Extended Family Moving Closer? Sounds Great for Marriage

 

According to a recent New York Times article, the typical adult now lives only 18 miles from his/her mother. Over the last few decades, Americans have become less mobile. Extended family nearby is a terrific indicator for healthy marriages because it means we’re becoming a country of close-knit families. Members of multiple generations can lean on one another for financial and practical support. And close proximity to Grandchildren = Priceless.

 

Did You Get Some Chill Time Last Summer? If Not, Plan Your Winter Break for You and Your Family’s Sake

Vacation is no laughing matter. It's imperative for you and your family to hit the reset button in your brain. A walk in nature or listening to music acts as a neural reset button and provides much needed perspective on what you're doing. Taking breaks is biologically restorative. If you were a workaholic all summer, plan a winter getaway in some warm weather with your spouse and family.....for goodness sakes. Click Here for Daniel Levitin's NY Times article.

 

Going From Man-To-Man….to Zone

When you go from 2 children to 3, that is what happens to parents; zone defense.  A recent NYTimes article described a growing number of three-child households in Manhattan. Really? With some of the highest apartment prices in the world, could that be true? It turns out the article describes the significant increase in three-child families with incomes in the 200K to 400K range. So we’re not talking your typical American family here by a long shot.

Community does play a role in family size decisions. For people in normal income brackets who frequently use the subway system, holding on to your child/children continuously is a priority. I am often on the NYC subways and I am personally much calmer when I see two parents and each has one child rather than one parent with 2 or (Yikes) 3 children all to him/herself. The high cost/small square footage of Manhattan apartments makes it impractical to have a large family size. So it follows that many couples, when expecting their second or third child, move out to the suburbs. The one child family is still the most common family size in NYC.

This article reminded me of when family size researchers altered the standard FamSize question and began to ask: If money is not at all a concern, how many children would you and your spouse like to have?

 

When Your Child Asks if It’s Ok to Bungee Jump Off One of the Highest Bridges in the World....

What irked me most about J F Boylan’s Op-Ed in the NY Times was the statement "It's impossible for me and all those other parents, not to want to shield our young from the many accidents we know are waiting for them".

 

So I responded to the Editor:

Intriguing how Ms. Boylan intertwines themes of parental responsibility as it pertains to thrill-seeking adventures and then love, as it pertains to her gender decision. A parent’s primary responsibilities are safety and protection; love and respect are secondary. If Ms. Boylan believes that “many accidents are waiting” for her children, then for God’s sake she should do her job as a parent and instill in them an understanding of recreation and adventure that excludes bungee jumping and sky-diving. When my adult children explore the world, I know they’ll research shark-cage diving and understand the waters are “chummed” to incite sharks into a feeding frenzy. They’ll surely have the common sense to go swimming in a different risk pool.

 

 

 



Good News Beats Bad When it Comes to Friends

Here’s a feel-good story to end your summer. It’s about hearing good news from friends.

“When it comes to the media, the classic rule is: Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Wars, earthquakes, plagues, floods, fires, the more suffering and mayhem, the more coverage,” states John Tierney in the NY Times.

“But now that information is being spread and monitored in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By scanning people’s brains and tracking their e-mails and online posts, neuroscientists and psychologists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.”
“The ‘if it bleeds’ rule works for mass media that just want you to tune in,” says Jonah Berger, a social psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “They want your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share a story with your friends and peers, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”

On that upbeat note, I want to wish you a safe and enjoyable end of the summer!

Dinner Time, Shminner Time, as Long as You Connect With Your Children

A recent NY Times Op-Ed pointed out that the benefits of family dinners aren’t as strong or as lasting as previous studies suggest. Authors Meier and Musick, who published their research in the well-respected Journal of Marriage and the Family, thankfully stopped short of claiming that family dinners don’t affect family well-being at all. The benefits might not be as strong as previously thought…..but there are still benefits! It’s our old friend “causality” that wrecks the party. Everyone’s having a grand old time until a researcher comes along and tries to PROVE that something CAUSES something else. That’s when the lifeguard blows the whistle and yells, everyone out of the pool (can you tell this is a summer-time Blog Post?). You can read the Op-Ed (click here) and judge for yourself or just rely on my Cliff Notes below, since it’s dinner time soon and I recommend that you turn off all electronic items and go enjoy dinner together with your family. KEY: “Given that eating is universal and routine, family meals offer a natural opportunity for parental influence: there are few other contexts in family life that provide a regular window of focused time together.” “If you aren’t able to make the family meal happen on a regular basis, don’t beat yourself up: just find another way to connect with your kids.”

How Can Over-Protective Parenting Cause an Injury?

On a playground slide….that’s how. “Orthopedic specialists say they treat a number of toddlers and young children each year with broken legs as a result of riding down the slide on a parent’s lap.” In Tara Parker-Pope’s piece on this surprising risk, she quotes Jed Dickman, whose 18 month old toddler’s sneaker got caught on the side of the slide, resulting in a fractured tibia. “My wife was just trying to keep Hannah extra safe and make sure she didn’t fall; she felt very guilty about it.”

What’s the upshot?

This may be one of those counter intuitive situations when a child is actually safer by herself. During the summer, have fun and be safe!

NewsFlash: Women Enjoy Child Care Tasks More than Men

In case you haven't read a thousand articles/studies on child care, read one more. Tara Parker-Pope (always excellent) makes several important points in her recent NY Times Magazine essay:

1. On 16 out of 25 child-care tasks like changing diapers, women report higher levels of enjoyment than men.
2. Women are far more likely to take advantage of family-leave benefits than men.
3. Men have more than doubled the time they spend on child care since 1985. Yet women still spend twice as much time with the children as men (surprise, surprise).

How about surveying fathers on the child-care-enjoyment-gender differences and asking.....Aren't you lazy because you married the greatest woman in the world who also happens to be the Mother of all Mothers? Therefore mothers...your diligence increases our laziness. I don't have to worry about repercussions; my wife is way too busy to ever read this blog.

In honor of my birthday blog post, I want to thank both of my parents (in heaven) for having taken such great care of me and.....doing it with a smile!

When an Adult Child Cuts Off a Parent

I wish I had a more chipper post for Election Day folks; this is just plain sad.

Therapists for years have listened to patients blame parents for their problems. What about the suffering of parents who are estranged from their adult children?

Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco psychologist who is an expert on parental estrangement, says that parents often report that a once-close relationship has deteriorated after a conflict over money, a boyfriend or built-up resentments about a parent's divorce or remarriage.

''We live in a culture that assumes if there is an estrangement, the parents must have done something really terrible,'' said Dr. Coleman, whose book ''When Parents Hurt'' (William Morrow, 2007) focuses on estrangement. ''But this is not a story of adult children cutting off parents who made egregious mistakes. It's about parents who were good parents, who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits.''

Dr. Coleman himself experienced several years of estrangement with his adult daughter, with whom he has reconciled. Mending the relationship took time and a persistent effort by Dr. Coleman to stay in contact. It also meant listening to his daughter's complaints and accepting responsibility for his mistakes. ''I tried to really get what her feelings were and tried to make amends and repair,'' he said. ''Over the course of several years, it came back slowly.''

(A Singer: there is no simple answer or quick fix here. Coleman correctly states that persistence is the key)

Source: Tara Parker-Pope, NY Times

Summoned Self or Well-Planned Life...which are you?

A recent column by David Brooks is a real thought stimulator. He illuminates two ways of thinking about your life, that are described by Clayton Christensen who is a professor at the Harvard Business School.

The first is what you might call the Well-Planned Life. Once you have come up with an overall purpose, you have to make decisions about allocating your time, energy and talent. Christensen notes that people with a high need for achievement commonly misallocate their resources. If they have a spare half-hour, they devote it to things that will yield tangible and near-term accomplishments. These almost invariably involve something at work — closing a sale, finishing a paper.

“In contrast,” he adds, “investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. ... It’s not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, ‘I raised a good son or a good daughter.’ ” As a result, the things that are most important often get short shrift.

The second way of thinking about your life might be called the Summoned Life. This mode of thinking starts from an entirely different perspective. Life isn’t a project to be completed; it is an unknowable landscape to be explored. A 24-year-old can’t sit down and define the purpose of life in the manner of a school exercise because she is not yet deep enough into the landscape to know herself or her purpose. That young person — or any person — can’t see into the future to know what wars, loves, diseases and chances may loom. She may know concepts, like parenthood or old age, but she doesn’t really understand their meanings until she is engaged in them.

The most important features of the human landscape are commitments that precede choice — commitments to family, nation, faith or some cause. These commitments defy the logic of cost and benefit, investment and return. The person leading the Well-Planned Life emphasizes individual agency, and asks, “What should I do?” The person leading the Summoned Life emphasizes the context, and asks, “What are my circumstances asking me to do?”

AMS: Just some food for thought as we contemplate our lives and roles as parents and spouses.

Middle Class Getting Socked; Divore Rate Dipping?

The Great Recession, as they now call it, continues to bash the middle class and adversely affect family well being. A recent piece by Judith Warner in the NY Times, is as usual, excellent. Some of the highlights:

"Economists may assert that we’re in the early stages of a recovery, but surveys continue to show that the impact of the Great Recession on American families is deep, widespread and grim. A Pew Research poll published last month indicated that more than half of all adults in the U.S. labor force had experienced some “work-related hardship” — a period of unemployment, a pay cut, a reduction in work hours or an involuntary move to part-time employment — since the recession began in December 2007."

"The poor are getting poorer, and the rich, despite stock-market setbacks, are still comparatively rich. The most devastating losses in household wealth over the past two years have been suffered by the middle class. And families are fraying at the seams. The Pew poll showed nearly half of people who had been unemployed for more than six months saying their family relationships had become strained, and a New York Times/CBS poll of unemployed adults last winter found about 40 percent saying they believed their joblessness was causing behavioral change in their children."

"Parents who have jobs are working longer hours than ever. Mothers are taking shorter maternity leaves. The birth rate is on the decline. The divorce rate is declining, too — it’s too expensive for people to break up their households — but that’s not necessarily a family-friendly thing, as a report from the Council on Contemporary Families noted in April: “We know from the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s that divorce rates can fall while family conflict and domestic violence rates rise.”

Endnote: Our President has much on his plate. I hope (and pray) that he keeps the astronomical unemployment rate at the very top of his domestic agenda until this nightmare is in our rear-view mirror.

Family Life Takes a Hit From Recession

The Recession and Families: Post 3 of 4

What effect does an unemployed parent have on family well being?

Do men take over family responsibilities when their wives become the sole breadwinners?

Michael Luo wrote an excellent piece for the NY Times recently that describes the impact of this recession on families. "For many families across the country, the greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial, but emotional and psychological. Children, especially, have become hidden casualties, often absorbing more than their parents are fully aware of. Several academic studies have linked parental job loss — especially that of fathers — to adverse impacts in areas like school performance and self-esteem."

Luo describes, "A recent study at the University of California, Davis, found that children in families where the head of the household had lost a job were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade."

“The extent that job losers are stressed and emotionally disengaged or withdrawn, this really matters for kids,” commented Dr. Ariel Kalil (University of Chicago). “The other thing that matters is parental conflict. That has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies to be a bad family dynamic.”

"Besides quarrels over money, the reversal in the couple’s roles also produced friction. Dr. Kalil said a recent study of how people spend their time showed unemployed fathers devote significantly less time to household chores than even mothers who are employed full-time, and do not work as hard in caring for children."

A Singer: It's a problem that I labeled Role "Non-Reversal" Syndrome, where men seem to forget how big a burden their spouse bears as wife/mother....and they just forgot to switch roles when their wife works all day and they sit at home. Men at home, must quickly take over the lion's share of household tasks to give their wives some much needed down-time and stress relief.

Not Knowing is Making Us Sick

The Recession and Families: Post 1 of 4

"Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Americans are smiling less and worrying more than they were a year ago, happiness is down and sadness is up, we are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes and depression is on the rise."

Author Daniel Gilbert, in a NY Times article, asks Why? Some of us are clearly suffering in this recession, but it’s not as if we all lost all of our money.
"The reason is because people feel worse when something bad might occur than they do when something bad will occur. Most of us aren't losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don't know whether it will fall or not -- and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they're uncertain about."

"Consider an experiment by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who gave subjects a series of 20 electric shocks. Some subjects knew they would receive an intense shock on every trial. Others knew they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense shocks, but they didn't know on which of the 20 trials the intense shocks would come. The results showed that subjects who thought there was a small chance of receiving an intense shock were more afraid -- they sweated more profusely, their hearts beat faster -- than subjects who knew for sure that they'd receive an intense shock."

A very interesting piece about human nature.

An Anniversary That Deserves No Champagne

We have just passed the 40th anniversary of that much vilified institution, the no-fault divorce. "It is an appropriate moment to re-evaluate how divorce affects families, and particularly children," states Ruth Bettelheim in a recent NY Times Op-Ed.

Here are some excerpts from the Op-Ed:
"As child support is often linked to the proportion of time the children spend with each parent, the days and hours of their future lives become tools for one parent to extract payment from the other. This is a recipe for warfare, with the children’s well-being both the disputed turf and the likely casualty.

In an adversarial custody battle, no one wins, but children are the biggest losers of all. Intelligent legislation could promote the one thing that children of divorce need most: peace between their parents." (It is interesting that no-fault divorce is now practiced in every state except New York.)

As good as Bettelheim’s Op-Ed was, Elizabeth Marquardt’s letter to the Editor was even better:

“Re ''No Fault of Their Own,'' by Ruth Bettelheim the argument seems to be that because parental conflict is bad for children, the solution is to make divorce easier. If only it were that simple. In our nationally representative study of adult children of divorce, Prof. Norval D. Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin and I found that even successful young people are profoundly shaped by childhood divorce.

They described how they had to travel between two worlds, and make sense of their parents' different beliefs and ways of living, something their parents were no longer required to do. Most said their parents did not have a lot of conflict after the divorce. Yet these grown children of divorce report a profound and lonely inner conflict, even when their parents did not fight.

As a culture, we can do better.”

You Lost Me at Your Second Sentence, Sue

Susan Goldberg recently ranted in the NY Times about smug parents who do their parenting in public places and “at the top of their highly educated lungs.” “If we’re being honest” she writes, “we have all had the same frightening and ignoble urge to smash their heads in with a brick.” Really Sue, we all have that urge? You want honesty? You’ve got considerable Chutzpa!

Unlike you Susan, no matter how much these “operatic” parents infuriate me I actually don’t have any desire to inflict bodily harm on any of them. Seriously, who writes a parenting article and mentions smashing heads?

Last, what bothers her is this generation of “parental wind bags” with their “painful lack of subtlety” when they speak to their children. Well Sue, you win the painful lack of subtlety award in my book.

The Elderly are 7 Times More Important than the Young

When it comes to government spending that is.


I like David Brooks' recent NYTimes column, "The Geezer's Crusade". It's an insightful look into what Grandparents can do for future generations. Grandparents you ask?

Brooks writes:

"A series of longitudinal studies, begun decades ago, are producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement. These studies don’t portray old age as surrender or even serenity. People are most unhappy in middle age and report being happier as they get older.

One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls “generativity” — providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don’t. As Vaillant writes in his book “Aging Well,” “Biology flows downhill.” We are naturally inclined to serve those who come after and thrive when performing that role.

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.

In the private sphere, in other words, seniors provide wonderful gifts to their grandchildren, loving attention that will linger in young minds, providing support for decades to come. In the public sphere, they take it away.

It may seem unrealistic — to expect a generation to organize around the cause of nonselfishness. But in the private sphere, you see it every day. Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize."

The last line is pure Brooks: "The elderly. They are our future."

We Interrupt this Parenting Blog for a Rant

Not that this has anything to do with parenting, but I must rant about my pet peeve: people who stop at the top/bottom of a staircase or escalator and people who come to a complete halt in a doorway. Folks, these are passageways so please keep moving. I normally start singing (aloud) Bob Dylan’s lyrics, “Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall.”

Pamela Lewis ranted about this recently in a NY Times article titled, “Don’t you know you’re in the way?” But the focus of her rant was about people on cell-phones. Not me, I am ranting about people who choose the top/bottom of the stairs or a doorway to get bewildered in. TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: That is a very dangerous place to be bewildered, so please step aside. Granted that in the spacious farmland of the Midwest, this is not an issue. But, most people in the United States live and work in cities.

Just be courteous to others and be alert to their safety as well as your own. Now that I think of it…that is a rather important message for parents to convey to their children so I’m glad I blogged about it here.

College Students’ Healthy Sense of Entitlement – Aren't They Confusing Level of Effort with Quality of Work ?

I believe that unwarranted praise of children is a contributing factor in this entitlement psychology. Here's a welcome back to college post.

Max Roosevelt wrote an excellent piece for the NY Times. He interviewed Prof. Marshall Grossman, who has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

“Many students come in with the conviction that they’ve worked hard and deserve a higher mark,” Professor Grossman said. “Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before.” He attributes those complaints to his students’ sense of entitlement.

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

Roosevelt added, “A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that a third of students surveyed said that they expected B’s just for attending lectures, and 40 percent said they deserved a B for completing the required reading.”

Seeing the World Through a Child's Eyes

The things that fascinate adults may not impress children at all and vice versa. In my latest Home News Tribune column I discuss this topic.

You can try to impress young children by showing them the wonders of the world, but it might not be a good investment of your time. What you think will leave them awestruck doesn't, and the seemingly minor details of life will amaze them. So don't try to predict what will fascinate them. Instead, just observe, listen, and learn.

An article that sparked my interest in this topic appeared in The New York Times: "Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad." In it, Pam Belluck describes scientists who use their children as research subjects. Studying their own children allows researchers a more in-depth investigation. Their children make reliable participants and are willing subjects in an era of scarce research funding.

One MIT professor embedded 11 video cameras and 14 microphones in ceilings throughout his house; he recorded 70 percent of his son's waking hours for his first three years. He amassed 250,000 hours of tape for a language development study that he called "The Human Speechnome Project," according to Belluck.

Similarly (and don't tell my daughter and son-in-law) I am constantly studying my toddler grandson's every move and word, but without cameras and microphones. I cherish the opportunity to watch his growth and development up close and in real time. I soak up every detail of what he sees, hears, touches, and interacts with. The phone rings and he says, "Uh-oh," which is an interesting reaction. He's fascinated by a daddy long-legs bug and pursues it with no fear whatsoever. I was yelling, "Yuckee bug ? don't touch!" and he continues on his mission to investigate how something so small can move so fast on its own.

He could say "up" or "outside" to me, since he regularly uses these words, but sometimes he'll simply choose to walk over and grab my finger, start pulling, and take me exactly where he wants us to go. Dare I attempt to guess what he's thinking, or what he finds interesting? Not a chance.

Recently, when my grandson was visiting our home, there was a backhoe on our block excavating a basement for a new house. I came home from work, ran inside, grabbed my grandson and his jacket, and hurried down the block to watch the backhoe with him. The machine operator saw us, waved, and beeped his horn. In my mind, I couldn't imagine anything more exciting for a little child to experience. That's when my grandson turned, pointed and screamed "Ball!" He was thrilled to point out to me that there was a basketball sitting nearby on another neighbor's lawn. That which I figured would mesmerize him, clearly did not.

Do adults know what impresses young children? Try asking our "father-in-chief" of the United States. While appearing on the "Tonight" show several months ago, President Barack Obama described how impressive the ride is in Marine One. The helicopter lifted off the White House lawn and headed for Camp David. Below, symbols of our nation's history were in full view.

Soaring higher, they flew over the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Monument. Quite an impressive sight, don't you agree? Sasha Obama, while scanning the amenities of the presidential helicopter, was oblivious to the magnificent view, and asked her Dad, "Can I have one of those Starburst candies in the jar?" She was appreciating Marine One on her own childlike level and her father was intuitive enough to understand that.

This column is dedicated to our grandson on his second birthday.
Be Counted columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column via his website http://www.familythinking.com/

Seriously, Is This Summer Camp?

Summertime Week post 4 of 5

Camps with full-time parent liaisons?
Summer camp as a secret vacation from Ritalin?
Have meddlesome mothers and fathers forgotten that one main point of overnight camp is to give children a chance to solve problems without parental assistance?
And what is "fading parental morality"?

Tina Kelley described the changes in summer camps in her article in the NY Times. Most high-end sleep-away camps in the Northeast now employ full-time parent liaisons. The job is “almost like a hotel concierge listening to a client’s needs.”

Kelley states, “The liaisons are emblematic of what sleep-away camp experts say is an increasing emphasis on catering to increasingly high-maintenance parents, including those who make unsolicited bunk placement requests, flagrantly flout a camp’s ban on cell phones and junk food, and consider summer an ideal time to give their offspring a secret vacation from Ritalin.”

And are camp WebCams helping matters?
“I have parents calling and saying they saw their child in the background of a picture (on our website) of other children and he didn’t look happy, or his face looked red, has he been putting on enough suntan lotion, or I haven’t seen my child and I have seen a lot of other children, is my child so depressed he doesn’t want to be in a picture,” said Jay Jacobs, who has run Timber Lake Camp in Shandaken, N.Y., since 1980.

According to Norman Friedman, “They’ll give their child two cell phones, so if they get caught with the first one, just give it up and you’ll have the second one to talk to me,” he said. “That’s widespread, not isolated. I call it fading parental morality. What they’re doing is entering into delinquent behaviors with their children. And what kind of statement is that to a child?”

Summertime Week Posts:
1. Children gain more weight in summer than during school
2. Summer books: Bad Parenting stories are so funny (not)
3. (From the We-Kid-You-Not-File) Summer Strolls: the direction your stroller faces could affect your baby's language development
4. Seriously, do you call this summer camp?
5. Too much sunscreen and too much paranoid parenting