A Green House Effect

I just posted one of my favorite Russian poems on my other blog http://ipoempod.blogspot.com/ which I have loved since early childhood. It is a children's poem, and it tells a story of a pampered kid whose parents dote on him, pile on warm blankets on him when he sleeps, bring him his favorite food whenever he asks and pander to his every whim. The author compares such a child to a tender plant in a green house which is unable to survive in real world. The moral of the story is that one has to be toughened up from the early childhood to be prepared to meet life's challenges. As the poem puts it, a paddled child won't be ready to become a pilot, a brave sailor, to wield a machine gun or to drive a truck. The poem is very well written, and like I said, I have loved it for a long time.

I am now wondering if I love it so much because I really wanted to be such a child myself. In fact, I am now sure that that was the biggest draw for me - if not experience it in real life, at least to read about it in a poem. I was raised ready to face life's challenges, knowing how to survive. I was sent to school when sick if my temperature at 7 am was below 100.5F, I was not allowed to have any night light in the room even though I was terribly afraid of the dark, etc. (Chores and helping with the younger sibling were a given and expected.) Boy, how I wish I instead felt loved and spoiled, felt like I were the center of my parent's universe!

In my own mothering I have much more abided by Vladimir Nabokov's words, "балуйте детей побольше, господа, вы не знаете, что их ожидает!" from the Russian version of "Speak, Memory!" ("Другие берега") which can be translated as "indulge your children more, ladies and gentlemen, you do not know what awaits them in life!" Indulging and setting limits are not mutually exclusive; moreover, a child feels a lot more protected when he or she knows where the limits are set. I firmly believe in parenting as creating a safe space for children, a comfort zone where they can always turn to in life, where they know they will always find a warm wall to lean against, a dinner on the table and a compassionate ear. If you love your children in such a way, you will prepare them for facing life's challenges better than if you let them experience the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune at home.

A plant grown in a greenhouse may be gradually exposed to the life outside and in many cases will be healthier and more vigorous than its crooked and crippled brethren which learned to survive the cold winds or a harsh sun from their early days.

Indulge your children, ladies and gentlemen!

America Doesn't Have a Chance

A few days ago we went to meet with the world-famous cellist Yo-Yo-Ma as a part of the lecture series. This was the occasion where he not only played, but also talked with the public. Most of the talk was surprisingly trivial (our daughter said that he "played it safe," which of course, sucks all the life out of the talk), but one thing really struck me. He started off by saying that he was going to play the very first piece of music his Dad taught him at the age of 4. This was the first time ever the little boy held the bow in his hands. What was that piece of music? It was Bach's cello suite No.1. Here is a YouTube video of Yo-Yo-Ma playing the prelude from that suite. It was not adapted, shortened or in any way made easy for the player who barely left his infancy age. By the time he turned 5, Yo-Yo-Ma learned three suites by Bach. That was the beginning of his music career.

Before he started playing, Yo-Yo-Ma asked the public to think what emotions they would be experiencing when listening to the music. After he was done, he asked the audience to share what they thought. (The thoughts were extremely "profound," like "peace," "joy," "contentment," and the performer didn't fail to praise the listeners with each revelation: "Wow, this is so deep! You guys are the best! Great observation!" I don't know what was more annoying, that condescending and childish attitude or the inane public comments.) I did not share what I thought with him because while he was playing, my main thought was that America has no chance whatsoever as long as Asian parents have such high expectations of their children, and their children deliver.

Nobody in the US would dream about sitting their 4-year-old down and making him learn unadapted Bach. (Mind you, Yo-Yo-Ma's Dad had no indication he had a future genius in front of him - this was literally the first time ever that the kid was in front of an instrument; this demonstrates that a Chinese parent would not hesitate to raise the bar this high for a perfectly average child.) We in the US do not set expectations nearly as high as Chinese parents do. In a way, the competition is already lost. A bit more time needs to pass for it to become evident even to us.

On Videotaping and Learning to Drive

I rarely find parent-teacher conferences worth my time. In 20 minutes we cast a cursory glance over my son's grades, ask him a pro forma question of what he would like to change and how, and then leave. Nothing learned, an hour wasted. I do attend them dutifully, though.

Yesterday, we had a conference scheduled. My husband happened to have a day off, so he attended it as well. On the way to school, our son was marvelling at the fact that Dad was coming along and teasing him whether he knew the names of any of his teachers. My husband responded with dignity that he had attended parent-teacher conferences in the past. To be fair, I confirmed that during our son's Middle School years he did attend ONE teacher conference, to which my husband defiantly retorted: "And that is all there was!"

Anyway, we teased Dad some more about it when our son's adviser lauded the fact that the whole family showed up. To which the adviser said: "Well, you are doing better than me!" And he proceeded to share his own story. Years ago, he was in magazine publishing business which kept him travelling away from home for two weeks out of a month. Naturally, that made him miss many of his children's events. Then one day there was a kindergarten graduation ceremony for his son to which he barely made it rushing madly from one of his trips. He got there after it had already started, got a seat in the back row and was very proud of himself for not forgetting to bring a camcorder. He videotaped his son, and his wife was very happy to see after the ceremony that her husband did manage to attend. Feeling like a super Dad, he told his son that they will now go home and watch him on TV. When they started watching the tape, his wife asked with amazement: "Why on earth did you tape ... Manny?" It turned out, he videotaped the wrong kid. His explanation was that from such a distance all blond 6-year-olds look the same. "Were you in a dog house after that?" I asked. "No," he said. "I had to change careers."

And there was another great story which is a good analogy for situations when we feel overwhelmed when starting something new. Our son just started high school this year, and it was not a very happy start. He felt lonely and rushed, overworked and confused. Since he was getting an 'A' average in all of his classes, many of them advanced, the school did not seem to be aware of the problem, and I had to bring it up to their attention about a month ago. Well, this time his adviser shared another personal story on when he first started driving a car. He got his learner's permit, and his Dad told him that he can drive himself to school one day with his Father in the car, of course. The boy was very happy. He felt that he already knew how to drive, and the school was just 2 miles away. Well, in those 2 miles he was completely exhausted. He said he left the car all sweaty feeling like he had worked a long day. He realized that on the road he had to keep track of so many things at once (traffic signs, lights, pedestrians, other drivers, keeping the speed limit, giving a turn signal, etc.) that it was overwhelming. He could not see how he would ever find driving natural and relaxing. Yet it did happen to him in due time, just as it happens to all of us. And especially as women, we can drive, talk on the phone, put make-up on, feed the kids and interrupt their fights all at the same time.

So this was the first time when we left enriched with two thought provoking parables. By the way, my husband then remarked that even though the adviser goofed up with the videotaping, he got a great story which would not have been if not for his silly mistake. I am sure next time when my husband forgets to take the time off to attend our son's teacher-parent conference, he will have some great story to tell.

Putting Things in Perspective

Exactly one week ago, my daughter got in a car accident in which her car was totalled. My day started with a phone call from her cell phone. When I picked up the line, a male voice asked me if I was Mrs. So and So. I said, "Yes." He identified himself as a police officer and informed me that my daughter was in a car crash. I asked him if she was alive. He said, "Yes," but they are preparing to take her to the hospital. In my further short conversation with him I found out that she was mostly OK, but shaken up and crying, and that is why he called himself. This opened up a saga of doctor visits, insurance filing (she was not at fault), adjuster negotiations, and looking for a car replacement. But looking on the bright side of things, it could have been much, much worse.

Then on Tuesday morning of this week we found out that my son's classmate and a friend had committed suicide the night before at his own house. Just a few hours prior to that my son invited him to hang out on his school bus before the driver got in. They talked and joked around, and the boy asked him how it would make my son feel feel if he (this boy) killed himself. My son thought this was a purely theoretical questions, and told him that it would put him through such incredible pain that he doesn't even want to think about it. Later than night he send an IM via Facebook to one of the girls in class, and a SMS message to another one saying that he is going to go shoot himself. One thought this was a stupid joke, and the other one did not even check the message till next morning. By then the boy had long been dead of a gun shot wound to his head.

For us this was two hits and two misses in the last 7 days. It was a lot worse for the parents of that boy. I can only repeat my advice to all of the parents to talk to their children and to maintain as close connection to them as possible. And also to quote Nabokov (from memory, so it may sound a bit different verbatim): "Spoil your children, ladies and gentlemen. Who knows what they will have to experience in the future."

In the Footsteps of the Great

The other day I went to watch "Julie and Julia." I should say that the part about Julia Child was a sheer delight to watch due to the personality of the character and the superb acting of Meryl Streep; and the part about Julie was cute but totally unremarkable. I thought that the part about Julie did not add anything - whatsoever - valuable to the movie. I wish they would have spent all the time on Julia Child - original, passionate, creative, authentic. I still am struggling to understand what makes Julie's tour de force effort in cooking every single recipe from Julia Child's book so appealing. Would we be equally engaged in a journal of an amateur artist who decided to copy every single work by Gauguin in one year and documented his progress online? Someone who decided to learn every sonnet by Shakespeare? So why does cooking appeal to us so much? Because unlike fine art and poetry we can actually enjoy it? What does Julie's understanding of Julia through cooking add to our own perception of the same person had we been afforded more opportunity to observe her without diluting the picture with Julie's trite observations? I don't even think that Julie's personality is big enough to really offer a prism through which we watch Julia - she provides a mere bland sideline comment. So even though I was not mightily annoyed by her presence in the movie, I still find it unnecessary.

Anyway, this is not the point of this post. The point is that I remembered about this movie just now when my son told me that today at school he looked through the guide on "How to Tick People Off" which a friend of his was secretly reading in class. First of all, I did not know that teenagers need GUIDES for that! I thought that knowledge comes naturally. But I suppose, some extremely conscientious teens who take the art of annoying people seriously enough look for additional opportunities and suggestions on how to hone their skills of ticking off people. My son said that from what he had a chance to read, his favorite ideas were to sing along at an opera, and to ask people which gender they were. I am wondering if I should suggest to my son's friend to set a goal, like practice all the tricks in the book in - say - a month, and to track his progress in a blog. You never know, he may become famous just like Julie Powell. Only funnier, I would think.