Hi friends – I saw this in the Wall Street Journal this morning and wanted to pass it on. Christmas with a little less commercialism and a lot more in values. What’s wrong with that? Our kids will survive!

When Less is More

My kids know this Christmas is different, and I, for one, am already enjoying it more. Last night the 5 of us curled up in front of the fire while it snowed outside, and watched the Frank Capra classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And you know what? It is! Difficult days like this don’t change the fact that life is always a precious gift.

I hope you are “simply” enjoying the season with the ones you love.

Betsy

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Hi Friends – here’s this week’s column.  Yet another rise in average age of first marriage was announced this week.  But is that good for individuals – or our culture? (Hint: no!)

By the way, for those of you who will be at Navy Pier in Chicago this Saturday night for the Illinois USO Salute to the Troops Gala, please come up and say “hi” to me.   I’d love to meet you as we celebrate together our wonderful men and women who serve this country!

Have a great weekend – and thanks for stopping by.

Betsy Hart

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I hope you like this new audio feature which lets you listen to my podcasts instantly! (If you want to download the program instead and listen to it later just click the “Download” link.)

And here’s this week’s column on the dangers of. . . the hula hoop? Yep!

my column

Meanwhile, I hope you tune in to my radio show, “It Takes a Parent,” this Sunday at noon central time, AM1160/WYLL Chicago, streaming live on WYLL.com, or later here on my website or, on Fridays, that week’s show is podcast and archived on www.nationalreview.com. I’ll be talking with Dr. David Elkind, author of the block buster best-seller “The Hurried Child,” on what happens when we push our kids to grow up too fast? Twenty-five years after the release of the book, the trend may be worse than ever. How can we give childhood back to our kids? I also talk to Dr. Bennett Leventhal from the University of Illinois Chicago. A renowned juvenile psychiatrist, he sheds light on the news this week that pediatric suicides are on the rise after years of having leveled off. I hope you tune in for some really valuable information.

Later, I’ll be posting some political columns I’ve done for the “Chicago Daily Observer” this week on the Sarah Palin choice – and why she makes so many people so hysterically nervous!

I hope you have a great weekend. Thanks for stopping by, and please remember that I read all the e-mails I receive, even when I can’t answer each one.

And thank you!

Betsy

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Hi friends -

Hey, if you haven’t had a chance to check out www.nationalreview.com, please do! Every Friday and over the weekend NRO will be featuring the podcast of my radio show. They gave me a really nice play on their landing page. I’ve loved National Review since I was a kid, so I’m very pleased to be a part of the NR community.

And again, to all the folks visiting form National Review, it’s great to have you here. I hope you’ll come back often for updates, information about the show, the posting of my weekly syndicated column, parenting tips, and best of all – I think – comments from readers and listeners. I’d love to know what you think, and what features you’d like to see here, so feel free to let me know.

If you’d like to get a feel for the show without listening to the full half-hour, click on the “highlights” button above. It’s a three minute montage of the show, and we had fun putting it together.

Please feel free to visit my store (soon to feature items like ” ‘no’ is a complete sentence!” mugs) but there you can even now buy a signed copy of my book, “It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting is Hurting Our Kids and What to do About It.”

And in case you’d like to tune in later today, I’ll be on the FOX news channel a little before 2:00 eastern time talking with Catherine Herridge about education.

Again, thanks for visiting – and have a great day!

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Betsy’s column filed Thursday, April 19th
@Scripps Howard News Service

Ah, for the unerring wisdom of a child …

“It’s just the two of us,” said one single-mom physician in Manhattan of her daughter, age 11. “That makes her more like a partner in some ways than a child.”

That’s the crux of the recent piece in The New York Times by Stephanie Rosenbloom, “Mom and Daddy’s Little Life Coach.”

That mom is hardly the only one. Rosenbloom chronicles the rise in children who advise _ more like instruct _ their parents, on everything from relationships to real estate deals.

Another mother, who has a top job at a literary firm, seeks advice from her 17-year-old because the woman just respects “how she looks at the world.” The daughter says she “never feels like she’s stuck in the parent-child stereotype …”

And that would be bad … because why? I would argue that a whole lot of 17-year-olds would benefit by being in a parent-child “stereotype”!

One single mom says of her 17-year-old son: “he advises me on everything.”

Too bad for her and the others that even MRI studies show that teens use the part of their brains governed by emotions to make decisions, whereas adults are more likely to use the parts of their brains related to planning, judgment and executive function. In fact, those “adult function” areas are not fully formed in the brain until a person reaches his 20s.

We really didn’t need an MRI study to tell us this, did we?

As Rosenbloom points out, parents have often looked to their kids for advice, from clothes _ “Does this look frumpy?” _ to where they want to go on vacation, to help with installing a new software program.

My own children like to advise me on the fact that I am a terrible cook, we need a dog and we ought to take a vacation to Hawaii _ for starters.

But Rosenbloom says today’s trend is different. That both the scope and nature of “… child-to-parent advice has reached new proportions for a variety of reasons. Many parents _ who have shed their status as old fogy untouchables and become pals with their progeny _ are treating their offspring as worldly equals,” she writes.

One cause seems to be material bombardment, which is now oriented in such a way that “it sells everyone on the notion that children are smarter now than in previous generations,” Susan Linn, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, told the Times. There’s also the rise in single-parent families, with apparently many single parents (though not this one!) turning to their children to be their confidants. Maybe this is also about parents wanting to bond with their kids as pals because it’s not only “easier,” it makes Mom and Dad feel younger.

In any event, “we’re robbing children of childhood in some ways,” Linn said.

She’s right, but the trend is growing. Rosenbloom rightly ponders: What happens when these kids enter the work force? Will they be irritated when their managers don’t partner with them and seek their advice on all of the company’s decisions?

But I’m betting that one big reason for this shift is one not mentioned in the piece: the demise of religious tradition. The more we as a culture walk away from the latter and think we can do life on our own, the more we have to think our children come into the world inherently wise and virtuous _ because then that means we do, too.

Well, “As for me and my house,” to borrow from the Old Testament’s Joshua, I know that no matter how chaotic it may get around here, my kids are kids _ not my “partners” _ I’m the mom, and it’s for their sake that I have to care a whole lot more about whether they like me when they are 30 than when they are 13.

(Betsy Hart hosts the “It Takes a Parent” radio show on WYLL-AM 1160 in Chicago. She can be reached at www.BetsyHart.net.)

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Betsy’s Column for the week of April 5th.
@ Scripps Howard News Service

I like classical music. Not as much as I like Rod Stewart classics, mind you, but well enough.

But I never bought into the notion, prevalent throughout my four children’s babyhood, that there was a small window of time to really shape a baby’s brain. And that flooding that brain with Mozart or other classical music during those years was one key way to make a baby smarter. That understanding was based on “research” in the 1990s that just always seemed … a little too easy to me.

Though apparently not to a lot of people. In the late 1990s, then-Gov. Zell Miller mandated that every new baby leaving a Georgia hospital be given a classical-music CD.

He said, “Listening to music at a very early age affects the spatial-temporal reasoning that underlies math and engineering and even chess.”

Really? States started pouring millions into baby education and resources, with the hope that reaching babies in the first months and years of life would help them do better in school later on. Whole companies developed “brainy baby” products that teased parents out of untold amounts of money in the belief that just the right educational toy, CD or gadget in those all-important first three years of life would give their baby that all-important leg up on … everything.

Well, finally somebody is showing a little smarts here after all. Sara Mead, a senior analyst at Education Sector, an education-policy think tank based in Washington, released her analysis this week, “Million Dollar Babies: Why Infants Can’t be Hardwired for Success.”

Mead writes that “there’s a problem … with the new conventional wisdom about building brighter babies: it’s based on misinterpretations and misapplications of brain research.”

She points out that the real evidence is that there’s no magic “brain development window” that closes after the first three years of life. That, in fact, focusing on that “magic” window may let us parents and our communities off the hook later on when what we do for our kids really matters. And so, for instance, she recounts director _ and so-called child advocate _ Rob Reiner arguing: “If we’re going to have a real impact on societal ills _ crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, welfare _ we’re going to have to focus in on the first three years of life. It’s problem-solving through the prism of zero to three.”

Like I said, some folks sure want it to be easy.

Mead goes on to lay out the overwhelming science for dumping the super-baby approach. But, she’s not the first. In 2005, Marina Krakovsky reported in the “Stanford Report” from Stanford University that while scientists had discredited the claims that Mozart affects babies’ brains, the belief in the “Mozart effect” had still exploded in popularity over the years, becoming a myth that couldn’t be dislodged.

As Krakovsky points out, the original Mozart-makes-baby-smarter theory came from a 1993 Nature journal report. It found a small and temporary (15-minute) increase in a college person’s IQ after listening to classical music. Babies were not studied.

Still, the Nature report _ along with other research that showed some major growth in a baby’s brain in those early years of life _ essentially ignited the “baby brain” rage. The “findings” made the cover of Newsweek, and were the basis of countless news articles.

I know, because my mother used to send them to me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the baby-brain “wave” will end anytime soon. A new mom and dad don’t want to hear: “Trust your instincts, and just enjoy your baby. Your natural, loving interaction with him in those first years is all the stimulation he needs.”

Too many parents want to build a “better, stronger, smarter baby,” and they believe there is an expert out there who can help them do it.

Sadly, it seems many of today’s moms and dads want to believe that it takes an expert to raise a child _ maybe because, in a lot of ways, that’s just so much easier than believing it takes a parent.

(Betsy Hart hosts the new “It Takes a Parent” radio show on WYLL-AM 1160 in Chicago. She can be reached at www.BetsyHart.net.)

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Betsy’s Column
released 3/29/07
@Scripps Howard News Service

It’s not your father’s exercise routine anymore.

Forget the fit body _ what about a fit brain?

New research is suggesting that whatever exercise does for one’s physique, there’s a benefit we’re understanding only now: exercise makes us smarter.

This isn’t just about exercise making us feel perkier and better able to focus. This is about the brain performing at a higher, better level, over time, in people who work their bodies.

So Newsweek just revealed in “Stronger, Faster, Smarter” by Mary Carmichael. She looked at the work of researchers like Dr. Charles Hillman, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois. He and other scientists are discovering that brawn leads to the brain. And so in a study of grade-school students, for instance, he found that the most fit kids also did the best on statewide standardized tests, “even when factors such as socioeconomic status were taken into account.”

Just a few weeks ago, “researchers announced that they had coaxed the human brain into growing new nerve cells, a process that for decades had been thought impossible, simply by putting subjects on a three-month aerobic-workout regimen.” There are also growing indications that physical activity can stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

We’ve known for a long time that exercise sends blood to the brain, and that has benefits. What’s new? Well, as Carmichael lays it out, a lot. There’s new understanding that a chemical that’s produced with exercise, BDNF, “fuels almost all the activities that lead to higher thought.” Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey calls the molecule “Miracle-Gro for the brain.” Conversely, a brain that’s low on the Miracle-Gro “shuts itself off to new information,” as Newsweek put it.

Unfortunately, the kind of exercise I do _ intense, slow weightlifting _ may be great for strengthening thighs, but unfortunately it isn’t the most helpful for the brain, and no one knows why. Does running after four kids count? But at least it’s something.

Believe me, I’d drive myself to the bathroom if I could. Let’s just say that given how often I can’t seem to recall a name or find my car keys, I shudder to think where I’d be if I didn’t exercise at all.

Anyway, it’s the research on kids that really intrigues me. There, exercise probably has “a more long-lasting effect on brains that are still developing,” one expert explained.

As Hillman told me, there are clearly implications here for kids with conditions like ADHD for whom exercise, whether or not it’s combined with medication, can be especially useful in helping the brain overcome what may be abnormal wiring.

But this also has implications for the average youngster, for whom recess has been curtailed and playtime has too often been replaced by videogame time in recent years.

Perhaps, Hillman speculated to me, it may just be that we were designed for the physical and the mental to profoundly work together and reinforce each other. That it’s such a part of our make-up that when the former is thrown off because of a modern sedentary lifestyle, it deeply subverts the latter in ways we are only now beginning to understand.

Of course, Bill Gates and his cohorts who changed the world were the product of a generation that probably “sits around” more than any other in history. An irony? Well maybe there isn’t a paradox. Maybe we should just imagine what that generation could do if they were all in shape!

The bottom line, so to speak, is that in an age of obesity and desk jobs and kids parked in front of videogames, it’s worth reflecting on the incredible value, to the brain and the body, of just regularly going out and taking a fast walk. Or, maybe doing what my mom used to: kicking her five kids outside and saying, “Go play until I let you back in.”

(Betsy Hart is host of the new “It Takes a Parent” radio show on WYLL-AM 1160 in Chicago. She can be reached at www.BetsyHart.net.)

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Betsy’s Weekly Column
Released Thursday, March 8
© Scripps Howard News Service 2007

I like to say that my ultimate goal for my children is Heaven, not Harvard. Now if my kids go to Harvard on the way to Heaven, that’s great: But if I so focus on Harvard and success in this world that they miss Heaven, I will have failed them _ and for all of eternity.

It starts with training them in the wise habits of the heart. I was so fortunate to have wise friends in my church _ families mentoring me and challenging me, teaching me things like (gasp!) it’s the job of us parents to lead our kids. It’s not up to the experts, it’s not up to the village, it’s up to us. So with apologies to Stephen Covey and gratefulness to my many wise friends, I distill it down to the seven essential habits of the successful home, in this case the seven “A’s”:

1. The culture teaches us that success in the world is what’s of paramount importance. Instead, we parents need to have as our greatest mission for our kids something that will really matter for them, now and forever. And so my ultimate aim for my children is Heaven, not Harvard;

2. The culture tells us that our children are inherently wise and virtuous. But the wise parent sees a child’s heart accurately, meaning he understands that the foolish tendencies of his child’s heart are the biggest danger facing him;

3. The parenting experts want us to believe that we must “earn” our authority in the lives of our kids, as one such leading expert puts it. Instead, we parents must accept our role of authority in our children’s lives for the good of our children. And, we must understand that we as parents are under God’s authority too;

4. The culture seeks to protect children from every conceivable disappointment or frustration. This isn’t the way to build resilient children. This is the way to build children who will be routinely buffeted by life’s storms, even the storms God Himself asks them to weather. We parents give a gift to our children when we let them appropriately experience and learn from adversity;

5. The world teaches children to ask, “What have you done for me lately?”

But wise parents teach their children an attitude of gratefulness;

6. The culture wants our children to believe they are wonderful right now, as is. Instead, our duty as parents is to affirm our children not because they are wonderful today, as crazy as we are about them, but because they are created in God’s image. And, they are the only creatures He made who can choose to do better tomorrow;

7. The world wants us parents to be our children’s “friends.” But the wise parent knows that to be a child’s advocate, to be on our child’s side, means we have to care less about whether our children like us when they are 13 than when they are 30. And that to really be our child’s advocate, we need to pray for our kids and wisdom in parenting them.

This list is hardly exhaustive. But whatever we decide are going to be the essential habits of our home, we parents have to persevere in the moment, even when we don’t see the fruits of our perseverance in the moment. Parenting is like waves washing over a rock. You think the water is having no impact at all on the rough stone, but then one day, it’s almost suddenly clear that the rock is smooth right where the waves have been washing over it all those years. So, too, it can be when it comes to the work of a parent in shaping the heart of his child.

As a dear friend recently reminded me, when it comes to parenting our children the days are so long _ but the years are so short! And so what a blessing it is to our children when we parents have as our ultimate aim for them Heaven, not Harvard.

(Adapted from Betsy Hart’s recent talk to the Willow Creek Association’s Children’s Ministry Conference 2007, an international gathering of children’s-ministry leaders held at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill.)

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Betsy’s Weekly Column
Released Thursday, March 8
© Scripps Howard News Service 2007

“It’s not fair.”

My kids have, for some reason, been all over that one more than usual lately. It’s not fair they have so much homework, it’s not fair they don’t get to play more video games, it’s not fair that so-and-so down the street gets a ski trip and they don’t, it’s not fair that one child got four more seconds of “tuck-in” time than another.

Yes, when I hear those words I try to do a quick review of whether or not there is something grossly out of whack. Do I really “never” tuck one child in as long as another? Maybe one child does need a little more attention than he or she is getting.

But, I’ve never heard of a child arguing “it’s not fair” because he or she is actually interested in matters of objective justice. Generally speaking, when a child says “it’s not fair” it means, “I want what I want right now.” And so for the most part I respond with those great words of my dear mom, who would tell me when I whined in the same way: “Well, life isn’t fair.” Or, to add a little something from the Rolling Stones, I sometimes will sing to my kids, “You can’t always get what you want …,” which they really can’t stand.

But more and more lately, I’ve found myself “agreeing” with my kids. As in: “You are so right, life isn’t fair. It’s so unfair that you have so many great things others don’t, like you are healthy and live in a good home, you’re surrounded by family who love you and you have a devoted mom who gets to work from home, you live in a free country and … ” it’s about at that point they cut me off with, “OK, Mom. OK, Mom. We get it.”

I wonder: Do they?

Maybe the question really is: Do I myself “get it”? The concept of the “hedonic treadmill,” as psychologists call it, fascinates me. Actually, I worry it might define me. It’s the phenomenon where getting more “stuff” makes you want more “stuff,” but still you are never quite satisfied.

Charles Dickens saw a version of this more than a century ago. “‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19, 19 and six, result happiness. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds ought and six, result misery.’ ” (From “David Copperfield.”)

Now that’s insight.

So, why is it just so darn hard for us to be grateful for and content with what we have right now and, even more _ to be grateful for the good things that come to others when they don’t come to us, too? It’s not just about money, but almost any good thing. I think, ultimately, “it’s not fair” is really about “I don’t want that person over there to get a good thing unless I get it, too _ and preferably with a little more.”

I suppose it’s human nature, and can manifest itself in some way wherever, and in whatever conditions, we live. It’s certainly at the base of the culture of “victimology” we have in the West in spite of our prosperity and ease of life.

Well, I can’t fix any of that. But I can more consistently and energetically encourage my children, and myself, to be so grateful for the incredibly good gifts we have, and not just material things, but gifts like love, and laughter, and especially the amazing gift of life itself. To be grateful for today.

The Apostle Paul wrote that he had learned to be content in need and in plenty. The physical circumstances of his world were not the source of his joy _ and that is exactly why he had abundant joy.

Lately I’m just becoming more mindful of working to build this sense into my kids and myself. And yes, all the while I look forward to the great day when my children are parents and I get to hear them responding to their own little ones: “Well, life isn’t fair!”

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