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Friday, February 28, 2014
Love Quotes
"For, you see, each day I love you more, Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow." -- Rosemonde Gerard 
Are you Maxed Out?
I just finished Katrina Alcorn?s gripping memoir, Maxed Out, about her nervous breakdown. Although it is an absorbing, can?t-put-it-down kind of a book, her breakdown?harrowing as it was?struck me as ordinary.
Ordinary in that her experience seems so common. Working parents are stressed. Women in particular are really suffering: They report record-high use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. By some reputable reports, nearly a quarter of American woman use a prescription medication for depression or anxiety. 1 (Men tend to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, and report higher rates of addiction and alcohol.2)
Here?s how Katrina tells it:
I was a 37-year-old mother of three and somehow, my kids, my marriage, and my career were all thriving.
Then, one Saturday afternoon in the spring of 2009, while driving to Target to buy diapers, I broke down. Not my car. Me.
I pulled over to the side of the road, my hands shaking, barely able to breathe. I called my husband and sobbed, ?I can?t do this anymore.?
Thus ended my career, and thus began a journey into crippling depression, anxiety, and insomnia; medication, meditation, and therapy. As I learned to heal my body and my mind, I searched for answers to one question: What the hell happened to me?
I first met Katrina at a woman-led tech firm (which was recently bought-up by Facebook). Ironically, I was there as a consultant working on a happiness app for the iPhone. Katrina was successfully leading a team of hipsters doing cutting edge work?and slowly but surely having a full-on nervous breakdown.
She ended up in bed for a year, crushed by burn-out so thorough and unexpected that her friends had to bring her family food and drive her kids to day care while she recovered.
As she recovered, Katrina had a realization that was shocking to her:
Working and raising kids pretty much sucks in America.
FACT: The typical American family worked 11 hours more per week in 2006 than in 1979.
FACT: Only the United States lacks paid maternity-leave laws among the 30 industrialized democracies.
FACT: Fully 90 percent of American mothers and 95 percent of American fathers report work-family conflict. 3
Most of us feel pretty lucky and very grateful to be Americans. Dysfunctional as it may sometimes be, our government remains the world?s oldest and arguably its most stable democracy. The majority of Americans experience material wealth and abundance unknown in many parts of the world. And those of us in California and many other parts of the country are blessed with natural beauty and national parks so stunning that they inspire awe and wonder in all but only the most hardened among us.
But our policies for working families are shameful.
It isn?t that working sucks?if we are lucky, like Katrina Alcorn, we love our work. Most parents want to do meaningful work outside of our homes. It?s just that our workplaces aren?t set up to allow us enough time to take care of ourselves (say, by getting enough sleep) and raise our children and work outside the home.
This Time Bind, artfully described by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1990s in her book of that title, is a problem that we won?t solve by ?leaning in? to our work (as Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg advises us to do in her book about the problems that plague women in the workforce today).
Despite the publicity around a recent study that supposedly shows that working less doesn?t make people happier?more on that next week?I believe that we are still grappling with Hochschild?s time bind, all these years and technological advances later.
But what are we to do if we are feeling MAXED OUT? The owner of Alcorn?s company, a mother of three herself, advised her to hire a ?mother?s helper,? to assist with homework and dinnertime. Sandberg has a team of paid folks helping her with household and child-related tasks. But hiring more help isn?t a feasible, or even desirable, solution for most of us. Would working less make us happier?
Next week I?ll look more closely at some new research related to this question.
?????????-
1. Bindley, Katherine. ?Women And Prescription Drugs: One In Four Takes Mental Health Meds.? Huffington Post. 2011.
2. Kessler, Ronald C., et al. ?Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.? Archives of General Psychiatry 62.6 (2005): 617.
3.Joan C. Williams of the Center for Work Life Law and Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress called ?The Three Faces of Work-family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle.? Published January 2010. - See more at: http://www.workingmomsbreak.com/just-the-facts/#sthash.4G1K4JM9.dpuf
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Ordinary in that her experience seems so common. Working parents are stressed. Women in particular are really suffering: They report record-high use of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. By some reputable reports, nearly a quarter of American woman use a prescription medication for depression or anxiety. 1 (Men tend to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs, and report higher rates of addiction and alcohol.2)
Here?s how Katrina tells it:
I was a 37-year-old mother of three and somehow, my kids, my marriage, and my career were all thriving.
Then, one Saturday afternoon in the spring of 2009, while driving to Target to buy diapers, I broke down. Not my car. Me.
I pulled over to the side of the road, my hands shaking, barely able to breathe. I called my husband and sobbed, ?I can?t do this anymore.?
Thus ended my career, and thus began a journey into crippling depression, anxiety, and insomnia; medication, meditation, and therapy. As I learned to heal my body and my mind, I searched for answers to one question: What the hell happened to me?
I first met Katrina at a woman-led tech firm (which was recently bought-up by Facebook). Ironically, I was there as a consultant working on a happiness app for the iPhone. Katrina was successfully leading a team of hipsters doing cutting edge work?and slowly but surely having a full-on nervous breakdown.
She ended up in bed for a year, crushed by burn-out so thorough and unexpected that her friends had to bring her family food and drive her kids to day care while she recovered.
As she recovered, Katrina had a realization that was shocking to her:
Working and raising kids pretty much sucks in America.
FACT: The typical American family worked 11 hours more per week in 2006 than in 1979.
FACT: Only the United States lacks paid maternity-leave laws among the 30 industrialized democracies.
FACT: Fully 90 percent of American mothers and 95 percent of American fathers report work-family conflict. 3
Most of us feel pretty lucky and very grateful to be Americans. Dysfunctional as it may sometimes be, our government remains the world?s oldest and arguably its most stable democracy. The majority of Americans experience material wealth and abundance unknown in many parts of the world. And those of us in California and many other parts of the country are blessed with natural beauty and national parks so stunning that they inspire awe and wonder in all but only the most hardened among us.
But our policies for working families are shameful.
It isn?t that working sucks?if we are lucky, like Katrina Alcorn, we love our work. Most parents want to do meaningful work outside of our homes. It?s just that our workplaces aren?t set up to allow us enough time to take care of ourselves (say, by getting enough sleep) and raise our children and work outside the home.
This Time Bind, artfully described by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the 1990s in her book of that title, is a problem that we won?t solve by ?leaning in? to our work (as Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg advises us to do in her book about the problems that plague women in the workforce today).
Despite the publicity around a recent study that supposedly shows that working less doesn?t make people happier?more on that next week?I believe that we are still grappling with Hochschild?s time bind, all these years and technological advances later.
But what are we to do if we are feeling MAXED OUT? The owner of Alcorn?s company, a mother of three herself, advised her to hire a ?mother?s helper,? to assist with homework and dinnertime. Sandberg has a team of paid folks helping her with household and child-related tasks. But hiring more help isn?t a feasible, or even desirable, solution for most of us. Would working less make us happier?
Next week I?ll look more closely at some new research related to this question.
?????????-
1. Bindley, Katherine. ?Women And Prescription Drugs: One In Four Takes Mental Health Meds.? Huffington Post. 2011.
2. Kessler, Ronald C., et al. ?Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.? Archives of General Psychiatry 62.6 (2005): 617.
3.Joan C. Williams of the Center for Work Life Law and Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress called ?The Three Faces of Work-family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle.? Published January 2010. - See more at: http://www.workingmomsbreak.com/just-the-facts/#sthash.4G1K4JM9.dpuf
Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.
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Insulting Quotes
"An ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull." - Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 5. 1 
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A New Theory of Elite Performance
When we look at people who are at the top of their field, what do we know about how they got there?
We used to think that people were successful thanks to their genetic make-up?their inborn talents and innate passions. We called these people ?gifted,? and assumed their success came from God-given talents more than their efforts.
The belief that success comes from God-given talent is not only discouraging?what if you don?t feel ?gifted???but profoundly incorrect. Because researchers love to study super-high achievers, we know that the vast majority of achievements don?t spring from innate talent as much as they emerge from hard work and passion.
Angela Duckworth, the celebrated psychologist who first defined ?grit? as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, has a theory about success. Instead of seeing achievement as simply a byproduct of IQ or intelligence or innate talent, Duckworth sees achievement as the product of skill and effort (Achievement = Skill x Effort) in the same way that we understand that Distance = Speed x Time. She explains:Distance [is] an apt metaphor for achievement. What is achievement, after all, but an advance from a starting point to a goal? The farther the goal from the starting point, the greater the achievement. Just as distance is the multiplicative product of speed and time, it seems plausible that, holding opportunity constant, achievement is the multiplicative product of skill and effort?
Tremendous effort can compensate for modest skill, just as tremendous skill can compensate for modest effort, but not if either is zero. Researchers across diverse fields have produced remarkably consistent findings that back up Duckworth?s theory. They find that innate ability has relatively little to do with why people go from being merely good at something to being truly great.
This is hard for most of us to believe, but K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist and author of several landmark studies on this topic, has shown that even most physical advantages (like athletes who have larger hearts or more fast-twitch muscle fibers or more flexible joints?the things that seem the most undeniably genetic) are, in fact, the result of certain types of effort (which I describe below). Even super-skills, like ?perfect pitch? in eminent musicians, have been shown to stem from training more than inborn talent. Hard to believe, but entirely true.
It isn?t just putting in any old effort that will build the right skills and lead to elite performance. People who rise to greatness tend to have three things in common: 1) They both practice and rest deliberately over time; 2) Their practice is fueled by passion and intrinsic interest; and 3) They wrestle adversity into success. These three things together are the very essence of ?grit.? In the rest of this post, I?m going to zero in on the importance of deliberate and persistent practice; my next two posts will cover other facets of grit.Deliberate practice
Elite performers practice a lot, in a really specific way. Accomplished people spend hours upon hours in ?deliberate practice.? This isn?t just poking around on the piano because it is fun; it is consistently practicing to reach specific objectives?say, to be able to play a new piece that is just beyond their reach. In the beginning, they may practice a new phrase or even a single measure again and again and again.
Unfortunately, deliberate practice isn?t always pleasurable?far from it. In fact, it is the elite performer?s willingness to engage in hard or, quite often, very boring, practice that distinguishes people who are good at their chosen activity from those who are the very best at it.
There are a few ways to learn how to spell words for a Spelling Bee, for example. One way is to simply pay attention to words when you read for pleasure. Another way is to have your friends and family quiz you. But how exciting must it be to study long lists alone?
Yet it turns out that the most effective way to become a National Spelling Bee champion is the third option, solitary study. (This explains why I?d be lost without spell-check.) The highest performers in the National Spelling Bee spend the most time in this type of deliberate practice?the most effective, but probably the least fun, way to learn to spell obscure words.
What typically predicts how much effective-but-boring deliberate practice a champion engages in? In the Spelling Bee study, it was grit. The champions? perseverance and passion for their long-term goals enabled them to persist with a preparation technique (solitary study) that was intrinsically less rewarding but far more effective than other techniques. Grit gives us the ability to practice the right thing, rather than to just practice what is fun.Persistence over time
Elite performers also practice consistently over a pretty long period of time. Ericsson says that ?elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.? Spending a half hour jogging over the weekend isn?t going to make you a great runner, but training every day might. Dabbling with your paints every once in awhile isn?t going to make you a great artist, but practicing your drawing every day for a decade might.
True masters gain experience over the long haul?specifically, for 10 years of dedicated work, or 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller Outliers, made the ?10-year-rule? famous by colorfully illustrating Ericsson?s research. Most successful people average 10 years of practice and experience before becoming truly accomplished. Even child-prodigies generally work at it for a decade or more. Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at 16 years old, but he?d been studying since he was 7. Tiger Woods had been working on his golf game for 15 years when he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship.
And there is something else: People who go to the top of their fields don?t just practice deliberately and persistently, they also rest strategically. This is a key component of success, and one that we often overlook in our 24/7 go go go culture.
This is part one is a series. The next post, ?The Quiet Secret of Success?, deals with the relationship between rest and performance; part three, ?Passion + Adversity = Success,? explores how passion helps us to overcome failure.
Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.
Sign up for the Raising Happiness CLASS!
We used to think that people were successful thanks to their genetic make-up?their inborn talents and innate passions. We called these people ?gifted,? and assumed their success came from God-given talents more than their efforts.
The belief that success comes from God-given talent is not only discouraging?what if you don?t feel ?gifted???but profoundly incorrect. Because researchers love to study super-high achievers, we know that the vast majority of achievements don?t spring from innate talent as much as they emerge from hard work and passion.
Angela Duckworth, the celebrated psychologist who first defined ?grit? as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, has a theory about success. Instead of seeing achievement as simply a byproduct of IQ or intelligence or innate talent, Duckworth sees achievement as the product of skill and effort (Achievement = Skill x Effort) in the same way that we understand that Distance = Speed x Time. She explains:Distance [is] an apt metaphor for achievement. What is achievement, after all, but an advance from a starting point to a goal? The farther the goal from the starting point, the greater the achievement. Just as distance is the multiplicative product of speed and time, it seems plausible that, holding opportunity constant, achievement is the multiplicative product of skill and effort?
Tremendous effort can compensate for modest skill, just as tremendous skill can compensate for modest effort, but not if either is zero. Researchers across diverse fields have produced remarkably consistent findings that back up Duckworth?s theory. They find that innate ability has relatively little to do with why people go from being merely good at something to being truly great.
This is hard for most of us to believe, but K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist and author of several landmark studies on this topic, has shown that even most physical advantages (like athletes who have larger hearts or more fast-twitch muscle fibers or more flexible joints?the things that seem the most undeniably genetic) are, in fact, the result of certain types of effort (which I describe below). Even super-skills, like ?perfect pitch? in eminent musicians, have been shown to stem from training more than inborn talent. Hard to believe, but entirely true.
It isn?t just putting in any old effort that will build the right skills and lead to elite performance. People who rise to greatness tend to have three things in common: 1) They both practice and rest deliberately over time; 2) Their practice is fueled by passion and intrinsic interest; and 3) They wrestle adversity into success. These three things together are the very essence of ?grit.? In the rest of this post, I?m going to zero in on the importance of deliberate and persistent practice; my next two posts will cover other facets of grit.Deliberate practice
Elite performers practice a lot, in a really specific way. Accomplished people spend hours upon hours in ?deliberate practice.? This isn?t just poking around on the piano because it is fun; it is consistently practicing to reach specific objectives?say, to be able to play a new piece that is just beyond their reach. In the beginning, they may practice a new phrase or even a single measure again and again and again.
Unfortunately, deliberate practice isn?t always pleasurable?far from it. In fact, it is the elite performer?s willingness to engage in hard or, quite often, very boring, practice that distinguishes people who are good at their chosen activity from those who are the very best at it.
There are a few ways to learn how to spell words for a Spelling Bee, for example. One way is to simply pay attention to words when you read for pleasure. Another way is to have your friends and family quiz you. But how exciting must it be to study long lists alone?
Yet it turns out that the most effective way to become a National Spelling Bee champion is the third option, solitary study. (This explains why I?d be lost without spell-check.) The highest performers in the National Spelling Bee spend the most time in this type of deliberate practice?the most effective, but probably the least fun, way to learn to spell obscure words.
What typically predicts how much effective-but-boring deliberate practice a champion engages in? In the Spelling Bee study, it was grit. The champions? perseverance and passion for their long-term goals enabled them to persist with a preparation technique (solitary study) that was intrinsically less rewarding but far more effective than other techniques. Grit gives us the ability to practice the right thing, rather than to just practice what is fun.Persistence over time
Elite performers also practice consistently over a pretty long period of time. Ericsson says that ?elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.? Spending a half hour jogging over the weekend isn?t going to make you a great runner, but training every day might. Dabbling with your paints every once in awhile isn?t going to make you a great artist, but practicing your drawing every day for a decade might.
True masters gain experience over the long haul?specifically, for 10 years of dedicated work, or 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller Outliers, made the ?10-year-rule? famous by colorfully illustrating Ericsson?s research. Most successful people average 10 years of practice and experience before becoming truly accomplished. Even child-prodigies generally work at it for a decade or more. Bobby Fischer became a chess grandmaster at 16 years old, but he?d been studying since he was 7. Tiger Woods had been working on his golf game for 15 years when he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship.
And there is something else: People who go to the top of their fields don?t just practice deliberately and persistently, they also rest strategically. This is a key component of success, and one that we often overlook in our 24/7 go go go culture.
This is part one is a series. The next post, ?The Quiet Secret of Success?, deals with the relationship between rest and performance; part three, ?Passion + Adversity = Success,? explores how passion helps us to overcome failure.
Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.
Sign up for the Raising Happiness CLASS!
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Funny Quotes
"English - Who needs that? I'm never going to England!" -- Homer Simpson 
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Valentine Quotes
"All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!" -- Lucy Van Pelt, in Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz 
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Tablet and Smartphone Boot Camp for Middle School Parents
Everyday I read something that leads me to believe that tech devices are dramatically affecting our kids? normal social, sexual, intellectual, and emotional development. What I?m most amazed by, frankly, is how uninvolved we parents tend to be in the online lives of our middle schoolers. Our tweeners tend to seem much more savvy than they actually are: They may have technical skills, but usually they don?t have the social skills they need to navigate the sophisticated online and social media world.
Smartphones, tablets, and computers are powerful, wonderful devices that I can hardly imagine living without. But our kids get addicted to them easily, and they often use them inappropriately.
Middle schoolers are not old enough (or developmentally ready) to have as much freedom online as they often do these days. Think of these devices like cars: Before kids can drive them alone, they need to know the rules. They need clear roads with bright lines painted for them to show them where?and where not?to go.
In order for parents to teach these rules to our kids, many of us need a crash course in them ourselves?consider it a new technologies boot camp. If your middle schooler seems to be spending more time on Facebook or texting than she is in-person with her friends, this boot camp is for you.
Step 1: Make it clear which SPACES are appropriate for device and computer use.
Just because we can take a laptop into the bathroom does not mean that this is an appropriate thing to do. These are the places where it is typically NOT OKAY to use a computer, tablet, or smartphone:
? The car, unless it is planned for a long road trip. If your kids are used to being on their devices while you shuttle them around town, re-introduce them to the car window. Encourage them to learn the names of the streets you are driving on. Talk to them. If they complain about being bored, remind them that boredom is not a health hazard, but technology overuse is.
? Bedrooms and bathrooms. If you think your middle schooler is mature enough to have a computer in his or her bedroom, read Catherine Steriner-Adair?s book The Big Disconnect. Believe me, it can forever change their development. Laptops, phones, and tablets get charged in the kitchen at our house.* (I do let my daughter take a smartphone into her room after school and before dinnertime, where she uses it to talk and text. She is not allowed to use it for Internet access in her bedroom. This means that kids do homework in our house in public spaces, not in their bedrooms.)
? Public spaces where others can overhear a conversation, like restaurants, school, or any place where someone is helping you, like in a check-out line at a store. Remind kids that when we are texting or talking on the phone, we are ignoring the people around us, which is especially rude when they are helping us with something.
Step 2: Identify appropriate TIMES to be on a device.
For example, here are some times when it is NOT appropriate in our household to be texting, snapchatting, Facebooking,** playing an electronic game, emailing, etc:
? While they are doing homework. I am aware that most middle-schoolers chat while doing homework and are better at multitasking than us middle-agers. But the ability to FOCUS (you know, do just one thing at a time) is a core life-skill that more and more of our kids are failing to develop.
? During meals. There is usually nothing so important that it can?t wait 20 minutes. Daily family meals actually ARE important to kids? development, and need to be accorded that importance.
? During bedtime routines. In the evening all devices can be set to their ?do not disturb? setting and put in their chargers (iPhones and iPads can be set to do this automatically) a half hour before bedtime.
Why 30 minutes? Because the low-energy blue light emitted by our tablets and smartphones stimulates chemical messengers in our brains that make us more alert, and suppresses others (like melatonin) that help us fall asleep. Changing electronic reader settings to have a black background may help if your kids like to read before bed on a tablet or electronic reader.
Step 3: Make it clear what is private, and what is not.
Here is the biggest ever newsflash for most seventh and eighth graders: They are not entitled to privacy in their texts, emails, Facebook or Instagram posts, etc. The computers, phones, and tablets they use are, in fact, owned by their school or their parents.
As such, schools and parents are accountable for everything that happens on them. This means parents have a responsibility to control all of the passwords on the devices they own, and they have the right to read all posts created or received on said devices.
Why? Two reasons. First, because everything that kids do online is much more public and permanent than they typically think. If they want to write a private love note, they should use a pen and the US Mail. If they want to have a private conversation, they should do it in person. Make it clear what is private (their journal, for example, or their bedroom) and what is not: all online communications.
The second reason that middle-schoolers are not entitled to privacy online is that kids usually behave differently?and by that I mean better?when they know that they are being watched by adults. They are emboldened by independence, and once they do something risky or against the rules online and get away with it, they are likely to do it again.
So collect your middle-schooler?s passwords, and USE THEM. Log in and read their posts and texts. (See Step 4 if you see something you don?t like.) Insist that they accept any and all requests to connect via social media with relatives and trusted adults: This can be a part of the village that helps keep an eye on your kids.
Step 4: Teach kids to seek help when things go awry?and have a plan yourself as a parent when they do.
Inevitably, our kids will be spammed, flamed, and even bullied online or via email. And they may make major mistakes themselves that have deep consequences. First, be clear about what you see as bad online behavior, and establish clear consequences should that bad behavior come from your child.
Second, teach them that their how they respond when something goes wrong usually matters a lot, so their first response should be to get help from you or their school. Establish an ?amnesty? policy with them so that should they realize they (or one of their close friends) has made a mistake, they feel they can seek adult help repairing any damage.
If you aren?t sure how you?ll respond when things go wrong, or what situations middle-schoolers typically deal with online that you might need to help them with, take the time to read the last couple of chapters of Steiner-Adair?s The Big Disconnect.
Step 5: Actively teach kids to use their devices and social media accounts as a force for good.
On balance these technologies are good. They represent progress, not the death and destruction of our youth. But kids need to be taught how to use these sophisticated tools to make them happier, and to make the world a better place. (For ideas about how to do that, see this post about How to use Facebook to Increase Your Happiness.)
Perhaps this goes without saying, but kids will do what we do, not what we tell them to do, so the most important part of this boot camp is probably modeling these behaviors. When we text our work colleagues during dinner, we teach our family that work is more important than them. When we check Facebook during a red light in the car, we teach our kids that boredom is intolerable, and that it is safe to be online while driving.
But here?s the thing: We can also model positive behavior. We can turn our devices off, and keep them off at significant moments in our day. When we are online, we can post inspiring quotations and send our friends gratitude emails. We can text pictures of the kids to grandparents. And these technologies can make us more efficient (rather than just more distracted), and that efficiency can buy us more time with our middle-schoolers?who are readying themselves to leave our nest at any moment.
*A tangent that will make me seem like a luddite, but I can?t help throwing in: My kids use old-fashioned alarm clocks to wake up in the morning. One of them uses the ?clock-radio? that I got for Christmas one year when I was in grade school. This in and of itself is amazing: My kids can?t believe something electronic was ever designed to last more than a couple of years and is still operable 30 years later.
**Note: My kids are not allowed to have Facebook accounts until it is legal for them to do so, at age 13. They have tons of friends and are somehow surviving socially being the ?only kids in their entire school? who don?t have Facebook accounts. (Perhaps because many of their friends actually don?t have active Facebook accounts.)
Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.
Sign up for the Raising Happiness CLASS!
Smartphones, tablets, and computers are powerful, wonderful devices that I can hardly imagine living without. But our kids get addicted to them easily, and they often use them inappropriately.
Middle schoolers are not old enough (or developmentally ready) to have as much freedom online as they often do these days. Think of these devices like cars: Before kids can drive them alone, they need to know the rules. They need clear roads with bright lines painted for them to show them where?and where not?to go.
In order for parents to teach these rules to our kids, many of us need a crash course in them ourselves?consider it a new technologies boot camp. If your middle schooler seems to be spending more time on Facebook or texting than she is in-person with her friends, this boot camp is for you.
Step 1: Make it clear which SPACES are appropriate for device and computer use.
Just because we can take a laptop into the bathroom does not mean that this is an appropriate thing to do. These are the places where it is typically NOT OKAY to use a computer, tablet, or smartphone:
? The car, unless it is planned for a long road trip. If your kids are used to being on their devices while you shuttle them around town, re-introduce them to the car window. Encourage them to learn the names of the streets you are driving on. Talk to them. If they complain about being bored, remind them that boredom is not a health hazard, but technology overuse is.
? Bedrooms and bathrooms. If you think your middle schooler is mature enough to have a computer in his or her bedroom, read Catherine Steriner-Adair?s book The Big Disconnect. Believe me, it can forever change their development. Laptops, phones, and tablets get charged in the kitchen at our house.* (I do let my daughter take a smartphone into her room after school and before dinnertime, where she uses it to talk and text. She is not allowed to use it for Internet access in her bedroom. This means that kids do homework in our house in public spaces, not in their bedrooms.)
? Public spaces where others can overhear a conversation, like restaurants, school, or any place where someone is helping you, like in a check-out line at a store. Remind kids that when we are texting or talking on the phone, we are ignoring the people around us, which is especially rude when they are helping us with something.
Step 2: Identify appropriate TIMES to be on a device.
For example, here are some times when it is NOT appropriate in our household to be texting, snapchatting, Facebooking,** playing an electronic game, emailing, etc:
? While they are doing homework. I am aware that most middle-schoolers chat while doing homework and are better at multitasking than us middle-agers. But the ability to FOCUS (you know, do just one thing at a time) is a core life-skill that more and more of our kids are failing to develop.
? During meals. There is usually nothing so important that it can?t wait 20 minutes. Daily family meals actually ARE important to kids? development, and need to be accorded that importance.
? During bedtime routines. In the evening all devices can be set to their ?do not disturb? setting and put in their chargers (iPhones and iPads can be set to do this automatically) a half hour before bedtime.
Why 30 minutes? Because the low-energy blue light emitted by our tablets and smartphones stimulates chemical messengers in our brains that make us more alert, and suppresses others (like melatonin) that help us fall asleep. Changing electronic reader settings to have a black background may help if your kids like to read before bed on a tablet or electronic reader.
Step 3: Make it clear what is private, and what is not.
Here is the biggest ever newsflash for most seventh and eighth graders: They are not entitled to privacy in their texts, emails, Facebook or Instagram posts, etc. The computers, phones, and tablets they use are, in fact, owned by their school or their parents.
As such, schools and parents are accountable for everything that happens on them. This means parents have a responsibility to control all of the passwords on the devices they own, and they have the right to read all posts created or received on said devices.
Why? Two reasons. First, because everything that kids do online is much more public and permanent than they typically think. If they want to write a private love note, they should use a pen and the US Mail. If they want to have a private conversation, they should do it in person. Make it clear what is private (their journal, for example, or their bedroom) and what is not: all online communications.
The second reason that middle-schoolers are not entitled to privacy online is that kids usually behave differently?and by that I mean better?when they know that they are being watched by adults. They are emboldened by independence, and once they do something risky or against the rules online and get away with it, they are likely to do it again.
So collect your middle-schooler?s passwords, and USE THEM. Log in and read their posts and texts. (See Step 4 if you see something you don?t like.) Insist that they accept any and all requests to connect via social media with relatives and trusted adults: This can be a part of the village that helps keep an eye on your kids.
Step 4: Teach kids to seek help when things go awry?and have a plan yourself as a parent when they do.
Inevitably, our kids will be spammed, flamed, and even bullied online or via email. And they may make major mistakes themselves that have deep consequences. First, be clear about what you see as bad online behavior, and establish clear consequences should that bad behavior come from your child.
Second, teach them that their how they respond when something goes wrong usually matters a lot, so their first response should be to get help from you or their school. Establish an ?amnesty? policy with them so that should they realize they (or one of their close friends) has made a mistake, they feel they can seek adult help repairing any damage.
If you aren?t sure how you?ll respond when things go wrong, or what situations middle-schoolers typically deal with online that you might need to help them with, take the time to read the last couple of chapters of Steiner-Adair?s The Big Disconnect.
Step 5: Actively teach kids to use their devices and social media accounts as a force for good.
On balance these technologies are good. They represent progress, not the death and destruction of our youth. But kids need to be taught how to use these sophisticated tools to make them happier, and to make the world a better place. (For ideas about how to do that, see this post about How to use Facebook to Increase Your Happiness.)
Perhaps this goes without saying, but kids will do what we do, not what we tell them to do, so the most important part of this boot camp is probably modeling these behaviors. When we text our work colleagues during dinner, we teach our family that work is more important than them. When we check Facebook during a red light in the car, we teach our kids that boredom is intolerable, and that it is safe to be online while driving.
But here?s the thing: We can also model positive behavior. We can turn our devices off, and keep them off at significant moments in our day. When we are online, we can post inspiring quotations and send our friends gratitude emails. We can text pictures of the kids to grandparents. And these technologies can make us more efficient (rather than just more distracted), and that efficiency can buy us more time with our middle-schoolers?who are readying themselves to leave our nest at any moment.
*A tangent that will make me seem like a luddite, but I can?t help throwing in: My kids use old-fashioned alarm clocks to wake up in the morning. One of them uses the ?clock-radio? that I got for Christmas one year when I was in grade school. This in and of itself is amazing: My kids can?t believe something electronic was ever designed to last more than a couple of years and is still operable 30 years later.
**Note: My kids are not allowed to have Facebook accounts until it is legal for them to do so, at age 13. They have tons of friends and are somehow surviving socially being the ?only kids in their entire school? who don?t have Facebook accounts. (Perhaps because many of their friends actually don?t have active Facebook accounts.)
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Thursday, February 27, 2014
Love Quotes
"I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled." -- Bible - Song of Solomon 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/7gEYn9TnIn8/love_quotes.shtml
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Insulting Quotes
"Bacon-fed knaves!" -- William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1, 2. 2 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/EMZDvtat6e0/shakespeare_insults_quotes.shtml
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Great Sex Quotes
"Continental people have sex life; the English have hot-water bottles." - George Mikes 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/uB4SAoxE9pg/sex_quotes.shtml
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Sex Quotes
"An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." - Aldous Huxley 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/uB4SAoxE9pg/sex_quotes.shtml
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Top Sex Quotes
"Cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth�certainly greater than sex, although sex isn�t too bad either." - Harold Pinter 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/uB4SAoxE9pg/sex_quotes.shtml
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Famous Love Quotes
"Can miles truly separate you from friends....If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?" - Richard Bach 
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AllGreatQuotes/~3/7gEYn9TnIn8/love_quotes.shtml
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