Recommended Reading: NurtureShock Sent Me to Bed Early

After Po Bronson's amazing 2007 article on praise, his new book on parenting research NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children (co-authored with Ashley Merryman) mesmerized me long before I actually saw it in person.

The first chapter on praise (revised from the original New York magazine article) remains strong and fresh after repeat readings. I was poised to devour the book in an all night marathon read.

Enter Chapter 2: The Lost Hour. The research on sleep was so compellingly presented that I whined and shut the book at 1 AM (an hour earlier than my typical bedtime since late adolescence). Mr. Bronson, Ms. Merryman, you accomplished in one evening what my mother, and later, Jim have been trying to do for decades. I'm now in bed at least an hour and a half earlier (often more) each night.

The loss of late-night reading hours slowed my reading down, but the change of pace gave me more time and mental space to absorb the rich content of NurtureShock.

Like the new generation of social science books (Stumbling on Happiness, Outliers, Freakonomics), NurtureShock works to be informative rather than prescriptive. Unlike self-help parenting books which offer specific instructions for a perfect relationship/child/childhood, Bronson and Merryman discuss a huge body of research on child rearing and behavior (the bibliography and notes account for 83 pages).

While I could poorly reiterate the book's contents, I'm sure you'd benefit much more from reading it yourself.

The research on siblings gave me real pause. Things have been pretty rough between Ranger and the Raptor since she started crawling. Her mobility resulted in constant meltdowns and Ranger serving a lot of penal time in his room. NurtureShock summarized research on why siblings fight (or more importantly, get along). It's nothing like the theories I've heard. I called Jim at work after reading the chapter. "This may be what's going on..." Our situation looked rough. The research described our kids far too well as present and perpetual rivals. We talked about why siblings get along and committed to a 180 degree shift in our actions. In two days, Ranger's tantrums (regarding the Raptor) started fading. Two more days and only one tantrum. Things improved greatly as we thought purposefully about Ranger's interactions with the Raptor. We're all happier.

Bronson and Merryman carefully choose research that stands up to repetition and avoid the dangerous one-hit-wonders that grab headlines, but fail under long-term scrutiny. They aren't worrying about genius babies, prodigies, or delinquents nor are they pushing to create a super-achiever culture. They don't weigh on who sleeps where, offer dietary advice, or tell you how to punish your child.

The findings they report question underlying assumptions we have about our children, their character, and their development.

NurtureShock offers complex, but fascinating, perspective. I'm sure the ideas behind each chapter will get ample media coverage for months to come (Newsweek already excerpted the race chapter and NPR profiled the lying research in an interview with Bronson).

I hope it will be read by my family, friends, and community educators.

$14.99 at Amazon. $24.99 recommended price.

Baby Toolkit has no relationship with Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman, or their publishers (12 & Hachette Book Group)- though we'd gladly invite them all over for dinner any time. With two degrees in literature, Adrienne can be considered a professional reader (of fiction), but we have no credentials in child development. We bought the book through Amazon.

8 Random Facts About Me (Adrienne): Chocked Full of Hard-Earned Life Tips

When Heather at Rookie Moms tagged me in an "8 Random Facts About Me" meme, I heard the unused unicycle in my garage start rattling for attention. But I'm opting to ignore it (and my lime green ukele) for the moment to pass on eight important life tips (mostly the products of experiential learning).

Meme Rules:

1) Post these rules before you give your facts

2) List 8 random facts about yourself

3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them

4) Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged

Life tip #1- When your washing machine's drain cycle mysteriously fills your bathtub with murky drain water, it is not a good time to experiment with the drain system by flushing the toilet. The morning we discovered this gem I was heading to a job interview and hadn't yet showered or brushed my teeth. The bathtub filling is a symptom that your main drain line is blocked (tree roots were eventually found to be the culprit). When I saw the tub filling, I wondered what would happen if I flushed the toilet. This, I should mention, was a completely academic question and unnecessary flush. Short answer- the toilet does not drain into the bathtub (which is kind of a relief), BUT I ended up learning how quickly I could bail a rising toilet into a trashcan with a Dixie cup.

We fought with a horrible implement called a toilet snake (way worse than any deadly viper) for about hour, but just couldn't get the line clear. This turned into our first call for a professional plumber which brings us to...

Life tip #2- Plumbers are almost always worth the expense. And treating them as superheroes when they work on your house doesn't hurt either.

So I met the plumber at the front door in my robe (which probably freaked the poor guy out) and with a handshake and exaltations of his speed fit for Mercury. The plumber offered to come in through the back door (I joke not). Our house was less than grand, so I laughed. He said that it wasn't common in our neighborhood for people to ask him to do exactly that. Wow, you'd think we were living somewhere classy- but the truth is our 1950s era mass-produced neighborhood had floorplans where you had to walk through the entry room no matter which door you chose. Silly people.

Jim quit wrestling the toilet snake (this sounds like a very twisted horror movie). Normally Jim offers his hand to shake, but in this case, I'm sure the plumber appreciated his standoffishness. We also now always offer the plumber a drink (no one has ever accepted), but that didn't seem so appropriate after having hands-on contact with the toilet.

Jim offered to help the plumber and we'd already moved everything out of the way (this is especially nice when there are large appliances involved like clothes washers). It ended up the plumber was able to use a clean out line in the backyard and get the drain cleared so I wasn't even late for the interview.

As the plumber was friendly, Jim said "How's your week going?" We heard a great story about how half a wine glass got lodged in the neck of a bar toilet at such an angle that it couldn't be broken by a snake. It was really funny. This wasn't the best bar in town, actually it was a place where you're pretty surprised to find a wine glass on the premises, so the bathrooms were horroshow much like the one in Trainspotting.

Plumbers aren't surprised to be treated as untouchables (at least where we've lived) which is really shabby because they are usually taking care of some pretty dire situations in a very heroic capacity.

That house had 6 more years of plumbing failures and we never paid full price for any service call. We also got fast service because the plumbers came to recognize our name and address.

Life tip #3- The inevitable experience of caring for barfing kids can be improved by preparation.

Life tip #4- Sometimes it's just "too big to split." Confused? So were we. There was this restaurant called "The Hole in the Wall" a little North of Upland, Indiana that specialized in baked potatoes with a variety of dressings. When they hauled these GIGANTIC mutant potatoes as big as your head out to the tables near ours, my friend and I decided to split one.

When the waitress took our orders, she refused to let that potato be split. "It's too big!" My friend said, "That sounds perfect..."

The waitress wouldn't allow us to split the mega-giant potato and she was getting irritated by our stupidity. "HONEY, it's TOO BIG TO SPLIT" (the additional "how can I say it more plainly, you absolute idiot?" was understood by everyone in the place.'

So we stupidly ordered one each to answer the old vaudeville joke "Well, how big is it?"

Flipping huge. The table creaked under the first one and I think it came to rest on all our knees with the second one. They had a gravitational pull that drew small objects like silverware across the room. I could easily see splitting one in two with an axe or chainsaw. Or splitting it in twenty to feed everyone in the place and a few people passing by on the street.

"Too big to split" is now code in the Jones family for anything fervently believed by others but completely inexplicable to us. Some mysteries in life are not to be answered: They're simply too big to split.

Life tip #5- Mommas need posses: Not long after my week-long hospitalization for mastitis and Ranger's cold-turkey weaning, I went back to library group. Ranger was hungry, so I started looking through my bag for still-foreign formula supplies. I'd left something essential at home, but a friend loaned me the missing supply and peace was restored after a short Ranger meltdown. The whole situation left me sad and rattled and a mom next to me said (with a strong dose of self-righteousness) "Well, that's why I breastfeed my daughter." About the time my eyes started to burn, but before they filled with tears my momma friends jumped to my defense. It immediately made me smile to watch them go after this woman. If it's bad to anger a momma bear, it's apocalyptic to anger a den of them.

Life tip #6- Few things are more empowering than helping others.

This sounds really trite, but the second major life event for the Jones in 2005 (shortly after the birth of Ranger in chronology and significance) was being hit by a 2 AM F3 tornado. As was the case with many tornado victims (and I suspect other disaster victims in the wake of Katrina), our insurance company was using every dirty tactic in the book to not pay enough to repair our damaged home.

I was so angry and felt completely subject to the company's decisions. I was told there was no appeals process and I had to settle on their terms. We just wanted a fair settlement (a working house). No one had any idea what to do to get our costs covered. One Friday night I decided to give up an accept their paltry offer and work to make up the $10k+ deficit on our own. I was broken. Thank God it was a weekend. On Sunday, my Dad told a funny story about grandpa and the federal credit card regulatory agency and the penny dropped. While insurance is regulated on a state by state basis, our state has a great Department of Insurance. Talking to one of their investigators gave me enough information to scare the insurance company into meeting our costs. That made me feel a little better, but it was a still a painfully long and frustrating process.

In the meantime, I invited the Department of Insurance to return to our city about 2 months after the tornado for two public meetings. They were WONDERFUL. They came and worked individually with every one who attended the public meetings. It turned out our insurance problems were minor in the grand scheme of things. Fines were levied, some people who had previously been cheated were given 100% or more of their policies' benefits. You can read about it here. This particular settlement is the product of a lot of hard work by a lot of fine people, but the egregious treatment by the insurance company only came to light in those public meetings. The fact that people cared about our community (not the message conveyed by some insurance companies) was more healing than any restoration of our home. Knowing I could still help others when I had felt so subject to circumstance helped me get out of bed during those terribly dark months.

(Side note: Our absolutely horrible experience was with Horace Mann and their subsidiary Teachers Insurance Company- I know you were wondering.)

Life tip #7- Look everyone in the eye. I stole this from Mother Teresa's playbook (I doubt she'll pursue me for copyright). Not necessary long, lingering looks, but enough to realize you're interacting with someone. I honestly think this changes the viewer more than the viewee. It's improved my life greatly and goes well with a smile.

Life tip #8- (also known as the Jones family motto)

So Jim and I went to this arts fair over a decade ago and watched a master baker decorate cakes (see, adventure around every corner!). This guy could created contest-worthy creations in record time. He then took questions. An observer asked him to show the best technique to make a rose. He pulls out something that looks like a giant thumbtack and pipes a perfect rosette on it in less than 30 seconds while giving good narration.

His questioner looked perplexed. "That's how I do it and mine never look that good." She probed for his trade secret, "How do you do it so easily?"

Through a wide grin he offered a secret to success in life as well as rose-making "The first thousand times are the hardest."

To further this "8 Random Things About Me" meme, I'm passing it on to:

• AJ at Thingamababy,
• Judy at GoodyBlog (good luck working a Halloween theme into that!),
  
• The Pasta Queen, The I'mPerfect Mom, and Shonnie Lavender- friends and fellow hostelers from BlogHer,
• IndyWriter,
• Adventures of A Twenty Something Mother,
  
• and Rocknroll mum Scurvy Ann.

Anyone else have life tips they want to add?

Naming Babies: An Early Introduction to Parental Responsibility

[This post has been brought to you by an internet meme (an idea that is traveling, in this case much like a game of tag). My instructions for this post:

Give the meaning of your kids’ names, and write about what or how or why you gave the name to your kids. Tag five people to play along and leave a comment at their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

To follow this meme backwards, see Judy's name post at Goodyblog. To see it progress follow the links at the end of this post.]

Sometime, very early in our marriage, we started playing a hypothetical name game in the car. We'd pair different names with our distinguished surname (Jones). Within moments it became apparent that long O names or names with a initial consonant and o pairing could create problematic circus clown variety nicknames: Jonas Jones becomes Jo-Jo, Noah Jones becomes No-Jo, Howard Jones- Ho-Jo. The only long O dominant name we liked paired with Jones was Orlando (already taken). There was one girl's name that I would break this rule for, but then I heard the dulcet tones of Norah Jones and consigned yet another promising name to the discard pile.

During the car game one of us would propose a name and then we would both viciously attack it in typical schoolyard fashion.

One of the most important taunt tests for a name is RHYMING. Jake, snake, fake... you get the drift. My brother (slightly older than the tidal wave of Christophers) was named after our adventuresome forefather Christopher Peter-Fox [last name omitted]. Old Christopher preferred the nickname "Crit" above all over others, so my parents sentimentally passed this nickname on to my brother. As a result, my brother spent more of recess in the office for fighting than on the playground. Whatever you do, please very carefully reconsider any name ending in -it or -uck if your expect your child to possess the power of hearing. Kids are not known for civil society; please don't put your child in a head-on collision with childhood conflict.

DUAL OR LITERAL MEANINGS: Okay, so kids aren't literary sophisticates, but they will work hard to get a really good insult. Names with English meanings or homophones (or near phrases) can be problematic. I loved the name and associations of Minerva- but the dream of a little Minerva Jones died with "You're stepping on my last Minerva!" It's not that funny, but it still springs to mind when young Ranger is treading on thin ice. It would get old for her fast. Cliff, Seymour, and any other name from a childhood book title jokes is probably a troubled direction. (If you're missing this allusion and don't know who wrote "Under The Bleachers" good examples are available here in titles 1-15)

VIRTUE NAMES: This is probably the most controversial statement ever written to Baby Toolkit, and I am putting on my helmet for the rain of hell-fire this will attract, but we are firm believers that virtue names and natural tendencies toward rebellion are not well matched. It has been my experience that Graces are clumsy, Hopes are pessimistic, and Chastitys are... well... not. I fear that a generation of Nevaehs will be pure Lleh. If you have one of these names and embody the appropriate characteristic- then your parents were wise and granted you a perfect name. If only all parents could be so wise.

We actually considered giving our children a middle name that was a deplorable vice (probably picking from the seven deadly sins) in hopes that they would rebel against the name's intrinsic expectations. But Minerva Selfishness Jones would probably incur way too much explanation in future years.

COMMON NAMES: These are great and actually recommended for pairing with stylish and distinctive last names like Holiday or Czekajewski. While they're fully functional for any child in daily life, the pairing of a common first and common last name can cause identity confusion.

When I was in grade school in a small rural community, there were 2 John Miles in my class (we referred to them as M or J- their middle initials). Jim has had perpetual problems with his very common name causing mistakes: like when he was mistakenly sued for child support of 3 children (one older than himself) at the ripe old age of 13 -or- the time all our mail was swapped for months with that of a felon so we got his parole notifications and he got our paychecks (we were lucky, he was reformed and brought us our mail when he couldn't get the post office to straighten the mess up).

ALWAYS GOOGLE: So your embryo's name sounds great, but are you missing some vital information? It's easy to learn now (as opposed to later when the ink on the birth certificate is dry) what people with your child's name have been up to in the past.

Unfortunately, Google can't see into the future. Jim Jones decided to kill a multitude of his believers years after my husband Jim had been given the same moniker. And seriously, if a Google search can save your child a lifetime of Kool-aid jokes, it's definitely worth the effort.

The same admonition goes for names heavily tied to popular fictional characters- I have heard everyone's bad Stallone impersonation "Adreeee-uhnnnnnn!" for three decades now. It's beyond tired. And my friend, Francie "Francis the Talking Mule," would probably second that opinion.

AND NOW- I'm not telling you Ranger's true name. Maybe it's because I read too much Elfquest in adolescence, but I think he deserves his own privacy in the next decade when mean spirited 6th graders discover that parent blogs are rich with personal information.

We did change his blog name from BabyGeek (which he'd outgrown) to Ranger in honor of my grandfather, a career member of the Forest Service.

SO- HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR OWN GREAT SECRET NAME?
There are three baby name books that really stand out as exceptional to us.

The Baby Name Wizard offers meanings and "sibling names" which are names of the same style or tone. It also documents the popularity of a name throughout the last century of US census data. Their online Name Voyager tool is phenomenal (and was recently covered on Goodyblog) and their Name Wizard blog is simply fascinating.

The Baby Name Survey Book and its soon to be released update The New Baby Name Survey Book are great for seeing general perceptions of a name. I don't think this book heavily influenced our name choices, but we had the best time reading it. This book would make a conversation piece at any cocktail party. Go to the library and check it out immediately.

The Perfect Baby Name Book: Finding the Name that Sounds Just Right looks at how sounds work together. It's great at breaking large linguistics concepts down understandable ideas in a just a few introductory pages, and then it sorts the names in a workable manner. Looking for a two syllable long O name with the emphasis on the second syllable? Then this book is perfect for you. Its short title is shared with another, more traditional baby name book, so make sure you get the one written by Walker & Reyes.

OTHER NAMING TIPS:
- Don't tell anyone the names you're really considering unless you want frequent, thorough, and (often) completely irrational criticism. [This goes double if you have any teachers in your family. Kids ruin lots of names for teachers, but your mom is going to forget immediately about Gavin the Terrible when Gavin the Grandson assumes the name.] Some people can offer good criticism, but it's very hard to hear at times, so choose your confidantes wisely.

-If you can't announce that you're keeping names secret and stick to secrecy, choose RED HERRINGS. Jim and I have already started list for any future pregnancies. We have actually chosen names so painful and odious that everyone will be relieved when we reveal a socially acceptable name. We'll attribute this change entirely to a last-minute change of heart- allowing us to reuse our red herrings in any subsequent pregnancies.

-Choose a name that you're willing to say at least a million times a day, because you will use it all the time. You will probably even have to scream it in public at times.

-Stealing names is a grievous offense. If you're using the name of another child in your social set, think through your relationship with that family. Will you see them often? How inconvenient is a shared name going to be at gatherings? Have they worked to choose a really distinctive name? If they have spent time finding an usual name, then they will probably resent your co-opting it.

-FIRST TIME PARENTS: Seriously, people are going to grind the names you love and have carefully chosen into dust. Don't tell, or be prepared to take the slings and arrows. This is actually a good introduction to parenthood. You're working feverishly choosing a name that you child will, for at least a short period of their life, curse you for giving them while you suffer from immense criticism of your carefully chosen names. The naming criticism is NOTHING compared to the PARENTING ADVICE that is headed your way. Learn to flip a little switch in your brain and work on a Mona Lisa smile- they will serve you well as you're about to be hit by an avalanche of unsolicited (and even unsound) advice. Stand your ground (unless it violates the -it or -uck rhyme rule). It's your child and you have to live with them when they hate you and their name.

Please watch meme as it travels to Jenni & Jeremiah at Zrecs.com (check out their recent Sippy Cup Showdown- all BPA-free!), Jodi at The Mom Tech Review (a great blog for the geek parent set), Jill of Jill's Place (offers the story of her kids great names) and more blogs to be announced soon. If you blog and would like to be a part of this meme, email me (babytoolkit[at]gmail.com) or leave a comment and I will put a link right here.

***Baby Toolkit is a sometimes stream-of-consciousness commentary of some opinionated geek parents.  We are Amazon affiliates, so a portion of any purchases made through our Amazon links helps pay our ISP charges (thank you!).