Love having the kids be off school every 6 weeks or so which means we get a week of everybody adjusting to them being at home and then another week of adjusting them being back at school. All thanks to the trash tier school logistics of Germany.

A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer. Unfortunately, our time is being spent telling stories that are unsupported by research and that do little to support young people who need, and deserve, more.

The experts agree that kids need to be cared for better. The experts also agree that people like Haidt are grifters who do not contribute anything into that direction.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Schools wasting money is not as big of a deal as it is made out to be here. Not every investment can be a good one and you have to deal with that and just keep investing. My business partner used to say that innovation in the education field is like driving a van full of money to a school building and setting it on fire. Soit.

The main issue here is that a purchase like this (hardware firewalls!) fits in the rampant fear based culture around digital technology here where schools have their own IT (which they can’t deploy or manage) and everything needs to be absolutely secure. The net result of that way of thinking is of course that nothing is even slightly secure.

https://www.golem.de/news/elektroschrott-hunderte-deutscher-schulen-sitzen-auf-ungenutzten-firewalls-2402-182195.html

Come to Berlin, they said. There’s lots of space here, they said.

In the mean time in Berlin everything is full and anything related to children is wildly under-provisioned (because Germany out of principle does not invest in anything). That creates waiting lists and insane competition for everything.

https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2024/02/berlin-infrastruktur-kinder-kein-platz-wartelisten-teuer.html

The most vocal people in progressive/critical technology don’t have kids (for various reasons) and as such also have zero empathy for the real problems people deal with.

Not everybody has infinite time to deal with broken government institutions or solder all their stuff together from scratch or waste countless hours debugging some free software device.

Or maybe even worse: Lots of men in tech have kids and a stay at home wife who frees them up to engage in every kind of side-project and hobby.

2023 Year in Review

Looking back on 2023 I can say that we made lemonade out of an overall pretty shit year.

But not to worry. This is probably just one shit year in a sequence of many more shit years to come. No sign of anything getting better in our near future and lots of trends pointing downward. Does it have to be like this? Not in any way but the majority of people are stupid and we all suffer together.

ACL

I had messed up my knee in late summer of 2022 during a climbing accident and after a bit of stalling figured out that having my ACL reconstructed would be a good idea.

The surgery was scheduled for February 23rd of 2023. That made a lot of the beginning of the year waiting to go into surgery which was followed by getting the surgery (a supremely weird experience), then recuperating from it at home for a couple of weeks and going back to work while doing physical therapy.

The chronology as far as I could piece it together:

I got around mostly using ride shares during the first part which was fine. Turns out that I spent €474,55 on cab rides. A fair bit of that was thankfully reimbursed by my saved up mobility budget. I stopped taking cabs and started cycling on the electric Christiania on April 15th and then had my first outing on the road bike on June 18th.

During one of my final check-ups I told my physician at the hospital that if I didn’t rationally knew I had knee surgery, a lot of the time I couldn’t remember it. There was no noticeable difference anymore.

Of course there are still lots of situations where I notice it. The difference in strength between the two legs is still there and catching up very slowly. But that things are more or less back to normal is exactly what was promised.

I’m cleared to boulder again from around Easter if I choose to ever practice that sport again.

Kids

School

The kids started their school year with the German event they call the Einschülung, something that I disagree but I have no shortage of things that I disagree with about the German school ‘system’. That’s for another blog post.

The concept of the school and how classes are setup is very cool and the teachers are young and engaged. If everything worked the way it should, things would be amazing. The only issue is that most of the time there are staff shortages that fully destabilize whatever plans or schedules had been drafted. Those shortages stem from the deep dysfunction of the Berlin civil service and mostly because of a lack of funding for the schools that need it the most.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do there but for now we’re going to see if things look up in the second half of the year.

Let it be clear that Germany is a country that in no way values kids and their education.

Father

Related to our kids going to school, on their first school day morning my dad passed away suddenly in Amsterdam. We knew he was sick but we had no idea that things would progress this quickly.

The funeral was of course in Turkey so I took a flight to Amsterdam to be with my family and see him off and then flew to Turkey with my mother to do the burial in our village. It was the first time I was back in Turkey since 2015.

That was a difficult thing to do and after that everything is different.

Holidays

I heard the news about my dad’s illness on our holiday in the Alps this year. Our first family holiday in a long time and otherwise a resounding success.

After all the affairs were wrapped up we went to Amsterdam for a week during the fall break to keep my mother company and to have the kids experience a bit of the Netherlands again. It was good to be back and to see people we hadn’t seen in a long time.

Studies

I’ve continued the trend of unapologetically self-studying things that I fancy. I can recommend it.

Abstract Algebra

To continue to study category theory I diagnosed a gap I had on basic abstract algebra and tried to close it. I didn’t finish either of the textbooks (Fraleigh and Galian) because it seems that text books are bad for self-studying people.

I worked through a couple of YouTube lecture series on the topic which gave me much more value.

Sheaf Theory

Then I continued on and off in Sheaf Theory Through Examples which is a very mixed book. It’s nowhere near as good as Fong and Spivak’s book and now nearing the end it is getting very obtuse and inaccessible. I’ll finish this and then move on to Bartosz Milewski.

Japanese

I kept studying Japanese for most of the year and on a whim I registered for the December JLPT. During registration I had a choice where I could either go for the safe but relatively irrelevant N5 level or stretch myself and go for N4.

I picked N4 and that turned out to be a lot tougher than expected. I had to push very hard on both vocabulary and grammar to get to a point where I even felt it was worth going to Düsseldorf to take the test. The 1-2 months before the test I was cramming flash cards throughout the day and studying most evenings.

The test itself in Düsseldorf was even harder than I expected and I think that it’s unlikely that I passed it, but who knows… Results are due end of January.

Even if I don’t get the certificate, stretching myself to N4 has made me study much much harder than I would ever have otherwise and I’ve advanced quite a bit. Also I got a quick trip to Düsseldorf out of it where I could eat Asian food at a level and authenticity that’s impossible to get in Berlin.

CulturaI

With everything else that was going on, I didn’t have anything significant happen here. No time, no energy, no relevance.

I don’t really know how other people manage to binge dozens of crappy Netflix shows. I can’t really imagine spending entire evenings watching television. Do people do this still?

There are lots of good shows still that I would like to watch (The Last of Us, The Bear, Succession, etc.) but there’s just no time.

Books

I only read 15 books this year with Galian, Genki and the sheaf theory book—none of which are listed below—sucking up most of my reading time.

Cold Enough for Snow was a nice book and it also happened to be the only piece of fiction I read this year. The rest of the books above are all highly situational and none of them are particularly interesting or made a lasting impact.

Video

I watched six movies this year. The only notable one was Heat which I first saw as a teenager in the City cinema in Amsterdam.

When it comes to television things look slightly better:

  • The Sandman: We did not finish it but enjoyed the episodes that we watched.
  • Spy x Family S1: Exactly the light-hearted fun anime that I needed to watch. Nothing serious here but a fun conceit well executed.
  • Tour de France Unchained: An epic dramatization of the world’s biggest cycling event that is a must watch if you’re even slightly interested in the sport.
  • The Witcher S3: Nothing of note happened in this season but it was still kinda fun to watch I guess.
  • Attack of Titan S4P2: It was good to watch the ending of this epic series but after such a long wait it was kinda hard to pick up the relatively complex storyline.
  • Death Note: An anime classic that I started which is well executed but tough as nails and not at all compelling.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen S2: The long awaited Hidden Inventory and Shibuya Incident arcs turned into a treat to watch despite the continuously escalating power levels and its sprawling cast of characters and villains.

Games

During my recovery from surgery I started and finished Breath of the Wild. The irony of having had a climbing accident and making Link free-climb epic cliffs on Hyrule was not lost on me.

That was the year. Let’s see what the new one does.

Hey Datenschutz, leave those kids alone

The next bit of insanity has to do with the German Datenschutz nutters. This is a small but virulent group of people who have blown up privacy issues to the point where most of Germany is still afraid to use the internet.

It started with this:

https://chaos.social/@HonkHase/109864477100535497

A bunch of schools in Karlsruhe were attacked by ransomware and their servers had to be taken offline.

Now the first question that comes to mind is of course: Why does a school have servers? Don’t all schools run in the cloud these days?

Well, in Germany they don’t. There are lots of agencies and levels of decision makers all of whom are too busy covering their own ass and none of them will say: “Schools can use cloud solutions.” People and organizations being as risk averse as they are in Germany, nobody will use cloud solutions without such a declaration.1

So what do they do instead? They have to get servers and people to install and maintain barely useable non-cloud collaborative software tools. Nobody in their right mind would use these tools and kids in private schools of course don’t either, but this dysfunctional ideology is foisted upon kids who have no other choice.

These tools are not usable in any way, barely work even in the best of circumstances, are tremendously costly in maintenance and then break like in the news above. If you ever get to see from the inside how a normal organization manages their IT (i.e. poorly), from that point on you will beg, plead and scream to have everything put in the cloud.

That’s where somebody like the poster above from KRITIS comes in. That’s an organization representing people who get off on pushing around physical servers and whose founding member sells an alternative private collaboration suite, exactly like the ones that they recommend people use.

I agree with their core point that critical infrastructure should be protected better and in just doing that they’ll generate more than enough work for all the security consultants in their network. Just stop scaring normal people because you benefit from the widespread climate of fear and hands off the kids.

  1. Probably for the best because if they do, they will be sued by a random wanker (such is the German legal system). []

Year Note 2021

The days are long but the years are short.

One more year over and these are starting to look like a blur, so here’s what changed.

Work

I gave notice between Christmas and New Year 2020 and spent the first three months of the year in a weird in-between state mostly done with the old job, waiting for the new one to start, in between daycare closures and being sick.

Then the new job started and I fell into a blur of work that has continued for most of the rest of the year. It’s been a nice change but also very intense. Details are on LinkedIn.

Travel

I haven’t been anywhere in 2021 except to an island in Croatia last September with work which definitely was a highlight.

Will I travel again and why? I have no idea.

Learning

I finished Turkish. I now prefer it over German again especially for writing.

I gave up on Chinese and couldn’t motivate myself or figure out how to book the HSK2. I did learn a couple hundred characters which seem to mean the same thing as in Japanese.

I started learning Japanese which is a lot more enjoyable and for basic conversation seems a lot easier. There also has been some strengthening on the claim for a relationship between Turkish and Japanese so let’s see how it goes.

I should have started this way earlier and not listened to anybody who ever said something is difficult. What they mean is that something was difficult for them. Depending on their intelligence, many things may in fact be difficult for them. It shouldn’t matter to me or anybody else.

Kids

The daycare was closed at the start of the year until March or Easter, not sure anymore. Most of the rest of the year things were up and running.

We had a nasty burn wound on one kid that cut the summer break short and gave us several weeks of grief but in the end all turned out well.

Then at the end of the year we gave notice. We are leaving one very esteemed Kindergarten for another which I didn’t think would be possible with two kids in the middle of the year, but it is. We even had several more places willing to take our kids.

The kids are doing really well. After a brief bout of gymnastics which they enjoyed a lot, COVID made us switch to outdoor ice skating for now.

Sports

I finally killed my old fixie or to be more correct it nearly killed me. With it gone, I could finally shop for a real road bike.

Thanks to a ship blocking the Suez Canal and all the other supply chain difficulties in the world, there was a tremendous bike shortage most of the summer (who knows, maybe it’s still going on?) and I got any random bike I could get my hands on in the €1000 price range.

I also got most of the tools and kit that you would need for cycling. It’s the clichéed guy midlife hobby. The local Rapha store is more convenient and also cheaper than many of the cycling apparel you can buy dropshipped over Instagram.

I seem to have ridden 1231km on it and looking forward to doing many times that in the coming year. The details are on Strava.

I picked up bouldering again which when in a rhythm (every 4-5 days) I’m finding pretty enjoyable.

Health

I got boosted randomly on November 17th which was a lot earlier than I expected and before almost everybody I know. I am now AZ/Comirnaty/Comirnaty.

We survived another year. That’s it. That’s the year note.

Hugely thought provoking charts of how much time fathers and mothers have spent with their children in various countries.

https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1338465169874313220

Drastically lowering the voting age as Germany is considering here would solve a huge amount of problems (which is why it will of course not happen).

David Runciman has argued along similar lines that rejuvenating democracy usually happens by expanding the franchise, in this case to children.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/abgeordnete-wollen-wahlalter-auf-null-jahre-senken-kinder-an-die-macht-kolumne-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000171168297

Highlights for Peaceful Parent Happy Kids

Despite the popular idea that we need to “express”our anger so that it doesn’t eat away at us, research shows that expressing anger while we are angry actually makes us more angry. This in turn makes the other person hurt, afraid, or angry, and causes a rift in the relationship. Rehashing the situation in our mind always proves to us that we’re right and the other person is wrong, which again makes us more angry as we stew. What works is to calm down, and then find a constructive way to address whatever is making us angry so that the situation is resolved, and our anger stops being triggered.
The real job is keeping your cup full so you have plenty of joy and presence to share with your child.
Parenting is about nurturing your child, which means noticing what she needs and trying to make sure she gets it. You are, after all, the grown-up. But we can be peaceful parents only to the degree that we “parent”ourselves.
Children freely, even enthusiastically, cooperate when they believe that we’re on their side. When they don’t have that belief deep in their bones, our standards of behavior seem unfair, contradicting what they perceive as their own best interests, whether that’s taking the biggest piece of cake or lying to us.
The happy news is that as you come to terms with your own childhood story, you subtly change your emotional availability to your child, and your child blossoms accordingly, whether she’s an infant or a nine-year-old.
In relationships, without quantity, there’s no quality. You can’t expect a good relationship with your daughter if you spend all your time at work and she spends all her time with friends, screens, or the sitter. So as hard as it is with the pressures of jobs and daily life, if we want a better relationship with our children, we have to free up the time—daily—to make closeness happen.
Every child benefits from Special Time to reconnect with each parent often, if possible every day. Think of it as preventive maintenance to keep things on track in your family. And if you’re having issues with your
Every difficulty is an opportunity to get closer, as you extend understanding and your child feels truly seen, heard, and accepted.
Children need to know deep in their bones that their parents adore them and take delight in their company.
Remember, getting dressed is your priority, not his. Your presence is what motivates him.
To parents, bedtime is the time they finally get to separate from their children and have a little time to themselves. To children, bedtime is the time they’re forced to separate from their parents and lie in the dark by themselves. On top of that, children are exhausted and wound up, and parents are exhausted and fed up.
This isn’t about you right now, and your being upset won’t help. In fact, no matter what your child is talking about, you can process it later.
It may seem impossible, but if we feel the slightest glimmer of desire to turn things around, we can grab it. We don’t even have to know how. We can just choose love. We can always find a way to reach out to our child and reconnect. We can always find a way to heal things, even when we’re in a cycle of negativity that’s gone too far.
By contrast, when we think of ourselves as coaches, we know that all we have is influence—so we work hard to stay respected and connected, so our child wants to “follow”us.
What Empathy Isn’t
But before you can correct, you have to connect.
To know that their parents adore them, love to care for them, and care about their happiness. (Worthiness, security, self-esteem) To feel truly seen, known, accepted, and appreciated—even the “shameful”parts like anger, jealousy, pettiness, and greed. (Unconditional love) To stay connected with each parent through regular relaxed, playful, unstructured, affirming time together. (Intimacy, belonging) To work through challenging daily emotions. (Emotional wholeness, self-acceptance) To master new skills. (Mastery, independence, confidence) To act from one’s own motivations to impact the world. (Self-determination, power) To make a contribution. (Value, meaning)
Acknowledge your child’s perspective and empathize.
Allow expression of emotion, even while limiting actions.
Respond to the needs and feelings behind problem behavior.
When a desire can’t be granted, acknowledge it and grant it through “wish fulfillment.”
Tell the story so your child understands his emotional experience.
Teach problem solving.
Play it out.
Look him in the eye. Stay calm. He will either go blank (numbing himself), look away in shame, or look straight at you in defiance. Regardless, reach out for him.
We’ve absorbed the misguided view that children will be disobedient and manipulative unless we force them to “behave.”
Authoritarian parenting keeps children in a state of stress, worried about the next punishment (which may explain why kids who are spanked have lower IQs5).
But it does mean that babyproofing is better than trying to teach limits at this age.
Until your child has a chance to be heard, those feelings will be looking to spill out, disconnecting her, driving misbehavior and keeping her from being her usual sunny self. That’s why the single best thing you can do for your preschooler is to prioritize reconnecting with her when you’re reunited at the end of the day.
This parenting approach tends to raise kids who are self-centered, anxious, and not very resilient.
Authoritative. The final parenting style is the one that Baumrind’s research showed raises the best-adjusted kids. Her authoritative—as opposed to authoritarian—parents offer their children lots of love and support, like the permissive parents. But they also hold high expectations, like the authoritarian parents. Age-appropriate expectations, of course—they aren’t expecting a three-year-old to clean up her room by herself. But they may well be working with that three-year-old to help her clean up, over and over and over, so that by six she really can clean up her room herself. These parents are involved—even demanding. They expect family dinners, lots of discussion straight through high school, good grades, responsible behavior. But they also offer their children complete support to learn how to achieve these expectations. Importantly, these parents aren’t controlling like the authoritarian parents. They listen to the child’s side of things, they make compromises, and they cede control where possible. Their kids, not surprisingly, stay close to them—they often describe one of their parents as the person they would most trust to talk to about a problem. These kids usually do well in school, and they’re also the ones that teachers describe as responsible and well liked, simply nice kids who are a pleasure to have around.
Every child who has a sibling needs daily private time to bond with each parent.
We’re inviting him in, so that he’s part of the solution. He may have done a monstrous thing, but we’re communicating to him that he isn’t a monster. This is the foundation of his being able to face that he did something that crossed a line—and to forgive himself. It starts with our forgiving him.
Mastery isn’t a one-time feeling. It’s a way of approaching experience that through repetition becomes an acquired trait, a way of living life. It describes a person who loves to explore, learn, grow, apply himself, practice, master something, take joy in the whole creative process whether he “succeeds”or “fails”in the eyes of others, and move on to his next goal.
Every child is born with latent talent. Any child who enjoys the process of mastery has the internal motivation to polish his natural abilities to achieve—as long as the achievement he’s aiming for matters to him.
What might we say? “You really like doing that puzzle. . . . It’s the first one you took out again today.”(Empathize with his feelings.) “You’re trying all the different pieces to see what fits in that spot.”(Notice what he’s doing, which helps him feel seen and valued. In this case, we’re also articulating the strategy we see him using, which helps him be more conscious of what he’s doing, so he can evaluate whether this particular strategy is effective.) “I love doing puzzles with you!”(Communicate your enjoyment of sharing a task or project with him.) “It’s frustrating, isn’t it? But you’ve almost got it!”(Effective encouragement. By contrast, if we show him, we imply that he can’t figure it out for himself, which lessens his self-confidence.) “You did it! You got all the pieces to fit! You must be so proud of yourself!”(We’re mirroring his joy in his accomplishment, but notice we’re not telling him we’re proud of him, which implies that pride in him is something we can also withhold. Instead, we empower him by acknowledging that pride in himself is his, something he can take action to create.)
Blame is simply anger looking for a target, and it never helps us toward a solution.
The truth is, we always have more responsibility than we’d like to admit. And the more responsibility you take, the less defensive your child feels, so the more responsibility she’s likely to take in her own mind and, eventually, aloud.

Parental leave

https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1183001025155944448

One of the biggest regrets I have is that we couldn’t arrange it so that I had parental leave by myself. In large part, this was because you don’t get twice the duration (28 months) when you birth twice the kids and I could only take three full months.

“But we don’t need a secret police to turn us into atomized, isolated souls. All it takes is for us to stand by while unbridled capitalism rips apart the temporal preserves that used to let us cultivate the seeds of civil society and nurture the sadly fragile shoots of affection, affinity, and solidarity.”

A roaring end to a lament on the fragmentation of work hours and as such also of society as it took place in America.

Germany still resists this trend by for instance not allowing shops to open on Sundays. I found this tremendously annoying, but I’m now starting to see the use and charm of quiet Sundays. (And now that I have kids, I manage to buy our groceries on Saturday.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/why-dont-i-see-you-anymore/598336/

“Sometimes when he walks, I swear I can hear it, the depression. It’s a liquid sound. I can hear the cortisol sloshing around in his veins. I can hear the adrenaline drip-drip-dripping down the twisted cord of his spine.”

I’m afraid this piece has disappeared behind the Medium paywall, but The Weather by Aubrey Hirsch is one of the rare things I have ever read about post-partum depression in men and it is written like a punch in the gut.

https://gay.medium.com/the-weather-a0ee3b988ed5

Highlights for How not to hate your husband after kids

Fisher says there is brain evidence that when women are under stress (say, a new baby has colic), they are inclined to “tend and befriend”(become more empathetic and social), while men under stress are apt to withdraw.
A study of heterosexual couples led by Shiri Cohen, a couples therapist and psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School, revealed that women reported feeling much happier when their male partners understood that they were angry or upset. “This research bore out what I see every day with couples,”Cohen tells me. “When the man can register his wife’s negative feelings, and communicate that on some level, the wife feels better, because she knows that ‘Oh, he gets how I’m feeling.’”She points out that, conversely, men do not derive the same satisfaction in knowing that their wives are upset. “Research shows that men tend to retreat from what feels like conflict to them, because they tend to physiologically get much more negatively aroused,”she said, “so conflict feels way more intense for them.”
so women have better memory and social cognition skills, making them better equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that can work within a group.
Brené Brown calls this tendency to project a motive onto someone without actually knowing the facts “the story I’m making up.”
No surprise there—but the mind-boiling part is that men’s stress levels fell if they kicked back with some sort of leisure activity—but only if their wives kept busy doing household tasks at the same time
meanwhile, found that married couples’ wounds actually healed more slowly when they had hostile arguments compared with so-called low-hostile couples. The stress from a fallout, they discovered, drove up blood levels of hormones that interfere with the delivery of proteins called cytokines, which aid the immune system during injuries.
“Tom, what you’re not getting, and this is true for most men I see, is that it is in your interest to move beyond your knee-jerk selfishness and entitlement and to take good care of your wife, so she isn’t such a raving lunatic all the time.”
“But the idea that you can haul off and be abusive to your partner and somehow get a pass, that you can’t control it, or whatever you tell yourself to rationalize it, is nuts. Also, your whole ‘angry victim’ role is going to get worse. You are extremely comfortable with your self-righteous indignation.”
We construct a plan for his phone to issue a spate of reminders before all school pickups.
A week later, Tom’s crisis negotiation skills are required yet again. It is a school morning, and he is sleeping in after a late night of binge-watching a Swedish crime series. I am up at 6 a.m. with our daughter, making her breakfast and lunch, supervising her homework, ordering a replacement water bottle after she somehow lost hers at school, filling out a form for a class trip, and baking carrot muffins for Tom.
“Men often do best if they know exactly what to do.”Do not use moralistic or shaming language, he continues, which only brings on defensiveness.
Tell your spouse that changing his behavior will directly benefit him because you will be happier and more relaxed.
I’ve learned to be protective of my time, just as my husband is.
“Both boys and girls learn that mothers have needs, too, which is also very important if they have children of their own,”
Those drained respondents negotiated their responsibilities anew every day, starting from scratch—as Tom and I had been doing. This cracked system trapped the participants in an exhausting cycle of “requests and avoidance of these requests.”Conversely, spouses who knew exactly what to do around the house didn’t spend as much time negotiating responsibilities and didn’t tend to monitor and criticize each other. Not surprisingly, “their daily lives seemed to flow more smoothly.”
“So my question to you is, if he waits that long, what does it cost you, other than your obsessive need to not have it pile up? What’s it actually costing you?”
Please, snorts couples therapist Esther Perel. “One important intervention for my clients who are mothers that overmanage—who are overwrought not by difficult life circumstances but by the culture of perfection that has captured parenthood—is that I tell them to go away for the weekend,”she says. I admit to her that I am that over-managing mother. “Then go away alone, go with your friends, go away with someone you haven’t seen in ages!”she says.
The Gottmans categorize couples as masters and disasters. Masters look purposefully for things they can appreciate and respect about their partner; disasters monitor their mates for what they are doing wrong so they can criticize them. Intent on being a relationship master, I order a stack of their books.
This means voicing what the Gottmans call the “three As”: affection, appreciation, and admiration.
When Tom is reading the paper, for example, he occasionally comments, “Hmm, that’s interesting.”This is a “bid,”a sometimes-subtle appeal for attention. If I reply, “Oh, what are you reading?”this response is what Gottman calls “turning toward”my partner—I have given him the encouragement he’s seeking. If I ignore his bid, I am “turning away”from Tom.
My friend Jenny, mother of two, tells her husband that saying “thank you”is the ultimate cheap buy-in. “The average mom does a hell of a lot,”she says. “And unlike at work or school, at home, rarely is anyone saying, ‘Good job.’
Of course, I am still “household manager,”constantly reminding Tom to do fundamental things such as feed the kid breakfast—but he does it.
Sometimes he even says, “Need a hand?”
Oh, that must feel bad. I can see why you feel like that. What can I say or do right now to make you feel better? It’s calculated, but who cares?
One girl mentioned that every morning when she left for school, her father would say, “You go, tiger—you go get them.”
Father-initiated playdates are fairly rare, but they’re important, particularly for daughters.
Research shows that doing chores makes children thrive in countless ways, and is a proven predictor of success,
She found that having children take an active role in the household, starting at age three or four, directly influenced their ability to become well-adjusted young adults.
Those who began chores at three or four were more likely to have solid relationships with their families and friends, to be self-sufficient, and to achieve academic and early professional success.
three-quarters of the garages they studied were so crammed with junk, the homeowners couldn’t store cars
He laughs and says he understands. He explains that he isn’t suggesting that women should pump up the male ego—rather, that the need to feel appreciated is universal. Who among us does not love praise and kindness?
ad for Ariel India, a Procter & Gamble laundry detergent brand
When she was unhappy about making the lengthy commute to her daughter Jennifer’s preschool, her husband, then the chief executive of Microsoft, said he would drive Jennifer two days a week.
If a fight is brewing, start with “I”statements.
Say “Thank you,”and say it often.
All of those gestures—and I’m aware they were mostly gestures—took a total of a few hours, but she was thrilled, it deepened their relationship, and the goodwill he received from me lasted for weeks.
Especially, I would add here, if you can find a therapist who yells at your husband, “Stop with your entitled attitude, get off your ass, and help her out!”
The FBI’s methods of paraphrasing and emotion labeling are remarkably effective.

The dropping arises from the combination of the laissez-faire attitude of Dutch parents along with the incredible safety of the Netherlands. I have been dropped as a child and I never considered that this was a uniquely local experience.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/world/europe/netherlands-dropping-children.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur

Figuring out why there is a shortage of pediatricians

Just like almost every public service in Berlin the pediatrician situation is absolute squalor. It’s impossible to find one who picks up the phone or takes on new patients1.

We’ve had some bad incidents in the past with sketchy doctors because of this and now I’m trying to figure out why this is the way it is.

  1. Call my lead for a pediatrician
    “We’re very sorry but we can’t take any new patients.”
  2. Call the Kassenärztliche Verein
    “It’s not us who do this.”
    I am told to call the Dachverband der Krankenkassen
  3. Call the Spitzenverband
    “We do not determine how many pediatricians can settle in a given area.”
    The telephone person says they are a temp and do not have any channel up to their leadership. I’m told to call my own Krankenkasse.
  4. Call Techniker Kankenkasse
    ‘Wir sind nicht dafür zuständig.’
    The person says they have the same problem on a personal level in Hamburg but can’t really do anything for me professionally. I am told to call the Kassenärztliche Verein
  5. Call KV (again)
    Reception says that I can get a peds appointment sometime in the future from a different number of theirs (not what I want). I called this number before and they will not give me a pediatrician and that is if they bother to pick up the telephone.

Every instance says “Dafür sind wir nicht zuständig.”and sends me on until I’ve closed the loop.

It’s not the first time that this happens. I’ve previously spent half an hour being sent in a loop between Polizei and Ordnungsamt. This is the way that Germany functions: nobody is responsible for anything and everybody in between can get fucked.

Corollary: if it is impossible to figure out why something is the way it is, it is also impossible to fix it.

  1. Don’t bother tipping me a pediatrician unless you’re sure they take new patients. []

To Christiania!

After their long nap, I took both out for a round of recycling cardboard, pumping some tires and buying some coffee beans1.

Both of them put on their helmets of their own accord and jumped into the Christiania as soon as we got there. It was clear that they had a destination in mind. They then tried to describe to me which playground they wanted to go to and how to get there lacking most of the vocabulary to do so. Extremely adorable and no doubt in my mind that they’ll be able to describe their wishes here pretty soon as well.

On the way back both kids were singing something in the cargobike while I in the back was trying to vocalize a rendition of Lemon Tree from very distant memory. We should definitely install a sound system in the bike.

  1. Johann & Nyström at Chapter One []

Some nice parenting tips from the Inuit.

For example, how do you teach kids to stay away from the ocean, where they could easily drown? Instead of yelling, “Don’t go near the water!” Jaw says Inuit parents take a pre-emptive approach and tell kids a special story about what’s inside the water. “It’s the sea monster,” Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.
“If a child walks too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family,” Jaw says.
“Then we don’t need to yell at a child,” Jaw says, “because she is already getting the message.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger?t=1552778810967

Highlights for Oh Crap

One year of one child using disposable diapers uses two full grown trees.
What’s worse is very few people dispose of the poop in the toilet before throwing away the diaper—did you even know you’re supposed to do that?
Most moms, probably including you, are reading this book because you know deep in your heart that your child is ready.
There will be a power struggle and for the first time ever, your child will literally be holding all the power, in the form of pee and poop. You will not win.
Some men are superlinear thinkers and don’t really connect with the chaos of the toddler mind. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a situation like this: Mom’s been working her butt off to potty train the kid during the day. She leaves the child in her husband’s care for twenty minutes. The child has an accident. Mom asks Dad what happened, and he says, “I told him to go and he said no.”I think dads really expect that you only have to tell your child that he needs to pee in the potty one time and the child should fully comprehend and comply.
He’s vital to this process, just as you are, so let’s involve him right from the beginning. And let’s understand and validate how he truly feels about this process, yeah?
Kids can smell fear a mile away, and it will either make them fearful or they will eat you for breakfast.
Online news, the ability to Like and Share, blogs . . . all these things combine to make for a fast-paced world. We as moms, in particular, are subject to an onslaught of not only frightening news (kidnappings, etc.) but also parenting media drama, like the infamous Time magazine and the breast-feeding cover. All this media just serves to confuse us and wound our intuition. It also makes us feel anxious, which our children pick up on.
Bottom line: we are moving too fast. We are exposing our children to too much, too soon.
I’ve seen kids learn to meter out pee and poop to get more rewards, and I’ve seen candy create bigger power struggles during potty training.
Logistically speaking, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a preschool or kindergarten that will accept an untrained child.
Day cares are essentially screwing you, especially if you are a full-time working mom or dad. (Though I’m sure you’re used to getting screwed by everything at this point, eh?)
Wearing underwear is simply too confusing for your child in the beginning. The snugness creates a muscle memory of a diaper, and the covering suggests privacy. I can almost bet you that your child will have more accidents if you put undies on her too soon.
Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne a couple of times. Mr. Payne was a Waldorf teacher and is so brilliant and eloquent on this topic, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. He says that raising children is like building a pyramid. The widest part at the bottom is the foundation. That is made up of “governing,”and takes place roughly from birth to age six. Next is the middle of the pyramid, made up of a “gardening”phase that takes place from roughly six to twelve years. And last, at the top, is the “guiding”phase, which is the way he recommends parenting children ages twelve to eighteen.
maybe nobody told you this, but one kid plus one kid = like five kids.
Your partner is going to go cuckoo. I promise she’ll return to normal very soon. Get her drunk. It’s okay.
Your role in this is just as vital as Mom’s is. Maybe more. Everyone knows that Dad is a little magic.

Highlights for No Bad Kids

When setting limits, the emotional state of the parent almost always dictates the child’s reaction. If we lack clarity and confidence, lose our temper or are unsure, tense, frazzled, or frustrated — this will unsettle our kids and very likely lead to more undesirable behavior.
Why would our sweet darling throw her toy at us when we’ve just asked her not to, and then add insult to injury by smirking? Is she evil? Does she have a pressing need to practice throwing skills? Maybe she just hates us…
When parents say more than a sentence or two about the limit-pushing behavior, even while remaining calm, they risk creating a tale about a child with a problem (perhaps he hugs his baby sister too forcefully), which then causes the child to identify with this as his story and problem, when it was just an impulsive, momentary behavior he tried out a couple of times.
If the comfort and validation of our attention has been in short supply, or if there have been compelling mini-stories and dramas created around our child’s limit-pushing behavior, she might end up repeating them to seek this negative attention.
For example, if we snatch toys away from our child, she may persistently snatch from friends
Deciding between two options is usually all a toddler needs, as long as the question is an easy one.
The sooner a caregiver can establish those limits, the easier it will be for the child to relinquish ‘testing’ and return to playing. Parents sometimes fear they will crush a child’s spirit if they are firm and consistent about rules. Truthfully, it is the other way around. A child does not feel free unless boundaries are clearly established.
Children raised without firm, consistent boundaries are insecure and world-weary. Burdened with too many decisions and too much power, they miss out on the joyful freedom every child deserves.
A toddler also acts out when there is a blatant failure to draw clear boundaries at home. Sometimes, the child is exposed to adults or older children who do not respect the toddler’s boundaries; they grab and tickle him, for example, depriving him of a sense of secure space. When a young child is overpowered and assaulted in this way, he becomes confused about physical boundaries with other people.
I asked Wendy if anything was different at home, and she mentioned that she was frustrated while getting Henry to sit in his car seat when it was time to go somewhere. She was allowing Henry to do it in his own time, waiting while he played around inside the car. Wendy said she finally became impatient, and after telling him what she would do, she placed him in his seat. She could not believe that Henry cried anyway, even after she had tried to be respectful, giving him so much time to sit in the seat himself!
I advised Wendy to give Henry the option of climbing into his seat by himself, but if he did not climb in right away, she should place him in his seat, even if he cried.
Respect your child’s play and other chosen activities. Don’t interrupt unless absolutely necessary.
Children need our undivided attention during these cooperative activities. Pay attention, connect, and encourage children to do the same.
Unfortunately, this perspective makes it next to impossible to stay unruffled with toddlers, who (as I explained above) need to disagree with us and feel safe expressing their strong emotions.
Occasionally, though it’s pretty rare, my superhero perspective even allows me to recognize the romance in these moments. I’m able to time travel at hyper-speed into the future, look back, and realize that this was prime time together. It didn’t look pretty, but we were close. I’ll remember how hard it was to love my child when she was at her very worst and feel super proud that I did it anyway.
Help fulfill her healthy needs for autonomy, competence, and participation by asking for her assistance with the baby (and anything else) whenever possible.