The Thirty-Six-Inch Rule

With little kids especially, very little effective parenting happens at distances greater than thirty-six inches.

As parents, of course we're anxious for our children to learn things like responsibility, honesty, loyalty, kindness, fairness, and hard work.  So we try every day to model these things; to be good examples of them.  But of these attributes, hard work is a little bit unique in that if Kat and I simply model hard work and show our kids a really, really good example of hard work, that doesn't help our kids to learn to work hard.  In fact, many of us can point to examples of the opposite, where hard working parents produce lazy children who expect their parents to wait on them.  Our good example doesn't really ensure that our kids know how to, and are willing to work.

Of course what is required is to teach our children to work... hard.  And it turns out, that's hard work- much harder than simply doing it yourself.  So the temptation is to unload the dishwasher myself in under two minutes rather than take five minutes to get one of the children to even START unloading the dishwasher.  Which then may give rise to the next temptation:  to just tell our children to go attend to some chore.  That way we can just put it out of our minds.  This is an advanced maneuver we should only use for older, previously well-taught children.  When we do this with little kids, we just a start a game of pretend where we pretend to ask them to do something, and they pretend that they will.

For example, we get into trouble with our younger children if we just tell them to go tidy their room when we are unwilling to go with them, work beside them, and show them how hard work is done- and the kind of attitude we should have about it- that it's a privilege.  So if we can't feel that it's a privilege ourselves (and sometimes we don't), then it gets risky to work beside them, because they'll sniff us out for the liars that we are; kids aren't stupid.  In those cases, Kat has been a wonderful example of honesty:

"I know this doesn't seem like much of a privilege to clean up this big mess that Jeffrey made.  It doesn't feel like a privilege to me  either.  What do you think we can do to get this cleaned up and feel better about it?"

Our kids have responded amazingly to this kind of honesty.  Many times they'll think of fun ways to clean up, but mostly I think simply allowing them to feel what they are feeling let's them take ownership of it, and then they are empowered to change what they are feeling.  The proximity is essential because it lets them know we're in it with them and that they matter more to us than the chore at hand.

Lake Powell 2012

A few years ago, I was talking with our good friend Logan.  I lamented that years ago, I knew tons of folks with houseboats on Lake Powell; I was passing on offers to go down because they were just too many.  Now that we had a nicer boat and would really like to go, we didn't know anybody.
He said, "You should call Darin Warren."

A few weeks later we were on Lake Powell with the Warrens.  I knew his older brother in high school, but we didn't know any of the people going on this trip.  In retrospect I realize how dicey that could have been.  I'm not what would normally be called genial or easy-going.  But it was amazing how well the five different families that went on that first trip got along so very well, including the adults!

Earlier this month we got back from our third Lake Powell trip with the Warrens.  Here's the recap:

• Jeffrey did not kneeboard - Booooo!
• Emerson totally waterskied a lot and tamed several lizards
• Ava wakeboarded and found many shells
• Elisabeth wakeboarded and waterskied and you can tell she's a teenager now (in a good way).
• Truman ate a lot of sand
• Many scorpions were spotted using UV black lights
• Some midnight wakeboarding may, or may not, have happened
• The boat ran perfectly
• The shaft seal that I replaced earlier this year is so nice; I don't think the bilge pump ran once
• The ballast on the "goofy" side was totally worth it
• The weather was perfect
• Nobody was irreparably injured
• We had a fantastic time
• We are truly blessed

It's a Republic, Not a Democracy

If you grew up consuming education in the United States, I'm sure at some point you heard some smarty pants correct another student who erroneously referred to our nation as a democracy.  The smarty pants was correct.  You don't vote for a president, rather, technically you are indicating your preference to the state you live in about how you would like your state's electoral votes to be cast.  Recently, Shannon Manning commented...

One of the more interesting interpretations of the purpose of the electoral college I've encountered, based on close reading of the text of the Constitution, is that the President is not elected to represent the people to the federal government - he is elected to represent the Union, or the collection of states that constitute the United States of America. Members of Congress are elected to represent the people to the federal government. It's part of the system of "checks and balances." Because most states select their electors by vote of the people, the voice of the people is to some extent recognized in the election of the president while still leaving it up to the states (as individual governmental entities with their own sovereignty over all powers not granted to the federal government) to elect the Chief Executive who represents the Union as a whole. However, the Constitution actually does not require states to allow the voters to select the state's electors.

 So what does this mean?  It means a lot of things... in 2012 it means that unless you live in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, or Florida; it means that your vote doesn't affect the election of the president very much at all.  The exceptions to this would be Nebraska and Maine who use a proportional allocation of their electoral college votes.

And it also means that unless you get out your checkbook and donate your time, the only people affecting the outcome of this election will be others who are willing to donate time and money.

Create your own electoral college map!

Math Matters

One evening, when we were in high school, Sam Reisner and I went to pick up Bruce MacArthur.  I'm sure we had some wholesome activities planned.  We ran down the stairs in his basement and beheld him working on some crazy math problem; y'know the kind that takes like three sheets of paper.  Sam was mad, "Dude, you're not done with your homework?!?!"

"Oh, I'm done.  I was just messing around with a different way to solve this.  Let's go."

Unlike Bruce, I'm not one of those "math people".  But I work at it.  I passed college algebra and calculus; actually I got really good grades in those classes.  I did it by teaching it to the other students in the study group that I formed.  Through that experience I realized that most math teachers shouldn't be.  And the truth is many of them don't really want to be; they want to be mathematicians and teaching the schmucks like me pays the bills (or they want to coach full-time ;-) ).

Now I teach math to my kids and a few of the neighbor kids.  One of the consistent bits of feedback goes something like this:  "Wow Mr. Facer, you're really good at this.  The way you explain it totally makes sense.  You should be a math teacher."  I chuckle and think silently to myself, "I already am."

But seriously, why is it so common for children to have this experience where math is such a difficult discipline?  Certainly my experience growing up was that once we made the jump to algebra, to variables, to complex formulas, I was lost.  There was a small group of my peers, maybe ten or twenty percent that kept up, and the rest of us were left drowning.  I think it's because for non-math people, it needs to be explained in better detail, with more of the "why" and illustrated in multiple different ways; until you reach the example or illustration that clicks with that particular student.

When I teach math, here's what I do:

• We do NO math without scratch paper.
• We show all the steps, every time.
• I explain the concept different ways, and we work it different ways until I can tell it has registered.
• We don't move on at the right answer, we move on when we have the right answer plus comprehension.
• I check comprehension by having the student explain it back to me.

This year, one of the neighbor kids has trigonometry.  I never took trig, but I like it.  Between the text and the internet we're figuring it out.  I really like math.  It's a darn shame that it took more than thirty years for that to happen.

We're Going to Lake Powell!

Years ago, I was reading a little desk calendar that had a wise quote for each day of the year; you know the ones where each day gets its own little page, sometimes with a clever cartoon or inspirational picture?  It was at Chuck Coonradt's office where he ran his business, The Game of Work in Park City.   The quote that I read that day was something like this:

"Take a family vacation every year, even if you don't think you can afford it.  You cannot afford not to."

I've used that excuse for the last fifteen years, and never been sorry.  Here are three big reasons why getting away from it all is essential for families that want to hang together over the long haul.

Uninterrupted, contiguous time:  You develop a deep bond with your spouse and your children when you spend several days together, away from the daily distractions at home.  In many ways, we cannot see each other clearly until we get away from the distractions, and allow a little bit of time for the scales to fall from our eyes.  Think about the scales of noisy traffic, marketing-driven media, work demands, domestic chores, school responsibilities, neighborhood issues, etc.  I know that for me and Kat, many times it's difficult for us to "see" the amazingness of our children without getting away from all the crap.  A family vacation provides the distance from the crap, and time & space for clarity of vision.

Shared experience:  It would be nice if we were advanced enough to where we could simply connect with loved ones based on proximity and desire, but we don't.  We connect with people based on shared experience.  And we reinforce those connections when we recount those experiences:

"Remember that one day in January at Powder Mountain?  The kids were skiing Confidence and Deadhorse, the snow was perfect, and we took run after run down the backside in un-tracked powder.  Your smile wouldn't go away, and you laughed like you were ten.  I remember driving home, you were handing out snacks, and the kids went on and on telling what they did, and what their favorite run was."  

Shared experience - I don't know of any intimate relationship that can survive without it.

Confidence in a big world:  In the Facer family we have a strong bias toward activity-centered recreation and vacations.  This means that we make really great participants, but not such great tourists.  While Kat probably wouldn't mind touring, it would probably drive me a little nutty.  We want our kids to see the wonders of the world in an authentic, empowering way.  So they've seen the beauty of the Rockies while skiing and hiking the mountaintops in all four seasons.  They've explored the crevices and canyons of the west on foot and by boat with a lot of waterskiiing and wakeboarding mixed in.  The thing that our kids talk about from our vacation to Hawaii is not the luau show, but the day we spent adventuring and snorkeling at Honolua Bay.  Common phrases we say to our kids:
"I dunno, what do you think?
Let's go check it out.
I'm certain that you can do that.
Hey!  You totally did it!  I knew you could.
Of course it's difficult; the truly awesome things usually are."
Seeing the big world and experiencing it first-hand (with a minimum of packaging) gives our kids a sense of confident ease walking this great earth; and it shows.  They generally avoid that mistake where we think the familiar world is bigger than it really is, and then assume the rest of the world is smaller that it really is.

So later this week, we'll pack up the kids, the boat, and a bunch of gear, and spend six days in one of the most amazing places on earth.  We're gonna have a lot of fun.  I'll be able to see Kat more clearly and appreciate her all the more.  The level of appreciation and amazement of our kids will only go up.  And we'll experience more of this great world that God made for us.