J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Parenting Page 2 of 3

Family Values — A Different Take

By

On October 29

In Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming, Parenting

7171589318_17cc979b71_b
In the United States, the phrase “family values” tends to be associated with a conservative “1950’s style” family structure and lifestyle, including a heterosexual marriage, a bread-winning father, a homemaker mother, and multiple children.

There’s nothing wrong with that kind of family, but it’s not accurate to consider this kind of family as “normal”. Most families in the United States don’t look like this.

The way the term “family values” is used politically angers me — it attempts to marginalize families with gay parents, single parents, even couples who elect not to have children.

What makes a “real family”? Love and commitment. That’s it.

Maybe it’s time to reclaim the phrase. What if “family values” simply referred to the particular values that your family holds?

The idea is simple: sit down with your family and discuss what’s important to all of you. What values can you agree on? What does it mean to be a member of your family?

This isn’t a new idea, but rather a trend that’s gaining momentum. I can’t remember where I first read about this particular exercise, but here’s another post that describes it.

Our daughter is six, and you can see a six-year-old’s voice in the some of the items below. First-graders tend to make fun of each other mercilessly, and she decided she didn’t need that at home. So for now, we’ve agreed to not make fun of each other.

Our daughter sees these more as “rules” — she doesn’t quite get what a value is. Kia and I see the list as aspirational. It’s what our family looks like on a good day (or week).

What is your family about? Articulating your values is powerful. Co-defining your values pulls your family together, like gravity (but doesn’t bind you, like glue).

Values ripple out. Your small (or big) family unit may be more influential than you realize. Values are contagious. Like cold viruses, values spread through children.

Here’s the list my own family came up with (in no particular order, redundancies and family slang included). If you do the exercise, feel free to post your own results below.

What does it mean to be a member of our family?

  • We take care of each other.
  • We help each other with projects and tasks.
  • We share enthusiasm.
  • We listen to each other.
  • We prepare and enjoy healthy meals together.
  • We make good food.
  • We accept each other for who we are.
  • We celebrate birthdays and holidays* together.
  • We are polite and respectful and nice to each other.
  • We go on adventurecations together.
  • We learn together.
  • We go to family camp together.
  • We read together.
  • We don’t make fun of each other.
  • We go on bike rides together.
  • We go to the movies together.
  • We play games together.
  • We spend time in nature together.
  • We help our community together.
  • We help our friends and extended family.
  • We try to make the world a better place.
  • We are loving towards each other.

* we celebrate all of the Jewish holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween … we are equal-opportunity observers (and yes I’m an atheist — but I don’t think religious practice needs to be tied to beliefs)

What was the result of completing this exercise?

As I mentioned above, our daughter has assigned herself the “enforcer” of the “family rules.” Even though she is selective and self-serving in her enforcement, her reminders do sometimes get us back on the right track.

What happens when you explicitly define your values is that inevitably you start to notice discrepancies between your stated values and your behavior.

A less-developed mind will shout “Hypocrisy!” and condemn the value setter.

But what’s the alternative? Lower standards? Not stating and therefore not knowing what your other family members hold dear?

Some “falling short” is inevitable. But it’s also inevitable that once you search your heart and then mentally focus your feelings into values, you’ll find yourself moving towards them.

Explicitly stated values vs. habitual behaviors create friction and tension within the mind. That leads to growth.

So slowly, day-by-day, we’re getting a little closer to what we all consider to be ideal family relations and activities.

In addition to growth, I have a secure feeling that I know what we’re about, as a family. It won’t be the same as your family (though there might be a lot of overlap). Each family is unique.

Conscious Growth — Personal vs Familial

Defining our values as a family made me consider what my own personal values are. The exercise served as a catalyst for my own personal growth. I ended up following-up with a series of exercises where I defined and prioritized both my positive and negative values (things that I want to have both more of or less of in my life). I’ll describe this process more in a later post.

Values as Cultural DNA

I sometimes think about my eight great-grandparents, and how they influenced me. I only knew one of them personally, and of course she was a really old lady when I was a little kid — I never got a good sense of what she was about.

But I know those eight people shaped me, not only through bits of DNA, not only via their life events that activated or inactivated various genes via epigenetic methylation, but through values, implicit and explicit, that they held and lived by. My strengths, my weaknesses, my hopes and fears, everything about me was greatly influenced by those eight people — even though I only met one of them.

Their values were passed down to my grandparents, to my parents, and then to me. No doubt some changes were made along the way. Sometimes we reject our parents’ values, because those values suck. But that kind of change takes tremendous self-analysis and effort, and even then we can find ourselves walking in our parents’ footsteps.

Take the time to consider your own values, and what values you’re passing on to your children (or whatever children you come into contact with in your life, even if they’re not your own). Make the passage of “cultural DNA” a little more conscious, a little more intentional.

 

Another Reason to Send Your Child to a Less Affluent School

By

On September 30

In Culture Rants/Shares, Education, Health/Body-hacking, Oakland, Parenting

5405554378_06801f649d_z

A while back I wrote about why we chose to send our daughter to an under-performing, high-poverty public school in our neighborhood. Basically, a high rate of parental involvement and good teachers allayed any fears we had regarding low test scores (the concept of relative rank¹ was also a factor). Our daughter is now thriving in first grade, both academically and socially. School standards are high, and PTO fundraising has helped develop programs in art, poetry, and science (ideally tax dollars would pay for these things, but California schools are still struggling financially).

Yet Another Reason to Avoid the Affluent Schools

Recently Kia forwarded me this article which points out that vaccine opt-out rates in California have been on the rise for the past seven years. This had resulted in both measles and whooping cough epidemics. Research clearly showed that higher vaccine refusal rates fueled the epidemics.

Why are parents opting out? Fears linking vaccines to autism is the most likely reason, even though such research has been completely refuted. We still don’t know definitely what is behind rising autism rates in the U.S. (rates vary significantly by state). SSRI use during pregnancy is one possible factor, though a Danish study noted that depression itself is a risk factor, and that there was no difference in autism rates of children born to depressed mothers who had been taking SSRIs and those who had not. It’s also possible that more children are being classified as being on the autistic spectrum — a change in diagnostic trends. Bottom line, we still don’t definitively know. But vaccine avoidance isn’t helping anything, and is having devastating effects on herd immunity.

What’s herd immunity (or community immunity)? If your child is vaccinated, they’re safe against that disease, right? Unfortunately not. While being vaccinated reduces the chance of infection if a child is exposed to a disease agent, an additional benefit come from not being exposed in the first place. In other words, the protective effects of vaccines are cumulative, depending on what percentage of the kids are vaccinated.

Notably, wealthier communities, and wealthier schools within those communities, tend to have higher vaccination opt-out rates via the “PBE” (personal belief exemption). Marin county, the wealthiest county in the Bay Area, had an average 8% PBE opt-out rate (San Geronimo Valley Elementary in Marin had a whopping 79% PBE rate). Private schools also have higher PBE rates than public schools (on average).

Less affluent public schools (like our daughter’s school), tend to have a PBE rate of only 1%. Now there’s some community immunity!

Does Affluenza = Influenza?

Not all wealthy communities have high PBE rates. The San Francisco average is quite low (1.64%). Maybe Marin County, the land of crystal healers and psychics, just has lower scientific literacy.

Vaccines are not entirely risk-free. [CDC.gov] But in terms of cost-benefit analysis, the tiny risk of most vaccines is worth the protective effect against the disease. Just as importantly, you’re not only protecting your own child, but your child’s classmates.

If you’re considering NOT vaccinating your child, I can empathize. I considered it too — there are scary stories out there on the internet, real (but rare) cases of children being injured by vaccines. But please ALSO consider the risks of the diseases themselves, and check the published research in terms of the actual probability of serious injury. It’s far more probable a vaccination will save your child’s life than cause them any harm.

 

¹ On relative rank … sending your child to a school comprised mostly of elites can negatively warp their confidence and self-worth. If most of your child’s classmates are richer, smarter, more socially connected, more sophisticated, and/or more competitively oriented, your normal or above-average-under-normal-circumstances child might end up feeling a bit beaten down. Relative rank matters. On the other hand, if your child’s school is comprised of a more diverse cross-section of society, it’s more likely they’ll get a chance to shine in at least one area.

 

Back to School — Getting Bedtime Back on Track

By

On August 19

In Parenting

2372984774_88da4590ee_o
This is the last week of summer for Oakland Public Schools — school starts on Monday. We let bedtime for our six-year-old slip a little later over most of the summer. Even on days she had camp, the camp drop-off was usually later than her regular 8:30am school day. Like many kids she gets a huge energy burst right as it’s time to go to bed, so bedtime is often a struggle.

Ever since we did our no artificial light experiment several years ago, we’ve been turning lights way down in the evening. Even so, our daughter wasn’t getting to sleep until 9:45pm up until last week. Knowing we’d all have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7am once school began, we started to worry about how to get back on schedule.

Luckily we remembered how well turning off the lights had worked in terms of getting all of us to bed earlier, so we tried that. If our daughter hadn’t already brushed her teeth before the sun went down, we allowed her to bring her flashlight to the bathroom, but no overhead lights, no lamps, etc. When it’s dark, it’s time for sleep … so get the book reading in early while you still can.

We’ve added some fun rituals: lighting candles, a few minutes reading by a low-lumen wind-up flashlight, the adventure of getting to bed in the semi-dark.

Short explanation: blue-wavelength light (emitted by light bulbs and screens, but not candles) prevents serotonin from converting into melatonin. The latter makes you sleepy. So keeping lights off in the evening helps you get sleepy (and thus go to sleep) earlier. Think camping.

The other factor is FOMO: fear-of-missing-out. With all the lights off in the house, our daughter is less concerned with what we are doing while she’s supposed to be going to sleep. A dark house seems more boring, which in this case is a good thing.

So the experiment is working … we’ve shaved 15 minutes off of bedtime every night since we started, and last night she was asleep by 8:45. The goal is 8:30 so we’re getting close. Most kids her age need at least 10 hours (at least if you want a kid in a good mood who can pay attention to stuff), so that works.

As for myself and Kia, we’re still staying up late on the laptops, or reading. I’d like to be getting to sleep a little earlier myself (if for no other reason than to get up before my kid and get some writing in), so I’ll probably put a “devices off by 10pm” rule in place for myself. Even with f.lux installed, computers keep me up later than just reading by lamp light.

Why I’m Sending My Child to an Underperforming Public School

By

On October 29

In Culture Rants/Shares, Education, Oakland, Parenting

Emerson Elementary class portrait 1916

Emerson Elementary class portrait 1916

I live in a middle-class neighborhood (Temescal) in Oakland, California. I’m lucky enough to live very near two elementary schools. Park Day School is a private school, with tuition costs of roughly $20K/year. As far as I can tell Park Day is an excellent school, and some of my friends are sending their kids there. The other nearby elementary school is Emerson Elementary. That’s where my daughter goes, despite the fact that average test scores are quite low.

Why did my wife and I choose to send our daughter to Emerson? The obvious reasons apply. We support public schools, who accept all children from the community, instead of picking and choosing the easy and/or bright kids (the rambunctious son of an acquaintance of ours was rejected from Park Day’s kindergarten for “behavioral issues”). I don’t think that sending your kid to private school makes you a bad person, but I do feel like I’m doing the right thing by my community. It’s also nice to save the money on tuition.

But the main reason I’m writing this post is to explain why I think my daughter will get a better education at Emerson, despite the low average test scores, some students with behavioral problems, and tight budgets.

Great Teachers

Kia (my wife) decided to become active in the Emerson PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) a couple years before our daughter enrolled there. She made the commitment to get to know the school, and to do what she could to make the school better before our daughter started there (fund-raising for art and music programs, improving school grounds, increasing parental involvement, etc.). She was able to get to know many of the teachers, and observe them in the classroom. At least for kindergarten and the lower grades, the teaching quality at Emerson is so high that we did not even bother to submit a classroom preference when we enrolled. Both kindergarten teachers, Ms. Campos and Ms. Aiello, are excellent.

High-quality “value added” teaching (meaning that the teachers positively influence test scores) in primary school can have positive economic and social effects that reach into a young person’s twenties and beyond. Here’s a nytimes article that discusses the same study.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about the teachers over at Park Day, but if all other things are equal, I’ll choose the public school. Sending your kid to private school undercuts the public school system, depriving public schools of state funds. Sometimes there’s a good reason to do this, but in this case teaching quality isn’t an issue.

Of course, all things are NOT equal. Park Day has more money, and a carefully selected student body. Overall, the private school receives more kindergarteners who are better prepared, have a head start on their education, are better behaved (the most difficult kids are not accepted into the school), and on average come from homes with all kinds of economic and social advantages. So let’s get into that.

Test Scores Are Not Contagious, and the Benefits of Being a High Rank Student

Emerson gets some disadvantaged kids. 63% of the students are eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. A stable two-parent family is the exception, not the rule. Many of the kids didn’t attend preschool before starting at Emerson. Predictably, many of these children do not excel academically in elementary school, despite the best efforts of their skilled and motivated teachers.

My own daughter comes in with some advantages, including a great preschool experience, a culture of literacy at home, a stable family life, good nutrition, etc. She is not going to suddenly lose these advantages by having classmates who don’t share them. This seems to be the biggest mental disconnect of parents who obsess over standardized test score averages while school shopping. Your child’s academic performance is going to be influenced by their readiness, their innate ability, the quality of the teaching, and additional support and instruction they receive at home. Having classmates who are economically and/or socially disadvantaged (and thus possibly behind academically) is not going to bring your child down.

In fact, the opposite may occur. There is an academic benefit to being a high-ranked student that is just as strong as having a good teacher. In other words, being a “big fish in a small pond” can have an enormous positive influence on your child’s confidence, which can impel them to study harder and achieve even more.

I’m not making this up. High achieving students do better in worse schools (especially boys, and more competitive students).

Around 2009-2010, Oakland parents started enrolling their children in school later, so that their kids would be the oldest in the class. They did this en masse, so much so that our preschool had to add a classroom to accept all the redshirted laggards. Why did they do this? All because of a chapter in Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers that described how almost all professional hockey players are born in January or February (the oldest kids in the class are bigger, get the most time on the ice, get more practice and acquire skills more quickly, and maintain that advantage until the pros). Never mind that this advantage doesn’t translate to other sports (like basketball) or academics (the younger kids in a class tend to do better by the time they’re in high school). Middle-class Oakland parents are trendy and want every advantage for their child. [Edit: To be clear, I include myself in this category! Our daughter was not near the age limit but we might have easily made the same decision at the time.]

Now that Gladwell has gotten behind the “big fish in a little pond” theory of success, I wonder if we’ll see trendy Oakland parents flocking to the lowest-performing schools. 😉

Diverse Social Interactions, and a Diverse Worldview

Our daughter went to Temple Sinai Preschool in Oakland, and overall had a great experience there. The only thing that bothered me about that school was that it was overwhelmingly white. It’s a Jewish preschool, so to some extent that was to be expected, but my daughter was starting to exhibit some disturbing stereotypes about African-Americans that really bothered me. Once, at around age 3, she pointed to a picture of a middle-class African-American couple in a magazine and asked “Are they homeless?” Homeless people in Oakland? Check. Mostly African-American? Check. Lack of social exposure to African-Americans in general to balance her worldview? Check. No wonder she said that. The last item I could actually do something about.

Emerson is currently 58% African-American students (the remaining 42% being Hispanic, white, Asian, and multi-ethnic kids). A couple months into the school year, and I’m relieved to see that my daughter has friends of all skin shades. At this point she has fewer racial hang-ups than I do.

As an aside, when Kia told other parents at our preschool that our daughter was going to Emerson, she encountered in several cases an attitude that could only be described as “fear of blackness” (if not outright racism). While I understand the impulse of a parent to not want their child to be culturally isolated, Emerson is a diverse school, especially in the lower grades. It looks a lot like Oakland. To me, that’s ideal.

Of course, diversity is not just about black and white. 20% of of Emerson students are classified as “English language learners.” Check out the breakdown of languages spoken in the homes of these students:

Languages spoken in the homes of "English language learners" at Emerson

Languages spoken in the homes of “English language learners” at Emerson

There’s some American melting pot for you. Once again, I see this kind of cultural diversity as a clear benefit. My daughter will have direct experience at a young age that 1) English is not the only language in the world, and 2) there are other cultures worth learning about.

Summary

Sending your kid to any school is really an experiment. I’m not making a 100% no-matter-what commitment to Emerson, or to public school in general. We’ll have to see how it goes. And as for our friends who have chosen private school for their kids, I respect those decisions. Each kid is different and has different needs. All a parent can do is to try to make a good choice, and then observe closely and adjust course as needed. Here’s what I’ve observed so far at Emerson:

  • my daughter likes to go to school, at least on most days
  • academically she is progressing very quickly, learning to read and write and do simple math problems
  • in addition to basic academics, good programs exist for art, music, and poetry
  • parental involvement is high
  • teaching quality is high
  • the school is being led well by principal Kathy Hatzke
  • teaching and admin staff are open to ideas and suggestions for how to more effectively educate our children (especially if backed by empirical research); they are not “set in their ways” but rather are hungry for progress and improvement and creating better systems

On the downside, some of the kids definitely have some behavioral issues, primarily around poor concentration and emotional control/anger management. But these same kids are sweet and good-natured most of time, and still have tons of potential even if the odds are stacked against them. Their parents and teachers haven’t given up on them, and neither have other adults in the community (myself included). Ultimately you have to ask yourself (if you are a parent considering sending your child to a public school with poor test scores): why are the scores bad? Is it bad teaching, or is the school taking on the hardest kids, with the fewest social and economic advantages? If it’s the latter case, and the school has other good things going for it, there’s no good reason to fear sending your child there.

[twitter_follow screen_name=”johndavidmoyer” show_count=False size=Large]

Color Me Crazy – Artificial (Coal Tar) Dyes and Your Child's Mental Health

By

On October 18

In Culture Rants/Shares, Health/Body-hacking, Mental Health, Parenting

Delicious, colorful, neurotoxic?

Delicious, colorful, neurotoxic?

Until recently, I didn’t take the health claims regarding artificial dyes in food very seriously. I don’t eat candy very often, but when I do, M&M’s are towards the top of the list. Eating unnaturally brightly-colored food is fun!

But over the last few months, my wife noticed a correlation between our daughter eating artificially-colored candy and having complete emotional meltdowns (tantrums, screaming and hitting, etc.). At first I was a little skeptical of this correlation; I suspected lack of sleep as a more obvious and likely factor (or the sugar in candy, as opposed to the artificial dyes). But it did prompt me to look into the research behind the claims.

After doing some reading, I’m now convinced that allowing your child to eat artificial dyes is about as responsible as serving them a gin & tonic. And then lighting their cigarette.

The History

Rachel Hennessey has a good article on Forbes.com that covers the history of artificial color in food. A few points from her article:

  • the earliest food colorings, from natural sources, contained toxic amounts of mercury and arsenic
  • in the early 1900’s synthetic colors were created from coal tar, to replace the natural toxic ones
  • over the next century the vast majority of these synthetic colors were banned by the FDA because of health concerns, leaving only seven still legal for use in food

Of the remaining seven legal artificial food colorings, there is a great deal of research linking their use to behavioral problems, DNA damage, reproductive problems, psychotoxicity, immunosuppression, metabolic acidosis, and a host of other serious problems.

Here’s a summary of the research.

Here’s another research summary, in chronological format, focusing on behavior/ADHD.

Corporations that produce products that use artificial colors would like you to believe that this research is “controversial.” But it looks fairly straightforward to me. There is enough evidence pointing at artificial colors as a cause of behavioral problems and other health issues that I’m going to stop eating the stuff altogether. And I’m not going to allow my daughter to eat artificial colors on a regular basis. (I don’t have any illusions about controlling my kid’s diet 100%, but I am ready to start sharing my views with other parents, and requesting that treats at birthday parties, etc. be as dye-free as possible. I hate being a food cop but this is serious stuff, and parents are generally underinformed on the topic).

Lunchtime Observations

My daughter recently started attending our neighborhood public school. I live in a middle-class, diverse neighborhood, but most the middle-class parents around here send their kids to private school. The public school my daughter attends is comprised mostly of working-class and poorer families, many of whom may not have the time or inclination to review the clinical research on every ingredient that goes into their kids’ mouths. Quite a few of the kids have behavioral problems, including trouble paying attention and frequent emotional outbursts. I sometimes volunteer at lunchtime, and after seeing what some of these kids eat, I can’t help but wonder if some of the behavioral problems are related to the Kool-Aid, Lunchables, and other junk that passes as “food.” Check out the ingredients list from a Lunchable:

Read the fine print (Yellow 6, Red 40, Blue 1)

Read the fine print (Yellow 6, Red 40, Blue 1)

Do you really want to feed your kids chemicals that have been linked to such a wide array of health problems? It’s not just ADHD kids who are affected, it’s everyone.

Nanny State

Libertarians love to rail against the “nanny state.” But the way I see it, making it illegal for corporations to attempt to sell/feed poison to my kid is a reasonable restriction on corporate freedom.

Over the last 100% years, the FDA has disallowed use of 73 of the original 80 petroleum-based artificial colors. Do you really think the remaining seven are that much safer? Review the existing research before you answer.

I love the Skittles commercials. But I’m fine with looking at the rainbow. I don’t need to taste it.

What Can You Do?

Sign this petition on change.org to remove artificial dyes from M&M’s.

Experiment in your own household. If you remove all artificial color from everyone’s diet, do behavior and mood change for the better?

When you go shopping for Halloween candy (if you do that kind of thing), choose candy without artificial colors. Take a few seconds the read the ingredient list.

Talk to other parents (without attacking them). All parents love their kids, but they may have no idea that artificial colors are linked to behavioral and health problems. After all, these chemicals are FDA approved, right?

Share this post, help spread the word.

uhr-fb-redfooddyedangers

Page 2 of 3

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén