Sometimes they just need the words.

A little flash of insight from the other day:

My son, age 3 -- in a most demanding tone -- calls from behind me: "Dad, put on my shoes!"

My second instinct was to turn to him, and with a stern voice, tell him: "Hey, that's rude, you don't tell daddy what to do -- you're such a little turkey, why can't you be sweet like your sisters?"

Fortunately for me, my first instinct is to not do anything rash because some mistakes can be very hard to fix.

As an adult, I've spent literally thousands of hours interacting with other people and watching others interact with each other. I know what words and phrases imply, and that even slight differences in tone can send very different messages.

My kids on the other hand, even the older ones, are oblivious to most of that. Usually the content they're wanting to convey is perfectly fine -- they just don't know how to say it.

Sometimes they just need the words.

So I turned to my sweet little boy and said, prompting him, "Dad, can you help me get my shoes on please?"

"Oh -- Dad, can you help me get my shoes on please?" he said with a smile, happy to know the right thing to say.

"There's my sweet boy."

=)

Faith will always remain a matter of choice

Terryl L. Givens on the FAIR podcast:

If we were to ever reach a point in our lives where we felt the evidence -- for, or against, Christ's divinity or the Book of Mormon, or Joseph Smith's prophetic calling -- were overwhelming, then there would be a kind of intellectual compulsion involved, and our faith would not be a matter of choice.

I've been trying to put that thought to words for almost 2 years. My experience so far has been that whenever I feel like the evidence weighs more heavily on one side than another, it's only because I haven't looked hard enough for the counterpoints on the other side.

But why faith? Because this life is principally a test of spirit. Sure knowledge eliminates the wrong answers from the test, and it ceases to be a valid test for the spirit, and instead becomes a simple test of will, which is interesting, but insufficient.

Russian soldiers in WWII who ran from the front line were shot by their own men -- how do you award medals of honor when valor is forced on you?

Spreading "culture"?

Remember my post on culture?

Looks like the "stool donor" approach is getting some traction -- Dr. Gordon is Director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, talking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air a couple weeks back about doing exactly that:

Dr. GORDON: Well, in this particular case, a fecal community was transplanted into a diseased individual's gut and there was a beneficial effect observed over time, reflected in improvement of their symptoms. ...

GROSS: I guess one of the things I find so interesting about this fecal transplant is one, its a fecal transplant. It's so odd to think of using in this case, a spouse's feces or the community of microorganisms in those feces to transplant into the ill person's gut. Its a way of transplanting good guy bacteria instead of using antibiotics to just kill the bad guy bacteria and in the process, kill the good guy bacteria too.

I still think someday it will be more common for doctors to administer bacteria cultures than anti-biotics.

Also interesting from this interview is that 90 percent of the cells we carry around aren't actually human -- but bacterial and other non-human microbes. By count, we're ~10x more bacterial than human. Surprising, hard to believe, but also very interesting.

Having politicians kiss your babies? Maybe a good way to get healthy/successful peoples' bacteria on your kids.

Part of the test.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926-2004):

Why should it surprise us, by the way, that life's most demanding tests as well as the most significant opportunities for growth in life usually occur within marriage and the family? How can revolving door relationships, by contrast, be as real a test of our capacity to love? Is being courteous, one time, to the stranger on the bus as difficult as being courteous to a family member who is competing for the bathroom morning after morning? Does fleeting disappointment with a fellow office worker compare to the betrayal of a spouse? Does a raise in pay even approach the lift we receive from rich family life?

A little bragging...

Can I just take a timeout from my usual blogging fare and brag about my wife for a minute?

Kyla and her running partner Kathy after their last race

Yesterday morning she ran a half-marathon. Yes, a real half marathon. Just over 13 miles in just over 2 hours. How cool is that? To be able to just start running and keep going for a couple of hours, now that's just incredible to me. She wasn't even sore afterward. Awesome.

Way to go, babe!

Kenneth Cope, and music for kids

A couple weeks back Kenneth Cope happened to be coming through Huntsville and accepted the invitation to come and talk and sing at our church in Madison.

I wasn't even really sure who he was when they made the announcement, but I decided to go when I realized that he wrote and sings a few of my favorite LDS songs, such as "Once Upon a Time", a song about miracles in the scriptures. Or "Brothers", a song about Joseph Smith and his ever-faithful brother Hyrum, who Joseph begged not to follow him back to Carthage where he knew he was soon to be killed, but who would not leave his brother's side.

Kenneth was also going to do a "fireside" for the youth as well, but that was cancelled. Unfortunately many inferred from the wording of the cancellation that *all* of his presentations were cancelled, so when we arrived, there was almost no one there -- just the Bishop and his wife, Kenneth, and one other member.

At 15 minutes before it was to start, I got up to use the restroom, but as I got up I saw Kenneth in the back, and he seemed to think I got up to go talk to him, so I walked up and introduced myself. He's a very friendly, happy guy (a former bishop, too), and I chatted with him for a few minutes.

So here's why I'm writing this post...

In talking to him, I asked him if his kids were interested in music, and how he fostered that interest. He said that all 3 enjoyed playing instruments, and the key was just making it fun for them. "Find music they like, and they'll want to learn to play it."

It sounds obvious that people do things they find fun, but like most parents I tend to default toward the mindset that the kids should be doing the things we tell them to. Fun? What does that have to do with anything?

But I didn't really get into piano until it became fun, i.e. when I got a book of Enya sheet music. I hated most of the music I had to play in my early lessons. Similarly, I loved soccer as a kid because I had only ever played it for fun. Baseball, on the other hand, was a serious sport according to my coach, and fun wasn't the point. Come to think of it, whether I enjoyed something depended a lot on the attitude of the guy (or gal) in charge.

And when it comes to my girls, I'm the guy in charge.

---

His presentation was excellent, by the way, very spiritual. Not many dry eyes at the end. Curiously he mentioned my name during one of the songs, basically complimenting my smile -- the downside of being complimented for something is that you end up putting in extra effort to live up to it!

Coconut, right?

Kinney today, pointing at her teeth:

"The stuff between your teeth is called coconut, right Dad?"

Last week:

Me: "Hey girls, how do we know when the Spirit is talking to us?"

Regan: "We feel good inside -- and happy."

Me: "Kinney?"

Kinney: "Um -- we hear beeping."

Actually, it was me.

A minor correction to that last post -- actually, it was me that put another of Regan's works on eBay, not her. She's not quite ready for that yet. =)

I struggle still a little with this idea of encouraging her to draw pictures to sell on eBay. Who would want to *buy* a crayon drawing done by a 6-year old, even if they are fairly well done for her age? Only their grandparents (who perhaps not coincidentally are the only buyers so far) -- and shouldn't they get them for free?

My original goals were:

• Provide a way for her to earn money (instead of us just giving it to her).


• Give her a little exposure to how businesses are run, i.e. with expenses, profits, etc.*


• Encourage the development of talents.

Selling her crayon drawings on eBay seemed a good solution that met all my goals -- however it still hasn't quite "settled" with me yet. Maybe it's because I know that the pictures have very little inherent value except for what little is incurred through guilt in the relatives, which just doesn't seem like a very solid business plan.

What do you think? Is this a good way for a 6-year old to earn money? How did (do? will?) your 6-year olds make money? I'd love to hear your thoughts, feel free to add comments below.

---

* As if I knew much about it myself...

Regan lists another piece

Regan has just put up another of her works of art on eBay, Little Monkeys.

Getting some real culture

Part One

Cindy (name changed) was in the same group as I when I first started as an engineering intern at my job -- I didn't interact with her much, but I remember she was a little overweight in physique and somewhat reclusive in personality. We soon went our ways and I only saw her in passing sometimes.

A couple years later I noticed that she was *much* thinner than the previous time I had seen her, "anorexia" being the only word I could think of. She also was walking waving her arms around in the air, almost like she was swimming or dancing or something, but the look on her face was one of determination, not of someone having fun. I wondered if she'd gone a little crazy.

Some time later, she approached me in the hall and asked if she might speak to me some day at lunch -- "privately".

"What's it about?" I asked, all kinds of red flags and bells going off in my head.

"I need help, and was hoping you might be able to help me -- but I'd prefer to discuss it in private." The red flags and bells hesitated... what could she mean? She barely knows me, what could she possibly think I could help her with? I feared it had something to do with children, though she was probably at least 20 years my senior.

I agreed hesitantly.

I immediately called my wife and my superiors, asking advice and letting them know where and when we were to meet, and all the circumstances I knew of. If she was going to proposition me with something, they would all find out almost as fast as I did, which I figured was my best protection from my biggest worry: people getting the wrong idea.

The day arrived, and she laid out an interesting story that has stuck with me ever since:

"I have a rare condition -- one that results in my gastrointestinal system being very delicate, susceptible to all kinds of infections. My doctors believe that it's because I have taken so many antibiotics that I've killed off all the 'beneficial' bacteria in my system that prevent the malignant kinds of bacteria from taking hold.

"That's where you come in. The doctors have suggested that if I can find a person to regularly donate stools for some time, they could be converted into a solution that could be transferred via enema into my system, and repopulate me with the healthy bacteria that I need."

I was stunned. She wants what from me?

We quickly decided that I wasn't a good candidate because I had gastrointestinal parasites on my mission in Ecuador. Granted I was pretty sure they were all gone now, but she didn't want to take any chances, and I was happy to not have to be in the stool-supply business.

Part Two

Fast forward to last Wednesday, to a routine doctors visit -- my first in ~15 years. I had woken up with a slightly sore throat, but figured I might be coming down with a cold. The doctor looked in my throat -- "How are you feeling today?"

"Woke up with a little bit of a sore throat."

"Well, it looks like you have strep."

Wha? Wow. Well, turns out I didn't, but a swabbing revealed that it was indeed a bacterial infection, and 20 minutes later I started a week-long antibiotics treatment.

Connecting the two

Now stick those two stories together.

1) Do I want to be wholesale-killing bacteria in my system, especially when I've got lots of good bacteria keeping me from other sicknesses? What choice do I have, I hate sore throats.

2) Where am I going to get more good bacteria after I kill off what I've got? Maybe that's what kissing is for. Keep passing the good stuff back and forth with your wife and kids. Maybe that's why our instincts are to kiss babies, to get your kids started off with the best cultures your gene pool has managed to come up with.

3) And lastly, if I'd had the right kinds of bacteria in my throat 3 days earlier, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the infection in my throat to begin with???

I wonder if there's someone out there who never gets bacterial infections in their throat because they *already have* the right kind of bacteria in there, keeping the bad stuff from getting a foothold.

So, if you have kids but you never get sore throats, can my kids kiss your kids? =)

Praising your kids

I never tell my kids they're smart.

"What a rotten parent you are! They need that positive affirmation, do you want them to be damaged forever?!"

Okay, okay, hold on a second. Turns out, a study has found that certain kinds of praise can actually be *bad* for your kids -- including telling them about how smart they are. If you have kids, you should definitely read it.

Still here? Okay, here's a quick summary: when faced with hard problems, the kids who are told how "smart" they are begin to think maybe they really aren't smart at all, and see any failure as evidence of that -- that having to put forth effort is proof they've been misjudged.

On the other side, kids who are praised for their *effort*, e.g. "I like how you always do your best", become more engaged and redouble their efforts when things get hard -- they focus on "trying", which in the end is where success comes from.

Terrific insight into the minds of kids.

And I'm starting to think it works with adults too. =)

OpenDNS: A safer internet

I spend a fair amount of time on the internet, probably associated with my N.A.D.D. -- which pretty much means that I'm hooked on the "content firehose" that is the internet. I'm amassing knowledge (and not wisdom) at an unhealthy rate, and I know it -- who cares that the world's longest ear-hair is 10 inches?

Anyway, it shouldn't take anyone long to discover that the internet's a fairly dangerous place in more ways than one -- ask me sometime about the first hit I got on a Yahoo! image search for "family" a few weeks back (with SafeSearch supposedly on!). If you're part of the internet generation reading this, you probably won't be surprised.

Of course there are lots of internet filter options, but so far it's been pretty hit and miss. Mostly it's software that's installed that you have to buy or subscribe to (or both!). Who wants to do that? Besides all the options on the Mac get mediocre to poor reviews.

Enter OpenDNS, a simple free service that takes care of most of the problem for you.

Here's the lowdown:

• Content filters sit on your local machine watching the incoming traffic for keywords that meet a certain criteria, and if it finds them, it refuses to pass the data along to your browser.
• DNS filter services (DNS = domain name server), on the other hand, replace your ISPs default DNS with their own servers, which keep track of which sites are okay and which are not -- if your computer requests a site that is objectionable, the DNS server points your browser to their "safe" server instead.

How does this work? The internet is just a bunch of computers connected together, passing files around. When you type in "cnn.com", your browser asks your OS to lookup the IP address of cnn.com, and your OS asks the DNS (domain name server). That's where the DNS filter service steps in, mis-directing your browser (in a good way) to their own safe servers.

OpenDNS* is a free DNS service that does this. You can block dozens of different types of categories, add white-list items (sites that will never be blocked), and keep logs of blocked requests if you like. To use it, just type their DNS server addresses into your DNS server fields in your router configuration window or in your network setup (you may need help with this part, if you don't know what this means).

How do they make money? By putting ads on the blocked or mis-entered pages -- so if you type "foxnewsss.com", you get a google search results page with ads that pay them if you click on them. I'm totally fine with that.

One of my favorite parts about this is that you can set the DNS servers on your router, so all computers in your house are protected, and it's pretty tricky to sidestep. Also, there are a ton of users already, but if you run across something that made it through, you can submit pages to the service for review.

Granted it won't catch everything (including my Yahoo! example above, unless I want to block all of Yahoo!), but it goes a long way in the right direction.

---

* Scrubit.com is a similar service that I used to use, but it doesn't allow all the fancy customizations.

*Much* better half

Once a year in February, my dear sweet wife heads off to the annual "Sisters Reunion", where she and her 6 sisters flee from husbands and kids and life in general and hang out. As far as I can tell they mostly just pretend they're teenagers again, which we could all stand to do a little more often. The trip is sacrosanct, it's not up for debate or dispute, and somehow they all manage to align schedules and gather enough money to make it happen. That's not a small miracle, considering the number of people involved -- amazing how certain things just happen.

What also happens about this time every year is that I get a rude awakening as to what my wife's life entails. It was hard last year, now I'm running a small 24-hr preschool. This year before we even started we learned that all 3 kids have ear infections. Then, the first night Regan threw up in her bed (not a little, either), and Kendy was up periodically crying while Kinney had a fever. Since then it's been better, but whenever I'm not directly overseeing them, they're meandering around.

I have a new metric for describing my children: MTTFM. That's "mean time to food mess", how long on average do I have of non-direct supervision before one of them has made a mess with some sort of food product. Right now, that figure is somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes -- not enough to get going on any serious project. Kinney with the grapes, Kendy with the whole wheat (?), Regan with the cheez-its, etc.

So it's on. Am I keeping the house clean? Not really. Am I buying food, or getting exercise, or doing laundry? My dear sweet wife has figured out how most of the time to do all of those things, keep the kids on track, and maintain some degree of sanity. Nice. What a great lady.