Same names

I recently watched a terrible documentary on netflix about Alan Berliner, narcissist.  It was actually supposed to be about the science of naming.  (Related to work, though it turned out to be useless.)  Probably about 80% of the movie was Alan Berliner complaining that there were other people in the world also named Alan Berliner.  Or just him saying his name over and over again.  (The other 20% was mildly interesting, but not as in-depth as it could have been.)

I have three cousins with the same first name.  Two of them were named after the same great-aunt.  The other is a step-cousin, so it’s just coincidence (as much as fashions and trends can be coincidental).  In my family this is not a big deal.  We have a strong tradition of reusing family names, until very recently we’ve had sizable families, and we tend to live a long time.  It’s just natural that there’s going to be some overlap.  Since we’re spread out all over the country, even when there’s the same first and last name, it doesn’t generally cause much confusion.

My husband’s family feels quite differently on the subject.

I can’t remember if it was just before or just after she married into DH’s family, but my (then childless) sister-in-law gave me a lecture about how she hated it when her friends gave their babies names that she had already laid claim to.  She was genuinely angry about it, even though she no longer even lived in the same town as said high school friends.  She not so subtly told me two names that I must avoid.  I noted with silent irony that these two names just happened to be the top most popular baby names of that year, and if she wanted her future children to have unique names, maybe not the best way to go about it.

And time went on.  We had a child.  Both prospective boy’s names and girl’s names were family names, as in our tradition (on my side).  Presumably we chose ok because we didn’t get any hate-mail.

BIL and SIL had a child.  Oddly, they chose the non-traditional family name of my aunt/uncle (on my side, not DH’s!) that we were going to use if we had a second child of the same gender.  I have no idea where they got the idea, but because of my SIL’s warning, we had to jettison said name and ability to honor said relative from our potential name-box.

Then BIL and SIL had a second child.  Rather than using one of the names SIL had warned me against… they used the name that our DC would have been had ze been the opposite gender.  By that point, it seemed like everyone we knew who had had a baby in the past couple years had used the same name (it jumped way up in the naming charts the year DC was born), so we’d moved on (plus my MIL says she always hated that relative)… but how bizarre.  It’s not like we kept our potential names a secret or anything.

On my side of the family, these things wouldn’t be a big deal because nobody feels like they have property rights to any specific name.  You can name your child the same thing as a cousin, no problem.  But, in deference to family peace and tranquility we won’t be “stealing” any names from the in-laws and came up with a new set.

Update:  If you want to check out name popularity by year:  baby name voyager is fun.

Do you get upset when a friend or relative “steals” a name you’ve chosen?  What are your family naming traditions?

Ask the grumpies: Tracking

Leah asks:

I assume you prefer tracking students based on ability in K-12 or at least 6-12/7-12. maybe yes? Have you seen any good evidence for that, or is there better evidence for having lumped classes where assignments/projects are differentiated to ability?

We’re not really up on the tracking literature for non-gifted kids.  Our impression is that once you cut off the tails of the distribution, mainstreaming has better outcomes than tracking.  There is good evidence that mainstreaming gifted kids has worse outcomes both for the gifted kids and for the middle of the distribution in cooperative learning environments.  The literature on mainstreaming for learning disabled kids is mixed, but I suspect that mainstreaming is good for kids who are misdiagnosed (generally because they are poor or minority) and for those with specific learning disabilities, and bad for kids who need more than just pull-out programming for their individual kind of disability.  It would be awesome if they could, say, track math classes for kids who have dyscalculia, because math can be taught to kids with dyscalculia, but it has to be taught in a different way than mainstream math is taught.  But it’s hard to do that kind of thing except in a major urban center.

As a teacher, it is much easier to teach to a tracked class, but that’s just personal anecdote.  There’s a lot more work to go into differentiation, and God bless the teachers who are willing and able to put in that effort.  We salute you and wish you smaller class sizes!

Differentiation, when done well, has good outcomes across all ability levels.  Ability clustering within a class (allowing clusters to change as abilities change) also has good outcomes for everybody.  Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom has an excellent literature review of the differentiation and ability clustering literature for all kids, not just gifted kids.

Do any of our grumpy readers have more knowledge about tracking to share with Leah?  Any experiences to share?

A deliberately controversial post: The sins of the parents

should be visited on the kids.

This is a sentiment we often see on the internets.

Schools in poor neighborhoods are often terrible.  If the parents cared, they’d homeschool or move. (Because that’s totally an option for single moms on EITC working minimum wage jobs as best they can.)

We shouldn’t improve the quality of school lunches.  If parents cared, they’d be feeding their kids organic meals full of veggies made from scratch every night so one meal a day wouldn’t hurt them.

Personally we suspect a lot of this sentiment is disguised racism.  Who cares about black kids or Hispanic kids.  It’s their fault for being born something other than anglo-saxon.  But maybe not– the internet seems to think just as poorly of rural white parents from West Virginia.

We also suspect it’s a way that middle class folks feel superior.  We’re not like THOSE people.  Our kids will do just fine because we’re so wonderful.  Our schools are great not because everyone else in our neighborhood is able to pay higher property taxes, but because we made the decision to be (white and) middle class.

It’s parents’ fault is the repeated refrain.  That’s why schools are crumbling.  That’s why kids are fat.  That’s why kids are in bad schools.  Or don’t get enough to eat.  Or get kidnapped or shot.

We at Grumpy Rumblings say:  WHO CARES?

Whether it’s parents fault or not, Won’t somebody think of the children?

Kids could have crappy parents and still get a great education if all kids had access to great schools.  Sure, some kids may be too damaged to benefit from even the best interventions, but what about the bulk of kids who could benefit?  Who through no fault of their own are stuck in poverty with little way out?  Imagine if they had great preschools, safe neighborhoods, healthy food, high quality K-12… the chance to take a calculus class.  Maybe they’d have a chance to live the American Dream.

Even if their parents suck.

A warning for those who decide to accelerate: And why is weird so bad?

If you decide to accelerate your kid and if this information gets out through cross-examination from strangers, say, at the airport, then the conversation invariably goes like this: “I redshirted my kid, best decision I ever made, she’s so popular and she gets straight As. There’s a kid in her class who is younger and he’s just WEIRD. Just as a warning, maybe it doesn’t matter so much now, but when ze gets to the high school level kids who skip just end up weird.”

You will also get this argument many times should you post about it on your blog (“I know a kid who skipped and he was socially ostracized”).

People really don’t get counterfactuals– that correlation is not causation.

I think we got some anecdotal examples here about some kid being skipped and he was a sociopath and mean to his brother… as if that had anything to do with acceleration.  What I said to the woman in the airport was that the kid probably would have been weird even if he hadn’t been skipped (‘cuz I teach statistics).

But what I should have said (and I did not think about this until later that night), was that maybe there isn’t anything wrong with being weird (maybe even, “Bill Gates was weird”).

Maybe being different isn’t so bad, especially when the same as everyone else is pretty mediocre.  Maybe middle school popularity shouldn’t be our end-goal in life.  When kids who are different grow up, sometimes they do quite well for themselves, better than the folks who spent their entire K-12 career blending in.  What’s the t-shirt say, Well-behaved women seldom make history?

I think Sheldon says it very well in this comic.  (Weird kids out there… It gets better!)

Do you think that being weird in K-12 is the worst thing that can befall a kid?  Do you really believe that the only way a an out-of-synch kid can keep from being socially ostracized is by being kept with hir same aged peers, even when they have nothing in common?  (That last question there is rhetorical– not only is there a nice literature on the social benefits of acceleration for out-of-synch kids, we can assure you it is far worse to hang back from personal experience.)

Should kids come first? A deliberately controversial post.

My kids don’t come first. My FAMILY comes first. Kids who come first end up being entitled little pricks with helicopter parents who are PITA in the classroom and in life until they get beaten down when they’re finally away from their parents. Our family is a team with all members equally important (based on need and so on) and all members pulling their weight. My family has produced generations of strong successful responsible middle-class working women and men who are proud of their parents and siblings with this strategy.

You can try to guilt me into thinking I’m a terrible mother, but what I do worked for my mother and her mother and her mother before her and so on. I turned out perfect, as did my sister (as did my mom and aunts). My kid is turning out perfect. If I changed anything, then we might move away from that optimum. My kid is strong and independent and loved and ze’s not going to be the one who is helpless at college when it comes to taking care of hirself. Ze’ll be the one showing other kids how to do their laundry or grocery shop and so on, just like I was. There’s a satisfaction in being able to do things yourself.

You can try to make me feel guilty for being selfish instead of selfless.  You can quote Horatio Storer at me, that 19th century intellectual who worked tirelessly to ban abortion, among other things.  This ideal that the angelic innocent mother should sacrifice herself for her children (her sons, really… daughters are only important if they’re going to bear grandsons) is an upper-middle-class Victorian ideal made possible only on the backs of the starving working class of an industrializing society.  They’re the products of modern surplus.  And one that my family has never bought into– we were too tied to the land at that time, traveling across the Western US in covered wagons.  Pioneer women don’t have time to stand on pedestals or to raise Little Lord Fauntleroys.

And because we all had to pull our fair shares, whether to stay alive or just to make the work-life balance work for everyone, we perhaps grew up thinking that we should spoil our parents rather than the other way around.  We should do chores without being asked.  We should do our best to behave and entertain ourselves.  And it’s much more pleasant spending decades as a mom being treated a little bit like a princess by spouse and progeny after waiting on one’s own mother (though we call it “helping out” and “being thoughtful”), than it would be having to reverse that.  It’s nice having something to look forward to rather than something to dread.  (Guilt-free too!)

And that is definitely not to say that SAHP are, by definition, helicopter parents. They’re not. Most of them have lives outside their children. Most of them know how to discipline their children so they don’t try to brain other kids with tool-boxes. But folks who try to lecture me on being a bad person because I don’t have to work but I do anyway (or who were passive-aggressive at my mom growing up)– IRL at least, their kids tend to be spoiled brats incapable of polite relations with society.  That probably has nothing to do with their choice in work-status.  But the idea that they have to martyr themselves because the children come first and all mothers who aren’t martyrs are, by extension, miserable sinners… well, that’s not really healthy for anyone.  Especially not their daughters.  Or for their sons…

Bottom line:  Family first as a team.  Children first makes for a pretty depressing adulthood for the kids to look forward to and may result in a lack of  grandchildren.

What say you?  Kids first?  Family first?  Furbabies first?

You are destroying your child by allowing hir to think

Research shows that children whose parents who allow them to think end up socially maladjusted in middle school.  Sometimes they don’t get a date to prom.  They’re also not considered physically attractive by their peers.

Kids who spend time reading don’t spend enough time watching TV.  Even if they get in some screen time every day, they do not have enough to truly keep up with their peers.

Kids need lots of sleep.  If your child isn’t getting the average amount of sleep needed, then you are harming your child’s mental abilities.  Having your child lie awake with no distractions in a crib is better for hir than allowing hir to play on the computer.  We all know that unsupervised screen time is harmful to children.

Allowing one’s child to think is also harmful to parents.  They are branded, “pushy,” and socially condemned if they are egotistical enough to talk about their children instead of quietly listening when others talk about theirs.

This public service announcement brought to you by disgruntled grumpies.

Stupid “You should be doing more” arguments from people who aren’t

On the NYTimes or forums or blogs etc, a common refrain among commenters when the subject of fertility treatment comes up is that there are so many kids in the world (and so many kids in the US) that people should really be adopting.  And they should really be adopting in the US (because apparently international children are not as important as US children).  [They seem to think that adopting kids is as easy as calling an orphanage and having Anne of Green Gables sent on the next train.  The reality, of course, being that adoption can be as heart-breaking and uncertain a process as infertility itself, even in states with supposedly easy adoption and quick termination of parental rights.  (We have some friends who tried and failed adoption when a biological aunt came out of the woodwork.)]

Even people that are supposedly skeptical and critical thinkers can fall into stupid fallacies.  For example, PZ Meyers is very vocal that people who homeschool their kids are selfish assholes equal in their danger to society to people who refuse to vaccinate their kids.  He says:

I am not a fan of homeschooling; in fact, if I had my way, I’d make it illegal.

and

If you don’t believe in vaccination, then don’t vaccinate your kids.

Sorry, but the same logic applies. Public schools are for the good of the community; homeschooling is intended for the good of the individual child.  I know that homeschools can be good (but most aren’t), and that public schools can be awful (and most are), but I consider homeschooling to be a distraction from the cause of a greater good.

he goes on from there in the comments, basically arguing that if you keep your kids out of (bad) public schools that hurts all the kids still in public schools, mainly because the school doesn’t get the federal money for the kid being there (partly because he says parents have some kind of obligation to be involved), despite perfectly logical arguments responding to his own (such as:  I homeschool because my child is autistic/requires other special accommodations– he would be costing the district much more than he brings the district in per-student federal funds and isn’t mainstreamed anyway… or, My kid was hospitalized after getting beaten up/bullied to the point of self-harm and the school did nothing… or simply, I pay taxes but am not costing my district anything).

All you holier-than-thou folks on the internet: It’s easy to volunteer other people to be saints.  Not so easy to be one yourself.  If you don’t have 20 foster kids and 10 adoptees, then don’t tell people using fertility treatment there are tons of needy kids out there needing homes and that they’re sinners for trying to have a baby instead of adopting one.  Bless people who do foster and adopt, but if you’re not one of them, then why are you telling other people that they should do more than you are?

If you don’t have your own kids in dangerous crumbling schools (because you decided to live in a more expensive district, your kids are grown, or you just don’t have kids), and you’re not volunteering regularly and donating heavily, at least the amount that the federal government would be giving* for say, I dunno, 5 kids, then don’t say that parents who pull their kids out of public schools for private or homeschooling are selfish.  You’re even more selfish because you have more time and money to give, and you wouldn’t be physically, mentally, or emotionally scarring any minors as collateral damage.**

These “you want/have a child you should be doing X” are all stupid arguments.  No one person can save the world.  And nobody, just by dint of being unable to easily have biological children or by having children should be required to contribute to those specific causes.  Nobody is actually required to contribute to any specific cause.  But if someone chooses to put their kids in private school and also donates to people starving in developing countries rather than joining the school board at the local public,*** does that make them selfish?  What about public school teachers who send their own kids to private?

These kinds of arguments seem to be focused on fertility, race, and gender.  If you have kids then you’re supposed to support specific causes.  If you want kids but can’t have them, then that must be a sign from God that you’re supposed to adopt (but people who can have kids easily have no such obligation).  If you’re a black college grad, then you’re selling out your race if you’d rather be an investment banker than a high school teacher (this is a narrative that two of my black studies colleagues frequently argue about).  If you’re female then you have to have a certain kind of active feminism and aren’t allowed to make choices to be the trailing spouse or the one who cooks dinner, even if your husband is allowed to make those choices.  Why do these immutable characteristics (it’s hard to give a kid back), many of which we have no choice over, provide such obligations when others do not?  Owning a pet doesn’t make you have to support spay and neuter laws or pose nude for PETA.  Being a white male provides no obligation to any race or gender.  And yet, when historically you’ve been chattel, all of a sudden you have an obligation to change the world.  IBTP.

*~8% of the school’s budget… meaning that actually your paying state and local taxes without costing the local district to educate your kid (at a cost of ~10K/year to the district) is probably more than making up for not having your kid in school.  And if you kick an additional $800/kid-you-don’t-have to the school district, you should be able to say STFU to any guilt-mongers.  Me, I prefer to spend my education charity dollars in high poverty districts using Donors Choose because they need my money more than the local school district does.  If our district had less money they wouldn’t fricking change districts every 5 years because they wouldn’t be able to afford to bus kids to schools so far from where they live.

**Before having kids the one of us with a kid volunteered extensively tutoring and teaching math in failing urban school districts and at migrant summer programs in rural agricultural areas.  There’s a lot more time to volunteer when you don’t have a small child.

***After years on the school board, and while still on the school board, my mother sent my sister to a Catholic high school.  Does that make her selfish?  She continued on the school board after my sister graduated as well, even though she no longer had kids in school.  Her research career suffered substantially from her public service.