bearing blog

History headaches.

We have a few weeks left in our 18-week literature-based unit study of the Civil War:  up ahead are two weeks on Reconstruction, and two weeks I called "Aftermath" which should take us through Plessy v. Ferguson and lay the groundwork, I hope, for grasping the Civil Rights movement when we study it next year.

 I started out very stressed that I hadn't worked out an exact week-by-week schedule of readings, but as I went on, planning just one or two weeks ahead from a master list I had prepared before the beginning of the year, I relaxed into a routine.  I am definitely getting better at flexibility.  And I am finding that it's far better to pick a few good, lengthy books that go into details, than to try to cram EVERYTHING in.   

 For example, we spent two weeks on one gem of a book about the Monitor and the Merrimack, and two weeks on another book about nothing but Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox -- and let me tell you, I always thought of that latter event as being worthy of one or two paragraphs, as it had appeared in all the American History texts I'd ever read before.  How amazing to read it all fleshed out into a 180-page book -- a gripping read, really.  Notes passed back and forth between the two generals; the constant threat of a deadly skirmish breaking out just as the surrender deal was about to go through; the drama of the negotiation of the terms of surrender; striking and contrasting portraits of the two very different men who met that day; the comical, frantic bidding for souvenirs from Mr. McLean's sitting room after the surrendering was over.

I'm surprising myself.  I always thought I would be the sort to insist on memorization of key dates and things.  Instead, I'm hitting my stride with an approach of "bringing the era to life," the best I can, through good stories and biographies.  The children are really, really interested in it.  History is, after all, a collection of stories, and who doesn't like a good story?   

This leaves me 18 weeks to "do," um, the rest of the 19th century in America.  WOW was it hard to make decisions about that.  Finally I just laid a printout of my book list on the table and moved eighteen pennies around on the pages until it seemed I'd distributed the best books evenly.  So:

• 3 weeks on pre-Civil War leadership and foreign policy.
• 4 weeks on expansion of the United States.
• 3 weeks on immigration, urbanization, and social change.
• 3 weeks on daily life, art, and entertainment.
• 2 weeks on technology and economics.
• 2 weeks on innovations in transportation and communication.
• 1 week on post-Civil War leadership and foreign policy.

The reference spine is Joy Hakim's A History of US.  I plan to anchor the century in biographies, choosing them mostly for the quality of the writing, which leaves me with the lives of Andrew Jackson, Crazy Horse, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Luther Burbank, the Wright brothers, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt.   (How's that for a survey?)*   A handful of other really good books should round it out, covering topics like the Monroe Doctrine, stagecoaches, railroads, captains of industry, labor unions, the Edison-Westinghouse rivalry, settlers in southwestern Ohio, one-room schoolhouses, and European waves of immigration.   Whew.  Even with all this work done, I'm still sort of making it up as I go along... but it's actually working, I think.

____________

*Don't forget we did spend the first half of the year on the Civil War, which gave us the opportunity to read biographies of Dred and Harriet Scott, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Lee and Grant, and  Abraham Lincoln ... and coming up we have bios of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. 

Details, details.

Having less time to spare has forced me to learn to be more flexible.  Last year, for instance, I had planned out every book we were going to read for our literature-based American History study down to which chapters we'd read which weeks, all in advance, for the entire school year.  I felt sure I'd fall behind or miss something if I didn't.

This year (19th century, with half the time spent on the Civil War) I managed to make a list of books I wanted to use, and to divide them roughly up into topical chunks lasting two to six weeks long, but I didn't get around to figuring out exactly which ones, and which pages of which ones, I would have time to cover in two hours' reading and discussion per week.

To my surprise, the world has not stopped turning, and the children seem to be getting some decent history education.  

This is what I am doing now:  A couple of weeks in advance I request the dozen or so books I need for the next several-week chunk.  Then, the morning that we're doing American History -- Tuesdays with Hannah -- I frantically flip through the books and find some decent excerpts that add up to the number of pages I can reasonably cover in the allotted time.  Then, I read them to the kids and we talk about them.

There's a lot of stuff we never get to.  Especially, there are many books that I would love to read in their entirety, but can only afford the time to read half, or a couple of chapters.  

For instance, a few weeks ago, I read about half of a wonderful old book by Fletcher Pratt called The Monitor and the Merrimac.  Fantastic.  Yeah, it covered the Battle of Hampton Roads.  But it also contained biographical information about Ericsson, the engineer who developed so many original innovations that became part of the Monitor; a lot of really interesting (to me anyway) technical information about the process of working out the kinks in the boat; detailed explanation of the North's strategy of naval blockade against the Confederacy, including discussions of the implications for international relations, blockade running, and the like; and it gave us the opportunity to discuss the concept of an "arms race" with the fourth graders.  But the whole book is 180 pages long; I got as far as the end of the actual battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac itself, and really didn't have time to go on to the second half which went into the rest of the naval campaigns of the war.

Still, it was a great choice.  The boys loved it.  So did I!

Today was another example.  I cobbled together a lesson from:

• 1 picture book, the text of which was the Gettysburg Address, to use with the younger children as their history lesson
• One section of a children's book about the Battle of Gettysburg, for the background leading up to the battle
• A few pages of 1 book for young people called "The Military History Of Civil War Land Battles" written by a military historian, for covering the actual battle, and using its maps to discuss troop movements
• Parts of two chapters from a book about women in the Civil War, for covering hospital work and bread riots
• Part of Daugherty's biography of Abraham Lincoln to cover NYC draft riots, Lincoln's many pardons of army deserters, the famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, and the Gettysburg Address again in more detail.

The whole lesson wound up being surprisingly cohesive, since the chapters about women and the civil war (A Separate Battle by Chang) centered around the time period near Gettysburg.  

Next week we begin the wrap-up; all I know is that we'll read one book about Sherman's march to the sea and we'll read part of a book about Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox -- a book that is itself 180 pages long.  The next week we'll read more of that book and also a book about Lincoln's assassination.  Then we cover Reconstruction.

Anyway, my point is that I am learning to wing it.  "You call that winging it?!?" says Hannah incredulously, knowing that I have already put a lot of work into selecting the list of books to read from -- even if the list is too long and I still have to pick and choose and excerpt the morning before a lesson.  Believe me though, this amount of flexibility is new to me.  It's giving me so much more confidence that things will go all right, the children will still learn, even when I don't have a super-detailed plan.

Medium-detailed, though, I'm clinging to as long as I can.

The quote not taken.

At the last meeting of the homeschool co-op, someone suggested using audiobooks on CD in the car to expose the kids to poetry.   I thought that was a great idea of the "why didn't I think of that?!" variety -- they have had little patience for poetry as read-alouds, but they have loved classical music CDs in the car.  I  had an order almost ready to go at Rainbow Resources anyway; I immediately added A Child's Introduction to Poetry and sent in my order, and when the box arrived we put the disc in the car right away.

Success!  The kids love it and have been reciting snippets of sonnets and haikus.  I will be getting more poetry CDs for sure.  It has been nice for me, too, to listen to recitations of famous poems, many of which I remember from high school English, while driving.  When they come in through the auditory channel, it's really quite a different experience from reading them off the page, even reading them aloud.  You're more of a passive receiver, rather than using your own voice to modulate and interpret the poem, and you have to receive the poem linearly instead of visually taking it all in at once, knowing which lines are long and which short, and when to expect the end.  Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandburg, Robert Browning -- it's a nice collection, mostly of well-known favorites.

Listening to the recitation of Frost's "The Road Not Taken," I was reminded of my favorite rant about quotations out of context.  By the time I got to tenth- or eleventh-grade English literature, I had read the famous quotation from this poem about eleventy-thousand times:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

This quote is always, always, always used to support the thesis that the wiser, better man will take the "road less traveled."  Have you ever seen a place where it is not used as an implication that the road less traveled is the one that leads to happiness?  Something about being unconventional, I suppose.  You will see people writing, for example, that the poem offers "good advice."  That sort of thing.

I remember being really annoyed and angry at the quoters when I encountered the whole poem, finally.  Because of course the poem as a whole implies nothing of the sort, offers no advice at all, contains no judgment about the relative merits of the two paths.   The last stanza contains a whiff of mystery and not a little regret alluding to the consequences of the choice, but to me most of the regret is contained in the line "I could not travel both/And be one traveler."  

It strikes me as a simple meditation on the tragedy of reality:  that you can't experience everything.  Listening to it again, maybe for the first time, in a purely audio format, I was even more strongly struck by it.

But I have always been irritated at the quoters who take the last three lines, not even the whole last stanza with its "sigh," and use it to imply the inherent superiority of the road less traveled.  Hey, sometimes it's the right choice.  Other times it's not.  Logic, people.

In case you're interested.

A few weeks ago I posted a review of Paul Campos's The Obesity Myth.  Megan McArdle interviews Campos here -- text transcript, no audio or video.

If you haven't read the stories I speak of, this post won't mean much to you.

With all the resting and putting my feet up, I've been doing more reading for pleasure.   A couple of weeks ago I pulled out and re-read The Habit of Being, the volume of collected letters of Flannery O'Connor edited by Sally Fitzgerald.  I am intrigued by reading somebody else's correspondence -- maybe it is the sense of eavesdropping, maybe it is the mystery of only getting one side of the conversation, and having to fill in the interlocutors' questions and responses with guesswork, or else just let it go.

Re-reading THOB got me in the mood to read O'Connor's stories again, so I opened up my copy of A Good Man is Hard to Find, and again, having finished that, requested the collection Everything that Rises Must Converge from the library.  I was struck again by the first impression I had upon reading straight through a volume of O'Connor's short stories:  I do not think the best way to read them for the first time is several all at once.  The overall impact is dulled.  One can only be shocked by the grotesque so many times in one afternoon.   (I remember this happening, too, with stories by Roald Dahl when I encountered them in junior high.)  I think Flannery O'Connor deserves to be read one story at a time, at least the first time.

And yet, when you are coming back to them for the second or third or tenth time, there is an entertaining dimension to reading them all together.  This time through it -- with both AGMIHTF and ETRMC in hand, and able to turn back and forth from the earlier stories to the later ones over a period of several days while I let them percolate through my brain -- I noticed the stories having a peculiar effect on me.  

In many of the stories, Flannery's omniscient narrator is more omniscient than most.  The protagonists of her stories are all deeply flawed people --- everyone in the stories is deeply flawed, and if I had to guess I'd guess her point is that people in general are deeply flawed.  They are also people who often have an inaccurate view of their own motivations.  But it's so crisp and precise -- it has taken me a while to put my finger on it, but I think the peculiar brilliance is that her narrator simply, objectively, and faithfully tells the inner monologue of the characters, completely nonjudgmentally,  but in a way that lays bare to the reader all the character's flaws and prejudices and self-aggrandizements, leaving only the pure inner thoughts.   You know what the character is thinking, and the character knows what she is thinking, but somehow you can know the character better than the character does.  It is a clarity that burns away all the facades, the ones erected for others and the ones erected to protect the self from self-knowledge. 

So, the effect on me.  After reading some of these stories in a row (to name a few, the ones that have really stood out for me this time around are "Revelation," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," "The Enduring Chill" especially, also my dearly beloved "A Temple of the Holy Ghost", and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" which I didn't appreciate nearly as much the last time I read it)...

...I started to get this weird sense of my own mind being laid out like that on the page.  I had a notion, a brief one, of what it would read on the page if Flannery's narrator were inspired with my own internal monologue.  It was kind of horrifying to think what my thoughts would look like if I had the ill fortune to be a character in a Flannery O'Connor story.  Because after reading a number of the stories in a row, I started to feel like I would fit right in among them.  We can't all be Southern, and we can't all have artificial legs or hated overbearing mothers, but we can all be a little grotesque.  

Just a brief, fleeting glimpse of "what if I could read Flannery's narration of my own inner thoughts?" followed by the chilling certainty that it would be, um, a purgatorial experience.  

Five books that explain the 20th century.

I love posts in which commenters are challenged to name a handful of books and/or movies that meet some specific criteria.  (Here's a previous post along the same lines)  If anything else they often add to my lists of must-sees and must-reads.  

There's a great one going on over at Volokh Conspiracy:

Name in the comments the five works of fiction that you believe best explain - not define or symbolize or exemplify, precisely - but in some way explain the past century to (in Brecht's phrase) 'those who come after.'

Lots of suggestions there already, including many that I've never read.  I don't know if I'd keep the list down to five, but among the suggestions that I agree do explain the parts of the 20th century I lived through are Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons and  Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.   I'm almost embarrassed to find myself agreeing, too, with another Wolfe work, The Bonfire of the Vanities.   Wolfe's a stylistic and journalistic genius and it translated to his novels.  

As for the others listed, mostly what's been produced is a catalogue of novels that have palpable senses of place and time.  The Great Gatsby.  Catch-22.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  Lolita (which may seem like an odd choice to explain the 20th century, if you've never actually read it).  1984 is a strange choice in some ways, but in others it is not.  Did the events come to pass or did they not?  I think I'd defer to the judgment of a citizen who actually lived under a real 20th century totalitarian regime, when deciding whether 1984 turned out to be an accurate portrayal.

Love the list -- I'm going to have to read some of the suggestions.

A lot of people wondered what it means to "explain" a century.  I would say it means a novel which has a strong sense of the time and place, so that the reader of the future can understand the answers to some of the questions of "How could people have lived that way?  How could so many have made the choices they did?  What were they thinking?  Why did history take the turns it did?  How did the choices and beliefs of individuals come together to create the conflicts and movements that shaped history during those years?"

So, the nature study book for this year is...

 In a previous post I wrote about my philosophy for teaching nature study to elementary-school kids, and promised to mention the book I'm going to use next year with Oscar.  Here it is: Messing Around with Baking Chemistry by Bernie Zubrowski, from the Children's Museum Activity Book series.  (Little, Brown, and Co., 1981; ISBN 0-316-98878-2)

 There are a lot of books about "kitchen chemistry" out there, and most of them don't really fit my style.  This one, however, is a little bit different.

The usual problem with many of these books of demonstrations -- I do not call them "experiments" -- is that they are all about being impressive, and only superficially treat the deeper reasons why the material works.  A particular handicap is that the level of chemistry knowledge which elementary-school-age children might actually be able to assimilate -- inorganic solution chemistry -- is not readily available in the home kitchen, and most of the solutions that change colors or do otherwise interesting things are, um, toxic.  So the kitchen chemistry books play with baking soda and vinegar and call the one a base and the other an acid, and demonstrate that acids and bases combine to give off carbon dioxide.  Also that this is how volcanoes work.  Um.  No.  

For good reason, introductory chemistry courses in formal study -- high school and college -- do not begin with sodium bicarbonate, but instead begin with inorganic hydroxides.   Nor do they begin with acetic acid, but instead with inorganic acids.  They are simpler systems that readily demonstrate basic principles of stoichiometry. (You try to demonstrate Dalton's law of Multiple Proportions in your kitchen when your reaction evolves a gas.)  

Because this tendency in kids' science books irritates me so much, I never thought I'd use one that relies heavily on baking soda and vinegar.  Well, I spoke too soon.   This one's pretty good.  

For one thing, it doesn't pretend to teach the fundamentals of chemistry.  Instead, what it's teaching are the fundamentals of laboratory practice:  as I wrote in my earlier post, "developing skills of safely handling, carefully observing, accurately describing, faithfully reporting, and logically analyzing."   And I think with a little bit of emphasis on my part it can also teach that "we can learn from our experiences and make predictions about the future, and when our predictions are wrong we have still learned something" -- this is no less than the fundamental postulate underlying all of natural science.

For another thing, it is honest about its limitations.  Zubrowski writes in the introduction, "What this book is about is how to investigate the chemistry of cake and bread making."  Indeed, "how to investigate" -- not "This book will teach you all about the chemistry of cakes" or "this book will teach you why cakes and bread rise" or "this book will teach fundamental concepts of chemistry."  

No, what it does it encourage kids to begin with recipes, change them, and observe the differences in the results.  This is different from most of the activities in kids' kitchen chemistry books -- it's not just a demonstration ("Drop some food coloring in a jar of warm water and a jar of cold water and see what happens!  If you did it right, you'll see that the color spread faster in the warm water!"), it's actually an experiment.   If I require the child to keep a laboratory notebook and run parallel experiments with "control" cakes, then he'll really be doing a real experiment -- much like my soaked-flour-in-the-bread-machine series I wrote about earlier.

The experiments in cake-baking are followed by activities that demonstrate the effects of mixing various liquids with baking powder, and the author does not commit the error of calling these  activities "experiments."  He writes, "If you play with baking powder by itself you will find that it does some very curious things..."  and suggests that the child keep a record of his observations.  To introduce an activity in which the baking powder is mixed with soap water, he writes:  "Now here is something special to try that will show you what happens to the baking powder when it is added to the cake batter."  The explanation:  "The foam, especially in the sudsy water, is similar to what happens in cake batter. The water in the milk in the batter reacts with the baking powder to make small bubbles.  In the sudsy water, air is trapped by detergent film.  In the cake the combination of flour, eggs, and milk forms a sticky dough that traps the bubbles as they are formed."  

This is accurate, unpretentious, and uncondescending writing for children about science (and about cooking).  Compare this to the language in, say, The Everything Kids' Science Experiments Book by Tom Robinson:

Question:  What makes things fizzy? 

 In this experiment, you will produce different combinations of mixtures that react to form fizzy solutions.  You'll start with a baking soda/vinegar mixture and then move on to produce your own safe-to-drink, though not particularly tasty, lemon soda.

Science concept:  Certain materials, when brought into contact with other materials, react in a way that forms bubbles.  Acids and bases often combine to form carbon dioxide, which, as a gas, is what makes carbonated soda fizzy.  You'll be experimenting with several common ingredients to determine which react in this way.

The last statement is an out-and-out lie, and the thing about acids and bases "often" combining to form carbon dioxide is... well... misleading at best.  Not to mention implying that this is how soda drinks are carbonated.  Oh, by the way, one of the "reactions" is dropping a lump of dry ice into some water, which illustrates a physical (not chemical) change.  

Back to Zubrowski.  Because he has kids making small cakes (6 Tbsp of flour in each one), we can use that to discuss the concept of scale-up.  Because he has kids comparing recipes that have been altered by one change at a time, we can discuss experimental design and controls.  There are several activities where mixtures of different quantities are compared, so the importance of measurement and careful replication is demonstrated.  Different brands of baking powder are compared:  since these will, of course, have different prices, there's a nod to economics and to variations in quality control from different suppliers, which Dad-the-process-engineer is really going to appreciate.   A suggestion that the child try making a baking soda cake with orange juice leads me to think the child ought to be able to design his own recipe based on what he's learned from the previous experiments.

  Gas collection systems begin with crude balloons-on-bottles but progress to the child's building a gas generator and a collection system in which the volume of gas can actually be measured.  (Here's where I'm going to go the extra mile and get some lab equipment -- no need to bore holes in rubber balls stuck in the necks of jars when I have access to online retailers that will sell me value-priced two-hole stoppers and Erlenmeyer flasks).  The child is encouraged to try several activities that demonstrate the properties of the gas.  "Experiments?"  No!  Zubrowski writes, "Just what is this gas?  Is it plain old air or does it have special properties?... One of the jobs of a chemist is to find out about things like this.  Scientists have developed all sorts of tests for substances to find out exactly what they are.  Here are some you can try." He goes on to tell how the child can demonstrate that the gas doesn't support combustion, is heavier than air -- a chance to explain molecular mass! -- and dissolves in water to form an acidic solution).  And then, rather than claiming that all these tests prove it's carbon dioxide, he warns the reader "You would need to do other tests to establish this fully..."  (Guess what.  I can buy saturated lime water online.  Problem solved.)

Why does the language matter so much to me?  It reminds me a little bit about my philosophy towards child discipline. With discipline responses, the most important thing to me isn't whether a given technique, or way of explaining things, "works" (appears to give immediate results).  I obviously don't want to choose things that turn out NOT to work, but not just anything that appears to "work" will do.  Ultimately, I choose techniques and language that I am comfortable using:  language and actions that communicate the truth, namely,  that the child is a human person deserving of respect while learning, AND that I as his parent have a real, natural, and just authority over him, AND that I expect him to learn to comport himself more and more as he gains experience and maturity.  If I can't find something that meets both those criteria (truth and effectiveness), I'm going to do my best to try to come up with one, and in the meantime I err on the side of truth over apparent effectiveness.  Because I believe that the truth IS effective, even if it seems to take longer than, say, duct-taping a kid's mouth shut.

For the same reason, I need to use books that use language I can stand to hear.  Language that isn't dumbed down so much that it no longer accurately describes what's physically going on.

So... even though Exploding Color Changing Slime may appear to get kids interested in science, really it only demonstrates that kids are interested in exploding color changing slime.  Which is not representative of "science."  I'd rather introduce children to what workaday science really means:   observation, measurement, recording, communicating, repeating and repeating and repeating, calculating, predicting, testing.  It is not, perhaps, as impressive; it perhaps will not produce wide-eyed wonder, at least not right away.  But it is true, and I think there is a special kind of quiet fascination that some children can find in the thought:  I can do this.  I can discover this.  I can measure this.  I can find it out for myself.  It takes longer to develop, but I think it will stick.

I just came down from the attic, and I have an announcement to make.

This is difficult for me.  Hold on a minute.

(sound of me steeling my will)

Okay.  I'm ready now.  Ahem.

Until further notice, I am going to get rid of two books for every new book that enters my house.

There.  I said it.  

What are you looking at?  It's so hard to tell "I'm so proud of you" from "Yeah.  Sure you are."

Making sure your people are taken care of: Induced exercise part 16.

(Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6  7  8  9  10 11  12 13  14 15)

Most people know that a workout plan has to include a time, a place, and an activity.  Usually the question "but where are your kids?" is kind of rolled into those three, assuming you'll mentally calculate times, places, and activities that make room for them.  I want to pull it out separately and give it equal attention.

I don't want to focus on the minutiae of leaving children in gym childcare facilities (though that is worth a post) or having your spouse care for them while you exercise or asking a friend to watch for a little while.  I want to focus on, well, focus.    If you struggle with boredom and distraction during exercise, or if you feel that the activities you're constrained to choose are drudgery, then the solution is to find a way to experience psychological flow; and to do so requires concentration, plus the perception that without concentration, you'll not meet your goal.

Psychological flow is its own reward:  

"The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.  Optimal experience is something that we make happen.  For a child , it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage.  For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves."  (From Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Czikszentmihalyi)

But flow requires concentration, and if the activity doesn't inherently require concentration, then achieving flow requires willfully creating a context of concentration:

"Flow experiences based on the use of physical skills do not occur only in the context of outstanding physical feats... Every person, no matter how unfit he or she is, can rise a little higher, go a little faster, and grow to be a little stronger.  The joy of surpassing the limits of the body is open to all.

"Even the simplest physical act becomes enjoyable when it is transformed so as to produce flow.  The essential steps in this process are:  (a) to set an overall goal, and as many subgoals as are realistically feasible; (b) to find ways of measuring progress in terms of the goals chosen; (c) to keep concentrating on what one is doing, and to keep making finer and finer distinctions in the challenges involved in the activity; (d) to develop the skills necessary to interact with the opportunities available; and (e) to keep raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring."

Czikszentmihalyi proposes the act of walking as an example of a simple activity that can be transformed into a flow activity by the setting of goals that require concentration.  I propose, maybe a bit optimistically, that walking on a treadmill or doing yoga at home in your living room can also be transformed into a flow activity, with some forethought and planning and goal-setting  and the opportunity to concentrate.    I believe habitual experience of flow is the difference between many people who love exercise, and are drawn back to it by desire, and people who hate it, avoid it, or do it only with a sense of duty.   Flow bestows a sense of meaning, purpose, competence, and (yes) fun on the most prosaic of activities (I used to get it from writing computer code!).  You deserve to be able to achieve it.

And this is why I believe it's crucial (if you're to become someone who enjoys exercise) to make sure your people --- your children or anyone else you're responsible for --- are completely taken care of while you are getting your exercise.  

You can't achieve flow without focus.  You can, of course, exercise without focus and do without flow.  But why would you, if you can find a way to get it?

For most people, total focus on the activity at the same time as being responsible for small children is either (a) impossible, because part of the attention is always on the children---listening for sounds of distress or wakefulness, or watching out of the corner of the eye; or (b) dangerous, because none of your attention is focused on the children.

It should be obvious by now that I'm speaking to people who try to get their exercise at home, while they are alone in the house with the children; or who hope that they can get it with their kids by their side.  I am arguing that to settle for this is to deny yourself the benefits of flow.  Only if somebody else can respond to all your small children's concerns short of real emergencies, are you free to concentrate enough to achieve it.

Achieving flow through exercise with children younger than 3 or older than 10 is, I think, workable.  One can run with a jogging stroller, or walk briskly with a baby in a backpack; and a 10-year-old can be a real workout partner, if she wants it as much as you do!  

But those 3 through 9 year olds... They are too big to carry, and they are not big enough to keep up with many adults who are really exerting themselves.  They also are not usually big enough to be completely responsible for themselves, or to be completely responsible for younger siblings.  Hannah and I tried to brainstorm  ways to get real vigorous exercise with a passel of mid-sized kids, and the only thing we could come up with is running around playing chasing games in a big yard or field---though even that can end in tears before you really want to be done.

So this post is a sort of appeal:  Even if you are sure that you can only exercise at home anyway, still, try not to settle for exercising while you're the only responsible person around.  Naps and videos are simply not reliable enough.  Exercise in the morning or evening or lunch hour while your spouse is home, and instruct the kids to take their concerns to him.  Arrange to take turns with another mother.  Hire a mother's helper.  Begin training an older child how to be responsible for ninety percent of their younger siblings' needs for fifteen minutes or half an hour, and how to tell when it's time to call Mom.

Give yourself a chance to know that your people are taken care of for the block of time you've allowed, be it five minutes daily or a big block of time twice a week.  Give yourself the freedom to lose yourself in body motion, to experience a sense of competence and challenge.  It may be difficult to arrange if you're "just" following videos on the floor of your living room; but the first step to making it possible is giving yourself the gift of concentration.

Next up:  How to make a backup plan!

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Note:  Two books by Czikszentmihalyi are available in "limited preview" on Google Books.  One is Optimal Experience:  Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness and the other is Finding Flow:  The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life.  I haven't read either of these yet, but maybe they will give you a taste of the material.

In which I really and truly recommend a diet book.

No kidding.  You know that while I was losing weight, I read dozens of diet books, doling them out over the weeks to keep myself motivated, and trying to take something valuable out of each one.  I've mentioned a few of the ones I found particularly helpful.  But I've not gone right out and recommended the main approach of any of them.  Till now.

A few days ago I wrote that I'd had a chance to skim through The Beck Diet For Life by Judith S. Beck, that I had seen some things in there that reminded me of myself, and that I would buy the book and write  a longer review.

Well, I've got it.  And for once, I'm going to recommend, with complete and whole-hearted enthusiasm, Chapters 1-4.

Why only Chapters 1-4?  Um, because that's as far as I've read.  These chapters take you through "Stage 1" of the five-stage program.   I know nothing about the other stages yet.  But I am telling you, the preparatory stage and Stage 1 are that good.  Judith Beck could have packaged them up as a book all on their own and sold them.  Indeed, I am beginning to think that it might be a good idea for people who decide to get the book and follow the program to pretend that Stages 2-5 don't even exist, at least until they've read and implemented Stage 1 -- which is all about putting habits and skills into place, and doesn't include any advice at all about what or how much to eat.

I'm going to summarize the book in a minute, but first I want to tell you why am I so excited about it.

Reason number 1.  Because I see myself there.  So many of the things I did to abolish gluttony from my life -- it's almost as if Dr. Beck has written a set of instructions for how I did it.  Not what to eat---but how to think, and especially, how to get over the fear of hunger.   

Here is an excerpt that is an example of near-perfect alignment with my experience and thoughts:

It's important for dieters to know that hunger is normal and most people without weight problems get hungry, often a little while before meals... Most diet programs encourage you to avoid hunger.  Some tell you to eat when you feel hungry and to stop eating when you feel full.  The problem with that is you are likely to confuse hunger and non-hunger, at least sometimes.... Some diet programs encourage you to fill up on such "free foods" as raw vegetables to avoid hunger.  The problem with that advice is that you never learn to tolerate the very normal sensation of hunger...

Phillip doubted his ability to tolerate hunger, and he engaged in certain unhelpful behaviors to avoid it.  He was always thinking about how, when, and where he could get food, in case he got hungry before his next meal.  He consistently overate at meals to ensure that he wouldn't feel hungry later on.  He kept extra food in various places---his car and office desk---just in case he got hungry.  He was continually giving himself the message that it was bad to be hungry, that he couldn't tolerate hunger.  This incorrect thinking is exactly what I want to free you from!

(See my post from the "Gains" series, "What's wrong with me," and compare.)

How does Dr. Beck suggest that would-be dieters learn to tolerate real hunger without feeling panicky?  She recommends they perform a series of "experiments" in which they get hungry on purpose, and write down what happens --- keep a record of their level of discomfort over the hours that pass without food.  Her instruction is to keep doing this experiment until the would-be dieter is able to "go from breakfast to dinner without eating and without feeling panicky," and until the would-be dieter is completely convinced that "hunger is not a big deal---it's only mildly uncomfortable... it comes and goes."

This is very close to what I did, feeling my way through the experience with no guide. It seems to me that Dr. Beck's version is better designed than mine, which isn't surprising because while chemical engineering is an excellent all-around background for all sorts of problem solving, it is just possible that a cognitive behavior therapist might have some insights into the field that I don't.  

Dr. Beck advocates almost the same set of behavioral changes that I went through, albeit with some differences in how she implements them.  Daily motivational thinking:  check.  The daily weigh-in as a piece of useful information:  check.  Eating slowly and paying attention to food:  check.  Setting small goals and consciously noticing successes several times a day:  check.  Learning to tolerate hunger:  check.  It's all there.  Those of you who want to do "what I did?"  This is is definitely a way to do it.  I love the way she is advising readers to really take the time to learn about what works and what doesn't.  It is definitely a lifetime approach, rather than a quick fix.  And that's exactly what I tried to do, and succeeded:  I changed my life.

Reason number 2.   Anyone, and I mean anyone, can do the first part --- pregnant, nursing, medical problems, none of it is a barrier to beginning the program.  (Some of the "experiments" might have to be skipped or modified.)    The preparatory stage and Stage 1 of the program don't involve an eating plan or calorie restriction, though Dr. Beck encourages readers to make good food choices if they want while following  even if it doesn't make sense to "diet" right now.   It is all designed to work on your attitudes, fears, and habits.

(Dr. Beck does suggest that people who suffer from an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, or other psychological problem seek treatment from a mental-health professional before beginning the program.  It sort of underscores how different this plan is:  most plans advise you to check with a doctor for physical ailments that might preclude you from starting.  This program is about your mind and behavior.)

Reason number 3.  The program strongly appeals to my engineering brain.  It is clear, and it is organized step by step, with "tasks" to complete before moving on to the next stage.  Some of the tasks are collected into groups, and she says you can be working on several tasks at once, but (as they are numbered and presented in a specific order) you can surely master them one at a time --- which strikes me as the wisest course.   Baby steps.  

Reason number 4.  If you follow this program and do exactly what she says to do---and I can find no reason to recommend deviating from her plan through Stage 1---it will take a good long while.  I'm guessing that if I had followed her program beginning from before I started to lose weight, it would have taken me three or four months at minimum to master all the skills.  Someone with a more serious and out-of-control eating problem would likely take longer.  

I am saying that I think it is a good thing that this program progresses very slowly.  I do not think it  will do anyone any good to rush it.  Gluttony problems, like mine, have to be abolished for life --- there is plenty of time to slow down and do it right.  Overweight, the visible manifestation of the gluttony problem, will follow in time.

Reason number 5.  It is a cognitive-behavioral approach, but it is entirely compatible with leaning on the Lord for help.  This is not, of course,  a "Christian Weight Loss" book.  Dr. Beck doesn't get into discussions of gluttony as a kind of sin; but neither does she absolve the reader of personal responsibility.  The program cannot work without some degree of personalization:  The would-be dieter has to come up with his own motivating statements and reminders of values, of reasons to change behavior.  It was obvious to me as I read through the preparatory tasks and the Stage 1 steps where the would-be Christian dieter can (and should) consider how the skills and tasks fit into living out his or her vocation in Christ.  I can write more about that in another post if it seems necessary.

* * *

OK, now, here is an executive summary of the approach.  I'm going to crack open Stages 2-5 just long enough to give you an overview of the whole program.

Overall structure of the plan is as follows.  In each of these stages a very specific, quantifiable behavior-based goal is defined, and the "student" must reach that milestone before moving on to the next stage.  In Stages 1-4, these end goals appear near the end of the chapter under a heading "Before You Move On."   

• A preparatory stage in Part 1 of the book - several tasks to complete before starting
• Stage 1 - Building cognitive skills and habits
• Stage 2 - Introducing "the diet"  and practicing sticking to it
• Stage 3 - Dealing with challenging situations
• Stage 4 - Learn flexibility and prepare to move into maintenance  
• Stage 5 - Skills to maintain, to get re-motivated, and to turn around relapses

I would suggest not reading ahead  past the stage you're on. 

A bit more detail about the preparatory stage and stage 1:

The preparatory stage has 10 tasks.   I would suggest doing them IN ORDER and one at a time.  Dr. Beck specifically enjoins the reader against assuming that these things can be figured out "as you go along."   They include gathering materials, setting a small goal, make time, get a "diet buddy"  (I wish she'd used a less light-hearted term for a supportive person to be accountable to, because this strikes me as seriously important).  Basically, you're assembling all the things, people, and circumstances that are within your control and that you will need to build the skills in stage 1.  

Stage 1 has 9 success skills to master before beginning the diet plan.  A daily check-off sheet is included, and you are not supposed to move to Stage 2 until the check-off sheet is completed perfectly for seven consecutive days.  I would suggest beginning with each new skill and mastering it before moving on to the next one.  A few of the skills will take a minimum of several days to master, and I can easily see many people taking several weeks mastering just one skill.  As an example, I know it took me a couple of months to learn to identify hunger accurately, when I was trying to figure it out on my own.  I could probably have done it a bit faster on Dr. Beck's plan, if I was devoting my full "dieting" attention to that skill rather than several skills at once.

That is as far as my review goes for now.  I'd like to add one thing --- if you have been following my series of posts, and you decide to give the Beck program a try, would you please drop a comment in the box to let me know?  I'm interested enough in the program that I'm thinking of going through the steps myself, adapted a bit to help me with maintenance rather than weight loss.