Bully and bullying

I haven’t seen the film yet, but here are a few related reviews and commentaries I’ve read and recommend.

First, from Catherine Gobron at North Star, a point about bullying and the structure of schools.  It’s embedded in this piece of Catherine’s about the structure of North Star; third paragraph.

Next, from David Bornstein in the New York Times awhile back, on Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program and fighting bullying with the human instinct for compassion.

Third, a recent New Yorker review of Bully and The Hunger Games: Kids at Risk. Note the commentary on the film’s ratings controversy.

Finally, Common Sense Media’s review, if you’re thinking about how the film will be for young viewers.

Quick thinking

I played a great game the other night.  My performance in the game was not great.  I’d say it was lackluster at best.  It’s a fast-moving game, and I kept grinding to an entire halt.  This is a common occurrence for me in this sort of game.  When you’re new to this kind of game, it’s a good idea to not try to do it perfectly at first. It’s a better idea to just stay in it, keep up, and learn the ropes.  Mastery is for later.  (Or is this true of all games?  Of all things?)  Once I let up on myself about doing it perfectly right away, it got more fun and I got better. Old dog, new trick.

Technically, it’s a counting game.  If you can count to five, you can play.  But there’s lots more to it.  It’s a game of mental agility and flexibility, a game that encourages the brain to think in more than one direction or way at once, or maybe not if not at once, in very quick succession.  It’s good for the aging brain, to keep the neurons firing, and it’s good for the developing brain, to build the aforementioned mental agility and flexibility.  It’s also a much more fun way to work on executive function than… well, many other recommended methods. And it encourages use of the brain’s visual capacity in a way that other similar games might not, by representing quantities in five different ways. (You can take the words out to play without reading.)

Here it is.  Ratuki.  Enjoy.

Leaps and bounds

Three friends set out from here in the cold rain the other day on a four-month bicycle trip (two adults and their five year-old daughter).

I knew I’d be very excited for them, a little worried, and entirely in awe of the undertaking, but something else happened that I didn’t expect.  Throughout the day I found myself mentioning their departure to others who don’t know them.  Probably I just wanted people to know that I have friends who would take on such a thing.  But in the course of these conversations I watched as people really considered the scope of what’s possible, beyond what we tend to conceive of in the course of a regular day. “Wow,” they’d begin.  ”I don’t know, that’s a long time…” And then sometimes “It would be amazing to see part of the world that way, though, wouldn’t it?”

It’s not news that when you do something bold, or unusual, or ambitious, it inspires others to push their own limits.  But it’s easy to forget how widely the inspiration can spread.  My friends have never met the eight or ten people I told about their trip, nor the handful of people those people are likely to tell.  But their choice to strike out in the stormy weather, with the promise of all manner of adventure, fright, relief, and victory, prompted these many strangers to ask themselves what they wouldn’t otherwise have asked – Could I do that?  Would I want to?  Should I stop not doing the things I’ve been hesitant to try?

Lemonade and beyond

When I was nine, I wanted to go to theater camp. I was determined to become an actor and I’d taken all the related classes and workshops that were available in my hometown.  I’d been in all the plays I could get into and I wanted something that seemed only to be available somewhere else.

At first it looked as though I was going to be able to go, but then something happened with my family’s budget (I don’t know exactly what) and my parents faced the unpleasant task of telling me it wasn’t going to work. I asked, my parents said they’d try, and then ultimately they made the decision that it wasn’t prudent given the family finances at the time.

I’ve never asked why I couldn’t go because I know my parents well enough to know that if there was any way they could have sent me they would have.  It’s likely that my staying home that summer meant that we all got to continue eating and living in our house.  I don’t harbor any ill will toward them or the decision.

What I realize now, though, is that there was a possible piece missing from the scenario that would likely not have resulted in a different outcome with respect to camp attendance, but might have given me a different outlook for that experience and future ones like it.

What if instead of “Sorry, we can’t do it,” my parents had said to me “We don’t have the money for your camp in the budget right now. Here’s how much it costs, and here’s how much we can pay of it.  Let’s see if we can think of a way to come up with the rest together, and then figure out if we have enough time to do it before the money’s due for your camp.”

Why not?  To avoid a possible second round of disappointment?  I think that’s why we don’t tend to have this kind of conversation with kids.  We feel terrible, if we find ourselves in a situation where we can’t give them whatever it is they want or need, so we break the news quickly and then change the subject (often with a trip to the ice cream shop, or an extended allowance for screen time; anything that says we’re sorry that’s beyond words).

It’s a missed opportunity, though – a missed opportunity to invite participation and collaboration.  The suggestion to work together on a fundraising effort might result in further disappointment if the goal is still not met, but it will also send the message that kids can have agency in the course of their own lives.   They are not at the mercy of adult circumstance and conclusion. (And really, it’s not likely that there’ll be more disappointment; it just won’t be over with as soon.)

Let’s say it’s fifty additional dollars you need to close the gap on a set of Legos.  (And this example can be mapped onto items and experiences with any number of decimal places; colored pencils, iPods, sports camps, pianos, trips overseas; the scope will of course vary from family to family and child to child.) You and your child sit down and map out a plan for how to gather the additional funds.  She makes suggestions, you make suggestions, you each share any concerns or ideas you have about the various suggestions.  You may be surprised by her suggestions. One might well be “have a lemonade stand,” because kids learn early that lemonade is more or less the understood boundary of young earning potential.  (Adults tend to get uneasy thinking of kids doing any more “work” than what’s involved in lemonade sales, so we limit our imaginations to the lemonade, even though it’s very possible for kids to earn money by other entirely safe, non-exploitative means that don’t sacrifice education.)  But she might also say “How much would we save if I only had one scoop instead of two the next time we get ice cream?” or “There are a lot of toys I don’t use anymore, maybe I could have a yard sale and sell some of them,” or “Maybe I could sell the cards I’ve been making with my photos,” or even “How much do you have to have to invest in the stock market?”  Kids tend to be more creative and think farther outside of the usual than adults do. The way you’re likely to be of most service is by helping troubleshoot any ideas that are good but may be tricky to carry out.  Together you decide when and where to start, whose help you’ll enlist, and other logistical details.  You put some things in the calendar.  You choose a time frame for completing the plan.

The end of that time frame comes, and maybe the goal is met, maybe it’s not met.  Maybe it’s exceeded, or maybe your child has lost interest in the Legos.  Maybe she’s decided she’d like a bigger or different set after all and you return together to the drawing board to renegotiate and strategize together.

Regardless of the financial outcome, this child has the experience of being included, of being treated like a participant and partner, of confronting the actual financial realities of making a purchase, of weighing the relative costs of raising money for something, of working with someone else toward a common goal… The list of likely benefits is long, and they’re different benefits from the ones available when we tell kids they can save up their “own” money for something.  Saving is of course a useful skill and lesson, but for most kids it entails mostly inaction as opposed to action. Including them in the generation of funds offers another set of benefits, not the least of which is that instead of “you’re on your own if you want this,” they hear “we’re in this together, let’s see what we can accomplish.”

The cost of these benefits may feel high at the moment when we realize that we can’t just say a quick yes (especially when the item or experience requested is something we know is going to be of great benefit to the child).  But if we find it in ourselves to move through that discomfort into the realm of collaborative strategy, we can facilitate great growth and agency.

And once we’ve done it, we’ve increased the chances that kids will come to us not with “Can I have a/Can I go to…” but with “Can we see if we can come up with the money for me to…” What an advantage that could be when later they’re out on their own, finding their ways through the world…

Rules and tools

I was helping an 8 year-old with a math problem the other day.  It looked like this:

She pointed to Luke’s pencil and said “Well, it’s not this one because you aren’t supposed to start in the middle of the ruler.” She then proceeded to try to convince herself in various ways that one of the others (besides Luke’s and Nate’s) was right.

It’s possible that no one actually told her “you aren’t supposed to.”  Someone is more likely to have said “don’t,” by which that person meant “it’s easier math-wise to do it this way.”

But we don’t tend to say things that way.  We tend, in the interest of simplicity, we imagine, to say things like “don’t” and “you should” and so kids get into the habit of turning our words into rules.  Rules that in cases like this make tools (like rulers) more difficult to use.  Every time we tell kids how to do something rather than telling them it’s how we do it, we train them to hear things as rules.  It keeps them from investigating, and then they not only get stuff wrong on tests, they don’t learn how the stuff really works.

In the case of the ruler, if kids have the chance to notice that when you don’t start at zero you have to account for the extra space between zero and the beginning of whatever you’re measuring, they get to realize what the ruler’s actually doing. Rather than feeling, as many of them do, as though the ruler is  just another mystery invented by the adults, and their only chance of survival in the world of adult rules is to do as we say and hope they don’t forget one of the rules.  When they’ve had the chance to explore and really come to understand, they’re less likely to panic if one day a test question comes along, asking them to, like this one did, really notice and account for length. Not to mention that often in the course of real life activity (sewing, building, decorating), it’s actually easier to pinch a measuring tape at, say, two and 14 and hold the resulting 12 inches where you want them than it is to try to anchor the awkward zero end of the tape, and stop at the 12.

One way to help kids find their way to the kind of understanding that will allow them to use tools and knowledge effectively and comfortably is to acknowledge that when we show them how to do things, we’re really just showing them how we do things.

Toughing it out

I’ve been thinking about one of the arguments I often hear for keeping kids in school even when they’re miserable, even when it’s taking a toll on their confidence and vitality.  “They need to learn to deal with hardship,” people often tell me.  “Life isn’t easy, so we shouldn’t make childhood easy.  I’ve had hard times, and it made me stronger. I learned determination and how to cope.”

I don’t disagree that hard times and challenge can make people stronger.  But there are two things that concern me about this line of thinking.  First, there are different kinds of hard times.  There are naturally occurring hard times (sickness, loss of a loved one), hard times that one chooses (a craft to master or a dream to realize) and then there are hard times that one party manufactures for the presumed sake of another.  Different types of hard times and challenge yield different lessons and results.  Adults don’t tend to say “School was a miserable experience for me, but I’m so glad I had to suffer through it.” I do however hear a lot of people say things like “I’m so glad I didn’t quit taking karate when it got hard, because now I know I’m capable of more than I sometimes realize.”

The nature of the hard times makes a difference. The ones we insist on just for the sake of teaching the art of surviving hard times don’t seem to have the same positive effect as the ones that are naturally occurring or chosen.

Second, it seems to me that even if we’ve decided that it’s worth it to impose hard times on a person (as we do when we force school and other mandates on kids), we’d be wise to more carefully consider the relative cost.  Maybe kids are learning valuable lessons by enduring the hardship that school is for many of them.  But at what cost?  Does the benefit justify the cost?

I mentioned the book Reality is Broken a few weeks back.  I’m further into the text now and still maintain that it’s one of the top few books I’d recommend to parents trying to understand the various preferences and resistances that are common among present-day children (attraction to video and other games, interest in technology, lack of interest in and commitment to traditional academic training, in spite of ability and potential).  In the author’s discussion of Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi‘s work on flow “(the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning,” according to Csíkszentmihályi), she mentions Csíkszentmihályi’s belief that the structure of games can teach us a great deal about the structure of good sustainable work.  ”Games teach us how to create opportunities for freely chosen, challenging work that keeps us at the limits of our abilities, and those lessons can be transferred to real life.  Our most pressing problems – depression, helplessness, social alienation, and the sense that nothing we do truly matters – could be effectively addressed by integrating more gameful work into our everyday lives.”

Kids are (often desperately) trying to get us to realize this.  They arrive with the intuition and wisdom to recognize which things are going to offer that experience of accomplishment and heightened functioning, and which are not.  We think that as adults we know better.  We think that if we give kids too much freedom to pursue what intrigues and inspires them they will not be prepared for adulthood.  But do we know that for sure?  And if we don’t, isn’t the world in dire enough straits – financially, socially, emotionally – to merit our taking the time and energy to consider that the way we’ve been doing things thus far may be flawed or lacking in some way? That kids might in fact know something about preparing one’s self to thrive in the world that we’ve lost sight of?

Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken walks readers through the ways in which games are structured such that they can teach us how to engage with the world in a satisfying way that gives us the experience of exhilaration and even joy while including challenge and hardship, calling on our capacity for persistence and determination in the face of it.

Many of us are often so resigned to our own plights of boredom, anxiety, and worse that we storm around insisting that real life is real life and it’s hard, so stop trying to play.  Get serious.  McGonigal invites us to consider that it may in fact be that the things we truly need – safety and security, good health, joy and contentment – become more readily available when our first priority is to connect people with the activities that offer them the most engagement and sense of accomplishment. The way games do.

What if kids aren’t looking for an easy way out when they turn away from the things we’re accustomed to insisting upon, when they turn toward the likes of games and other things we think are “just for fun?”  What if they’re looking for vitality, connection, accomplishment, and we’d be wise to let their wisdom set us on a new course?

Now and later

In case you haven’t seen it yet, check out the story of a 9 year-old in Los Angeles who built an arcade out of cardboard.

The film is getting lots of attention for this child’s creation, and it’s getting donations for a college fund the filmmakers have set up.  I’m hoping that the collection will be helpful for this family, but I can’t help wondering if the donations could be even better used.  This guy’s already building and imagining complex designs and solutions.  What if instead of setting aside money for him to use for college several years from now, they arranged to fund an apprenticeship to a successful inventor, or hired him a business manager to help market what he thinks up?  What if we found a way to support him without making him wait to go to college to get qualified to make use of the skill and ingenuity he’s already using?

Addendum: Better yet, what if instead of only offering help to him and his family, we took the opportunity to ask for his help?  To invite him to consult on any of the myriad design, engineering, logistical problems that currently challenge us.  Now, while his mind is clearly flexible enough to be resourceful, to think in new unexpected ways, to make purposeful (and repurposeful) use of things and ideas, to turn vision into reality.

For your young engineer/inventor/technician/designer/artist

Wow.  Look at this.

Room to grow

One summer I worked with a 10 year-old who’d been attending a small private school where her mother worked and was headed for public middle school in the fall.  Her parents were concerned that she wasn’t prepared.

This 10 year-old has an older sister, so she had an idea of what would be expected of her in middle school.  The thing she was the most worried about was missing the bus.  She knew herself to be distractible in the mornings, and did not want to be late for school.  So we got to work on a system (involving markers, clipboards, and clocks) that would prevent that from happening.

Each time her dad picked her up from my office, he’d  mention that he thought it would be good for us to work on multiplication soon.  Each time, his daughter would roll her eyes.

Finally one week she said firmly “Dad.  I’m not worried about the multiplication.”

“I don’t think you understand,” he pleaded. “Your classmates are going to have their multiplication memorized.  You don’t know yours by heart yet, so if you get asked in class, I’m afraid you’ll be embarrassed.”

“But I don’t care if I can’t do them fast, Dad. I know how to do them.”

I was reminded of that exchange this morning when I passed a family en route to school in my neighborhood.  The approximately 7 year-old child was wearing shorts and long sleeves.  The adults were wearing jackets and hats and the like (as was I; it was 39 degrees).  I heard myself thinking “He must be freezing!”

Just because I would have been. This is a habit we often fall into when it comes to advising young people – assuming that their experience of something is as ours would be. We don’t want them to be uncomfortable, so we tell them what we think they should do to avoid discomfort.  But there’s empathy – being sensitive to what someone else might experience – and then there’s projection.

When we’re careful not to mix the two (or at least own up to and fix it when we do), we make it possible for kids to have their own experiences, and even to get stronger than we ever got.

My young middle school-bound friend was confident in a way that her dad knew he wouldn’t have been under matching circumstances.  She was socially comfortable enough to know that anyone who’d judge or tease her for taking a few seconds to find her way through 6 times 8 wasn’t someone she was going to want as her friend.  And that she would find the ones she did want.  Her dad had played a part in raising daughters with this kind of confidence, and once he realized that she was OK with her slow multiplication, he could let her boldly tread where he wouldn’t have dared.  He’d called her attention to the area of possible discomfort, so he knew she’d been fairly warned. From there she could choose how to manage it. As it turned out, she had a confidence and ease he hadn’t had at the age of 10.  Which of course was exactly what he always wanted.

Unvilifying the video games

I’m reading Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, about how games (of the video variety in particular) may not be the useless waste of time and brain power they’re reputed to be.

It’s one of the most powerful pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time.  I don’t play video games, and until I started reading the book I wished that fewer people would play them less of the time.  That wish didn’t stop me from encouraging parents to resist the temptation to forbid the playing of video games out of hand, and vilify screen time in general, but I still wished.

So I’ll say this.  If you have or know a child who likes to play video (or other) games, and you find yourself trying to get him or her to play less, this could be one of the most important books you ever read.  Not because it will necessarily change your mind about anything (so please try not to resist because you’re afraid it will do that).  Rather because it will offer you a perspective on why your child is drawn to these games that casts him or her in a much more favorable light than the video-games-are-bad rhetoric allows.

And even if you don’t know such a child, McGonigal’s insights on work, happiness, social interaction, and the way we solve and don’t solve large-scale problems make it worth the read as well.

Here’s a passage from early in the book:

“When we’re in a concentrated state of optimistic engagement, it suddenly becomes biologically more possible for us to think positive thoughts, to make social connections, and to build personal strengths.  We are actively conditioning our minds and bodies to be happier. 

If only hard work in the real world had the same effect.  In our real lives, hard work is too often something we do because have to do it – to make a living, to get ahead, to meet someone else’s expectations, or simply because someone else gave us a job to do.  We resent that kind of work.  It stresses us out.  It takes time away from our friends and family.  It comes with too much criticism.  We’re afraid of failing.  We often don’t get to see the direct impact of our efforts, so we rarely feel satisfied. 

Or, worse, our real-world work isn’t hard enough.  We’re bored out of our minds.  We feel completely underutilized.  We feel underappreciated.  We are wasting our lives.

When we don’t choose hard work for ourselves, it’s usually not the right work, at the right time, for the right person.  It’s not perfectly customized for our strengths, we’re not in control of the work flow, we don’t have a clear picture of what we’re contributing to, and we never see how it all pays off in the end.  Hard work that someone else requires us to do just doesn’t activate our happiness systems in the same way.  It all too often doesn’t absorb us, doesn’t make us otpimistic, doesn’t invigorate us.

What a boost to global net happiness it would be if we could positively activate the minds and bodies of hundreds of millions of people by offering them better hard work.”

Indeed. Jane McGonigal’s interested in a happier, more productive world.  We mightn’t expect such a commitment expressed in the form of a book about video games, but that’s what she’s done.  It’s quite something.