Who's Really the Nincompoop Here?

First, let it be known that because I have the sense of humor of a 4-year old, the word nincompoop still cracks me up. Mostly because it contains the word, "poop". Obviously, that, coupled with my obsession over all things helicopter parenting meant that I had to read this: Are We Raising a Generation of Nicompoops? It is currently the most e-mailed article on Boston.com - and has been for over 5 days.

On reading however, I was sorely disappointed in what I found. Rather than another interesting commentary on the ill effects of helicopter parenting as children come of age, it was an unintentional slam on the parents themselves. So, I thought it would be fun to dissect the article here (feel free to play along and add your two cents!):

1. Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."

My Thoughts: Um...your daughter literally will not know how to use a can opener if she's never been shown. Clearly, you have one in your home because you have inferred here that not all cans in your larder have pop-tops. You have witnessed the dejected sag of her slender shoulders as she realizes that, yet again, she is foiled by a can and may not partake of her snack of choice. And yet...you have not stepped in to demonstrate the fine art of utilizing the most ancient of all tools - the can opener?!

You, Ma'am, have failed.

Nincompoop Score:
Kids - 0
Parents - 1

2. Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."

My Thoughts: You allow your kids the luxury of throwing their clothing on the floor. I will assume here that you pick them up for them. You've given them pegs to utilize. You admit to have seen them struggle with a hanger. Please see comment #1. Again, Ma'am, you have failed.

Nincompoop Score:
Kids - 0
Parents - 2

3. Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.

My Thoughts: How? Why? Our toddler has "chores" if you count the fact that we ask her to put her sneakers in the hallway after she takes them off, and we ask her to clean up her toys at the end of the day. I'll have her put her dirty clothes in her hamper and she throws away rubbish without being asked. Age appropriate chores, but in a sense, chores nonetheless.

Drive through and take away are luxuries - expensive and unhealthy ones 9 times out of 10. Even families I know who have 12 hour days before they get home and start dinner typically cook, especially now, especially in this economy. Granted, that's anecdotal. But it's my experience and the concepts in this paragraph are so foreign to me that I'm afraid the parents lose this round again. Clearly, chores and home cooked meals can happen. These parents simply choose to not have them happen.

Nincompoop Score:
Kids - 0
Parents - 3

4. "It's so all laid out for them," said Maushart, author of the forthcoming book "The Winter of Our Disconnect," about her efforts to wean her family from its dependence on technology. "Having so much comfort and ease is what has led to this situation -- the Velcro sneakers, the Pull-Ups generation. You can pee in your pants and we'll take care of it for you!"

My Thoughts: So, Miss Maushart is actually trying to wean her family off of the technology that she chose to raise them with. Interesting. That aside: Velcro is great for right now. Our 2 year old can fasten her own shoes. However, I do note that shoes with laces are still in great abundance (and velcro was around when I was a wee lass, yet I still know how to tie my shoes...) and as kids age, there's nothing stopping a parent from buying them.

Pull-ups factor heavily in our lives at  the moment - or perhaps they don't? After all, it's only during very long car rides, naps, or bedtime that Miss A wears them. She's getting goood at this "using a toilet" thing. And she's only 2! Imagine that. Teching a kid that peeing in your pants isn't for life...wow.

[sigh] This is really getting depressing.

Nincompoop Score:
Kids - 0
Parents - 4

5. The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.

My Thoughts: OK. Really?! 99% of the homes I've been in, either my own or friends' or acquaintances, have normal fridges with freezers that require ice cube trays. In fact, my own fridge does have an ice maker (though it's not an "in-door" model), but we have no water line to connect it to. So, we use ice cube trays. Just like most of the canned goods in our larder, and so many others, require an opener (have you noticed that a pop top actually adds a buck or more to the price?!), so we must suffer in what's apparently viewed as neolithic servitude - slaves to our manual kitchens that do nothing for us, never mind wipe our bums too.

Nincompoop Score:
Kids - 0
Parents - 5

This is too depressing. I think I'll stop here and call it a loss for the parents.

Now, while I'm the first to gleefully admit that I can't wait to be of that age where I can scream at kids to get off'n my lawn...and I've certainly been known to go off on my own, "KIDS THESE DAYS CONSARN'T" rants and raves (usually after a cherub-faced 6 year old tells me to "F**k off"), I will also be the first to come to the defense of the youth of today when they are unfairly maligned.

It's not the kids who are the nincompoops here. It's the parents who never taught them; who never made the time; who value the material and ease over anything else. I also suspect that the number of kids who are like those in the scenarios culled from the original article and noted above is vastly smaller than those who aren't - and it's totally unfair to use them to paint a generational picture like this. Let's call it like it is: There Is a Generation of Nincompoops Passing Their Nincompoopery Along to Their Offspring.

The Year of the Rat? Nooo... The Year of the Fruit Bat? Nooo...It's the -

After a much needed hiatus, wherein I took the time to focus on my actual life (as opposed to my electronic life) and also to unwind and regroup, I am back. [cue the lone kazoo] With my return, I bring the fruits of much soul searching to share with you. Are you ready for it? [cue a drumroll, lone kazoo optional]

I am officially declaring this year to be: The Year of the Parent.

Well, duh, you say as you roll your eyes. We’re parents. Every year is our year. Right?

NO!

Denialism and Parenting - Where to Draw the Line?

This morning, I was dismissed from my military duty for having the appearance of being sick. It's true, I've been sick for a while, but I am on the mend and didn't feel altogether awful. Nevertheless, policy has changed and now, so much as a sniffle can get you sent home. To think...I showed up with 3 broken ribs back in 2001 and wasn't sent home then. [sigh]

It's a long drive and on my way home, I tuned in to NPR. Normally, NPR is not my thing. Well, most talk radio isn't. But NPR is a little too politically skewed and I tend to prefer objectivity in my news (which is probably why I don't put much stock in any of the news I read or hear now that I think of it...). But, well, it is what it is. I was listening to NPR as I drove and what I heard floored me.

Michael Specter was the guest on Saturday's Weekend Edition show, on to talk about his book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives. I know, that's quite a mouthful, isn't it? Yet, what he had to say had me cheering. Finally! Someone for whom a large segment of progressives have a great respect for has come out and said that which has been attributed to the conservative right or those with no grasp of science for so long - that perfectly intelligent people are making decisions based on incomplete or misinterpreted data that are harming us or, at least, have no backbone of support.

The examples he talked about specifically were the rising number of communities with large percentages of completely unvaccinated children and, what calls the "organic food fetish". It was amazing. Here was a popular science and technology writer finally, finally saying publicly what I grumble about under my breath all of the time: Denial is Harmful.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article for our Emergency Management newsletter at work about denial and the cost in both lives and dollars as it relates to the way that people think of and prepare for disasters. It will probably end up here at some point, but Mr. Specter's argument was the same. That perfectly logical, intelligent, well educated people can still, especially as a societal group, think completely irrationally and buy in to misinformation without looking clinically at the facts - and it is a threat.

He went so far as to say that parents of completely unvaccinated children were irresponsible and frankly, I could not agree with him more. In fact, when it comes time to choose a school for our daughter, the numbers of unvaccinated children (exempted from the requirement) will play a part in that decision.

This form of parental denial is growing. In 2008, AMN Healthcare featured an article on vaccine refusal and the resurgence of Pertussis (Whooping Cough). It was noted in the article that the antigens that children are exposed to through all of their childhood vaccinations are less than the antigens that were contained in the original Smallpox vaccine - and less than those they're exposed to daily just going about their business. Mr. Specter, in his interview on NPR today used the following example of just how ignorant us intelligentsia really are when we make these kinds of decisions. In his words, "A vaccine may kill one child in over a million, whereas the disease itself will kill one in every 1,026." Yet, parents see that one child killed by a vaccine and believe the vaccine itself to be worse than the disease it's treating.

He even went on to say that he had spoken recently with someone who refused the flu shot because they said they didn't want any foreign substances in their body. He laughed and asked, "What do they think they're doing when they sit down to dinner each night?" Touche, Mr. Specter.

On "natural" food and drug products, he asked, "What does that mean? What is natural?" He pointed out that, if you remove vector borne diseases (i.e. diseases carried by insects and animals) from the history of man, you will find that the two largest killers of humans are pure, untreated water and untreated food products. So, is "natural", that is, food and water that has been untampered with and in a natural state, really all that great?

I'll be honest - I think that organic food tastes better, but it's expensive and so I don't buy it very often. I do know, though, that nutritionally, it is no better or worse than a "non-organic" food product.

So why is it that, when I make the choice to save money; when I decide that yes, the risks of the disease far, far outweigh the risks of the vaccine; when my daughter gets sick, I give her actual medication (the reason the FDA doesn't regulate homeopathic remedies is because they have zero impact on the human system. That means they don't DO anything - other than act as a placebo) - I'm made to feel like a Bad Parent by the not-so-All Knowing, not-so Scientifically Savvy parents out there?

Look, I understand that when bad things happen to children, we want to find something to blame. When we can't find that culprit, we turn to our environment and select the thing or things that we think are the most sketchy. Vaccines are a perfect example. They hurt when they're administered. They're developed by scientists working for "evil" pharm companies, so they must not be for the better good but for profit, right? They're administered by people who know more than we do about such things and one thing I've observerd is that other smart people don't always like thinking that someone out there is smarter than them. It's threatening, somehow. So vaccines have a lot to fear and be worried about and there seems to be a body of convincing conjecture out there that sounds scientifically sound that "proves" that vaccines are the cause of certain lifelong problems in children.

From a personal perspective, I wanted to blame a flu shot on the miscarriage I had before our daughter was conceived. Nothing could explain why it happened, but the flu shot coincided with the miscarriage. I was devastated. Yet, I have a cold, calculating voice that seems to sometimes be independent of the rest of me and it pointed out that miscarriages are bad, but they happen more often than we're made aware of in general, for a myriad of reasons. Conception is not perfect. Chromosomal matchup is not a flawless dance. Mistakes are made and it's the body's way of deleting the file that's become too corrupt for use any longer, in order to start again.

But dammit, it was so much easier to blame the vaccine. I hate having shots to begin with and I'm a skeptic too. I know they're good for me, but I don't trust them. In the end though, I don't really blame the vaccine. I blame a bad chromosomal matchup. I'd like to blame the needle, but I don't. I researched the body of evidence on vaccine interactions in early pregnancy and much to my disappointment, I found that I had nothing tangible to say, "A ha! THAT made it happen!" It would have been nice though. Perhaps made me feel a little less defective...

I'm going to pick up his book. He's well respected in his field and it'll be an interesting read. If you decide to do the same, he closed the interview with this thought: "Some will agree with one part and not another. I already know this. But I would ask that reader to consider WHY you agree with one and not the other." You see, as he pointed out, it doesn't work that way. Selectively denying scientific statistics and proofs is still a denial unto it's own. And I agree with him. It is extraordinarily harmful to us and to the generation we're bringing up now.

To listen to the full Weekend Edition interview with Michael Specter on Denialism, please click here.