Welcome to the Family

Congratulations to my baby brother Matt and his new fiancee, Ashley! Matt and Ashley were engaged last night. Matt made her some of her favorite Chinese food, and surprised her with a real “ringer” of a fortune! I’m excited to meet Ashley and look forward to getting to know my future sister-in-law.

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How Not to Talk to Your Kids

A friend of mine sent me a link to this article called “How Not to Talk to Your Kids – The Inverse Power of Praise” by Po Bronson. It’s pretty long, but worth the time to read it. I’ve cut out a few of the highlights for me:

“For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. But a growing body of research and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it…

Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in which Nathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single most important facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever he can to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad societal effects. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise…

(Baumeister) will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves…

Students turn to cheating because they haven’t developed a strategy for handling failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignores a child’s failures and insists he’ll do better next time. Michigan scholar Jennifer Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains that the child may come to believe failure is something so terrible, the family can’t acknowledge its existence. A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can’t learn from them…

But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure by exerting more effort instead of simply giving up is a trait well studied in psychology. People with this trait, persistence, rebound well and can sustain their motivation through long periods of delayed gratification. Delving into this research, I learned that persistence turns out to be more than a conscious act of will; it’s also an unconscious response, governed by a circuit in the brain. Dr. Robert Cloninger at Washington University in St. Louis located the circuit in a part of the brain called the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex. It monitors the reward center of the brain, and like a switch, it intervenes when there’s a lack of immediate reward. When it switches on, it’s telling the rest of the brain, “Don’t stop trying. There’s dopa [the brain’s chemical reward for success] on the horizon.” While putting people through MRI scans, Cloninger could see this switch lighting up regularly in some. In others, barely at all.

What makes some people wired to have an active circuit?

Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. “The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

This idea is a new one to me, but is makes a lot of sense. In the article he also mentions how we shouldn’t cut out praise all together, but be specific in the praise like saying: “You really blocked that pass well” instead of saying a general, “You played a good game.” or “You must have worked hard on that report,” instead of “You’re so smart!” It seems that specific encouragement when given sincerely has the most impact. I’m going to give it a try and see if I notice a difference.

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Plastic or Paper?

You may have noticed from our Valentines breakfast that we were eating on paper plates and drinking from plastic cups. It’s time I confessed- I am addicted to disposable dinnerware. When I was pregnant with Hannah and Rob was doing his summer internship, we lived in a tiny two bedroom house for the summer. It was actually a lot of fun living in close quarters, but Rob was working long days, and I just didn’t want to wash dishes. It is by far the worst household task to me! I hate scraping off the old food and scrubbing the little bits. I don’t know why it’s ok for me to put in my mouth and eat until after it has been cleared from the table. Then it becomes disgusting! Weird.

So, Rob suggested that we go all paper plates and cups. I resisted at first mostly because of the cost, and a little environmentalist guilt. But it was great! We even moved on to paper bowls for cereal and plastic utensils when we can get away with it. I have been using paper and plastic ever since. I still put off doing dishes, and my kitchen sink is never empty for more than an hour, but it would be even worse. I’m not sure when I will go back to real plates especially since I found these paper products that have biblical sayings on them. That will make things more classy right? …ok, so I won’t really buy these, but they’re funny. If only there were disposable pots and pans…

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Whale Watch

While much of the country has been shut down because of winter storms, we are loving the weather here in the west. Yesterday was Hunter’s field trip to go whale watching, and it was beautiful! I really wanted to go with him, so I asked a new acquaintance of mine from church to watch the little girls for me. It was a big deal for me to do that because I hate to ask for help or feel like I’m causing an inconvenience– especially with people I don’t know very well. But the girls did well there, and Hunter and I had a very fun day!

It was the perfect day to be on the water. The winds were calm, the sky was clear, and the temperature was in the 60’s. Hunter and his friends had a blast just taking turns with the binoculars that he had brought along. They were all looking for “footprints” in the water– a flat spot that happens when a whale or dolphin surfaces to take a breath. There were several times kids thought they saw something and it would turn out to be a guy in a kayak, wake from another boat, or a bird sitting on the water. After about an hour they announced that there were dolphins at 2 o’clock! There were about 100 of us on the boat, and everyone gathered at the railings to get a look. There were several dolphins swimming along the surface. We watched from a distance for a while, and eventually they came closer to the boat. It was really a great experience to watch them out in the ocean instead of behind glass at an aquarium. The kids were all so excited, but eventually we had to move on and see if we could find a whale. So it was back to eating pretzels and crackers (to keep from getting seasick) and scanning the water. It wasn’t until our time was almost up that we saw the top of a whale in the distance. It was surprising because we were close to the harbor and they usually aren’t in that area. He surfaced briefly twice but was pretty sneaky, so I didn’t get any pictures of him. We felt lucky to have seen both dolphins and the whale, because there have been years that the kids didn’t see either one. If you ever have the opportunity, give whale watching a try!

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Happy Valentines Day!

We are having a fun day here celebrating with hearts and candies. Last night Cupid came and left pink and red hearts on the walls with little sayings on them. Hunter and Emma told me it was so fun to wake up and find hearts all over. Emma wanted to know why none of them had my name on them, and that’s when I had to confess that I played Cupid. I think she was a little disappointed that it was just Mom, but she gave me hug and said she loved me anyway. We had pink heart pancakes for breakfast, and the kids partied at school. I’m so glad they didn’t come home with a ton of candy like they did last year. I like it when the focus is more on the nice valentines than on the candy.

Daddy surprised us all by bringing home a giant valentine balloon that even lights up last night. It was a huge hit, and Hannah is still convinced it was just for her. This morning Daddy had another surprise. Two buckets of microwave popcorn from Blockbuster, and the Curious George and Walk the Line movies. (Hopefully we’ll finally get to see that one after the kids go to bed tonight.) And instead of flowers Rob got me a massaging neck pillow. I love it. I think the inflated prices on Valentines flowers are crazy, so I prefer the more practical, yet pampering gift!

We love and miss all of our family and friends out there today! Know that we’re thinking of you!!

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