to other gods is that Santa has special access to knowledge about the moral behavior of people. This is known in psychology as “strategic knowledge.” Even gods believed to be all knowing are believed to pay more attention to people’s moral behavior than to, say, the average number of kibbles your dog eats every week and a half. Like many other gods privy to strategic knowledge, Santa is associated with specific rituals. These rituals include the hanging of stockings and even offerings: cookies and milk. Gods that have strategic knowledge also tend to use it in some way, either to punish or reward people. The Santa myth supports this as well, in that Santa brings deserved surprises to his young believers: toys for the nice and coal for the naughty.

We so rarely examine the habits and rituals we take for granted. Looking at them from outside perspectives is always a good thing.

This doesn't have anything else to do with the rest of this post, I just find it fascinating.

Hot Streaks in Your Career Don’t Happen by Accident

In Wang’s most recent analysis, he found that artists and scientists tend to experiment with diverse styles or topics before their hot streak begins. This period of exploration is followed by a period of creatively productive focus. “Our data shows that people ought to explore a bunch of things at work, deliberate about the best fit for their skills, and then exploit what they’ve learned,” Wang said. This precise sequence—exploration, followed by exploitation—was the single best predictor of the onset of a hot streak. . . . 

At least for artists, film directors, and scientists, neither exploration nor exploitation does much good on its own. “When exploitation occurs by itself,” Wang and his co-authors wrote, “the chance that such episodes coincide with a hot streak is significantly lower than expected, not higher, across all three domains.” Only when periods of trial and error are followed right away by periods of deliberate focus does the probability of a hot streak increase significantly.

The research suggests something fundamentally hopeful: that periods of failure can be periods of growth, but only if we understand when to shift our work from exploration to exploitation. If you look around you at this very moment, you will see people in your field who seem wayward and unfocused, and you might assume they’ll always be that way. You will also see people in your field who seem extremely focused and highly successful, and you might make the same assumption. But Wang’s paper asks us to consider the possibility that many of today’s wanderers are also tomorrow’s superstars, just a few months or years away from their own personal hot streak. Periods of exploration can be like winter farming; nothing is visibly growing, but a subterranean process is at work and will in time yield a bounty. . . . 

The point is not that exploration is good and exploitation is bad. It’s that all success—career success, corporate thriving, national flourishing—requires that we pay close attention to the interplay between scouting new ideas and pumping established wells. By and large, America seems to suffer from too much exploitation and too little exploration. “We’ve gotten very good at encouraging people to be more and more focused and at penalizing people who wander outside their lane,” Wang said. “I don’t think America is particularly good at rewarding novel thinking.” Indeed, we have a national scouting deficit, because our theories of success emphasize immediate productivity in a way that might obscure the benefits of a little bewilderment and curiosity.

Play, experimentation, and a willingness to try things that fail are so important (so long as you don't get stuck there).

Finally, the book I just finished, which I enjoyed immensely and in which I found much to pull out. The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold. First, the general description from Goodreads:

When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.

And what I wrote about it in my 5-star review:

A story about a few young survivors struggling to find meaning and wisdom in a world with a dwindling human population. Massive swarms of carnivorous flies infect with a deadly flu anyone they don't initially consume. Few mammals of any kind remain. The primary and secondary teen protagonists have spent their lives in the ruins of civilization, trying to make sense of the world.

Yet the story is not about the flashy setting; it's about those characters, which is its strength. It's about their humanity and quest for commonality. There's another science fiction element (no spoilers) that gives the story additional layers and depth, making their lives all the more poignant and compelling.

Arnold's writing is eloquent and skilled, and his narrative is intricately crafted. This is a thoughtful and moving book.

(And this is why I don't care for "best of the year" lists that come out before Jan. 1, because that closes the door on late-game discoveries like this one.)

And many quotes I want to reread and find opportunities to share:

How to be human, it seemed, was an infinite ocean in which Kit had only yet dipped the corner of a toenail.

We each only get a refraction from the prism.

We are all limited and flawed. That is essential to our nature. And it is okay.

Even in a world where Fly exterminates Human, this has not changed: that one person might find beauty in another.

-----

He would never understand how humans could be so entirely smart and so entirely stupid at the same time.

Not 50 percent one and 50 percent the other.

They were 100 percent smart and stupid.

-----

Whenever Kit got down about being born in a world where Flies ate humans, he reminded himself that even in the world before Flies, things made little sense.

-----

After reading a few more entries, something occurred to her. A trend. The more ambitious Lives--the ones that stretched the boundaries of their power--generally ended in trauma, disaster, or grief. Whereas those Lives who understood and respected their power were generally fulfilled.

Vulnerability and empathy. Accept limitations and flaws. Love them as part of who we are.

This seems so obvious to me.

In the olden days, there had been a breed of human known as "billionaire." To qualify, you had to have at least a billion cash bucks. One billion! But the real mind-boggler was that billionaires kept on being billionaires even when they knew there were people who had zero cash-bucks.

What a zany place this world had been.

Yet apparently it's not obvious to everyone.

Just a bit of personal validation for this night owl.

Morning people, as Kit understood them, belonged to a breed of humans who derived unending joy from the horrors of emerging from one's bed. . . . 

The only thing "morning people" enjoyed more than morning was telling everyone else about it. It was a badge of honor, apparently, to be a "morning person."

I've established a habit of rising early, but I'm never happy about it.

And this I truly love.

It wasn't that Kit didn't like the old person library. It was the insinuation that a library for old people had more wisdom than a library for children.

It only took a few afternoons in the old person library for Kit to debunk this theory. (Debunk being a word he knew that meant "remove the bunk.") The stories were different, yes. Most of the covers were bigger, and some even had print so large, Kit could have read the pages from across the street. There were "books on tape" and "audiobooks," which, so far as Kit could tell, had been nothing more than very long grown-up versions of bedtime stories. But there was no more or less wisdom to be found in the old person library.

Children, with all their limitations and flaws, are as fully human as any of us.