Book Notes: No-Drama Discipline

by. D. Siegel and T. Payne.

Intro:

• whenever we discipline our kids, our overall goal is not to punish or to give a consequence, but to teach. Setting limits while still being emotionally attuned to our children. 
• Rethinking discipline ... not about punishment or control, but about teaching and skill building -- doing so from a place of love, respect and emotional connection. 
• Dual goals: 1. cooperation (short term); 2. help develop self-control, moral compass (long term).  Encouraging cooperation and building the brain. 
• No to behavior, yes to the child. Kids act, parents react, then kids react. Rinse, lather, repeat. Foundation of No-Drama Discipline: connect and redirect. 
• Connect with our children emotionally. Give our kids our attention, that we respect them enough to listen to them, we value their contribution. Deep empathic connection can and should with clear and firm boundaries that create needed structure in children's lives. 

Rethinking Discipline

• Three questions. Before you respond to misbehavior, ask yourself three simple questions: WHY did my child act this way? (approach with curiosity); 2. WHAT lesson do I want to teach in this moment? 3. HOW can I best teach this lesson? 
• Can't vs. Won't: Discipline isn't One-Size-Fits-All. Asking the three questions  helps us remember who our kids are and what they need. Discipline this one child in this one moment. 
• Too often we discipline on autopilot, we respond to a situation much more from our general state of mind than from what our child needs at that particular time. Easy to forget our children are just that -- children -- and expect behavior beyond their developmental capacity. 
• Can't vs. Won't. Huge percentage of misbehavior is more about can't than won't. 
• Strongly against spanking. Avoid any discipline approach that is aggressive, inflicts pain or creates fear or terror. 
• No time-outs. Practice handling a situation differently. Time-outs often fail to accomplish their objective, which is supposed to be for children to calm down and reflect on their behavior. Main thing kids reflect on while in time-out is how mean their parents are to have put them there. Too often time-outs aren't directly and logically linked to a particular behavior, which is key to effective learning. 
• Main objection to time-outs: child's profound need for connection. Sends conditional love message. 
• Parents need to be intentional about how they respond when their child misbehaves. 

Your Brain on Discipline

• Three Brain C's: 1. Brain is CHANGING; 2. Brain is CHANGEABLE; 3. Brain is COMPLEX.
• Check their book, Brainstorm. 
• Unfair to always expect her to handle herself well. We need to work hard to understand our children's point of view, their developmental stage, and what they are ultimately capable of. 
• Changeable: Neurons that fire together wire together. Experiences lead to changes in architecture of the brain.
• Complex: When we discipline with threats, we activate the defensive circuits of child's reactive reptilian downstairs brain. "Poking the lizard" -- leads to escalating emotions, for both parent and child. 
• We can't be in both reactive downstairs state and a receptive upstairs state at the same time. Move from reactivity to receptivity: name the emotion to tame it strategy. Help them engage their upstairs brain. Engage upstairs brain, don't enrage the downstairs brain. 
• They know that when they are upset or acting inappropriately, we're going to be there for them. And with them. 
• Give child opportunity to decide how to act, rather than simply telling them what he should do, he becomes a better decision maker. 
• Setting limits: We need to tolerate the tension and discomfort they may experience when we set a limit. But sometimes saying no is the most loving thing we can do. Much more effective than an outright no is a yes with a condition. 
• Every time our children misbehave, they give us an opportunity to understand them better, and get a better sense of what they need help learning. 

Connection is the Key

• Needed to connect. Needed to move out of the reactive state and into a receptive one, where he could hear his dad and learn. Sometimes we can avoid discipline by parenting proactively, rather than reactively. 
• Proactive: HALT before responding: is he Hungry? Angry? Lonely? or Tired?
• Connect first. Her actions, big emotions -- a message that she needs help. Bid for assistance and for connection. 
• We can ask ourselves before we begin redirecting and explicitly teaching: Is my child ready? Ready to hear me, ready to learn, ready to understand? If not, more connection is needed. 
• River of well-being: one side CHAOS, other shore is RIGIDITY. Center of the river is calmness. 
• Connecting: listening and providing lots of verbal and non-verbal empathy. Touching. Get them back to the peaceful flow of the middle of the river. 
• Connection should be our first response in virtually any disciplinary situation. 
• Tantrums. Plea for help. View them with empathy and compassion. They need us to be calm and nurturing. To connect. But with rules and boundaries, in a tone that communicates interest and curiosity instead of judgement and anger. 
• To connect is to share in your child's experience, to be present with him, to walk through this difficult time with him. 

Connection in Action.

• Response flexibility. Pause to think and to choose the best course of action. Lets us separate stimulus from response. Parent intentionally. Remaining mindful of meeting the needs of your child -- this particular child in this particular moment. Don't parent on autopilot or robotically. 
• Connection Principle #1: Turn down Shark Music. It takes us out of the present moment, causing us to practice fear-based parenting, on past expectations or future fears. Adjust our expectations; also pay attention to our own needs, desires, and past experiences. 
• Connection Principle #2: Chase the Why. Be a detective. Be curious. What's the reason behind the behavior. 
• Principle #3: What we say and How we say is important. TONE. 
• Strategy #1: Communicate comfort. Most nurturing takes place non-verbally. Get below child's eye level. 
• Strategy #2: Validate, validate, validate. Let them know we hear them. We get it. Attune to their experience. Resist temptation to deny or minimize what they are going through. Don't tell them how to feel. Perhaps identity and name their feeling, experience. 
• Strategy #3: Stop talking and listen. Talking often compounds the problem. Really listen to what she's saying. 
• Strategy #4: Reflect what you hear. 
• There are plenty of ways to spoil children -- by giving them too many things, by rescuing them from every challenge, by never allowing them to deal with defeat and disappointment -- but we can never spoil them by giving them too much of our love and attention. 

1-2-3 Discipline: Redirecting

• One definition, two principles, three outcomes. 
• Definition of Discipline -- about teaching, not about punishment.
• Two principles: 1. Wait until your child is ready (they are calm, alert, and receptive); 2. Be consistent but not rigid. Let them practice with do-overs.
• Three mindsight outcomes: 1. personal insight (better understand themselves and have more control over how they respond in difficult situations); 2. Empathy (how it impacts others, how others are feeling); 3. Integration and repair of rupture (how they can fix it, make it right?). Me, you, and we. 

Addressing Behavior

• Before you redirect: Keep calm and connect. Is my child ready? Also, am I ready? Pause, just pause. Take a breath. More emotionally responsive and effective to listen, emphathize, and really understand your child's experience before you respond. 
• Redirection strategy: R-E-D-I-R-E-C-T. 
• R - Reduce words; E - Embrace emotions. Emotions valid, not good or bad. Behavior can be bad. D - describe, don't preach (simply state what we observe); I - Involve your child in the discipline, start a Dialogue (that leads to insight, empathy and integration); R - reframe no into conditional yes; E - emphasize the positive (catch kids behaving well); C - creatively approach situation (sometimes humor, silliness); T - teach mindsight tools (upstairs/downstairs Hand-Brain model).
• Help kids develop a dual mode of processing the events that occur in their lives; be present with the experience AND able to observe what's going on -- as actor and director. 
• Sibling Chess. Don't take sides. 
• Upstairs - prefrontal region. 
• He wasn't thinking about his own behavior at all -- he was solely focused on my misbehavior. We need to be patient, understanding, and forgiving -- not only with our children, but with ourselves as well. 

From Whole-Brain Child

• We want our children to be happy, independent, and successful. Now think about what percentage of your time you spend intentionally developing these qualities in your children. Not enough time creating experiences that help children thrive. 
• Integration takes the distinct parts of the brain and helps them work together as a whole. 

Notes: Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

by M. Kondo.

• tidying marathon is best.
• tidying is just two things: deciding whether or not to dispose of something and deciding where to put it. If you can do these two things, you can achieve perfection. 
• storage myth
• tidying must start with discarding.
• tidy by category, not by place.
• tidying is a special event. Don't do it every day. 
• Examine each item you own, decide whether you want to keep or discard it, and then choose where to put what you keep.
• You only have to decide where to put things once. 
• tidy in the right order. Do not even think of putting your things away until you have finished the process of discarding. 
• secret of success is to tidy in one shot, as quickly and completely as possible, and to start by discarding. 
• visualize: think in concrete terms so that you can vividly picture what it would be like to live in a clutter-free space. 
• We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of. Take each item in one's hand and ask: "Does this spark joy?" If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. 
• Gathering every item in one place is essential to this process. 
• Best sequence: clothes first, then books, papers, misc, and lastly, mementos. 
• Urge to point out someone else's failure to tidy is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space. 
• You'll be surprised at how many things you possess have already fulfilled their role. Discard those that have outlived their purpose. 
• Out of season clothes -- "Would I want to wear it right away if the temperature suddenly changed? Do I want to see it again?"
• Don't downgrade to lounge wear. Only wear clothes you love. What you wear in the house does impact your self-image. 
• Clothing storage: By neatly folding your clothes, you can solve almost every problem related to storage. Act of folding -- an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle. Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies. 
• Folding is really a form of dialogue with our wardrobe. 
• How to fold: key is to store things standing up rather than laid flat. Goal is to fold each piece of clothing into a simple, smooth rectangle. 
• Arrange your clothes so that they rise to the right. Heavy items on the left side of the closet and light items on the right. As you move to the right, length of clothing grows shorter, material thinner, and color lighter. 
• By category, coats would be on far left, then dresses, jackets, pants, skirts, and blouses. Clothes slope up to the right. 
• Storing socks: Never, ever tie up your stockings. Never, ever ball up your socks. Shoebox is perfect divider. 
• Books. Goal -- bookshelf filled only with books that you really love. 
• Sorting papers: discard everything that doesn't fit into one of these three categories -- 1. currently in use; 2. needed for limited time; 3. must be kept indefinitely. 
• filing method: divide into two categories ... papers to be saved and papers that need to be dealt with. Make sure keep all papers in one spot. 
• Only need three categories: 1. needs attention; 2. should be saved (contractual documents); 3. should be saved (others). 
• Reduce until you reach the "clicking" point. 

Storing

• Designate a place for each thing. Existence of an item without a home multiplies the chances that your space will become cluttered again. 

Notes: Where You Go is not Who You'll Be

by Frank Bruni.

*on the whole anti-Ivy kick, and any anti-Admissions Mania, and the Track (prep, brand college, soulless job, etc)

• It's not where you went to school. It's how hard you work.
• But too many kids get to college and try to collapse it, to make it as comfortable and recognizable as possible. They replicate the friends and friendships they've previously enjoyed. They join groups that perpetuate their high school cliques. 
• College needs to be expansive adventure, propelling students toward unplumbed territory and untested identities rather than indulging and flattering who they already are. 
• the alumni of elite institutions were less clear about why they were at Harvard and what they wanted from it. For them it was the next box in a series that were dutifully checking over the course of their lives. 

[for me, it was the Ladder. Put a ladder in front of me and I would always climb it whether I wanted to or not, whether it had meaning or not. Some call it the Track; I call it the Ladder.]

• St. John's College (New Mexico and Maryland) -- [part of the Colleges that Change Lives book Need to look that book list up. I have actually heard of St. John's. But too Euro centric? Western canon based?]
• The world only cares about -- and pays off on -- what you can do with what you know (and it doesn't care how you learned it).  It also cares about a lot of SOFT SKILLS-- leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. 
• How you use college. What you demand of it. 
• Excellent Sheep, W. Deresiewicz, and his essay, "Disadvantages of an Elite Education."
• There's ideally more to higher education than a springboard to high-paying careers, and an elite school composed almost entirely of young men and women who have aced the SATs or ACTs isn't likely to be the most exciting, eclectic stew of people or perspectives. It doesn't promise to challenge extant prejudices and topple old expectations. And that's largely because there's a surfeit of students who traveled to their elite destinations on an on-ramp of familiar perks and prods. 
• College: What it Was, Is, and Should be, Debanco. There was "germ of truth" to charge that elite colleges bred self-satisfaction and he wished they "encouraged more humility and less hubris."
• "I don't think it matters that much where you go." -- John Green, novelist. Went to Kenyon.
• It's not necessary to get into a highly selective school in order to be successful. What's necessary is to understand what you want and how to do it well, and to be a self-starter.
• College president rued a propensity to be very LINEAR in too many of today's overachievers. 
• I don't know people who've been successful who've worked in a straight line. 
• Fire over Formula: "If you are extremely smart but you're only partially engaged, you will be outperformed, and you should be, by people who are sufficiently smart but fully engaged." -- hedge fund CEO.
• What mattered most in the end was a true, deep attachment to whatever you're making, whatever you're selling, whatever you're doing. Intensity and stamina. Sheer determination. Synonym for HARD WORK. 
• We know that people are often defined as sharply by setbacks, and their responses to them. 

Zen Practice - Trying Again

Just finished reading Nothing Special, C.J. Beck. The best book on Zen I've read so far. Just exactly what I needed at this time.

Going to try again and sit. Perhaps in two or three years from now -- July 2015 -- I will make it to next stage of Practice.

The book is so clear. Sitting is boring. I'm not supposed to get anywhere. I'm not supposed to be a calm buddha. That might happen, but it's not the goal.

Sit. Breathe. Label the thoughts. Give up hope. Surrender the "I" and "self." No good or bad. No judgements. No "I." Keep sitting.

Notes: Grow the Tree You Got

by T. Sturges.

Thought this would be the last parenting book, but I need to read his first book on parenting, Parking Lot Rules and 75 Other Ideas for Raising Amazing Children. This one is on raising teens; first on younger kids.

• Fathers and Daughters: The template for many of her friendships and love affairs is her relationship with her father.
• Patience, kindness, listening, anticipating, understanding, risking love, putting the adolescent first and absolutely first, putting your frustration last, absolutely last ... some of the basic requirements ... 
• Paul McCartney Rule: No embarrassments. Never am I embarrassed by anything my boys do. Be proud of them no matter what. What would Paul McCartney do? Nothing! Never again be embarrassed by anything your teenager has done, should have done, should not have done, is doing ... 
• Learn to let go, a little. 
• Five things every adolescent should know: 1. Know right from wrong; 2. Know Passion - makes the simplest thing exciting and wonderful. 3. Know creativity - "path to self-respect is through creativity." 4. Know perspective; 5. Know trust - they should know what it feels like to be trusted. 
• Parents -- be inspired by what might be, not by what might have been. 
• Once said, never unsaid. Some things should never be said ... 1. "I didn't raise my daughter to be ..."; 2. "You are not going out of the house in THAT?" -- First reaction must be a compliment. You must find something you like. 
• Life is like a football game: child does something inexplicable, mumble some encouragement, then move on to the next play. There is always a next play. But there is no going back. 
• Keep your mouth shut and they can only judge you only for what you do best. 
• I am always in a hurry to do the right thing and to do good things before I run out of time in which to do them, especially with my children. Live your life as if you only have a few years to live. 
• Jackie O -- "If you can't raise your children right, then what else is there?"
• When it's time throw the box off the roof. The box with the egg experiment. Let your young out of the nest. 
• One of our greatest responsibilities as parents is to help our children discover themselves, discover exactly who and what they are supposed to be, and help them grow into their own skin while teaching them it is okay to become whoever they turn out to be. 
• Positive thoughts are much more effective. 
• Before adolescence, Build 7 bridges. Do the things that you are supposed to do when you are supposed to do them. Be together. 
• Disappointment and Perspective. If they did get upset, they had to whisper. When dealing with an adolescent who has disappointed her parents, the greatest level of patience and kindness and perspective is required. She is still owed understanding, respect, support, and the very best her parents have to offer. They usually outgrow their bad habits if pressured with patience. 
• Disappointment is really just a measurement: difference between what you expect and what she delivers. Change her habits, but not her nature. 
• When you are wrong, be completely wrong. Own up to it. 
• Let them be beautiful. Whenever possible, let her decide her clothes, her sports, her fashions, her passions, and her hair. Force nothing on her other than your love and devotion. 
• Roland Warren. Children spell love T-I-M-E. 
• One of our principal responsibilities is to simply listen. Listen, listen, listen. It's not always what they say; often it is what they mean. 
• Like a river. As often as you can bear, let your adolescent and teenagers make their own decisions. At end of day, decisions or choices may be be so important that each one needs to be corrected. Mistake, correction, mistake, correction. Just like a river. 
• We must ask ourselves which is better, correcting mistakes or allowing them to correct themselves.
• Anger and frustration with his behaviors and his poor time management. 
• Shaq rule: Be nice every chance you get. 
• Compliments (dangers of). (Embarrassed) because not sure how he had done the thing that I was complimenting him for. He did not know how he did, so he could not repeat it. Child does not need to be complimented excessively every time he does something amazing. 
• Dreams are vital, necessary, enriching. 
• When she finally divulges her big dream -- be filled with wonder. Say nothing logical or practical. Try not to be wise. 
• Big Dream is just transportation. May need a brand-new dream to drive around in. Just a gets your teen from one point in his life to another. 
• Important for teen to please herself, not just her parents when looking at possible dream or future. 
• Siblings. Thomas Bell - ding when they are feeling left out by all the attention on younger, cuter version of themselves. When they need a little attention, too. 
• Older child -- must be completely respected by his parents an must be seen by his siblings as being completely respected by his parents. Rules and regulations of the house must be adjusted for the age of the children trying to follow them. 
• Privileges of the older child: If he works for you as an assistant parent, and does good work, recognize and reward him for doing so. At same time, he must know he is never allowed to use these privileges as a platform to bully or dominate the younger children. We want them to have the qualities of a great older sibling -- the looking out, the extra kindness, the prescience, the anticipation of need ... Kind is kind. Selfish is selfish. If you do not like what you see, make the change now. 
• Rate your sibling. 10 the best. What would it take to improve score? 
• To keep the peace. 1. One divides, other chooses. 2. 3-2-1: We pick three choices; young one picks one and one other; oldest picks from the two. 
• Share plate: dining exercise where everyone puts a piece to share. 
• Games. Playing on fair and balanced team. Camp tom-tom: nothing undertaken that was in any way responsible or good for any of us. No worries about anything, just hanging out, having a good time together. If it was not fund, we did not have to do it. Tap tap - tap to quit. 
• Make it more fun: lots of points being scored, team personnel changing frequently, quick games. 
• Punishment vs. Understanding. Purpose of punishment is to change behavior. There must also be compassion and understanding. The truth reduces punishment by 90%. 
• Punish with kindness. Wait 20 minutes before deciding what the punishment should be. Change the behavior, not the person. 
• When it finally affected his life more than anyone else's, he began to understand. He alone had to make the change in his behavior. 
• No reason to hit, ever. Or yell either. When you get upset, whisper. 
• Rule #5: Call me, no questions asked. You are forgiven in advance. (like a Get out of Jail Card). Gets child home safely. 
• Coda: You cannot keep them. They fly away. College or not -- grow the tree you got. 

Notes: The Price of Priviledge

by M. Levine.

Yes, another parenting book. One more and that's it.

• Paradox of privilege - overly concerned with how our children "do" rather than with who our children "are." Our persistent and often critical involvement is well-intended ... does not lessen the damage. 
• Past age 11-12, increases in material wealth do not translate into advantages in emotional health; they can translate into significant disadvantages. 
• Aspects of this (affluent) culture: materialism, individualism, perfectionism, and competition may actually contribute to psychological problems. 
• Two factors repeatedly emerge as contributing to their high levels of emotional problems. The first is achievement pressure and the second is isolation from parents. 
• Strong relationship between perfectionism and suicide among those adolescents who are gifted. 
• It is when a parent's love is experienced as conditional on achievement that children are at risk for serious emotional problems. 
• Being "everywhere" is about intrusion; being "nowhere" is about lack of connection. Parents can be overinvolved and children can still feel isolated. If controlling and overinvolved. 
• Kids love rituals and depend on them for a sense of continuity and connection. Having dinner together -- very important ritual. 
• Applicants to highly competitive programs -- have a "terrific paper pedigree, but on interview, often reveal a misguided tendency to choose pre-programmed advancement over genuine curiosity and good values."
• Core issue of adolescence: autonomy. A time of defining, redefining, and fine-tuning a sense of self. 
• Reliance on others - common among affluent adolescents. A parenting style that emphasized the importance of external motivation while promoting materialism as a substitute for the hard personal and interpersonal work  that adolescence demands. 
• It encourages them to forgo the development of internal motivation, keeping them dependent on others and on material goods for a sense of self. 
• Materialism is not the same as having money. Materialism does predict a lack of happiness and satisfaction. It is a value system that emphasizes wealth, status, image, and material consumption. It is a measure of how much we value material things over other things in our lives, like friends, family and work. It keeps us wedded to external measures of accomplishment for a sense of self -- prestige, power, money for adults; grades, clothes, electronics for kids. 
• "Retail or shopping" therapy. Advertisers target girls and women to make them feel bad about themselves in order to encourage consumerism. 
• Taking your daughter shopping to "chase away the blues," or because "she brightens up whenever we go shopping" not only teaches materialistic values, it also prevents the development of skills for dealing with sad feelings. (my god, can't take Ev to Menchies to make her feel better!)
• Help them understand and manage distressing feelings, and find ways to cope with them. 
• Buying children off is a parenting strategy that only leads to a lessening of parental power and a fortifying of childish greed. Kids do things when they see the benefit of those behaviors for themselves. Internal motivation is the basis for all true learning. 
• External motivation drives kids to participate not primarily for the activities itself but for some associated gain. 
• Admissions director of Brown: "I see many teens of means with few interests or passions. Ironically, many are academically successful. Rarely, though, is their success driven by a quest of knowledge. Rather, they tie academic achievement to an eventual lifestyle of luxury." 
• Need to be educated about values of perseverance and perspective, and to understand that learning and performance are not always the same thing. Need to see parents value effort, curiosity, and intellectual courage. We do this by valuing the process more than the end result. 
• We need to always deal with the child in front of us, not the child of our fantasies. (grow the tree you got.)
• Culture of affluence that's sickening our children. Need to teach that objects can never replace relationships. 
• Many affluent kids prefer organized sports activities to spontaneous play. We should provide a safe environment, give your kid a few tools, and get out of the way. 
• Not so much that kids are spoiled, but they are immature. Affluent kids do not have enough opportunity to work on self-management skills because parents are quick to limit their child's frustrations and distress. 
• Our primary responsibilty is not to gratify our children but to make certain that they develop a repertoire of skills that will help them meet life's inevitable challenges and disappointments. 
• Affluent kids are so protected from even the most minor disappointments and frustrations that they are unable to develop critical coping skills. A child cannot possibly develop resilience when his parents are constantly at his side, interfering with the development of autonomy, self-management, and coping skills. 
• The "stuff" we buy our kids, the "advantages" we insist on providing say more about our won needs than our children's. 
• Preschoolers needs to develop skills like self-control and frustration tolerance, school age children need to learn how to accurately assess their abilities, and teenagers need to resolve issues of identity and independence. 
• Many parents are losing touch with the intuitive side of parenting (including me!!). Parenting is an art, not a science. (and all the books and experts are eroding our confidence.)
• Magic Years (years 2 to 4): Parents need to be clear and brief about what pleases them and what doesn't. Speak to your child firmly but respectfully. Have plenty of unstructured playtime. Be patient; most childhood problems blow over. 
• Masters of Universe (5 to 7): Help children gain perspective on their abilities. They see themselves as "all good" or "all bad" ... parents need to develop a working alliance based on warm collaboration rather than criticism. Once a child forms a negative impression of himself, it is very difficult to change. Never bribe a child to learn. 
• How am i doing? (8-11): becoming critical and competitive. Children need to see we value their character first, their effort second, and then their grades. Girls given more negative feedback than boys at this stage. 
• What Happened to my kid? (12-14): model thoughtfulness. Including the ones kids have been working on -- sense of self, academic success, and friendships -- they are also in the process of separating and individuating from their parents. In this process, they find it necessary to challenge, ignore, reject, and criticize their parents. Our sense of loss as they become flesh-and-blood reality, quite unlike our fantasies. 
• Working on real me (15-17): kids can, will, and must make mistakes, suffer consequences, and dig deep within themselves to find better solutions and alternative strategies. Same two manifestations of good parenting -- how we connect with our children, and how we discipline them. 
• Dr. Baumrin and the styles of parenting: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Connection and discipline. 
• Good warmth: Acceptance is important part of warmth. Our children are always a work in progress, and part of true acceptance is our ability to love our children even as they swing back and forth between attachment and separation, between alienation and commitment. Not only acceptance but of deep understanding. Take time to really listen. Take a few steps back, follow their lead, listen openly and with curiosity. 
• Overinvolvement is not simply more. Involvement that gets in way of child development. Unnecessary involvement. 
• Affluent women -- without a close friend to share our problems, likely to turn to our children for solace. "Enmeshment," -- when boundaries between parent and child have collapsed. (gilmore girls syndrome)
• Praise is often "bad" warmth: Indiscriminate praise makes it hard for children to evaluate themselves realistically. Praise for grade works against real learning. It ignores the most critical aspect of learning: effort and improvement. 
• Sometimes we follow our strengths and sometimes we follow our interests. They are not always the same. Better parenting strategy to allow them to experience our love regardless of how well they are performing. Teaches them our love and acceptance are not conditional on their performance. 
• Opposite of warmth and connection -- criticism and rejection. Correction should be informational, not personal. Parental criticism of performance is damaging. 
• Discipline won't really work unless we have a loving relationship with our child. Need to set clear expectations and consequences for non-compliance. Firm control early on. A lack of firm limit-setting as major contributor to adolescent dysfunction. 
• Adolescents simply don't have the tools, the pre-frontal cortex of development, the judgement to consistently and appropriately regulate themselves.
• Monitor the kids. "Where are you going?" "Who will be there?" "Will the parents be there?" "When will you be back?"
• Containment. Power to enforce the rules. 
• Flexibility. Required in healthy relationship. 
• All conflicts between kids and parents embedded in issue of control. "In control" and "controlling."
• Types of parental control: Behavioral - being an authority, setting appropriate limits; Psychological - intrudes into inner world of child, attempts to manipulate child's thoughts and feelings by invoking guilt, shame, and anxiety. 
• Parents who use behavioral control are "in control."'; psychological control is experienced as "controlling" and intrusive ... nonresponsive to the child's emotional and psychological needs. 
• Tenets of authoritative parenting style - emphasis on warmth and control. Before exerting control, ask if what you are doing furthers your child's ability to make good choices or simply defends your own superiority. But the most critical factor in how well we parent has to do with our own feeling that we have enough inside of us, enough love, enough support, enough reserves ... 
• Challenges in affluent communities. Cultivates perfectionism - precursor to depression. Emphasize competition and extrinsic markers of success (grades, trophies, admission to elite schools). This cultivates external motivation, putting kids at risk for emotional problems. 
• Poison of perfectionism. Affluent communities emphasize individualism, perfectionism, accomplishment, competition, and materialism. "Not good enough."
• Maladaptive perfectionsim is driven by intense need to avoid failure and to appear flawless. Roots in demanding, critical, and conditional relationship with parents. When approval is conditional on performance; the feeling that excessively high standards are expected and necessary to win approval and acceptance can lead to intense feelings of hopelessness. 
• Chasing perfection. (not realizing no such thing as perfection.)
• "All roads are the same ... Choose the one with heart." -- Carlos Castaneda. 
• Make it clear you value good citizenship just as much as academic excellence. Make certain your children see you treat others respectfully. Watch your children for signs of arrogance or bullying or lack of cooperation, This is the place to show disappointment. 
• Antidote for isolation is involvement. Reach out and develop relationships with like-minded people. 
• Marrying at a young age is the single greatest predictor of divorce. 
• Dad's control and mom's depression robbed kid of opportunity to develop building blocks of a strong sense of self: ability to self-soothe, to tolerate adversity, to think creatively and flexibly, and to feel safe and loved for one's unique self. 
• Critical factor in child's well-being is serenity of the mother. Need to identify and attend to our own emotional needs. As we are able to feel generally loved, valued, and connected, so will our children. Particular challenges and obstacles faced by affluent women are real. Having everything but what we need most. 

Notes: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

by S. Adams (the creator of Dilbert)

• Goals vs. Systems. Goals are for losers. Goal is a specific objective. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. 
• His system: create something that had value and that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. 
• Deciding vs. Wanting: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. Once you decide, you take action. 
• Energy metric. All about your energy. 
• Managing attitude. Have a big, world-changing project -- you almost always end up learning something valuable in the process of failing. Smarter to see your big-idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and skills. 
• No matter what reality delivers in the future, my imagined version of the future has great usefulness today. What's real to you is what you imagine and what you feel.
• To find out your extra talent, consider what you were obsessively doing before you were 10 years old. Where there is a tolerance for risk, there is often talent. Childhood obsession and tolerance for risk are only rough guides for talent at best. 
• Quality of a product a poor predictor of success. Customers clamoring for the bad versions of the product before the good versions were even invented, like the Simpsons and cell phones. 
• It's genuinely true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be. 
• Success isn't magic; it's generally the product of picking a good system and following it until luck finds you. 
• Success Formula: Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. 
• Knowledge Formula: The more you know, the more you can know. 
• Math of success: There's usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. 
• Skills every adult should gain a working knowledge: public speaking, psychology, business writing, accounting, design, conversation, overcoming shyness, second language, golf, proper grammar, persuasion, technology, proper voice technique. 
• Public speaking. Dale Carnegie course. Rule one - no would would ever be criticized or corrected. Only positive reinforcement would be allowed. Second Rule - every must speak at each session, but they had to volunteer to go next. 
• Psychology: knowledge is power, but knowledge of psychology  is the purest form of that power. 
• Conversation. Carnegie technique for conversation with strangers: All you do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest. 1. What's your name? 2. Where do you live? 3. Do you have a family? 4. What do you do for a living? 5. Do you have any hobbies/sports? 6. Do you have any travel plans? 
• Keep asking questions and keep looking for something that interests you enough to wade into the topic. 
• Summary of good conversation technique: 1. Ask questions. 2. Don't complain (much). 3. Don't talk about boring experiences (TV shows, meal, dream, etc). 4. Don't dominate the conversation. 5. Don't get stuck on a topic. Keep moving. 6. Planning is useful but it isn't a conversation. 7. Keep the sad stories short, esp medical stories. 
• Basic parts of a good story: 1. Setup - keep it brief. 2. Pattern. 3. Foreshadowing. 4. Characters. 5. Relatability. 6. The Twist.
• Overcoming Shyness: Harness the power of acting interested in other people. Imagine you are acting instead of interacting. Figure out if people are thing people or people people. Thing people like new tech and tools and possessions; people people like things about people doing interesting things. 
• Persuasion. Persuasive words ... Because. Would You Mind ... ; I'm not interested. I don't do that. I have a rule ... ; I just wanted to clarify...; is there anything you can do for me? Thank you. This is just between you and me. 
• Thank you -- pay special attention to the quality of your thanks. No matter how you deliver a thank-you, make sure it includes a little detail of what makes you thankful. Surprise? the thoughtfulness, or how helpful the favor or gift? Be specific. 
• Just between you and me -- Sharing a confidence is a fast-track way to cause people to like and trust you. The trick is to reveal a secret that isn't a dangerous one. 
• Decisiveness. Deliver an image of decisiveness ... others see it as leadership. 
• Insanity. Crazy + confident. When you bring an emotional dimension, people can't talk you out of it. A little bit of irrationality is a powerful thing. 
• Learn Proper Voice Technique. Hum Happy Birthday, then speak in normal voice. When trying to convey false sense of confidence, tell yourself you're acting. Speak in a way you imagine a confident person would speak. 
• Pattern Recognition. On of his systems involves continually looking for patterns in life. 
• Humor. Check out his books, Dilbert Principle, Joy of Work, Dilbert 2.0., and Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain. 
• Affirmations. I, Scott, will become rich. Visualize. I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn't ask you to put money in. All it asks is your time, focus, and energy to pull the handle over and over. 
• Attitude always the same: Escape from my cell, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. 
• Experts. Experts are right about 98 percent of the time on the easy stuff but only right 50 percent  of the time on anything that is unusually complicated, mysterious, or even new. 
• Association Programming. To change yourself, part of the solution might involve spending more time with the people who represent the change you seek. 
• Happiness. The single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want. You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule. Happiness has more to do with where you're heading than where you are. 
• Next element of happiness you need to master is imagination. 
• Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good. 
• Primary culprit in your bad moods is a deficit in one of the big five: flexible schedule, imagination, sleep, diet, and exercise. Good moods are highly correlated with exercise, diet, and sleep. 
• Unhappiness caused by too much success ... seek happiness in service to others. 
• Happiness Formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future. Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others. Reduce daily decisions to routine. 
• Diet. I can change my food preferences by thinking of my body as a programmable robot. Food is mood connection. 
• Food is the fuel that makes exercise possible. For both diet and exercise, you want to reduce willpower. 
• First part of the system: break your addiction to simple carbs. Eat as much of the other stuff. 
• Peanuts or mixed nuts to suppress appetite. Avoid food that feels like punishment. If eating a healthy diet feels unpleasant, you're doing it wrong. 
• Fitness. Be active every day. Take willpower out of equation. Daily habit. 
• Motivation to exercise. Never exercise so much that you won't feel like being active the next day. 
• Failure is for people who have goals. 
• Summary: failure is your friend. Raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don't let it leave until you pick its pocket. That's a system. 

Notes: Everyday Blessings

The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, M. and J. Kabat-Zinn.

• Sovereignty. Sir Gawain and the Loathely Lady. 
• Empathy. When we cultivate empathy, we try to see things from our child's point of view. The real test for us comes when it feels as if their needs are in conflict with ours. 
• In the face of an unresponsive environment, many babies close off emotionally, withdraw, and tune out. Shutting down emotionally what we want in our kids?
• As parents, it is our job to continually rebuild and restore our relationships with our children. This takes time, attention, and commitment. 
• Acceptance: next moment called for something new, something to further healing, completion, and respect. How we see things will completely affect what we choose to do. It can help us to remember, right in those most horrible moments, to accept our children as they are, and attempt to act out of awareness, with compassion. 
• This cycle of "bad behavior," followed by some kind of discipline imposed by us, frequently does not include any attempt to empathize with what the child is experiencing. Rather than a difficult moment leading to greater understanding and a deeper connection between parent and child, distance and alienation are created instead. 
• The times they need our acceptance and our love the most are, inevitably, those times when it is hardest for us to give. 
• Too many children live with the feeling that they are not accepted for who they are, that, somehow, they are "disappointing" their parents or not meeting their expectations. Ultimately, each child has to find his or her own way. When they feel our acceptance, feel our love, not just for her easy-to-live-with, lovable, attractive self, but also for the difficult, repulsive, exasperating self, it feeds her and frees her to become more balanced and whole. 
• Zen trainers - that's our kids. It's all about mindfulness and non-attachment, knowing who we are at the deepest of levels. Our babies as live-in Zen Masters ... giving us endless challenges, and they have much to teach us. 
• Parenting as 18-year retreat. Inner calling of parenting and the years of constant and ultimately selfless attention, caring, and wisdom that it asks of us. 
• The practice is always the same: To be fully present, looking deeply, as best we can, and without judging or condemning events or our experience of them. Just presence, and appropriate action, moment by moment. 
• Practice. With awareness. Being fully there. 
• Free within our thoughts. 1. Breathing. 2. "I am not my thoughts." So when practicing mindfulness, it's important to see your thoughts, as thoughts, and not simply as "the truth." 
• Discernment vs Judging. Mindfulness is defined as moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. May look back years later, with deep regret, that our opinions were just that, opinions. 
• What is called for in the cultivation of mindfulness, and in mindful parenting, rather than judging, is discernment, the ability to look deeply into something and perceive distinctions keenly and with clarity. Discernment is the ability to see this and that, as opposed to this or that, see whole picture and its fine details, to see gradations. 
• Only through being non-judgmental that it's possible to see and feel what is actually happening, past surface appearances and the filters of our won limited opinions, our likes and dislikes, beliefs, fears, our unexamined and sometimes unconscious prejudices, and our deep longing for things to be a certain way. 
• Discernment includes seeing that even as we attempt to see our children for who they are, we also cannot fully know who they are or where their lives will take them. We can only love them, and accept them, and honor the mystery of their being. 
• Formal practice. Put your mind in your belly for a few moments and feel it moving with the breath or put our attention at the nostrils and feel the flow of the air there. Pay attention to the breath ... means attending to the feelings in your body. Activity of your mind ... you simply observe it, let it be, and let it go, returning to the breath. 
• Letter to young girl about Zen. Important to be sensitive to what is coming from our children, and what we may be forcing on them from our desire to have them value what we value.
• Zen and Buddhism are really about KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. About knowing yourself, understanding yourself, and knowing what that means. Some kinds of knowing and understanding are beyond words, and beyond thinking, and beyond anybody being able to tell you about it. Your true self. 
• Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon. Pointing is not the something. Zen mind - when walking, just walk. Meditation is simply working at being aware of each moment. I love listening to silence. 
• Keep sight of who our children really are and what they need from us in that moment. 
• Stopping and stillness need to be valued, and brought into the home to restore balance. 
• To see things from each child's point of view. What does my child really need from me in this moment? What choices do I have here? Catch ourselves. Do over. Say to the child, "Let's begin again," "Let's try again." and do it differently. 
• Major responsibility of parents: to actually behave as adults, and respond to and meet the needs of their children. Good idea from time to time to ask ourselves whether our children are here to meet our needs, or whether it is the other way round. 
• Family values. Sovereignty, empathy, acceptance, and awareness. 
• Consumers. Products become barriers and substitutes for human interaction and presence. Relationships are built on shared moments. 
• Greater risk of losing our children to the enticing values and images of peer culture, the mall culture, and the various media. Children experiencing a lack of connection. Lot easier to start our parenting without a TV than it is to regulate its use once you have one. 
• Balance. Awed and amazed when we see parents who have been able to transcend the limits of their own childhood and the era in which they were raised, and create a different model of parenting. Managed to create more balance in their own parenting. 
• Ronia the Robber's Daugther book. Same author who wrote Pippi. 
• Tatterhood - I will go as I am. Strong women. Sovereignty and authenticity. 
• Learning to touch silence and stillness. 
• Expectations. Attend to whether we are seeing our children clearly in each moment and modifying our expectations to the circumstances. Decades of therapy to undo damage that is caused when children embark on journeys driven by expectations that they unquestioningly adopt but that are not truly theirs. 
• Surrender. They put me to the test. Can I let her show frustration and misery without judgment, without criticism? Mindful parenting is to continually re-examine whether we are doing and thinking is in this child's best interest, and to ask ourselves if there might be a better way that we are not seeing. 
• My move. Generous choices to attend a child ... we are not acting like her servant (though it may feel like it).
• Grief. Making space for deep and unpleasant emotions is a much as part of mindfulness as following the breath. Maybe able to see and accept them in ways that will occasion less lopping off parts of themselves in their heartbreaking attempts to be accepted for who they actually are, rather than for what we -- in our own ignorance of how things are, and out of our won fears -- might want them to be. 

                 Lost, David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost to you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

• Intention 4: see my children as they are, accept them and not be blinded by my own expectations and fears. 
• Intention 5: I will make every effort to see things from each point of view and understand what my children's needs are, and to meet them as best I can. 
• Exercise 3: Practice seeing your children as perfect just the way they are. 
• Exercise 4: Be mindful of your expectations of your children and consider whether they are truly in your child's best interest. 
• Exercise 7: Try embodying silent presence. Listen carefully. 
• Exercise 8: Learn to live with tension without losing your own balance. Practice moving into any moment, however difficult, without trying to change anything and without having to have a particular outcome occur. 
• Exercise 10: Every child is special and every child has special needs. Each sees in an entirely unique way. Drink in their being, wishing them well. 

What is, not What Should Be - Unhappiness/Happiness

Where is this anger coming from? What his all this general unease, unhappiness?

I need to start seeing things as they ARE, not as they should be or the way I want them to be. Accept things as they are, change the things I can, and leave all the rest.

There are going to be jerks, people who have no class or manners. Not much I can do about that. What if they are my own kids? I didn't raise them like that!

Are they really Zen masters? Teaching me? Challenging me?

Roy Dean says, "Discover who you are." Who am I? Who am I?

If I'm not chasing the money, what am I chasing?

Notes: Think Like a Freak

by S. Levitt & S. Dubner

What it means to think like a freak

• First two books (Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics) were animated by simple set of ideas: 1. Incentives are cornerstone of modern life; 2. Knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, can make a complicated world less so; 3. Conventional wisdom is often wrong; 4. Correlation does not equal causality.
• Economic approach relies on data. 
• When people don't pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently ... ie. free healthcare. 

Three hardest words

• I don't know.
• Every time we pretend to know something, we are doing the same: protecting our own reputation rather than promoting the collective good. 
• When it comes to solving problems, start by putting away your moral compass. 
• Key to learning is feedback. 
• Good way to get feedback is run a field experiment. Take the lab mind-set into real world. Still running an experiment but the subjects don't necessarily know, which means feedback is pure. 

What's Your Problem?

• Evidence suggests teacher skill has less influence on a student's performance than a completely different set of factors: namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether parents have instilled an appetite for education. If these home-based inputs are lacking, not much a school can do. 
• Rather than what's wrong with our schools, ask "Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia and Poland?" When you ask the question differently, you look for answers in different places. When we talk about why American kids aren't doing so well, we should be talking less about schools and more about parents. 
• Important to properly define the problem or redefine the problem.
• Kobayashi -- isolation was really one long bout of experimentation and feedback. 
• Koba redefined the problem he was trying to solve. Competitors were asking, "How do I eat more hot dogs?" He was asking, "How do I make hot dogs easier to eat?" Only by redefining the problem was he able to  discover a new set of solutions. 
• Limits that we accept, or refuse to. 

Truth is in the Roots

• Need to identify and attack the root cause of problems (not symptoms). 
• Legalization of abortion lead to less crime. 
• Crime - start talking about the benefits of good, loving parents who give their children  a chance to lead a safe and productive lives. 
• Instead of treating the symptoms of ulcer, they uncovered the root cause (bacteria that lived in the stomach). 
• Transfusion of healthy gut bacteria. Fecal transplants. 

Think like a Child

• Think small, not big. 
• Expert performance - raw talent is overrated. Practice endlessly. Is it possible to practice something you don't enjoy? 
• Have fun, think small, don't fear the obvious - all childlike behaviors. 

Giving Candy to a Baby

• People respond to incentives. 
• Herd-mentality incentive very strong.
• Moral incentives don't work well. Wrong-headed strategy -- subtext message is that a lot of people just like you are doing this. It legitimizes the undesirable behavior. 
• Once asked to donate, the social pressure is great. 
• "Once-and-done" strategy very successful. Shifted the relationship between itself and its donors.
• Backfiring bounties/incentives -- "cobra effect:" India -- they began to breed, raise, and slaughter the snakes to get the bounty. Bounty rescinded, then freed the snakes, making problem worse. 
• M. Twain: "Best way to increase wolves in America, rabbits in Oz, and snakes in India is to pay a bounty on their scalps. Then every patriot goes to raising them." 
• To make incentives work -- treat other people with decency. 

King Solomon and David Lee Roth

• "pooling equilibrium" -- two mothers; "separating equilibrium" -- real mother instinct ... guilty party to unwittingly reveal his guilt through his own behavior. 
• Teach your garden to weed itself. 
• Nigerian scammer -- minimize his false positives, by finding a supremely gullible person.

How to Persuade People

• Appreciate that your opponent's opinion is likely based less on fact and logic than on idealogy and herd thinking. 
• Consumer has the only vote that counts. Your argument may be airtight, but if it doesn't resonate for the recipient, you won't get anywhere. 
• Good idea to acknowledge not only the known flaws but the potential for unintended consequences. 
• Acknowledge the strengths of your opponent's argument.
• Keep insults to yourself.
• Tell stories. Not anecdotes. A story  fills out the picture. It uses data to portray a sense of magnitude. Also includes  the passage of time. Stories capture our attention and are therefore good at teaching. 

Upside of Quitting

• Sunk-cost fallacy
• Opportunity cost outweigh the sunk cost, then time to quit or change course.
• Inventions: key is failing fast and failing cheap. 
• Quitting at core of thinking like a Freak... "Letting go."