The Box

It became the catch phrase of the 90s. To think outside of the box. Apple Computers made a fortune using it. We felt like if we had an Apple computer...and now an iPad, iPhone and an iWhatisthenextcoolestthing, then you are way ahead of the pack...you are thinking outside of the box.

When in actuality you are thinking right inside the box..right where the industry would like you to be...wishing and hoping and wanting what they have to sell you. Those who truly did think outside the box, did so months ago when they conceptualized the idea for the next hottest thing that they could make the public drool over, the next must-have-it item.

When we go back and think about what causes us to want those thing, I think we must blame it on cereal.

Yes, I believe it is all the grain industry's fault. That is my line of thought anyway...and I am sticking with it.

See, I recall being a kid, around six, maybe seven. I was one of the first real generation that grew up with television..with the real Saturday morning cartoons. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Speed Racer, Scooby Doo, Flintstones, Pink Panther and so on...and we watched with rapt attention.....we even watched the commercials.

And ahhh, those commercials...they were only for two things. Toys and cereal. We still lived in an age when toys were special; they were treats, they came at Christmas, on your birthday and when you saw your Grandparents. Otherwise, it was doing chores and saving nickles and dimes that got you that new toy.

So we were not as swayed by every toy commercial that came our way. Sure, closer to Christmas, man, we made our lists from those commercials and the Sears and Roebuck Christmas Catalog. However, in the day to day viewing...no, it was all about the cereal...and which one had the coolest toy of course was a matter of playground debate.

See cereal was affordable and sugar coated. It was the mom-approved, double-dipped, triple the amount of sugar an adult should consume in a week, candy bar in a box and it came with a toy. It was the first real commercialism that was marketed in children, and we bought it, hook, line, and hyperactive overloaded sinker.

WE HAD TO HAVE IT!!! The box of Capt'n Crunch that had the magnet set, the box of Vitamin King that you could send away for a set of coloring books, a stuffed Tony the Tiger...oh. my. god.....it was almost too much to take! We would go down the cereal isle with our mothers, usually just a few hours after seeing these commercials and not just beg, but sob for these boxes of cereal...we just had to have them or else we would die. Our friends would hate us. We would fail out of school. Become a hippy. It was the worst possible outcome if we did not have this particular cereal. Regardless if our mothers had a coupon for another cereal.

And we could hardly wait for breakfast the next morning. We usually would con our Dads into pouring out the box to find the prize at the bottom. I recall being devastated when trying to collect all of the Capt'n Crunch magnets and lacking just one...the one, that everyone else at school had. I had gone through three boxes of cereal trying to get that magnet without any luck and this was my fourth. To my utter devastation, my father pulled out yet another of the magnets I already had. I begged my mother to go back to the store and buy another box. Of course she said no. She told me she would get me more when I ate this box, when I finally confessed, "But I HATE Capt'n Crunch!"

And to be honest, I still do to this day. I have no idea what posessed me to think that those magnets would influence my life to this point. I wonder if I thought that they would still be on my fridge at this age?


And there it is, think about it. It all began with cereal in a box. We began to think we were cool, ahead of the game, thinking outside of the box...buy buying a box. The irony.


So the next time you stand there and think to yourself that you simply must have something...wonder to yourself, who put you in the box?

Rasing Future or Present Oriented Kids

Recently I watched a video from the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts. It was a video on our perceptions of time. The speaker was Philip Zambardo author of The Paradox of Time. In this ten minute speech he explains how as a society we tend to be either past, present or future oriented. He also explains how this affects our children.

While watching this video he touches on the fact that future oriented children know that things like doing drugs, having unprotected sex, or drinking can cause them problems in the future and they are willing to put off that initial gratification to protect their future. Unfortunately, all of the propaganda we aim at out children are aimed at kids who understand and plan for the future....in other words...they get it...they don't need us to preach to them. It is the kids who are present oriented, who cannot move beyond living in the now...immediate gratification, the I-want-it-and-I-want-it-right-now! behavior. Kids who are unable to save even five dollars, kids who put off doing a job until the very last minute, kids who never start on a project until the night before it is due.

This reminds me of a YouTube video I have seen many times...in our house we refer to the action of immediate gratification as "licking the marshmallow." In this video you will see pre-school aged children presented with a hard decision. They are presented a marshmallow and told by the adult that they (the adult) have to leave for a few minutes, but if they (the child) can resist the marshmallow until the adult comes back they will be rewarded with a second marshmallow. The wait time ranged from fifteen to twenty minutes. For a four year old....this is eternity.

The video is hilarious, but it also brings to light some very interesting knowledge about the ability to delay gratification. You see kids doing everything in their power to ignore the marshmallow, others have to touch it, sniff it, pick it up and pat it on their lips, desperate for just a taste, a sniff, bringing that tantalizing object closer and closer. Some try to be sneaky about it, they pinch little nibbles off the sides or bottom in the hopes it will be just enough to leave them not wanting more and get them through this time. Then there are the ones who just pop the marshmallow in their mouths...who needs a second marshmallow when you have a perfectly good one in front of you at this very moment?

But the most interesting point in this study did not come until many years later. The doctor who conducted the study had used many children from his daughter's school. As the children grew up he noticed a trend. The children who were able to delay gratification were the ones who scored higher on ACTs, were the ones who went on to more successful lives. The ones who were not able to wait, tended to have problems in high school and later on in life. This idea is very telling and explains to us, as parents the need we have not to give into the desire to gratify our children's every desire and wish.

I was thinking about this the other day...especially as it pertained to food. I remember that going out for a meal consisted of getting cleaned up, getting into the car, driving to a restaurant, sitting down, ordering, waiting for food and then, finally the food would arrive. We ate politely, quietly and were in no hurry as this was a time to be savored and enjoyed.

In contrast, when our children are taken out to eat today, they are placated with play rooms, crayons, coloring books....and on it goes. Many parents today become angry, even argumentative that they are just children, behaving like children and other adults should learn to accept them, as they run around the table screaming after four Mountain Dews.

I have been in restaurants where parents have no control over their kids. I have seen them just stop short of dragging a toy chest in with them and a child still cannot sit and play quietly for the 20 minutes it takes for food to come. Don't get me wrong...I had the same issues with my kids. Taking four kids into a place to dine is like visiting a petting zoo. And I am just lucky if I don't have to send one to the car.

But even better today, eating out can consist of being in the car already, pulling into a drive-through, ordering and in a matter of 1-2 minutes having your food handed to you in your car....but not only do you get your food in the car...you get a toy! and a sugared up caffeinated drink...to go in your drink holder. You never have to leave your car.

Immediate gratification versus delayed gratification. Sure...there are some benefits to immediate gratification...sometimes it is ok to lick the marshmallow. But we should remember, that immediate gratification should be the exception, and never the rule.


But look at how our children are being propagandized....Commercials tell them they need toys right now. Schools reward mediocrity....and give a prize for just showing up. Television shows tell us how wonderful we all are just the way we are....even if we are lazy, don't do school work, or are belligerent.

A recent study wanted to see what the allure was to repetitive type video games. Games that required the same action over and over again...like a wheel of fortune sort of game and outcome. In this study there was a button to be pushed to win a prize. They had three selections for the gamer. In Game A, you were rewarded every single time. In Game B, you were never rewarded. In Game C you were randomly rewarded. In both Games A and B they found that kids had no interest in playing. It was only in random rewards...given when the gamer was not expecting it that kept the gamer playing on.

What does that mean to us as parents to these little minds? It means that while we know we should reinforce the behavior we are looking for a child does not need, nor want to hear every single time they do something that they have done something right. Rather, the praise, in a random pattern, when least expected, does the most good. Delayed gratification


Even if, we as parents, try to limit the barrage on our children....we tell them no, they are still overloaded by the world to want more. I recently went through Wal-Mart with my 14 year old. She had asked me for 12 items...not in the store, just things she thought of as we walked through the store, while shopping. When I pointed this out to her she was rather shocked. Consumerism begets greed.

It all comes down to being willing to be the parent...not the friend. To be the one who can say no to a child..and teach him or her to say no to themselves.

Link to RSAnimate: The Secret Powers of Time
Link to the Marshmallow Experiment
Link to the Wikipedia Article and the Follow Up Studies

Integrity

We are all presented with choices in life. Sometimes those choices are easy; rice or mashed potatoes? Watch the game or the movie? Go out to eat of just grab the left overs?
But sometimes we are presented with complex issues that there are clear right and wrong answers to, and the right answer is the one that is difficult. The one that can cost us a friend, cost us a relationship, can cost us a job....those are the tough choices....but, while difficult, in the end they also allow us to sleep at night. Sure, we can talk our way out of the right thing to do, reasoning that we don't want to hurt the other person, cost our families money, or other thoughts, but in the end, if there is something we know we should do, and we don't do it, it weighs heavy on our very souls.
As we grow up we find ourselves in these predicaments that test us, the easy ones, but at the time they seem to encompass our entire worlds. "Do you know what happened to my vase? It is broken." In this moments as a child we are tested with questions like these, sure the easy path says, deny knowledge, pass the buck, turn the blind eye. And even if we, ourselves are not the guilty ones, being put on the defensive, having to decide, at a moment's notice what answer we are going to give is a choice that marks either a path that will lure us as we grow with its ease to deny guilt or knowledge or will mark us with an ability to accept life's happenings and their consequences.
I find that the child who can say, "Yes, I do know what happened." tends to be the child who faces little difficulty in making friends in life, who tends to have a self assurance about himself that understands that life is messy, and we all make mistakes....and accepts those flaws in others.
On the other hand, the child who tends to deny any knowledge tends to doubt themselves and their belief that others have faith that they can truly succeed. It is that lack of faith in themselves and in those around them that, in the end, causes them to lack the confidence to make the truthful statement, to choose integrity.

We are not able to instill in a child faith in himself, it is a great inner gift that he gives himself. But when it is given, when a child gives themselves permission to have faults, flaws and to actually believe that they can learn from them, it is then that the moral compass with the bearing of integrity takes the correct bearing, steering them on a course into maturity and adulthood.

Motherhood

"Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own." -- Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons



I am a mother. With all that entails. All of the sticky fingers. All of the untied shoes. All of the slamming doors. All of the dates. All of the broken curfews. They are all mine.

And each child that presents me with these things, these dilemmas, every day presents me with another way to think about how I respond to them and mold their lives with some input...but eventually, they become who they are going to be. I find I delight in the discovery.


It causes me to think back on what it must have been like for my own mother. The potential I had! The possibilities! What a landscape that lay before me..so much different than the days when women were expected to find a man and get married, I grew up in a time where college was an open door to me. I could choose from so much.

Yet, the decision I made was to marry and to have children. To be the housewife. And I do not regret it. I loved every minute of being a homemaker, raising children and being a wife. But I look back, with a bit more wisdom now and think, "Oh, now I see all the possibilities I had...and what I could have done and the things I could have had. And I still could have been a homemaker...." I understand now, perhaps some of the regrets and disappointments my own mother might have felt in me. I could have had so much more.

But living in the past has never given anyone more today. And so, a couple of years ago I took advantage of those possibilities and graduated with my degree. I am working at a very satisfying job now with great opportunity for advancement. I like where I am at in life. I like who I am in my life now.

And this makes me a good mother. In so many ways. It draws on the values and good that my mother was able to instill in me...and there was so much. There are still so many days I think, "I wish I was more like my mom."

And it trickles down to my kids. They see me in a different light. I am more confident. I am self assured. And in this, they get a better me. They take away a better them. We are open with each other and respect each other more.

In life my goal is not to create little people who are just like me...God forbid. My goal is to create individuals, who can think, create and be themselves, without fear of what that means. I am proud of who they are so far. I only see good things for them right now...my worries are small. Sure they have bumps in their roads...some of them are going to be hard, but I have confidence that they will be able to handle them all with the personalities they have. They are strong, stronger than I was.

And isn't what this is all about...motherhood? Building a better mousetrap?

Happy Mother's Day Mom....I miss you and think of you every single day. From one mouse to another.