AAA Brief Response on Child-Rearing, and Miscellany

One of the advantages of insomnia is that it gives one the opportunity to make productive use of more time than usual. So, with the sunlight just beginning to penetrate the heavy morning mist here, I'll respond very briefly to the AAA question on child-rearing, and share other thoughts as may want to tumble out of my head.

One thing that Lobo and I have tried to do that's very different from most parents we observe is to explain the reasons behind our requests for our children to do something. And please note, we do not arbitrarily order them about, like small domestic slaves, as we hear others apparently doing. We try to be firm and uncompromising regarding respecting others' property, but other than that, as I said, we make requests rather than issue ultimatums.

For example, both snolfs seem to have inherited my Scandinavian antifreeze genes. They're perfectly comfortable going out in cold weather in garb most people (sometimes even myself included) would consider woefully inadequate. Rather than ordering them to put on a coat, we explain why a coat might be a good idea, and ask them questions (such as, "What would you do to stay warm if the car broke down and there was no heat?"), and leave the choice to them. They've complied and not needed it sometimes; they've failed to comply and complained other times. We remind them that the choice was theirs, so they need to deal with the consequences -- and that they might want to remember this consequence next time we make the suggestion. (Of course if the child is really cold we don't let him or her suffer overmuch.) If we're going shopping and they don't want to put on shoes, we remind them that stores have "No shirt, no shoes, no service" policies and that if they want to go with us, they'll need to have them.

We also allow them to expand their abilities as they wish to explore them. That means my son was helping me chop vegetables -- really helping, with a good knife, not just playing -- before he was two years old; he now has two pocket knives of his own, with which he is mostly very responsible (he tends to forget them in his pockets). The older children have been helping in the kitchen by cooking meals; the snolfs wanted to do so as well. So, with lots of parental supervision, each snolf has been added to the meal-making rotation. They don't just throw frozen food into the microwave or oven, either; they plan and prepare meals. Last night my daughter made a very tasty variation on one of my el cheapo meal standards -- ground beef gravy, with rice and corn. She puts her musical talents to good use as she cooks, singing about the ingredients and encouraging yumminess. Here's a sample of her typical dinner song, not recorded last night but from an earlier dinnermaking session with her father: dinnersong.wav

Last, while I try my best to give them accurate information in response to their knowledge-seeking questions, I also take advantage of opportunities to reinforce the idea that they need to question what everybody tells them. Thus, I don't make up scientific facts or such, but if they ask me a more general question, sometimes I'll give a totally outrageous response. Usually they challenge me, but if they don't I'll prompt them to review what I said, often by asking something like, "Does that make sense?" Lobo and I readily admit when we've been wrong, and we apologize to our children when that's deserved. Thus, although our children trust us a good deal, they know we aren't infallible, and that grownups can be wrong.

Truffle news update: one tester has reported that the package was received in good condition. This individual has survived multiple samples already, so those of you still waiting can breathe a sigh of relief.

And if you want political commentary, here's a couple of loonies' worth: I feel quite strange about my near-channeling of the Bush line on the ports hullaballoo. I say "near" because I smell something underneath his rhetoric, and it ain't pretty. It's a sure bet he's trying to hide something.

And, speaking of hiding something, it's debt ceiling season once again: Bush, Congress Make a Farce of the Debt Ceiling:

The reality is that taxes and spending are badly out of whack, and hardly anyone -- certainly neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Richard Cheney -- wants to admit it. If the White House won't acknowledge what's happening, why should an ordinary member of Congress?

Instead, Bush continues to push Congress to extend earlier tax cuts that lowered the maximum personal income tax rate on dividends and long-term capital gains to 15 percent. Those cuts are set to expire at year-end.

Meanwhile, Cheney, in a Feb. 9 speech, called for extending not just that pair of rate cuts, but all of the Bush-era cuts that under current law would expire in 2010.

"In the last five years, the Bush tax relief has left $880 billion in the hands of American workers, investors, small businesses, and families,'' Cheney said. "They have used it to help produce more than four years of uninterrupted economic growth."

"Yet the tax relief is set to expire in the next several years. So if we do nothing, Americans will face a massive tax increase. That would be counterproductive, it would be irresponsible, it would be bad for the economy. Congress needs to make the Bush tax cuts permanent," he said.

Irresponsible? Bad for the economy?

Not nearly as irresponsible as Cheney's claim in the speech that "despite forecasts to the contrary, the tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues."