Lift Up Your Hearts!

I don't enjoy reporting bad news, really.  It makes me sound old and curmudgeonly.  Okay, so I am old and curmudgeonly, but that's beside the point.  So today I feature an exciting story from the Philadelphia Inquirer:  Midwife Diane Goslin has emerged victorious from a court case in which the State of Pennsylvania accused her of practicing medicine without a license by assisting at home births.  (See my previous post.)  The author of the article, Angela Couloumbis, and the headline writer who created the title, Birthing Women Win Legal Decision understand that this victory is not about one person's profession, but about one of our most basic freedoms:  choosing where and with whom we will give birth to our children.

I could point out that some of the rejoicing may be premature: the State is considering appealing the decision, and the court only dealt with the charge of practicing medicine, not with the problem that Pennsylvania is not among the 22 states in this country that recognize the Certified Professional Midwife license.  There is cause for joy, to be sure, but not for letting down our guard.  But we'll take our victories one at a time, and be thankful for daily bread even if we're not certain of next week's provision.

Anything less would be curmudgeonly.

Someone on one of my Internet forums alerted me to Rush, Little Baby, a Boston Globe article of a few months back.  As articles critical of academically-oriented education for young children, it's a pretty good one, covering many perspectives and giving fair space to the opposing view.

It's still frustrating.

For all that it's a long trek through the article, I finished the trip feeling more as if I had been on an If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium tour of Europe: sound bites rather than substance.  And though I have criticisms myself of some of the ways preschool children are taught, they naysayers in this article are generally setting up straw men to knock down.

The case of William Sidis, for example, is a tired old chestnut, full of half-truths, and in any case there are plenty of reasons to account for his problems without blaming his precocity.

I've written before on the problems with the Baby Einstein study.

Phonics instruction is important, and those who never learn to sound out new words are at a distinct disadvantage as readers.  I've quarreled often enough with schools that teach reading by the infamous look-say method.  But the article's assertion that those who learn to read that way can't really read is ludicrous.  Poor as it may be, that's the way I learned to read, and I'm an excellent reader, having figured out (enough) phonics along the way.  More to the point, I'm sure the author doesn't really mean to imply that Chinese, Japanese, and other speakers of non-phonetic languages aren't really reading....

Studies purporting to show that children who are advanced when they enter school generally lose their advantage in a few years will remain unconvincing as long as most schools offer little or no opportunity for such children to continue to blossom, but instead encourage them to become bored and complacent.  I'm very tired of making that point, but apparently it needs to be made over and over again.  (Martin Luther, on being asked why he preached on justification by faith every week, responded "Because you forget it every week.")  

Most of all, I'm frustrated by the false dichotomy that is always being presented. Of course sitting on the floor with your child and building block structures together is a good thing, as are creating puppet shows, snuggling on the couch reading together, cooking dinner, and a host of other activities.  But why are these things always presented in opposition to showing your child pictures of art works, or butterflies, or words, or mathematical quantities, or introducing them in other ways to the lively world they will later "study" as academic subjects?  The people I know who do the latter also do the former, probably more than most.  I'm sure there are those who plop their kids down in front of "brain-boosting" DVDs or TV shows for hours on end and call it education, but that's no one I know, and even if it were, a few bad apples don't invalidate a practice.  I'll grant this:  IF one only has time to build block castles with a child, OR show the child pictures of art masterpieces, but not both, I'd take the blocks.  But that's a foolish premise, an impossible situation.  Whoever needs to make that choice?

If you have time, check out the Doman Inspired Parenting blog.  I have issues with some of Timothy's parents' choices for his upbringing—not that it's any of my business, but so you know I'm not holding them up as paragon parents.  Nonetheless they've done an absolutely amazing job.  A most intense program of the kind derided in the article, with plenty of activities of the kind promoted (check out their ExploraZone!), the parents also managing a job and a half plus grad school...no, these aren't the Incredibles, but they certainly show the foolishness of the above either/or dichotomy.

Parents should share God's wonderful world with their children in a variety of delightful ways.  All else is commentary.

Dana Summers is one of my favorite cartoonists, partly because I like his cartoons and partly because he's a local boy.  Not a native, but few of us Floridians are.  He creates editorial cartoons, produces the strip The Middletons with Ralph Dunagin (also a Central Floridian and editorial cartoonist), and—the inspiration for this post—is the creator of the Bound & Gagged.  So, for Heather, who is tandem nursing and currently expecting...

Eternal Vigilance Is the Price of Liberty

Whether you attribute that quotation to Wendell Phillips, Thomas Jefferson, or Patrick Henry, it's the truth, and no less true when it comes to the rights of parents to educate their own children.

When we first considered educating our children at home, that right was in legal limbo here in Florida, not being mentioned in the statutes at all. Some homeschoolers stayed under the government's radar by never registering their children for school in the first place (and staying out of sight during school hours), and others registered their homes as private schools, but I believe the most common choice was to homeschool under the "umbrella" of an existing private school. Some private schools were set up specifically for homeschoolers to be able to choose that option. It worked reasonably well, and thus some homeschoolers were reluctant to rock the boat when others pushed to make home education specifically legal. They were—quite reasonably—afraid that bringing the issue to the attention of lawmakers might result in less freedom rather than more. It's a legitimate fear, but recent events in California show the danger of not making rights and freedoms explicit.

A California appellate court ruling in the case of one specific family has thrown into confusion the legal status of homeschoolers in the whole state. The homeschooling family came to the attention of the authorities when the oldest child made accusations of child abuse. Whether these accusations were valid or a rebellious teen's reaction to resonable and legitimate family restrictions and discipline is not the point here—I only mention it because there's a general assumption that the parents were guilty, and I know personally that the alternate scenario is sometimes the truth. The matter of immediate concern to other homeschoolers is that the court made a general ruling on the legitimacy of homeschooling, and "published" it, making it available as legal precedent for other court cases. The judges ruled that parents do not have a right to educate their own children unless they hold valid state teaching certification at the appropriate grade level.

Several things are frightening about this, not the least of which is that the issue didn't even come to light until several days after the court decision had been made. The battle was lost before it was joined.

California homeschoolers are trying not to panic. The host that has arisen in their support includes Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger and the state superintendent of education, Jack O’Connell, as well as the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Predictably, however, opponents are taking advantage of the opportunity as well. Los Angeles teachers' union president A.J. Duffy: What's best for a child is to be taught by a credentialed teacher. Los Angeles Daily News columnist Paul Kujawsky: [W]hat could work would be a regulatory scheme in which the California Department of Education creates standards for initial training and continuing supervision of home-schooling parents. This training and supervision could be carried out by organizations of credentialed teachers under contract with the department. Such a solution may not satisfy everyone, but it would preserve home schools while ensuring that their students are getting the sort of education California law requires. Note that Kujawsky's "solution" says nothing about how well children are actually learning and puts parents under direct control of the state and the teachers' union. (See Kujawksy's whole column here.)

If this doesn't scare you, read this column by Steven Greenhut of the Orange County (California) Register. Here are few excerpts (emphasis mine).

The judges—two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee—argued that "parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children. … Because parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling within the provisions of these laws, parents who fail to do so may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program." The court made it clear that parents face a loss of custody if they don't comply, arguing that "the juvenile court has authority to limit a parent's control over a dependent child.

The ruling is shockingly totalitarian, as it echoes this point: "In obedience to the constitutional mandate to bring about a general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence, the Legislature, over the years, enacted a series of laws. A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

Is this California or Germany? I haven't written about the homeschooling horrors in Germany since the Melissa Busekros case (see here, here, and here), but the situation is so bad people are fleeing the country rather than turn their children over to the state. Homeschooling has become a significant movement in the United States, and most families who now teach their children at home have no memories of the battles that won them that freedom. They may have to repeat them.

I have had my quarrels with the HSLDA in the past, but nonetheless we chose to support them (and join them) while we were actively homeschooling, and I would do so again. As far as I can tell, they are the best and most effective organization around for monitoring the legal assaults on homeschooling, both here and abroad, and as they have matured they seem to have become more calm and less likely to panic unnecessarily (one of my objections in the past). One HSLDA opponent complained that the organization should have quietly gone away after home education was legalized in all states, instead of continuing to grow. Much as I respect that person, one California court decision was all it took to prove him wrong.

I'm not sure of the value of petitions, especially the electronic variety, and though I've signed some physical petitions, I'd never signed one online. Until now. The HSLDA website has a petition requesting that the California Supreme Court "depublish" this case, which would mean it could not be sited as legal precedent. Normally I would not expect petitioners to matter if they are not California citizens, but the HSLDA would like to show broad national support as well, so I signed.

On the other side of the continent, Washington, DC is now considering instituting Draconian restrictions for its homeschoolers. According to this Washington Times column by J. Michael Smith, president of the HSLDA, The regulations cover everything from record keeping and home visits to the power of government officials to immediately terminate a homeschool program at their discretion.

Here's an interesting map, taken from this San Jose, California Mercury News article.

Note that both California and Washington, DC were considered to be "low regulation." Connecticut is a great place to live if you want to homeschool, almost an island in the midst of its heavy-handed neighbors. North Dakota, on the other hand, stands out in the other direction.

Many people choose where to live based on the quality of the public schools. Homeschoolers are liberated from that concern, but would do well to consider the homeschooling regulations to which they would be subjecting themselves. Even so, nothing can be taken for granted. To continue the Wendell Phillips quote, Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot. That's a lower case "d" democrat—Republicans are not exempt.

One of the strangest and most difficult aspects of interacting with other people is discovering those areas which you consider to be so basic, so foundational, so obvious that you don't even think about them—until you run up against someone for whom they are not basic, and maybe not even important.

For me one of those givens is that you don't take food from a common dish and then put it back, and if your hands touch something on a common plate you take it, even if you didn't mean to.  Thus I find it particularly unnerving to watch at church potlucks, or <shudder> restaurant buffet bars, as folks violate those maxims repeatedly and egregiously, with no consideration for those behind them in line.  I'm not speaking particularly of children here; the adults are just as likely, sometimes more so, to be the offenders.

This raises two questions:  Is this really a matter of fundamental hygiene and common courtesy, or merely a particular, culture-specific custom?  I do hope not the latter, or I may have to stop eating away from home.

and

What are the habits that seem perfectly normal and natural to me, yet cause in others the stomach-turning reaction I experienced this morning?

Since—ta da!—we expect our fourth grandchild in October , and since choosing a baby's name has an aura of sacrament in the Daley household, and since others have already begun making positive suggestions, I hereby offer an article on baby names not to use.

Ancestry.com's Bad Baby Names on the Brain features the book, Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With—And Now You Can Too!  I don't know if the article is open to the public or requires a subscription; in case of the latter, I present just a few of the 2,000 or so names, culled from census data, that I would rather not use when speaking of our newest grandchild:  Title Page, Magenta Flamingo, Ghoul Nipple, Mann Pigg, Mary A. Belcher, Deuteronomy Temple, Hell Grimes, Lucifer Carmendo, Sandwich Green, Mayo Head, Tuna Fish, Fanny Pack, Major Nutt, Warren Peace.  Some people have no imagination; names like Octavio and Quintin clearly indicate birth order (though the one present-day Octavio I know is an only child; go figure), but the authors also found, as first names, "every number from one to twenty, by tens to a hundred, and thousand, million, billion, and infinity."  I know our Puritan ancestors were fond of naming their children after virtues (Love, Prudence, Patience, Charity, Endurance), and sometimes after circumstances associated with their lives (Fear, Wrestling), but who would name a child Lust, Wrath, Greed, Avarice, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, or Pride?

Take a moment and be thankful for your parents' wisdom.  Even if you've always hated your name, you now know it could have been much, much worse. 

I am on an Andrew Pudewa kick.  I first discovered his Institute for Excellence in Writing through an online forum for early childhood education, and—as usual—once I'd heard of him, his name started coming to my attention in other ways.  A friend of ours is the principal of a private Christian school which emphasizes academic excellence as well as a solid Christian worldview, and she and her teachers waxed so enthusiastic about his program for teaching writing that she even sent me a sample videotape of one of his lectures.  It didn't take me long to get hooked.  For the first three minutes, I found Pudewa's voice to be annoying; after that I was so intrigued by what he was saying and how he was presenting it that it didn't matter.

Now I'm not averse to spending money on educational materials for our grandkids, but they're not yet old enough for the writing materials, which are a bit pricey to buy on speculation, especially since there might well be a subsequent edition or two by the time they would be used.  Fortunately for my curiosity, one of our favorite homeschooling families was impressed enough to try it out, and I'm looking forward to hearing about their experiences.

Some of Pudewa's other materials are financially more accessible, and since I couldn't interest anyone else in his poetry memorization program, I bought it for myself!  I think I'm going to enjoy it.  It came with a bonus DVD of his lecture entitled Nurturing Competent Communicators, which I highly recommend.  As a writing teacher, he has been appalled by the lack of writing ability very much evident today, and has come to the conclusion that you can't get out of a mind something that's not there in the first place.  Today's children (and those from a generation or two before, as well) simply have not had sufficient input of good language vocabulary, structure, and style; this hinders not only their ability to write, but also their ability to think.  Rather than spend much time berating the negative influences on language (peers, media, lack of reading, stress and fast pace of life), Pudewa suggest two positive solutions.

Read good books (especially poetry) aloud.  This is still critical well after children are competent readers.  One can read aloud books at a much higher level of sophistication than a child can (or will) read for himself.  Moreover, even very good readers will often mispronounce words they've only encountered in print, and will often read so quickly as to get the meaning of the words while missing their music; hearing them read aloud corrects both these errors.  A cosy family situation is best for such reading, but Pudewa acknowledges the time crunch many families suffer and the value of books on tape.  He also suggests enlisting grandparents in the project, suggesting we create heirloom recordings of our own.  Reading aloud is more critical to language development, says Pudewa, than much of what we give higher precedence.  I'm grateful that Porter knew this instinctively and for many years ended each meal by reading aloud to us.  He even began with poetry—and no, it wasn't just a way of getting out of helping with the dishes, though I must say it did make doing the dishes much more interesting.

Memorize poetry and other examples of good language.  Memorization itself promotes brain growth, and memorization of good language provides the brain with a stock of good language patterns.  Pudewa tells a story close to my own heart for reasons most of you will recognize.  As a Suzuki violin teacher, he had lived in Japan for three years, studying under Shinichi Suzuki himself.  Naturally he wanted to learn the language, and had reached the point where he could communicate reasonably well, and yet was frustrated by knowing that he wasn't really getting things right.  Drawing on his Suzuki training, he devised a plan:  He asked his sensei to record himself reading a Japanese children's book version of Jack and the Beanstalk.  This Pudewa practiced and practiced, phrase upon phrase, until he had it completely memorized.  As a result, his ability to speak Japanese took a significant leap forward; through a simple children's story he had given his brain many of the patterns and cadences of the Japanese language.  Plus he became a great hit with the little Japanese children he met.  He would have loved the HIPPO Family Clubs!  No wonder my dad was so smart:  when he was young, he walked a lot, and when he walked, he memorized poems.

At the same time that I purchased the poetry program, I couldn't resist getting a couple of CDs containing his lecture, The Profound Effects of Music on Life.  I'm anxious to hear my favorite musician's take on this lecture (if she ever has time to listen to it).  I know he has greatly oversimplified things for his lay audience, but much of what he says rings true to my ears and I'd love to have an expert's opinion.

And I wonder why everthing takes me so long!  It was to clean my office that I set out to do, but I couldn't just put the CDs on the shelf, I had to enter them into my library software, and I had to rip them to mp3s so I could listen to them when I go out walking.  In the process of ripping I discovered that one was a DVD, and since I couldn't rip it I listened to it then and there.  And that inspired me to install another piece of software that I was going to install "sometime," and then of course I couldn't stop but had to write about it all.  Now I'm done and can finally put the materials away.  But there's still the rest of the room to work on, and where did the day go???

The One Thing You Need to Know...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success, by Marcus Buckingham (Free Press, 2005)

[This is Part Two.  Part One is here.] 

The mediocre manager believes that most things are learnable and therefore that the essence of management is to identiry each person's weaker areas and eradicate them.

The great manager...believes that the most influential qualities of a person are innate and therefore that the essence of management is to deploy these innate qualities as effectively as possible and so drive performance. 

I find Marcus Buckingham's belief in the essentially unalterable effect of our genetic makeup on our abilities to be disturbing, to say the least.  However, that doesn't change my appreciation of his observation that we spend too much time and effort trying to shore up our areas of weakness, and not enough building on our strengths.  True, we can't afford to ignore our weaknesses, and well-directed efforts at overcoming them are often in order.  Spending the majority of our energy on our strengths, however, generally leads to the most progress, the most satisfaction, and the most achievement.

There's a reason we're strong where we are.  Buckingham didn't put it this way, but God created us as unique individuals, with our own special strengths, and it's reasonable to think he had a purpose in mind.  Why say to one's creator, "You made me good at X, so I'm going to ignore that and work on Y, where you weren't so generous."

Strength builds on strength.  Buckingham indulges in some hard biological explanations of why this is so, but the short version is also obvious:  It's easier to multiply knowledge and skill in an area related to those in which one is already knowledgeable and skilled.  Progress in areas of weakness requires a greater investment of effort and time—often just to get to the point of being mediocre. Building on one's strengths is a more promising path to excellence.

Concentrating on weaknesses also comes, for most people, with a huge psychological burden.

[I]f you really want to ruin your chances of sustained success, ponder your weaknesses, ruminate on your past failings, chew on your flaws.  Pretty soon you'll wonder why it's worth getting out of bed in the morning.

[Y]ou will be more likely to be resilient, persistent, self-confident and effective in those areas where you have developed some mastery, and you will transfer these powerful feelings to new challenges [that] are substantially simlar to your existing areas of mastery.

I'll bet that if you can name someone in your life who consistently inspired you to do be better than you thought you could be, that person focused on your strengths, not your weaknesses.  Couldn't it be that one of the reasons most children dislike school is that the classroom is a place where their weaknesses are always in focus?  Where teachers are rarely concerned with building on their strengths once they've reached an acceptable level of mastery?

There's wisdom in The One Thing You Need to Know that applies far beyond the business world. 

Central Florida is the most dangerous place in the country, at least if it's lightning strikes that worry you.  The tragedy of a girl who was struck by lightning just after descending from her school bus is still fresh in our memories, so it's no wonder the Orange County school board policy errs on the side of caution:  No student is allowed outside until 30 minutes after the last lighning flash, if thunder follows the lightning within 30 seconds.

They are wisely reconsidering the policy, however, after a recent debacle.  A long-lasting storm coupled with rigid enforcement of the rules kept some 2000 students trapped at two schools until nearly 9 p.m.  Snacks were trucked in (the district apparently caring less about the safety of their employees), and no doubt many of the students thought the excitement high adventure—at least for the first hour.  But most of the children—not to mention the teachers—must have been anxious to get home to their families, with not a few kindergarteners crying for their mommies.

Certainly their mommies were longing to get to them.  If the students were imprisoned in relative comfort and safety, their parents did not fare as well, trapped as they were in a long line of cars, with no idea when their children might be released.  The students may have had food, but picture the poor mom, waiting in a hot car with a couple of preschoolers and no more than a couple of rice cakes and a bottle of water among them.  If that.  The schools would not even allow parents to sign their children out and walk outside with them under their own responsibility.  This policy, above all, needs to be rethought.

There are scenarios in which it may be necessary to keep parents away from campus and their children for a time.  We had a situation not long ago where a student was threatening others with a gun; under such circumstances, adding a swarm of panicked parents to the mix would only increase the danger. But such very exceptional cases should not be the model for less critical situations.

While students are on campus, schools have an awesome and serious responsibility for their safety, but this is a delegated responsibility.  The true authorities in a child's life are his parents, and if they temporarily transfer some of their responsibility to someone else, be it babysitter or institution, they must retain the right to take it back at will.  A school that does not recognize the primacy of parental authority needs to rethink its raison d'être, or risk tempting parents to rethink their educational choices.

With my interest in both children and education you knew it wouldn't be long before I commented on the latest "Baby Einstein" controversy.  A study (based on telephone surveys) published in The Journal of Pediatrics found that babies between eight and sixteen months experienced a significant decrease in language development for every hour spent per day viewing baby videos.

Now those who ridicule parents' attempts to enrich their children's early educational enviroments are having an I-told-you-so field day, and those who profit from the business are crying foul.  The responses that bother me most, however, are those of the defenders of baby videos.  They are giving answers to the wrong questions, and reassurances for the wrong concerns.

Commentators rushing to the defense of parents readily cede the ground of infant stimulation and assure us that it doesn't really matter what the videos do or don't do to our children; all parents need a break now and then and letting a video entertain your baby is a perfectly good way to achieve that goal, just another form of baby swing, bouncer or other device designed to give parents a little distance from the demands of parenthood.

I don't deny the need of parents for some respite, though I may disagree on what constitutes a good approach to the problem. But that's hardly the main issue here; I don't think it would even make the top ten of my questions, which include:

• When is an infant's visual system sufficiently developed to make sense of the image on a television screen, which is not the same as seeing a physical object?


• What effect does this unnatural visual experience have on the baby's developing eyes and brain? 


• What type of video experience did the babies have?  Are all baby videos equally bad?


• What is the effect of small amounts of video exposure, say less than 15 minutes per day in the context of a great deal of other experiences and personal interaction—a more likely situation in a household where parents are not looking for an electronic babysitter but are actively trying to enrich their baby's learning experience?  The study rated the effect in terms of hours of video exposure per day—I can't even imagine how a parent could set his child in front of a television screen for that much time and think it to be a good thing.


• What is the best use of a baby's time when it comes to mental development?  Is watching a video better than sitting in a dark room but worse than crawling for a toy?  Is being carried in a sling, close to Mom, still better?  Would the opportunity to see a very short video (content is still another question) plus plenty of time for crawling plus lots of time being carried around best of all?

I've never had a Baby Einstein video, never bought one for nephews or grandchildren, and as far as I know never seen one.  I certainly have no vested interest in them.  But if we're going to discuss such important issues as babies' mental development, let's consider the critical questions and not be sidetracked by defending business interests and assuaging parental guilt feelings.

Television has long been called the "idiot box," but here is more evidence that being a couch potato harms the brain as well as the body.  Unfortunately, in this case reading is just as bad as watching TV.

The Swedish experiment was actually about depression.  Previous studies have shown that the hippocamus region of the human brain shrinks in depressed people.  In this study, exercise was shown to have a significant anti-depressant effect in rats, and promoted dramatic neuron growth in the hippocampus.  (If you, like me, wonder how on earth they can tell if a rat is depressed, read the article.)

As usual, the study raises more questions.  How does this apply to humans?  Is the effect noticable in both young and old?  Is it physical activity, per se, that makes the difference, or are some types of exercise more valuable than others?

Most intriguing of all:  The study was about depression, but the hippocampus is also involved in learning and memory.  What effect, then, does exercise (or lack thereof) have on our general intellectual abilities?  Since the days when most people earned their daily bread through physical labor, have our sedentary lives taken away a significant portion of the intellectual growth gained by increased access to books and schooling?

When I mentioned this article to Porter, his first question was, if this is so, why the generalization of the "dumb jock"?  Perhaps the kind of exercise really does matter.  Maybe running, being a natural human motion, builds brain cells better than say, tennis.  Maybe the average intellectual ability among athletes is brought down significantly by those sports that involve massive blows to the head.

The sedentary lives of most American children are harming their brains as well as their bodies.  Blame television, video games, long hours in school/day care, urban apartment and suburban homes with small lots, or crime rates and parental fears that keep children close to home—any and all of the above.  Our kids need to get moving!  Until there is more data, I would favor the more natural forms of movement such as crawling and creeping for babies, and walking and running for older kids, and swimming for everyone (except that I worry about the high chlorine level in public pools), and only add organized sports on top of a good program of the above.  But that's a personal preference; I imagine that for most children any exercise will help.

Moreover, we adults need to get moving, too!  If we're worried about our children's intellectual development, they have equal right to worry out their parents' intellectual decline.  If exercise now will help keep our minds sharp as we age, we owe it to our kids as well as ourselves to get off the couch (or out of the computer chair).

I'm extrapolating here, of course.  This particular study was just about depression.  But I'm all for non-pharmaceutical solutions, and in this case running was as effective as anti-depressant medication.  We'll be happier, and we might become smarter.  What are we waiting for?

One of our nephews is a Boy Scout.

My father was for many years a Boy Scout leader, so when I joined the Girl Scouts I was mightily disappointed that we did so little of the camping, hiking, mountain climbing, knot-tying, fire-building, and survival skills work he did with his boys.  Thanks to some amazing (and somewhat rebellious) leaders and dedicated parents, we still had a good time, but the national program left me less than impressed.

From what little I know of it, I'm even less impressed with today's program.  It's politically correct, oriented towards modern society, relevant to today's girls—and therefore boring as all get out.  At least to me.  (They still make great cookies, though, and Boy Scout popcorn doesn't even come close.)

For all I know, the Boy Scout program has changed, too.  But my heart is encouraged by knowing one troop that is still in the business of helping boys grow into men.  And even more so to see the video-game, text-message, iPod, virtual reality generation rising to physical, organizational, and social challenges.  I applaud the leaders who provide necessary support and guidance while giving the Scouts much of the responsibility for running the troop.

They leave this week for Philmont, the apex of Boy Scout adventuring.  What they are doing "on the way" exhausts me just thinking of it, including hiking up and down the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Trail.  During their two weeks at Philmont the boys themselves chose the most rigorous program available to them, which includes over 80 miles of hiking and lots of camping and other intensive activities.

Sounds like the best conditioning short of joining the Marines—and without getting shot at.

Not long ago, a friend was lamenting to me about how tedious elementary recitals are.  Little piano and violin students plunking and scraping away on the same, boring pieces, making the same mistakes you've heard hundreds of times.  I couldn't disagree more.

She has a different perspective, mind you:  she's a music teacher, so no doubt that makes a difference.

But I love music recitals, elementary and otherwise.

Today we made up for our disappointment with the Tuileries by visiting Leu Gardens. It was delightful to wander amongst the palms, bromiliads, wildflowers, camelias, cacti, roses, and other Florida and non-Florida flora.  Especially the gardenias, which take me right back to my grandmother's garden.

Standing by the lake, watching the fish, a turtle, and a white heron—while watching out for alligators and water moccasins—we heard music.  Violin music.  Suzuki violin music.  Talk about natsukashii!  We had to investigate...at the main house there was a luncheon, for which a single violinist was providing entertainment, and she was working her way around the Suzuki repertoire—books three and four, if I had to guess; it's been a while.

Our first live Suzuki contact was made at Leu Gardens; we happened to be there when a group from the Suzuki Music Institute of Maitland was playing on the grounds.  For me, it was love at first sight (sound).  That great music coming from those tiny kids!

Well, that was the beginning for us of more than ten years of Suzuki music.  There were plenty of frustrating times, but one thing I never tired of was hearing the kids play.  I loved to hear our own children practice, I loved to hear all the students—not just ours—play at the recitals.  True, I no longer attend them, now that we've moved on, but truly, I wish the music we heard today had been a public group concert, so I could have heard once again the tiny kids and the old, familiar pieces.  Even Twinkle!

This just in:  middle-aged men have no business stopping to chat with young people.  After all, the young and their elders have nothing in common, right?  No reason to talk to someone who is so different from you.  Certainly no reason to smile and speak to a stranger passing on the street.  Even if you both have dogs.

Here's the story.

The 43-year-old man was the subject of a police "be on the lookout" memo because two children said he spoke to them while they were walking their dogs. Police said no criminal activity had been reported.

I don't blame the police for being cautious.  Maybe the kids had been overly hyped to "stranger danger" by well-meaning parents and teachers.  Maybe they truly sensed something wrong.  In any case, I'm glad the police took them seriously.

If you read the article, you know that this is not the main thrust of the story.  What happened next was that someone obtained the man's personal, identifying information, and e-mailed it all around the neighborhood, with the implication that he was a child molester.

The primary concern seems to be that the information was released illegally, which is certainly a problem.  But I'm more concerned, overall, by the attitude revealed here that he had no business talking to the kids.  Believe me, as a parent I understand the terrible fears, but in defending ourselves against one horror, we musn't lose sight of the cost.  "If we can save just one child/woman/person from [insert particular horror here], it will be worth it," is often flung out like a banner, with little thought given to just what "it" is that we are sacrificing.  In a world where lost children hide from adults instead of seeking help, and where kindergarten teachers are afraid to hug their students, we must at least consider the question of how many children we hurt in our efforts to help others.

Then there's the bedrock of our legal system, the idea that one is innocent until proven guilty.  Frightening as the circumstances may be, this must apply to possible child molestors just as much as to possible murderers, shoplifters, and tax evaders, to Americans with possible connections to terrorists, and to Americans of Japanese descent during World War II, or it means nothing at all.  Note that if this man turns out to be other than the completely innocent person he appears to be, it does not change my argument.

I'm supposed to be writing about our trip to Europe, but the discussion on a friend's blog (begun here and continued here) tempted me to respond, and why waste a long essay in just one place?

The discussion began with the statement, "I loathe the spanking of children," and some very interesting comments followed.  Herewith my own contribution.

I see no mandate in the Bible either for spanking or for not spanking, so I believe we have to make our own decisions based on general Biblical principles, sound reasoning and experience.  I come down firmly on both sides.  :)

The trouble with the term spanking is that it is so broad as to be almost meaningless.  Think about words like Christian and you'll know what I mean that it's nearly impossible to make general statements.  Still, I will try.

On a very basic level, one must ask the question, Do parents have the right to punish their children?  If the answer is no, the debate ends there.  So I begin with the premise that parents have not only the right, but the duty; that the setting and enforcing of rules is a necessary part of rearing children.

In a well-regulated, healthy home, punishment is a very small element of the total picture.  Discipline, socialization, and the "nurture and admonition of the Lord" are much, much more than rules and punishments, just as our relationship with God far transcends the Law.  Another basic premise of my argument is that the punishment in question takes place in the context of a loving, supportive family where children are honored and respected.

Love is not permissive, but will arrange as much as possible for the child to succeed.  Leaving many breakable knick-knacks within his reach is not the best way to teach a child respect for other people's property.  If we let our yeses be many, our noes will have more meaning, and more power.

When rules are broken, most often it is through ignorance, inexperience, carelessness, or accident on the part of the child, who is still learning his way in the world.  Such events, I believe, require patience, explanation, and education rather than punishment.  Sometimes, however, the disobedience is willful, deliberate, and with full knowledge of what he is doing.  This, too, is part of the child's learning; he must test the limits to see if they are true.  In this case, I believe punishment is necessary, and we fail as parents if we do not give our children the security of firm boundaries.

But what form should that punishment take?  I would argue that there is no one, right answer for all families, nor for all children in the same family, nor for any one child at all times or in all situations.  Those who wish a clear, precise formula for bringing up children hope for something that does not and cannot exist.  The job of a parent requires wisdom, not a set script.

I don't need to go any further than our own extended family to see evidence that healthy, happy, secure, and disciplined children can be brought up both with and without spanking, so arguments that either philosophy is harmful in itself bear little weight with me.  And I have seen marvelous examples of better ways of handling certain situations that I, myself, might have dealt with by spanking.

That said, I believe spanking has a place in a parent's disciplinary toolbox, and am appalled at legislative attempts to have it banned.  First, let me explain what spanking meant at our house, not that we were always successful in carrying out this ideal.  Spanking was almost exclusively reserved for deliberate disobedience, ended when the children were quite young (I don't remember when; probably before age five, having become more and more infrequent as the years passed), and was an "event," not a casual swat.  Whenever possible, I would take the child into a private space, explain both the infraction and the reason for punishment, administer just as many barehanded swats as was necessary to produce sorrowful tears (generally two or three), and follow it up with lots of hugs, comfort, and reassurances of restoration to grace.  Then it was over.  Period.  No recriminations, no nagging reminders of past failures.  Over and done with.  Our children undoubtedly will have something to say about how successful we were in our implementation, but that was the theory, and I think it worked quite well.  (In reference to Jon's comment that spanking seems to work better for dads than for moms, I did not find that to be the case.  It worked very well for me.  What I never did master was "the look" that dads seem to be able to give that compels instant obedience.)

I respect spanking as a tool because I believe it is often the kindest of punishments.  We obscure the issues when we use inflammatory terms like "hitting a child," and "violence" to describe spanking.  One could just as easily refer to a timeout as imprisonment, or taking a way a toy as theft.  All three of these actions involve the forcible imposition of the adult's will on the child.  I have used each of them in my time, depending on what is appropriate to the circumstances.  Abuse of a toy is logically followed by its removal until the child can behave more responsibly; antisocial behavior begets banishment until the child is ready to act reasonably.  But consequences unrelated to the infraction, such as the taking away of a favorite toy when the offense is deliberate disobedience, do violence to the child whether or not there is physical contact.   Spanking has the advantage of being over quickly, so that the issue is dealt with, the lesson learned, and the offense forgiven and forgotten within a short duration, much more appropriate to a young child's sense of time.

Natural consequences teach best—if you live long enough.  The natural consequence of a child's not instantly obeying a parent's command to stop might be that he is run over by a car.  In much the same way as a vaccine is a small assault intended to prevent a deadly illness, our job as parents often involves inflicting small amounts of pain on our children in order to spare them greater suffering.  Pain, as C. S. Lewis said, is God's megaphone.  We do not spare our children pain by not spanking them; all punishment causes pain.  It is only a question of form, duration, and degree.

Spanking, I believe, is not necessary.  Human beings are designed to learn in a great variety of situations and by a great variety of means.  But neither do I think it cruel.  Appropriately administered it can be one of the kindest techniques in a parent's repertoire.  As with all of our parenting decisions, we must always look at the results.  As John Holt said, "We ought all to keep asking ourselves, Where are you trying to get, and are you getting there?"  Sadly, the jury is out on our parenting techniques until we're grandparents, or even longer.  But we can usually get a good picture of the direction in which we are moving, especially if we have friends willing to be honest with us.