What are the Conditions of Giving?

About a month ago, Sophia and I pulled to a stoplight next to a man with a sign asking for money. The light changed and I continued driving.

"Dad, did you not feel like giving anything today?" my 5-year-old asked.

"I'm not sure if he really needs my help," I responded.

Sophia said, "What if he does?" 

I was ashamed. My wife, Tanya, and I stress to Sophia and her 8-year-old sister, Ella, that it's everyone's responsibility to help the less fortunate, even if we can't give all we have to everyone who needs it. We have the right to choose who we help, and how much we give. Harsh as it might sound, giving is conditional. How do we explain that to our kids?

We shouldn't sacrifice our mortgage and grocery money to make a donation, but we owe it to our communities to be charitable. A person's ability and desire to give depends on many factors. We must respect and not judge how a person distributes their wealth because everyone's situation is different.

I'll admit, I rarely toss change to beggars because I think the surest way to make money is to work for it. But maybe begging is a person's last resort. What I may justify as teaching self-reliance can also be considered selfish. Strictly speaking, when I overlooked the man at the corner, I was guilty of not helping my fellow man. Sophia had a point.

Tanya organized a fundraiser at Ella's school that raised nearly $800 for Poudre Valley Hospital's Cancer Center, and Ella helped enthusiastically. But by helping only one worthy charity did Tanya and Ella willfully neglect all others? Yes, they focused on one cause this time but the effect of their actions will trickle down to others because charity elicits more charity. Also, when we're governed by a sincere desire to help others, our choices are immune to justification. It's not about for whom or how much but the purity of the intention.

Children learn from the act, not the degree. To them, if the intention is clear, a penny to a Salvation Army bell ringer is tantamount to a million dollar endowment. When we help our fellow man with a cup of coffee or a loving hug or a few attentive minutes, both giver and receiver are likely to perpetuate the cycle because both gain joy from the act. When giving comes from the heart, children learn the real lessons: generosity is contagious, exponential and necessary for survival.

While this phenomenon is ingrained in our biology, it still must be trained. And sometimes our kids teach us more than we teach them. The more I think about it, the more likely I am to change my habits and give a dollar to a street beggar. How they spend their money is not my concern. Giving is about the cause, not the effect.

Weighing Risks and Rewards

My kids and I were watching a hockey game last week. A player slid into the boards and lay hurt on the ice for a few minutes. Sophia, my 5-year-old, asked if he was going to come back and play again.

"It happens all the time," I said. "He'll come back if the coach says he's safe to play."

"Why do they play if people keep getting hurt?" she asked.

Hockey is not the only activity that carries risk. When Sophia was a toddler, she tripped over everything within a 4-foot radius. Even with no formal education on the nuances of locomotion, she's now a skilled walker. So I wonder: Is the concept of weighing risks and rewards something we should bother teaching to our children, or should we trust they'll learn it on their own?

Everything we do has a risk of negative consequences. In sports, these run from concussions to plummeting self-esteem, but what about more mundane tasks? I've cut my fingers many times slicing vegetables. People get burned all the time while cooking. I want to be safe, yes, but I still have to eat.

Risk-taking comes naturally to many people, requiring no external guidance. Yet if you ask stockbrokers and base jumpers, they'll tell you risks can be substantially lessened with appropriate learning. So there is a gray area.

The growth we seek for our children occurs most pointedly when risks and rewards are more pronounced. Taking risks can lead to more confidence and can teach valuable lessons. We make these decisions daily and don't always succeed. The trick, therefore, is discovering how much risk we're comfortable accepting. And that can take help.

Ella, my 7-year-old, used to clutch the side of the pool, afraid that she couldn't swim. With practice, patience and gentle nudges from mom and dad, she gradually learned to be more confident. Now she jumps off the diving board. The reward finally outweighed the risk. Was it our help or her natural instincts that flipped the switch?

Not all things come so organically. A friend of mine recently applied for a new job. There were risks: salary discrepancy, more hours and uncertain office dynamics. And rewards: emotional fulfillment, chance to use his innate skill set and the probability of making a difference in his community. Five years ago, the same opportunity would have resulted in paralyzing fear, despite the possibility of great gains. What caused him to make the leap?

Assessing risks and rewards means accepting ourselves, whatever the outcome. The Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden weren't concerned with the risks of their jobs; duty to peace-loving citizens everywhere was their first priority. While they were probably the same kids who thought nothing of sacrificing their bodies for thrills, they also might have been fearful children who were explicitly taught that rewards are greater when the risks are, too. Either way, we're thankful they learned.

Victory Versus Value

I took my daughters, Ella and Sophia, bowling last month. They were beating me for most of the game. I was shocked at how bad I was. "I can't believe I'm losing to a couple of kids," I repeated over the course of the evening.

I won by four pins thanks to a lucky strike off the bumper (yes, the bumper) on the last frame. Sophia, 5, seemed mildly upset and wondered why she didn't win. Ella wasn't bothered. "I just wanted to have fun," she said.

Sophia's interest in winning and Ella's preference to have fun made me wonder: Is competition good or bad for kids?

In the adult world, success tends to grace those who work harder than their peers. Competition drives the open market and encourages growth. It provides incentive to create better products, train harder or learn more. A company's ability to succeed is predicated on hiring better employees and developing better systems than the other companies.

But for those who are more inclined to cooperate than compete, having rivals is stressful and can even inhibit participation. My wife, Tanya, for example, prefers collaboration to competition and avoids situations that promote a win-or-lose mentality. I play basketball; she prefers yoga.

Things change when we talk about kids, whose goals lean toward intellectual and emotional growth, not the almighty dollar. Some experts say that competing for better grades in schools actually detracts from a student's ability to succeed.

According to Alfie Kohn, an author of 12 books on parenting and education and an outspoken critic of our fixation with grades and test scores, competition in schools is harmful. Kohn quotes studies illustrating that a child's sense of self-worth is defined by external sources. By focusing on winning the prize instead of performance quality, their inherent sense of value becomes a function of victory or defeat. The more a child competes, says Kohn, the more they need to compete to continue to feel good about themselves. A vicious cycle.

But competition is a reality in our society. From education to business and sports to relationships, we compete. For one to rise to the top, another must fill the vacuum at the bottom. The cost of the resultant hierarchy is that there will always be more losers than winners. Is it possible to skew this theory so more kids become the latter?

In a world where competition is unavoidable but cooperation is critical, parents need to play the game. Maybe we should decide what's more important, victory or value. Otherwise, we need to find the middle ground between individual quality and productive collaboration. Surely it exists.

Competition has made our country great, and it always feels good to be recognized for superior efforts. But the greatest triumphs in our civilization's history - democracy, space exploration, city building, to name a few - were team efforts with many winners.

I'll remember that after my next gutter ball.

Non-Traditional Traditions

Kelvin, Tanya, Sophia, Jen and Ella

I am not a religious person. Actually, I eschew western religion's  dogma, I don't believe in heaven and hell, or that one religion could possibly be more true than another, but it serves its purpose for those who believe. However, I do respect the value in traditions. That's why I make an effort every year to partake in some traditions associated with my Judaic history.

I received a pretty intense Jewish education from K through high school that taught me valuable lessons about my people's history and customs, global human values like charity, work ethic and basic respect for one another. The most glaring thing that has stuck with me is not the knowledge of what happened in Exodus or why we eat Matzah on Passover, but the importance of passing down customs from generation to generation to maintain a sense of identity and belonging. I feel I am typical of most Jews in the world, in that I'm much happier picking and choosing the traditions that suit me and don't follow rules that make no sense.

Sophia (1/2 Jew), Kelvin (gentile), Andrew and Jen
(Jews...sort of)

To that end, I led another low-pressure Seder on Tuesday night. We had Matzah and the Passover plate and read some of the Haggadah, even drank all the appropriate glasses of wine (though maybe out of turn). But with some minor discrepancies:

I didn't have walnuts to make the haroseth so I used some logic. Haroseth, normally a mixture of apples, walnuts, wine and cinnamon, represents the mortar with which the Jews were required to make bricks for the pharaoh. I used peanut butter instead, whose consistency is more like mortar than just about any other food I have in my kitchen. Turned out great, and it's surprisingly good with bitter herbs and parsley on a piece of matzah.

The seder plate. Notice the easter egg and
the dollop of peanut butter
 (and lack of shank bone)

Our hard boiled egg was an easter egg the kids painted (Tanya is not Jewish so we celebrate Easter as well), and we forgot the shank bone because we were going to take it from the Safeway roasted chicken we bought, but we forgot. Oh well.

I forgot the wine cup for the prophet Elijah, so we all drank a little extra on the back end.

Sophia, the youngest in the house, said only the first question of the required four. Actually, she repeated what Tanya told her to say.

We did eat Matzah ball soup, made by my beautiful Shiksah wife Tanya, but instead of brisket I made a traditional middle eastern feast, with tabouleh, hummus and falafel. (Fear not, we had chicken, albeit the already roasted one from Safeway) and some homemade potato kugel. The tabouleh, however, had couscous in it, which may not be permitted on Passover (no grains).

I hid the aifkomen, a piece of Matzah that the kids search for and get money when they find it. Then they hid it for the adults, who got no such cash prize.

We explained the meaning of Passover to everyone who attended (the four of us and a Jewish friend and her gentile fiance) and inferred some valuable lessons from it. 1) Having slaves is bad. 2) Freedom is the most under-appreciated virtue in western society. 3) It's important to have faith in whatever you believe. 4) Seders are much more enjoyable with more wine. 5) Cleaning up from the seder is never fun, but... 6) The leftovers make it worth it.

Happy Pesach.

Persistence vs Pigheadedness

Last month, I gave a talk to Ella's class on the writing process. Befitting a group of second graders, there were a lot of questions. A boy named Jake asked if I ever got frustrated enough to make me want to quit writing.

"Absolutely," I said.

Jake's hand spiked up again. "Then why don't you?"

I thought for a moment, embarrassed at my inability to immediately answer the query. I stammered, blurting out phrases like "try hard" and "follow through," but I couldn't quite come up with an answer I was happy with. "I'll think about it," I told them.

The class seemed satisfied but later that day I pondered why indeed I don't quit after spending five hours working on one sentence, or after receiving dozens of rejection letters for my fiction. It certainly can be frustrating, and my time might be better served doing something less challenging, like yard work or laundry.

I wondered: Is it ever OK for a parent to encourage their child to give up?

No parent chooses to have children who quit when the going gets tough. However, we all make difficult choices in our lives, some of which involve walking away. Persistence can turn to pigheadedness quickly, and the results aren't always positive. We want to teach our kids that effort pays off, but sometimes it takes more strength to quit than to keep going. Think of physical confrontations, toxic relationships and a cold blackjack table at the Bellagio.

There is a difference between quitting and completing. We are responsible to see that our children give an acceptable effort, but we also should advise them when to move on and try something better suited to them. If they exert a reasonable effort and still don't like what they're doing, perhaps it's not the right activity for them. It's better to seek something they enjoy than to give a less-than-appropriate effort at something they don't.

Ella wasn't crazy about ballet and wanted to quit in mid-season. My wife and I made her finish the full session and didn't sign her up for the next one. She has since chosen to try soccer (two seasons) and now guitar (one year and counting) and we're prepared to support more. If we had made her continue dancing, she'd probably be a good ballerina. But would she have thrived doing something she didn't love?

Sometimes, we have to prod Ella to practice guitar, but she enjoys it once she begins. She likes her teacher, has always loved music and hasn't yet expressed an interest in quitting. If she decides she wants to stop, I'll cautiously encourage otherwise, however, sadly.

As far as the writing goes, the reason I don't quit is that I simply love to do it, and following dreams takes persistence. So here's my advice to Jake and the rest of Mrs. P's second-grade class: Hard work always pays off if you really love what you do.

Mexico Dispatches

Me dancing at the Grand Mayan pool...without my wallet

Most family vacations contain some kind of challenge. Most of the time it involves the kids. Someone gets hurt, sick, loses something important...the possibilities are endless. On our family vacation to the Riviera Maya for Spring Break, the kids were fantastic. Dad was the one who caused all the problems.

There was the “lost wallet” incident.

And the “swimming cell phone” incident.

And best of all, the “Getting-lost-in-Cancun-at-night-and-running-the-red-light-and-getting-stopped-by-non-English-speaking-policia” incident.

Sophia, my 5-year-old, saved the day on that one. Go figure.

Yes, I lost my wallet. I either left it in the unlocked rental car overnight and someone took it, or it fell out of our stuff as we unloaded the car from a busy day trip to Isla Mujeres, and someone took it. Either way, I only lost my drivers license (that’s 2 hours at the DMV I’ll never get back), about $180 in cash and some credit cards that were never used, wasted 2 hours searching for the wallet and not lounging in the pool, and we aborted our planned day trip to Playa Del Carmen. No worries, though: the kids and Tanya and I were content to spend the day at the pool anyway. 

On the bright side, I did learn how to say, with perfect Spanish pronunciation, “¿Ha encontrado cualquiera mi cartera?” (Has anyone found my wallet?) and “Perdí mi cartera el miércoles por la noche” (I lost my wallet wednesday night). 

Sophia jumping in the pool...without her daddy's wallet

All in all, I think we can all agree that I came out on top.

Playing on the beach...without a wallet

And as far as the swimming cell phone and the run-in with the police? Next dispatch...

The Dangers (or benefits?) of Parental Pressure

Ella was getting in trouble at school for talking in class. My wife Tanya is also extroverted, so she empathized with our second grader. Nevertheless, she explained why it was important that Ella listen to her teacher. Ella agreed, to a point. “But, Mom, sometimes I have to talk!” she pleaded. “It’s hard for you too, isn’t it? Sometimes can’t you just say what you need to say?” 

Ella’s inherited gregariousness didn’t excuse her from paying attention in class, but it did stimulate some questions. Are we doing our young children a favor or a disservice by nurturing their inherent abilities? Is it okay to sacrifice the standard path to promote a child’s obvious talents?  

Children gravitate toward their natural tendencies regardless of their parents’ preferences. Yet we still have the ability to influence our children’s future by what we introduce to them, and our methods. We often straddle the line between facilitators and police and we can only hope our balancing act pays off when our kids become adults.    

Ella has taken guitar lessons for almost a year. She may have natural musical talent but I still have to push her to practice. There are times when I wonder if I’m pushing too hard, or if I’m simply teaching the value of hard work. Either way, I probably won’t know the answer until she’s older.   

When a child has a more obvious aptitude or talent, the challenge for parents is amplified. Mozart composed his first symphony at the age of 6. What if his parents had demanded he become a doctor because they thought music was getting in the way of his academics? The world would have been deprived of one its greatest treasures, even if he would have been a great doctor. 

On the other hand, too much specialization can lead to burnout or injury or a dearth of basic social skills, all at the expense of furthering a chosen craft. Tiger Woods could split a fairway before kindergarten but would have benefited from spending more time learning about fidelity and less with his five-iron. 

I won’t use Ella’s natural abilities as an excuse for certain behaviors, but I will try to recognize them. While Ella is more likely to be a talk show host than a mathematician, she still needs to learn the second grade curriculum. Work ethic, patience and social graces are learned traits, whether you’re a genius or not.     

In any case, I will encourage my daughter to follow her passion, whatever it is. If she decides to become the youngest mayor in the history of Fort Collins, I’ll support her. If she wants to continue playing guitar, I’ll pay for lessons and equipment and accept less time for other things. But she better finish her homework. And after watching her try soccer, tennis, dance and guitar, I still think Ella’s strongest innate abilities might be her intellect and social skills. 

Then again, I could be wrong.