My new bookstore

I have a Kindle. The electronic book reader. If I lived in the US I may never had bought one, but it is so nice to have instant access to so many books in English, here in Zurich. Parenting books, self-help (you're not surprised by that one, I'm sure), novels, something I just heard about on NPR.

These days, instead of roaming the aisles of a Borders' store, I roam the book pages of my favorite magazines to see the recommendations, with my Kindle next to me. And the best part is that I can download all sorts of book samples for free. I don't need to read the first 10 pages of every book I find interesting in one trip to the store. I can download them to the reader and then on a night I'm having trouble sleeping, pull one up.

And perhaps most important, baby A has not yet figured out how to turn on my Kindle. That day is coming, I know, but for now it is a boring static image. She presses a few letter keys, nothing happens, she moves along to find my iPhone or the remote control. Something more rewarding of her efforts.

At this point I have some 30 books on my reader, and just downloaded a sample of a book about adult LEGO builders. I probably won't buy the book, based on the writing, but it is nice to have a chance to browse this way.

Sure, paper books are still nice, but they get less so when you already lug a diaper bag around or have to pack for a long trip with a toddler. Or move across an ocean to a smaller living space. It is much less disappointing to not read any of 10 books when they are all in one light piece of plastic than it is to not read 10 paper books. Think of the shoes I could have packed instead!

Crying it out

When we first got the Pupper from the Human Society, we signed her (and, more importantly, us) for an 8 week training class. The head trainer was amazing, equally patient with dogs and their humans. The other trainers helping him liked dogs, but often got short with us humans. And really, the class was meant to train the humans to carry out commanding correctly. This class was a no yelling, no punishment class. All positive reinforcement. The basic principle was very simple and applied to every command:

1. Say (or hand motion) the command;

2. If the dog does nothing, you do nothing;

3. If the dog does what you wanted (perhaps coming by a gentle pull of the leash toward you those first few times), say "Yes!" all excited and happy as soon as the command has been executed and give a cookie.

A few years later, at a dog park in Tucson, the I saw the power of positive reinforcement used for a horrible purpose. A "trainer" was working with a man and his dog just outside the fence of the dog park, having the man yank the dog's choke chain harder and harder each time the dog misunderstood a command to heel while walking. Harder, harder, until I was close to an anxiety attack for the poor animal and the beautiful German Shepherd was cowering and whimpering. It was grotesque. And the "trainer" seemed to be having fun, calling out "yank! yes! yes! harder! good! good job!"

It was the first time I'd had the nerve to say something to someone else about their behavior and I managed some wavering "if you don't want to hurt your dog while training, the Human Society has great classes. This isn't training, this is abuse" the former directed at owner, the latter at "trainer." Of course the "trainer" got pretty upset with me, and I don't know if I got through to the owner. I was shaking, heart pounding.

Only later did I realize the irony of the situation - the dog had learned nothing through punishment and pain. The real results came from the positive reinforcement. The trainer was getting the owner to be more and more violent with his dog by applying the same principles our dog class teacher had - praise and encouragement. You can bet that owner would have walked away had the "trainer" said something like "you idiot, can't you even hold your dog right?" I wish I had realized that at the time.

Just as before, the dark side of positive reinforcement hit me this morning as I was reading a moms' forum about using the Cry It Out method, applied to kids who just kept crying and getting sick with despair. I've mentioned before the one incident where Baby A smacked her mouth on the crib and started bleeding which convinced me that Cry It Out just wasn't going to work for us - it went past my limit. I'd rather have a kid that wakes up more often than a bloody kid. And just like with that dog, I don't think Cry It Out works on all kids, and that it is harmful to keep using it no-matter-what. That can just land certain parents and kids in a traumatic place.

But these books, be they about Crying It Out or other parenting techniques that encourage us parents to do things that make our kids cry, bleed, throw up, get so upset...they are doing the same damn thing. Using positive reinforcement on us the readers, the parents ("Keep at it! Nothing comes easily! It's okay for kids to cry! You're a better parent for doing this!") to get us to do things to our kids that may not be where we wanted to be. That put our relationship with our kids in conflict. That encourage us to stop listening to them, in lieu of listening to some author who does not live in our house with our child.

I know, sometimes we have to say "No" and kids will cry. A lot. But I'm realizing that I want to be a whole lot more skeptical about books and blogs and "experts" who prey on my desire to be a good parent to encourage me to do things that make me uncomfortable.

Don't tell your kids they are smart

When we were back in the US for Christmas break, I picked up a book co-written by an author I like, Nurture Shock . Po Bronson had written a book about changing careers, "What Should I Do With My Life?", full of stories about people who had made huge career changes. It came at just the right time for me, as I was getting up the nerve to quit astronomy. I remember only a few things about the book (as I do with most of what I read), that I liked it, and that almost all the people in the book were forced to change careers. No one calmly sat down and wrote a list of pros and cons of being a day trader and decided it was healthier to follow their dreams of running a diner. Everyone went through a crisis - a divorce, a death in the family, a stroke or heart attack, a paralyzing depression - and this pretty much catapulted them in a new career. They could no longer do what they had been doing before. It made me realize I didn't have to be ashamed that it "took me so long to quit." Unfortunately, my will was strong enough to get me through 5 unproductive, unhappy graduate school years before a major depression hit and I couldn't continue. But that book showed me that this is the natural order of how big career changes happen to a lot of people.

Anyway, apart from recommending that book, I wanted to talk about the more recent book, Nurture Shock. It is a collection of chapters on child development, and the first chapter lands right in the middle of some of the literature I was reading for my dissertation. On praise and intelligence. The first chapter talks mostly about Carol Dweck's research on the perils of praising kids (and I extended that to adults) for their success as an outcome of being smart. Saying "good job! you're so smart" actually seems to set kids up for trouble. They start to worry that they won't be smart enough for the next task they approach and being to avoid challenges. I think of it as hearing "Each person is some fixed amount of smart. If you were smarter than this math test, the next math test could be smarter than you, and people will know you were not smart enough to pass it. You should hide how smart you are and avoid challenges because it is good to be smarter than others and bad to be less smart."

I'm not even going to get into the concept of intelligence today, but the results of Dweck's research suggest we should praise achievement by attributing it to effort - "Good job! You must have tried hard on that test." This encouraged the children in her studies to see challenges (and trying hard) as a good, fun thing. They enjoyed harder tests, even when they didn't do that well on them. In contrast, the kids who had been praised for smarts tended to try hiding any effort they had to expend.

We say "good job!" a lot around the house these days. And whenever I can, I add in something about effort. I think there is a lot to be learned from this research that applies to the culture of academia, but I'll leave that for another day.