A Week with Children
So, I've just made the long drive across a stretch of desert from Tucson back to where I live in Santa Barbara. That's not a real long day, but it's enough that my brain feels like a fried egg and I'm having some difficulty trying to re-adjust to the computer keyboard from which I've been away for about a week...it's quite a bit louder than I remember it being a week ago. In any case, I'm trying to re-orient myself, and so, without further ado, let me tell you why, at this particular point in my life, I'm planning not to have any kids.
I just spent the last week with family, my grandma, my uncle and aunt, my parents...and my two little cousins, Paul and Kate, who are ten and six, respectively. Now, I had a great time, and I was very happy to see all of them, but I noticed something: I spent the bulk of this past week completely exhausted, almost as soon as my morning coffee was finished and the kids showed up to hang out for the day. I found that hanging out with kids, or at least in the company of kids, is very draining, and I'm having a hard time figuring out why that might be. It wasn't a matter of physical tiredness, per se, but more a mental one. As soon as the kids had gone home for the night, I would crack open a book and then proceed to just stare through the pages. I couldn't bring myself to focus mentally on any given thought that required any more of an attention span than a book full of Gary Larson cartoons.
My best guess: my brains gets bored very easily, and when I don't use it all day, it becomes as barren and dry as the desert that I just spent the last nine hours driving through, and begins to shut itself down. I guess it thinks that it's in hibernate or power-conserve mode or something, and when I don't spend any amount of time loading bytes into it, it just simmers and ends up pulsating quietly within the confines of my skull like a big blob of jello.
And kids, any kind of kids, not just my two little cousins, are not that stimulating as far as I'm concerned. Oh sure, I'm sure that people who are parents, and who have spent loads of time combing through the vast body of literature that's out there on child-rearing and how to raise kids, think it's a great challenge. I imagine it's very stimulating to raise a child, and that it's a very interesting to make some kind of conscious effort to influence their line of thinking in some way. That's great. I'm not doing that. I realize you only get out of things what you're willing to invest, but I see no reason for me to start experimenting with how to interact with kids in the interest of learning anything that is useful to me.
I enjoy learning. I like the free-flowing exchange of ideas, and of getting a sense of other people's perspectives on things. I think it's invaluable to put yourself into someone else's shoes and get a sense of their personal context, and understand why they think the way they do. I try and do this with everyone I meet, whether or not I'm ever going to see them again. I do this because I've started noticing patterns in people, and have used those occasionally to strike up more interesting conversations with people. I'm also quite selfish, and am always on the lookout for new information that I might benefit from learning. It's odd to hear two people arguing about something that's largely a matter of opinion, like what programming language is better. ("Coldfusion is better!" "No, PHP is better!") It's like listening to penguins yell at each other.
Whenever I hear anyone who is...well, wait. I was going to say "older", or "more experienced", but that's not quite right. Experience and age don't necessarily mean anything as far as criteria for who I'm going to listen to. I listen to just about everyone, and at least consider what they have to say. I try and take everything in and let my brain retain the information that it perceives as important, instead of trying to make the judgement call all by myself.
Kids are much different. Instead of being able to verbally poke them and let them babble on about whatever, so that I can listen and get a sense of who they are, I have to take a much different approach. Like I said, as far as kids go, I'm very lazy, so I take the "echo" approach in dealing with kids. Here's an exchange typical of the past week:
Kate: Jimmy, Snow bear has fwowers in his basket.
Me: "Fwowers in his basket?"
As you can see, the echo approach tends to be repeating the last phrase in the sentence, emphasizing one word that wasn't emphasized in the original sentence, and turning the phrase into a question. It's passive, and it sucks, but it lets that poor little girl know that I was listening to her, seriously, I am...I'm just missing one of three things:
1. I might not have understood what she said. I'm asking her to elaborate so I can figure out what the hell she said.
2. I might not have understood the significance of what she said. Why is she telling me this? Ummm.....[scanning brain, coming up empty]....don't know. Clarify.
3. I might not have any idea how to respond to her. I'm not good with talking with kids because, like I said, I suck at comprehending where they are coming from.
The echo method is pretty callous and impersonal, and to the extent that my little cousins don't much like me, I'm sure it's because they can see through my facade, at least partially, and resent me for acting like a cyborg. It's tough to know at what age you're supposed to treat children like they're adults and when you're supposed to simply try and teach them to play patty-cake or whatever it is kids do these days.
I had particular difficulty because my uncle's kids are so damned bright for their ages, especially Paul, who, for a ten year old, is very intelligent. He said his favorite subject was chemistry, which made sense because he spent three days wearing a T-shirt with a periodic table of the elements on it. I asked him, out of genuine curiosity, because I couldn't remember for the life of me, to explain what a covalent bond was. He pulled out a crayon (do chemists use crayons these days?) and drew a picture of the compound methane, which is apparently CH4, and explained that the carbon atom shares an electron with each of the hydrogen atoms, and that's why it's a covalent bond or something. I really have to admit I wasn't listening to him so much as I was astonished that this ten-year-old was explaining something that I didn't learn until much later. I wasn't ten when I learned Chem 101...I was in tenth grade.
Good for him. I hope that he goes on to engineer a better-smelling toilet urinal mint that doesn't spray back at you when you piss on it, and that he makes a million dollars off of it.
As it happens, I start a new job tomorrow, at Green Sherpa, an online personal cash flow management website designed for individuals which is supposed to act like Quicken, but on the Internet, in hip Internet form. I'm very excited to start, as I'll be working with Python on Django, a language / web framework I really love, in a Unix environment, under a few people that I have a very good impression of, based on my phone screening and interview. At a new job, I always shut down and go into "sponge-mode" in the first week.
Starting a new job is always like pulling off a band-aid. You want to jump in and do it, but you know there's going to be an initial sting. You have to get to know everyone, meeting a bunch of new people, and at some point, you just know that you're going to say something stupid, and everyone will stop talking and stare at you in disbelief, wondering if they heard what they just thought they heard. I'm anxious to get past that initial awkward phase and into the heavy awk phase. (how's that for Unix geek humor? Bad? Yeah...bad.)
I just spent the last week with family, my grandma, my uncle and aunt, my parents...and my two little cousins, Paul and Kate, who are ten and six, respectively. Now, I had a great time, and I was very happy to see all of them, but I noticed something: I spent the bulk of this past week completely exhausted, almost as soon as my morning coffee was finished and the kids showed up to hang out for the day. I found that hanging out with kids, or at least in the company of kids, is very draining, and I'm having a hard time figuring out why that might be. It wasn't a matter of physical tiredness, per se, but more a mental one. As soon as the kids had gone home for the night, I would crack open a book and then proceed to just stare through the pages. I couldn't bring myself to focus mentally on any given thought that required any more of an attention span than a book full of Gary Larson cartoons.
My best guess: my brains gets bored very easily, and when I don't use it all day, it becomes as barren and dry as the desert that I just spent the last nine hours driving through, and begins to shut itself down. I guess it thinks that it's in hibernate or power-conserve mode or something, and when I don't spend any amount of time loading bytes into it, it just simmers and ends up pulsating quietly within the confines of my skull like a big blob of jello.
And kids, any kind of kids, not just my two little cousins, are not that stimulating as far as I'm concerned. Oh sure, I'm sure that people who are parents, and who have spent loads of time combing through the vast body of literature that's out there on child-rearing and how to raise kids, think it's a great challenge. I imagine it's very stimulating to raise a child, and that it's a very interesting to make some kind of conscious effort to influence their line of thinking in some way. That's great. I'm not doing that. I realize you only get out of things what you're willing to invest, but I see no reason for me to start experimenting with how to interact with kids in the interest of learning anything that is useful to me.
I enjoy learning. I like the free-flowing exchange of ideas, and of getting a sense of other people's perspectives on things. I think it's invaluable to put yourself into someone else's shoes and get a sense of their personal context, and understand why they think the way they do. I try and do this with everyone I meet, whether or not I'm ever going to see them again. I do this because I've started noticing patterns in people, and have used those occasionally to strike up more interesting conversations with people. I'm also quite selfish, and am always on the lookout for new information that I might benefit from learning. It's odd to hear two people arguing about something that's largely a matter of opinion, like what programming language is better. ("Coldfusion is better!" "No, PHP is better!") It's like listening to penguins yell at each other.
Whenever I hear anyone who is...well, wait. I was going to say "older", or "more experienced", but that's not quite right. Experience and age don't necessarily mean anything as far as criteria for who I'm going to listen to. I listen to just about everyone, and at least consider what they have to say. I try and take everything in and let my brain retain the information that it perceives as important, instead of trying to make the judgement call all by myself.
Kids are much different. Instead of being able to verbally poke them and let them babble on about whatever, so that I can listen and get a sense of who they are, I have to take a much different approach. Like I said, as far as kids go, I'm very lazy, so I take the "echo" approach in dealing with kids. Here's an exchange typical of the past week:
Kate: Jimmy, Snow bear has fwowers in his basket.
Me: "Fwowers in his basket?"
As you can see, the echo approach tends to be repeating the last phrase in the sentence, emphasizing one word that wasn't emphasized in the original sentence, and turning the phrase into a question. It's passive, and it sucks, but it lets that poor little girl know that I was listening to her, seriously, I am...I'm just missing one of three things:
1. I might not have understood what she said. I'm asking her to elaborate so I can figure out what the hell she said.
2. I might not have understood the significance of what she said. Why is she telling me this? Ummm.....[scanning brain, coming up empty]....don't know. Clarify.
3. I might not have any idea how to respond to her. I'm not good with talking with kids because, like I said, I suck at comprehending where they are coming from.
The echo method is pretty callous and impersonal, and to the extent that my little cousins don't much like me, I'm sure it's because they can see through my facade, at least partially, and resent me for acting like a cyborg. It's tough to know at what age you're supposed to treat children like they're adults and when you're supposed to simply try and teach them to play patty-cake or whatever it is kids do these days.
I had particular difficulty because my uncle's kids are so damned bright for their ages, especially Paul, who, for a ten year old, is very intelligent. He said his favorite subject was chemistry, which made sense because he spent three days wearing a T-shirt with a periodic table of the elements on it. I asked him, out of genuine curiosity, because I couldn't remember for the life of me, to explain what a covalent bond was. He pulled out a crayon (do chemists use crayons these days?) and drew a picture of the compound methane, which is apparently CH4, and explained that the carbon atom shares an electron with each of the hydrogen atoms, and that's why it's a covalent bond or something. I really have to admit I wasn't listening to him so much as I was astonished that this ten-year-old was explaining something that I didn't learn until much later. I wasn't ten when I learned Chem 101...I was in tenth grade.
Good for him. I hope that he goes on to engineer a better-smelling toilet urinal mint that doesn't spray back at you when you piss on it, and that he makes a million dollars off of it.
As it happens, I start a new job tomorrow, at Green Sherpa, an online personal cash flow management website designed for individuals which is supposed to act like Quicken, but on the Internet, in hip Internet form. I'm very excited to start, as I'll be working with Python on Django, a language / web framework I really love, in a Unix environment, under a few people that I have a very good impression of, based on my phone screening and interview. At a new job, I always shut down and go into "sponge-mode" in the first week.
Starting a new job is always like pulling off a band-aid. You want to jump in and do it, but you know there's going to be an initial sting. You have to get to know everyone, meeting a bunch of new people, and at some point, you just know that you're going to say something stupid, and everyone will stop talking and stare at you in disbelief, wondering if they heard what they just thought they heard. I'm anxious to get past that initial awkward phase and into the heavy awk phase. (how's that for Unix geek humor? Bad? Yeah...bad.)