Be sure you inspect your crib.

Click here for instruction on how to inspect your crib for its general safety. Click here to read a story from ABC news about every parent's worst nightmare.

Great article from Mother Jones about the 12 Most Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggie

This is from a section on the Mother Jones webpage called Econundrum. There are some excellently challenging articles there. Here is one of them.

12 Most Contaminated Fruits and Veggies

Is Empathy an Endangered Species?

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

Like most of us, the tragic recent events in AZ have gnawed at me all week. Every time I get online, I look to see if there is new information or a new insight that might explain this tragedy. But there is no simple conclusion. I wish it were as easy as saying that the political rhetoric of the last three plus years stoked a disturbed mind to commit unimaginable horrors. But there is no straight line between specific discourse and specific actions. That sort of dishonest solace is too easy for an action that reflects a much more complicated world. In spite of how much I look for answers, I find only a sadness rippling in the wake of a madman.

It is the complexity of our world, though, that has left me feeling not exactly hopeless, but burdened. Last week's events leave me wondering about a much larger question. I wonder if we're raising the next generation with the skills to handle events like the ones in AZ. I don't know what it means that gun sales, especially for the same Glock 9 mm have soared. I don't know what it means, as reported on NPR last week, that a firing range outside of Tuscon was busier than it's ever been because people were trying to change clips faster than Jared Loughner was able to. They were trying, in essence, to beat his time. But again, I don't think we can draw a straight line from these actions and a nation on the verge of an identity crisis. In my effort not to afix a definite meaning to such activities, I can't help but wonder if we're raising children to be able to deal with complexity and ambiguity. The knee-jerk reactions we're witnessing from adults in recent days (gun use, bills both reducing and increasing gun access, bills limiting how close fire arms can be from politicians, the punditry's gainsaying, etc.) support my contention that we're not a people who can tolerate any gray - and I fear it's only getting worse.

I came across a study last spring from the University of Michigan which seems to represent one possibility of our nation's future. The university report finds that since the start its longitudinal study in the 1979, empathy among college students has dropped dramatically. As quoted in an article in Science Daily, "College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait," said Sara Konrath from the U-M Institute for Social Research. Now how does one define empathy? The exact definition of empathy is a question that has been circling since the term's introduction to the world in the early 1900's - credited to a German historian named Johann Gustav Droysen.

Skeptics of the Michigan study are quick to point out that the report does not hold water because its methodology only sampled 79 other reports conducted on empathy over thirty years. These skeptics argue that you can not draw statistically significant results from that. Others say that there are too many stories of incredible empathetic responses to tragic situations (you only have to think of the heros who tackled and subdued Loughner) in order for the study to be correct.

I am not a skeptic of the study. Looking at it from a research perspective, the sample size is more than large enough to validly predict trends and patterns. And for those who herald unending examples of empathy, I say thank God for them. But there is a difference, as the Michigan report points out, between empathetic action and empathetic identification. Being able to feel for the other is different than doing something about a clear moment of crisis. Empathetic identification is the internal monologue that you have with yourself - it is not what you when you feel compelled to act. All we have to do is consider the popularity of the television show, "What Would You Do" to see evidence that this is true. We act out of empathetic identification, without that, there is no empathetic response to a situation.

The Michigan study also reveals a link between narcissism and decreased empathy. The Science Daily article quotes researcher Edward O'Brien who said, "Add in the hypercompetitive atmosphere and inflated expectations of success, borne of celebrity "reality shows," and you have a social environment that works against slowing down and listening to someone who needs a bit of sympathy." As numerous studies suggest, narcissism is on the rise. In an age of high-stakes testing, a paucity of jobs and the economic reality of the world, it is easy to see a few reasons as to why. That combination of increased self awareness with a decreased concern for others, however, is a troubling one.

If this trend continues, what does this mean for our children? What will a nation who manufactures animosity towards our neighbors and treats every political vote as if it were the "end of days" mean for our kids? Are we really going to raise generations of children who will form opinions about people simply because of a D or R next to their political affiliation and not be able to tolerate what that difference represents? As Paul Krugman wrote in a recent New York Times editorial, "For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama [in his eulogy in Tuscon on Wed] urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice." I fear that if we all are not better at practicing empathy, we will continue to circle our wagons to include only those who are just like us; these groups will become more and more divided until they fracture. In this scenario we will not be able to stretch our imaginations to include other worldviews, and what will we have then? What world will we have created for our kids? We will not only continue to divide our country, but we will decrease national productivity. We will find it harder to work with those who disagree with us, we will not be able to create products and services that will benefit others. The reasons for concern are not just touchy-feely, but economic as well.

So, in my own small way, in my own sort of memorial to those who lost their lives and were wounded in AZ, I resolve to practice a more concerted empathy. I am going to do the hard work of listening to other points of view and hear the personal story that lives behind a given position. Will I always agree? No, but that is not the point. This tact reminds me of a quote I heard attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "You cannot hate those whose story you know."

In looking into how to increase empathy in children, I came across the following tips from www.character-education.info:
* make empathy mean something - demonstrate it yourself! (I'll have to remember this particularly when I am driving)

* talk to you kids about why kindness and empathy matter

* praise examples of empathetic identification you recognize expressed by your children

* create opportunities to practice "random acts of kindness"

* include reasoning in your discipline

* help your kids see similarities between themselves and others

* avoid stereotyping male/female empathetic responses

Please share your ways of instilling empathy in your family.

References:

University of Michigan. "Empathy: College students don't have as much as they used to, study finds." ScienceDaily 29 May 2010. 16 January 2011 .

"The Empathy Deficit - The Boston Globe." Boston.com. Web. 16 Jan. 2011. .

A Tale of Two Moralities - NYTimes.com
Jan 13, 2011 ... Though President Obama spoke to our desire for reconciliation, the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14krugman.html

http://www.character-education.info/Articles/instilling_compassion_in_students.htm

Chris Jordan's depiction of consumption

Many of you most likely know of Chris Jordan's work, but if you don't, check out today's link. Jordan is an artist who uses photoshop to manipulate simple images to put the scale of American consumption into perspective.

Happiness and Children - are they mutually exclusive?

This is an excellent article from The Economist called "The U-Bend of Life." It discusses how, from the time our children start to grow until they leave the house, our happiness appears to dip. Once the nest is empty, our happiness tends to rise. Interesting article.
http://www.economist.com/node/17722567

A case for a kids' organic clothing swap

Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption | Video on TED.com

Why do Kids play with the box and not the toy?

I am sure our experience is universal.  Our daughter loves to open presents and then immediately play with the box, not the toy.  How many times have you heard parents say, "I should have just gotten them the box!"?  If you think about a child as an explorer, their preference for the box is quite understandable.  As Tim Brown, the president and CEO of the design firm IDEO explains, a toy has only a certain number of prescribed uses.  It beeps the same way every time you hit that button or sings the same song when you turn that switch.  But the box, now there is something with infinite possibilities to explore!  The box could be a boat or a plane or a hat or a turtle's back or whatever else the child can conjure.  The context of the play will change every time the child plays with the box.  And the toy will always be, well, the toy.

In preparing for the holidays we had many wrapping paper tubes lying around the living room.  My wife and twenty-three month old daughter, Eve, colored several of them and they were a great source of amusement for her.  Usually, Eve would just blow into the tube as if she were a trumpeter announcing the king and queen's arrival.  That was the usual context for playing with the tube.  But she also used it as a telescope and a microphone and could easily switch back and forth from trumpet to banjo without it interrupting her play with the object.   But with toys with a prescribed context, Eve finds it more difficult to play with the toy differently.

Doris Pronin Fromberg, a leading expert on early childhood education explains that there are essentially three different forms that play takes.  There is "Construction play, pretend play, and sociodramatic pretend play" (20).  Construction play is anything that requires building; Legos, Lincoln Logs, etc.  Pretend play, also sometimes called transformational play, is imagining an object differently than it appears.  So, for example, using an orange as a baseball or a rocketship.  Lastly, there is sociodramatic pretend play.  This sort of play includes role playing and acting out events.  These three types of play lie at the heart of our imaginative growth and cognitive development as children (and adults).

This may explain why children tend to gravitate toward playing with the box - because it could contain two or more of the aforementioned forms of play.  A toy like "Tickle me, Elmo" can exist for the child in "sociodramatic pretend play," but its rules are fairly constrained.  Generally speaking, Elmo will always be Elmo.  Now there is not anything inherently wrong with this, but it limits the full range of play that a child could enjoy with a given toy.   Our daughter has a Dora the Explorer doll.  To the best of my knowledge, Eve has never seen a single episode of Dora.  She knows the doll's name is Dora, but she isn't constrained in her play with the doll by the limits of the character and her storyline.  Consequently, the doll can be an explorer, a soccer star, a mad scientist, or a guest at her tea party.  There is no delimitation of this doll since my daughter can fill in a new back story every time she plays with her.

Of course play is important and sophisticated.  According to educational specialists, the best sort of play is play that encourages the children to create the rules of the playing and not the toy.  So when considering toys for your child, think about construction play, pretend play and sociodramatic pretend play.  Can the toy satisfy two or three of these types of play?  Will the toy allow your child to create the rules of the playing or are there implicit rules connected with the toy?  That is not to say that such toys are bad and other toys are good.  But in order to foster a robust imagination, it is important to make sure that your child is provided opportunities to create the rules of playing as well as following them.  For if a child only follows the rules of the game, then we are foreclosing on not only their creativity, but their cognitive development as well.

Please share your favorite toys for your little ones and where you can find them.

"Tim Brown on Creativity and Play | Video on TED.com." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Web. 10 Jan. 2011. <http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html>.

Fromberg, Doris Pronin. Play and Meaning in Early Childhood Education. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002. Print.