Just what do you think the chances are that Momma will be successful? 🙂
Has anyone ever tried to motivate you by nagging? If so, did it work? That approach never worked for me. I was a sucker for positive reinforcement, but criticism and nagging brought out the rebel in me and made me dig in my heels. What about you?
Scott Adam says the best motivation is having a bad boss…it was a few bad bosses in a row that inspired him to create the cartoon Dilbert. My own motivation came from being bored out of my mind when I was a kid. I didn’t know what I would do when I grew up, but I knew it had to be something I could get involved in, something that made me feel really alive. It took some time and work but it was more than worth it.
What’s been your motivation?
I never had a really bad boss — until the last one. While he wasn’t the reason I retired right after turning 55, if I’d been working for any one of the previous supervisors, I probably would have stayed at least a couple of years longer.
Now, when I go back as a contractor, he’s my contract manager and our working relationship is hugely better.
What has motivated me in the most in that job was a period when, because of company policy, I felt empowered to be innovative and creative.
Fear of failure – Not coming up to the expectation of my mother who put up with a lot of nonsense to defend me. That was motivation enough to make me soar and make her very happy.
I don’t know. Maybe it was the interview. ‘Do you want to be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary?’ Those were the basic careers offered to women at the time. I wanted to be a mother & wife.
Tom’s grandmother was one of only two women at the University of West Virginia, the only female math major. But I wasn’t her.
I think nagging can get (grudging but not willing) compliance. It may get the teen to clean their room once but not to be motivated to do it continually.
So I don’t think nagging will get something big (Momma won’t succeed).
I think Scott actually got angry – and this lead to creativity. It is often like this, especially with humour.
this is too difficult for me to comment on – sorry…
don’t worry I survived the biggest ‘nagger’ that was in my life for a period of 20+years but it still hits a raw nerve from time to time…
now I am alone and what I do in my own time, is just that ‘my own’ 🙂
Mike,
I agree, my favorite job was the one that gave me autonomy and where we were encouraged to take initiative and allowed to be creative. On the other hand we talked about favorite jobs in Toastmasters once and one fellow said his favorite was when he was in the military and his boss was a stickler for detail. Everything had to be done in a particular way and done perfectly. This fellow loved it because he didn’t have to think, he knew exactly what he was supposed to do. It was an eye-opener for me.
rummuser,
It sounds as if your mother didn’t have to nag to inspire you and be a huge influence in your life. I’m glad it worked out so well for both of you.
bekehikebabe,
Good for you for knowing what you wanted. It was easier then to become a housewife and mother.
Evan,
I see Scott as a great example of creative discontent. It’s a lot more fun than discontent without the creativity. 🙂
I know a fellow who doesn’t like Dilbert. It’s too much like his work situation and it makes him depressed.
Cathy,
Your comment said a lot…we don’t need to hear more details. Thanks for sharing with us.
“Good for you for knowing what you wanted. It was easier then to become a housewife and mother.”
I don’t understand “It was EASIER THEN to become a housewife & mother.” What could be easier? It was the joy of my life. It was exactly what I wanted.
bikehikebabe – When we were married, Karen stayed home and was a housewife & mother. The phrase “stay at home mom” was not something you heard then. Today, it’s more normal for both parents to work make ends meet and a lot more unusual for moms to stay at home.
Now, what’s really unusual is for the hubby to stay at home and be a house-husband — like my son-in-law. 😉
Mike – My son hasn’t had a job in 12 years though he has a doctorate in physics. His wife is an artificial intelligence researcher & professor. She accepted a job elsewhere so Kendall left his job here at LosAlamosNationalLaboratory.
He isn’t a house husband either because he’s out kayaking, bicycling, skiing (with & without the kids who have been in schools since three years. Now are 9 & 11.They’ve lived in other countries briefly (Hungary, France) so now are taking Latin & Chinese + the usual.) This last part in parenthesis is just a grandmother’s blah, blah.
bikehikebabe — My daughter and son-in-law have been together for about 15 years and, in all that time, he never had a job and I had a huge problem with it. Most of that time he still lived with his parents. When she went into management training, she had to move 80 miles away and told us that he was going to go with her. I had hopes that he would try to find work. After she was done with the training, they ended up moving to the Little Rock area and, year before last, got married. Still never found work.
Several years ago, I reconciled myself that it was simply domestic role reversal and I’m fine with it. I think he has more of a problem with the situation when he’s around us because of our generation’s expected norm.
bikehikebabe,
I assume Mike answered your question? Kendall clearly married “a good provider”, to use an old-fashioned phrase. We don’t hear that much any more.
Changing the subject–here’s a cartoon showing the futility of nagging. 🙂
Mike,
Marriages like that can work a lot better than those where both parties are ambitious for their careers. It helps if one party is flexible.
…and she married an intelligent sperm donor since neither had children from their former marriages.
You’d better change the subject quickly. You just insulted my son with your simplification.
I still love you, my best friend!
bikehikebabe,
“…and she married an intelligent sperm donor since neither had children from their former marriages.”
Where did that come from? Who insulted your son?
P.S. Kendall worked at LosAlamosNationalLab & his wife at Santa Fe Institute (a think tank), for several years after they were married. She didn’t want to work where weapons are developed.
Sorry my fault. I got it wrong about the time he didn’t work. That time is about 5 years, after they moved. Senior moment.
The supposed insult: ‘Kendall clearly married “a good provider”…’ Yes he did & I was doing my usual–deciding YOU thought that was his intention. Sorry I need to work on not doing that.
bikehikebabe,
I think of Andy as a good provider, and I’m grateful. Granted we lived frugally for years, but it meant I could stay home with Kaitlin when she was young and we could still save money for retirement/contingencies. And I had plenty of free time to study what I wanted. Those things were important to me. I didn’t feel that somehow I was inadequate because I wasn’t bringing money in. It was one of the most meaningful periods of my life.
During that time I went back to CA for my father’s funeral, and one of my mother’s friends said, “It’s too bad you never did anything with your education.” Another friend of the family said, “You were such a smart little thing. It’s too bad you never did anything with it.” I didn’t bother answering. It would have been like trying to explain a sunset to a blind person. We just had different values and ways of looking at the world. And they were judging, not asking about how I experienced life.
Tom’s grandmother had three boys & one girl which was Tom’s mother. His grandmother said that if she didn’t have enough money for all that education, it would be the GIRL that she sent to college. Because it’s the woman who educates the children & that’s the most important.
bikehikebabe,
I remember you saying that before, and I couldn’t agree more.
People where I grew up didn’t see it that way, somehow to them educating children…or simply enhancing your life, making you a better human being…didn’t count. You were supposed to “do” something with your education in the sense of getting a job and earning money. To them that was the only way of contributing to society.
Is this related to the recent Chinese Mom discussions? Yes, I have personally witnessed career success driven by unrelenting parental authority and entirely against the will of the children. A big profit comes with a big price.
Looney,
This post has been at the back of my mind ever since I saw the cartoon last November, but the recent Chinese mom discussions…about the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother…is the reason I posted it now.
Yes, the price is often high…especially the suicide rate among the children raised that way. I’ll probably read the book someday. Even people who don’t approve of the parenting style say the book is entertaining and thought-provoking.
What do you and your wife think…are the results worth the cost? We never pushed Kaitlin academically or forced her to continue piano lessons when she wanted to stop. We did do a lot as a family up on our land so she learned a lot of practical skills, as well as the rewards of working. She wound up highly motivated and much more ambitious in her career than Andy and I were. We support her in that too because it makes her happy.
From what I’ve read it is just a justification for child abuse – along the lives of ‘I was beaten black and blue and it never did me any harm’.
It seems to be an ‘end justifies the means’ argument.
But I am thought to have extreme views on this – schooling as usually practised just seems institutionalised child abuse (not terribly severe and mitigated by the majority of teachers who genuinely care about students – but abuse none the less).
Jean, my wife and I could write a book on the subject too, both because of how we handled things and because we are living in a school district where all the Tiger Moms have gathered.
My wife’s mom would probably have considered Amy Chua to be too soft. My upbringing was traditional let-them-find-their-own-destiny sort, except that my father was an engineering professor and that provided some stimulation that wasn’t going to happen for many other kids. We tried to find a balance between the extremes, but this was challenging as we didn’t fully understand the opposite system that much. It seems to have partially worked, in that I have gotten four kids into excellent programs. Whether this works out as fulfillment in life is another matter.
The local high school, Mission High, is 75% Asian. A classmate of my son committed suicide about two years ago, but she was a Caucasian. One thing Mission High isn’t known for is drunk driving deaths or drug over dosing. Taking things altogether, I don’t like an overly simplistic view. It seems to me that the spiritual state of a child develops in a different dimension from the academics. They can be underdeveloped in both or developed in one to the exclusion of the other. But it is also possible to develop both.
Evan,
I’d like to hear more about exactly what you mean by institutionalized child abuse. Is corporeal punishment involved or is it emotional pressure? We had corporeal punishment in the schools I attended years ago, but as far as I know that has been outlawed. If anyone knows differently please correct me.
Looney,
I would love to read your book if you ever write it. I personally agree with encouraging kids to do well but this business of calling them “garbage” is something I could never do. Also, our family image was never tied to how well Kaitlin did in school. I wanted her to find something she liked to do so she could make a contribution to society and be happy. It had nothing to do with me. I think that makes a big difference.
When she was in 8th grade she lost all of her friends because they went on drugs and she wouldn’t. When I told her later I was so impressed by her for that she said she was too afraid of disappointing Andy and me. The three of us are very close. Also, even though we didn’t push her academically her cousins were all high achievers. She definitely felt some pressure there. Andy and his mother, father and siblings all had Ph.D.s so there was a joke that you weren’t really a Browman unless you had a Ph.D. (Only she and one of the cousins got a Ph.D. but the rest have law degrees, MBAs, etc.) Anyway, I could afford to enjoy what she was like as a human being. As I’ve said before, she and Torben blow me away sometimes. I never will forget how generous and caring they were at their wedding.
Looney,
Back to Tiger Mothers. One of the best letters to the editor I read on the subject was by a non-Tiger mother whose daughter had dyslexia. The daughter was in grammar school and was frustrated that she couldn’t read. She started going to a demanding program…four hours a day as I recall…designed for students like her. The mother was worried it was too much but the child insisted on trudging off every day until she learned to read. The child kept telling herself, “You can do it. You can do it.” The mother said she didn’t know where she learned that expression, probably from one of the TV programs the mother wasn’t supposed to have let her watch. There’s no such thing as one ideal way to raise a child…a lot depends on the child.
Forgot to say thank you for the link. I read the article and watched the videos. I’m glad I didn’t go to a high school like that! Ours was great but there wasn’t nearly so much pressure.
My view is roughly human rights (though I’d prefer to speak of interests). That is: people are valuable as people and not due to achievement.
Declaring some people more valuable than others I think quite pernicious.
I believe people should have their gifts nurtured.
A good book (very old now) setting out roughly this case in relation to education is The Sabre Toothed Curriculum. I think there will still be copies available on Amazon and such.
There is good research on what assists good learning (not just rote regurgitation). It is intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation (awards, grades and so on). It is chunking of information, space to try out stuff – and especially permission to fail without penalty. The brain physiology (our understanding is extremely primitive) is that the brain stem is activated by stress, which activates habits – extremely useful, you don’t want to be contemplating the nature of the universe while trying to escape a tiger or jump out of the way of a car. However if you wish to develop thought and the ability to consider (which involve the front part of the brain) then don’t apply exterior pressure.
As to institutional abuse. Let’s consider what children like to do. Play, interact, move around. Schools usually punish them for this (being who they are). Children are different and have different rhythms – schooling is regimented. Schooling is for the benefit of teachers (somewhat) and administrators (an awful lot). They are not set up for children – despite all the pious platitudes.
Children are people, not apprentice people. They are constrained and confined, they are punished for wanting to move in ways that others disapprove of (even though it is not illegal and no one is hurt). Their needs are routinely ignored, they are punished for enjoying themselves.
These all add up to institutionalised abuse. (There are many worse forms of course – but this is no excuse.)
As to the argument that things have always been done this way, I don’t really think this is worth even considering.
As to the argument that it works – well, the current situation does produce the current set up. I think there is a very great deal wrong with the current set up.
As to the argument that this is the best way to educate; this is only true if the purpose of education is to pass exams (I don’t think it is). Even on this criteria the results aren’t all that impressive.
For real education schooling is just a rotten way to do it. There are many alternatives and they have been successful – they have been around for well over 100 years now.
That education has not been revolutionised by the findings of the research that schooling is a rotten way to educate (and there is little enough other findings – unless it is about test scores only, in which case see above) is good evidence that there is more to people than the cerebral. Which opens up a whole ‘nother area of discussion (quite relevant to education but perhaps for another day – this rant is already too long I expect).
Evan,
A lot of people are homeschooling their children because they agree with you. In general education here in the U.S. is a real mess. In our own town it was especially good when Kaitlin was going here but I’m not sure what it’s like now.