This one is about how to be a good partner to your stay-at-home spouse. Steve at BripBlap has posted an excellent writeup on the subject that covers his ten tips on what you can do. It not only includes a simple explanation of what each suggestion refers to, but also deals with the problems that ensue and offers solutions to them.
What more can you ask for, really? All that’s left to do is implement. Here’s the list in brief:
1. Don’t ‘decompress’ for an hour after you get home. 2. Take care of chores without ‘dividing them up.’ 3. Give the gift of break time. 4. Don’t be selfish with your own ‘me time.’ 5. Remember you are less expert in your child’s moods and needs. 6. Back off. 7. Don’t bring work home. 8. Try not to undermine ‘wind-down’ time. 9. Turn it off. 10. Remember that this is a team effort.
Read the entire piece; it’s well worth the time. In the end, you’ll surely be happier if you have a relaxed spouse and happy kid(s)…
A series of links led me to an excellent writeup on Komando.com listing the 10 Commandments for Kids Online. Here are just a few…
I will not try to win free things or buy things on the Internet without my parents’ permission. If I get a message that I won something, I will show it to my parents. If I get an e-mail asking for passwords or other secret stuff, I will ask my parents. I will never tell anyone online or post online that I am home alone. I won’t give out my last name, my home address or telephone number, the name of my school or teachers, where my parents work or their telephone numbers without getting my parents’ permission. I will never give out my friends’ screen names, e-mail addresses, names, addresses and telephone numbers, and I will remind them to keep mine a secret. I WILL NEVER, EVER MEET WITH ANYONE I’VE TALKED TO ONLINE WITHOUT FIRST TALKING WITH MY PARENTS.
I will not try to win free things or buy things on the Internet without my parents’ permission. If I get a message that I won something, I will show it to my parents. If I get an e-mail asking for passwords or other secret stuff, I will ask my parents.
I will never tell anyone online or post online that I am home alone. I won’t give out my last name, my home address or telephone number, the name of my school or teachers, where my parents work or their telephone numbers without getting my parents’ permission. I will never give out my friends’ screen names, e-mail addresses, names, addresses and telephone numbers, and I will remind them to keep mine a secret.
I WILL NEVER, EVER MEET WITH ANYONE I’VE TALKED TO ONLINE WITHOUT FIRST TALKING WITH MY PARENTS.
This is just an excerpt, of course. And, depending on the age of your child, you may or may not subscribe to some of these. But it’s a great concept, and one that deserves implementation on some level.
It also got me thinking about other things you can do as a parent, to keep your loved ones safe.
Here’s a link to another excellent writeup from Komando on Limiting your children’s Screen Time. It features many useful tips on parenting controls and how to use available Technology to make your job a bit easier.
And, here’s a link to OpenDNS – a (free) service that helps you keep your online environment safe through phishing protection and other forms of security, without the hassle of complicated software installation and configuration.
Safe surfing…
A remarkable article in the New York Times expounds the Power and Perils of praising your kids. If you have children, you simply cannot afford to ignore this finding…
Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Out of our children’s lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day — We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you. In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments. We expect so much of them, but we hide our expectations behind constant glowing praise.
Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Out of our children’s lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day — We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.
In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments. We expect so much of them, but we hide our expectations behind constant glowing praise.
A series of experiments reveals that it’s not just the praise but the kind of praising that gets different results…
For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly. Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized — it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.
For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.
Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard
Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.
I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized — it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.
Luckily for us, there are a few things we can do differently…
In the first stage, I fell off the wagon around other parents when they were busy praising their kids. I didn’t want Luke to feel left out. I felt like a former alcoholic who continues to drink socially. I became a Social Praiser… Then I tried to use the specific-type praise that Dweck recommends. I praised Luke, but I attempted to praise his “process.” This was easier said than done… … every night he has math homework and is supposed to read a phonics book aloud. Each takes about five minutes if he concentrates, but he’s easily distracted. So I praised him for concentrating without asking to take a break. If he listened to instructions carefully, I praised him for that. After soccer games, I praised him for looking to pass, rather than just saying, “You played great.” And if he worked hard to get to the ball, I praised the effort he applied. Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him see strategies he could apply the next day. It was remarkable how noticeably effective this new form of praise was.
In the first stage, I fell off the wagon around other parents when they were busy praising their kids. I didn’t want Luke to feel left out. I felt like a former alcoholic who continues to drink socially. I became a Social Praiser…
Then I tried to use the specific-type praise that Dweck recommends. I praised Luke, but I attempted to praise his “process.” This was easier said than done…
… every night he has math homework and is supposed to read a phonics book aloud. Each takes about five minutes if he concentrates, but he’s easily distracted. So I praised him for concentrating without asking to take a break. If he listened to instructions carefully, I praised him for that. After soccer games, I praised him for looking to pass, rather than just saying, “You played great.” And if he worked hard to get to the ball, I praised the effort he applied.
Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him see strategies he could apply the next day. It was remarkable how noticeably effective this new form of praise was.
Read the entire essay. This one is a must-read.
If you are a parent, you most likely spend more than 80% of your memory card (or film!) photographing your children. As a photography and parenting enthusiast, I thought it would be a good idea to share with you some helpful advice on making the most of this pursuit.
For the more technically inclined, there are lots of decisions to be made about shooting modes, film/ISO speeds, lens choices, etc. Based on my own experience, using a fast lens (with a big aperture) and a camera with a fast response time (DSLR or SLR) works wonders. With any gear, using Aperture Priority mode should give you better results, when photographing children. If you have the option, choosing faster shutter speeds will help you get that action shot of your little one darting by! And, my personal preference is to avoid using built-in Flash as much as possible – you get much better skintones and results if you can work with the available light.
Coming to the actual shooting, it’s been said countless times that photographing children is best done when the child is comfortable with the surroundings and the photographer. Whatever you can do to make them more comfortable will help, and whatever you do to cause stress will not! If you’re unfamiliar with the location, it may help to do a small walkaround and plan your shots in terms of where the children will feel most naturally at ease. Candid shots may yield far better results than your attempts to make the child pose in a certain way, but sometimes a child’s attempt at artifically posing can make for a memorable photograph. If your camera has a burst mode, you can get interesting results of your kids in action. Most importantly, try to get down to their level and see their world from that height – the photographs you shoot from down there may turn out to be the ones you keep.
For good measure, read this excellent article from Digital Photography School on How to Photograph Children; it also sports some great children shots for inspiration. Also, Elizabeth Halford’s blog has a number of excellent posts on photographic children.
Happy clicking!
A few weeks ago, Rajesh Jain in a post entitled ‘Rethinking Education‘ blogged about the various approaches towards changing the prevalent Education system in India, and about his own thoughts on what’s needed:
One approach is to work within the current system and see what best can be done. It assumes that the legacy that exists will be very hard to change — everyone has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Parents are not keen to take risks with their kids, the ones in the education business would prefer to stick to the status quo since they are already in the business, the government seems to be quite happy with the way things are, and the kids don’t have much of a choice anyways. So, even as some of us believe that the current education system needs a dramatic revamp, it is not easy to figure out where to begin. (Perhaps, there isn’t an entrance at all for those not already in.) The second approach, advocated by Atanu, is to create a parallel system from scratch — encompassing K-12 and beyond. This thinking starts with the belief that the current education system is fatally flawed and there is no way to apply band-aid. What is needed is a new system, a new standard. And there will be early adopters among parents and kids who will be drawn to this new system. My personal vote goes for the second approach. The world has changed a lot, especially in the past couple decades, and the simplicity that needs to be there in the education system has vanished. One hears of kids as young as two and three years going for coaching so they can get into the preferred school of their parents. IIT coaching now starts in the sixth standard. It is reaching ridiculous heights (or lows). And then look at the quality of the product that comes out of this system.
One approach is to work within the current system and see what best can be done. It assumes that the legacy that exists will be very hard to change — everyone has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Parents are not keen to take risks with their kids, the ones in the education business would prefer to stick to the status quo since they are already in the business, the government seems to be quite happy with the way things are, and the kids don’t have much of a choice anyways. So, even as some of us believe that the current education system needs a dramatic revamp, it is not easy to figure out where to begin. (Perhaps, there isn’t an entrance at all for those not already in.)
The second approach, advocated by Atanu, is to create a parallel system from scratch — encompassing K-12 and beyond. This thinking starts with the belief that the current education system is fatally flawed and there is no way to apply band-aid. What is needed is a new system, a new standard. And there will be early adopters among parents and kids who will be drawn to this new system.
My personal vote goes for the second approach. The world has changed a lot, especially in the past couple decades, and the simplicity that needs to be there in the education system has vanished. One hears of kids as young as two and three years going for coaching so they can get into the preferred school of their parents. IIT coaching now starts in the sixth standard. It is reaching ridiculous heights (or lows). And then look at the quality of the product that comes out of this system.
This is a burning issue for many parents, and naturally, Rajesh’s post saw a flurry of comments in a short span. Here’s what I wrote in response :
My view is that disruptive innovation has a place in many things, but not in something as well-rooted in society as our present education system… There is just too much at stake for parents. … most people within the system are averse to change of any sort – that is typical human response to any new idea. However, with a new system, even if you get some folks to switch over, many others will not fearing what will happen to their children once the system’s runway ends. Already, I hear many concerned and informed parents voicing their fears of how their children will eventually have to cope up with the “mainstream” once they graduate from their gurukuls or whatever liberal-minded school system they follow. That fear is what keeps many of them from sending their kids down the less-trodden path in the first place! And until a critical mass of people *do* choose the new route, the fear of the majority would always remain… … I think a more agreeable option would be to make small but significant changes in the existing system (even if that takes more effort), so that more and more people eventually benefit from the changes. As a parent of two, I would certainly welcome a move in that direction.
My view is that disruptive innovation has a place in many things, but not in something as well-rooted in society as our present education system… There is just too much at stake for parents.
… most people within the system are averse to change of any sort – that is typical human response to any new idea. However, with a new system, even if you get some folks to switch over, many others will not fearing what will happen to their children once the system’s runway ends.
Already, I hear many concerned and informed parents voicing their fears of how their children will eventually have to cope up with the “mainstream” once they graduate from their gurukuls or whatever liberal-minded school system they follow. That fear is what keeps many of them from sending their kids down the less-trodden path in the first place! And until a critical mass of people *do* choose the new route, the fear of the majority would always remain…
… I think a more agreeable option would be to make small but significant changes in the existing system (even if that takes more effort), so that more and more people eventually benefit from the changes. As a parent of two, I would certainly welcome a move in that direction.
Rajesh sent me an email in reply, later that day, in which he mentioned that the best solution may well be a combination of the two approaches. What do you think?
