The Yin Blog

My boys on Taylor Swift

My two boys are getting exposed to my taste in music, which is to say, mostly 80s and 90s pop/rock, with notable exceptions including Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift.

It's funny hearing my sons say "I like this song!" when the MP3 player kicks out a new one over the powered speakers. Since they seemed to like a lot of Swift's songs, I showed them the CD cover so they could see what she looks like.

"Oh my gosh, she has a lot of hair!" exclaimed my older son (7 years old).

"And she's naked!" declared my younger son (almost 4 years old).

"What? She's not naked," I pointed out. "She's wearing a dress." What goes through the minds of little boys. . . .

Bilingualism and brains

NPR reports:

Research suggests that the growing numbers of bilingual speakers may have an advantage that goes beyond communication: It turns out that being bilingual is also good for your brain.

That's excellent news and motivation for my possibly Quixotic quest to learn on my own how to read/write Chinese.

The NPR article continues:

The idea that children exposed to two languages from birth become confused or that they fall behind monolingual children is a common misconception, says Janet Werker, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who studies language acquisition in bilingual babies.

I'm not a researcher in this area, but I think this sounds right -- except that I do recall one incident to the contrary, sort of. Back when he was in daycare, my older son liked to be picked up and held by the daycare teachers. And when he was on his own and then felt the need for some attention, he would walk over to a teacher, hold his arms up, and ask to be held.

Only, the way he asked was, "Bao bao me." Bao bao being Chinese for "hold" or "hug."

His teachers had no clue what he was trying to say, until we found out about this and explained to them what bao bao meant.

About Asian mothers. . . .

Amy Chua, a Yale law prof, puts forward her explanation for "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior":

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

That's way more severe than anything I endured when I was growing up.  Certainly not the part about TV or computer games . . . .  And I'm not exactly proud of this, but the only musical instrument I have competence with is the stereo system.

Still, my guess is that a lot of Generation X Asians have experienced some aspects of what Chua describes, particularly the academic expectations part.  I remember being driven off to boarding school to start my junior year of high school and being told that I needed to get As in pre-calculus, chemistry, and English composition; history and Spanish were less important.  On the first grading period (3 per semester), I had a B in Spanish, B+ in history, As in pre-calc and English, and an A+ in chemistry.  My parents complained about the B grades.  In the second grading period, I had As or A-s in everything.  My parents complained about how my chem grade dropped from an A+ to an A.

And there was the matter of the skipped grade, which might or might not be an Asian fixation.

It sounds like Chua's daughters are a bit young to be thinking about college majors, but I wonder if she's going to dictate the acceptable choices for fields.  Not surprisingly, my parents' expectations for me were strongly directed toward math/science, particularly electrical engineering.  Needless to say, neither journalism nor law -- my two most recent degrees -- were on the radar.

Like Tom Smith, I'm of mixed feelings about the severity of Chua's parenting.  To be clear, I'm not judging her -- I'm simply speaking from the standpoint of whether (a) I'd want to be raised in that environment; and (b) I'd want to raise my kids in that environment.  What seems better for my family may be different for what's better for hers.

While I think some of what says makes some sense, I just can't go along to the extremes that she does.  Having high expectations, and trying to instill discipline and good work habits (homework first, then TV/play) strikes me as generally desirable.  No playdates, no roles in school plays, no choice in extracurriculars . . . .  I'd rather let my kids experiment a bit to see what they like, and then encourage them to work hard at what they choose.  True, this means my kids are not likely to become Olympic athletes/musical prodigies, but I'm not sure I'd want to be parenting on that assumption anyway.

EDIT: I should add one potentially pernicious thing about Chua's article (and forthcoming book) is the idea that there's any one monolithic "Chinese"/Asian approach to parenting.  No doubt there are some basic elements that maybe common, like the emphasis on education.  But it would be a shame if non-Asians were to come away from this article thinking that this is the *only* way to raise kids in a Chinese way.

"Fish are our friends, not food"

We've introduced our boys to the Pixar movie "Finding Nemo," both the DVD itself (once) and the read aloud storybook version on CD (many times).  Last night, as we sat down to a dinner with a main course of fish, my younger son recited a line from the movie: "Fish are our friends, not food."

Thankfully, he went ahead and ate dinner anyway.

Last one standing?

I'm the last one standing in the house. . . .

Last Friday, my older son woke up with a fever and threw up four times that morning by the time he saw the doctor.  He had pneumonia in one lung, a severe asthma attack, and what we later learned was type A influenza (which means it's almost certainly H1N1 "swine" flu).  He spent three nights in the hospital with an IV drip and an oxygen feed.  My wife stayed with him the whole time, while I stayed at home with our younger son -- though we did go visit twice daily.

By Monday, when he was released from the hospital, he was doing much better, though not cleared to return to school.  Of course, my wife had a fever and headache and other flu symptoms by then(!).  I did my best to keep our younger son away, but by Wednesday night, he too developed a fever, and last night he ended up in the emergency room with croup, probably brought on by the flu.

I feel kind of silly wearing a hospital mask when I'm around them, sleeping in a different room, and so on.  I haven't really felt any different, so I'm hoping it's not inevitable that I'll get sick too. . . .

Is Senator Obama a "Bob the Builder" fan?

Just wondering, since his catch-phrase in his speech tonight was "Yes, we can!"

Those of you who are parents of young kids are probably well familiar with the show "Bob the Builder," whose theme song includes the refrain, "Bob the Builder, can we build it?  Bob the Builder, yes, we can!"

Allegorical speech

There was an episode from the 5th season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (bonus geek points to any reader who identifies the name of the episode) where Captain Picard ends up stranded on a planet with an alien who communicates by saying apparently non-sensical things like "Darmok at Gerard."  Eventually, Picard figures out that this alien species communicates by referring to past stories.  To say that they need to cooperate, for example, the alien would refer to a past incident where two rivals put aside their differences to defeat a common enemy.

Of course, this doesn't work so well if you don't know the alien's mythology.

Anyway, I always thought this was kind of a silly episode; after all, who talks like that?  It's way too complicated.  But recently, when my baby son has had enough to eat, he's been saying, "Pooh stuck in Rabbit's doorway."  This is, of course, in reference to the scene in "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" where Winnie-the-Pooh (a bear of very little brain) gorges on Rabbit's honey and then finds that he can't fit through the doorway -- only after he's already halfway through.

Then I started to realize that allegorical speech would make things a lot more efficient.  Some obvious candidates: prisoner's dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons.

Then I remembered a passage from Dean Harold Koh's book, The National Security Constitution, in which he describes how government lawyers referred to United States  v. Curtiss-Wright Corp. as the "Curtiss-Wright so I'm right cite," because of its apparent holding (but actually just dicta) that the President enjoys vast unfettered discretion in the realm of foreign affairs.

I wonder if it's possible to teach class like this . . . .

Hooray for the Kenyons

Hooray for the Kenyon family!  Long-time readers may recall the heartbreaking story of Will Kenyon, who was born three months premature.  Will struggled to survive but ultimately passed away.

But the Kenyons just had another baby, Edward, who was a month early but seems to be fit and healthy.  Congratulations to the family!

Baby Riverdance

My baby son really likes music, and now he starts doing a jitterbug-type dance that's like some kind of Baby Riverdance.  Maybe this is my ticket to retiring. . . .

How parenting is like taking a deposition

How is being a parent to a baby/toddler who can't quite speak like taking a deposition?  You can't ask compound questions, like "do you want cereal or yogurt?".