Phelps and Focus

Phelps and Focus

Any frequent reader of this blog could easily predict my reaction to Michael Phelps' triumphs at the Summer Olympic Games. In fact, my cheers might have been heard around the world. I appreciate and applaud Phelps’ remarkable accomplishments, but above all, I am enormously grateful to him for shaking up mistaken notions about non-conforming kids. Teachers, parents, coaches, etc. all too often jump to unwarranted conclusions such as that of Michael’s teacher who boldly told his mom (as quoted by the New York Times), "'Your son will never be able to focus on anything.'"

When I was a graduate student in school psychology, a very wise professor repeatedly cautioned, "Don’t jump to the conclusion that a child 'can't focus' when the fact may actually be that he isn't focusing on what you want him to focus on." That's Michael Phelps' story for sure.

While kids like Michael are not truly challenged, they do challenge us to find a way to reach them. Debbie Phelps did exactly that. Michael was always "all sports," so she gave him the Baltimore Sun sports pages to make reading worth his while. Although her own life had many other challenges, she made the effort to focus on who the real Michael was. She listened and took him seriously when he said he wanted to get off Ritalin to spare himself the embarrassment of the daily call to the school nurse’s office to take a pill.

With their physician’s approval and monitoring, Michael did, as promised, manage his own behavior without meds. Though never a star student, he had learned to do at least the minimum school work required. He found his focus (and then some!) in the family sport of swimming. By his 11th year, his coach predicted Olympic stardom, and the rest is history, underscored by his mother’s level-headedness and singular respect for her son’s unique strengths (although she was mindful of his limitations too).

For more real stories illustrating the merits of discovering your child’s strengths, I heartily recommend a book (written before the Michael Phelps story) by Jenifer Fox entitled Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them. There is a determined (though, to date, minority) movement in American education to focus on kids' strengths rather than their weaknesses. The author of this book, an educator of distinction, makes a case that should liberate more talented children from unhelpful labels. Michael and Debbie Phelps have contributed to that cause in a very important way.

August 26, 2008

It's Not All About Anthrax

It's Not All About Anthrax

Here we go again. I know I have raised the question before, but regrettably, it's still frighteningly relevant. Do we, as a culture, have any respect for massive evidence of severe emotional disturbance in a person who has the power to act out violent fantasies? It is absolutely mind-boggling to me to learn that the scientist whom the FBI names as the Anthrax killer was widely known to be what his therapist called a "homicidal maniac"! His paranoia and readiness to act on it was well known far beyond his therapist’s office. He was smart enough to diagnose himself--to document his preoccupations and impulses in emails to colleagues and friends.

So what’s the deal? Are these grown-up scientists, employees of the U.S. government, loath to be called "tattletales"? The New York Times reports that a U.S. Attorney called Dr. Bruce Ivins "'a troubled individual' who carried out "the worst act of bioterrorism in U. S. history." Did anybody wonder about continuing to allow a documented psychotic individual with paranoid delusions and a lack of impulse control to handle anthrax? To have easy access to such materials for murder with the blessing of the United States government?

This isn’t even a question of whether therapists have a "duty to warn" (which they absolutely do) when presented with persuasive evidence of a client’s impulse to commit a violent crime. It seems that Ivins’ menacing qualities were well known to his colleagues. And what sort of a friend allows his buddy to commit heinous acts without acting to protect the perpetrator from himself?

Something is very wrong here. While millions of sane and sober citizens are taking off their shoes in airports, being denied a bottle of water as they board, a certifiably mad and dangerous individual is afforded the continuing right to menace others. For my part, the question is not “Did he act alone?” or even at all; but why are we allowing a cultural predisposition to dismiss psychology and its lessons to put so many innocent people in grave danger?

We’ve got to get a grip and deal with the reality that twisted minds cannot be dismissed as just harmless "nuts" with the right to be free. I am hoping that the increasing numbers of psychologists running for and winning legislative offices, notably in the U.S. Congress, will make their voices known in the full definition of terroristic threats. Homicidal maniacs should be barred from positions of power over a naïve populace.

August 19, 2008

Semper fidelis

Semper fidelis

I truly enjoyed a recent New York Times op-ed column by Doris Kearns Goodwin, entitled “Defeat Your Opponents. Then Hire Them.” I have long admired the author’s scholarship, and the ease with which she enriches history with a dash of psychology. This particular article happened to strike a timely personal note.

A week or so before reading it, I had been driving on the New Jersey Turnpike when one of my tires suddenly blew out. Fortunately, I was near an exit. I pulled in to a gas station with my smoking, pancaked tire, grateful to have made it. But the station attendants categorically refused to change my tire. I suspect they didn’t know how. One pointed to a man standing nearby.

With some trepidation, I approached him, asking if he worked there since I was looking for someone to help me change a flat tire. In a rich Southern accent he answered, "I don’t work here, but maybe I can help you, ma'am. I notice you have a Marine sticker on your car. Are you in the Marines?"

Wow! What a case of mistaken identity. I was wearing faded green sweat pants and a t-shirt, with my trusty high-topped grey-green Merrells. Maybe that helped to complete this grandmom’s disguise as someone courageous and always faithful. "No," I hastily corrected the misimpression, "it is my nephew who is a Marine."

"Oh," he said, with a friendly smile. "I am Navy and I have great respect for the Marines." We walked together toward my smoking tire. Then while he deftly found all that he needed in my car’s trunk and proceeded to exchange the dead tire for a live "doughnut," he shared his story.

My modest rescuer is a reserve Naval pilot, who had years of career service including tours in Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and the current Iraq war. He enjoyed every minute of his overseas service. Since retirement, his day job has been to fly and manage the maintenance of a corporate jet. Sadly, that "great job" would be ending the next day, the plane grounded because business is suffering.

So this perfect gentleman had taken a walk from his motel to think about what comes next for him. He has an opportunity to go back to active duty. He would love to go overseas again. He has always wanted to serve his country and deeply admired the military. He has a "very supportive wife, herself a child of the military," and a young son. They live in the South where he was born and raised.

Predictably, he would accept no gift of gratitude from me, and only reluctantly agreed to allow me to send some books to his son. The fact is, I had happened upon a generous man who could not only change any automobile tire, but was completely versed in doing the same for jet airplanes. In a gentle way, he indicated that his mission in life is service, in the broadest sense of that term; and he was proud to have been able to be of some help to me.

What does all this have to do with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s sage political advice? Everything. The tire episode was something approaching an epiphany for me. I do have family members (though not blood relatives) who have voluntarily served in the Air Force and the Marines, some who still do. I love and admire them; but live in a very different ideological world. Crudely put, they are "red-staters" and I am all blue. I not only oppose the current war, but was a vocal young peace-nik during Vietnam. During Desert Storm, I chastised the military in a letter to the editor for routinely deploying two parents in families with young children.

With an academic, Eastern seaboard mindset, I certainly don’t consider the term "liberal" defaming. What is more, I am under the illusion that I am an independent thinker. But today, I couldn’t agree more with Goodwin’s implied caution about being so narrow-minded that we shoot ourselves in the feet. Not only must each presidential candidate be open to drawing on the wisdom of opponents, we, the voters, need to be reminded that this isn’t a recreational rivalry like the Yankees vs. Red Sox (although I know Doris Kearns Goodwin could never agree with me about which to cheer!). We must urge our leaders to follow the examples that Goodwin cites, of past presidents who drew on the gifts of strong leaders without regard for ideology. This America belongs to all of us after all, to be protected in any way we each can.

August 11, 2008

Further over the top

Further over the top

Last fall, I wrote about a wave of parental anxiety over kids’ academic performance. I wondered whether incessant parental worry about achievement might represent an unspoken struggle between working and stay-at-home noms. Are they each trying to prove, mostly to themselves, that their way is the right way to parent; witness their successful kids?

Now, in recent weeks a startling news story suggests support for that notion. It reported a rash of electronic parental academic surveillance which, in my view, is truly over the top. The headline of the lead article in the New York Times Sunday Styles section was "I Know What You Did Last Math Class." It told of parents’ routinely logging on to sites such as ParentConnect for exhaustive info on their children’s test grades, class cutting or lateness, missed or failed assignments, up to the minute grade point averages and class standings. And this isn’t the only site with such a mission. Others include Pinnacle Internet Viewer, PowerSchool, and Edline. The opportunity to get such current info on kids’ school performance is not new, but lately the practice has become very popular with parents and schools throughout the country.

I frankly find it offensive, going against the developmental grain of adolescents struggling to trust their parents while growing more independent. Some speak openly about resenting the indignity and lack of privacy, and accuse their parents of "snooping." It knocks the wind out of their sails to have their every move in school monitored by family. In some cases, parents know their children’s grades on tests before the students themselves have received the results.

The Times article reports, "the software can certainly be a boon to working parents," as well as divorced or otherwise absent parents. So involved parenting no longer implies being there physically, as long as there is internet access to achievement data. Dogging their children may be becoming the new model for would-be superparents. Fortunately, not all have bought the online monitoring idea; and some schools distinguish constructive and caring parental involvement from hovering. But for all too many worried parents, the ends justify the means when it comes to the brass ring of academic achievement.

Quoting a parent interviewed for the Times article: "'It can be hard to resist. It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect… How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?'"

I wonder about that too.

August 4, 2008