Follow the Money

Grandparents often wake up one morning and wonder how they could possibly be this old. How did it happen? Sneaks up on you, sort of…First you notice that your doctors and political leaders are young enough to be your sons or daughters. Your own children’s friends are people of “substance” in their fields----whether law, business, education, technology; and if they are not, why aren’t they as successful as they “should be”.

Your co-workers get younger every year. Your jokes about Jack Benny’s vault evoke puzzled stares and an occasional, “Who’s Jack Benny?”  But a lot more than popular culture icons have changed. Intrinsic values are often turned on their heads.  Behind all this mess now in the financial world a huge flip flop is revealed.  Sure our parents (the great-grand parent generation) believed in hard work and prized the financial rewards it brought. Most were committed capitalists, with full faith in the system. But they clung to a priviso or two: “Work hard, make a lot of money, and be sure to save a lot too!” Go after the brass ring with a fervor, but do it honestly. Lying, cheating, exploiting friends and relatives, in particular, was considered heinous.

Something has happened since the winding down of the cold war.  Our new enemy is financial failure or even mediocrity. Nothing is more sacred than the acquisition of signs of riches---huge, if highly mortgaged multiple homes, automobiles, electronic toys, boats, clothes, jewels, glitzy vacations and hobbies, obscene tuitions even in some preschools. We’re in an awful mess because of the acceptance of excess.

A check out clerk at the supermarket confided a question she was almost ashamed to ask me---it seemed so unreal. “Someone about your age told me that when you were growing up there were no credit cards.  Is that true or is he pulling my leg?”

Her eyes bulged as I confirmed the accuracy of that information. It was too much to believe that we didn’t even have health insurance cards.  Mom would send or take us to the doctor with a stomach ache or sore throat and a five or ten dollar bill to pay the kind gentleman for his care. In farm towns, some doctors got paid in eggs, chickens, a side of beef or a turkey for Thanksgiving. That worked because it was a long horse and buggy ride to the general store, and the farm goods were fresh. But now I am going way back to a time----before Jack Benny even thought of having a vault. Jack’s silent reaction to an armed robber’s demand, “Your money or your life” caused the villain to repeat the choice before him.  “Give me a minute”, Benny responded, “I am thinking about it”.

With that remark, we entered the modern era, thinking less and less about any contest between our money and our lives. Today, it’s money, hands down.

Culture Clash

I guess I set myself up for culture shock since I read newspapers, and magazines including local weeklies that purport to “enlighten parents”.  And I am also a regular reader of books and journals in developmental psychology. As a consulting editor for NAEYC, I am a staunch defender of “Developmentally Appropriate Practice”, and absolutely certain about the value of play. My position about standards vs. individualized instruction is predictable. Learning programs should be designed to meet the individual needs of each child. No wonder the public positions on such matters frequently cause me dismay.

One of my favorite little magazines is “The Horn Book” since it not only offers updates about the history and current best of children’s literature, but dares to question some of our deepest held popular assumptions such as a commitment to enhancing kids’ self esteem.  Daniel Greenstone, author of “Ain’t I Great!: The Problem With Self- Esteem”, attacks with powerful data,  the notion that what matters most is to love yourself.  He accurately unmasks the notions that bullies and bad behaving kids have low self-esteem.  As it turns out, not liking one’s self is not an accurate predictor of poor behavior.

Greenstone quotes a NY Times writer who in 2002 predicted that “studies attacking self-esteem would not gain much traction.;” and they haven’t. The Times author pointed out that “Self esteem, as a construct, has become a quasi religion, woven into an (American) tradition.”  It is tough to budge it, just as it is tough to demystify group testing results.

The same can be said of the growing popular conviction that play is a waste of time, and kids should be single-mindedly working toward college acceptance from the day they enter school, maybe even from the day they are born. An article in the current issue of my small town paper announced (with implicit pride) that the Board of Education is offering a presentation for parents of all school children, from kindergarten up, a presentation guiding parents about how to prepare their children to apply to college. Implication: it’s never too soon; children are never too young to begin the college application process. 

Sigh!

GRANDPARENTS…LOST AND FOUND

My 12 year old twin nieces (S & R) and their 7th grade classmates were asked to write an essay about an interesting ancestor.  Much to the delight of their father (my brother) the twins each elected to write about a paternal grandparent. S chose the life story of her grandmother (my mother) who had died when S was 6 years old.  R decided to write about her grandfather (my father) who had died before the twins had been born. Both girls gathered interesting details by interviewing family members.

S. said she chose her grandmother because she thought it was “neat that Grandma Helen had been able to work and have a happy life at home.” She had a very important job in “what was then a male dominated world.”  Imagine a poor girl from a large family, growing up in Brooklyn, graduating from high school at age 15 and working hard enough to become the President and CEO of Dell Publishing Company. R learned that their grandfather also had humble origins, and was the first member of his large family to attend college, graduating with honors before the age of 20.

These grandparents’ life story was not only about work and achievement. There was a romantic side to it. They met on a train when Helen was just 18 and traveling for business; and her future husband was a college student traveling home for vacation. Two years later they married, she, on her way to a startlingly successful career in publishing, he, a newspaper reporter, the couple beginning life together a month before the stock market crash of 1929. In the early days of the depression, Abraham Meyer was reassigned to the financial page of his newspaper.  Helen Meyer got on the bandwagon of publishing successes during those hard times. She had a hunch that movie and romance magazines might be diversions from life’s real troubles. (Incidentally, once again in the current economic meltdown, movies have become a popular diversion.)

The twin grand daughters admired their grandparents for making the most of their talents in a tough time. “Grandma Helen reached the top of her profession, never forgetting her first life priority—her family, soon to include a daughter and son.”

Grandpa Abraham was a hard working man, earning his own way through college and beyond. “I am so proud of him” said one of the two granddaughters he had never met. “It makes me very sad that I didn’t get a chance to meet him because he seems like he would have been a great grandfather. I know that if I had met him I would have loved him.”

How Do You Spell Success?

It seems there is no end to the social tentacles of the current recession. As reported by a recent N.Y. Times article, private school vs. public school education has become a painful issue for many families who believe in private school as the singular route to success.  So a special clash of reality and contemporary values has come to the fore.

Heightened parental anxiety about children’s academic performance predated the recession. Does it have to be a road through “Harvard”?  Oh, O.K., maybe another upper echelon Ivy School or one of the smaller and very select liberal arts colleges like Amherst or Swarthmore will do. Some children who can’t seem to ace the admissions tests for private schools that serve as platforms for “HARVARD” are left feeling almost worthless, a profound disappointment to their parents, who have put their own self esteem on the line with their kids’ scores and academic achievement. This is an au courant topic for sophisticated magazine pieces and books by benevolent child development experts, who urge getting to know and appreciating our kids for themselves, matching their opportunities to their interests and talents, rather than to parental ambitions.

It’s not all new, though. Even 2 generations ago, “the ideal eighteen year plan” for the road to success included a high school diploma from one of the feed in to ‘Harvard’ prep schools. The opportunity was not as common as it is these days; therefore, few parents or kids were heart-broken about having to settle for public education.  I, personally, never felt I missed anything important by not applying to a prep school. In fact, I think that my education was broadened by having spent 4 years in a typical small city high school. Fewer than half of my classmates even applied to college. They took courses that prepared them for office work. I still think that my elective typing course has been more useful than the years of Latin urged by my father. But perhaps the most meaningful aspect of my high school education was social, or more accurately, sociological. The members of my class made up a normal curve of American social classes. There were one or two wealthy kids, few with college educated parents, and about the same number of children whose families lived on an income below the “poverty line”.  There was racial and religious diversity. There were even gangs and gang wars. It was easy for those of us who wanted to steer clear of the “cross-fire” to be safe:  by going home when the last bell rang or more often, working late on the Newspaper or the Yearbook. You might say that high School journalism kept me out of harm’s way. 

Since so few students could afford to go away to college and none had ever applied to an Ivy League or Seven Sisters school, the process of applying was barely stressful. And when we got to college, we brought a social consciousness rarely shared by our new classmates.  After the first semester, the prep school kids didn’t seem so smart, barely had any academic advantage. And by now we have all forgotten the dates of Caesar’s conquests, but I personally will never forget what I learned about getting along in the real world.

Good News for Children of Divorce

And the “good news” is long overdue. From anecdotal reports to controlled research, and plain old common sense, the word has long been out that---help for kids of divorce is in the hands of their parents.  All the splitting couple has to do to keep their kids from experiencing the worst possible grieving is be nice to each other. Stop the battling around and through the children.  Stop treating the children as if they are “property” or referees or both. Really, I mean really really, turn parental attention to what all this might mean to the children. Put adult grievances and face saving tactics off bounds. Don’t battle for “equal” everything, including time with children, especially babies and toddlers who thrive on familiarity and routine, so much that even a change to “Day Light Savings Time" can be unsettling for a week.  Give up such notions as a 19month old’s summers should be spent with Dad and his new significant other, on Sabbatical, in Greece, while Mom takes her two week vacation in Maine. One mental health author has suggested that parents in such instances act as though they are entitled to cut the children in half, “to be fair”.

But now, at last, “a court directly supports psychology’s role in lessening conflict in family breakups through the District of Columbia’s Superior Court’s initiative."  The court is funding a program through which psychologists, act as parenting coordinators, especially in high conflict custody cases. These cases are not ones with domestic violence or child abuse, but high on rancor. Court Judges appoint the psychologists whose goal is to ease the strain for the children, even eliminating  parental battling. The psychologists’ role is to enable parents to communicate better, work out disputes, focusing on each child’s needs.   The outcome of this program will be carefully measured, but judges are already unofficially enthusiastic about the results.

According to a Superior Court Chief Judge “the program is helping children by helping the adults in their lives get along better, demonstrating a way out of the constant parental conflict children have witnessed. There is already great enthusiasm for making this program a permanent part of obtaining a legal divorce.  What took us so long to change the focus in marital dissolution, from adult grievance to children’s needs. (ref.:"Less Fighting, Better Outcomes", Christopher Munsey, Monitor, APA, 2/2009)