Coming to America

You may have noticed that blogging here has been light for the last couple of months. That is because the entire family is picking up an moving to the US for the whole of 2010. I'm spending a sabbatical year at Harvard (chief advantage: no one asks you why) and we are all going to arrive in Boston just in time for the whole Winter experience.

And an experience it will be. I can count on one hand the days I have seen snow, the two children who have seen snow can't remember it and the last one is still unconvinced. The one of us who has experienced snow through a thing called skiing (don't ask what that's all about) has never lived with anything more than a Melbourne winter.

Suffice it to say, moving the five of us is a non-trivial exercise. We have a place but no furniture, we have visas but no health insurance (yet and ouch!), we have made contact with a school but have not dealt with the pages of forms and we have bags but no clothes. On the clothes front our plan is "to buy stuff when we get there." That last one is contingent on the hypothesis that we can last one day in Boston without winter clothes. But I forecast a future bleg asking for advice about all of that.

The children's excitement is mixed. No one is happy about leaving friends behind but there they have identified things that they are definitely looking forward to. The top 3 are: Number Three -- that is where Hannah Montana lives. This is a true statement but it is also coupled with some notion that we are just going to bump into her. Rather than cause our youngest any further anxiety, we aren't ruling out that possibility at this stage.

Number Two -- no school uniforms. Apparently, the desire to rid themselves of the Australian (and I guess rest of the world) norm of a uniform is strong enough to be a major reason to move countries. I'll evaluate that whole debate when I get to see more of the other side.

Finally, reason Number One, and a topical one, is: Halloween. Australia doesn't have Halloween and this has always been a constant source of disappointment to my eldest daughter. That disappointment will continue this evening. But next year it will all be different.

"I guess you are looking forward to next year where we will be in a place where people understand Halloween."

"Yes. Although I don't really understand it."

"What do you mean?"

"You know I love the whole 'let's go dress up and go around the neighbourhood getting treats 'thing but I have no idea how this all happened."

"I guess that will be something else you'll find out next year."

"Can't wait."

Neither can I. For starters, I could use more material for the blog and maybe a forthcoming (and doomed to failure judging by most attempts at such things) book, Parentonomics in the USA.

Shock! Baby Einstein not educational

Bigger shock! Disney agrees and will refund any DVD purchases for the last five years! They had dropped claims these were "educational" but apparently that wasn't enough.

Well that doesn't help me too much. From 1998 to 2001, we must have purchased a ton of Baby Einstein DVDs and CDs, board books, toys (and maybe even videos). Our kids loved them and I loved the fact that the marketing was so cynically directed at the nervous (if I don't act the kids will suffer) yet optimistic (they could be Einstein) parent. The educational claims didn't motivate me. Indeed, similar claims seem to surround all kids toys and there is an entire campaign directed at selling books based on educational value.

Actually, there is a deeper point here: it seems to me that educational claims abound but only certain ones get scrutiny. For instance, the NYT's article on this news ends with:

“My impression is that parents really believe these videos are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them,” Ms. Rideout said. “To me, the most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do.”

Is it? Really? Getting on the floor and playing is the "most educational thing" a parent can do? This comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But where is the evidence for that bold claim? Looking at their site, there is a lot of statistics about children doing different things than they did in the past (including substituting TV for reading) but surely we cannot presume that various other things are "educational" any more than we can presume that DVDs might not be. A lack of evidence is always a lack of evidence.

Scrooge is an economist

and his name is Joel Waldfogel. Who is Scrooge? He is someone who hates Christmas and thinks that Christmas activities are a waste. Joel Waldfogel in his new book, Scroogenomics (will the onomics trend know no end?) tell us in a series of essays why you shouldn't buy presents for the holidays. Actually, he does better than that, he calculates it. It is around $12 billion per year made up of the money value of the total difference between what a gift is worth to someone versus just having the money. And that is not counting the whole hassle of the fruitless exercise of trying to make that value less by shopping and making the thoughts that count.

Scroogeonomics is an aptly titled 170 odd page presentation of the case against Christmas but more generally against gift giving. (Note to self: don't invite Joel to birthday parties). That said, it is completely compelling. You just can't read this book without thinking about how to get out of the whole gift giving mess. And the book doesn't even mention the classic Seinfeld episode about bringing stuff to dinner parties. So Joel is like George Castanza too.

But the book is not without hope. We can end the inefficiency yet preserve the 'social' value of gift giving. One way is to use gift cards or money rather than trying the 'thought' approach. Another is to give to charities in someone's name although that is still kind of complex as you can get that wrong too. One thing you should not do is do what I have said and encourage self-made gifts. That seems to only exacerbate the inefficiency.

And what of the book itself. It is published by Princeton University Press but if you excepting the usual academic sized affair that is not to be. Instead it is 'made for gifts.' A small little book that you might see as a last minute counter purchase at a Borders. In other words, Waldfogel is capitalising on the problem and potentially creating more inefficiency.

So let me help get out of this. Don't buy this book as a Christmas gift. Go out and buy it now and send it to one friend and ask them to read it and pass it on. That would be efficiency enhancing by the book's own metric. By the time we get to December, enough may have read it to have killed Christmas for good.

Much of Parentonomics online and for free

I was lamenting the lack of Parentonomics availability on the Australian version of the Kindle. Don't get me started on that. But in doing so, I discovered that much (maybe 2/3s) of the original Australian edition (which is written in a slightly different language to the Worldwide one by MIT Press) is on Google books. You can read it here.

Media debates on parenting

In the news today, Australian PM Kevin Rudd admits smacking his kids. The headline sounds different from the text though.

Weighing in to the debate, Mr Rudd said: "And the rule that's been applied in our family ever since they were tots is that if they're doing something dangerous they'll get a, you know, whack across the knuckles."

"The key thing is a gentle tap on the wrists which is usually, if you know anything about two and three-year-olds, the cause of the quivering bottom lip and the general collapse into tears."

That seems pretty different from a wooden spoon (the thing that sparked this current round in the corporal punishment debate). Indeed, check out this picture of Mrs Cunningham from Happy Days.

She is clearly slapping Richie (who is hardly a child but let's admit that is not the point). And she is hardly the poster child for bad parent. Don't believe me, watch the video at around 26 seconds in.

Now I don't want to say I'm condoning anything. But as I have written about elsewhere, punishment is a tough parental issue. What is clear is that it is very difficult to have a national discussion on this in the media. It looks like psychologists are attacking the PM too harshly. Who would care about a rap on the knuckles?

But then let me leave you with a thought on how difficult this is. Half way through writing this post, it occurred to me that it took all of 2 minutes for me to recall and then locate the picture above. This was something I watched 30 years ago and it only appears in one season of Happy Days intros. Yet, I remembered it. What does that tell you about a rap on the knuckles?

Real life maths

A conversation:

"I hate real life maths."

"Why? Real life sounds interesting"

"But it is not real life. We had to design a theme park."

"That sounds real."

"Maybe if it was that. But who looks for angles after designing a park?"

"I am not sure what you mean. Angles are important to designers."

"But do designers do a whole design and then just circle two right angles and two acute angles? I mean what is the point?"

"I guess that doesn't sound too real."

"Right."

She has a point.