February 22, 2019--Coddling of the American Mind

Greg Lukianoff's and Jon Haidt's, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure, offers a convincing analysis of how the rise of "fearful parenting"; the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play; and the new world of social media that have engulfed teenagers have led to major changes in childhood itself. Much of it not for the better.

As a sidebar, there is an excellent summary of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and how the issues it was developed to address are among the developmental consequences of this new childhood.

CBT focuses on a cognitive feedback loop in which irrational negative beliefs can produce powerful negative feelings, which in turn drive clients' reasoning, motivating them to find evidence to support their negative, emotion-based beliefs. This produces a cognitive triad that can cause depression and a negative pattern of self-regard: "I'm no good," "My world is bleak," and "My future is hopeless."

CBT therapists work with clients to help them break the disempowering feedback cycle (which they call schemas). If people work to examine these beliefs and consider counterevidence, it frequently gives them some relief from negative emotions so that they can hopefully be released from them and become more open to questioning their negative feelings, thereby rising from their depression and becoming more positively oriented and activated.

I have found this approach to be helpful in my own life and thought it might be for yours as well.

To become less theoretical and more specific, the list below shows nine of the most common cognitive distortions that people learn to recognize while undergoing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  

EMOTIONAL REASONING:  Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality.  "I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out."  

CATASTROPHIZING:  Focussing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely.  "It would be terrible if I failed."  

OVERGENERALIZING:  Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident.  "This generally happens to me.  I seem to fail at a lot of things."

DICHOTOMOUS THINKING (also known variously as "black-and-white thinking, ""all-or-nothing thinking," and "binary thinking"):  Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms.  "I get rejected by everyone," or "It was a complete waste of time."

MIND READING:  Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts.  "He thinks I'm a loser."

LABELLING:  Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking).  "I'm undesirable," or "He's a rotten person."

NEGATIVE FILTERING:  You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives.  "Look at all the people who don't like me."

DISCOUNTING POSITIVES:  Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgement.  "That's what wives are supposed to do-so it doesn't count when she's nice to me," or "Those successes were easy, so they don't matter."

BLAMING:  Focussing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself.  "She's to blame for the way I feel now," or "My parents caused all my problems."

April 21, 2014--Fore!

Not only is Tiger Woods sitting out much of the golfing season but so are at least 5.0 million more. Those, the New York Times reports, who have stopped playing during the last decade.

And this has the golfing industry worried--golf courses and country clubs are suffering and so are the TV networks that broadcast golf: fewer players translates into smaller audiences which in turn translates into fewer advertising dollars. And that constitutes a big problem.

The networks are left to hope that Tiger miraculously returns to form (when he is doing well and is part of the final twosome during a tournament ratings double); but since golf courses have no equivalent silver bullet, many are turning to gimmicks to attract a younger population of duffers.

A favorite gimmick is to enlarge the physical hole form the current 4.25 inches to 15 inches, the size of a large pizza. Top-10 golfer Sergio Garcia likes the hole this size. Considering he has never come close to winning a Major, this could be considered special pleading or his endorsement the result of a handsome honorarium.

Sand traps are a special agony for the average golfer. Though the likes of Phil Michelson blast out of them without trouble, folks who hack their way around country clubs have been knows to take four or five strokes to extract themselves from a bunker and to break their sand wedges in frustration. So, a new rule would allow golfers to reach down, pick up their ball, and toss it onto the green. At least twice a round.

It's also OK on these souped-up courses to use juiced golf balls and clubs to make shots go further with less effort or skill.

If you remember when Bill Clinton was the First Duffer you recall he wasn't much good as a player and so, as Commander-in-Chief, he gave himself numerous mulligans--do over shots. If he hit his drive in the pond (he was especially adept at that), he'd allow himself a second or third attempt. All strictly against the PGA rules. But under the new rules being proposed to reattract golfers, especially younger ones, mulligans would be permitted and routine as would allowing golfers to place every shot on a tee, not just when driving.

TaylorMade-Adidas Golf in the process of redesigning 100 courses to make them more kid friendly because, as reported in the New York Times, youngsters are quitting the game after a few rounds because it's "too hard" to play courses as they are currently designed and with existing rules.

Parents are apparently upset that their little-ones are being frustrated. God forbid that any child should experience any frustration about anything. Including things that are hard to do. Which is half the point of golf--to try to excel at something difficult and learn to live with inevitable frustration and occasional bursts of excellence.

By the way, Sergio played in a tournament on a nine-hole nouveau course with anchovy-pizza-sized holes and shot a six under par. In truth, not that impressive.

February 4, 2014--Self-Esteem

In the early 1970s, when concern mounted that minority children were not doing as well in school as white students, researchers began to assert that this was because of a self-esteem gap.

The findings indicated that white kids on average felt much better about themselves than black and Latino youngsters and this in turn led to gnawing differences in academic achievement. Ultimately, this lack of feeling good about themselves meant that many fewer minority children eventually graduated from high school and went on to college. And, as a result, over time, more wound up on the economic sidelines, in jail, or worse.

Based on this research, during the 1980s, many educators embraced what came to be known as the "self-esteem movement," an effort to help low-income students feel better about themselves. It was asserted, without verifiable evidence, that if a kid felt positively about herself, she would do better in school and, ultimately, life.

The evidence that was lacking was not that children of color had lower self-esteem (in many ways they did) but that there was a causal relationship that was proclaimed to exist between that and academic achievement.

Progressive ideologues and educators at the time did not see the possibility of reverse causation--doing well in academics or various other things such as musicality, aesthetic expression, physical adeptness, or leadership skills precedes feelings of genuine self-esteem rather than derives from it.

Thus, the inclination to overpraise and over-coddle children became commonplace. God forbid a child should be allowed to struggle; face difficulty, frustration, or danger; or feel second-best for coming in second in a race.

But this movement coupled with parental hyper-involvement has not gotten the job done.

There are still unacceptable gaps in achievement between majority and minority children (exacerbated by class differences) and, ironically, the over-protected, overpraised children of the affluent themselves have been shortchanged in the process. Study after study shows these children to be risk-adverse, under-motivated, and less rigorously serious than their overseas counterparts.

And there has been a spate of popular books calling this to Americans' attention. Amy Chua's 2011 best-seller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, slammed American mothers of over-indulging their children, allowing them to spend too much time texting and playing video games, engaging in trivial after school activities, and collecting certificates and trophies for participating rather than actually doing well by achieving something worth celebrating.

She noted that Chinese (and Chinese-American) parents limit TV watching, forbid social networking, praise no grades less than A's, insist on hours of homework, and have their kids taking violin lessons rather than rushing off to Gymboree.

And on Sunday, the New York Times offered a front-page review of another cautionary book by Chua (and Jed Rubenfeld), The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, about how American, addicted to instant gratification, including overpraising, has "lost its Triple Package."

I think we know which groups are doing the rising and falling--that isn't new news--but the Triple Package is interesting and worth paying attention to--

First, most upwardly mobile and successful Americans, as a group, feel superior to other groups.

Then, paradoxically, individuals are simultaneously riddled with self-doubt and feelings of inferiority. These two elements of the Triple Package supply the motivation to work extra hard to succeed.

And then, third, there is the capacity to control one's impulses, which leads to having long-term goals and respect for various forms of authority, from parents to teachers.

We may not like these messages and what is leeching out of our culture, but we ignore them at our peril.

January 3, 2014--Ladies of Forest Trace: Are You Limping?

Like clockwork, for decades, at precisely noon on Sundays, my mother would call. In fact, she was so regular in doing this that it would generate genuine concern if she was even a minute late.

I would look at Rona, she would look back at me with a worried face and I would ask, "I wonder if anything is wrong."

"She's probably on the phone with someone else," Rona would say, as much to calm herself as me.

Invariably, on those rare occasions, when she placed her call a few minutes after twelve, she would say, "I was on the phone with Harriet. She called and I couldn't rush her. I know you must be worried," she would say, "But I'm fine," and knowing we might be skeptical, she would add, "I am. I really am. Fine."

Last Sunday the telephone rang at the stroke of noon. "Is there something wrong with your voice?" my mother asked even before I could ask how she was.

"I don't think so," I said to assure her and by attempting to sound stentorian.

"It doesn't sound good to me. Your voice."

"I'm fine. I really am." In truth I was feeling well, though I am quite capable of not always telling her the full truth about my health, knowing that if I do, or cough while talking with her, she will begin to worry and in the process begin herself to not feel well.

"You sound scratchy too," I said. "I think maybe there's a problem with the connection. Hang up and I'll call you back."

She did and I did. "How's that?" I asked when we were reconnected.

"You still sound sick. Are you sure you're not hiding something from me?"

"I'm not. Really. But you don't sound so hot yourself," I said, in an effort to lighten the mood and relieve her concerns about me.

"Let me go upstairs to get another phone," I suggested, "Maybe there's something wrong with this one. Hold on. Hold on. I won't hang up while I'm going upstairs."

When I retrieved the phone from my night table and turned off the one from downstairs, I asked, "Is that any better?"

"Not really." My mother said, also continuing to sound as if she had a sore throat.

"Are you really all right?" I asked, turning the tables on her. "You're not keeping something from me, are you?"

"I'm not. But what's going on with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you limping?"

"Limping?" I said, feeling confused. "I'm fine. As I said."

"I don't believe you. You're limping. I know you are."

"I'm not. I'm not." I felt guilty that I was beginning to become annoyed with her unending uber-concen about all aspects of my well-being as if I were still a child. "I'll tell you when something's wrong. I always do," I said, trying to calm her with a half-truth.

"By the way," I added, "What makes you think I am?"

"What?"

 "Limping."

"I heard you."

"Heard me?"

"Yes."

"How? When?"

"When you were walking up the stairs."

"Really? You heard me walking up the stairs?" I was truly incredulous at her inventive ways of keeping track of me.

"Yes."

"How?"

"The phone."

"The phone? I mean--"

It was beginning to dawn on me. I'm sometimes slow about noticing all the manifestations of her monitoring strategies. "You mean you heard me coming up the stairs because I was carrying the telephone? We do have a wooden staircase that amplifies sound and--"

She began to chuckle. "Since I don't always believe you tell me the truth, I have my methods for keeping up with you." She was by then laughing.

"You know, Mom, for an old lady you're really something."

Feeling good about herself, she said, "That I am. Something."

Before I could tell her how much I love her, she hung up. She didn't want to be late for State of the Union on CNN. One of her favorite Sunday TV talk shows.