Conversations with Carter

Carter: I know everything because God told me everything.

Me:  Really?? That's amazing!  Tell me what you know.

Carter:  Well, there's one thing I don't know.  I don't know why there are trees.

Me:  Oh, so there's one thing you don't know.  But, what DO you know?

Carter:  Well... I don't know anything because he took it away.  Sad.

book review, part 1

So I’m back to blogging, but this time, I’m kicking it up a couple notches as far as the depth of my content goes.  I will be reviewing a book that I am reading for my summer graduate course called Punished by Rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A’s, praise and other bribes, by Alfie Kohn, first published in 1993. 

My class doesn’t start for another week and a half, but I’ll have to present on this book as part of a team project that makes up a huge chunk of my grade.  And once the class starts, I’ll have a ton of other reading to do each week, so I thought I’d get a head start on this book.  I decided that I should take notes on the book as I go along, to help me remember the content.  I’ve read the first 2 chapters, and I’m finding it interesting, so I thought I’d type up my thoughts and post them on my blog, maybe others will find it interesting.  If it’s not interesting to you -  no big deal – I’m practicing my writing skills and will most likely have a much better understanding of the book!

In this book, Kohn challenges the very foundation of almost everything in our current society – application of Skinner’s behaviorism to so much of what we do in parenthood, education and work.  The first chapter, “Skinner-boxed: the legacy of Behaviorism” provides an overview of behaviorism (along with some excerpts from Skinner’s writings and interviews that led me to believe that Skinner had some issues with personal relationships, maybe he had Asperger’s?), and connects it to how we use the principles of behaviorism in society, which he refers to as “pop behaviorism.”  Pop behaviorism can be summed up as “Do this and you’ll get that” and has been generally accepted as the best way to teach children and manage employees.  Kohn challenges this assumption and sets out in this book to show how this rewards system is not only ineffective, but harmful.

“If we constantly see people being manipulated with rewards, we may come not only to accept this as natural but also to assume the tactic can be generalized: if we pay adults for working, why not children for reading? And we reward children, they may absorb the message that the way to get other people to do what they want is to bribe them.” (p. 15)

Why is pop behaviorism so pervasive?  It takes “courage and thought” to teach children self-control and problem solving, to examine the appropriateness of our expectations, to manage a workplace environment and inspire workers to do their best work.  But giving out stickers or offering bonuses to get the results you want? That “is seductively simple to apply” (p. 17).   Kohn recognizes that in the short-term, the method seems effective, but he questions the long-term effects:  “The negative effects appear over a longer period of time…the more rewards are used, the more they seem to be needed…the other, more substantive reasons for you to do your best tend to evaporate, leaving you with no reason to try except for obtaining a goody.” (p.17).  He says that he’ll go into more depth on this in a later chapter.

In chapter two, “Is it right to reward,” Kohn questions the use of rewards as a moral consideration, apart from its effectiveness.  There are 2 opposing viewpoints that he considers: 1) that people ought to be rewarded for their work and 2) that there is something inherently objectionable about giving rewards in the first place.

The first viewpoint is supported by the equity principle: “that people should get what they deserve.”  This based on the idea that if you work hard, you will succeed.  Seems logical, until one examines it more closely.  “What if the result of hard work is failure?” or who gets to define success? Or if it’s a team effort, who is responsible for the success?  (This section made me think of all the top business/financial executives who took huge bonuses, despite having run their companies, and our economy, into the ground.)

Kohn also notes that there are examples when the equity principle shouldn’t apply anyway – does a parent give out dinner to his kids based on how much they can contribute to the household? No, that’s silly.  In this analogy, he also says that policymakers struggling over health care resources don’t “automatically assume that the most productive contributors to society (whatever that means) should get the most care.” (p. 22) As this point, I questioned Kohn’s credentials as an American, but as this book was written a while ago and before the recent health care debate, I’ll give him some grace for this analogy.  Maybe Americans were philosophically more compassionate towards the uninsured 20 years ago??

Ultimately, I think that Kohn’s critique of this approach is that situations are often too nuanced, or life is sometimes simply unfair, for an across-the-board method of  “you get what you deserve.”

Kohn turns his attention to the 2^nd perspective, which he supports - that there is something objectionable about using rewards in the first place.  Skinner is famous for his experiments in getting hungry lab rats to push buttons or something like that, then extrapolating that data to inform ideas of human behavior.   Kohn states though, that “even to suggest that we learn or work only in order to obtain rewards…is not only inaccurate but demeaning as well” (p. 25).   Later on, he describes how researchers are recognizing that humans are curious, strive to overcome challenges, seek to master skills, etc. intrinsically, so we don’t need rewards to motivate us.  But, “when we repeatedly promise rewards to children for acting responsibly, or to students for making an effort to learn something new, or to employees for doing quality work, we are assuming that they could not or would not chose to act this way on their own.  If the capacity for responsible action, the natural love of learning, and the desire to do good work are already part of who we are, they the tacit assumption to the contrary can fairly be described as dehumanizing.” (p. 26)

Even worse than the dehumanizing offer of rewards is the underlying purpose – we offer rewards and incentives in order to control another person’s actions or behavior.  “Anyone who is troubled by a model of human relationship founded principally on the idea of one person controlling another must ponder whether rewards are as innocuous as they are sometimes made out to be.” (P. 26). 

Kohn goes on to describe the use of “token economies” that used to be popular in mental hospitals and schools.  He spoke of the “height of their popularity” as past tense, but I’m pretty sure it is still very popular in schools because both of the elementary schools we have attended, and my friends’ schools, have used a similar system, often referred to as positive behavior support. Basically it’s a reward system where students receive some sort of tokens when they are caught showing good behavior, then they can trade those tokens in for rewards, prizes, privileges, etc.  This system is appalling to Kohn: “it is difficult to imagine a more flagrant example of control than one person’s giving another a token redemeeable for candy or privileges to reward him for being ‘cooperative’” (p.27).  I think this critique is a little extreme – yes, I can imagine more flagrant examples of “control,” examples that are much worse.  I would say this is a subtle example of manipulation, not blatant control.  (Maybe I’m biased, because the token economies at my kids’ schools have been positive experiences.  And the system is designed as an alternative to punishing bad behavior, it’s used to promote good behavior, help define that behavior for kids, etc., not controlling kids.) 

This chapter gets into some interesting territory here, because his definition of “rewards” is very broad and targets several strategies that I have used in my own parenting and programs in my boys’ schools.  I like a lot of the things that he says, but I’ll have to wait until he explains his ideas in more depth “later in the book,” before I can really decide if his ideas have merit and value.  Basically, now I’m left wondering how to get my sons to help around the house – if I can’t use punishment or reward, he’s not internally motivated and doesn’t care about my logical arguments for why it’s necessary, or how it will make him a better person.  Or how schools are supposed to teach good character and appropriate behavior to classrooms full of kids.  So these later chapters need to have some good info, and I’m looking forward to reading them!

Conversations with Carter

As is probably the case with most households of school aged children, Knock-Knock jokes are the source of much fun and entertainment.  Even Carter (aged 2) has started to get in on the action, but he seems to get mixed up with some other verbal communication activities.  Here's his current version of a knock-knock joke, which he repeats often:

Carter:  Knock-Knock
Mommy:  Who's there?
Carter: Apple
Mommy: Apple who?
Carter: Fries, Chicken Nuggets and CHOC-IT MILK!

ummm, someone's been ordering at McDonalds too much....

Cute

 

There is so much cute in this picture.  From Carter's cowboy boots, mismatched pjs and elmo hat to Charlie's Christmas-themed, fleece footy jammies in July, all cuddled together on the chair playing video games.  Love summer.

Flappy

 

These are some pictures of when we rescued a bird who got tangled in our soccer net.  His wing was tangled up pretty bad and sadly, our rescue was not enough.  "Flappy" passed away before we were able to get him to a wildlife rescue worker.  The boys gave him a lovely funeral service and burial in the woods at the end of the street. 

Conversations with Charlie

So we're going on a week-long cruise soon (yes, with the kids!) and I was asking Coulson and Charlie what they wanted to do on our vacation - beach, pool, explore, adventure, etc...

Charlie immediately responded "sleep."  After some more prodding, he finally also admitted he would like to "play video games."

(And I was looking at some back posts and found this similar conversation)

Coulson responded that he wants to eat.  I have the most exciting kids ever!  Although I'm pretty sure Carter will be a bit more adventurous - when I saw the movie 127 hours (the rock climber who got stuck and had to cut his arm off with a pocket knife) I had fearful premonitions of Carter's insatiable quest for adventure.  Maybe he'll let me tag along on his adventures...

Conversations with Coulson

As we were driving in the car today, I was helping Coulson with his multiplication and division tables.  We were working specifically on multiples of 3, and since Coulson prefers word problems, I was making up some fun problems for him.

"If I had 18 M&Ms and I divided them among you and your brothers, how many M&Ms would you each get?"
"six"

"If I had 9 M&Ms and I divided them among you and your brothers, how many M&Ms would you each get?"
"three"

"If I had 15 cupcakes and I divided them among you and your brothers, how many cupcakes would you each get?"
he took about a second longer, then answered correctly "one"

(because he knew I would never let him have 5 cupcakes)

the next david copperfield/blaine....

Maybe I'm not such an absent-minded mom who forgets to lock the cabinets to keep her toddler safe -- after careful observation today, I can confidently confirm that Carter can indeed work a little magic and bust through a certain style of child lock.  The kind on the cabinet where I keep the flour and powdered sugar.  But the lock on the cabinets under the sink seem to work well, so it looks like I'll be buying some new child locks today....

Hide and Seek

Where's Carter????

Peek-a-boo! I found you!
(he's in the dryer...)

Mr. Mayhem almost causes tragedy

I think I just lost 15 years of my life in 15 minutes of parental
terror! Carter locked himself in the car with the only set of keys.
Thankfully it was 6:00 in the evening and not the full heat of midday
(and we're in NY, not NC, where it's probably still 90 degrees at 6pm)
so we had some more time to get him out. The volunteer fire department
of Tivoli responded quickly, but finally we got Carter to push the
right button so we didn't need any drastic measures. I have a big
grateful heart tonight! Going out for ice cream now.

Why I Don't Blog Anymore

a.k.a. Carter

I haven't been regular with blogging lately and I also haven't updated you on all the new things Carter has been learning and enjoying lately.  I could provide some extended commentary, but I think I'll just let the videos and pictures say it best.

Why we moved to a booster seat already...

 

On this particular day, he was standing on the floor near the window when I walked to the other side of the kitchen to put a dish in the sink and throw away some trash.  I turned around and saw this new climbing skill!  (which he has repeated about 50 times everyday since then, and I'm not even exaggerating...)

Dog's Best Friend

The sad thing about this next video is that he did the exact same thing the day before but with powdered sugar.  When Coulson realized it was powdered sugar, he tried to lick it off the floor!  Yes, I have a child-lock on the cabinet with the flour and sugar, but I keep forgetting to latch it when I'm cleaning up the kitchen.

 

And while I was blogging the previous post about the upholstery tacks the other day, he learned this new skill - pushing his chair to the counter so he can reach things on top!

 And while I was uploading the first of these many videos, I thought he was with his brothers, but then I noticed his brothers were in the other room without him, so I went off in search of "Mr. Mayhem."  I found him in my bath tub, water running and Carter, fully dressed with shoes on, soaking wet.  His brothers were with him when this started, but they neglected to inform me of his escapades.

He's only 16 months old!  As you see, just trying to wash the dishes is hazardous to his health, so I'm really having a hard time blogging.  It's a shame, because all my kids are so cute and doing wonderful things and I'd love to share more!

Don't sign me up for "Mom of the Year"...

So Carter (16 months old) walks in the room and I can tell by the smile in his eyes that he has something in his mouth.  

"What's in your mouth?  Spit it out."  And this is what he spits out into my hand: 8 upholstery tacks and a bead.

A poem

A poem by Coulson, who is now 7 years old.  7 YEARS OLD!!!! I begged him to stay 6 for just a little bit longer, but he refused to comply... And now he's writing poetry???

Orange

If you want to find orange
go to Hawaii
and watch a volcano erupt,
OR
eat a juicy orange,
OR
go into the woods
and find an orange snake,
If you want to find orange.

Jedi Training, part 2

Charlie's turn

Kitchen reorganization in action

Oh No...

Carter has mastered the skill of opening cabinets and emptying them of
their contents. And he's fast.

Jedi Training, part 1

Conversations with Charlie

Charlie is very much my son - he looks just like me and has my same
easy-going personality. Sometimes I wonder if he has any of Casey's
genes. Then we have moments like this and I don't have to wonder any
more...

It's our 3rd day at Disney World. Charlie climbs into bed with us this
morning, cuddles with us and says, "I want to go home so I can play
video games."

Sent from my iPhone

A Decade's Worth of Procrastination

(My college roomies will enjoy this!)

12 years ago, during the same Christmas break when Casey proposed to me, his mother helped me pick out a pattern and fabric for a quilt (she’s a great quilter).  Choosing the right pattern was important because I didn’t have a sewing machine at the time (she got me one for Christmas a few years later) so I needed a pattern that could be done mostly by hand.  So we chose a pattern called “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” which was mostly hand appliqué.  Basically I hand stitched all of the half-circles on each square.  There are 4 half-circles on each square and the quilt is made up of 108 squares. Then the squares were pieced together with a sewing machine.  I’ve blogged before about my skillful procrastination techniques and, boy, was this a mammoth of a project to procrastinate! 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the process, here’s a brief outline –

First, you piece together the top of the quilt.  This is the nice decorated part.

Then, you take the fabric you are using for the back of the quilt, a layer of batting (fluffy stuff for the middle) and the top and sew the three layers together with long, loose stitches.  This is called basting and it holds the layers together during the quilting process.  These stitches get pulled out after it is finished.

Finally, the quilting - these are the tiny stitches that run all over the quilt.  You can hand quilt or machine quilt.  Hand quilting instills an heirloom quality.  Machine quilting is faster and good for quilts that will face repeated washings and rough treatment (good idea for kids’ quilts).  Wanting to maximize my opportunities for procrastination, naturally I chose to hand quilt…

I can’t remember exactly when I finished the top of the quilt and basted it together, but it was either before Coulson was born, or when he was still an infant, so I’m going to guesstimate it around 7 years ago.  Well, it turns out, hand quilting’s not really much my thing.  My barely quilted quilt sat around for years.  About a year ago, my mom was going to Florida to visit her cousins and I knew that one of her cousins was a huge quilter.  So I tossed my project in my mom’s car and begged her to ask her cousin to finish it for me.  Then I forgot about it…

So I was super excited to unwrap this at Christmas!  12 years worth of procrastination and finally outsourced, but my quilt is finished!!!

Dirty Laundry Triage

About two weeks ago, our washing machine broke.  The repairman looked at it briefly and said, “That’s not good.”  We had to order a new, expensive part and of course he would have to take apart the whole machine, so labor would be intensive.  Yay!  Well, it took a whole week for the part to arrive and then the snow came, so we weren’t able to get an appointment for the repair until Thursday morning.  So the laundry has been piling up.  I did take some laundry to my mom’s house once, but mostly was just waiting to get my machine fixed.  Friday we were leaving for vacation, so my plan was to wash laundry all day Thursday after the repair.

Thursday morning two repairmen arrive and start to dismantle the washing machine.  The boys were fascinated by this, naturally.  After a while, they leave the house and go out to the van.  They were out there for a long time, so I looked out the window to see them both sitting in the van with one on the phone.  I tell Casey, “I don’t think this is good…”

Sure enough, when they come back in they say, “It’s not good.”  I won’t bore you with all the details, but I didn’t get my washing machine fixed that morning.  We were faced with the unhappy dilemma deciding to spend a ton of money to get a fairly new machine fixed (It’s less than 3 years old) or toss it and buy a brand new one.  I try to curb unnecessary consumption of goods – If it’s not broke, don’t replace it, and if it can be fixed, fix it – so I opted to fix it, although Casey (and many others we’ve spoken with) thinks the machine will never run the same again.  But if it cleans my clothes, it works for me. 

****But Casey does want me to highlight his dissatisfaction with Whirlpool and their lack of regard for the quality in their product; it should not have broken after less than 3 years! We were able to buy the replacement part for half price, but we’ll still have to pay labor, so we were hoping to get it for free.  (Whirlpool says it’s company policy to only give half off, but the repairmen were the ones who told us to ask to get it free, which makes us think that other manufactures might replace poor quality parts for free)   Bad Whirlpool!

Anyway, as I mentioned before, we were leaving for vacation the next day and by now I have mountains of dirty laundry.  Thank goodness for wonderful friends!  I triaged the laundry – picking the clothes that we would most likely take with us on our trip – and took a couple loads to my friend’s house.  She had to work that day and her mother was there watching the kids.  And her mom is just like my mom, always helping around the house.  Actually as I arrived, she was busy fixing the door to their laundry closet.  So I popped in my first load and told her I was going to run some errands and come back to finish in an hour.  She convinced me to just let her put in the next load and not worry about it.  So when I went to my friend’s house later that night, all of the laundry was clean, dry and neatly folded in my laundry basket.  Awesome!  (My friend was disappointed that her secret weapon had been revealed - now I know how she makes working motherhood look so easy!)

So I got the most important laundry clean and thankfully we will be staying in a condo with laundry facilities.  Although I am not looking forward to all the laundry that awaits me when I get home….