Category: Psychology

Is it kids, parents, society, the water?

Posted on by Suki

I keep a little virtual sticky note on my computer of ideas for my blog. A long-running idea is summed up with “kids are different these days,” something someone said to me. I’ve been pondering it. Clearly something is different, but what is it?

A friend e-mailed me because she saw a banner ad on Yahoo that said, “Is your child happy in school?” and it occurred to her that such a question probably never was asked in her grandparents’ generation. I’m sure that’s true of my family: Neither of my parents had much choice in schooling. They went, and that was it.

As far as my schooling was concerned, we didn’t have a lot of choices. I never heard of homeschooling. There was a Catholic school in town; my parents tried it for my oldest sibling and then switched her to the public school, and all five of us went straight through public school. There was no “school choice,” no “alternative education.”

On the other hand, my husband, who grew up in a much more densely populated area, chose to go to the “alternative” high school in his town. So alternatives were growing in the seventies, but they were generally alternatives geared to what parents wanted rather than what children needed.

I have to fast-forward over all those years that I was neither a student nor a parent to this century. Things have really changed. Certainly I know that a lot of people, perhaps the majority of people, still send their kid to the neighborhood public school, and the most choice they feel they have is to fight for the teacher they like in each grade. But there has been a quiet and deep change in our attitudes, and I think that kids are reflecting that.

First of all, there’s the change in parenting. I truly believe that parents now are actually thinking about being parents as something that involves choices; I’m not sure that was true in previous generations. Certainly before Dr. Spock came along, people pretty much did what their parents did. But now, more and more parents are actually considering what each individual child needs. Instead of “this is what parenting is” (the old approach) or “this is what I think is right” (the “new school” approach), we have “this is what I’ve determined is right for this child at this time.”

I’ve met so many parents who say that school is a year-by-year thing. This year they’re homeschooling, but next year remains to be seen. This year they’re fine with the neighborhood public school, but they’re keeping a close eye on how things go.

So back to the question: Is this a change in kids, parents, or society? I think it’s all three. Kids are living very different lives than they used to. I wrote a series of articles for Growing Up in Santa Cruz about behavioral problems in kids and some new ways of treating them. Almost all of the practitioners I talked to noted the incredible change in lifestyle that kids today have from their parents’ upbringing: a complete lack of unstructured time, very little time in nature, scheduled days that have them running from one activity to another, lots of time in highly structured environments, in close quarters with a lot of kids.

Parents are also changing. Pretty much every parent I know has tried out one theory or another: Positive Discipline, Attachment Parenting, etc. There are probably lots of theories I don’t know because they don’t appeal to me! This is a huge change from when my parents were parenting; they had their memories of how their parents did it, and if they didn’t want to take that as a model, they just had to figure it out for themselves.

Finally, society has opened up so much. I would guess that some things are largely the same for families in the small Midwestern towns I knew when I was growing up, but one major thing has changed for all of us: We are less connected with our physical neighbors and more connected with like-minded people regardless of location. Living in Santa Cruz is a good fit for me; there are lots of families here who have similar values to ours. But if it weren’t a good fit, I would still have a virtual community that could offer me advice and support, which they do every day.

It’s a whole new world, really, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable judging it “better” in every way. But in some ways, we have come a long way, baby. By paying attention to each child’s needs, parenting has been made all the more complicated, but (I hope!) all the more effective.

Soccer Girl

Posted on by Suki

There are a couple of areas of parenting in which I admit freely that I have given up. One of them was enrolling my kids in activities that would teach them the basics of group sports, especially those dreaded sports that depend on catching balls. You see, I grew up in a baseball and hockey family. I also have very bad eyes. So in my youth I did learn to throw a baseball pretty well, and skate well enough to get around, but when a ball came at me, I’d see two of them. I’d have just enough time to think, “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” and then if I didn’t duck the darn thing would hit me in the face.

Not surprisingly, I never tried hockey. I wanted to keep my teeth.

When my son, whose eyes are perfect, expressed his dread of signing up for sports, it wasn’t a big deal to me. I also thought of my sister, whose family schedule revolved around whether her son’s team was winning. And there was that husband I chose, who, like me, prefers solitary, man-battling-his-own-limitations sports. I eased my conscience by making sure that my son is enrolled in a school that has P.E.

So when my daughter mentioned that she wanted to play soccer, it hardly registered. It was like she’d said “I want to be princess of the universe,” one of those passing fancy things. (Well, OK, it is not a passing fancy that she is, in fact, Empress of the Universe!) But then she said it again. And then a flyer turned up in her box at school. “I want to go to soccer camp,” she announced. And she was serious.

The flyer was from an outfit called Santa Cruz Soccer. I know nothing about local soccer groups. But they had something they called “economy camp,” and that seemed to fit the bill. I signed her up. The appointed day was the other day, and we turned up with bells on. “Oh, the economy camp? You didn’t get a call?”

I suddenly knew that things were going to go badly… but then they didn’t! “No problem,” said Bill, who runs the camp. He got a couple of teenagers to take my daughter onto the field, and she was gone, totally hooked in. He explained that they’d had to cancel my daughter’s camp, but that they’d just work her into the one that was going on.

It was at that point that I had to start into my standard speech about my daughter’s behavioral oddities. People sometimes find it surprising at first that I stay to watch her, given that she’s not a clingy kid and seems so completely with it… till she isn’t. Although I don’t want to prejudice people, I think they’re better off forewarned and she’s better off if I’m there to support her and help teachers understand her needs. Bill was totally understanding. He and one of his coaches, Katie, told me that they got lots of kids who have behavioral difficulties, and in fact Katie works with special needs kids during the schoolyear.

I felt like I’d walked into a place where I was understood, and where I just didn’t have to say anymore. It was a fabulous feeling. So was watching my six-year-old out on that field. I noticed that they kept someone — a teenage counselor or a coach — on her all the time, which is what she needs. She was happy and confident.

This is how I wish all the things my kids take part in were run: The people running it don’t bother worrying about whether the mix-up was my mistake or theirs. They find a way to include children who don’t fit in. They’re relaxed about the kids’ behavior, but also prepared to take care of whatever they get. When a kid needs something different than the rest of the kids, they find a way to accommodate.

My daughter was so in love with the experience that she was relatively easy to deal with. Some other kids had various “issues,” though, and I watched the staff take care of them supportively and firmly. They didn’t coddle the kids; they were just realistic about the differences between kids and what they are able to do. I guess that perhaps in this regard they have an easier job than a classroom teacher, but I bet if I saw these same people at work during the schoolyear, they’d be just as impressive.

Some people get kids. It’s such a joy to find them and watch them work their magic.

Socialization and the Homeschooled Child

Posted on by Suki
Homeschooling parents will tell you that the comment they get most often from well-meaning adults is that their homeschooled kids might not get proper socialization while being homeschooled. Usually the well-meaning adult has an example or two to give as proof of the deleterious effect of homeschooling on the social skills of children.
Homeschooling parents get angry about it, joke about it, brush it off, but still it keeps coming back and back.
I’ll tell you my own experience: being in school five days a week had an awful effect on my daughter’s social skills. She started kindergarten generally happy. She left kindergarten in a different state entirely.
She went to a school where the word “bad” was never spoken by adults and never tolerated from children. Not a single adult or child referred to her as “bad” in her entire three months there. Yet by the end of her short kindergarten career, my daughter was drawing self-portraits with the word BAD scrawled at the bottom. She would say things like, “Mommy and Daddy are good, Brother is pretty good, and I am bad.” She had nightmares and said that everyone hated her.
How did that happen?
A structured kindergarten environment was the very worst social experience for her. Her small, quiet, orderly program was the worst sort of place I could have chosen, but I didn’t know that then. My daughter stuck out as different. She had a lot of trouble following some of the rules, and because the rules were so strictly enforced, she was often called on for not following rules. The other children noticed. She started to be made a scapegoat in the classroom.
When I was a freshman in college I wrote a paper about George Orwell’s “Newspeak” in the novel 1984. Orwell posited a world in which the government controlled people’s minds by using a language that made bad things sound good. To a certain extent, this is just what advertising does. But really, there’s no way people can change fundamental ideas. You might use the word “ungood” for “bad,” but it doesn’t cancel out the concept of bad. You replace a set of sounds with a new set of sounds, but you can’t change the concept.
Every child, whether or not they’ve been called “bad,” (my daughter hasn’t been, to my knowledge) can tell you who the “bad” kid is in their school classroom. Even if they don’t use the word “bad,” they know who it is. In my daughter’s case, when she was very young she wanted a word that expressed a revulsion at something, not just “bad” but really, really gross and awful. The word she invented was “gox.” Food she didn’t like was gox. Clothing she wouldn’t wear was gox. She has stopped using the word, but the concept remains.
So for my daughter, the most socially healthy thing I ever did for her as far as schooling goes was to take her out of school. Now she sees her school friends a lot less often. And yes, they still, in their limited times together, notice that she is different. They notice that when they sit in circle, sometimes she sits in circle, but other times she lies down in the middle of the circle, pulls up a chair outside of the circle, or turns her back on the circle and ignores it completely. They notice that if they do something she doesn’t like, she’s likely to react in a stronger way than other kids. But she doesn’t have to be with them all the time. She doesn’t need their constant approval. Twice a week she gets to play and have fun, to share her interests and passions, and the rest of the time she can relax. She no longer finds herself playing the “bad” kid so often, and so she is happier. Her self-portraits now have gone back to having the word “love” or “I love you” on them. She’s back to being herself.
I realize that there are some people who homeschool because they want to keep their children away from society, but in reality homeschooling families are anything but homogeneous. If you spend time with a bunch of homeschooled kids, you’ll find that they are as ungeneralizable as any group of people. Yes, as younger children they are probably harder to corral into a unified activity — this isn’t something they practice on a daily basis. But the most compelling argument against homeschooled kids not being socialized well is right there in front of you in every mainstream school in this country: when, in the rest of your life, are you going to have to march around in a group of people all your same age, have a set place in line, do what you’re told, and learn a set group of facts that will be tested by filling in bubbles? These are not social skills any of us need in our daily lives. And certainly we don’t need to be forced into situations where we constantly feel bad about ourselves. For now, as long as she needs it, I’ll take my happy little girl feeling good, and drawing her lovely, loving pictures.

Emotional Intelligence

Posted on by Suki
One year there was a boy in my son’s class who was always bugging the other kids. He would break into conversations, touch kids in ways they didn’t like, and generally ignore the usual social conventions that kids follow.
He was also a very large boy, which affects how people view him.
It occurs to me that in another school, with other teachers and in less controlled situations with other kids, this boy could easily have turned into what we call a bully. He was big, physically intrusive, and unable to listen when other kids told him to back off.
In the school his mother chose for him, however, his behavior was looked at from a whole different angle. Instead of saying, This boy is behaving badly, which is the traditional view, and then applying the traditional punishments, the teachers questioned, Why does he act this way? What does he need? They talked to his mother. They had class meetings. When clashes arose between him and other kids, there was always a caring adult there to mediate.
As the year progressed, the other kids came to understand him more. Instead of getting mad at him, they would gently explain what he’d done that was wrong. And because he wasn’t being punished and ostracized for the behavior, he listened to them. By the end of the year, he was integrated into the classroom, and though his behavior still wasn’t completely within the range we call “normal,” he was able to form good relationships with his classmates.
In a traditional school setting, this is the perfect situation to create what we call a “bully.” Here’s a boy who is very large. He doesn’t understand social cues the way that most kids do in the middle of their elementary school years. He’s not a verbally adept child. Other children misunderstand his actions.
In a large, chaotic classroom, the teacher probably doesn’t have time to notice him, except when he’s making trouble. Because she doesn’t have a lot of support, every time a kid complains about his behavior she just sends him to the office for discipline. It’s likely that not one adult takes responsbility for him and tries to figure out what’s at the root of his problems.
On the playground, kids don’t want to play with him, and he doesn’t understand why. With no adults to mediate, their clashes escalate. As the children try to push him further away, he gets more and more intrusive till his behavior starts to fit the definition of bullying.
His teacher might meet with his mother, but his mother’s concerns are dealt with outside of the classroom. The problem is his behavior, the school tells her. What are you going to do about it?
The mother is desperate for help, but no one seems to look at it from her point of view. Here’s a boy that she loves, who is so sweet and loving and really wants to have friends. But the more he is pushed away by the staff and students, the more upset and angry he gets. Because the point of view is punitive — what can we do to discourage the behavior? — instead of therapeutic — what does he need that he’s not getting? — the problems just increase.
Behaviorally different kids have always existed, and do exist in every society. How the society chooses to deal with them greatly influences whether those behaviors set into an anti-social adult, or whether they are channeled into an emotionally healthy adult. By blaming children for their behavior, rather than trying to figure out what the child is expressing with the behavior, we force the child to protect himself in whatever way he can.
The growing field of Emotional Intelligence is trying to figure out what we need to know in order to become emotionally healthy adults. From Wikipedia: One attempt toward a definition was made by Salovey and Mayer (1990) who defined EI as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.”
Just like with any other pursuit — reading, basketball, knitting, math — some kids seem to come into the world better equipped than other kids to develop the skill of emotional intelligence. We don’t punish kids for having a hard time learning to read – why should we punish them for not getting social cues without being taught?
Of course, what I’m suggesting here is not cheap, it can’t be done on a computer, and its results can’t be boiled down into a score. In other words, it’s education.

More about “bad” kids

Posted on by Suki
A cool thing about a blog is that it’s not supposed to be polished writing. You can just dump your thoughts of the moment into it, whether or not they’ll be your thoughts of the next moment!
One of my readers took offense at my blog entry, “In Defense of Bad Kids.” She said: The “bad kids” who made you cry are not necessarily fine adults, now. There are plenty of adults who continue to act like bullies and I really don’t agree with you justifying their mistreatment of you by saying that you learned something from them worthy.
I totally agree with this comment. On the other hand, I still totally agree with what I wrote before. I don’t think this is a contradiction, however. Just an expression of how contradictory the whole subject of humans, their behaviors, and their intents is!
The reader’s comment is slightly wrong: she seems to imply that I meant physically violent behavior should be tolerated or even supported. I didn’t mean that at all, of course. No school should allow its students to be in physical danger. That’s obvious and absolute.
But I wasn’t just writing about bullies who hurt other children, rather about “different” and negative behaviors in general. My experience with my kids and working in their schools has led me to believe that the popular image of a kid who “is” a bully is overly simplistic. Bullying is often a behavior that means something else, and few kids always act that way.
Yes, I’ve known kids who seem to “be” bullies: they invariably pick on the less powerful, whether doing that through physical force or emotional coercion.
But I’ve seen more situations in which kids who are acting in a negative way have something else going on, and their behavior is the only way they know to express it. I’m not saying their behavior should be tolerated; I’m saying that it’s better to face problems than to push them away.
I’m also concerned that in trying to make things easy for our kids, we might end up making things harder. Part of the function of a school is to teach kids to get along in a society. And all societies contain people who bully others, as well as people who are likely targets for bullies. Teachers can provide a good role model for kids on all sides of the conflict, by showing them how to work on their differences in a rational, fair manner.
This is definitely not the easy way to go, especially for a school that doesn’t have to accept any student that walks in their doors. It’s easier just to make your problem someone else’s problem, then forget about it. But if you’re an educator, that’s a lousy lesson to teach your students.
I’m guessing that the most incorrigible bullies in my school probably never changed that much. No one ever taught them any differently; teachers were in general indifferent to what was causing the behavior. And if the cause was a violent home life, that’s probably more than a single teacher can take on anyway.
But my point is that it’s always worth a try to help kids, no matter how they behave, and to view their behavior in context. Our public schools are responding to budget cuts by cutting “non-essential” personnel like counselors, who are an essential piece of helping kids to work out their problems at school. And fewer personnel means fewer eyes and ears, more freedom for the bullies to get firmly entrenched in their role and the bullied to learn to accept their role as the victim.
I’ve never seen a “zero tolerance” policy have much positive effect, but I have seen skilled teachers help kids understand themselves and others in a constructive, positive way. And I hope that those kids, whatever their role was in the conflict, turn into adults who have more tools to resolve conflicts they and their children face. The words are easy to write, but the lessons are hard to learn and teach. That’s life!

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