Things to Read - Five Interesting Articles From Around the Web (on modern day parenting, happiness vs. meaning, "real careers", quinoa, and life after high school)

(1) Modern Day Parenting - Amy Morrison's Why You're Never Failing as a Mother made me feel better about life lately.

"[W]e are part of a generation that considers parenting to be a skill. Like a true skill that needs to be mastered and perfected and if we don't get it right, we think our kids suffer for it -- and that's hard sh*t to keep up with. That's not to say other generations didn't have it tough or think parenting was important, but there just wasn't the same level of scrutiny that could be liked, tweeted or instagramed all at once."
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(2) Happiness vs. Meaning - In There's More to Life Than Being Happy, Emily Esfahani Smith questions whether Americans' emphasis on the miraculous "H" word causes them to neglect finding actual meaning in their lives.

"How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.

Most importantly from a social perspective, the pursuit of happiness is associated with selfish behavior -- being, as mentioned, a "taker" rather than a "giver." The psychologists give an evolutionary explanation for this: happiness is about drive reduction. If you have a need or a desire -- like hunger -- you satisfy it, and that makes you happy. People become happy, in other words, when they get what they want. Humans, then, are not the only ones who can feel happy. Animals have needs and drives, too, and when those drives are satisfied, animals also feel happy, the researchers point out.

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers write.

. . . .

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. "Thinking beyond the present moment, into the past or future, was a sign of the relatively meaningful but unhappy life," the researchers write. "Happiness is not generally found in contemplating the past or future." That is, people who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.

Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life. Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. "If there is meaning in life at all," Frankl wrote, "then there must be meaning in suffering."
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(3) "Real Careers" - When the girls were younger, I had a really hard time with the princess craze (you can read our story here), so I really wanted to like Andy Hines' Atlantic article on his ill-fated battle against the princesses, but somehow I ended up routing more for his young daughter who doesn't want "a real career." Maybe my lack of empathy for the father is caused by my own lack of a "real career" or maybe I've just loosened up now that my own daughters have outgrown princesses or maybe there's something to be said for dreaming of impossible things, I can't decide. Regardless of my own issues, Hines' rant is worth a read.
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(4) Quinoa - For some depressing news, quinoa (love that stuff) has become so expensive that "poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fuelled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture." You can read more about it here.

[UPDATE (from an awesome reader) apparently the situation is not so bleak - "The world market for quinoa may be very, very hungry, but to some extent, that’s good news for Andean farmers, who are actually able to make a living from farming, even though they allegedly can’t afford to eat what they grow. And quinoa production on the whole seems like good news for the rest of us, too.

The United Nations declared 2013 the Year of Quinoa, claiming that the crop can “contribute to world food security,” in part because the 3,000 varieties of the hardy stuff can be grown at many different temperatures and humidities. “While the main producers are Bolivia, Peru and the United States, quinoa production is expanding to other continents and it is currently being cultivated in several countries in Europe and Asia with good yields,” according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization." Finally, happy news!!!]
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(5) Life After High School - And for entirely different, but still somewhat depressing news, New York Magazine uses quirky anecdotes, wonderful photos, and psychology research to explain Why You Never Truly Leave High School.

"It turns out that just before adolescence, the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that governs our ability to reason, grasp abstractions, control impulses, and self-­reflect—undergoes a huge flurry of activity, giving young adults the intellectual capacity to form an identity, to develop the notion of a self. Any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during puberty can, therefore, make more of an impression, because we’re now perceiving them discerningly and metacognitively as things to sweep into our self-concepts or reject (I am the kind of person who likes the Allman Brothers). “During times when your identity is in transition,” says Steinberg, “it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability.”

At the same time, the prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing in adolescents. It’s still adding myelin, the fatty white substance that speeds up and improves neural connections, and until those connections are consolidated—which most researchers now believe is sometime in our mid-­twenties—the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain (known collectively as the limbic system) have a more significant influence. This explains why adolescents are such notoriously poor models of self-­regulation, and why they’re so much more dramatic—“more Kirk than Spock,” in the words of B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. In adolescence, the brain is also buzzing with more dopamine activity than at any other time in the human life cycle, so everything an adolescent does—everything an adolescent feels—is just a little bit more intense. “And you never get back to that intensity,” says Casey. (The British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has a slightly different way of saying this: “Puberty,” he writes, “is everyone’s first experience of a sentient madness.”)"

Things to Make - Imaginary Animals

(Okay, so I'm not exactly an artist, but at least I tried :)

Last month, when we went to the zoo, F questioned whether bald eagles' fame would lessen if they had pink feathers, which lead to a whole discussion about imaginary animals and all the fabulous creatures we could mix together (an innocent enough discussion among those who know nothing about genetic engineering). Rainbow zebras. Monkey birds. Leopard elephants.

As soon as we arrived home, the art supplies came out. And we did not put them back away for quite some time.

What magical beast would you create?

Places to Go - Out and About (Early Winter 2013)

Our random meanderings about town . . . T has taken to wearing pajama shirts everywhere he goes, I'm sure some parents are appalled by this, but I've decided this isn't the battle I want to fight.



National Children's Museum - In December, we spent a lot of time at National Harbor's newly opened National Children's Museum. The museum has undergone some controversy due to its small size, but for preschoolers the limited space is a huge asset, in that you can't easily lose them.

T and his friends LOVE it here - from driving the fire truck to shopping in the Tanzanian marketplace they can easily spend hours "playing". There's also a 3 and under room with lots of soft flooring for crawlers and new walkers.



The National Zoo - The new carousel might be the coolest thing ever - how to decide which animal to ride? A panda, frog, bald eagle, etc . . . so many choices. Also, in the winter, more animals are out and about, we even saw the usually reclusive beavers take a swim.



The National Building Museum - I cannot say enough good things about the new Work, Play, Build exhibit. We finally bought a membership, so we've visited a lot after preschool and during winter break. As always, towers must be built.



New Years at Noon at the MD Science Center - Um, it was crowded, so very very crowded. But ball drops are most definitely exciting.



Lichtenstein at the National Gallery with F - F loves art, so I took her to the Lichtenstein exhibit, which she found "big". Then we lingered in the lighted tunnel and ate gelato.



Long Branch & Gulf Branch Nature Centers - We end up here a lot after preschool gets out. Beautiful bare trees outside and fun toys inside. Sort of a win win.



The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian - I have such mixed feelings about the ImagiNations playspace, it has so much potential but still falls somewhat flat. For example, they have this awesome stilt house that my kids would probably love to play in, but it's almost completely empty, even the kitchen just has two plastic fish. T looked everywhere trying to find "food" to cook for me. "Why is there nothing to do in this house, mommy?" Good question, T. I've considered bringing our own play food and toys next time we visit.

On the upside, they added a cool new music room where you can play lots of instruments and videos help you match a beat. On the downside, they only open it for one hour a day (random). Further, their skateboarding videogame is a little addictive. And everything is free.

Two weekends ago, we checked out the multicultural festival - wonderful dancing and a fantastic mask making workshop. The kids keep wearing jaguars around the house.



The Playground After School - Because you have to appreciate the warmish days when they're here. And yes, see the blue thing that P's playing on? That's how she broke her arm. Apparently memories (for better or worse) have not kept her from returning to the scene of the crime.

So that's what we've got going on. Where have you ventured lately?

Things to Do - Grateful List (December 2012)

ARTS
* Watching TED talks on Netflix
* F constantly taking out books about other countries from the library
* Reading Lives of the Artists, Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story esp. James Salter's Bangkok, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, and Grace: A Memoir
* Perusing new photography books
* Listening to the Cave Singers
* Watching Despicable Me for family movie night
* Watching Girls
* Reading the Bacteria Reconsidered article in the October 22, 2012 New Yorker

FOOD
* Fatoosh from Jerusalem: A Cookbook
* The Artful Parent's chicken soup

STUFF
* Elizabeth Arden Salt of the Earth Body Lotion
* Our new posturpedic pillows

VACATIONS (Disney World)
*"Mom, do musketeers wear shorts when they go to Disney World?" - T
* No lines and 75 degree days
* The pools and hot tub at Windsor Hills
* The girls' excitement over Storytime with Belle
* The Haunted Mansion, the Lion King, Mickey's Philharmonic, Star Tours, Epcot's Storytimes Throughout the World, and the Kilimanjaro Safari
* That nobody became sick before we left for Disney (apparently half of P's class was out, some kids even vomited in the classroom)
* Peter Pan finally opening up 5 minutes before we had to leave the parks (now that's Disney magic)
* Avoiding Small World this trip (they really are growing up)
* Spontaneous father son swordfights
* Our neighbors for watching Coco (thank you Liz and Greg!!)

HOLIDAYS
* The girls pleading their cases (after a fight) to our Elf on the Shelf
* "F, pretend we still have an Elf on the Shelf even though we're princesses, okay?" - P
* Attending Richmond Ballet's Nutcracker (esp. the dancing bear)
* T and his cousin constantly sword fighting all weekend (T - "alright the swordfights are over"/ C - "okay, so now can we do guns?")
* Amazon wish list books from my MIL
* T in his musketeer costume
* Playing Dominion
* Mellow mornings and feasts at night in Richmond
* Our tablet Christmas (Kindle Fires for the girls and an Ipad for me)

PLACES
* River Farm on a 65 degree day
* Firefighter T at the brand new National Children's Museum
* Taking three (wonderful) toddlers to the National Zoo after preschool - beavers and a new carousel = happiness for everyone
* The National Building Museum's Detroit Photography exhibit

ETC
* "A lot of my friends keep saying there's no santa, but i know he exists because it would be too hard for you to go out with your iphone in the middle of the night and find stores that are still open. you'd probably get lost." - F (love that logic)
* A successful stayover party for P's 6th birthday and the end of birthday party season
* "Mom, please no gigantic sugar cookies after school today, yesterday I felt like a chubby old lady." - F
* F breaking a board in her martial arts class
* P's theater class presentation
* "Mom, I'm so glad you're a unique mom who celebrates the solstice and stuff." - P
* Snow on the day after Christmas
* A successful solstice party with the neighbors
* Finally, a flood recovered basement (with carpet, a sump pump, and a gigantic new TV)
* An (exhausting) kidfriendly NYE (thanks to Jessie, Allegra, and MD Science Center)
* Playing Suspend for family game night

THE KIDS' LISTS

F - art, Cybil Lily, that nobody got sick before Disney World, that I'm excited to go on a vacation, Natalia, drawing, reading, staying at the townhouse, going to Disney World, Story Time with Belle, school, that we have a nice house to live in and food to eat, being a secret agent [in Epcot], Christmas, going to all the plays with Grandma, going to [Unitarian] church, my Kindle Fire, my new old-fashioned game

P - Sabrina, dollies, my family, Natalia, Disney World, the Toy Story ride, the Safari ride, the Jungle parade, my new puppy [stuffed animal], my Kindle Fire, my new Monster Doll, singing Christmas songs at church, NYE at the museum and at Allegra's and Jessie's houses

T - That we went to Disney World, pink sheet, musketeers, rides, that we go to playgroup, Peter Pan [the ride]

Things to Read - Where Children Sleep

Lately the kids have been asking a lot of questions about poor people, such as: where do you live when you can't afford a house or apartment? how do you get food? what do you do when you can't find a job? Depressing topics. So we've talked about homeless shelters, welfare, and food stamps. And how, in a worst case scenario situation, we'd move in with their grandparents (the kids are already fighting over bedrooms), which seemed to pause their inquiries for awhile.

But then they started asking about kids and families in other countries and the answers became bleaker. I tried not to scare them too much, but we did talk how not all children have enough food to eat. "But how do they live? What do their houses look like? What do they do all day?" (all from F, of course). So many questions, several of which I didn't know how to answer.

Then I remembered a photography book I purchased a few years ago - Where Children Sleep. The book contains photos of kids' rooms throughout the world, next to each interior photo is a portrait of the child captioned with a brief description of their daily life. The stories range from middle class children in New Jersey to a boy who lives in a Cambodian garbage dump. Nothing is sugarcoated, making some of the stories depressing beyond belief.

Anyways, I debated whether or not my kids were ready for such heavy information, but F is the type of child who always wants answers - even if those answers are sad or scary - and we've talked about difficult subjects before, so I decided to take the book off of the shelf.

After a few pages, P said "this is too sad, I don't want to look at it anymore", so I respected her wishes and asked F if we could look at it later. F, on the other hand, has become a little obsessed with this book (she even wanted to take it to school), probably because it answers many of her inquiries through a format that makes sense to her (everyone has to sleep somewhere).

What I find interesting is how little judgment she casts while reading the children's stories, despite the bleakness of many of the child's lives, she also finds so much positiveness in each child's accomplishments - such as the Long Island girl with a black belt ("can you believe it? a black belt? and she's only 9, look at all of her trophies! look at them!"). And F doesn't seem to feel any guilt (like an adult would) over the fact that some have so little while others have SO much, perhaps because as a child, such things are still entirely out of her control.

Of course, reading the book has caused F to ask new questions that have caught me completely unaware - one story contains a Brazilian 14 year old who is undergoing her third pregnancy. So F asked "how is this possible, I didn't think kids could have babies?" To which I replied, "well, they can, once they become teenagers, but they shouldn't, kids are too young to care for babies." "But mom, how does the baby GET IN her stomach?" Ugh, poverty and reproduction, such tricky topics.

T on other hand, even though he can't read, has latched on to the idea that the 17 year old gang leader looks like a "real killer". "Is he a killer mom? Is he?" Truthfully, the answer appears to be yes. But I feel no need to reveal this to a three year old, so instead I replied "it is just a costume. A weird, silly costume that he will regret wearing."

It's such a fine line, how much to tell a child. But I try my best. And I emphasize that this book IS NOT for all children, their capacity to handle it will depend on their capacity to handle other such difficult subjects (or, for that matter, on your own capacity to handle such subjects).

Anyways, if you're interested, the book is available through Amazon (linked above) and James Mollisons' website contains some of the book's photos, click here to check it out.

According to the photographer, "[t]he book is written and presented for an audience of 9-13 year olds intended to interest and engage children in the details of the lives of other children around the world, and the social issues affecting them, while also being a serious photographic essay for an adult audience."