Dolphin Mothering

       A number of responses to Amy Chua's new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, are circulating the web.
       One I particularly like is Erika Christakis's The Call of the Dolphin Mother. Dolphin Mothers apparently appreciate the value of play for their young, are nurturing, and are protective while encouraging independence. They are creative, flexible, and can develop new teaching tools. And, man, can they develop tools and teach their young how to use them. Check out this National Geographic article: Dolphin Moms Teach Daughters to Use Tools. Top that, Tiger Moms!
       Christakis also points out that Tiger Mothers sometimes cannibalize their young. Now please do not tell me that Dolphin Mothers occasionally do the same. I don't want to hear it! I'm still getting over learning, after virtually worshipping sea otters for their cuteness for years, that sea otter males are complete Neanderthal cavemen in their intimate relationships:-O Please don't shatter my faith in another marine mammal.
       I love the Dolphin Mother idea. When I used to sail at Hout Bay back in South Africa, dolphins would often frolic in the wake of the boat. They always gave the impression of being so happy, enthusiastic, playful, friendly, and full of joie de vivre. Their lives seemed to be filled with sheer delight and fun. I hope my children are able to lead "dolphin lives" that allow them to happily follow their own stars (or wakes of boats.)



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       Then Ayelet Waldman came up with a tongue-in-cheek essay, In Defense of the Guilty, Ambivalent, Preoccupied Western Mom, in which she describes how she readily allowed her children to quit piano and violin and appreciated thereby being delivered from having to endure her children's music recitals. Unlike Ms. Chua, Ms. Waldman also allowed her children to have sleepovers and enjoyed the resulting savings in babysitter costs. She's honest, self-effacing, and amusing, and leaves me thinking that none of us really has a handle on this parenting thing. Maybe not even dolphins.

"Extreme Parenting"

       The article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, by Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, is making the rounds. My reaction to it was quite negative, although I think it was probably written somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Imagine making a 7-year-old practice piano hour after hour, pushing her past the point of exhaustion, forbidding her to go to the bathroom or to get a drink, just so she could learn to play "My Little White Donkey" perfectly! There are so many things in life that are both beneficial to children and fun. Why push a child into performing a task that might have some cultural merit, but that makes her miserable? 
       A counter-article, Amy Chua: Model Chinese Parent or Insufferable Elitist came out that makes fun of Ms. Chua's aspirations. I loved some of the comments, especially, "Consciously find ways to make your upbringing and your strengths into your competitive advantage. Otherwise, be prepared to work for a violin-playing, emotionally repressed, socially-retarded perfectionist for the rest of your life," and "Classical violin and piano lessons …the bane of the offspring of China’s parvenu nouveau riche."
       Another counter-article, Is Amy Chua right ..., was more depressing. One of the respondents described how her perfect, straight-A, high-achieving sister suddenly committed suicide at the age of 30. Other respondents drew attention to the unusually high suicide rate among high-achieving, young Asian-American women:-( 
       The article leaves me conflicted. In part, it makes me want to raise my kids to be street sweepers so that they never, ever have to experience this sort of stress and misery and violation of self. In part, it also makes me concerned that they'll be left in the dust by ueber-achieving, over-disciplined little robots.   
       Ms. Chua would probably think I'm a terrible mother. I never make my kids do anything. I break every one of her rules. We encourage the kids to have playdates and sleepovers and get involved in acting and play instruments other than the piano or violin (they have a little rock band going on.) It's an absolute given to me that my children choose their own extra-curricular activities. Waldorf education, in which children are encouraged to exist in a dream-like state until the age of about seven, and then to learn experientially and holistically until about 14, is very appealing to me. Within the Waldorf system, rigorous and traditional academics don't really start until age 14. 
       In spite of their relative freedom, my kids seem to be doing OK. Laura practices her viola for about an hour a day because she loves doing so. I know that falls short of the three hours expected of Ms. Chua's children, but Laura is progressing beautifully without any pressure. Paige does occasionally play her harp for three hours a day -- always and only by choice. Daniel has an exceptional GPA and mostly owns his own schooling. Emma reads a great deal and enjoys writing spontaneously. 
       I'm sure Ms. Chua, as we all do, genuinely loves her children and believes she is doing her best for them. Given that they're excelling musically and academically, she does have a point to make. However, I don't think one should forget that the work of childhood is play. Childhood is both brief and precious. It seems sad that it should be spent in a drab, gray world of repetition and pressure and coercion, rather than in having fun. One of the responses I've always enjoyed from my children when I ask them to do some home schooling is a slightly impatient, "Sorry, we're busy playing."

Legoland day!!!

       Craig is going to take a coalition of the willing (Daniel, Laura, and Emma) to Legoland, while Paige and I relax at the resort.
       Yesterday, Paige and I walked down to the beach and played in the tide pools.

Paige at Crystal Cove State Park

The Pacific Ocean

       It's interesting to be back in a big city after living in a little town with a population of about 8,000. It seems to me that people here in the LA area become desensitized to having people around them, just as animals in the zoo become oblivious to the crowds staring at them. The animals know people are there, but they become so accustomed to the fact that they develop a degree of detachment. People here are pleasant and friendly if contact is initiated, but usually it's not. Back home, people are much more inclined to acknowledge the presence of others with a nod, a wave, or a greeting.

Balboa Park

       Last Thursday, we flew from Denver to LAX, and then drove down to the our hotel in Newport Coast. Although it is coolish, the pools here are heated almost to hot tub levels, so the kids can't stay out of them. The views of the ocean are beautiful.
       Yesterday, we drove down to Balboa Park in downtown San Diego. Poor Paige was starving, but couldn't find anything she wanted to eat:-( There are several museums in the park, which includes the famous San Diego Zoo. We visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, the San Diego Air and Space Museum, and the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Paige: hungrier than a mountain lion at the natural history museum

       On the way home we found a Wendy's in Encinitas, so were finally able to feed poor Paige.
       Newport Coast and Newport Beach are very attractive communities, although poor California is showing the effects of its chronic budget crisis. The freeways seem corrugated, there's trash everywhere, and one has the sense that everything is covered in a film of grime. A "state of emergency" has been declared for California schools after $18 billion in cuts over the past three years. There also seems to be a vast gulf between the extremely rich and entitled, and the extremely poor. One thing we were glad to see ... Trader Joe's! We so miss that store out in Colorado!
       We are of course saddened by the shooting yesterday in Tucson, Arizona, in which six people were killed and more than a dozen wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords was shot through the left hemisphere of her brain, apparently from the back to the front of her head. Part of her skull has been temporarily removed due to swelling of the brain. It seems she's expected to live, but she may be left with disabilities:-( Sarah Palin's violent rhetoric ("Don't retreat; reload!") is being criticized in the wake of the attack, as is other hate speech that encourages "Second Amendment remedies".
       We're planning to go down to the beach today to explore the tide pools.

A House for Hope

I loved this article, which is an interview with the authors of a liberal Christian text, A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-First Century. It's discouraging at times to hear violent and incendiary rhetoric against Muslims, gays, feminists, and ecological responsibility from extremists within the "religious" right, but encouraging to see an alternative view proclaimed with conviction.

Given that John Boehner has become our new Speaker of the House, it's a little alarming to learn the extent of his knowledge about climate science:-O He seems to think the problem scientists have with carbon dioxide is that they think it's a carcinogen, not a greenhouse gas:-O The GOP's outright rejection of climate science, apparently based on total and stunning ignorance of the subject, just might one day prove advantageous to their opponents as the extent of the problem is becoming increasingly obvious to all most, and the science has developed to the point that the IPCC will supposedly remove all conditional language from their next report. Hopefully the extremists will then be exposed as dangerously callow and ignorant and derelict in their governmental duties and will be denied influence forevermore. More likely, however, they'll just change the subject by declaring jihad against Iran, and their followers will stampede after them like rabid lemmings. Shoot 'em up: fun; science: too hard.

Last night, Laura, Emma, and I decided to spend the night at a nearby Residence Inn as I had a Marriott certificate that's about to expire. 'Not a particularly exciting mini-vacation, but the kids love the indoor pool and spa, and a "special trip" is always fun for them. The hotel just kept feeding us! They laid on a hot buffet with wine in the evening, followed by a wonderful breakfast this morning!

Diversity

       2010 was a year of increased diversity. DADT was finally repealed. Hopefully the trend will continue and grow. This morning, the minister at my Unitarian Universalist church quoted Harvey Cox as saying that diversity, tolerance, and acceptance have won, and that the extremism we're seeing amongst fundamentalists is simply the death throes of a movement that has exhausted its momentum (one lives in hope.) I so enjoy our UU church and what I learn there.
       Shortly before Christmas, we celebrated the winter festivals of light from many cultures, including Hannukah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, Advent, Christmas, and Yuletide (a Teutonic pagan religious festival that celebrated the Germanic "divine mothers.")
       In the spirit of the theme "Neighboring Faiths for All," we're currently learning about Christianity, partly through Harvey Cox's book, The Future of Faith . From the Amazon review:
"What shape will the Christian faith take in the 21st century? In the midst of fast-paced global changes and in the face of an apparent resurgence of fundamentalism, can Christianity survive as a living and vital faith? With his typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores these and other questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary. He divides Christian history into three periods: the Age of Faith, during the first Christian centuries, when the earliest followers of Jesus lived in his Spirit, embraced his hope and followed him in the work he had begun; the Age of Belief, from the Council of Nicaea to the late 20th century, during which the church replaced faith in Jesus with dogma about him; and the Age of the Spirit, in which we're now living, in which Christians are rediscovering the awe and wonder of faith in the tremendous mystery of God. According to Cox, the return to the Spirit that so enlivened the Age of Faith is now enlivening a global Christianity, through movements like Pentecostalism and liberation theology, yearning for the dawning of God's reign of shalom. Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith."
       Next, we're moving on to Taoism, and will be taking a look at the book, The Tao of Emerson, and later this month I'm going to start a class called Bridges to Islam, which is being offered by the church.
       I'm so happy the kids have the opportunity to learn about world religions. They're also learning a little about Hinduism and Zoroastrianism through their Waldorf program, along with the mythology of many cultures and the (usually pagan) Spiritual Background to Christian Festivals. My hope is that they will examine the smorgasbord before them, select what is wise and meaningful, and integrate it into an informed philosophy of life. 

Our more recently acquired Waldorf resources