Category Archives: Parenting

What 44 Feels Like

In November, I celebrated my 44th birthday. What significance does 44 have? Barack Obama is the 44th president. 44 is the international direct dial code for the United Kingdom. The .44 magnum is a serious hand gun. Vicks Formula 44 is good when you have a cough. Ok, that was random.

Birthdays are interesting when you get old right? When you’re a kid, they are great and it’s all about presents and parties. When you are in college, they are great because it’s all about free drinks. Now, it’s mix isn’t it? I sort of feel like the #44 looks in the picture above. I feel grateful to get a card and phone call from my mom and well wishes from my Facebook friends and my boss took me out to lunch and a conference room of strangers at work sang to me. But the reality of life starts to set in as well. I’ve had friends die of cancer and friends lose a child. I also feel old when my teenager leans over to me at the latest James Bond movie and says “wow, that guy is so old, how does he do all those stunts and everything.” Well, Daniel Craig is our current James Bond and he was 44 when Skyfall came out and he’s 47 now which isn’t that much older than me. Side note, I’m not sure you follow James Bond, but you should really read this interview with Daniel Craig in Time Out London – it’s refreshingly honest and funny.

The symmetry of 44 is interesting to me. It’s the ying and the yang, the good and the bad, the hopeful and discouraging. I often find myself very appreciative but then I’m also more and more crabby. I’m 44, my kids are teenagers, I’m in middle management and am someone’s boss that is supposed to have the answers. The world is a complicated place – the problems seem more real and serious in today’s world. On a personal level if you eat too much red meat or birthday cake or have too many beers, you worry about your cholesterol and triglycerides and blood sugar. We also worry about terror attacks in faraway places like Paris and right here at home. Even in youth sports, it’s fun to watch kids play a sport at a high level right? So, you’re proud of them and you want them to do well but then you see kids get cut from a team for the first time or a coach tells a team that they “shit the bed” or “got their asses handed to them.” We’ve had coaches say that to our kids – really classy right? I can understand professional coaches saying that but not in youth soccer.

So, 44 is probably going to be more work than 24 and less fun than 14 but I’m hopeful and curious about 44 – I’ll let you know how it goes.

I love Girl Scout cookies, just not the propaganda

Now before anyone gets all wound up about this, let me just say that I love Girl Scout cookies and I probably like most girl scouts as well. But, after devouring a few of my favorite cookies this week, I decided to take a look at the box – pictured here. Now I’m sure that the Girl Scouts actually do teach girls some lessons that they retain throughout their lives but I think they are laying it on a little thick. Let’s approach this one skill at a time, shall we?

skills

            

1. Goal Setting – I set a few goals to eat fewer cookies and I think that each girl (and their family) probably has to decide how many boxes they can realistically sell. So, I’ll give them this one.

2. Decision Making – Should I walk around my neighborhood in the freezing cold selling cookies or should I have one of my parents just put the sheet out in the break room at work? Easy.

3. Money Management – I’ll give them another one, they do have to collect money and turn it in.

4. People Skills – I don’t know, I’ve asked the little salespeople where the money goes and gotten nothing but blank stares. One particular girl this year actually didn’t say anything at all. She just showed up with her girl scout vest on and a bag with cookies in it and my wife filled out the form, wrote the check, took the cookies and the salesperson was on her way. Not a lot of people skills. Not a lot of skill building for little girls who sell cookies because their parents leave a form in the break room either.

5. Business Ethics – This one is really the one that put me over the edge. I mean come on, are 8-year-old girls really learning business ethics from selling cookies? I’m not saying that the world doesn’t need all the help it can get as far as ethical behavior goes but I’m having a hard time associating what I’ve observed as the cookie sales process with any meaningful ethics lessons.

So, as far as I’m concerned, cookies and girl scouts are a good thing but I think that the propaganda could be toned down a little, don’t you?

Here’s to comebacks

Have you been watching football lately? There have been some great comeback wins. We like comeback stories and I wanted to highlight a couple of recent football examples.

First, I’d like to highlight the North Dakota State University Bison from Fargo, North Dakota. On January 10, the Bison capped a great game with a last second comeback touchdown for the national championship. That would make a great story all on its own right? That’s not the whole story though, this was their fourth national championship in a row. Actually, the senior class on this team had a record of 58-3, amassing more national championships than losses during their playing careers. A feat never equaled at NCAA Division 1 football. After the game, first year head coach, Chris Klieman, said “With our guys, I never saw any doubt in their mind.” That’s amazing right – no doubt in their mind.

The other comeback was from yesterday in the NFC Championship. I have a Seahawks fan in my house who stopped watching the game in the second quarter and being a lifelong Minnesotan, I wasn’t pleased with the Packers’ dominance at the beginning of the game either. For 56 minutes, it looked like Seattle’s season was going to be over. But, after a late touchdown, onside kick recovery, another touchdown and two point conversion, Seattle was ahead for the first time in the game. The Packers came back to tie and send the game into overtime but Seattle scored on its first possession when Russell Wilson hit Jermaine Kearse for an amazing touchdown – his only catch of the day. Doug Baldwin, another Seattle wide receiver, summed it up this way, “As a true competitor, you can’t have any doubt…we believed that we were going to find a way to pull it out. And obviously we did that.”

I find it amazing that neither team had any doubt. I had doubts watching these games and I have doubts about my own abilities all the time, it’s human nature right? What enables people to overcome doubt? I suppose for a team you need to have trust in each other, solid coaching, and a great game plan. What about for you, how do you overcome doubt? A positive attitude, a support system that encourages you, what else? Here’s to never having any doubt – that’s one story coming out of football that I like.

Thankful For Cancellations

So, I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago. We celebrated a couple days before my “real” birthday as the kids call it, because this was supposed to be my schedule on the evening of my birthday:

  • Leave work early to see my son’s basketball game
  • My wife and I go in different directions, she brings my son home, I collect my daughter from play practice
  • I grab dinner for my daughter and have her change into her soccer gear in the bathroom or na phone booth like a super hero
  • Bring my daughter to soccer practice
  • My wife and I cross paths on the road as I finally head home by around 7:00 PM, she is on her way to collect my daughter from soccer and bring my son to soccer
  • I sit at home by myself while my daughter and wife wait for my son’s soccer to be done
  • My family arrives home by about 8:45 and my kids shower and go to bed by 9

Interestingly enough, we had a fairly significant weather event (a.k.a. blizzard) on my birthday that resulted in all of our kids’ evening activities being canceled. All of them! It was the best birthday present ever. We ate dinner together and watched some television and laughed and I wouldn’t have traded it for any present! So, on Thanksgiving, I can say that I’m thankful for cancellations every once in a while!

calendarNow don’t get me wrong, I want my kids to be active and involved but to what end? I realize that we are doing this to ourselves. I know that my mom and dad didn’t get up and look at their iPhones and see the message “you have 11 events scheduled.” When I was growing up, there were no multiple activities in one night. We did one thing at a time for the most part. I had some busy times but when I played football, that’s all I did, which was the same with basketball and track & field. How bad is it? My wife is a teacher and she’s had 5th graders suffer from nervous breakdowns caused by stress because of being over-scheduled with sports, music, tutoring, etc. Now, you could argue like “Tiger Mom,” that music and tutoring in math and foreign languages should be the focus. At least you could get some lifetime benefits out of those. What about having fun and playing sports? Do we all think that our kids are going to get full ride scholarships and go pro? Very unlikely, but that’s how we train. Here are a few sports examples from my experience:

  • I know a little girl who is 11 who played more than 140 hockey games this year in multiple year-round leagues. Do you know how many games the professionals of the NHL play? 82 from October to April.
  • My favorite sport to play as a kid was basketball. Do you know the schedule of youth travel basketball leagues? They practice at least two days a week and play league games and have 10 weekend tournaments from November through March. Then they go to camps and play 3 on 3 in the spring and summer and start up again in the fall.
  • Soccer is no better, spring and summer leagues with out of town weekend tournaments for 11-year-olds playing up an age level, and for 13 year olds, flying to tournaments in places like Florida and Nevada. I know another 10-year-old girl who plays soccer 7-days a week right now and in case you hadn’t noticed – it’s winter in Minnesota!

At least Sunday’s and Wednesday’s used to be off limits for church and family time and major holidays like Memorial Day and Christmas used to be sacred too but now they schedule stuff every available day and have holiday tournaments as well! I could go on but I better stop now, I can feel my blood pressure rising.

Among other things, I’m also thankful that I don’t have many days with 11 events but we want our kids to be active and well rounded. How do you manage your kids’ involvement in athletics and activities? What’s your record for most events in one day? What does balance mean?

Design or function?

It’s not a new question, should something be built to be beautiful or should it be focused on usability instead? I’ve seen this question play out while developing web sites and print materials for years. The sweet spot is that the design actually improves usability like the iPhone that’s both beautiful and easy to use – “your world in your pocket” as Steve Jobs said. From my experience, that’s very difficult and very rare. In a past life, my company mailed two 16-page full color magazines out to employees to help them make their benefits decisions each year but no one ever read them and the call center was jammed for two weeks. So, over the course of five years, we went to a simple postcard and an interactive web site with good content and modeling tools and the call center heard crickets chirping rather than the phones ringing. It can work the other way too, one time I was building a web site and the prototype was so ugly (against my will by the way) that people couldn’t figure out how to use it. Don’t worry; we fixed it!

Until yesterday though, I never realized how different the design of an elementary school building could be or the outside pressures for functionality that influence design. I am lucky enough to be on a team that’s designing a new K-5 elementary school in the district where my kids attend. It’s an expensive and important decision – but it’s also a confusing one that’s filled with trade-offs about expenses (of course this is a public project), utility, instructional needs, access requirements, etc. Here are my observations from a tour of four schools:

  1. Why build computer labs with desktop PC’s when every student has their own iPad? This one has been solved by a regulatory requirement unfortunately – all the standardized tests that students are required to take and the fact that they are taken online, on computers that must be hardwired to a network. So, you have to both waste the space on computer labs and buy all of the equipment as well.
  2. At one school we visited, they had used a beautiful industrial design throughout that carried through to the entryway. But, birds built nests on the beams and sat on the lights and exposed pipes and pooped on the children and visitors as they walked underneath each day. The solution, compromise the design by adding some ugly screens and netting.
  3. One school put their media center – a combination library and technology hub in the center of their school and put windows all around to let in natural light from the surrounding hallways. Now you have a fishbowl where kids – remember those 600 people that you’re building the school for – lose focus while inside the lab because everyone who walks by is always waving or showing off.
  4. What colors should you use? The temptation at an elementary school is to go with primary colors but yellow can look dirty and red can be a little too emotional. Green is great because it can represent peace and harmony in the right shades and blue can be calm and friendly – do you think it’s an accident that the logos for Facebook and twitter are both blue?
  5. Do you add enough parking to accommodate every parent or guardian when all of them only come to the school at the same time a couple of days a year?
  6. Another dirty example. Would you ever put carpet in the lunchroom to reduce noise when you know that kids spill everything? It’s apparently cheaper and less slippery but really?
  7. What about recreational or community space? The main purpose of the building is to instruct students but gyms and soccer fields and rooms for groups to meet are in short supply and after all, the community owns this building. So, do you design flexible space into the cafeteria and classrooms so they can be used outside the school day? One school we saw had a partnership with the city that threw in the money for a second full size gym.
  8. How about lockers? Do you put them in the classrooms for easy access and require kids to share the space? Do you put them in the hallway outside the classrooms where you have more space? Do they have doors or not? What about space under the locker for wet boots?
  9. Security is a huge concern in the post-Columbine world. Some experts say to take out all of the windows so those who would do harm are left in the dark and others say put more in because natural light is better for learning and so authorities can easily see into the space.
  10. I’ll end where I started, with technology. Do you put screens and projectors and so called “smart boards” everywhere or do you design the space for the future more flexibly with walls that can be projected and written on with the use of a new adhesive film. What about all those iPads, do you put Apple TV in every room so you can go right from each student’s iPad to an LED LCD on the wall?

Those are just the top ten things that stuck with me. I’m going to be living this project over the next six months and then hopefully seeing a great new school in 2016 that will make students, staff and our community proud! Let me know if you have ideas and wish us luck.

PG-13 Changes Everything

Someone recently turned 13 in my home. I guess that becoming a teenager is a big deal but the most important thing that my son noticed was the fact that it opened up a whole new world of film entertainment – the PG-13 movie! Now, if you’re not a parent, you probably don’t pay much attention to PG, PG-13, R, you just stream movies and TV shows or order them on-demand and who cares about the ratings right? Well, not all PG-13 movies are created equally. In fact, if you’ve not paid attention over the years, the PG rating used to be a lot different. Compare the colossal Disney hit “Frozen” – which is rated PG with the 80’s classic “Uncle Buck” starring John Candy which was released in 1989 – also PG. I love the Internet Movie Database or IMDB as the kids call it. Actually, I think it’s just geezers like me that use that app but it’s incredibly helpful for those “who was that guy that was in that one movie with…” questions. Anyway, they have a parent’s guide for every movie that is not only accurate but cleverly written. According to that, there is an extensive amount of profanity in Uncle Buck (and none in Frozen), which is hilarious if you’re 13 and you don’t hear those words every day.

BS

That brings me to the photo here. My mom recently relocated to be closer to my family and she has a habit of writing her appointments and keeping almost a diary of sorts on a calendar that hangs on her wall. One day last week, my kids and I went over to visit and my son immediately noticed the entry on the 23rd and got the giggles. As you can see, she had “BS” scheduled for 9:30. Not long after my son buckled over with laughter, my daughter (who is 11) came over and asked what was so funny. He just pointed at the calendar and said “BS” and she looked at me and said with an inquisitive look, “Bible Study?” which was indeed what the abbreviation stood for. She hasn’t seen PG-13 movies or ridden on a middle school bus or spent any time with my dad who used the more profane version of “BS” in casual conversation to describe everyone from the weather man to our congressman.

I don’t know about you but I seem to deal with a lot of “BS.” I follow the process but the insurance company doesn’t pay a claim and the clinic sends crabby letters, our builder makes a total mess in our front yard last fall and doesn’t prioritize fixing it because we’ve already paid for our house, I get letters from our homeowners association about leaving the fire pit on the driveway overnight but I can see (and smell) a port-a-potty and five huge blue construction dumpsters full of garbage from my driveway. I could go on. Do you ever look at your calendar and see a meeting and then read “BS” between the lines. Maybe we should all schedule time to deal with “BS” (not bible study, also important but not the topic of my blog), would it be easier if we just knew it were coming on Wednesdays at 9:30? Maybe we should just watch more PG movies from the 80’s and laugh more.

Musical Memories

We all have musical memories right? When that song comes on the radio and takes you back in time, you can feel those memories, smell them, maybe even taste them. That’s amazing isn’t it? That’s why music is so important.

Here are some of my musical memories:

  • George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” takes me back to my dad’s Dodge truck, it was raining lightly, he was smoking and we were driving around looking at our crops
  • Chicago’s “You’re The Inspiration” takes me back to a gym at a school dance where I had my first kiss with a girl who was quite a bit taller than me
  • Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” takes me back to a time with my brother in his girlfriend’s Chevy Chevette driving way too fast on a gravel road where we grew up
  • Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” takes me back to my grandma’s basement at Christmas because my cousins got “Thriller” on cassette and we just sat there and listened to it over and over

Maybe you’re one of those lucky one’s who can actually make music. It’s interesting how many of us try, even Seth Godin says he played the clarinet for eight years but then corrects himself,

Actually, that’s not true. I took clarinet lessons for eight years when I was a kid, but I’m not sure I ever actually played it. Eventually, I heard a symphony orchestra member play a clarinet solo. It began with a sustained middle C, and I am 100% certain that never once did I play a note that sounded even close to the way his sounded.

I watch – and listen – to how much progress my son has made with the trumpet this year. It’s amazing. He played it for the first time about 20 months ago and that was painful, I’ll admit. The dog hid, we put him in a room with doors that we could shut, the neighbors called to ask if everything was ok. It was, and now it’s much better and it sounds like music. The whole band sounds like music. He’s not getting calls to join The Roots or anything but I can tell what he’s playing. Maybe he’ll be in the high school pep band, maybe he’ll get a scholarship to play the trumpet in college, maybe he’ll get paid to play the trumpet – who knows?

What I do know is that he’s learning a system and once you learn a system like math or music or another language, you can transfer that experience. For those of you who don’t think that technology is changing everything, even the way people learn, let me tell you about an app called SmartMusic, check it out at http://www.smartmusic.com/ This is a piece of software that listens to you play an instrument and then gives you instant feedback on the quality of the notes so that you can fix them. That’s a revolution. I wonder if it would have helped Seth? I wonder if these first memories of my son playing the trumpet will be one of those moments that I remember for my whole life or if it will be those first bad notes instead? What are your musical memories?

 

 

Advice From Spiderman’s Uncle

I was really hoping that Sheryl Sandberg would fade back into her day job at Facebook and that her book tour would finally end so I could quit hearing about “Lean In.” I realize that I cannot speak for women in the workplace but neither should Sandberg or someone like Reese Witherspoon, who is featured on leanin.org for overcoming her fear of public speaking so she could become the spokesperson for cosmetics giant Avon. Really? I’m not worried about the lack of opportunity or confidence for anyone – woman or man – with a Harvard B.A. and M.B.A. who has worked at World Bank, McKinsey, The Department of the Treasury, Google and Facebook. Other people seem to agree with me, including these two accomplished women: Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ campaign holds little for most women; or Sheryl Sandberg Lean’s into another controversy. 

Why “Lean in” anyway? I’m assuming they have a class at business school that teaches aggressive behavior. I’ve had bosses tell me to “lean in.” It was bad advice and it never worked. My impression is that the single biggest problem with business leaders – and our current crop of politicians – who have elite educations and make millions of dollars is not that they don’t lean in, it’s that they have lost touch with reality.  I suppose it’s kind of hard to keep it real when you reportedly cash in $90 million in Facebook stock right? In today’s corporate and political climate, it seems like compromise and collaboration should be valued and celebrated more than aggression. Do you think the government would have shut down last year if our political leaders were more collaborative? I’ve seen some interesting research from a corporation that was having problems with new leaders failing – both men and women. You know what the biggest problem was? They were too aggressive, they burned too many bridges, they failed to see people on their teams and in other departments as people and instead saw them as obstacles to profit and career advancement. 

Apparently Sandberg is really committed to being in the news because now she’s back with a few celebrities and the girls scouts trying to ban the word “bossy,” I thought she over did it before, but this may be an even worse idea and less helpful than leaning. Here’s a nice piece by a woman who is much smarter than me and has actually done research on this topic. Her name is Peggy Drexler, and is the author of “Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family” and “Raising Boys Without Men.” She is an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University. One of her quotes is worth repeating here in case you don’t read her entire opinion piece published on CNN: 

“Let’s not forget: There is evidence that girls and women aren’t in fact being overlooked, or discouraged into meekness. Girls are outperforming boys in schools. More women than men are graduating college and going on to earn as much, if not more, than their male partners. Fortune’s latest ranking of America’s 500 largest corporations includes more female CEOs than ever.”

I want to comment specifically on the fact that girls are outperforming boys in schools – that is certainly true in K-12 public education. I used to work in public education and I learned that the much maligned “No Child Left Behind” law was actually going to report scores by gender as well as every other grouping but that scores for boys were much lower than girls and “they” thought it would distract from the focus on raising test scores. In addition, the facts are there about the new gender imbalance in colleges and universities across America as well. The fact is that boys are being left behind or at least at the back of the class according to this piece in the NY Times.

Finally, to quote Spiderman’s uncle, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” So, I ask this simple question, if Sandberg really wanted to put her considerable wealth and influence to work, how could she? I have ideas. Even if she just wanted to help women, which I would be fine with, I can think of several more valuable and worthwhile ways than teaching them to lean or banning the word bossy. Here are two easy ones for someone like Sandberg, first, if you insist on being aggressive, how about helping young girls who have difficulty with bullying and their self image? Second, probably the easiest one for an executive at a technology company – what about getting more girls interested in technology and engineering careers? Those problems are real. They could be solved or at least affected by wealth and influence right? I think Uncle Ben would be proud of that.

Forget Law And Medicine, Try Software Engineering

I was reading yet another article about Yahoo and Marissa Meyer this week. Apparently she’s fixed the company’s biggest problem – talent. Read all about it here on QZ

I pulled a couple of insights from this article that I can’t help but comment on. First, the long tenured Head of HR at Yahoo was replaced by a former private equity exec. Then, they went on a buying spree, but not for market share or synergies, which drives many acquisitions, Yahoo bought 37 companies including Tumblr for over a billion dollars – for their talent. For other CEO’s who have “talent” as a goal, and they all should, this is an interesting strategy right? Their CFO was quoted as saying they lost a lot of talent and companies didn’t even want to be acquired by them so they had to pay a “Yahoo Premium.” Apparently their reputation has been repaired to a certain extent because the number of job applications more than doubled in the past year and they are the third highest paying company for engineers in the Silicon Valley. I’ll get to the pay issue again later but one other interesting place that Yahoo doesn’t score well is being a great place to work. Mayer’s ideas in that area haven’t been as big a hit. According to Glassdoor, which provides the salary info too, Yahoo did not make the 50 best places to work list like their other high tech peers.

Now let’s talk turkey. If you clicked the link to the QZ story above, I hope you noticed the table that lists average base salaries for engineers. If you didn’t, let me enlighten you. I remember when I was growing up, not that long ago by the way, the cool careers were law and medicine. They came with good pay and prestige – the two most popular TV shows were St. Elsewhere and L.A. Law. I wanted to be a lawyer for a very long time – until I bombed the LSAT and did some internships that is. I have friends who are doctors, that’s no picnic either, lots of headaches with insurance and patients. Here’s some advice for you parents out there – get your kids into software engineering or let them develop their own social network app.

At Juniper Networks, the highest paying company in the Silicon Valley, the average base salary for engineers was $159,900 last year. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook all pay over $120,000 a year.

Oh, and by the way, there is no end in sight to the demand for software engineers. Everything runs on software and everything will for the foreseeable future. Remember, Yahoo bought 37 companies to get their engineers. Forget clarinet lessons and getting into the Ivy League, let your kids absorb and learn to love technology because we need them to take care of us so we can eventually retire.

Katy Perry’s Parents

So, we all know Katy Perry right? She’s kind of a big deal. She did something in popular music that no one else has ever done – her first five hits from one album all went to number one. We just watched her new documentary, “Katy Perry – Part of Me” with our daughter this week. I loved it and am not ashamed that I laughed and cried and most importantly danced with my daughter and golden doodle. I read some other reviews of the film; professional movie critic Dana Stevens for Slate magazine wrote one of the crabbiest. I’m not sure what movie she saw. I guess you come to expect that professional critics are going to hate some of the stuff that you like right? Rotten tomatoes actually was 77% positive or “certified fresh” on the tomato meter, here’s a link to their page: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/katy_perry_part_of_me/ So, there you go, fair and balanced. I thought it was a fun movie about a weird girl with a dream and it showed the ups and downs of making it in the music business but sacrificing your personal life. Katy Perry’s music has drawn criticism for being obscene but I’ve got to say, she’s an adult and is writing songs about being an adult. It’s a parents’ job to manage the content that their kids consume, not the artist. Besides, Katy has a decent public reputation – no trouble with the law like many of her peers – so it’s not like she made this movie to spin her public image.

I’m not writing today to encourage you to buy or rent her new movie or download any of her songs, I’d like to comment about Katy Perry’s parents instead, Keith and Mary Hudson. You may have read about Katy’s upbringing in an evangelical Christian home with minister parents. If you watch the movie, you will get a taste of it as well. They were a little nuts – overprotective, overbearing, and sure that they were doing God’s work. Here’s the interesting part. Even with where her parents stand, they love their daughter. They thought that songs like “I kissed a girl and I liked it” and “Friday Night” were going to ruin their ministry and be a negative force on the world but guess what; they still love their daughter. Look at some other young celebrity’s parents with names like Lohan, Cyrus, Jackson and try to find love and support. The Hudson’s are parents that look at their daughter and openly disagree but they haven’t disowned her, they come to concerts. That surprised me and encouraged me to be a better parent. Our kids all have dreams right? Some of those dreams are long shots like playing in the NFL or becoming a pop star but that’s what dreams are, sometimes they are silly and improbable. How many of us had dreams like that and got no encouragement and support? Think what you will about Katy Perry and her success but here’s what I got out of it – there was a little girl that loved music who had parents that weren’t so sure but they loved her and her dreams came true.