REWARD

I was sharpening my largest knife.  Preparing to slice/chop/mince.

Youngest Child leans beside a cutting board stacked with onions, garlic, carrots, celery and peppers.

"Can I help, Mom?"

He is twelve years old. I adore him.

When he was 5, he tried surfing on the arm of a chair and fell nose first into an end table.

When he was 7, he discovered an old switch blade in the woods. Following a trail of miniature blood drops from patio to closed bathroom door, I found him trying to bandaid a fingertip that needed six stitches.

Nowadays he climbs to the canopies of 60 ft Sycamore trees - because they offer a much better view than the rooftop of our house.

Youngest Child is twelve. I adore him. He scares the bejeebers out of me.

"I'm about to start dinner," I answer casually. " How would you like to help?"

"I’ll chop the onions and garlic, K?"

Youngest Child eyes the knife I am holding. My minds-eye video reel of beloved boy surfing/switchblading/sycamoring begins spinning, inducing vivid recollections of FEAR.

  
The steel blade that I am holding flashes and gleams. It has morphed into an evil Disney character.

I take a singer’s breath and pull the cutting board toward me. “Let me show you how to hold the knife,” I say. “The goal is chopped onions, bud. Not chopped fingertips.”

The expression in Youngest Child’s eyes? Shock and Joy.  “I can do it, Mom. I’ll be careful.”

He did it. Magnificently. I watched each slice, chop, and mince, marveling that my twelve year old more capably prepared those onions and garlic than many a sous chef.

I wondered what other tasks he or his siblings might execute so well: tasks I never tasked them with, because they were too young, or the job too difficult or dangerous.

Youngest Child Chopping came to mind today as I read What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind by Alison Gopnik in the Wall Street Journal. Gopnik, a professor of psychology at U Cal Berkeley explains that over the past generation, the developmental timing of the two different neural and psychological systems that interact to transform children into adults has changed, profoundly altering adolescence and producing new kinds of adolescent angst.

Essentially, puberty begins much earlier than ever, but children take on adult roles much later.

 
The first system, dealing with emotion and motivation, is closely linked to the biological and chemical changes of puberty, and involves the areas of the brain that respond to rewards. Research studies suggest that adolescents are reckless because the reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of children or adults. Adolescents overestimate rewards, rather than underestimating risks. And they most desire social rewards, specifically the respect of their peers. As Gopnik  states, “Puberty not only turns on the motivational and emotional system with new force, it also turns it away from the family and toward the world of equals. Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.”

 
The second crucial brain system dealing with control is the system that inhibits impulses and guides decision-making. It encourages long-term planning and delays gratification. This control system depends on learning and experience, and continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood.

 
Big OOPS for us? In contemporary society, the relationship between these two systems is out of whack. Puberty and the motivational system kick in earlier, but the control system is delayed because our kids have very little experience learning or practicing the kinds of tasks that they'll encounter as adults. 

Because most of our children's time is spent at school, or preparing for future schooling, there is little time for jobs once associated with childhood and adolescence: babysitting, paper routes, scooping ice cream. Our kids aren’t learning how to soothe a baby or change a diaper. They don’t know how to make change, bus a table, or solve a problem for a disgruntled customer.  

Even though the growth of the control system depends on achievement and experience in the ‘real’ world,’ such  achievements and experiences, i.e rewards are increasingly delayed in our modern society. Pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at U Cal Berkeley describes it thus: “Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.”

 
Our kids are smarter than ever, and their prolonged period of dependence - from childhood to college and beyond - allows them to learn more than ever before.

 
But clearly, experience shapes our brains. And we need to figure out ways to give our pre-teens and teenagers a chance to “slowly acquire more skill and more freedom” instead of simply giving them more more classes, homework, extra-curriculars.

 
Consider: Cultural psychologist Barbara Rogoff has studied informal education in a Guatemalan Indian society, and found that apprenticeships allowed even young children to become adept at difficult and dangerous tasks- like using a machete.

 
Gopnik challenges parents to try to arrange more opportunities for apprenticeships that provide challenging real-life experiences with a degree of protection and supervision. She believes adolescents should spend more time watching and helping scientists and scholars work, rather than simply listening to their lectures. They should alternate summer camps and travel with summer jobs that demand real responsibility.

 
“The good news,” Gopnik writes, “is that we don't have to just accept the developmental patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them.“
 

I have my marching orders.
 

Think I’ll skip the machete.
 

Bring on the knives.

 

QUING Hereby Decrees:  Exhale Fear. Breathe Accomplishment.

QUING Parties at the Palace with LENTIL SOUP

Hearty, healthy, comforting, perfect. There's something about making - and eating - lentil soup that transcends time and place. It makes me think of home, far away towns I'd like to visit, relatives I wish had lived long enough to share a meal and conversation with me. Soup simmers, and so does the imagination. Gustare!

Lentil Soup

Based on  Marcella Hazan's recipe in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking    Serves 8.

1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
6 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
3 medium carrots, finely chopped
2/3 cup pancetta, or bacon, or prosciutto - slivered or shredded

2 cups Italian tomatoes, cut up, with their juice  (1/2 - 3/4 of a 28 oz can is fine)

16 ounce package of dried lentils, washed in cold water and drained
8 cups basic homemade meat broth, or 2 cups canned beef broth mixed with 6 cups water
Pinch of Salt

Freshly ground pepper

6 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Heat oil and 3 tablespoons of the butter in a stockpot. Sauté onions and pancetta, stirring over medium heat until golden brown. (If you are more comfortable sautéing pancetta or bacon in a separate frying pan, do so. Brown it, drain it, and add to soup with lentils.)

Add chopped celery and carrots to onions. Continue sautéing for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the cut-up tomatoes and their juice. Cook uncovered, adjusting heat so they cook at a gentle simmer for about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Add the lentils, stirring thoroughly to coat them. Add the broth, pinch of salt and a couple grindings of fresh pepper. Cover and cook at a steady simmer until the lentils are tender. Stir  from time to time. Cooking time is about 45 minutes, but it varies greatly, so, taste them! Also watch for lentils absorbing a lot of liquid. Add broth or water while cooking to keep the soup from getting too thick.

When lentils are cooked, stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter and the grated cheese. Serve with additional freshly grated cheese on the side. For even more flavor, add a leftover parmesan crust to the soup when you add the lentils. 

ADDING RICE: My kids love lentil soup with rice. So do I! Once the lentils are cooked, add 1 cup of water and 1/2 cup of beef broth (or 1 1/2 cups of homemade broth) to the simmering soup. Bring soup to a boil and add 1/2 cup of rice; Brown or Arborio. Cook at a moderate boil, stirring occasionally and adding more broth or water if necessary, until rice is cooked. 20-25 minutes. Stir 1 tablespoon of butter into the soup before serving.   

PRICE

Doesn’t matter whether he said, “There's a sucker born every minute," or "There's a customer born every minute."  

Either way, P.T. Barnum would have loved me.

I was their target consumer.

Did just what the manufacturers hoped I’d do.

Filled my rooms my yard my life with stuff.

 
Honestly. Can you ever have too many serving platters, candles, wine glasses, garden tools?

We were their target consumers.

Did just what the companies hoped we’d do.

Filled our desktops our pockets our backpacks with Mac Books, Ipods, Ipads, Smart Phones.

Shiny new pieces of brilliant technology arrived soon after the shiny big announcement was televised.

Honestly. Can you ever have too much technology?

The Great Pause led to The Great Reassessment.   

My house is too big. Too full of stuff we don't use. Don't need. 

Honestly. How did this happen?

Global economy. Cheap labor. Cheap goods. Cheap credit. There's a war on! Everybody go shopping.

We followed the consumer trail; snowed.

This week, Apple reported staggering profits in its first quarter earnings report. Executives said sales would have been even higher if overseas factories had been able to produce more inventory.

Overseas factories?  President Obama wants to know what it would take for American companies to bring their manufacturing jobs back home to onseas factories.

Today's NY Times article In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad, by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, answers the president's question.

 

N-E-V-E-R.

Because price has a price.

And a low price has an even higher price.

Follow the story of 22-year-old Lai Xiaodong, who carefully packed his college degree and left his childhood home to move to southwest China. There, he became "one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth." 

Mr. Lai's college degree enabled him to earn about $22 a day, including overtime — more than many other factory workers. He labored beneath almost blinding lights-- shifts run 24 hours a day, so the factory is always bright. Mr. Lai spent 12 hours a day, six days a week inside the factory.  After a few months he was put in charge of a team that maintained machines that polished iPad cases. The iPad had gone on sale just weeks earlier, and thousands of cases needed to be polished each day. The factory was frantic, aluminum dust was everywhere.

The evening the explosion that killed him occurred, Mr. Lai had stayed at the factory to work a second shift. He was so badly burned, his family didn't recognize him at the hospital. He survived only two days.

   

Two weeks before the accident, an advocacy group in Hong Kong published a report warning of unsafe conditions at the plant where Mr. Lai worked, including problems with aluminum dust.

Seven months after the explosion, an iPad factory in Shanghai also exploded. The cause? Aluminum dust.

“It is gross negligence, after an explosion occurs, not to realize that every factory should be inspected,” said MIT occupational safety expert Nicholas Ashford. “If it were terribly difficult to deal with aluminum dust, I would understand. But do you know how easy dust is to control? It’s called ventilation. We solved this problem over a century ago.”

We solved this problem over a century ago.

Imagine the outcry if Mr. Lai's story had played out in a factory in the United States.

 

Executives argue that overhauling this system- suppliers cutting corners, replacing expensive chemicals with less costly alternatives, or pushing their employees to work faster and longer for minimal wages- would slow innovation. "Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every year," they say. 

Customers. Like. Us.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said a former Apple executive. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Heather White, a research fellow at Harvard says that "until consumers demand better conditions in overseas factories — as they did for companies like Nike and Gap— or regulators act, there is little impetus for radical change."

A current Apple executive agrees. "...right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

Price has a price, and a low price has an even higher price.

 

Are we willing to pay a higher price for a lower human price?

Pause. Time for a Greater Reassessment.

QUING Hereby Decrees: The bottom line in the Story of Life does not include 'Profits'.

RECORDING

Did JFK have a hunch that he was going to be assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963?

Some are suggesting that the president may have intuited his demise.

 
The final 45 hours of White House recordings secretly taped by John F. Kennedy during the last three months of his presidency were released to the public yesterday. Researchers, historians, conspiracy theorists, and all the rest of us have a whole lot of conversation to process.

 
Like this juicy tidbit: In a scheduling discussion with a member of his staff, three days before his assassination, JFK comments about the very date that is destined to become the day of his funeral.

"Monday?" he asks a staffer. "Well that's a tough day."

"It's a hell of a day, Mr. President," the staffer replies.

Was it Presidential Premonition? Presidential Staffer Premonition? Presidential Staffer Overscheduling Overscheduled President Preposterously?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The unfiltered tapes are out, and open to interpretation. The president made the tapes deliberately, keeping them a secret from even his top aides. The recorded conversations relay his interest in politics, public relations, and his image. Speaking with his distinctive accent, JFK challenges aides who give him varying reports on the same issue. He expresses occasional boredom, annoyance, and frustration. He chats with world leaders and his kids. He swears. The really bad words.

"The president's intelligence really comes across," says Maura Porter, an archivist from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library who worked on the tapes for a decade. "Listening to the tapes, the intonation in the president's voice, the ebb and flow of a conversation offer historians a unique view that cannot be captured in official meeting minutes.”

We live in an age where most of our conversations are the equivalent of official meeting minutes: letters and abbreviated words on cell phone screens that we decipher, attempting to determine tone, nuance, implication, level of sincerity, and significance.

It’s no wonder that the secretly recorded conversations of an assassinated president are mesmerizing.

But what possessed JFK to make the secret recordings? After all, he died before he could edit them. Porter believes the president may have eventually used them either for a memoir, or to prove the veracity of his conversations.

Clever, that JFK.

Don’t tell anyone, but I am copying both the president's sneakiness and his cleverness. I have- unbeknownst to my housemates- made a secret Palace Recording; documentation my kids can eventually use in their memoirs, or share with their shrinks; documentation that will prove the veracity of our conversations to my grandchildren forty years from now when their parents offer conflicting reports about our family life.

.
The Palace Recording is a snapshot of daily life; relaying my interest in keeping 702 balls in the air without dropping even one in a spectacular crash. I chat with family members, spouse, kids, friends, Dog and Puppy. I express frustration and annoyance. I wish for boredom. I never swear. The really bad words.

Note: The 24 hour recording is an unusually rich collection of comments being made in real time. It is a valuable, raw look inside my abode. It is unfiltered, and hasn't been massaged by committees or by the Palace Press Machine. Just like JFK's recording.

It is unimaginably, inconceivably, unbelievably dull. Just like...

My voice is my voice. Feel free to determine intonation and the ebb and flow of conversation.

THE TAPE

Background noises: Shouting. Laughter. Canine growls. Puppy yelps. Occasional clanging of pans on stovetop and shattering of dishes on tile floor. Slamming of garage door. Singing. Guitaring. Opening and closing of refrigerator and freezer doors. Bickering. Teasing.

Conversation: Do it. NOW.

Late? How late is late?

Get the little bugger outside! FAST!

Are you actually killing people in that video game?

Super. Is it broken? We're not going for another X Ray unless it’s broken.

You think this is a negotiation?

Eat something HEALTHY!

Pick it up! Throw it out!
 

Who made up the concept of dinner, anyway?

Technically, that's not burned.

Who took it? Who ate it? Who left it? Who moved it?

Touch him one more time, and I will remove your head from your shoulders.

FINI!

Yikes.

Kindly strike that last comment from the Palace Recording.

It could be released to the public one day. 

I wouldn't want researchers, historians, conspiracy theorists, and all the rest of you to judge.

Me.

And Mom Premonition.

 

QUING Hereby Decrees:  Careful what you say. Everyone is listening.

MESS

 

Exciting news today!

Liberating!

Revolutionary!

No, not The State of the Union or The Rebuttal which promise to be, um, campaign speeches. 

And definitely not The State of My Union, which basically is Big dog hates Baby dog- and by association Mommy Dog for bringing Baby dog into the house to be companion to Big Dog.

The news of the day is that researcher Jai Liu of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has made a thrilling discovery: messy desks lead to clearer, more organized thinking.

Yup. Mess = Clearer, More Organized Thinking.

But wait. It gets better.

The study results suggest that this Mess-effect may not just help the guy or gal who often cannot be located under all that clutter. Mess may impact everybody who happens to simply sit beside the clutter.

The experiment: A bunch of college students were asked to sit at a cluttered cubicle, a tidy cubicle, or one that was somewhere in-between: the Goldilocks approach to psychological testing. The students answered a few questions, and were then given a test where they had to invent an organizing principle for sorting products into groups.

Results? The college kids sitting at the messy desks came up with much simpler organizing principles. They scored high on questions like, “I would like to simplify my life as much as I can.”

 
Liu and her colleagues concluded: “Opposite to conventional wisdom, we found that participants working at a messy desk displayed simpler cognitions. This is because messiness induces a need for simplicity.”

Unbelievable. Messy desk does not lead to distracted mind, after all.  Instead, marvelous Mess sparks a desire for simplicity, ultimately leading desk owner and nearby colleagues to think in a more organized fashion.

It's a revelation! I finally understand my desire to ditch everything and everyone, and run off to a tiny, quiet, peaceful cabin in Jackson Hole. Mess has induced my need for simplicity.

It's mind-blowing! I finally know what to do with the piles of laundry, stacks of mail, shoes, boots, book bags and sports gear cluttering every doorway and floor in my house. Embrace them. Mess is surreptitiously encouraging my kids to be inventors of simpler organizing principles. It will eventually condition them to live simpler lives!

That stack of papers on my desk that I always resented because they were the source of my procrastination?  Henceforth they are my simplicity enablers.

 
Those bowls, mugs, cereal boxes, school books and snacks left on the kitchen table as Husband and offspring dash off to school/work/sports/life?  Henceforth they are my simplicity inspirers.

Twenty years of annoyances between Mars and Venus?  Reevaluated. Mars’ Mess had a purpose, after all.  It was never intended to make me crazy. It was meant to make me a simpleton.

Imagine! Hanging out around Mess leads to clearer, more organized thinking.

Why, it's life-changing! My kids will get great jobs after college, because they will be the clearest, most organized thinkers of their generation.

And I shall have a new vocation. Beginning tomorrow my cluttered tables, desks, floors, counters and closets will be available for rent to any parent, school or organization that wants a child, student or employee to be a clear, organized thinker.

When this news gets out, people will be lining up at my door to come sit beside my Mess. And they will be willing to pay big bucks to do it.

It’s a simple idea, based on an unorganized principle, that will benefit all who have the guts and cash to venture into Mess. 

Just you wait. A year from now, my tax return will be more impressive than Romney's.


QUING Hereby Decrees:  Mess, our stalemate has ended. Victory is yours!