dad blog – Page 2 – Polymath Parent

June 23, 2022June 22, 2022

Overly precise

Fleur: is this the right foot?

Me: that is the right foot and the correct shoe.

I wanted emphasize “right” in the context of side and not correctness. Left/right and correct/wrong. I am perhaps a bit sensitive to how in technology we take existing words and re-use them for new meanings. For a time it creates confusion as people acclimate to the new meaning.

The usefulness of language is in how easily we communicate concepts to each other. This right shoe case is a niche where the same word with different meanings could cause confusion.

But, at the same time it makes me think harder before my morning coffee so it left an impression.

If as a side effect she becomes overly precise in her word choice too, it may drive Ada and Fleur’s teachers nuts, but I will adore it. Words have meanings.

June 11, 2022June 8, 2022

Game: Keepy Uppy Bandit

We know the game about keeping the balloon off the ground as “Keepy Uppy” due to the show Bluey. The father’s name is Bandit.

Setup: The same as traditional games of this sort. Inflate a balloon.

Action: Someone puts the balloon into the air. Each person hits the balloon back up into the air to keep it from touching the ground. The more acrobatic the better. Easy mode: control the balloon with soft hits so the other person can also controlled hit it.

In the episode, Bluey complains about it being too easy, so Bandit makes it harder. Fleur likes to make it harder by hitting it where I am challenged to keep it from touching the ground. Sometimes she transitions to Hard Mode after half an hour where other times she gets there after a few minutes. Sometimes she announces the change with “I am Bandit” while other times I figure it out because she’s started making it hard.

Anyway, she makes it more fun.

June 9, 2022June 9, 2022

Baby is a four letter word

Fleur doesn’t like my pet name for her: Baby. It earns an instant protest about not being a baby.

My mother claims to Fleur that I am her baby. Taking in this information became a game changer. Until recently, Fleur rejected even that.

She slowly but surely has come around to accepting that she is and will always be my baby.

My other argument is when she asks me to carry her, I remind her that babies get carried. So as long as she wants to me to carry her, I get to call her my baby.

Baby steps.

Loss of possession is 9/10ths of the screaming 2022

The original post on this is worth quoting.

Humans have a well developed and easy to exploit sense of loss aversion. (Kahneman and Tversky) We experience far more pain when losing something than the pleasure we experience from gaining.
https://polymathparent.com/2019/05/23/loss-of-possession-is-9-10ths-of-the-screaming/

Three years ago, it was easier as we could just give Fleur another thing we agree on her having to negate the loss aversion. Today, we have many conversations a day about why she cannot have something. The most difficult are the ones resulting in her not getting something she already decided she would get.

Examples:

We want her to eat dinner before dessert, expecting her to fill up on the dessert.
There is a toy at the store she wants, but we don’t want.

Photo by mohamed Abdelgaffar on Pexels.com

The strategy is still to give her something that she wants. For meals, we strive to make sure it is something she likes plus is nutritious and are not hard-set on eating it all. Which, of course, means quite a bit of “just two more bites” and “that was a half-bite.”

I also find myself reconsidering how strict I want to be on a specific confrontation. Sometimes, in the evaluation, I realize that her having the thing is not so bad, so I let her keep or get it. But, I encourage her to explain why she should. I hope to foster a habit of argumentation.

Not argumentation as in constant confrontation, but using logic and persuasion to get her way instead of fussing. Negotiation also works in this space. The brain is built for this, so I want to foster her using it to the fullest. (More about Dunbar.)

Her Elementary School teachers are going to despise me as a parent as

May 30, 2022May 30, 2022

Dunbar’s Number

I am continually fascinated with Dunbar’s Number.

In monkeys and apes, there is correlation between primate brain size and the size of their social groups, and by extrapolating this relationship we would expect humans to have a natural upper limit to the number of people in their group to about 150. This is what is known as Dunbar’s number, and turns out to be surprisingly common in human social organisation.
R.I.M. Dunbar, Dunbar’s Number, NewScientis.com, https://www.newscientist.com/definition/dunbars-number/

Hunter-gatherer groups tended to split into smaller groups around this size. English villages tended to be about this size.

It is key to remember, though, that the family should not be counted as biology has different rules for kinship. Natural selection rewards behaviors increasing the success of one’s genes and family drive ensures one’s genes thrive.

Acquaintances are not the same as friends.

Another hack humans use: rules to get around our inability to adequately know everyone else in our society. Read my Shortcut: rules post. Though other shortcuts like labels apply.

I need to read more science on this, but my feeling about the mechanics behind this comes from argumentation. We need memories from our experiences with individuals to anticipate their behavior. We need common experiences to share stories, bond, and trust. The ability to persuade others is tied to our understanding of them, which works best when we know something about them, which works best when we know them well. Dunbar’s number was important for survival.

In the age of social media and the quest to accumulate followers, the trick is to create false friendships. There is one-sided information shared from celebrities to followers, where the followers know a curated version of a person and the person knows almost nothing about the followers. That’s another fake form of friendship.

Acquaintances, aka weak links, are also important. It is how we obtain jobs, romantic connections, and cultivate new friendships.

We should also strive for quality friendships. Shared experiences. Shared stories.

Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships

May 28, 2022

Game: Run, Walk, Stop, Skip

At the house with dogs in the neighborhood, it used to be having me run because the dogs ran with me and not her. And, I can run faster, which is not allowed.

Now, the game is she barks commands for me to follow. And my intentional getting it wrong results in coaching me to do the activity correctly.

Photo by cheptu00e9 cormani on Pexels.com

I enjoy it because I get to be obtuse. She also learns to roll her eyes about me.

May 21, 2022May 9, 2022

Game: stuntwoman

Setup: the bed is the landing zone.

Action: I started off throwing her Superwoman style. She told me to hold her upside down and throw her. We call that variant, “Stuntwoman Extreme.”

She also loves me to spin the merry-go-round or spinner seats so fast she gets dizzy.

May 14, 2022

Game: Elsa and the Big Bad Wolf

Setup: Fleur is Elsa. I am the Big Bad Wolf. Others are various Frozen characters. Ada is Anna.

Action: this basically a chase game. I howl and try to get Elsa or others. Elsa can freeze me. Someone else can use fire to unfreeze.

I love this game because we play it in some public place with open space to run around. It gets weird looks about me howling.

May 12, 2022May 12, 2022

Potential new SIDS explanation

A new study correlates SIDS to a biological marker present in normal amounts babies at birth for babies who survive and lower in babies who don’t.

BChEsa, measured in dried blood spots taken 2-3 days after birth, was lower in babies who subsequently died of SIDS compared to surviving controls and other Non-SIDS deaths. We conclude that a previously unidentified cholinergic deficit, identifiable by abnormal -BChEsa, is present at birth in SIDS babies and represents a measurable, specific vulnerability prior to their death.
Carmel Therese Harrington, Naz Al Hafid, Karen Ann Waters, Butyrylcholinesterase is a potential biomarker for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, eBioMedicine, Volume 80, 2022, 104041, ISSN 2352-3964, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104041.

Correlation does not mean causation, but it is an intriguing area for more exploration to find a solution to a devastating problem for parents.

Parents receive a lot of sometimes contradictory advice on how to prevent SIDS. And should they lose a child to it, they could wonder what they did wrong.

April 30, 2022