One thing adults love to say to kids is “Well, too bad; there are some things you just have to do.”  If you watch a kid’s face when someone’s delivering that line, you’ll know right away how many times they’ve heard this before.  In most cases, LOTS.  You’ll also get a sense of how inspired they are to act as a result of it.  In most cases, NOT PARTICULARLY.

It’s something we say to each other, as adults too, and it’s implied in much of what we do.  Because, of course, we heard it all the time back when we, the present-day adults, were kids.  So we assume it’s true and in good conscience, we pass it on.  We want them to be ready for the real world.  And it helps us feel as though life is supposed to be as much of a drag as it can feel like when our days are full of things we’re doing because we think we just have to.

But it’s TRUE isn’t it?  There are things we just have to do.  Don’t worry; I’m not going to argue that it’s not true.  I’m going to argue that it’s incomplete.  On its own, the statement is in fact not true.  You don’t actually have to do anything.  You have to do some things if you want a specific outcome or you want to avoid a specific outcome. For example, nobody actually has to do the dishes. You might have to do the dishes if you don’t want to throw away all the ones you’ve used and buy new ones. Or you don’t want to cause a rift between yourself and a loved one.  Or you have a job as a dishwasher and you want to get paid at the end of the week.  So it would be more accurate to say “There are some things you just have to do if…” Or “There are some things you just have to do unless…”

What’s tough is that as soon as you decide you’re going to make it a point to complete the sentence, you start to see how much you’re insisting upon (from yourself and others, kids included) that demands deeper consideration of how the sentence should end.  Don’t worry, though.  There’s gold at the other end; if you commit to inquiring into why/if you have to do things, and why you actually insist on what you insist on for others, you’ll find that a lot of the fight falls away. Kids, in particular, will perk right up.  They can hear the difference between things we say on auto pilot and things we say because we’ve considered them and determined that they have some value.

My cousin invited me to play an online word game with her yesterday.  I don’t like spending any extra time at the computer, but I’ve got a weak spot for word games, so I agreed to try it.  After playing once on my lunch break, and being something less than satisfied with my score, I found myself waiting for the day to be over so I could try again.  I knew I wasn’t going to come anywhere close to scoring as high as the others who were playing, but I really wanted to do better than I had done.  It made me curious - the outcome of the game has absolutely no impact on my life whatsoever, but there I was looking forward to playing it again, just to see how I could do at this thing that I find interesting.  I didn’t just want to play, though, I wanted to See How I Did.  I wanted the results, and I wanted to keep comparing them with my other results.

I’ve seen this happen with kids, too, this kind of intense relationship with results - whether it’s short lived or longer standing.  But I’ve also seen lots of resistance to results.  I think that adults think that kids don’t want to know how they’re doing, or don’t think it’s important to know, but in fact they really do want to know how they’re doing. It’s just that they want to know how they’re doing on the things that they’re convinced are important.  That of course raises the question of whether or not they should have to be convinced of what’s important, and I won’t get into that now, because I only have a few minutes and that one’s a real button-pusher, but I thought it might be a good inquiry to raise.  See where you notice your children being really interested in results, and where you see them being less interested…

If you’re anything like me (and apparently Ira Glass as well), you tend to tune out  when the newsfolks start their bank crisis talk.  I was skeptical that even This American Life could pull off a clear enough explanation that I might begin to make sense of all this “toxic asset” talk and the like, but pull it off they did. Here’s a link to their page with the audio. You can also download a transcript…

I’ve been doing fractions for several decades, and only yesterday did I find out how the numerator (the number on the top) and the denominator (the one on the bottom) got their names. I’m not sure that knowing why they’re called what they’re called will help too many folks who struggle with fractions, but I’m pretty sure it will help a few, so here goes. Read more