Are Children Dumber Today Than They Used To Be?

Lest I get in hot water with all the parents out there, my short answer is "no." Now let me explain the question.

I recently learned of a bill coming before the Utah Senate which would fund all day kindergarten throughout the state. Perhaps I am thinking of my own kids only, but I am convinced that all day kindergarten is not helpful to most students. For those who would point out that it is optional and not required I will say two things: first, when will that change, because our trend is towards adding requirements such as these to combat falling achievement results; and second, This post is not just about all day kindergarten. (Now on to what it is about.)

Forty years ago we had fewer after school programs, less technology in schools, and less emphasis on standardized testing. We also had higher literacy rates, better scores on math and science tests, and probably higher graduation rates (I could be wrong there - I have no data). If we add those two things together we should come to the conclusion that after school programs, more technology and emphasis on standardized tests are not the solution to the problem facing our education system. (They are great for the bottom line of some technology companies and some education companies who specialize in testing or after school programs.)

I don't mean to imply that having computers and other technology in schools is bad, or that tests make kids dumber (I know some people who make either of those arguments) but we should see that they do not solve the underlying problem.

Another trend that I think has a greater impact on our education system than the technology, tests, and extra programs is this - the vast majority of students today come from one of two kinds of homes: single parent homes or two income homes. This was not the case forty years ago. The real problem confronting our society and manifesting itself in our education system is that children are not getting the care from involved parents that they used to get. They are getting more activities and government sponsored daycare solutions and less of mom or dad sitting down to help with homework, attending parent-teacher conferences, being aware of what's happening in their lives, or even playing with them in the back yard. Our problem is homes which are nothing more than places to sleep and families which are all about blood relations with no thought about relationships.

Programs like all day kindergarten make it that much easier for parents to decide that they can both work and let the government raise their children. I admit that some people are in a position where they need outside help, but in most cases it is a matter of convenience rather than need. Society should not be burdened by the financial and social cost of funding a convenience. For those who have needs, we should be looking for ways to help their needs without making it convenient for others to go joyriding at our expense.

My Life is So Good

I have been thinking a lot lately about how good my life is right now. I have a job I love, a family that keeps me both happy and busy (often happy and busy are the same thing), and the opportunity to do things that I enjoy - such as study politics, blog, train for a marathon, etc. Today was a holiday for some people, but I was not begrudging the fact that it was not a holiday for me because I enjoy my work. Other jobs that I have liked still left me wanting every holiday I could get.

In the last few days, Isaac has started sleeping through the night, so I get to sleep through the night as well. And today we took the family to the community center for breakfast to support the literacy center. That is the first thing we have done for the purpose of spending money to support something we believe in. It's nice to finally be in a position financially where we feel that we can give more than time or verbal assent to an idea.

As I was talking to Laura recently about this, I realized that life really could not be any better. I even like the challenges that we face, and that we undoubtedly will face as we grow and as the kids advance to new stages - like becoming teenagers. My assessment was - our life could be different in various ways, but none of those differences would make it better than it is.

Too Busy

Yesterday was one of those days. I wanted to get the Christmas lights up on the house and possibly write another candidate endorsement. Instead my day went something like this:

• Get up with Isaac for night feedings at 2:00am and 5:30am
  
• Run 6 miles at 6:00am
• Help get breakfast on the table for the kids who have kept Laura up since I left to run
• Talk about what the girls want to do today
• Start putting clips on the house to hang the lights
• Run to the store for extension cords and light socket adapters (skipping lunch)
  
• Have a friend over for games
• Finish getting the lights up
  
• Go to a dinner/Christmas party
• Put the girls to bed
• Feed Isaac for his late feeding
• Fall in bed - looking forward to the night feedings
  

I would love to show a picture of the lights on the house but, thanks to a shortage of lights at the store, I only have half the lights I wanted so it still looks a little weak - even by my meager standards. I guess you'll have to settle for a picture of what my hair looks like after a six mile run once I have run my fingers through it and it has had time to dry.

Annual Family News

It's that time of year. Many people have probably already had at least one newsletter arrive in their mailbox from friends or family. Laura and I have talked about doing a newsletter many times over the years and every year we are moving/graduating/having a baby (pick one) and so it doesn't happen. This year we are again planning to start that tradition. For one thing, it would be a new kind of writing challenge for me in addition to all the other writing that I do (this blog is not half my writing every day).

Enter my brother's wife. Their son just had his first birthday - the day before Isaac passed the one month mark - and she used that as an excuse to give a family update in her blog - twice. She posted a nice little visual update and then she posted a written year in review.

While many of the newsletters I have seen over the years include pictures, I liked one thing she did differently. Her pictures spanned the year rather than just being recent photos. Unlike other newsletters, her written review was a snapshot of their family at the end of the year, not a summary of the year.

Childhood Excitement

These last few days have been busy. The girls have had cousins to visit whom they have not seen since early June. As we have run from place to place, and activity to activity, I have begun to remember how children react to all the excitement that surrounds this time of year.

This is not a complaint, just an observation, but as the kids get all excited about one activity and then another event, and then a special visitor - not Santa specifically, but any special visitor who may come during the season, be it an grandparent, an old friend, a cousin, or an aunt who they have not seen in ages - they begin to forget some of the basic rules which they seemed to have learned. We find that they forget to listen to parents, they fail to do their chores, or they break some basic house rules. To make matters worse they start to get moody when the fun party does not come as fast as they wanted, or when it ends faster than they wished.

Having made this observation before, we will attempt to keep the activities at a reasonable level while still celebrating the season. So far we have not done very well. To the regular festivities of the year we have added a new brother (first boy makes it better than a new sister for the girls) and some of their close cousins are moving to New Zealand in a couple of weeks so there are extra parties and goodbyes to attend to.

Wish us luck as we try not to overload the kids while we indulge in the excitement of the season.

Becoming Comfortable

After a week at work I am becoming quite comfortable with my new position. The first half of the week was a bit empty since more than half the people at the office were gone for one reason or another. Over the last two days I have been able to meet the people who had been gone and get a better feel for the culture of the office and the personalities of all the people I will be working with. I have also had more interaction with customers and projects so my feel for the position is deepening. The more I know about the work and the people, the more I like where I am at now.

To top it all off, Laura came to visit the office with the kids so my co-workers got to meet my family and my family got to meet the people I work with. After the visit, Laura said to me that she was amazed at how comfortable she was with the people in the office. She really felt like it was the right place for me to be. I guess that up until then she was still not totally comfortable. That makes sense to me because she knows very little of the details of the work and she knew nothing about the company. At least in the case of BYU, where she knew no details concerning the work I was interviewing to do, she knew BYU and felt very confident in them as an institution.

It's nice now that she feels more confident in Rapid Intake as a company and can tell, like me, that it is a really good fit.

Starting a New Day

The reality of tomorrow is starting to sink in for me. I will be starting to work after two months and for the first time ever I will be working a regular, full-time job outside the house. All my previous outside jobs were part-time or irregular hours for student positions and the like. While I expect to feel the transition myself, it is my family that is likely to feel this change the most.

Laura has never had a time when I did not set my own schedule based on our family situation. On top of that she is still getting used to having four kids, so this is a double burden for her.

Savannah and Alyssa will notice the difference, but I expect they will just roll with the change.

Isaac will not know the difference.

Mariah will probably take it the hardest. She was not around for my schooling so she has never known me to go away to any form of work. She was as old as Isaac is now the last time I returned from work-related travel. She is the ultimate daddy's girl and she has become very clingy in the last day or so. I have no doubt that she will adjust to this new reality as well, but she is going to notice the change and probably hate it for the first few days or weeks.

It will be interesting to see how this change affects Mariah and the family as a whole. At least with the office just over a mile from home I will not have to deal with lengthy commutes and we will have the option to visit for lunch and have the girls come see the office some time.

My Sign

I thought it would be fun to show the sign I made for our front lawn announcing Isaac's arrival.

Big Day Today

Today was a big day for me.

Laura and Isaac came home from the hospital. Both are doing very well. The girls are excited to have their brother home - especially Mariah. I got to take the candidate yard sign I had and flip it around. Now it reads "It's a boy."

Today was the day that potential employer #2 had promised to give me an answer. There was a little bit of a glitch this morning as they were trying to come to a final decision. That made a bit more work for me. They did make their decision finally and now I was able to make mine. I am going with employer #1 who has made a very generous offer and has been very patient in allowing me to field another offer. Here we are, 12 days after their initial offer, and they are being gracious enough to allow me to start next Monday so I can help with my new baby.

On top of that it was election day. I voted.

Pictures as Promised

Here is the first picture I took of Isaac.

This picture was two experiments combined - first, use the self timer on the camera (I had never done that with this camera before); and second, get four children to look at the camera at the right time. I cropped the image, but this is us, today, after I brought the girls to the hospital from church.

One more of Isaac - lest we forget who's day it is.

Welcome Isaac

The surprise today was that Isaac decided to have a birthday. Stats and story follow.

Name: Isaac David Miller
Arrived: 7:13 am 11/5/2006
Weight: 7 lbs. 3 oz.
Length: 18 1/2 inches

At 4:45 Laura woke me up saying "I think we're going to have a baby today." She had been timing contractions since 3:30 after they had been waking her up since 12:00. Laura had been wanting to wait until her mom got home this afternoon, but Isaac had other plans. We called our friend, Kandice, to come watch our two sleeping children and Savannah (who was awake for all of this). I had to pack the bags and call the midwife on duty. Laura and I got dressed and rushed to the hospital.

Laura was 8 cm dilated by the time we arrived around 5:45 - it's a good thing we had pre-registered after Laura's last checkup - and she was at a 10 within an hour. They barely had time to get an epidural in her. Isaac's head was nearly out by the time Laura realized that he was crowning. He came after about 10 minutes of pushing. Aside from the extra pain - the epidural was just kicking in - it was the easiest birth we've had.

Isaac was almost 3 weeks early so we were not expecting this, but he and Laura are doing great. In our rush to get to the hospital we forgot the camera. We will have pictures up in the next few days.

P.S. Thanks to Kandice for her supporting role.

Highlight of My Day

After being out of work for over a month, you would think that getting a good job offer yesterday would have been the highlight of my day. It wasn't. Later in the day Alyssa, my three-year-old, came in to the office to tell me that she wanted to read Hey Diddle Diddle to me. She brought her book of nursery rhymes to me. It was opened to the correct page and she stared at the picture while saying the rhyme. I'm not sure if she had memorized it or if she was reading the picture, but she got it exactly right.

Insurance Racket

I had to deal with changing health insurance today with the business office at the womens clinic that Laura goes to in preparation for our new baby. That gave me the opportunity to review prices for their services. I discovered something very disappointing. In the last year, with insurance through my work, I have paid as much in premiums (not counting what the company was supposedly paying toward the premiums) as the clinic would charge an insurance company. The only money I saved by having insurance, even with the large medical expense of having a baby, is that I am not being charged the higher prices that they charge those who don't have insurance. I don't quite understand that policy. Why should they charge more to those people who can't afford insurance? Isn't that like kicking a person while they're down?

Anyway, that's the insurance racket. My portion of the price of insurance every year is enough to pay for a major medical procedure, like 9 months of prenatal care plus delivery and a hospital stay.If we weren't having kids I'd be throwing away a new car every year in insurance premiums - and that's when the company is paying the bulk of the costs. If I were to pay for that insurance myself for three years I would have paid for a major injury - like being seriously hit by a car. If I put that money into my house instead of my insurance I would have the house paid off in 11 years from the time I bought it.

Foundations

I was up very early this morning talking to Laura about foundations. We were specifically talking about the foundation that we are laying for our children which will affect them throughout their lives. We also talked about the foundations that we received from our parents. As I thought more about it I recognized the foundation of our government - the Constitution. Then I remembered the words to the hymn "How Firm a Foundation" which remind me that the foundation of my faith and the faith of other Latter Day Saints, as well as the faith of Christians in general, is (and ought to be) firmly founded in the excellent word of Christ.

During the discussion this morning I realized how vital a good foundation is in any endeavor. In our lives, Laura and I have both noticed that any strength we have comes from the strength of our foundations. Wherever there was weakness in the foundations we gained during our formative years we find that we are constantly struggling to compensate while we try to fix the underlying foundational layer. It is obvious why we are so adamant about trying to give our children the strongest foundations we can give them.

My later reflections had me thinking about how the strength of our nation comes from our Constitution. Where there is weakness in our country we can generally trace the origins of that weakness either to a weakness in the Constitution (which we can fix through the amendment process) or to our society contradicting or misinterpreting the Constitution.

As for spiritual foundations, our faith can never be stronger than the foundation for that faith. Although the word of Christ is a strong foundation we must be careful that we are not contradicting that word, or misrepresenting it in our lives. If we are we will find that we cannot enjoy the true strength of that foundation.

What Makes a Good Day?

If you are like me, you have wondered at times what kids think about different things. I wonder how they view the world around them as they try to make sense of it. I am especially curious about what they think before they get a vocabulary.

This morning as I went to get Mariah, my one year old, out of bed I realized by looking in her eyes how she decides whether a day is good or not. If she wakes up, it's a good day. She is just excited to be alive. She loves bringing happiness to everyone around her. This is not to say that she is happy 24/7, but the only time she is unhappy is when her focus on life is being distracted by more terrestrial concerns, like being hungry or tired.

Idiosyncracies

My one-year-old has the funniest little trick. We have been meaning to get a picture of it, or capture it on video, but it is possible that we may never succeed, so I decided that I would write it down, lest it be forgotten.

Somehow she learned to drink off of flat surfaces. She likes to dump drinks on the table and then stick her face in the drink to slurp it up. One time, at a barbecue with some friends, she found my root beer sitting on the patio and she knocked it over on purpose. She then planted her face on the concrete to slurp up what daddy was drinking. Like always, she came up smiling at what a great trick she had just performed. I, on the other hand, was hoping she would not repeat the trick on concrete in the future.