美国孩子的童年闲暇是很多的，在基础知识的领域要求不足，强化一下有必要。如果有朝一日，发现中国孩子减负减得太狠了，同样又可以调整回来。只要决策过程合理，充分征求意见，就不会错得太离谱。根据目前的现状，关于减负的探讨是十分合适的。
大部分的减负规定出发点非常之好，比如从教育均衡的角度要求“严格实行免试就近入学”、“均衡编班”、“零起点教学”，这都有助于让教育的领域更为有序而合理。这些做法或许“书生意气”，有可能遭遇“执行难”和“上有政策下有对策”这些传统的挑战，但我想“取法乎上，得乎其中”，若连这一点提出理想状况的勇气都没有，就别指望现状会有什么改变了。
社会担心的关键原因，是怕“学校减负，社会增负”，“学校减负，家长增负。”其实这两个担心都关系到家长的观念改变问题。作为监护人，家长如果不去强迫，也不会有一个叫“社会”的动物，到你家里来给你的孩子增负。为了避免出现家长和社会增负的情形，我给同样作为家长的朋友们建议：
第一，走出应试思维。不要学校里减了，你在家里或是补习班里就要增。“学什么”和“怎么学”，比“学多少”更重要。可能有家长担心减负后孩子“吃不饱”，不能应对未来的高考。现在高等教育逐渐平民化，招生方式正在走向多元，出国留学也进入了寻常家庭，越来越多家庭有能力负担。再者，由于技术等原因，教育本身正面临深层转型。应该说孩子日后的选择很多，真应该把眼光放远一点，不能只在下应对考试这一盘棋，而死命在给孩子课外填塞，让他们产生厌学情绪，使得他们负担更重。
第二，拓展教育面。这方面我甚至说家长真是需要“增负”，不是在学习上增负，而是在正式教育做不到的地方，家长需要拾遗补缺。家长应该拓宽关于“教育”的思维，想象自己希望孩子以后成为什么样的人。未来的他们将不仅仅是一个公司职员政府公务员，他们也是社会公民，也是丈夫或者妻子，父亲或者母亲。在你可以施加影响的家里，你将如何在这些方面给他们预备？如果你不擅长教数学或者英语，就不应该在这些方面在家里开小灶，而应把更多精力，放在教会他们其他东西上面。
教育设计专家迪·芬克（Dee Fink)曾经提出了“重要的学习”（significant learning)的概念，称“重要的学习”包括基础知识（foundational knowledge)、应用能力（application)、整合能力（integration)、人际交往（human dimensions)、关爱（caring)、学习方法（learning how to learn)等。 在很多方面，学校提供的正式教育能做的有限，有很多“死角”，家长大有可为。比如“整合”能力，包括把“观念、人和生活”有效关联，这是侧重知识传输的学校难以做到的地方，而这里是家长的天地。
第三，家长需要不断学习。能不能给孩子提供好的环境，这需要我们不断地自己去学习。可能大家“舒适区”是各自的专业领域，我这里说的学习应该突破这些，包括如何在不同年龄段和孩子沟通、交往，提供有效的管教和支持，这些希望我们都去听听孩子的状况如何，听听专家怎么说，识别不同情景下的需求，而不是根据自己有限的了解和自己的阅历，刻舟求剑，乱替孩子做主，莽撞行事。
第四，放松一些。减负如果给了家长压力，就把这些压力扛下来吧。生了孩子不应该为其负责到底吗？好在这个轭是轻的，如果你能享受和孩子在一起的时光的话。我总觉得看到孩子的成长和进步，在我们的努力下，他们的人生走在正轨上，这是我们做人一生某大的欣慰。或许你可以利用免除了作业的时光，多和孩子出去走走，一起锻炼锻炼，一起看看好的电影，一起去图书馆看看书。造就一个人的乐趣，有什么别的成就能与之相比呢？
我记得大家抱怨孩子负担过重抱怨了很多年，姗姗来迟的减负规定来了，我们该不会叶公好龙吧？
http://www.wcu.edu/webfiles/pdfs/facultycenter_significantlearning.pdf
http://www.deefinkandassociates.com/GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf
A TAXONOMY OF SIGNIFICANT LEARNING
One important feature of this particular taxonomy is that each kind of learning is
interactive, as illustrated in Figure 2 (next page). This means that each kind of learning can stimulate other kinds of learning. This has major implications for the selection of learning goals for your course. It may seem intimidating to include all six kinds of significant learning. But the more you can realistically include, the more the goals will support each other—and the more valuable will be your students’ learning.
HUMAN DIMENSION
Learning about:
Oneself
Others
INTEGRATION
Connecting:
Ideas
People
Realms of life
FOUNDATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Understanding and remembering:
Information
Ideas
APPLICATION
Skills
Thinking:
Critical, creative, & practical thinking
Managing projects
LEARNING HOW TO LEARN
Becoming a better student
Inquiring about a subject
Self-directing learners
CARING
Developing new
Feelings
Interests
Values
2018年9月28日星期五
"Why Nerds are Unpopular" by Paul Graham (2013-09-03 09:47:20)
February 2003
When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards."
We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.
My stock gradually rose during high school. Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper. So I've seen a good part of the popularity landscape.
I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.
Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?
The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?
One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other kids envy them for being smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. I wish. If the other kids in junior high school envied me, they did a great job of concealing it. And in any case, if being smart were really an enviable quality, the girls would have broken ranks. The guys that guys envy, girls like.
In the schools I went to, being smart just didn't matter much. Kids didn't admire it or despise it. All other things being equal, they would have preferred to be on the smart side of average rather than the dumb side, but intelligence counted far less than, say, physical appearance, charisma, or athletic ability.
So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.
If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some of them so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.
At the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. If I had, I would have seen that being smart was more important. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.
Much as they suffer from their unpopularity, I don't think many nerds would. To them the thought of average intelligence is unbearable. But most kids would take that deal. For half of them, it would be a step up. Even for someone in the eightieth percentile (assuming, as everyone seemed to then, that intelligence is a scalar), who wouldn't drop thirty points in exchange for being loved and admired by everyone?
And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.
I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. Some of them truly are little Machiavellis, but what I really mean here is that teenagers are always on duty as conformists.
For example, teenage kids pay a great deal of attention to clothes. They don't consciously dress to be popular. They dress to look good. But to who? To the other kids. Other kids' opinions become their definition of right, not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, right down to the way they walk. And so every effort they make to do things "right" is also, consciously or not, an effort to be more popular.
Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize that it takes work to be popular. In general, people outside some very demanding field don't realize the extent to which success depends on constant (though often unconscious) effort. For example, most people seem to consider the ability to draw as some kind of innate quality, like being tall. In fact, most people who "can draw" like drawing, and have spent many hours doing it; that's why they're good at it. Likewise, popular isn't just something you are or you aren't, but something you make yourself.
The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.
Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.
So far I've been finessing the relationship between smart and nerd, using them as if they were interchangeable. In fact it's only the context that makes them so. A nerd is someone who isn't socially adept enough. But "enough" depends on where you are. In a typical American school, standards for coolness are so high (or at least, so specific) that you don't have to be especially awkward to look awkward by comparison.
Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds. And that's why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after.
Before that, kids' lives are dominated by their parents, not by other kids. Kids do care what their peers think in elementary school, but this isn't their whole life, as it later becomes.
Around the age of eleven, though, kids seem to start treating their family as a day job. They create a new world among themselves, and standing in this world is what matters, not standing in their family. Indeed, being in trouble in their family can win them points in the world they care about.
The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very crude one. If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.
Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely caused them to be ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be actively persecuted.
Why? Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. How could things be any other way? But they could be. Adults don't normally persecute nerds. Why do teenage kids do it?
Partly because teenagers are still half children, and many children are just intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds for the same reason they pull the legs off spiders. Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.
Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.
But I think the main reason other kids persecute nerds is that it's part of the mechanism of popularity. Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's much more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to be constantly doing things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy.
Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, a group of kids from higher in the hierarchy create bonds between themselves. Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. This is why the worst cases of bullying happen with groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse treatment from a group of kids than from any individual bully, however sadistic.
If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's nothing personal. The group of kids who band together to pick on you are doing the same thing, and for the same reason, as a bunch of guys who get together to go hunting. They don't actually hate you. They just need something to chase.
Because they're at the bottom of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school. If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes.
The trouble is, there are a lot of them. The distribution of popularity is not a pyramid, but tapers at the bottom like a pear. The least popular group is quite small. (I believe we were the only D table in our cafeteria map.) So there are more people who want to pick on nerds than there are nerds.
As well as gaining points by distancing oneself from unpopular kids, one loses points by being close to them. A woman I know says that in high school she liked nerds, but was afraid to be seen talking to them because the other girls would make fun of her. Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense.
It's no wonder, then, that smart kids tend to be unhappy in middle school and high school. Their other interests leave them little attention to spare for popularity, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum game, this in turn makes them targets for the whole school. And the strange thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.
For me the worst stretch was junior high, when kid culture was new and harsh, and the specialization that would later gradually separate the smarter kids had barely begun. Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen.
In our school it was eighth grade, which was ages twelve and thirteen for me. There was a brief sensation that year when one of our teachers overheard a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be so cruel to one another.
It didn't have any noticeable effect. What struck me at the time was that she was surprised. You mean she doesn't know the kind of things they say to one another? You mean this isn't normal?
It's important to realize that, no, the adults don't know what the kids are doing to one another. They know, in the abstract, that kids are monstrously cruel to one another, just as we know in the abstract that people get tortured in poorer countries. But, like us, they don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they don't see evidence of specific abuses unless they go looking for it.
Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.
Why is the real world more hospitable to nerds? It might seem that the answer is simply that it's populated by adults, who are too mature to pick on one another. But I don't think this is true. Adults in prison certainly pick on one another. And so, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, with all the same petty intrigues.
I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.
When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Though notoriously lacking in social skills, he gets the right answers, at least as measured in revenue.
The other thing that's different about the real world is that it's much larger. In a large enough pool, even the smallest minorities can achieve a critical mass if they clump together. Out in the real world, nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing. Sometimes the current even starts to flow in the other direction: sometimes, particularly in university math and science departments, nerds deliberately exaggerate their awkwardness in order to seem smarter. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor.
As a thirteen-year-old kid, I didn't have much more experience of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The warped little world we lived in was, I thought, the world. The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Because I didn't fit into this world, I thought that something must be wrong with me. I didn't realize that the reason we nerds didn't fit in was that in some ways we were a step ahead. We were already thinking about the kind of things that matter in the real world, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others.
We were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. He wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the right music to like, the right slang to use. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought. We had no such confidence.
A lot of people seem to think it's good for smart kids to be thrown together with "normal" kids at this stage of their lives. Perhaps. But in at least some cases the reason the nerds don't fit in really is that everyone else is crazy. I remember sitting in the audience at a "pep rally" at my high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an explorer witnessing some bizarre tribal ritual.
If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.
Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.
And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.
Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.
Adults can't avoid seeing that teenage kids are tormented. So why don't they do something about it? Because they blame it on puberty. The reason kids are so unhappy, adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new chemicals, hormones, are now coursing through their bloodstream and messing up everything. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids will be miserable at that age.
This idea is so pervasive that even the kids believe it, which probably doesn't help. Someone who thinks his feet naturally hurt is not going to stop to consider the possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes.
I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.
As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.
When I was in school, suicide was a constant topic among the smarter kids. No one I knew did it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and suicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable.
Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.
At best it was practice for real work we might do far in the future, so far that we didn't even know at the time what we were practicing for. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. (The three main causes of the Civil War were.... Test: List the three main causes of the Civil War.)
And there was no way to opt out. The adults had agreed among themselves that this was to be the route to college. The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it.
Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.
Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults.
And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.
Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
What happened? We're up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30.
Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.
If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.
In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I don't think any of us knew French well enough to make our way through this enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we were given a test on the book, I noticed that the questions sounded odd. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Where had these questions come from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out. The teacher was using them too. We were all just pretending.
There are certainly great public school teachers. The energy and imagination of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. But teachers like him were individuals swimming upstream. They couldn't fix the system.
In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing.
We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be created without any meaningful criteria. We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest. And that's exactly what happens in most American schools. Instead of depending on some real test, one's rank depends mostly on one's ability to increase one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV. There is no external opponent, so the kids become one another's opponents.
When there is some real external test of skill, it isn't painful to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like him one day and is happy to have the chance to learn from him. The veteran may in turn feel a sense of noblesse oblige. And most importantly, their status depends on how well they do against opponents, not on whether they can push the other down.
Court hierarchies are another thing entirely. This type of society debases anyone who enters it. There is neither admiration at the bottom, nor noblesse oblige at the top. It's kill or be killed.
This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one place for a certain number of hours each day. What I didn't realize at the time, and in fact didn't realize till very recently, is that the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same cause.
The mediocrity of American public schools has worse consequences than just making kids unhappy for six years. It breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids away from the things they're supposed to be learning.
Like many nerds, probably, it was years after high school before I could bring myself to read anything we'd been assigned then. And I lost more than books. I mistrusted words like "character" and "integrity" because they had been so debased by adults. As they were used then, these words all seemed to mean the same thing: obedience. The kids who got praised for these qualities tended to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers. If that was what character and integrity were, I wanted no part of them.
The word I most misunderstood was "tact." As used by adults, it seemed to mean keeping your mouth shut. I assumed it was derived from the same root as "tacit" and "taciturn," and that it literally meant being quiet. I vowed that I would never be tactful; they were never going to shut me up. In fact, it's derived from the same root as "tactile," and what it means is to have a deft touch. Tactful is the opposite of clumsy. I don't think I learned this until college.
Nerds aren't the only losers in the popularity rat race. Nerds are unpopular because they're distracted. There are other kids who deliberately opt out because they're so disgusted with the whole process.
Teenage kids, even rebels, don't like to be alone, so when kids opt out of the system, they tend to do it as a group. At the schools I went to, the focus of rebellion was drug use, specifically marijuana. The kids in this tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were called "freaks."
Freaks and nerds were allies, and there was a good deal of overlap between them. Freaks were on the whole smarter than other kids, though never studying (or at least never appearing to) was an important tribal value. I was more in the nerd camp, but I was friends with a lot of freaks.
They used drugs, at least at first, for the social bonds they created. It was something to do together, and because the drugs were illegal, it was a shared badge of rebellion.
I'm not claiming that bad schools are the whole reason kids get into trouble with drugs. After a while, drugs have their own momentum. No doubt some of the freaks ultimately used drugs to escape from other problems-- trouble at home, for example. But, in my school at least, the reason most kids started using drugs was rebellion. Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help them forget their problems. They started because they wanted to join a different tribe.
Misrule breeds rebellion; this is not a new idea. And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.
The real problem is the emptiness of school life. We won't see solutions till adults realize that. The adults who may realize it first are the ones who were themselves nerds in school. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? I wouldn't. Well, then, is there anything we can do to fix things? Almost certainly. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. It has come about mostly by default.
Adults, though, are busy. Showing up for school plays is one thing. Taking on the educational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps a few will have the energy to try to change things. I suspect the hardest part is realizing that you can.
Nerds still in school should not hold their breath. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but they probably won't be coming this month. Any immediate improvement in nerds' lives is probably going to have to come from the nerds themselves.
Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. Adults know this. It's hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been nerds in high school.
It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
I've said some harsh things in this essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one-- that several problems we take for granted are in fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. That should be encouraging news to kids and adults both.
When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards."
We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.
My stock gradually rose during high school. Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper. So I've seen a good part of the popularity landscape.
I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.
Why? To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact is so overwhelming that it may seem strange to imagine that it could be any other way. But it could. Being smart doesn't make you an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I can tell, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But in a typical American secondary school, being smart is likely to make your life difficult. Why?
The key to this mystery is to rephrase the question slightly. Why don't smart kids make themselves popular? If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how popularity works and beat the system, just as they do for standardized tests?
One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other kids envy them for being smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. I wish. If the other kids in junior high school envied me, they did a great job of concealing it. And in any case, if being smart were really an enviable quality, the girls would have broken ranks. The guys that guys envy, girls like.
In the schools I went to, being smart just didn't matter much. Kids didn't admire it or despise it. All other things being equal, they would have preferred to be on the smart side of average rather than the dumb side, but intelligence counted far less than, say, physical appearance, charisma, or athletic ability.
So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.
If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some of them so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.
At the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. If I had, I would have seen that being smart was more important. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.
Much as they suffer from their unpopularity, I don't think many nerds would. To them the thought of average intelligence is unbearable. But most kids would take that deal. For half of them, it would be a step up. Even for someone in the eightieth percentile (assuming, as everyone seemed to then, that intelligence is a scalar), who wouldn't drop thirty points in exchange for being loved and admired by everyone?
And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.
I don't mean to suggest they do this consciously. Some of them truly are little Machiavellis, but what I really mean here is that teenagers are always on duty as conformists.
For example, teenage kids pay a great deal of attention to clothes. They don't consciously dress to be popular. They dress to look good. But to who? To the other kids. Other kids' opinions become their definition of right, not just for clothes, but for almost everything they do, right down to the way they walk. And so every effort they make to do things "right" is also, consciously or not, an effort to be more popular.
Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize that it takes work to be popular. In general, people outside some very demanding field don't realize the extent to which success depends on constant (though often unconscious) effort. For example, most people seem to consider the ability to draw as some kind of innate quality, like being tall. In fact, most people who "can draw" like drawing, and have spent many hours doing it; that's why they're good at it. Likewise, popular isn't just something you are or you aren't, but something you make yourself.
The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.
Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.
So far I've been finessing the relationship between smart and nerd, using them as if they were interchangeable. In fact it's only the context that makes them so. A nerd is someone who isn't socially adept enough. But "enough" depends on where you are. In a typical American school, standards for coolness are so high (or at least, so specific) that you don't have to be especially awkward to look awkward by comparison.
Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds. And that's why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after.
Before that, kids' lives are dominated by their parents, not by other kids. Kids do care what their peers think in elementary school, but this isn't their whole life, as it later becomes.
Around the age of eleven, though, kids seem to start treating their family as a day job. They create a new world among themselves, and standing in this world is what matters, not standing in their family. Indeed, being in trouble in their family can win them points in the world they care about.
The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very crude one. If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.
Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely caused them to be ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be actively persecuted.
Why? Once again, anyone currently in school might think this a strange question to ask. How could things be any other way? But they could be. Adults don't normally persecute nerds. Why do teenage kids do it?
Partly because teenagers are still half children, and many children are just intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds for the same reason they pull the legs off spiders. Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.
Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better. When you tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing water down. Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.
But I think the main reason other kids persecute nerds is that it's part of the mechanism of popularity. Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's much more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to be constantly doing things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy.
Like a politician who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By singling out and persecuting a nerd, a group of kids from higher in the hierarchy create bonds between themselves. Attacking an outsider makes them all insiders. This is why the worst cases of bullying happen with groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse treatment from a group of kids than from any individual bully, however sadistic.
If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's nothing personal. The group of kids who band together to pick on you are doing the same thing, and for the same reason, as a bunch of guys who get together to go hunting. They don't actually hate you. They just need something to chase.
Because they're at the bottom of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school. If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes.
The trouble is, there are a lot of them. The distribution of popularity is not a pyramid, but tapers at the bottom like a pear. The least popular group is quite small. (I believe we were the only D table in our cafeteria map.) So there are more people who want to pick on nerds than there are nerds.
As well as gaining points by distancing oneself from unpopular kids, one loses points by being close to them. A woman I know says that in high school she liked nerds, but was afraid to be seen talking to them because the other girls would make fun of her. Unpopularity is a communicable disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will still ostracize them in self-defense.
It's no wonder, then, that smart kids tend to be unhappy in middle school and high school. Their other interests leave them little attention to spare for popularity, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum game, this in turn makes them targets for the whole school. And the strange thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.
For me the worst stretch was junior high, when kid culture was new and harsh, and the specialization that would later gradually separate the smarter kids had barely begun. Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the nadir is somewhere between eleven and fourteen.
In our school it was eighth grade, which was ages twelve and thirteen for me. There was a brief sensation that year when one of our teachers overheard a group of girls waiting for the school bus, and was so shocked that the next day she devoted the whole class to an eloquent plea not to be so cruel to one another.
It didn't have any noticeable effect. What struck me at the time was that she was surprised. You mean she doesn't know the kind of things they say to one another? You mean this isn't normal?
It's important to realize that, no, the adults don't know what the kids are doing to one another. They know, in the abstract, that kids are monstrously cruel to one another, just as we know in the abstract that people get tortured in poorer countries. But, like us, they don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they don't see evidence of specific abuses unless they go looking for it.
Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I went to. The most important thing was to stay on the premises. While there, the authorities fed you, prevented overt violence, and made some effort to teach you something. But beyond that they didn't want to have too much to do with the kids. Like prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture we created was barbaric.
Why is the real world more hospitable to nerds? It might seem that the answer is simply that it's populated by adults, who are too mature to pick on one another. But I don't think this is true. Adults in prison certainly pick on one another. And so, apparently, do society wives; in some parts of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a continuation of high school, with all the same petty intrigues.
I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally these societies degenerate into savagery. They have no function for their form to follow.
When the things you do have real effects, it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It starts to be important to get the right answers, and that's where nerds show to advantage. Bill Gates will of course come to mind. Though notoriously lacking in social skills, he gets the right answers, at least as measured in revenue.
The other thing that's different about the real world is that it's much larger. In a large enough pool, even the smallest minorities can achieve a critical mass if they clump together. Out in the real world, nerds collect in certain places and form their own societies where intelligence is the most important thing. Sometimes the current even starts to flow in the other direction: sometimes, particularly in university math and science departments, nerds deliberately exaggerate their awkwardness in order to seem smarter. John Nash so admired Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of touching the wall as he walked down a corridor.
As a thirteen-year-old kid, I didn't have much more experience of the world than what I saw immediately around me. The warped little world we lived in was, I thought, the world. The world seemed cruel and boring, and I'm not sure which was worse.
Because I didn't fit into this world, I thought that something must be wrong with me. I didn't realize that the reason we nerds didn't fit in was that in some ways we were a step ahead. We were already thinking about the kind of things that matter in the real world, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others.
We were a bit like an adult would be if he were thrust back into middle school. He wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the right music to like, the right slang to use. He'd seem to the kids a complete alien. The thing is, he'd know enough not to care what they thought. We had no such confidence.
A lot of people seem to think it's good for smart kids to be thrown together with "normal" kids at this stage of their lives. Perhaps. But in at least some cases the reason the nerds don't fit in really is that everyone else is crazy. I remember sitting in the audience at a "pep rally" at my high school, watching as the cheerleaders threw an effigy of an opposing player into the audience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an explorer witnessing some bizarre tribal ritual.
If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.
Where I grew up, it felt as if there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was no accident. Suburbs are deliberately designed to exclude the outside world, because it contains things that could endanger children.
And as for the schools, they were just holding pens within this fake world. Officially the purpose of schools is to teach kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep kids locked up in one place for a big chunk of the day so adults can get things done. And I have no problem with this: in a specialized industrial society, it would be a disaster to have kids running around loose.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.
Life in this twisted world is stressful for the kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners.
Adults can't avoid seeing that teenage kids are tormented. So why don't they do something about it? Because they blame it on puberty. The reason kids are so unhappy, adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new chemicals, hormones, are now coursing through their bloodstream and messing up everything. There's nothing wrong with the system; it's just inevitable that kids will be miserable at that age.
This idea is so pervasive that even the kids believe it, which probably doesn't help. Someone who thinks his feet naturally hurt is not going to stop to consider the possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes.
I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.
As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.
When I was in school, suicide was a constant topic among the smarter kids. No one I knew did it, but several planned to, and some may have tried. Mostly this was just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved the dramatic, and suicide seemed very dramatic. But partly it was because our lives were at times genuinely miserable.
Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on. Humans like to work; in most of the world, your work is your identity. And all the work we did was pointless, or seemed so at the time.
At best it was practice for real work we might do far in the future, so far that we didn't even know at the time what we were practicing for. More often it was just an arbitrary series of hoops to jump through, words without content designed mainly for testability. (The three main causes of the Civil War were.... Test: List the three main causes of the Civil War.)
And there was no way to opt out. The adults had agreed among themselves that this was to be the route to college. The only way to escape this empty life was to submit to it.
Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.
Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn. Now most kids have little idea what their parents do in their distant offices, and see no connection (indeed, there is precious little) between schoolwork and the work they'll do as adults.
And if teenagers respected adults more, adults also had more use for teenagers. After a couple years' training, an apprentice could be a real help. Even the newest apprentice could be made to carry messages or sweep the workshop.
Now adults have no immediate use for teenagers. They would be in the way in an office. So they drop them off at school on their way to work, much as they might drop the dog off at a kennel if they were going away for the weekend.
What happened? We're up against a hard one here. The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. Now kids who go to college don't start working full-time till 21 or 22. With some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may not finish your training till 30.
Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap labor in industries like fast food, which evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In almost any other kind of work, they'd be a net loss. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. Someone has to watch over them, and the most efficient way to do this is to collect them together in one place. Then a few adults can watch all of them.
If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The problem is, many schools practically do stop there. The stated purpose of schools is to educate the kids. But there is no external pressure to do this well. And so most schools do such a bad job of teaching that the kids don't really take it seriously-- not even the smart kids. Much of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions.
In my high school French class we were supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I don't think any of us knew French well enough to make our way through this enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we were given a test on the book, I noticed that the questions sounded odd. They were full of long words that our teacher wouldn't have used. Where had these questions come from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out. The teacher was using them too. We were all just pretending.
There are certainly great public school teachers. The energy and imagination of my fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. But teachers like him were individuals swimming upstream. They couldn't fix the system.
In almost any group of people you'll find hierarchy. When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose, and the leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose. But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids make one out of nothing.
We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be created without any meaningful criteria. We say that the situation degenerates into a popularity contest. And that's exactly what happens in most American schools. Instead of depending on some real test, one's rank depends mostly on one's ability to increase one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV. There is no external opponent, so the kids become one another's opponents.
When there is some real external test of skill, it isn't painful to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he hopes to be like him one day and is happy to have the chance to learn from him. The veteran may in turn feel a sense of noblesse oblige. And most importantly, their status depends on how well they do against opponents, not on whether they can push the other down.
Court hierarchies are another thing entirely. This type of society debases anyone who enters it. There is neither admiration at the bottom, nor noblesse oblige at the top. It's kill or be killed.
This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one place for a certain number of hours each day. What I didn't realize at the time, and in fact didn't realize till very recently, is that the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same cause.
The mediocrity of American public schools has worse consequences than just making kids unhappy for six years. It breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids away from the things they're supposed to be learning.
Like many nerds, probably, it was years after high school before I could bring myself to read anything we'd been assigned then. And I lost more than books. I mistrusted words like "character" and "integrity" because they had been so debased by adults. As they were used then, these words all seemed to mean the same thing: obedience. The kids who got praised for these qualities tended to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at worst facile schmoozers. If that was what character and integrity were, I wanted no part of them.
The word I most misunderstood was "tact." As used by adults, it seemed to mean keeping your mouth shut. I assumed it was derived from the same root as "tacit" and "taciturn," and that it literally meant being quiet. I vowed that I would never be tactful; they were never going to shut me up. In fact, it's derived from the same root as "tactile," and what it means is to have a deft touch. Tactful is the opposite of clumsy. I don't think I learned this until college.
Nerds aren't the only losers in the popularity rat race. Nerds are unpopular because they're distracted. There are other kids who deliberately opt out because they're so disgusted with the whole process.
Teenage kids, even rebels, don't like to be alone, so when kids opt out of the system, they tend to do it as a group. At the schools I went to, the focus of rebellion was drug use, specifically marijuana. The kids in this tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were called "freaks."
Freaks and nerds were allies, and there was a good deal of overlap between them. Freaks were on the whole smarter than other kids, though never studying (or at least never appearing to) was an important tribal value. I was more in the nerd camp, but I was friends with a lot of freaks.
They used drugs, at least at first, for the social bonds they created. It was something to do together, and because the drugs were illegal, it was a shared badge of rebellion.
I'm not claiming that bad schools are the whole reason kids get into trouble with drugs. After a while, drugs have their own momentum. No doubt some of the freaks ultimately used drugs to escape from other problems-- trouble at home, for example. But, in my school at least, the reason most kids started using drugs was rebellion. Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot because they'd heard it would help them forget their problems. They started because they wanted to join a different tribe.
Misrule breeds rebellion; this is not a new idea. And yet the authorities still for the most part act as if drugs were themselves the cause of the problem.
The real problem is the emptiness of school life. We won't see solutions till adults realize that. The adults who may realize it first are the ones who were themselves nerds in school. Do you want your kids to be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were? I wouldn't. Well, then, is there anything we can do to fix things? Almost certainly. There is nothing inevitable about the current system. It has come about mostly by default.
Adults, though, are busy. Showing up for school plays is one thing. Taking on the educational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps a few will have the energy to try to change things. I suspect the hardest part is realizing that you can.
Nerds still in school should not hold their breath. Maybe one day a heavily armed force of adults will show up in helicopters to rescue you, but they probably won't be coming this month. Any immediate improvement in nerds' lives is probably going to have to come from the nerds themselves.
Merely understanding the situation they're in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. Adults know this. It's hard to find successful adults now who don't claim to have been nerds in high school.
It's important for nerds to realize, too, that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
I've said some harsh things in this essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one-- that several problems we take for granted are in fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids are not inherently unhappy monsters. That should be encouraging news to kids and adults both.
FIT IN (2013-09-03 11:15:50)
不知道怎么才能有确切的中文翻译来对应。
开学后，聪就要上中学了。中学这个词其实是具有一定的挑战性的。因为他们不再有自己固定的教室，每门学科上课的时间需要自己掌握，去找教室，和不同的同学上不同的课。中午没有午休的时间，只有吃午饭的时候。而这个时候，又不同于小学，孩子们会有任何自由去找他们自己喜欢的人坐在一起吃饭。有了足够的自由，就会有足够的故事。
正好上周纽约时报的周末的书评中看到有关一些如何适应中学生活的书籍。就把文章中提到的书找来看。
就在这个时候，聪告诉我，“妈妈，我想跟你说件事。”当时BILL在，她又补充一句，“爸爸，你也可以听。”然后她就说了，她觉得她和CINDY之间有了问题。
她开始了她的陈述：
1.CINDY现在时时刻刻用IPAD上Instagram，那是一种类似FACEBOOK的APPLICATION，只不过是给青少年的，所以在那上面可以关注他人或者互相关注之类的。而因为聪聪没有在IPAD上装这样的软件，也对此并不感兴趣，所以往往CINDY一提到这个话题，两个人就陷入僵局，以至于后来发展到CINDY说聪聪STUPID，没有SOCIAL LIFE。以至于后来发展到CINDY在画画课上跟旁边的小朋友直接说，“你知道么，MAY根本就不上Instagram。She is such a loser.”然后旁边的小孩也惊叫说，“啊？不会吧，那如果不出门的话，不就象是关在监狱里一样么？”聪聪说，“我没有觉得是在监狱里，我很开心，我也不需要上IPAD参加任何SOCIAL LIFE。”
2.CINDY现在一直听各种各样的流行乐曲，并且知道每首歌的名字、歌词和演唱者。上周她们两个一起去游泳的时候，在最后半个小时里自由活动的时候，背景音乐是流行乐曲，CINDY总是会去问她，你知道这首歌的名字么？你知道是谁唱的么？”有的时候聪聪不知道。她就说，“天哪，我要跟你说多少次这首曲子的名字和歌手么？你怎么什么歌曲都不知道呀？”
3. 聪非常喜欢哈利波特，但是CINDY一遍都没有读过。聪每次提到哈利波特，CINDY就立刻打断她说，"Harry Potter is Stupid!"
4. 上次和她一起去坐过山车玩，有一个动作幅度比较大的，聪想玩，CINDY也没有拒绝，但是坐在座位上以后，就对聪说，“If I die, I am gonna kill you.“她说KILL的次数一次比一次多。最近一次是在JESSICA家游泳的时候，有一个DIVE的姿势，JESSICA和聪聪都会，CINDY不会，JESSICA和聪聪就鼓励她跳。在跳之前，她又说了同样的一句话。
5.她现在经常骂人，比如刚跳进游泳池的时候，水有点冷，她就骂粗话。
而这些表现，只要有成人在，她都不表现出来，只有当只有孩子们的时候。
聪聪已经向她表达了她不喜欢CINDY这样说话。但是CINDY的第一反应是否定，受她从来没有做过。而后来在聪聪的坚持下，她就说，okay, whatever。很多次，这样就不了了之了。
聪聪对我说，她很不舒服，这样的朋友，究竟要不要？
BILL是这样劝她的：先不要考虑要不要保持友谊的问题，先从CINDY的角度去想想她的这些情绪的来源。（有一点是肯定，那就是自从聪聪长个后，她比CINDY要高半个头，每次见面，CINDY的母亲总是唉声叹气地比较，比较身高，比较吃饭等等。我个人认为在无意识中是给了CINDY很多暗示，而CINDY又是一个竞争性非常强烈的孩子，她曾经说过，“我做KUMON就是为了超过我的邻居。只要我做的LEVEL比她高就可以。”）
如果聪聪能够及时地在那个点上，比如CINDY又提到了KILL的问题，就制止她，明确地告诉她这不是朋友之间应该有的对话。
如果聪聪已经明确指出了，并且好几次。（几次让聪聪自己定夺吧。）那么如果聪聪认为这样的友谊已经失去了存在的意义，那么就随它去吧。很多朋友并不是一生的朋友。
聪聪问，“我向她指出过。她要么说，你怎么这么容易生气；要么说，你怎么不理睬我；要么就直接哭了。”
我停了一下，告诉她，其实，说到底，人与物质，人与人之间的关系，都有界限。要找到这个界限，可能要摸索一段时间。而且，我们找朋友不就是在找能说说共同话题的人么，而SMALL TALK，跟谁说都是可以的。
----------------------------------
今天去MALL里瞎逛，看到Vera Bradley的店，聪聪就说起她们班上的女孩对此品牌那个迷，并且为她的不迷而感到大惑不解。她曾经很真诚地问过那些女孩，让她们试着说出这个品牌的东西好在哪里？而她们总是尖叫着说，“What, you don't like it? It is so COOL." 聪聪对她们说，“这些包都是布的，自己就很有份量，弄脏了，也不好洗，书包也都是单肩背的，花样有的还不错，但是实在是谈不上迷恋。”
我又问她，还有其他女孩不迷这个包么？
她说，EMMA, Lubina。（这两个孩子都是书迷。都看过两遍以上哈利波特。）
我问BILL，如果班上所有的孩子都穿耐克鞋，而孩子回来也想要穿，而唯一的理由就是班上的孩子都穿耐克鞋，你会给她买么？
而聪聪听到了这个问句说，“我就不会回来问。”
所以，我找出读书狂推荐给我的《黑客和画家》的第一章，再次阅读了一遍，也让BILL读了一遍。在网上也找到了英文的，准备让聪也读读。
怎么办？
开学后，聪就要上中学了。中学这个词其实是具有一定的挑战性的。因为他们不再有自己固定的教室，每门学科上课的时间需要自己掌握，去找教室，和不同的同学上不同的课。中午没有午休的时间，只有吃午饭的时候。而这个时候，又不同于小学，孩子们会有任何自由去找他们自己喜欢的人坐在一起吃饭。有了足够的自由，就会有足够的故事。
正好上周纽约时报的周末的书评中看到有关一些如何适应中学生活的书籍。就把文章中提到的书找来看。
就在这个时候，聪告诉我，“妈妈，我想跟你说件事。”当时BILL在，她又补充一句，“爸爸，你也可以听。”然后她就说了，她觉得她和CINDY之间有了问题。
她开始了她的陈述：
1.CINDY现在时时刻刻用IPAD上Instagram，那是一种类似FACEBOOK的APPLICATION，只不过是给青少年的，所以在那上面可以关注他人或者互相关注之类的。而因为聪聪没有在IPAD上装这样的软件，也对此并不感兴趣，所以往往CINDY一提到这个话题，两个人就陷入僵局，以至于后来发展到CINDY说聪聪STUPID，没有SOCIAL LIFE。以至于后来发展到CINDY在画画课上跟旁边的小朋友直接说，“你知道么，MAY根本就不上Instagram。She is such a loser.”然后旁边的小孩也惊叫说，“啊？不会吧，那如果不出门的话，不就象是关在监狱里一样么？”聪聪说，“我没有觉得是在监狱里，我很开心，我也不需要上IPAD参加任何SOCIAL LIFE。”
2.CINDY现在一直听各种各样的流行乐曲，并且知道每首歌的名字、歌词和演唱者。上周她们两个一起去游泳的时候，在最后半个小时里自由活动的时候，背景音乐是流行乐曲，CINDY总是会去问她，你知道这首歌的名字么？你知道是谁唱的么？”有的时候聪聪不知道。她就说，“天哪，我要跟你说多少次这首曲子的名字和歌手么？你怎么什么歌曲都不知道呀？”
3. 聪非常喜欢哈利波特，但是CINDY一遍都没有读过。聪每次提到哈利波特，CINDY就立刻打断她说，"Harry Potter is Stupid!"
4. 上次和她一起去坐过山车玩，有一个动作幅度比较大的，聪想玩，CINDY也没有拒绝，但是坐在座位上以后，就对聪说，“If I die, I am gonna kill you.“她说KILL的次数一次比一次多。最近一次是在JESSICA家游泳的时候，有一个DIVE的姿势，JESSICA和聪聪都会，CINDY不会，JESSICA和聪聪就鼓励她跳。在跳之前，她又说了同样的一句话。
5.她现在经常骂人，比如刚跳进游泳池的时候，水有点冷，她就骂粗话。
而这些表现，只要有成人在，她都不表现出来，只有当只有孩子们的时候。
聪聪已经向她表达了她不喜欢CINDY这样说话。但是CINDY的第一反应是否定，受她从来没有做过。而后来在聪聪的坚持下，她就说，okay, whatever。很多次，这样就不了了之了。
聪聪对我说，她很不舒服，这样的朋友，究竟要不要？
BILL是这样劝她的：先不要考虑要不要保持友谊的问题，先从CINDY的角度去想想她的这些情绪的来源。（有一点是肯定，那就是自从聪聪长个后，她比CINDY要高半个头，每次见面，CINDY的母亲总是唉声叹气地比较，比较身高，比较吃饭等等。我个人认为在无意识中是给了CINDY很多暗示，而CINDY又是一个竞争性非常强烈的孩子，她曾经说过，“我做KUMON就是为了超过我的邻居。只要我做的LEVEL比她高就可以。”）
如果聪聪能够及时地在那个点上，比如CINDY又提到了KILL的问题，就制止她，明确地告诉她这不是朋友之间应该有的对话。
如果聪聪已经明确指出了，并且好几次。（几次让聪聪自己定夺吧。）那么如果聪聪认为这样的友谊已经失去了存在的意义，那么就随它去吧。很多朋友并不是一生的朋友。
聪聪问，“我向她指出过。她要么说，你怎么这么容易生气；要么说，你怎么不理睬我；要么就直接哭了。”
我停了一下，告诉她，其实，说到底，人与物质，人与人之间的关系，都有界限。要找到这个界限，可能要摸索一段时间。而且，我们找朋友不就是在找能说说共同话题的人么，而SMALL TALK，跟谁说都是可以的。
----------------------------------
今天去MALL里瞎逛，看到Vera Bradley的店，聪聪就说起她们班上的女孩对此品牌那个迷，并且为她的不迷而感到大惑不解。她曾经很真诚地问过那些女孩，让她们试着说出这个品牌的东西好在哪里？而她们总是尖叫着说，“What, you don't like it? It is so COOL." 聪聪对她们说，“这些包都是布的，自己就很有份量，弄脏了，也不好洗，书包也都是单肩背的，花样有的还不错，但是实在是谈不上迷恋。”
我又问她，还有其他女孩不迷这个包么？
她说，EMMA, Lubina。（这两个孩子都是书迷。都看过两遍以上哈利波特。）
我问BILL，如果班上所有的孩子都穿耐克鞋，而孩子回来也想要穿，而唯一的理由就是班上的孩子都穿耐克鞋，你会给她买么？
而聪聪听到了这个问句说，“我就不会回来问。”
所以，我找出读书狂推荐给我的《黑客和画家》的第一章，再次阅读了一遍，也让BILL读了一遍。在网上也找到了英文的，准备让聪也读读。
怎么办？
劳动日长假 (2013-09-04 01:44:37)
作为给明年的参考，报个流水账：
长假前的一周，聪下午还有三个小时的SWIMMING CAMP。我看了看周末的天气，真是不怎么样。三天预报雷阵雨。
果然，气压很低，湿度大，让我想起上海。
周六，我们迟迟到下午才决定出门去骑车。结果一骑骑了1个小时40分钟，13.31英里。
小姑娘长大了，骑她自己的旧车一直叫屁股痛。最后一段，她骑了我的车，一车当先来着。我呢，骑BILL的，BILL骑她的，落在后面做高抬腿运动。呵呵。
河边看到很多乌龟，她特别满足。一路都是树荫，非常宜人。骑车速度很快的时候，耳边全是风，真好。
周日，起床照旧晚了，趁下午去针灸的时候，去了一趟中国店。到针灸医生家的时候，雨开始哗哗地下下来。针灸医生说她买了一双跟我一样牌子的鞋，很轻，还特地上楼拿给我看。
第一次，回到家，有现成饭吃。郑叔叔牌蛋炒饭还是很好吃的。
周一，醒来就已经8点半了，吃早饭的时候讨论到哪里去，看看黑压压的云，还是决定去MALL，室内还是方便很多。她在LEGO店里，她爸爸在对面的MICROSOFT店里，各得其乐。最后他们又全部钻到APPLE店里。我瞎逛了几个店，买了两件衣服，黑色的短袖，准备上班穿。后来在the limited里逛的时候，她突然对正在翻看衣服的我说，“我想告诉你一件事。”后来就有了我先前的两篇文章，一篇是贴的，一篇是自己的胡言乱语。很久没有SHOPPING了，有一点点想凑凑热闹，但是看到商品，又没有什么心思去看。原来我们喜欢的书店BORDERS被改成了DSW SHOES。生意好得很，放眼望去，那么大的地盘！！看来，还是买鞋的人比看书的人要多？！
三天里利用零碎的时间把《罗马》第一季和第二季看完了。据说第三季因为收视率不高而被取消了。真是可惜。
长假前的一周，聪下午还有三个小时的SWIMMING CAMP。我看了看周末的天气，真是不怎么样。三天预报雷阵雨。
果然，气压很低，湿度大，让我想起上海。
周六，我们迟迟到下午才决定出门去骑车。结果一骑骑了1个小时40分钟，13.31英里。
小姑娘长大了，骑她自己的旧车一直叫屁股痛。最后一段，她骑了我的车，一车当先来着。我呢，骑BILL的，BILL骑她的，落在后面做高抬腿运动。呵呵。
河边看到很多乌龟，她特别满足。一路都是树荫，非常宜人。骑车速度很快的时候，耳边全是风，真好。
周日，起床照旧晚了，趁下午去针灸的时候，去了一趟中国店。到针灸医生家的时候，雨开始哗哗地下下来。针灸医生说她买了一双跟我一样牌子的鞋，很轻，还特地上楼拿给我看。
第一次，回到家，有现成饭吃。郑叔叔牌蛋炒饭还是很好吃的。
周一，醒来就已经8点半了，吃早饭的时候讨论到哪里去，看看黑压压的云，还是决定去MALL，室内还是方便很多。她在LEGO店里，她爸爸在对面的MICROSOFT店里，各得其乐。最后他们又全部钻到APPLE店里。我瞎逛了几个店，买了两件衣服，黑色的短袖，准备上班穿。后来在the limited里逛的时候，她突然对正在翻看衣服的我说，“我想告诉你一件事。”后来就有了我先前的两篇文章，一篇是贴的，一篇是自己的胡言乱语。很久没有SHOPPING了，有一点点想凑凑热闹，但是看到商品，又没有什么心思去看。原来我们喜欢的书店BORDERS被改成了DSW SHOES。生意好得很，放眼望去，那么大的地盘！！看来，还是买鞋的人比看书的人要多？！
三天里利用零碎的时间把《罗马》第一季和第二季看完了。据说第三季因为收视率不高而被取消了。真是可惜。
纽约一日行 (2013-09-07 03:04:32)
周五才开学，看看一周的天气预报，周三、周四都是好天。但是想着让她周四能早点休息，唯一能去纽约的只有周三，把钢琴课改到周四晚上，把针灸推到了周五上午，空出一天来，再去城里晃一圈。
她想去蜡像馆。我在网上看了看，把她叫来，问她知道几个总统，几个名人，几个演员，她说除了总统都不太知道。我建议等她稍微大一点再去。或者到那个时候她都可以跟朋友一起去，比跟我去要有意思的多。她同意了。
想挑一个好天去纽约就是为了登高望远。她自然想到帝国大厦。我在网上看了看，无数的游客都建议帝国大厦是晚上登高望远的好地方，因为多多少少是含有浪漫的意味，而可以看到灯的海洋。大家建议在白天去TOP OF THE ROCK，也就是洛克菲勒中心的顶端比较合适，因为可以看到钢筋森林中的一块宝贵的绿地：中央公园。我跟她说明了情况，她也同意了。
歪打正着地还找了一个SONY WONDER LAB，免费开放，WALK IN拿票就可以的了。也在中城。她爸爸一听就建议她去。于是，就有了路线，SONY WONDER LAB；TOP OF THE ROCK；St. Patricks' Cathedral；New York Public Library。这当中自然有在五大街的SHOPPING和时代广场看西洋镜。
在汽车站就跟她爸爸说再见了，我们直接去地下一层坐地铁。三站路后，我们钻出地面，横走一个大街，向北走三个BLOCKS，就到了SONY PLAZA。
SONY WONDER LAB一共有四层。并不以展示为主，而是任何都是可以让孩子亲自体验，她还去直播室做了一回主持人，当了一回DJ，剪辑了一个电影，做了一小段动画，创作了一个小游戏，好比上了一个半小时的科技课程。
阳光很好，我们回到第五大道上，只要走7个BLOCKS，就可以到洛克菲勒中心。第五大道上商店林立，又新开了一家UNIQLO，我建议进去逛逛。结果抱了一大袋出来。在世界的每个角落都能听到上海话，注意，是上海话，不是国语。一位先生正在奚落他的妻子/另一半，说，“你也不看看，你穿着条裙子的样子。”处于对上海话的敏感，我回头看了一眼。嗯，是有点不太匹配那位女士。已经不能在KIDS SECTION给她买衣服了，都可以直接穿LADIES的XS。
磨磨蹭蹭到洛克菲勒中心已经一点多了。等到买好了午饭吃的时候，她说，她才意识到自己有多么地饥饿。几乎是没有说话，她把午饭吃了个干干净净。我们顺着指示找到了售票处。我把网上购买的确认件给服务人员。她给了我两张票。
大厅内的水晶灯，有三层楼那么高：
坐着高速电梯上楼，聪说，象是再坐时光隧道。
到了顶端，那就是一览众山小：
大片的绿地是中央公园；远处的大桥是华盛顿大桥。
手机的效果居然这么好！！难为我背着个单反！！以后就确保手机充足电就行了。
自由女神：
想搞一下喜剧效果的：手被针刺了。
在那时，我已经非常疲惫，腿就向灌了铅一样。脚肿得觉得我的鞋子随时都要崩开似的。好在这里有大片的室内休息处。我和她躺倒在上沙发上。歇够了，我们去看对面的大教堂。
这是从教堂的上面看下去：教堂正在维修，所以能看到脚手架。
她说要许个愿，点个蜡烛。我让她捐了钱后，再做。
离开教堂，我们去洛克菲勒中心外围和周边的商店：
她指着顶说，“刚才我们还在最上面的。”
EGO店：是她的大爱， 否则我们也不会
走去纽约图书馆需要走10个BLOCKS，这个时候腿是挪都挪不动了。我坐在洛克菲勒中心周边的凳子上，享受着夏末午后的阳光。
慢慢走去图书馆。却在第五大道上意外地碰到书店。她说，我们就在书店呆着吧。好好歇歇，顺便看看书。对于她的建议，我立刻表示同意。我们歇了整整一个半小时。她逛了逛她钟爱的书架，当然是哈利波特。看完了一本书。我是几乎一直坐着，看《消失的爱人》。是呀，谁让我贪心，还带着KINDLE。负重行走，真是应验了那句话，“远路无轻重。”多亏了这一个多小时，我算是歇过来了。临走，又给她买了一个哈利波特里的魔杖，那时最POWERFUL的那个。
出了书店，我给她爸爸打电话，他说还需要半个小时。我们走去时代广场。
暮色袭来，霓虹灯还未闪亮。
“穿”成这样的，就是为了让你给她拍照或者和她合影，收取小费，我看到了赤裸的牛仔歌手，星球大战里的人物，当然，少不了孩子喜欢的卡通形象。
跑进forever 21里疯玩：
等到了她爸爸，在餐馆一条街上吃了日本料理就回家了。假期在悄无声息中结束了
她想去蜡像馆。我在网上看了看，把她叫来，问她知道几个总统，几个名人，几个演员，她说除了总统都不太知道。我建议等她稍微大一点再去。或者到那个时候她都可以跟朋友一起去，比跟我去要有意思的多。她同意了。
想挑一个好天去纽约就是为了登高望远。她自然想到帝国大厦。我在网上看了看，无数的游客都建议帝国大厦是晚上登高望远的好地方，因为多多少少是含有浪漫的意味，而可以看到灯的海洋。大家建议在白天去TOP OF THE ROCK，也就是洛克菲勒中心的顶端比较合适，因为可以看到钢筋森林中的一块宝贵的绿地：中央公园。我跟她说明了情况，她也同意了。
歪打正着地还找了一个SONY WONDER LAB，免费开放，WALK IN拿票就可以的了。也在中城。她爸爸一听就建议她去。于是，就有了路线，SONY WONDER LAB；TOP OF THE ROCK；St. Patricks' Cathedral；New York Public Library。这当中自然有在五大街的SHOPPING和时代广场看西洋镜。在汽车站就跟她爸爸说再见了，我们直接去地下一层坐地铁。三站路后，我们钻出地面，横走一个大街，向北走三个BLOCKS，就到了SONY PLAZA。
SONY WONDER LAB一共有四层。并不以展示为主，而是任何都是可以让孩子亲自体验，她还去直播室做了一回主持人，当了一回DJ，剪辑了一个电影，做了一小段动画，创作了一个小游戏，好比上了一个半小时的科技课程。
我比较感慨的还是这个老古董，让我想起我的中学岁月：呵呵。JW，你懂的。
出了SONY LAB，她说，幸亏DAD不再，否则他不知道要LECTURE我多少遍了。
阳光很好，我们回到第五大道上，只要走7个BLOCKS，就可以到洛克菲勒中心。第五大道上商店林立，又新开了一家UNIQLO，我建议进去逛逛。结果抱了一大袋出来。在世界的每个角落都能听到上海话，注意，是上海话，不是国语。一位先生正在奚落他的妻子/另一半，说，“你也不看看，你穿着条裙子的样子。”处于对上海话的敏感，我回头看了一眼。嗯，是有点不太匹配那位女士。已经不能在KIDS SECTION给她买衣服了，都可以直接穿LADIES的XS。
磨磨蹭蹭到洛克菲勒中心已经一点多了。等到买好了午饭吃的时候，她说，她才意识到自己有多么地饥饿。几乎是没有说话，她把午饭吃了个干干净净。我们顺着指示找到了售票处。我把网上购买的确认件给服务人员。她给了我两张票。大厅内的水晶灯，有三层楼那么高：
坐着高速电梯上楼，聪说，象是再坐时光隧道。
到了顶端，那就是一览众山小：
大片的绿地是中央公园；远处的大桥是华盛顿大桥。
手机的效果居然这么好！！难为我背着个单反！！以后就确保手机充足电就行了。
自由女神：
想搞一下喜剧效果的：手被针刺了。
在那时，我已经非常疲惫，腿就向灌了铅一样。脚肿得觉得我的鞋子随时都要崩开似的。好在这里有大片的室内休息处。我和她躺倒在上沙发上。歇够了，我们去看对面的大教堂。这是从教堂的上面看下去：教堂正在维修，所以能看到脚手架。
她说要许个愿，点个蜡烛。我让她捐了钱后，再做。
离开教堂，我们去洛克菲勒中心外围和周边的商店：
她指着顶说，“刚才我们还在最上面的。”
EGO店：是她的大爱， 否则我们也不会
走去纽约图书馆需要走10个BLOCKS，这个时候腿是挪都挪不动了。我坐在洛克菲勒中心周边的凳子上，享受着夏末午后的阳光。
慢慢走去图书馆。却在第五大道上意外地碰到书店。她说，我们就在书店呆着吧。好好歇歇，顺便看看书。对于她的建议，我立刻表示同意。我们歇了整整一个半小时。她逛了逛她钟爱的书架，当然是哈利波特。看完了一本书。我是几乎一直坐着，看《消失的爱人》。是呀，谁让我贪心，还带着KINDLE。负重行走，真是应验了那句话，“远路无轻重。”多亏了这一个多小时，我算是歇过来了。临走，又给她买了一个哈利波特里的魔杖，那时最POWERFUL的那个。出了书店，我给她爸爸打电话，他说还需要半个小时。我们走去时代广场。
暮色袭来，霓虹灯还未闪亮。
“穿”成这样的，就是为了让你给她拍照或者和她合影，收取小费，我看到了赤裸的牛仔歌手，星球大战里的人物，当然，少不了孩子喜欢的卡通形象。跑进forever 21里疯玩：
等到了她爸爸，在餐馆一条街上吃了日本料理就回家了。假期在悄无声息中结束了
读书乱谈 (2013-09-07 03:21:08)
暑期里她一共看了82本书。在镇上的图书馆的网页里写了82篇短小的评论。我分了五篇文章贴到了博客里。这里面有她曾经看过的书，也有一些图画书。我比较欣慰的是她开始增加非虚构阅读的量。只要有个开始，好书总是在那里等着你的。
暑期阅读截止到9/4。所以以后她读书，我就转移了阵地。
在GOODREADS.COM上帮她注册了一个帐号，先把这82本书转过去，然后添加了哈利波特等她喜欢的书的阅读记录，评论么，就让她慢慢地添上去了。根据她的阅读记录，goodreads会进行适当地推荐。她还可以参加读书的议论组。跟其他哈利波特FAN进行讨论，其实，哪怕是说说那些人物的名字，她（们）都会很高兴。我在她的IPAD上装了goodreads的应用程序，对于书的处理，只要扫描一下书后面的条形码就可以了，然后进行分类：是你想读的；还是正在读的；还是已经阅读的。这样，也不会遗漏自己想要读的书。经常在书店里看到那么多的好书的时候，只要扫一下，就可以轻松地记录下来。
Amazon那天一不小心把最新版的Kindle放到网页上去出售，结果不得不宣布他们要在9月底推出Kindle Paperwhite第二代。有新的改进：灯光更加柔和，对比度更加高；解决了翻页不丢失现在的页数的问题；如果在看书的过程中，你曾经查过某些个生词，Kindle会在你阅读完毕之后生成一张生词表。这些个细小的路线都可以看到，真是要做到每个学生一个呢，因为太讨好教育系统了。何况Amazon又买下了goodreads，让读书人的community又强大了很多。我对聪说，“我准备给你买一个。”她说，“我不需要，我现在的老KINDLE很好的。”
暑期阅读截止到9/4。所以以后她读书，我就转移了阵地。
在GOODREADS.COM上帮她注册了一个帐号，先把这82本书转过去，然后添加了哈利波特等她喜欢的书的阅读记录，评论么，就让她慢慢地添上去了。根据她的阅读记录，goodreads会进行适当地推荐。她还可以参加读书的议论组。跟其他哈利波特FAN进行讨论，其实，哪怕是说说那些人物的名字，她（们）都会很高兴。我在她的IPAD上装了goodreads的应用程序，对于书的处理，只要扫描一下书后面的条形码就可以了，然后进行分类：是你想读的；还是正在读的；还是已经阅读的。这样，也不会遗漏自己想要读的书。经常在书店里看到那么多的好书的时候，只要扫一下，就可以轻松地记录下来。
Amazon那天一不小心把最新版的Kindle放到网页上去出售，结果不得不宣布他们要在9月底推出Kindle Paperwhite第二代。有新的改进：灯光更加柔和，对比度更加高；解决了翻页不丢失现在的页数的问题；如果在看书的过程中，你曾经查过某些个生词，Kindle会在你阅读完毕之后生成一张生词表。这些个细小的路线都可以看到，真是要做到每个学生一个呢，因为太讨好教育系统了。何况Amazon又买下了goodreads，让读书人的community又强大了很多。我对聪说，“我准备给你买一个。”她说，“我不需要，我现在的老KINDLE很好的。”
开学第一天 (2013-09-07 09:25:04)
周五，他们开学第一天。她，一身的新衣服。呵呵。书包那个沉，好在很多东西都会放在学校的LOCKER里。
早晨感觉非常冷。白露的这一天真的就是“不露”了。都要穿上夹克和牛仔裤。还好有阳光在身上，还不至于觉得太冰冷。送她去等校车的地方，已经站着一大堆的人。后来反应过来，是去年没有见到的六年级学生今年跟他们一个校车了，难怪。这帮孩子，高矮不齐，有一个孩子的个头已经比我都要高了。真不能相信，她已经要上中学了。上校车，连头都不回一下下了。上车之前，我听到Rachel叫May跟她坐在一起。
忘了给她带点心和水了。
下午去接她，夹克已经绑在了书包上。阳光灿烂的样子。
书包果然轻了很多。告诉我还需要买一样学习用品：8 pocket accordion folder。我说周末去买。名堂真多。
问她，How was your first day.
她说，it's okay, nothing too much, we really did not do anything。然后告诉我，吃饭是跟Tim一起吃的。Tim是和她玩得比较来的一个男孩，去年在一个班里，今年又在一个Homeroom，看来，至少有两个小朋友可以跟她hang out。她说吃饭的时候还叫上了Sam，她做了一个怪相，结果Sam笑了十分钟。等到Sam一停下来，她又做了一个怪相，结果Sam接着笑。（Sam是一个印度女孩的缩写，印度人的名字实在太长，连她自己都觉得Sam比较容易一些。）她是第一拨吃饭的，没有找到其他的小孩子。Winsin必须得去peanut-free桌吃。周五，吃得PIZZA。她说牛奶不好喝，我让她不要喝学校的牛奶了，一定不会是有机的。让她宁愿喝水。
周一就要带小提琴去了，还有体育课。
显然是饿了，晚上我做了肉饼，六大张，她一个人吃了两大张，跟她爸爸吃得一样。
早晨感觉非常冷。白露的这一天真的就是“不露”了。都要穿上夹克和牛仔裤。还好有阳光在身上，还不至于觉得太冰冷。送她去等校车的地方，已经站着一大堆的人。后来反应过来，是去年没有见到的六年级学生今年跟他们一个校车了，难怪。这帮孩子，高矮不齐，有一个孩子的个头已经比我都要高了。真不能相信，她已经要上中学了。上校车，连头都不回一下下了。上车之前，我听到Rachel叫May跟她坐在一起。
忘了给她带点心和水了。
下午去接她，夹克已经绑在了书包上。阳光灿烂的样子。
书包果然轻了很多。告诉我还需要买一样学习用品：8 pocket accordion folder。我说周末去买。名堂真多。
问她，How was your first day.
她说，it's okay, nothing too much, we really did not do anything。然后告诉我，吃饭是跟Tim一起吃的。Tim是和她玩得比较来的一个男孩，去年在一个班里，今年又在一个Homeroom，看来，至少有两个小朋友可以跟她hang out。她说吃饭的时候还叫上了Sam，她做了一个怪相，结果Sam笑了十分钟。等到Sam一停下来，她又做了一个怪相，结果Sam接着笑。（Sam是一个印度女孩的缩写，印度人的名字实在太长，连她自己都觉得Sam比较容易一些。）她是第一拨吃饭的，没有找到其他的小孩子。Winsin必须得去peanut-free桌吃。周五，吃得PIZZA。她说牛奶不好喝，我让她不要喝学校的牛奶了，一定不会是有机的。让她宁愿喝水。
周一就要带小提琴去了，还有体育课。
显然是饿了，晚上我做了肉饼，六大张，她一个人吃了两大张，跟她爸爸吃得一样。
On Children by Kahlil Gibran (2013-09-11 23:31:49)
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 他们是生命对于自身渴望而诞生的孩子。
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that . arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 他们是生命对于自身渴望而诞生的孩子。
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that . arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
回去上班 (2013-09-12 07:52:09)
电脑一堆问题，中文输入也没有了，所有的收藏夹都没有了，工作上需要用的软件也没有了。第一天甚至连彭博自己的软件都开不开。真是蛮好笑的。
电脑的后勤搞好以后，工作程序上也更新了很多内容，需要CATCH-UP。感觉有点累。脑子也转得慢。
第一天到停车场，工作人员对我说LONG TIME!! 我还是蛮感动的，他居然还记得我，公司靠近1000多辆车。
很多人都说WELCOME BACK。一般一段日子没有见到了，无论是去度假了，还是休产假了，都是这句话。居然有人大声地问，So you are totally healthy now. 我朝她笑笑。人生有多少是Certainty?
最喜欢的还是对我说So glad to see you again。有几个是特地跑到我的座位这来跟我说，大多数是在走廊里碰到点头寒暄一下下。所有的女人都说我lost weight。我说，是呀，我需要公司的饭再把我养肥。
当然也有吐出来的不是象牙的。我也全当是恢复到社会的常态中来。
顶头上司看到我回来了，过来拥抱我，多么不真挚的一个。离我半尺远，我们身体根本都没有接触，如果当时有人看到，一定决定很滑稽。好在还在8点之前，没有多少人到办公室呢。
周一又是老板的生日，叫上全组的同事一起去吃饭。明明是他自己要吃饺子，结果说是为了庆祝我回来，去吃的中餐。吃完后，我意外地得到了一个拥抱。
接下来的两天我吃了两天的pasta。外面的桌椅还没有收去，天气也很帮忙，在露台上吃饭，有助于心情放松。真是久违了。
电脑的后勤搞好以后，工作程序上也更新了很多内容，需要CATCH-UP。感觉有点累。脑子也转得慢。
第一天到停车场，工作人员对我说LONG TIME!! 我还是蛮感动的，他居然还记得我，公司靠近1000多辆车。
很多人都说WELCOME BACK。一般一段日子没有见到了，无论是去度假了，还是休产假了，都是这句话。居然有人大声地问，So you are totally healthy now. 我朝她笑笑。人生有多少是Certainty?
最喜欢的还是对我说So glad to see you again。有几个是特地跑到我的座位这来跟我说，大多数是在走廊里碰到点头寒暄一下下。所有的女人都说我lost weight。我说，是呀，我需要公司的饭再把我养肥。
当然也有吐出来的不是象牙的。我也全当是恢复到社会的常态中来。
顶头上司看到我回来了，过来拥抱我，多么不真挚的一个。离我半尺远，我们身体根本都没有接触，如果当时有人看到，一定决定很滑稽。好在还在8点之前，没有多少人到办公室呢。
周一又是老板的生日，叫上全组的同事一起去吃饭。明明是他自己要吃饺子，结果说是为了庆祝我回来，去吃的中餐。吃完后，我意外地得到了一个拥抱。
接下来的两天我吃了两天的pasta。外面的桌椅还没有收去，天气也很帮忙，在露台上吃饭，有助于心情放松。真是久违了。
更换 (2013-09-16 04:25:41)
最近两周手里的IPHONE有点小毛病，那天开车的时候听有声书，听到一半，突然没有声了，一般这种情况是有电话进来，瞟了一眼，并没有看到有来电。趁着红灯的当，放存在IPHONE里的那首“明天你要嫁给我吗？”还是没有声音。一生气，重新启动了一次。它吱了一声，又无声无息了。放弃在开车的时候做这些危险动作了，所以回到家，再次重启，然后大声地放那首“明天你要嫁给我吗？”BILL从地下室钻出来，笑着说，“这首歌我在十几年前唱过了，你怎么百听不厌啊。”
我告诉他IPHONE的小毛病，他说还在WARRANTY期限内，可以调换。
后面的日子里，IPHONE愈发不像话，我把它放桌上的时候，有的时候，随意了一些，屏幕居然就熄灭了。实际上呢，还是在操作的，只是我看不到屏幕了，于是摸瞎关了手机，重启。焦急地等那被咬了一口的苹果出现在我的屏幕上。后来，这样重启的频率就越来越高，直到我忍无可忍。
BILL帮我周六预约了去APPLE店里TROUBLE SHOOTING。一大早起来，预约已经直奔12：50了。我们10点多出了门，先去COSTCO买了些家用的杂物，还给小姑娘买了跑步的鞋和跑步的短裤、袜子。周一就要开始训练了，反正她玩好就行。去了MALL里，她抓着一把在暑期读书活动中挣得的Free Aunti Anne's Pretzel的COUPON，说要请我们吃午饭。结果我们并没有仔细地看coupon，上面明确地写明是给18岁以下的孩子的。她要了给自己。后来发现这个MALL里有两个Aunti Anne的店。我说，你还可以去那家店再换一个，她象大人一样地叹了口气，说，“什么都要靠着我。”我大笑不止。就是这么个小点心。哈哈。后来我们还是去吃了TERIYAKI BEEF的盒饭。
去了APPLE店，等了20分钟，来了一位工作人员，听我解释了情况后，就说，“这种情况比较少见，但是确实是硬件问题，我们给你换一个吧。”我问，“是修过的么？”他说，“当然是全新的。”他去后面拿了一个新IPHONE，当着我的面拆了封。果然被BILL说中了，所以来之前做了备份。更换过程很简单。一会就完成了。最后他要DELETE IPHONE的时候，对我说，“跟它说BYE BYE把。”聪看APPLE TV都没有过瘾呢。
我告诉他IPHONE的小毛病，他说还在WARRANTY期限内，可以调换。
后面的日子里，IPHONE愈发不像话，我把它放桌上的时候，有的时候，随意了一些，屏幕居然就熄灭了。实际上呢，还是在操作的，只是我看不到屏幕了，于是摸瞎关了手机，重启。焦急地等那被咬了一口的苹果出现在我的屏幕上。后来，这样重启的频率就越来越高，直到我忍无可忍。
BILL帮我周六预约了去APPLE店里TROUBLE SHOOTING。一大早起来，预约已经直奔12：50了。我们10点多出了门，先去COSTCO买了些家用的杂物，还给小姑娘买了跑步的鞋和跑步的短裤、袜子。周一就要开始训练了，反正她玩好就行。去了MALL里，她抓着一把在暑期读书活动中挣得的Free Aunti Anne's Pretzel的COUPON，说要请我们吃午饭。结果我们并没有仔细地看coupon，上面明确地写明是给18岁以下的孩子的。她要了给自己。后来发现这个MALL里有两个Aunti Anne的店。我说，你还可以去那家店再换一个，她象大人一样地叹了口气，说，“什么都要靠着我。”我大笑不止。就是这么个小点心。哈哈。后来我们还是去吃了TERIYAKI BEEF的盒饭。
去了APPLE店，等了20分钟，来了一位工作人员，听我解释了情况后，就说，“这种情况比较少见，但是确实是硬件问题，我们给你换一个吧。”我问，“是修过的么？”他说，“当然是全新的。”他去后面拿了一个新IPHONE，当着我的面拆了封。果然被BILL说中了，所以来之前做了备份。更换过程很简单。一会就完成了。最后他要DELETE IPHONE的时候，对我说，“跟它说BYE BYE把。”聪看APPLE TV都没有过瘾呢。
体育锻炼 (2013-09-17 09:32:24)
美国人对体育的热情近似疯狂。同事在一起，问道孩子，从来不说她学习怎样，或者学习什么乐器，第一个或者说唯一的会聊的就是，What sports does your daughter play?
PLAY，是啊，老美什么都是个PLAY，什么都是GAME。连带乐器也都是PLAY。所以他们ENJOY的是这个过程。
让聪去运动，主要是为了强身健体。她参加过的体育运动可谓是丰富：溜冰、游泳、足球、滑雪、体操，跳街舞等等。
今年我们给她选了跑步，就是课后在学校里，20个女生跟着教练练习五公里的长跑。今天是第一次训练，我下了班去接她，看到校园上都是运动着的学生。找到了该接她的地方，她不在。同伴中有女孩跑得小脸红扑扑的，说Girls on Track就是在这里。后来看到她想从前门进来，结果门是锁着的，同伴帮她去开门。问她跑得怎么样？她给我看了看橡皮筋，说如果跑了1/4英里，就得到一个，她得了三个。真不错。
带上她，我们去网球俱乐部。想让她学学网球，这样，周末天气好的时候，大人小孩的都可以锻炼一下。
她问我，“你会打么？”
我说，“我打过，但是没有正式上过课，但是你可以教我呀。”
她叹了口气说，“唉，又要靠着我。”（我忍住没有笑。）
她不是很乐意，说，跑步就够了。我说，还是趁现在多学点技巧性的运动，以后想玩什么就玩什么。俱乐部的负责人让她拿着拍子去场地上挥舞了一下，没有碰到球。呵呵，算是很迅速的一次evaluation。然后负责人让她从最最BEGINNER开始学起，周日中午一个小时。
就PLAY, PLAY吧。
PLAY，是啊，老美什么都是个PLAY，什么都是GAME。连带乐器也都是PLAY。所以他们ENJOY的是这个过程。
让聪去运动，主要是为了强身健体。她参加过的体育运动可谓是丰富：溜冰、游泳、足球、滑雪、体操，跳街舞等等。
今年我们给她选了跑步，就是课后在学校里，20个女生跟着教练练习五公里的长跑。今天是第一次训练，我下了班去接她，看到校园上都是运动着的学生。找到了该接她的地方，她不在。同伴中有女孩跑得小脸红扑扑的，说Girls on Track就是在这里。后来看到她想从前门进来，结果门是锁着的，同伴帮她去开门。问她跑得怎么样？她给我看了看橡皮筋，说如果跑了1/4英里，就得到一个，她得了三个。真不错。
带上她，我们去网球俱乐部。想让她学学网球，这样，周末天气好的时候，大人小孩的都可以锻炼一下。
她问我，“你会打么？”
我说，“我打过，但是没有正式上过课，但是你可以教我呀。”
她叹了口气说，“唉，又要靠着我。”（我忍住没有笑。）
她不是很乐意，说，跑步就够了。我说，还是趁现在多学点技巧性的运动，以后想玩什么就玩什么。俱乐部的负责人让她拿着拍子去场地上挥舞了一下，没有碰到球。呵呵，算是很迅速的一次evaluation。然后负责人让她从最最BEGINNER开始学起，周日中午一个小时。
就PLAY, PLAY吧。
Blizzard!: The Storm That Changed America (2013-09-17 21:52:49)
是聪聪NONFICTION书单上的书。我拿来看，真是不错。没有想到过非虚构文学也能写得那么生动。遣词造句也非常讲究。原来总觉得会很枯燥。在吃饭的时候，我讲述了这本书里发生的事情，小姑娘很感兴趣。后来网上搜了一下，作者写了一系列非虚构书，我们买了其中的GREAT FIRE。他的还有一本书也获得了其他的奖项：
An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book)
不错，一个很好的入门非常重要。
"Loud were the cries to get to the shore."
"It was a gentle fall with little accompanying wind..."
"wallow in shallow water"
"while the predicted famine was averted, another sort of disaster began to unfold in isolated rural area."
"Every natural disaster leaves survivors with similar feelings and vivid impressions."
"The fear they felt during the storm, and the relief at having survived it, lingered in their memories for many fears afterward."
"vex at the collapse of all the principal means of intercommunication..."
"howling snowstorm"
"youthful energy, iron determination, and intelligence."
"ice collected on his clothes, weighing himself down"
乐器 (2013-09-20 22:00:33)
想了想，还是稍微做个记录。
周三下班回到家，孩子已经自己去钢琴老师家了。我烧好了饭，高高兴兴地去接孩子。结果老师一脸的不高兴，等到课结束，就对我说，她弹琴太不仔细了，并且很重地加了一句，她的学生中没有一个是象MAY这样的。聪做事情不是特别仔细，这个我知道，但是她加重的这句话让我感到很沮丧。就是因为聪聪不听老师的话么？不一句一字地遵循老师的话。钢琴老师甚至建议我换一个小提琴老师，因为如果钢琴的表现力都那么差，她说她难以想象弦乐的表现会怎样的糟糕。而弦乐的老师严格不严格对学生来说是很有差别的。
回家的路上，我忍了正在努力熊熊燃烧的小火苗。做完最后一个菜，我和她坐在饭桌旁。刚想跟她说起这件事，突然想到小时候妈妈曾经说过，什么重大的事都不要在饭桌上说，尤其是令人不愉快的，因为毕竟是会影响消化的。我生生地又忍了回去。问了问学校里发生的事情。
吃完饭，我收拾完毕，看着外面还有的阳光，提议去散步。
散步的时候，我先问她，觉得钢琴老师说得正确么？她说，部分。
我问，哪部分？
她说，不仔细。节拍不好。
我说，上周还说你节拍进步了很多。这周又说不行了，究竟发生了什么？
她说，上周我用了节拍器。
我停了停，对她说，我觉得老师生气可能在于她跟你说的要点已经一而再再而三地重复了，而你却有的时候能做到，大部分时候做不到，老师看不到进步，所以心里着急。而如果你停止不前，她就不能教你新的曲目，或者知识，来回炒冷饭，大多数人都会很烦恼吧。
她没有吭声。
我接着说，就音乐本身而言，从技术上我并不能帮助你很多的忙，但是从态度上来说，我一直是很佩服你的。你喜欢弹琴，自己学了哈利波特的很多曲子，这些都是我都不能做到的。但是可能在技术上，你需要更加地进行磨练。磨练的过程是枯燥的，漫长的，甚至是乏味的。有人不能经历这个磨练，也有人成功地度过了这个难关，当然，也有些人连磨练的门都没有摸到过。很多事物，兴趣是种子，但是种子埋在泥土里，还需要水、养分、阳光和关照。如果只是把埋在土里，什么都不去做，苗可能也能成长，但是可能歪了，可能长得不茁壮，可能结的果子小，或者就象我们家的西红柿，眼看着要红了，结果却烂了。
讲到了家里的西红柿，她笑了一下，表示了同意。
我一下子来了感慨，真想对她说，成长不是容易的，但是却是不可避免的。但是我忍住了。这些总结性发言，还是等她自己悟出来比较好。
我回来跟BILL讲了一下这个情况，他说我对老师的话太过认真了；而且他说聪学钢琴的GOAL是什么？我一听就很烦，真想嚷嚷，但是忍了一下，反问他，“难道学东西一定要有一个明确的可测量的目标么，学东西就不能为享受过程，享受生活？”
其实最了解孩子的应当是自己的父母，而我对老师却怀着盲目的敬畏，尤其是自己并不精通的学科，例如画画、钢琴等。如若老师批评孩子，那一定是孩子的错。一定么？
周四晚上，我带孩子去上小提琴课。上课前，我对小提琴老师提出让她对MAY严格一点，并问了一下小提琴老师的意见。她已经50多岁，两个儿子一个上班，一个上大学，她的年龄和经历让她的心态也放松很多。
我问她，聪的节奏是不是不太好。
她说，我已经对MAY很严格了。而MAY的节奏的确实需要加强的。如果在过去学音乐的环境中，她一定是不能继续拉曲子，要强化训练，训练到她象节拍器一样精准才好。但是，她不建议这么做。她的态度是，只要孩子保持着一定的兴趣，这些技术问题是想开窍一样，May just has not got it yet。什么时候开窍，不知道，每个孩子都不一样。她还讲到在她音乐学院里，歌唱系的学生表现力非常强，但是音有的时候却是走的，有了其他乐器系学生的纠正，也慢慢地就好了。
老师婉转地批评我太严肃了，并说聪现在参加学校的交响乐团，她会听从指挥，这对她对节奏的感受也是很好的帮助。她一再说，MAY学得快，并且愿意学，这就非常难能可贵了。节奏这个事是要贯穿整个音乐生涯的。要保护她对音乐的热情，保护她对音乐的自信。
其实任何事情就是一个度的问题，界限的问题。MAY看着咋咋呼呼，但实际上她很能隐忍，她手臂上湿疹又痛又痒，她一直都没有太多的抱怨。朋友对她的冷嘲热讽，直到最后她实在想不通，她才跟我们说；而学习钢琴，其中她也哭过好几次鼻子了。现在写下这些话，我都觉得心痛。真的，作为她的妈妈，保护她的自信，信任她的能力是第一位的，无论她是否在某个位置上出色。
另：周四又跑步了，接她的时候，她拿了5根皮筋，1.25英里，正好2000米。我对她说，“你太牛了，我在大学也就跑个1500米就趴地下了。”她说，“什么是牛？”
周三下班回到家，孩子已经自己去钢琴老师家了。我烧好了饭，高高兴兴地去接孩子。结果老师一脸的不高兴，等到课结束，就对我说，她弹琴太不仔细了，并且很重地加了一句，她的学生中没有一个是象MAY这样的。聪做事情不是特别仔细，这个我知道，但是她加重的这句话让我感到很沮丧。就是因为聪聪不听老师的话么？不一句一字地遵循老师的话。钢琴老师甚至建议我换一个小提琴老师，因为如果钢琴的表现力都那么差，她说她难以想象弦乐的表现会怎样的糟糕。而弦乐的老师严格不严格对学生来说是很有差别的。
回家的路上，我忍了正在努力熊熊燃烧的小火苗。做完最后一个菜，我和她坐在饭桌旁。刚想跟她说起这件事，突然想到小时候妈妈曾经说过，什么重大的事都不要在饭桌上说，尤其是令人不愉快的，因为毕竟是会影响消化的。我生生地又忍了回去。问了问学校里发生的事情。
吃完饭，我收拾完毕，看着外面还有的阳光，提议去散步。
散步的时候，我先问她，觉得钢琴老师说得正确么？她说，部分。
我问，哪部分？
她说，不仔细。节拍不好。
我说，上周还说你节拍进步了很多。这周又说不行了，究竟发生了什么？
她说，上周我用了节拍器。
我停了停，对她说，我觉得老师生气可能在于她跟你说的要点已经一而再再而三地重复了，而你却有的时候能做到，大部分时候做不到，老师看不到进步，所以心里着急。而如果你停止不前，她就不能教你新的曲目，或者知识，来回炒冷饭，大多数人都会很烦恼吧。
她没有吭声。
我接着说，就音乐本身而言，从技术上我并不能帮助你很多的忙，但是从态度上来说，我一直是很佩服你的。你喜欢弹琴，自己学了哈利波特的很多曲子，这些都是我都不能做到的。但是可能在技术上，你需要更加地进行磨练。磨练的过程是枯燥的，漫长的，甚至是乏味的。有人不能经历这个磨练，也有人成功地度过了这个难关，当然，也有些人连磨练的门都没有摸到过。很多事物，兴趣是种子，但是种子埋在泥土里，还需要水、养分、阳光和关照。如果只是把埋在土里，什么都不去做，苗可能也能成长，但是可能歪了，可能长得不茁壮，可能结的果子小，或者就象我们家的西红柿，眼看着要红了，结果却烂了。
讲到了家里的西红柿，她笑了一下，表示了同意。
我一下子来了感慨，真想对她说，成长不是容易的，但是却是不可避免的。但是我忍住了。这些总结性发言，还是等她自己悟出来比较好。
我回来跟BILL讲了一下这个情况，他说我对老师的话太过认真了；而且他说聪学钢琴的GOAL是什么？我一听就很烦，真想嚷嚷，但是忍了一下，反问他，“难道学东西一定要有一个明确的可测量的目标么，学东西就不能为享受过程，享受生活？”
其实最了解孩子的应当是自己的父母，而我对老师却怀着盲目的敬畏，尤其是自己并不精通的学科，例如画画、钢琴等。如若老师批评孩子，那一定是孩子的错。一定么？
周四晚上，我带孩子去上小提琴课。上课前，我对小提琴老师提出让她对MAY严格一点，并问了一下小提琴老师的意见。她已经50多岁，两个儿子一个上班，一个上大学，她的年龄和经历让她的心态也放松很多。
我问她，聪的节奏是不是不太好。
她说，我已经对MAY很严格了。而MAY的节奏的确实需要加强的。如果在过去学音乐的环境中，她一定是不能继续拉曲子，要强化训练，训练到她象节拍器一样精准才好。但是，她不建议这么做。她的态度是，只要孩子保持着一定的兴趣，这些技术问题是想开窍一样，May just has not got it yet。什么时候开窍，不知道，每个孩子都不一样。她还讲到在她音乐学院里，歌唱系的学生表现力非常强，但是音有的时候却是走的，有了其他乐器系学生的纠正，也慢慢地就好了。
老师婉转地批评我太严肃了，并说聪现在参加学校的交响乐团，她会听从指挥，这对她对节奏的感受也是很好的帮助。她一再说，MAY学得快，并且愿意学，这就非常难能可贵了。节奏这个事是要贯穿整个音乐生涯的。要保护她对音乐的热情，保护她对音乐的自信。
其实任何事情就是一个度的问题，界限的问题。MAY看着咋咋呼呼，但实际上她很能隐忍，她手臂上湿疹又痛又痒，她一直都没有太多的抱怨。朋友对她的冷嘲热讽，直到最后她实在想不通，她才跟我们说；而学习钢琴，其中她也哭过好几次鼻子了。现在写下这些话，我都觉得心痛。真的，作为她的妈妈，保护她的自信，信任她的能力是第一位的，无论她是否在某个位置上出色。
另：周四又跑步了，接她的时候，她拿了5根皮筋，1.25英里，正好2000米。我对她说，“你太牛了，我在大学也就跑个1500米就趴地下了。”她说，“什么是牛？”
让你的长处成为超常 （转载） (2013-09-20 22:03:24)
学校人力资源部门让我们新员工都做一下盖洛普公司开发的一个个人优势的问卷，这是一个很长的问卷，正因为比较长，问的问题多，所以答案也比较准确。测试后我发现，我的最大五个优势为：Input: 这种优势的人喜欢收藏东西，很好奇，喜欢倾听，接触复杂的世界。Learner, 这种优势的人好学习。Intellection, 这种优势的人喜欢思考。connectedness, 具有这种优势的人能看到事物之间的关联，并从中找到规律。relator, 具有这种优势的人比较喜欢深层的关系，而不喜欢泛泛交友。对我来说，描述都很精准，毕竟都是按照我对于不同情境的判断，从大量的选择中总结出来的。
这年头说实在的大部人都迷茫。有钱的人去找一些“大师”给自己指点迷津。普通人则热衷于通过属相、星座这些东西去了解自己的命运，并去看一些星座专栏试图“对症下药”地找到某个命运的密钥。我甚至发现，我自己翻译的《布鲁克林有棵树》被网上有些人称作是白羊座的”疗伤书“。找这些不怎么靠谱的方法去掌握自己的命运，还真不如查查自己性格上真正优势到底在哪里，如何扬长避短，或许这样对于自己的发展更有价值一些。
人力资源部的同事还给我们转述了关于人优势和劣势的一些有趣说法。根据一些“常识”，我们长进最快的领域是我们的“跛腿”领域，亦即我们的劣势。可惜这些常识只是“迷思”，不是真理。一些管理顾问公司，喜欢帮客户找“机遇”，所谓机遇，亦即客户做得不好的地方，可以长进的地方。它们试图让客户在每个领域都能做到出色，这样反可能失去侧重。一个组织也好，一个人也好，与其死命去“恶补”我们不足的地方，还不如去拼命发挥我们的优势。盖洛普的一个发现，是人长进最大的，反而是自己的优势领域。该公司曾经做过一次哦测试，让两组读者分别参加加速阅读的项目，参加项目前后分别测试。慢的那一组，接受项目培训前阅读的速度为每分钟八十多字，快的那一组为一百多字，经过培训之后，有趣的现象发生了。慢组的阅读速度提高了50％， 而快的那组提高了600％。
换言之，如果某个东西是你的优势，你再加一把劲，就会如虎添翼。如果不是你的优势，你再努力，改进也是有限的，烂泥扶不上墙。阿斗扶不起就扶不起，过了十年，有诸葛亮来辅佐，还是扶不起。心理学上有个说法，叫“马太效应”，来自《马太福音》第25章第14-30节： “凡有的，还要加给他，叫他有余；凡没有的，连他所有的也要夺去。”你看到了你的劣势，试图在这方面发力，变得和他人一样，也是非常划不来的交易 —— 你用同样的精力，去发挥你的长处，收效会更多。所以不要去管别人怎么去骂你的短处，你一根筋在你擅长的地方不断发力，且持之以恒，没有不成事的道理。
在我很年轻的时候，曾经有个女同学反感我的内向的性格，说如果我不改，我会穷愁潦倒一辈子。我没理睬她，也不知道我以后是否穷愁潦倒关她什么事。于是我该怎样怎样。二十余年过去了，我觉得我善用了我的内向特点，读书写作翻译，我不觉得我耽搁了什么，我也没看到我多穷愁潦倒。人活一辈子，精力能力都有限，哪能什么地方都齐头并进发展呢？一辈子若能找到一个自己的优势领域，一个小小的niche, 就足够我们安身立命，何必贪多，求全，别人有的我也都要有？这本身就是反人性的做法，因为我们每个人的才能禀赋和性格特点都是那么的不同。
从教育者的角度去看，我想这也是美国老师肯定孩子比较多的原因。看到孩子的优点，去夸一下，让他（她）以此为自豪，在这方面不断出力，这个优点就会越来越突出，越来越棱角分明，人的才能就是这样被雕刻出来的。反过来，你天天盯着孩子的弱点去打击，让其百般努力，或许耽搁了本可发展其优势的机遇，使得孩子弱点上进步不大，长处又得不到发挥，久而久之，其短处或许稍微长了一些，长处却没有加增，渐渐开始面目模糊，泯然众人。每个孩子都包裹着诸多可能，发现他们的优势，让其对着正确的方向发力，才是在做有用功。
这年头说实在的大部人都迷茫。有钱的人去找一些“大师”给自己指点迷津。普通人则热衷于通过属相、星座这些东西去了解自己的命运，并去看一些星座专栏试图“对症下药”地找到某个命运的密钥。我甚至发现，我自己翻译的《布鲁克林有棵树》被网上有些人称作是白羊座的”疗伤书“。找这些不怎么靠谱的方法去掌握自己的命运，还真不如查查自己性格上真正优势到底在哪里，如何扬长避短，或许这样对于自己的发展更有价值一些。
人力资源部的同事还给我们转述了关于人优势和劣势的一些有趣说法。根据一些“常识”，我们长进最快的领域是我们的“跛腿”领域，亦即我们的劣势。可惜这些常识只是“迷思”，不是真理。一些管理顾问公司，喜欢帮客户找“机遇”，所谓机遇，亦即客户做得不好的地方，可以长进的地方。它们试图让客户在每个领域都能做到出色，这样反可能失去侧重。一个组织也好，一个人也好，与其死命去“恶补”我们不足的地方，还不如去拼命发挥我们的优势。盖洛普的一个发现，是人长进最大的，反而是自己的优势领域。该公司曾经做过一次哦测试，让两组读者分别参加加速阅读的项目，参加项目前后分别测试。慢的那一组，接受项目培训前阅读的速度为每分钟八十多字，快的那一组为一百多字，经过培训之后，有趣的现象发生了。慢组的阅读速度提高了50％， 而快的那组提高了600％。
换言之，如果某个东西是你的优势，你再加一把劲，就会如虎添翼。如果不是你的优势，你再努力，改进也是有限的，烂泥扶不上墙。阿斗扶不起就扶不起，过了十年，有诸葛亮来辅佐，还是扶不起。心理学上有个说法，叫“马太效应”，来自《马太福音》第25章第14-30节： “凡有的，还要加给他，叫他有余；凡没有的，连他所有的也要夺去。”你看到了你的劣势，试图在这方面发力，变得和他人一样，也是非常划不来的交易 —— 你用同样的精力，去发挥你的长处，收效会更多。所以不要去管别人怎么去骂你的短处，你一根筋在你擅长的地方不断发力，且持之以恒，没有不成事的道理。
在我很年轻的时候，曾经有个女同学反感我的内向的性格，说如果我不改，我会穷愁潦倒一辈子。我没理睬她，也不知道我以后是否穷愁潦倒关她什么事。于是我该怎样怎样。二十余年过去了，我觉得我善用了我的内向特点，读书写作翻译，我不觉得我耽搁了什么，我也没看到我多穷愁潦倒。人活一辈子，精力能力都有限，哪能什么地方都齐头并进发展呢？一辈子若能找到一个自己的优势领域，一个小小的niche, 就足够我们安身立命，何必贪多，求全，别人有的我也都要有？这本身就是反人性的做法，因为我们每个人的才能禀赋和性格特点都是那么的不同。
从教育者的角度去看，我想这也是美国老师肯定孩子比较多的原因。看到孩子的优点，去夸一下，让他（她）以此为自豪，在这方面不断出力，这个优点就会越来越突出，越来越棱角分明，人的才能就是这样被雕刻出来的。反过来，你天天盯着孩子的弱点去打击，让其百般努力，或许耽搁了本可发展其优势的机遇，使得孩子弱点上进步不大，长处又得不到发挥，久而久之，其短处或许稍微长了一些，长处却没有加增，渐渐开始面目模糊，泯然众人。每个孩子都包裹着诸多可能，发现他们的优势，让其对着正确的方向发力，才是在做有用功。
2013普林斯顿少儿图书节 (2013-09-22 09:19:57)
一年一度，每年都盼望。去年没有去成。今年开学以来已经盼了三周了。今天早晨吃完早饭，她很迅速地写完了中文，我们俩就迫不及待地出发了。因为是在普林斯顿市中心公共图书馆的广场上，怕停车难，所以刚刚看到可以停车的位置，就赶紧泊下。塞足了硬币，就向图书馆的广场赶去，一路上还看到很多停车位。我们真是心急呢。今年请来了80位作家。远远地就看到早就支起来的Tent，并没有看到颜色的不同，而作家却是按照颜色就坐的。后来问了工作人员才知道看桌布的颜色。
超级喜欢这张宣传画。大厅下来是聪聪超爱的PERCY JACKSON系列的插画家画的。这是他的网站：
http://roccoart.com/
我们找到他的摊位。聪看着他就傻笑。暑假里看了他画的Black Out，因为是Picture Book，所以书的内容有点小儿科。但是我记得聪的评语是，插图非常棒。没有想到是他。我上前，跟他说，"My daughter is a huge fan of Percy Jackson.”对方会意地点点头，说，"Yes, I worked with Rick for a long time, and he always feels really bad that he has to let his fan wait the whole year for his new book.” 他拿了一张他的画做的书签，问了聪聪她的名字，给她签名留念。随后他又拿出Rick明年要出的两本书中的插画给聪聪看。我无法形容聪聪专注的眼神。
刚要迈脚，聪就不停地敲我，小声说，“妈妈，那就是Avi.” 啊，是啊，就在John Rocco的旁边。Avi是个高产作家，我记得我介绍过他的博客，给孩子很多中肯的写作的建议。他的书太多了。聪也念了不少。我和聪激动得都不知道该说什么好。后来，我鼓足勇气上前，跟他说，"My daughter and I read your blog and it is really helpful.” 他笑了笑，然后说，"I am glad that it is helpful.” 然后我就傻气十足地对他说，"Really Nice meeting you.“
他的博客：http://www.avi-writer.com/blog/
我还在激动之中，聪又拉着我说，“看，那是写BOMB的。”
我转身一看，真是的。早就知道这本书，因为它获得了一堆奖项。而且在NONFICTION文学中成为一本里程碑书籍。
我问他，写这本书做Reseaerch花了多久？他说足足两年时间。我又问，是查资料难还是写作难。他答，当然是写作。查资料的过程是故事的过程，很好玩。我享受每一分钟。
我告诉他，为了让我的女儿看NONFICION，我一般自己写看看。这本书我看了个头，还没有继续下去。
本来我想让MAY在她学校的BOOK FAIR中买的。但是现在作者就坐在我们面前，就买了一本，请他签名。他问了聪聪的名字后，是这样写的，
"For May,I promise - this isn't boring!
St. SH
Sept 13"
后来在图画书的作者中发现了它：
聪说，我这本书念了100遍都有的。她喜欢图画，喜欢文字，就是十足的喜欢。我说我们买一本，让作者签个名。作者Paul O. Zelinsky是一个非常和蔼可亲的老头。看到他的桌上上着那本The Wheels on the Bus的25周年纪念本，才知道这首每个孩子都能吟诵的歌谣原来是他写的。他也是轻声轻气地问了聪的名字，然后写上"To May, with pleasure."那个MAY中的M被他画成了一个小裙子，甚是逗人。我问他在改写的过程中，是先写文字，还是先有图画。
他说，都是先有文字，文字全部落成后，才开始有图画。否则如果先开始画图，就会无边无际地画开了。
然后看到Alexis Frederick-Frost，聪有他所有的书。最后一本是即将要出的新书。他很慷慨地让聪聪在那里看，因为还不能零售。
我告诉他，聪聪也很喜欢画卡通。他把他的画笔拿出来，介绍给聪聪，说他就是拿这个画笔画卡通的，笔尖象我们中国的小楷毛笔，但是自己带着墨水，所以携带很方便，说是日本一种笔，告诉我们一个网站是可以去购买的。他把笔递给聪聪，说，"Try it. Draw something.“ 聪接过笔，画了一个小妖怪。他一看就乐了，说，“我可真喜欢这两个角。”
他问聪聪要不要他为她画写什么。聪说，恐龙。
他拿出他的卡片本子，画了一个恐龙，写上了FOR MAY，最后还加了一朵云彩。
这个作者很安静地坐在她的桌子处，她的桌上唯一只有两本书，都是黑色的封面。聪问她，What are they about? 她一本一本地跟她说。我听下来都是creepy story，很符合聪的胃口。她问我可不可以买。我说，可以选一本。她选了下面这本。作者给她签了名，上面写到，“ For May - Don't ever be afraid to be YOURSELF! Claire Legrand 9/21/13"
我们很激动地在四个帐篷里来回地穿梭，旁边还有一个帐篷是请所有的作家讲10分钟的话，或者讲10分钟故事。两个小时转瞬即逝。因为下午还要去上写作课。我对聪说，“说不定十几年以后，是你坐在那桌子后面给小朋友签名呢。”她笑说，“也许吧。”
写作课 (2013-09-22 09:46:45)
听别人的介绍，想让聪聪一周花一小时的时间上写作课。一个老师，两个孩子。见到另一个孩子的时候，聪和对方都很高兴是自己的同学，并在同一个乐队。
第一堂课是Evaluation，然后决定接下去课程中要看并讨论的书。
她拿回来的的作业是这样的：
Writing: Summary of typical school day
Gramma: memorize: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been
Vocab: Two new words （此处看不清她写的是啥）
Reading: Where the Red Fern Grows - Read Chapter 1
Comprehension: 空白。
老师说了，写作的基础是阅读，所以打好基础很重要。这是老生常谈，但是一而再再而三地被强调。老师需要选一本书两个小孩可以同时阅读，同时讨论。老师说，要找一本MAY没有看过的书太难了。
老师布置的那本书在这个图书馆没有，在另一个图书馆。我真想一口气回家，可是没有书，就做不了作业。图书馆显示有有声书，我先借来给她听上，把她放在家里，然后去另一个图书馆借来。是老版的书，字都印刷得很小。半个多世纪的书了，真是很让人感概。
第一堂课是Evaluation，然后决定接下去课程中要看并讨论的书。
她拿回来的的作业是这样的：
Writing: Summary of typical school day
Gramma: memorize: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been
Vocab: Two new words （此处看不清她写的是啥）
Reading: Where the Red Fern Grows - Read Chapter 1
Comprehension: 空白。
老师说了，写作的基础是阅读，所以打好基础很重要。这是老生常谈，但是一而再再而三地被强调。老师需要选一本书两个小孩可以同时阅读，同时讨论。老师说，要找一本MAY没有看过的书太难了。
老师布置的那本书在这个图书馆没有，在另一个图书馆。我真想一口气回家，可是没有书，就做不了作业。图书馆显示有有声书，我先借来给她听上，把她放在家里，然后去另一个图书馆借来。是老版的书，字都印刷得很小。半个多世纪的书了，真是很让人感概。
NJASK的成绩 (2013-09-22 10:23:16)
今天收到学校的来信，想着暑期已经来信通知过她会去ENRICHMENT班，不知道这封信是什么内容。MAP的考试结果也已经在网上公布了。
打开一看，原来是NJASK的成绩。我都快要忘了。NJASK就是三年级到八年级州立的统考。去年四年级的考试一共有三门。
250-300 是Advanced Proficiency
200-249是Proficient
100-200是Partically Proficient
三年级的时候，她的语文在Proficient一档，数学在Advenced Proficiency。本来想着是不是四年级需要补习一下，搞搞题海战术什么的。结果，她钢琴audition的事情把这个事情也都弄放下了。
今年的成绩不错，三门课都是300分。三门课是English Language Arts, Mathematics and Science.
具体细分：
English Language Arts
Writing
Informative/Explanatory 9.0 out of 10.0 我记得她三年的时候这部分是刚刚及格。
Narrative 10.0 out of 10.0
Reading
Literature 11.0 out of 12.0
Informational Text 21.0 out of 24.0 从这里可以看到NONFICTION的比重的增加
Math
Operations and Algebraic Thinking 9.0 out of 10.0
Number and Operations in Base Ten 10.0 out of 10.0
Number and Operations - Fraction 16.0 out of 18.0
Measurement and Data 6.0 out of 6.0
Geometry 6.0 out of 6.0
Science
Life Science 14.0 out of 15.0
Physical Science 13.0 out of 13.0
Earth Science 10.0 out of 11.0
打开一看，原来是NJASK的成绩。我都快要忘了。NJASK就是三年级到八年级州立的统考。去年四年级的考试一共有三门。
250-300 是Advanced Proficiency
200-249是Proficient
100-200是Partically Proficient
三年级的时候，她的语文在Proficient一档，数学在Advenced Proficiency。本来想着是不是四年级需要补习一下，搞搞题海战术什么的。结果，她钢琴audition的事情把这个事情也都弄放下了。
今年的成绩不错，三门课都是300分。三门课是English Language Arts, Mathematics and Science.
具体细分：
English Language Arts
Writing
Informative/Explanatory 9.0 out of 10.0 我记得她三年的时候这部分是刚刚及格。
Narrative 10.0 out of 10.0
Reading
Literature 11.0 out of 12.0
Informational Text 21.0 out of 24.0 从这里可以看到NONFICTION的比重的增加
Math
Operations and Algebraic Thinking 9.0 out of 10.0
Number and Operations in Base Ten 10.0 out of 10.0
Number and Operations - Fraction 16.0 out of 18.0
Measurement and Data 6.0 out of 6.0
Geometry 6.0 out of 6.0
Science
Life Science 14.0 out of 15.0
Physical Science 13.0 out of 13.0
Earth Science 10.0 out of 11.0
网球课 (2013-09-24 01:24:57)
昨天送她去上第一堂网球课。去之前，她一直在唠叨，她很紧张，不知道自己能不能打好，如果谁都不认识怎么办？打了不好尴尬怎么办？
我问，为什么会尴尬？你去溜冰的时候，从来不担心自己不会溜怎么办，溜了摔跤怎么办。
她说，那个时候我还很小呀。人小的时候，是不会在意那么多的。
我说，你现在也还是很小呀。
她说，我比去溜冰的时候要大多了。
这么一推一拉地很快就到了网球馆。
5个孩子跟一个教练，我觉得还不错啦。家长们都被赶到楼上去观看。我扯着脖子看了一会，觉得她适应得还可以，就埋头看我的KINDLE了。网球馆负责人上来跟我们打招呼，说，让我们这堂课上完后问问孩子喜不喜欢。我问他需要买小孩的慢速球进行训练么，他说完全没有必要。我又问小孩子的牌子用哪一种，他说，等一会下楼可以去PRO SHOP里看看。他问我是不是另外有一个孩子来过这里打网球，参加过夏令营之类的？我说，没有。他说，你看上去很眼熟。我很好奇，那个跟我看上去很象的人会是怎样的。
再看她的时候，一群孩子撅着屁股在捡球。
到时间了，去门口迎她，她很高兴的样子。她告诉我她很喜欢她的教练，很风趣。当她把网球拍当作吉他在弹奏的时候，教练居然说，啊，那是B FLAT MAJOR。教练告诉她，他是乐队里的电吉他手。
她说喜欢网球击网的感觉和声音。
回到家，找出我们大人的网球拍，找了一圈没有球。晚上去针灸的时候居然在药房找到了球，买了两盒回来，不知道今天能不能打上。呵呵。
我问，为什么会尴尬？你去溜冰的时候，从来不担心自己不会溜怎么办，溜了摔跤怎么办。
她说，那个时候我还很小呀。人小的时候，是不会在意那么多的。
我说，你现在也还是很小呀。
她说，我比去溜冰的时候要大多了。
这么一推一拉地很快就到了网球馆。
5个孩子跟一个教练，我觉得还不错啦。家长们都被赶到楼上去观看。我扯着脖子看了一会，觉得她适应得还可以，就埋头看我的KINDLE了。网球馆负责人上来跟我们打招呼，说，让我们这堂课上完后问问孩子喜不喜欢。我问他需要买小孩的慢速球进行训练么，他说完全没有必要。我又问小孩子的牌子用哪一种，他说，等一会下楼可以去PRO SHOP里看看。他问我是不是另外有一个孩子来过这里打网球，参加过夏令营之类的？我说，没有。他说，你看上去很眼熟。我很好奇，那个跟我看上去很象的人会是怎样的。
再看她的时候，一群孩子撅着屁股在捡球。
到时间了，去门口迎她，她很高兴的样子。她告诉我她很喜欢她的教练，很风趣。当她把网球拍当作吉他在弹奏的时候，教练居然说，啊，那是B FLAT MAJOR。教练告诉她，他是乐队里的电吉他手。
她说喜欢网球击网的感觉和声音。
回到家，找出我们大人的网球拍，找了一圈没有球。晚上去针灸的时候居然在药房找到了球，买了两盒回来，不知道今天能不能打上。呵呵。
医生的电话 (2013-09-25 20:05:32)
上周一去抽的血。周五护士来电话，告诉我，甲状腺的一个指标还是低。所以需要加量。她直接打电话去了药房，让我下班后直接去药房取。
周六取了药。收到了验血报告。
周日去针灸的时候，把报告给针灸医生看了看。她说，她并不觉得低，应该不用加量，让我问问医生。
周一打电话给医生，她出诊去了。
护士给我回的电话，我指出那项指标并不低，为什么要加量。
护士回答不上来，说打电话问医生。
下午护士又来电话，说，看的是另一项指标，而验血的地方并没有做，是医生后来打电话让他们补做的。那个指标是很低的。
周一回到家就收到了验血报告的补充报告，果然很低。
所以只能老老实实地吃加了量的药。
周六取了药。收到了验血报告。
周日去针灸的时候，把报告给针灸医生看了看。她说，她并不觉得低，应该不用加量，让我问问医生。
周一打电话给医生，她出诊去了。
护士给我回的电话，我指出那项指标并不低，为什么要加量。
护士回答不上来，说打电话问医生。
下午护士又来电话，说，看的是另一项指标，而验血的地方并没有做，是医生后来打电话让他们补做的。那个指标是很低的。
周一回到家就收到了验血报告的补充报告，果然很低。
所以只能老老实实地吃加了量的药。
他人的读书笔记：有关青春期 (2013-09-25 22:42:24)
好象很多父母都在考虑跟青春期孩子的交流问题。我自己成长过程中就没有叛逆过，很缺乏第一手经验，但一直记得就属初中阶段最难熬，迷茫困惑的感觉，所以一直在找相关的书读。读书不能解决实际问题，但是至少可以做个思想准备。
http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/teenager/1664604.html
最近读的三本书，笔记之以为备忘录。三本之中最喜欢的是 Get Out of My Life (可译为《别来烦我》?)，从心理学角度分析孩子的言语行为，我读了才不由感叹，啊原来如此，怪不得，原来是这么一回事，跟我对身边朋友家的大孩子们的观 察一一印证了。作者是少儿心理咨询专家，理论都有大量的实例支持，言之有物，言之有理。我越来越认识到，要解决跟青春期叛逆期的孩子的交流问题，最重要的 是理解他们的所思所想。不理解，就容易做出错误的判断，盲动，瞎发脾气，让自己和孩子都不痛快！
Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager, Revised and Updated by Anthony E. Wolf PhD
Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!: Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind
by Michael J. Bradley
How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years by Julie A. Ross. M.A.
Review Notes on “Get Out of My Life”
General
Teens feel entitled (to our love, to our “service”)(it’s good) and we want them to. Their entitlement might make you mad as they take your “service” for granted.
Instilling fear as an explicit child-raising practice has some bad consequences. It can breed anger and resentment. It can intimidate and cause the intimidated to lose confidence in themselves. Worst of all, it tells the children that in the service of getting what one wants, fear and intimidation are necessary and acceptable in everyday life.
It is possible to elicit respect from teenagers. This respect can only be based on the strength and confidence of the parents.
The first step is to accept a child’s right to say what he or she has to say. No matter how stupid or unreasonable. It’s the strength not to descend to the teenager’s level of name calling that bring you respect.
You need confidence. Not that you are always going to make the right decision, nobody can do that, or that you are always in control of your child, nobody can even come close to doing that. Rather, you need confidence that you are the right person for the job and that your efforts are definitely not in vein.
The hallmark of adolescence, the transformation that defines this period of life, is a psychological change. It’s the adolescent mandate. This mandate tells the adolescent to turn away from childhood and childish feelings. Since childhood is marked by the domination of parents, it follows that adolescent must turn away from their parents.This turn towards independence, towards a world separate from family and home, has always been at the core of adolescence, today and a thousand years ago.
The course of pre-adolescent childhood is played out in the continuing struggle between the mandate to grow up, and the wish not to. On the one hand is the “baby self” which desires only the nurturing it has enjoyed for years. All pleasure. No fuss. Parents see their children act immature, irresponsible, lazy and demanding because the home is the natural realm for expressing the babyish mood of functioning. But there is the other self-beginning to develop slowly –the independent, mature self, which is usually on view only away from home, unseen by the parents.
Operating in the baby-self mode is a way not to separate from parents. Some children need to cling, often provoking endless and senseless battles. Children who are not so good at functioning on their own will probably have a tougher adolescence than their peers.
Why teenagers can’t accept “No” especially after a couple of attempts to change your mind hadn’t worked? – The teenager was being asked to accept the loss and this meant shifting over, however briefly, to the more adult, independent mood of functioning. Picking up and moving on is the separation that they dreaded. Instead of separation, they got passionate involvement for an extended period of time, even if it was in the form of yelling, crying and sucking.
The baby inside of teenagers controls their behavior. Teenagers have an infinite capacity of self-deception. This is the characteristics of the babyself: it does not look at itself. It does not judge itself. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s not anything. It has no conscience. ( so this explains why they can approach you as if nothing happened, 10 minutes after a major argument with you, after they said terrible things to you that make you feels desperate.
During adolescence, attention and concern turn to the world outside, and away from family and home. Success and failures in school and with friends seem absolute crucial to continuing survival. Everything takes on a much more desperate quality. Because adolescents don’t have much experience in life, they see only their day-to-day existence. They have no long-term perspective.
Mostly an adolescent’s love is unfocused, diffuse. It lights up the whole world and produces the sense of inchoate longing that so characterizes early adolescence. Teenagers are, in effect, in love them the world, but their love is unrequited. They have great longings, but are never quite fulfilled.
Two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the mandate that demands that teenagers turn away from childhood and parents.
Typical of Teenagers
Being near their parent creates feelings of wanting to be near them, as always before, feeling of loving them and wanting their love…because parents are the source of these unacceptable feelings, adolescents are repelled by their own parents. … so that explains why they don’t want to be in the same room with you.
Allergy to parents: The pattern of behavior caused by this allergy differs markedly for boys and girls. Boys, primarily because of their sexuality, choose the absenting method in dealing with mom and dad. They hide. Girls battle.
Boys choose to physically separate and become vanishing experts. Teenage boys become all a sudden very private. Boys are especially likely to avoid their mother. The possibility always exists that strong feelings towards one’s mother might be tangled with sexuality and therefore are extremely unacceptable. Since strong emotional contact with his mother is especially upsetting to any teenage boy, he might react strongly to his mother’s anger towards him. After all, he can’t explain the facts of life to his mother because he doesn’t know what’s really going on himself.
Boys for the most part, can’t battle verbally. They get little practice. If boys become emotional with their parents, they tend to be very emotional. Boys avoid confrontation for the excellent reason that they can’t handle it. They get too upset. It’s either fight or flight. Boys who battle their parents regularly instead of isolating themselves can encounter serious problems. They are usually boys, who, prior to their teenage years, remained strongly attached to their parents. In adolescence, their lack of separation takes the form of endless battle.
One particular irritating manifestation of the adolescent mandate in boys is a sort of absenting, even when present. They appear to do nothing. At home, boys want peace and tranquility. In this regard, parents are a special problem because they are a constant potential source of aggravation. Boys seek to achieve a state of perfect passive pleasure.
Girls solve the problem of living at home and get successfully combating their unacceptable feeling of love and dependence, by fighting everything.
Sexuality, for most teenage girls, does not have the “in the air, all the time, waiting to be attached to” quality that it has for boys.
With almost all girls, the attachment to their mother is stronger than the one to their father, and therefore the adolescent mandate requires that much more negativism in order to deny that tie with the mother.
Teenage girls also argue far more than boys do as an out-growth of earlier style of fighting and relating to peers.
Parents are to be taken for granted.
Parents should let them know that they are being inconsiderate. Parents should refuse to be bullied. They always have the option of saying “No”. Like it or not, the teenager behavior, though obnoxious, is normal. It does not mean in any kind of itself that they are selfish, inconsiderate people. It is a developmental stage, and it does change – even before the end of high school. They are still children.
Adults as Jerks
It is very important for adolescents to begin viewing adults as flawed. They know that they themselves have flaws. They also know that they are expected to go shortly into the adult world and survive. So it’s important to view parents as flawed. What they ideally want to see, especially in their parents, is adults who are flawed but who are not thrown by their own flaws, and hence are still worthy of respect. Adults who act as if they know everything are hard for teenagers to stomach. So to get along, parents need to accept that they themselves have flaws.
Parents as embarrassment
Not only do teenagers see their parents as grossly flawed, they also find them outright embarrassing, esp. when seen with them anywhere outside the home. The adolescent mandate says that teenagers must disinvest in parents and commit to the world separate from home. As a result, parents and the world out there – particularly friends do not mix at all. Comingling between parents and friends causes acute embarrassment.
Many teenagers find an adult whom they like, respect, or even listen to, but never their parents, until the end of adolescence.
Friends as everything
Adolescent girls fitting in
Girls are not confident. The underlying insecurity gives rise to much cruelty. They also develop intense attachments to girls they admire, which creates intense jealousy. The combination of insecurity and strong attachment is an unparalleled nastiness. Little can rival the viciousness and social desperation of eleven to fourteen year old girls.
The basic purpose of cliques is to give each group member a sense of self-worth, which is inextricably tied to the exclusiveness of a clique.
To an appalling degree, girls’ day-to-day feeling of self-worth is directly tied to a sense of their own popularity.
Fortunately, the stage passes. By the middle of high school, girls have usually formed more lasting relationship and are content to be part of a small but secure group of friends.
Fitting in for boys
Boys have to fight a lot (or maybe talk a lot about it) to show who is tougher. Cool replaces tough.
Parents
Letting go is the hard part, but it’s the key. Prevent disaster. Accept who they are.
Review Notes on "How to hug a Porcupine"
(her other book: Now what to do? A guide to parenting elementary aged children)
Teenage years are like holding the bow and letting go the arrow. Now it’s the time to hold back the bow and do the best you can at aiming the center of the target. In high school, you’ll have to let go the arrow and watch it fly. Whether it’s a good hit depends on how well you aim now and whether you have your bow adequately extended.
Teenage parents need to shift to a preparatory mindset, proactive and long-range stance. Change from controlling our children’s behavior to building, strengthening and fortifying our relationship with them, because you won’t be able to control them anymore. The relationship has 4 qualities: respect, support, reciprocity and collaboration.
Respect
Child’s self-worth has 4 levels in the shape of a pyramid: (from bottom up) unconditional positive regard, real accomplishment, parental feedback, and peer influence. The broader the base, the less weight peer influence will exert on our preteens.
When you treat them badly or talk to them in a harsh way(use of words, tone of voice and body language), think if you’ll treat your spouse, your best friend or anyone else this way. Do you want to be treated this way?
Support
Developmental urge: to become independent from us, to prove that they are different from us
Supporting means recognizing that their burgeoning developmental needs are in direct conflict with their reality. It means giving them healthy and appropriate outlets for their needs.
Reciprocity
Healthy adult relationships are reciprocal, which means that there’s a “give-and-take” quality to them. Compromise is required to achieve a win-win solution. Both needs are met.
Collaboration
Adopting a win-win philosophy
Methods
Listening with heart – interpret their behavior and tone, pick a time when both of you are relaxed. If your preteen is in a defensive mood, the best way to refrain from taking it personally is to walk away. If you are taking the bait and letting your temper flares, you are effectively transforming into a 12-year old yourself. In addition, you are role-modeling the very behavior that you are asking your preteen to eliminate. This is one of the most disastrous things we can do as a parent, for several reasons: 1)our children are much better at being preteen than we are; 2) our preteens need for us to remain emotionally connected and stable, because they are very unstable during this period.
How to connect with them – use “love tickets/notes” (keep it short, simple, stick to the present, and don’t ever use it to criticize)
What if they don’t listen?
1) natural consequences. It’s OK to let your child sink sometimes. It’s part of learning.
2) Use “sandwich” technique (first positive but honest statement, then use “I statement” to state the problem, followed by another positive statement of the truth. Never use “but” “however” to connect the bread).
3) Use the “tell me more” technique and explore together.
4) Use family meetings. Kids need to feel that they belong and are making meaningful contribution to something that’s bigger and more important than they are. The family meeting has to be consistent (for example, at the same time, on the same day), with an agenda and a format. Kids can choose a fun way to end each meeting, such as ice-cream or a family game of monopoly. A typical agenda may include the following: compliment one another, review anything that didn’t get resolved at last meeting, talk about new issues/discussions that need to be addressed (ep. Stay up late), hand out allowance, and close the meeting with something fun.
Dealing with Defiant Kid
Forgiving yourself is the first step in not making the mistake a second time. Confess, apologize, and forgive.
Understand their behavior: defiance and anger are ways in which they keep the world at arm’s length during their metamorphosis so they won’t get hurt. They are usually seeking attention, seeking power or control, seeking revenge (not necessarily because they are hurt), seeking withdrawal, out of a sense of inadequacy or fear of failure. If they are being defiant all the time, there’s a pattern that need to be analyzed.
If you are about to explode, disengage mentally, take a parental time-out, but only once. If the kid still can’t disengage, try different method.
For computer/games addiction, act as if we are interested and stay in with them. This help maintains the relationship and open lines of communication.
Michael Popkin, author of the video-based parenting-education program "Active Parenting", names 9 ways that parent mis-communicate with their children when the child is having a problem:
Communication Block
How it sounds
What your middle-schooler thinks when he hears you say it
Commanding
"quit whining." "Stop complaining". "Calm down."
"what I have to say is not important. " "I don't count".
Advising
"Next time, you should…" "Well, what you need to do is go back to her and explain that…"
"I never do anything right". "What happens is all my fault".
Placating
"Oh, honey. You're beautiful /talented / smart no matter what she /he said about you."
"Mom/Dad doesn't understand me." "Mom/Day is lying. "
Distracting
"You know what: let's go out to lunch to take your mind off of it".
"Feelings are bad. " "I need to bury my feelings or distract myself from them."
Interrogating
"Well, what did you do to make him say that?"
"If something bad happens, it must be because of I did something wrong."
Moralizing
"Every cloud has a silver lining." "Tomorrow's a new day; it will be better then. "
"My feelings don't count except as a way for Mom/Dad to prove a bigger lesson about life."
Using sarcasm
"It's not the end of the world, after all, you know."
"I'm a jerk/stupid for having feelings about this."
Being know-it-all
"Honey, that's just the way these things go. You have to chalk this one up for the law of averages. By the time you are twenty,…(blah, blah, blah)."
"I'm not allowed to feel the way I feel because there's always a bigger explanation that makes more sense than what I think or feel."
http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/teenager/1664604.html
最近读的三本书，笔记之以为备忘录。三本之中最喜欢的是 Get Out of My Life (可译为《别来烦我》?)，从心理学角度分析孩子的言语行为，我读了才不由感叹，啊原来如此，怪不得，原来是这么一回事，跟我对身边朋友家的大孩子们的观 察一一印证了。作者是少儿心理咨询专家，理论都有大量的实例支持，言之有物，言之有理。我越来越认识到，要解决跟青春期叛逆期的孩子的交流问题，最重要的 是理解他们的所思所想。不理解，就容易做出错误的判断，盲动，瞎发脾气，让自己和孩子都不痛快！
Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager, Revised and Updated by Anthony E. Wolf PhD
Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!: Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind
by Michael J. Bradley
How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years by Julie A. Ross. M.A.
Review Notes on “Get Out of My Life”
General
Teens feel entitled (to our love, to our “service”)(it’s good) and we want them to. Their entitlement might make you mad as they take your “service” for granted.
Instilling fear as an explicit child-raising practice has some bad consequences. It can breed anger and resentment. It can intimidate and cause the intimidated to lose confidence in themselves. Worst of all, it tells the children that in the service of getting what one wants, fear and intimidation are necessary and acceptable in everyday life.
It is possible to elicit respect from teenagers. This respect can only be based on the strength and confidence of the parents.
The first step is to accept a child’s right to say what he or she has to say. No matter how stupid or unreasonable. It’s the strength not to descend to the teenager’s level of name calling that bring you respect.
You need confidence. Not that you are always going to make the right decision, nobody can do that, or that you are always in control of your child, nobody can even come close to doing that. Rather, you need confidence that you are the right person for the job and that your efforts are definitely not in vein.
The hallmark of adolescence, the transformation that defines this period of life, is a psychological change. It’s the adolescent mandate. This mandate tells the adolescent to turn away from childhood and childish feelings. Since childhood is marked by the domination of parents, it follows that adolescent must turn away from their parents.This turn towards independence, towards a world separate from family and home, has always been at the core of adolescence, today and a thousand years ago.
The course of pre-adolescent childhood is played out in the continuing struggle between the mandate to grow up, and the wish not to. On the one hand is the “baby self” which desires only the nurturing it has enjoyed for years. All pleasure. No fuss. Parents see their children act immature, irresponsible, lazy and demanding because the home is the natural realm for expressing the babyish mood of functioning. But there is the other self-beginning to develop slowly –the independent, mature self, which is usually on view only away from home, unseen by the parents.
Operating in the baby-self mode is a way not to separate from parents. Some children need to cling, often provoking endless and senseless battles. Children who are not so good at functioning on their own will probably have a tougher adolescence than their peers.
Why teenagers can’t accept “No” especially after a couple of attempts to change your mind hadn’t worked? – The teenager was being asked to accept the loss and this meant shifting over, however briefly, to the more adult, independent mood of functioning. Picking up and moving on is the separation that they dreaded. Instead of separation, they got passionate involvement for an extended period of time, even if it was in the form of yelling, crying and sucking.
The baby inside of teenagers controls their behavior. Teenagers have an infinite capacity of self-deception. This is the characteristics of the babyself: it does not look at itself. It does not judge itself. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s not anything. It has no conscience. ( so this explains why they can approach you as if nothing happened, 10 minutes after a major argument with you, after they said terrible things to you that make you feels desperate.
During adolescence, attention and concern turn to the world outside, and away from family and home. Success and failures in school and with friends seem absolute crucial to continuing survival. Everything takes on a much more desperate quality. Because adolescents don’t have much experience in life, they see only their day-to-day existence. They have no long-term perspective.
Mostly an adolescent’s love is unfocused, diffuse. It lights up the whole world and produces the sense of inchoate longing that so characterizes early adolescence. Teenagers are, in effect, in love them the world, but their love is unrequited. They have great longings, but are never quite fulfilled.
Two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the mandate that demands that teenagers turn away from childhood and parents.
Typical of Teenagers
Being near their parent creates feelings of wanting to be near them, as always before, feeling of loving them and wanting their love…because parents are the source of these unacceptable feelings, adolescents are repelled by their own parents. … so that explains why they don’t want to be in the same room with you.
Allergy to parents: The pattern of behavior caused by this allergy differs markedly for boys and girls. Boys, primarily because of their sexuality, choose the absenting method in dealing with mom and dad. They hide. Girls battle.
Boys choose to physically separate and become vanishing experts. Teenage boys become all a sudden very private. Boys are especially likely to avoid their mother. The possibility always exists that strong feelings towards one’s mother might be tangled with sexuality and therefore are extremely unacceptable. Since strong emotional contact with his mother is especially upsetting to any teenage boy, he might react strongly to his mother’s anger towards him. After all, he can’t explain the facts of life to his mother because he doesn’t know what’s really going on himself.
Boys for the most part, can’t battle verbally. They get little practice. If boys become emotional with their parents, they tend to be very emotional. Boys avoid confrontation for the excellent reason that they can’t handle it. They get too upset. It’s either fight or flight. Boys who battle their parents regularly instead of isolating themselves can encounter serious problems. They are usually boys, who, prior to their teenage years, remained strongly attached to their parents. In adolescence, their lack of separation takes the form of endless battle.
One particular irritating manifestation of the adolescent mandate in boys is a sort of absenting, even when present. They appear to do nothing. At home, boys want peace and tranquility. In this regard, parents are a special problem because they are a constant potential source of aggravation. Boys seek to achieve a state of perfect passive pleasure.
Girls solve the problem of living at home and get successfully combating their unacceptable feeling of love and dependence, by fighting everything.
Sexuality, for most teenage girls, does not have the “in the air, all the time, waiting to be attached to” quality that it has for boys.
With almost all girls, the attachment to their mother is stronger than the one to their father, and therefore the adolescent mandate requires that much more negativism in order to deny that tie with the mother.
Teenage girls also argue far more than boys do as an out-growth of earlier style of fighting and relating to peers.
Parents are to be taken for granted.
Parents should let them know that they are being inconsiderate. Parents should refuse to be bullied. They always have the option of saying “No”. Like it or not, the teenager behavior, though obnoxious, is normal. It does not mean in any kind of itself that they are selfish, inconsiderate people. It is a developmental stage, and it does change – even before the end of high school. They are still children.
Adults as Jerks
It is very important for adolescents to begin viewing adults as flawed. They know that they themselves have flaws. They also know that they are expected to go shortly into the adult world and survive. So it’s important to view parents as flawed. What they ideally want to see, especially in their parents, is adults who are flawed but who are not thrown by their own flaws, and hence are still worthy of respect. Adults who act as if they know everything are hard for teenagers to stomach. So to get along, parents need to accept that they themselves have flaws.
Parents as embarrassment
Not only do teenagers see their parents as grossly flawed, they also find them outright embarrassing, esp. when seen with them anywhere outside the home. The adolescent mandate says that teenagers must disinvest in parents and commit to the world separate from home. As a result, parents and the world out there – particularly friends do not mix at all. Comingling between parents and friends causes acute embarrassment.
Many teenagers find an adult whom they like, respect, or even listen to, but never their parents, until the end of adolescence.
Friends as everything
Adolescent girls fitting in
Girls are not confident. The underlying insecurity gives rise to much cruelty. They also develop intense attachments to girls they admire, which creates intense jealousy. The combination of insecurity and strong attachment is an unparalleled nastiness. Little can rival the viciousness and social desperation of eleven to fourteen year old girls.
The basic purpose of cliques is to give each group member a sense of self-worth, which is inextricably tied to the exclusiveness of a clique.
To an appalling degree, girls’ day-to-day feeling of self-worth is directly tied to a sense of their own popularity.
Fortunately, the stage passes. By the middle of high school, girls have usually formed more lasting relationship and are content to be part of a small but secure group of friends.
Fitting in for boys
Boys have to fight a lot (or maybe talk a lot about it) to show who is tougher. Cool replaces tough.
Parents
Letting go is the hard part, but it’s the key. Prevent disaster. Accept who they are.
Review Notes on "How to hug a Porcupine"
(her other book: Now what to do? A guide to parenting elementary aged children)
Teenage years are like holding the bow and letting go the arrow. Now it’s the time to hold back the bow and do the best you can at aiming the center of the target. In high school, you’ll have to let go the arrow and watch it fly. Whether it’s a good hit depends on how well you aim now and whether you have your bow adequately extended.
Teenage parents need to shift to a preparatory mindset, proactive and long-range stance. Change from controlling our children’s behavior to building, strengthening and fortifying our relationship with them, because you won’t be able to control them anymore. The relationship has 4 qualities: respect, support, reciprocity and collaboration.
Respect
Child’s self-worth has 4 levels in the shape of a pyramid: (from bottom up) unconditional positive regard, real accomplishment, parental feedback, and peer influence. The broader the base, the less weight peer influence will exert on our preteens.
When you treat them badly or talk to them in a harsh way(use of words, tone of voice and body language), think if you’ll treat your spouse, your best friend or anyone else this way. Do you want to be treated this way?
Support
Developmental urge: to become independent from us, to prove that they are different from us
Supporting means recognizing that their burgeoning developmental needs are in direct conflict with their reality. It means giving them healthy and appropriate outlets for their needs.
Reciprocity
Healthy adult relationships are reciprocal, which means that there’s a “give-and-take” quality to them. Compromise is required to achieve a win-win solution. Both needs are met.
Collaboration
Adopting a win-win philosophy
Methods
Listening with heart – interpret their behavior and tone, pick a time when both of you are relaxed. If your preteen is in a defensive mood, the best way to refrain from taking it personally is to walk away. If you are taking the bait and letting your temper flares, you are effectively transforming into a 12-year old yourself. In addition, you are role-modeling the very behavior that you are asking your preteen to eliminate. This is one of the most disastrous things we can do as a parent, for several reasons: 1)our children are much better at being preteen than we are; 2) our preteens need for us to remain emotionally connected and stable, because they are very unstable during this period.
How to connect with them – use “love tickets/notes” (keep it short, simple, stick to the present, and don’t ever use it to criticize)
What if they don’t listen?
1) natural consequences. It’s OK to let your child sink sometimes. It’s part of learning.
2) Use “sandwich” technique (first positive but honest statement, then use “I statement” to state the problem, followed by another positive statement of the truth. Never use “but” “however” to connect the bread).
3) Use the “tell me more” technique and explore together.
4) Use family meetings. Kids need to feel that they belong and are making meaningful contribution to something that’s bigger and more important than they are. The family meeting has to be consistent (for example, at the same time, on the same day), with an agenda and a format. Kids can choose a fun way to end each meeting, such as ice-cream or a family game of monopoly. A typical agenda may include the following: compliment one another, review anything that didn’t get resolved at last meeting, talk about new issues/discussions that need to be addressed (ep. Stay up late), hand out allowance, and close the meeting with something fun.
Dealing with Defiant Kid
Forgiving yourself is the first step in not making the mistake a second time. Confess, apologize, and forgive.
Understand their behavior: defiance and anger are ways in which they keep the world at arm’s length during their metamorphosis so they won’t get hurt. They are usually seeking attention, seeking power or control, seeking revenge (not necessarily because they are hurt), seeking withdrawal, out of a sense of inadequacy or fear of failure. If they are being defiant all the time, there’s a pattern that need to be analyzed.
If you are about to explode, disengage mentally, take a parental time-out, but only once. If the kid still can’t disengage, try different method.
For computer/games addiction, act as if we are interested and stay in with them. This help maintains the relationship and open lines of communication.
Michael Popkin, author of the video-based parenting-education program "Active Parenting", names 9 ways that parent mis-communicate with their children when the child is having a problem:
Communication Block
How it sounds
What your middle-schooler thinks when he hears you say it
Commanding
"quit whining." "Stop complaining". "Calm down."
"what I have to say is not important. " "I don't count".
Advising
"Next time, you should…" "Well, what you need to do is go back to her and explain that…"
"I never do anything right". "What happens is all my fault".
Placating
"Oh, honey. You're beautiful /talented / smart no matter what she /he said about you."
"Mom/Dad doesn't understand me." "Mom/Day is lying. "
Distracting
"You know what: let's go out to lunch to take your mind off of it".
"Feelings are bad. " "I need to bury my feelings or distract myself from them."
Interrogating
"Well, what did you do to make him say that?"
"If something bad happens, it must be because of I did something wrong."
Moralizing
"Every cloud has a silver lining." "Tomorrow's a new day; it will be better then. "
"My feelings don't count except as a way for Mom/Dad to prove a bigger lesson about life."
Using sarcasm
"It's not the end of the world, after all, you know."
"I'm a jerk/stupid for having feelings about this."
Being know-it-all
"Honey, that's just the way these things go. You have to chalk this one up for the law of averages. By the time you are twenty,…(blah, blah, blah)."
"I'm not allowed to feel the way I feel because there's always a bigger explanation that makes more sense than what I think or feel."
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