A unicorn and the tendency towards loss aversion result in cleaner teeth and a new idea in behavior management.

The pre-gifting of the stuffed unicorn as a reward for the excellent behavior that we expected from my daughter during her recent dentist appointment was a stroke of genius on my wife’s part because of the nature of loss aversion.

In economics, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. The unexpected loss of $100 is significantly more painful than the joy of suddenly finding $100.

This tendency has been demonstrated again and again across cultures in a  wide range of contexts. 

But how often do we ever take advantage of this tendency?

As a teacher and parent, I normally establish an expectation and an associated reward, and only when that expectation is met does the child receive the reward.

Complete your chores and receive your allowance.

Write an essay that meets my requirements and receive an A+.

Work hard all week and behave well and you can eat lunch in the classroom on Friday.

But my wife flipped that paradigm in an effort to get my daughter to sit in the dentist chair and allow the dentist to do her work. She pre-rewarded Clara with a toy and the knowledge that if she did not behave well, the toy would be taken away.

She utilized Clara’s tendency toward loss aversion to change a behavior, and it worked beautifully. Clara refused the fluoride and balked at the flossing, but she sat more patiently than ever before.

   

Could parents and teachers do this more often when attempting to change the behavior of children?

Here is your allowance. You’ll need to pay me back at the end of the week if you don’t finish all of your chores.

I’ve entered an A+ in my grade book for the essay that I am assigning to you. If you complete the essay on time and meet all of my expectations, that A+ will remain.

I’ve planned for you to eat lunch in the classroom on Friday unless your effort or behavior cause you to lose this privilege.

Should parents and teachers be utilizing loss aversion more often?

Could employers find ways of utilizing loss aversion to improve employee performance and production?

I think so. With four months left in the school year and a lifetime of parenting ahead of me, let the experimenting begin.

The Reverse Nap: Mounting evidence that I am not a crazy person

I’ve been reversing napping for more than a year now.

I go to sleep at my regularly appointed hour, usually somewhere between 11:30 PM and midnight.

Then I wake up at some point in the middle of the night, usually around 2:00 AM. I climb out of bed. go downstairs and work for about 90 minutes. I write, revise, empty the dishwasher, walk the dog, pay bills, read.

Then around 3:30 AM I return to bed and experience all the joys of climbing into a warm bed and falling asleep for a second time that night. I sleep for another 90 minutes or so and then wake up again and begin my day.

The Reverse Nap.

I don’t do it every night, but I do it many nights.

When I first started reverse napping, people thought I was crazy. Then I wrote about it, and shortly thereafter, a few people began trying it and wrote to me, singing its praises.

Then I found research suggesting that segmented sleep, with two periods of rest separated by a period of wakefulness, was the dominant form of sleep in Western civilization prior to the Industrial Revolution. Human beings, it turns out, are already wired to reserve nap and did so for centuries.

Then I found research suggesting that if you are already awakening in the middle of the night and struggling to fall back asleep, remaining in bed can actually lead to “learned” insomnia, a kind of sleeplessness is caused by anxiety that comes from trying too hard to doze off when you can’t. 

Last week, New York Times science columnist Anahad O’Connor answered a question from a reader who falls asleep easily but is wide awake after only 3-4 hours.

O’Connor turned to Dr. Meir H. Kryger, a professor at Yale School of Medicine and the author of “The iGuide to Sleep,” who suggests the following:

If you wake up at night and find that you still cannot get back to sleep after 20 minutes, do not lie there in anguish staring at your clock. Get out of bed and do something that distracts and relaxes you, like reading a book. Then return to bed when you feel sleepy.

Dr. Kryger is suggesting the Reverse Nap.

Perhaps I’m not so crazy after all.

For my daughter. And all daughters.

Advice To Young Girls: If you have a choice between being the thin one or the pretty one, choose to be the funny one.

Megan Sass posted this to Twitter on Saturday. I don’t know Megan Sass, but I love Megan Sass.

In a platonic sense, of course.

Megan is a writer and a performer based in New York City, so perhaps our paths will cross someday. If they do, I will introduce myself and offer an awkward hug. And if Clara is with me when we meet, I’ll be sure to introduce her to the woman whose words I’ll have read to Clara again and again.

Everything happens for a reason, especially when your life is good.

When I hear someone say that "everything happens for a reason," I remind them that they might find this to be a less plausible premise if they had been sold into sexual slavery as a teenager or forcibly recruited into a Somali militia before their tenth birthday or were dying of smallpox in a mountainous, isolated region of Afghanistan. The belief that everything happens for a reason seems to be directly correlated to the quality of a person’s life.

The better your life, the stronger the belief.

This strikes me as rather convenient for the believers of this nonsense.

With all the pain and suffering in this world, “Everything happens for a reason” is a stupid thing to say and an ignorant thing to believe.

It belittles the genuine suffering that people experience that is beyond their control.

The Spiderman Principle of Meetings and Presentations

Kevin Smith’s approach to addressing any audience is the same as mine. He writes in his recent memoir that anytime a person is speaking to a group of people, in any context, the speaker has a duty to be entertaining.

I couldn’t agree more.

I have attended hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of meetings over the course of my lifetime where the person making the presentation, conducting the workshop or otherwise delivering the content made no effort to engage the audience in an entertaining and memorable way.

I will never understand this.

Regardless of who you are or what your previous experience might be, I believe that every person is capable of being entertaining while delivering content if he or she is willing to invest the time and effort required to prepare. This could involve the use of humor, self-deprecation, storytelling, drama, or surprise. It could mean designing a presentation that allows for meaningful and engaging interaction between attendees. It could include the use of food or props or even a costume. Whatever it takes to make your presentation entertaining and memorable to your audience.

Smith argues that the speaker or presenter is obligated to be entertaining for the sake of the audience. It’s what I call The Spiderman Principle of Meetings and Presentations (though Voltaire admittedly said it first):

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

If you are conducting a one-hour meeting, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room.

If there are 20 people in the room, you are now equivalent to a 20 hour investment.

It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that the hour is not wasted by reading from PowerPoint slides, providing information that could have been delivered via email, lecturing, pontificating, pandering or otherwise boring your audience.

But I also believe that there is a second, equally important reason to be entertaining:

It is a more effective way of conveying content to an audience.

When a student-teacher presents me with a lesson that he or she would like to teach my class, my first question is always this:

What’s the hook? What is the reason for my students to listen and pay attention to you?

Far too often inexperienced (and ineffective) teachers believe that if they design a lesson using all of methods and strategies that they have learned in college, students will sit quietly, attend fully and absorb the content.

For about two-thirds of an average class of students, this will probably be the case. But for the other third, effective lesson design is never enough. These are the students who slip through the cracks in many classrooms. They are the kids who have ability and potential but lack the necessary skills in order to learn. They are the children who are not predisposed to quiet, thoughtful attentiveness. They are the kids who can barely sit still. The ones with one foot still on the baseball diamond and one finger still on the videogame controller. They are the students who do not believe in themselves or their capacity for a bright future. They are kids who come to school hungry and tired and still reeling from the chaos and violence of an evening at home.

These are the students who need a reason to listen.

I believe that it is the teacher’s responsibility to provide a reason to learn. A meaningful, entertaining, engaging, thrilling, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants reason to keep their eyes and ears and minds open.

This is why every lesson requires a hook.

A hook is not a statement like, “This material will be on Friday’s test” or “This is something you’ll use for the rest of your life.”

A hook is an attempt to be entertaining, engaging, surprising, thought-provoking, challenging, daring and even shocking. This can be done in dozens, and perhaps hundreds of ways.

A teacher can be funny. Surprising. Animated. Confused. Even purposefully depressed. A teacher can offer students uncommon levels of choice or challenge them with meaningful, winner-takes-all competition. A lesson can include something students have never seen before or (even better) something they have seen a thousand times before but in an entirely new context. A teacher can use storytelling and drama and suspense to convey information. The lesson can include cooperative learning in groups that the children will actually enjoy. Students can be made the center of the lesson. Students can be invited to teach the lesson. Lessons can be broken up into smaller, rapidly changing segments in order to hold student interest.

This is just a smidgen of the strategies that teachers can use, and most of them, if not all of them, can also be used by a person running a meeting, conducting a workshop, or otherwise stealing an hour from people in order to convey content.

This is how I approach teaching on an everyday basis. I believe with all my heart that I am stealing seven hours of their childhood from each of my students on a daily basis. I am paid to be a thief. I rob my students of hour upon hour of the most precious and fleeting time of their lives. Therefore, I have a duty to make this time as meaningful, productive, memorable, and yes, entertaining as possible.

The best thing about all this:

If I do so, not only will my students be happy, not only will they look forward to school every day, but they will also learn better. Retain more. Become more skilled and knowledgeable and equipped for all that life has to offer.

Delta Airlines understands this. They recently produced an in-flight safety video that conveys the necessary information in an entertaining and surprising way.

Someone at Delta realized that if they are going to subject thousands of passengers a day to a dry, repetitive, but important safety video, why not make an effort to do better?

And they have. When your in-flight safety video has more than a million views on YouTube already, you know you’ve done something right.

Friends should not be allowed to retire if they’re going to have this much fun.

Friday morning. 7:48 AM.

I’m pulling into the parking lot at work. It’s 14 degrees. Slush and puddles fill the parking lot. The ground is covered with snow. I have a long day of teaching ahead of me. 

I receive this text from my friend and former boss who is now retired. It reads:

Teeing off in one hour.

It was accompanied by this photo.

He doesn’t mean to crush my spirit, but he does.

And I think he might be doing it on purpose.

I know it’s what I would do.

My two words

I know what I should say:

Invest AAPL.

Use the ticker symbol so I don’t accidentally invest in an apple orchard instead of the technology company.

But no. The monetary gains would be enormous, but there are two better words for my younger self:

Marry Elysha.

Yes, I ultimately marry her, at least in this future, but it isn’t worth the risk. Something could go wrong. I’ve been known to be an idiot before, and it might happen again.

I’m not opposed to amassing an enormous fortune, but I wouldn’t want to do it without her.  

Change the world by changing the paradigm of meetings. PLEASE.

Samuel Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, is featured in this month’s Harvard Business Review. In the piece, Khan explains that when it comes to meetings, Khan Academy’s policy is simple:

If people are meeting, they don’t need a lecture. If you don’t need them to interact, information should just be in a video or a memo.

On the HBR podcast, he went on to explain that if anyone at Khan Academy plans to speak for more than three minutes in a meeting, they are advised to record a video and make their talk available in perpetuity.

If only the world would follow this advice.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been sitting in a meeting, listening to information that could’ve been easily conveyed via email, wondering why 50 people just had to waste what amounts to four hours of productivity.

That’s the mindset that people should have:

Multiply the number of minutes you plan on speaking by the number of people attending the meeting and ask yourself:

Is the information that I am presenting worthy of that amount of lost productivity?

Imagine a world in which the mindless minutia of meetings are moved into the medium of email and video.

What a glorious place that would be.

Want to maintain longer lasting friendships? Here is my simple piece of advice.

A friend on Twitter recently asked for advice on maintaining long-term friendships. She was having a hard time remaining connected in meaningful ways with her friends and was searching of ideas.

My advice was simple:

Center each friendship on a project, activity or goal.

Always have something to do.

Perhaps this is a male instinct, but all of my closest male friendships are anchored by specific activities and/or goals. You will never find me having coffee with a friend (my hatred for coffee none withstanding). I don’t meet with my friends for brunch unless our spouses are included. I don’t chat with my friends on the phone.

My friend and I do stuff together.

Bengi (my friend of 28 years) and I have owned a DJ company for the last 17 years together. Though our friendship does not rely on the DJ company, our business forces us together more frequently than we would otherwise. Bengi has been a a storyteller for Speak Up, the storytelling organization that my wife and I founded this year. He attends Moth events with me. We are planning to write a book together.

Shep and I are Patriots season ticket owners. We spend about ten Sundays a year together, and we spend the rest of the NFL season communicating through email and texts about our team, our tailgate plans and more. We golf together during the summer and often catch movies together in the middle of the day. He has attended Moth events with me. He is one of the first and most valuable readers of my fiction.

Tom and I play a great deal of golf together. I recently enlisted Tom to become the producer of our soon-to-launch podcast, and he is now recording the audio at our Speak Up events as well. In the past, Tom and I have played a lot of poker together. Tom joins me from time to time at Moth events in New York City and hopes to one day tell a story on a Moth stage.

Until last year when he retired, Plato and I had worked together for fifteen years. I taught his daughter in third grade. Plato and I also play golf often. He has been a Speak Up storyteller. Recently he joined me for his Moth StorySLAM. In the past, I have acted in plays that Plato wrote and directed at our local playhouse. He attends Patriot games with me. We have written articles and presented together at conferences. We are apocalypse partners in the event that society crumbles, zombies rise from their graves or aliens invade. 

In 2006, he married me and Elysha. We are ministers for the same online church, and we have even worked a wedding together as minister and DJ.

 

Jeff and I teach together. He is my daughter’s godfather. We play golf often. We used to play a lot of poker, and I hope to play again someday soon. He reads my completed manuscripts and offers input. Over the years, we have attempted to launch several businesses together that have failed to get off the ground. We have a dream of opening our own one room schoolhouse in five years. We are constantly scheming. 

Andrew is my son’s godfather. I taught both of his children, including his daughter in third and fifth grade. We are in a book club together. He has attended Moth events with me. Two years ago I introduced him to golf, and it has become his obsession. We play together a lot. We have played together in the snow and the rain. I have become good friends with his nephew, who lives in New York and joins me for Moth events often. 

David is one of my more recent friends. He is a screenwriter. We don’t write together, but we frequently talk about our writing projects and share our work with each other. We listen to some of the same podcasts. We alternately encourage and berate each other when needed.

Though the tendency to anchor a friendship on an activity or a goal seems to be a more male-dominated trend, I have female friends with whom I share similar relationships.

Andrew’s wife, Kim, for example, was probably my friend before Andrew was. She is Charlie’s godmother, and she is also in a book club with me. She is also a Speak Up storyteller, and other than Elysha, has attended more Moth events with me than anyone else. She has also been an early reader of my fiction (Andrew has yet to read any of my novels), and when her children were in my classroom, she would spend a couple hours each week volunteering.

My friend, Donna, and taught together for the last 15 years, and except for two years when we were purposefully separated, we have always been in the same grade level. Donna and I golf together. She’s a character in my most recent novel. She’s old enough to be my mother, so there is a generational gap at times (she just learned how to text with reliability), but we still manage to do things together.

Admittedly, however, Kim and Donna are the exception when it comes to my female friendships, and even these friendships seem less dominated by activities and projects than my male relationships.

I’m not sure why this is the case. Maybe it’s just a male tendency. 

Regardless, these are some of my closest friends. As you can see, our relationships are very much centered around the things that we do. Though there have been some heart-to-heart conversations with these men and women over the years,  these talks often happen on the golf course, the basketball court or in the car on the way to a football game.

Bengi and I recently spent the day together driving to and from the Berkshires to pick up some furniture for my home. We talked for more than five hours about many things.

Some topics were silly. Others were serious.

But all of this conversation happened in the midst of driving, carrying couches and squeezing in a burger at McDonald’s.

We would never even think about meeting for coffee or lunch or talking about these things over the phone.  

Coffee and lunch can be too easily skipped. Too easily rescheduled. Too easily avoided. Too many things can take priority over coffee or a phone call.

Besides, the idea that we would sit across from each other at a table without a deck of cards or something else to do while we are eating is ridiculous.  

My 2013 Christmas haul

Another Christmas and another outstanding haul of gifts from my amazing wife, who understands me so well.

Some people wish for cashmere sweaters, brand new video game systems, stylish watches and jewelry. My hope is often for the least pretentious, most unexpected, quirkiest little gift possible, and she never fails to deliver. 

For the past four years, I’ve been documenting the gifts that Elysha gives me on Christmas because they are so damn good. Every year has been just as good as the last, if not better.

For point of reference:

• My 2009 Christmas haul

• My 2010 Christmas haul

• My 2011 Christmas haul

• My 2012 Christmas haul

This year was just as good.

image

In case you can’t tell from the photograph, my collection of gifts from this year includes:

• A remote controlled helicopter (the #1 item on the 2013 Matthew Dicks Holiday Gift Guide, which I have yet to be able to fly without crashing, and which my 18 month-old son keeps trying to take away from me. whenever he sees it.

• A rubber moose with an orange nose that can be shot across the room at an unsuspecting target

• Superman Band-Aids

• An 11 function survival tool (apocalypse preparation device)

• A book entitled Now I Know: Revealing Stories Behind the Worlds Most Interesting Facts. The back of the book reads:

“…the ultimate challenge for any know-it-all who thinks they have noting left to learn.”

I’m not sure if she’s trying to tell me something.

• A pin. The perfect pin, really:

image

• A small bag of blue candy with a fantastic marketing plan (and from an Etsy seller in New Mexico, no less):

image

My 3 completely biased, overly judgmental and fully valid rules of selfies

1. Try to avoid saying the word selfie aloud. You will always sound at least a little dumb when doing so. Even writing the word makes you sound a little stupid.
2. Any attempt to look sexy or alluring in a selfie is only going to make you look a little desperate. This includes pursed lips, well framed cleavage and obvious attempts to conceal large noses, receding hairlines or oblong chins through awkward and strained poses. We all know what you are doing. Spontaneity, a disregard for photogenic conventions and  an authentic smile is the only way to make a selfie almost acceptable.
3. A selfie is only immune to ridicule and assumed narcissism under the following circumstances:

• You are taking a selfie with another person in the photograph as well (which, by definition, no longer qualifies as a selfie).
• You are taking a selfie in order to show someone a new haircut, a new item of clothing or a similar change of appearance (the utilitarian selfie).
• You are taking a selfie with the express purpose of demonstrating the uniqueness of your locale as it appears the background (Grand Canyon, Brooklyn Bridge, football stadium, North Pole)
• You are taking a selfie in order to update your image on a social media or similar online profile, and you have not updated the image in this profile in at least three months.

Below is a blurry, poorly framed selfie that I took of myself and my daughter this weekend as we rode the historic carousel in downtown Hartford together, thus qualifying it as acceptable in two of the above categories.

I would love to play the role of Gandalf the Grey and stop trains. Just not at this moment.

I see this kind of hilarious brilliance (make sure you watch until the very end), and I think three things:

1. I wish I had thought of that first.
2. With my luck, I would’ve been arrested on suspicious of terrorism.
3. Despite how much I love and admire this, I’m not sure that I would want to invest the amount of time and energy required to produce a single minute of video that will likely be forgotten in a month (even one as amazing and daring as this).

I’m kind of glad that someone else is doing this for me, even though part of me desperately wants to try something like this myself.

Maybe when my kids are older and can do it with me…

Best goals ever

I’m a big fan of goal setting. At the beginning of very year, I establish a list of difficult-to-achieve New Year’s resolutions and then work like hell to achieve them. I document my progress, post it to my blog and add and modify goals when necessary.

I’ve been setting goals for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a list of goals as perfect as this one:

2013 Matthew Dicks Holiday Gift Guide

In keeping with the way that I shop for the holidays (last minute), I present my first ever holiday gift guide. I have attempted to create a list of gifts that are inexpensive, in some cases unique and guaranteed to please the recipient.

Almost all of these gifts also fall into the four categories of gifts that I consider most desirable:

• Time
• Experience
• Knowledge
• Cash

If purchasing gifts for your loved ones during this holiday season, you may  want to review my two simple rules of gift giving as well.

Happy holidays!

___________________________  

1. Remote control helicopter

I cannot speak for women, but every single man in the world wants a remote controlled  helicopter, regardless of what he may say. It is the ultimate gift for any man (with the exception of actual helicopter pilots… maybe). 

2. Microloan account

Open an account at a website like Kiva.org or Microplace.com on behalf of the recipient for as little as $20 and allow him or her to begin making loans to entrepreneurs  around the world. When the money is paid back into the account, it can loaned again and again,

It’s a great gift for anyone, and especially for a child. We have a microloan account in our classroom, and the kids love reading the entrepreneurs’ applications and choosing the person who they want to help.

 

I suggested this gift last year and met some resistance from people who don’t feel that this qualifies as a gift.

Others accused me of recommending it as a gift simply because I expected it to annoy people.

While this may be the case, it was not my intent when recommending a microloan account as a gift. Jason Kottke recommended this same gift on his blog last week (copycat) and summarizes the proper attitude toward these people nicely:

Any family or friends who think you're a jerk for doing this are annoying, and you should make new friends and find a different family. 

3. Five hours of babysitting

If your friend or family member has young children, this gift is invaluable but will cost you nothing but an evening of your time.

Give this gift as often as possible.

4. Knowledge

This is another gift suggestion that I made last year. Ask your friend or family member for a list of skills that he or she lacks but would like to learn (perhaps you have some ideas of what they lack already). If you know how to do something on their list, offer to teach them.

It’s an outstanding gift. You offer time and expertise, and the recipient gains a valuable skill.

Just this past week, John Dickerson of Slate tweeted that Evernote users can highlight text in any webpage or document and use Windows-A or Apple-A to automatically send that text directly into Evernote.

This is huge for me. Better than any sweater or scarf that I might receive this year. I told him that I considered it his holiday gift to me.  

My current list of things I want to learn includes:

• Change the oil in my car
• Give my car a tune-up
• Invest in individual stocks
• Hit my driver longer and more consistently
• Install replacement windows in my home
• Become more knowledgeable and skilled with Word Press
• Sync all my calendars reliably on my iPhone

5. Lord or Lady of Sealand

The Principality of Sealand is a recognized micronation, located on a former War War II sea fort in the North Sea, 7 miles off the coast of Suffolk, England.

Since 1967 the facility has been occupied by family and associates of Paddy Roy Bates, who claim that it is an independent sovereign state. Bates seized it from a group of pirate radio broadcasters in 1967. He established Sealand as a nation in 1975 with the writing of a constitution and establishment of other national symbols.

For £29.99, you can purchase the title of Lord, Lady, Baron or Baroness to the country of Sealand, along with all the official documentation required to confer such a title.

I am a Lord of Sealand. I include this fact in my bio. Despite also mentioning my two near-death experiences and my suspension in high school for inciting riot upon myself, the question most often asked about my bio pertains to my Lordship of Sealand, and this discussion often results in the subsequent purchase of a Sealand title of nobility.

Everyone wants to be a Lord or Lady. Now you can make this happen for someone for real.

6. A lifetime exemption to all future thank you cards

If you have a friend or relative with whom you regularly exchange gifts, this proverbial “Get Out of Jail” free card is invaluable because it offers the recipient life’s most precious commodity:

Time.

Also, postage.

Never again will your friend be forced to spend the time writing and sending you a thank you card. Over the course of a friendship, this is a gift that can really add up in time saved.

7. A refrigerator box

It’s tends to be a gift better suited for children, but it’s a perfectly acceptable for a more self-actualized adult, too.

There are few things in this world more entertaining than an enormous box.

I’m not the only one who recognizes the greatness of this gift.

8. Terror

The best gift I ever received was from my friend, Jeff, who handed me a gift box at my bachelor party and told me that it was his pre-wedding gift to me, and that I needed to give it to my friend, Tom. I tried to ask why I needed to give my gift to someone else but he insisted that I simply hand it over to Tom and say, “This is for you.”

I did.

We were standing near the starter’s shack at one of our favorite golf course, surrounded by friends and strangers who were waiting to tee off. Tom untied the ribbon, opened the box and found an enormous spider inside, still very much alive and apparently quite angry. He threw the box into the air, screamed like a girl, and ran about twenty feet before coming to a stop.

Tom is terrified of spiders.

What a gift.

It’s admittedly a difficult gift to reproduce, and it will require ingenuity and preparation, but if you can pull off a prank on behalf of a friend or loved one,  there may not be a better gift in the world.

That water was inside another person

Did you know that most of the water you drink has already been drunk by somebody else, human or animal, possibly several times over.

I kind of want to tell this to the people who pre-wipe down the treadmill before climbing aboard.

Teachers should use their first names. Honorifics confer artificial and meaningless respect. Even worse, they are sexist and demeaning to women.

If it were up to me, my students would call me by my first name. I find the use of last names and titles in education to be an artificial means of respect that doesn’t amount to any actual respect at all.

In my fifteen years of teaching, I have learned that if you’re depending on a title to confer even an ounce of respect from your students, you’re in a hell of a lot of  trouble. 

I’d much prefer the freedom to use whatever name I choose in my professional life. This has nothing to do with my last name, though I can understand why you might think otherwise. I tend to despise unnecessary formality and meaningless artifice, and in my mind, the use of last names represents both of these things.

Unfortunately, asking my students to use my first name is not a relativistic option for me. I work in a school where every teacher is identified by their last name and in a district where educators and administrators with doctorates almost always use that honorific as well.

I have a friend who possesses a doctorate, yet he has never used the honorific in any part of his personal or professional life. I wasn’t even aware that he possessed a doctorate for years.

I admire him a great deal for this.

Even if I were allowed to have students use my first name (and I suspect that I am not), I’ve also come to understand the hazards of stepping out of line in regards to decades-old, tradition-laden practices in the workplace, and especially in a school.

Breaking this norm would be challenging to say the least. I have colleagues who have never referred to me by my first name. Can you imagine how they might feel if students were suddenly calling me Matt?

Traditions are difficult to break. It can be done, but you need to be prepared to be despised by many for doing so. This is not an issue that I feel strongly enough about to absorb that kind of flack.

At least not yet. 

However, I make the argument for using first names whenever anyone will listen, hoping that one day I will build a large enough coalition to affect change. And I specifically make the argument to women, who should be more opposed to the use of last names than me.

When a woman uses her last name in a professional setting, the honorific that is attached to her name is an indicator of her marital status. Unlike men, who enjoy a universal honorific, women are forced to identify themselves based upon their legal relationship to another person, and most often, a man.

Miss if you’re unmarried and young (whatever young is).
Mrs. if you’re married.
Ms. if you are older and unmarried or choosing to be deliberately vague.

And yes, it’s true. Ms. is intended to be the default form of address for women regardless of marital status, but it’s also used by unmarried women who feel they are too old for Miss, thus muddying the waters of what was meant to be a solution to this problem.

Even if Ms. was used exclusively as a neutral default, the existence of the other two female honorifics invariably confuses matters.

Even if a married woman chooses Ms. as a way of keeping her marital status out of her name, she is doomed to a lifetime of slipups from colleagues who know that she is married and who will automatically use Mrs. until corrected and will likely make the same mistake again and again.

Students will make these errors even more often and will likely ask about the decision to use Ms. over Mrs. Despite her attempt to use the the neutral honorific, the woman will invariably be forced to discuss her marital status anyway, probably more often  and in greater detail than if she had simply used Mrs.

And the change in last name and honorific when a woman gets married or  divorced complicates matters even further.

Ms. becomes Mrs. or vice-versa.
Last names sometimes change but sometimes don’t.
A woman may be divorced but continues to use her ex-husband’s last name.

I have colleagues who have been married for a decade, and yet I still occasionally slip and refer to them with their maiden name.

By the way, the phrase maiden name should also enrage women.

Maiden?

If I were a woman, all of this would make me crazy.

Women should oppose the use of last names in education based solely on the sexist, demeaning way in which marital status pre-determines the way in which students and colleagues will address them. A person’s name should not be dependent upon the woman’s personal life and her legal attachment to a spouse.

It’s that simple.

Even though there are many schools in America where students refer to teacher by their first names, I realize that proposing a shift in a school absent this tradition is a radical one, but I am surprised that women have not complained and attempted to affect this change already.

They should be clamoring for the change.

Lessons learned from 4 years of parenting

Two years ago, when my daughter was two, I created a list of lessons that I had learned from two years of parenting. Two years and an additional child later, I’ve added to the list based upon additional experience. 

The list may someday become a framework for a book or memoir. For now, I hope it can helpful to new parents in need of some guidance and encouragement.

______________________________________

• The parent who assumes the tougher position in regards to expectations and discipline is almost always correct.
• Almost every behavior is temporary. Remembering this is key to avoiding frustration.  
• Almost every temper tantrum can and should be ignored.
• The calmer the household, the calmer the child.
• Avoid becoming emotionally attached to your child’s inappropriate behaviors whenever possible. They are almost never about you.  
• Writing to your child on a daily basis helps you better appreciate the moments with your little one and prevents you from wondering why times flies by so quickly.
• There are extremely few critical and uncorrectable mistakes that you can make with your child. 
• With exceptions, training your child to fall sleep on her own in her own bed and sleep through the night takes about two weeks if done with tenacity, an iron will and an absolute adherence to the advice of experts. Parents must also possess the grudging acceptance that thunderstorms, nightmares and illness will upset the apple cart from time to time.
• You cannot take too many photographs of your child.
• Despite their size, it’s almost impossible to impose your physical will on any toddler without risking harm to them. Find another way.
• Reading to your child every single night without exception is an easy but critical critical commitment that every parent must make.  
• Changing a diaper is not a big deal and is never something worthy of whines or complaints.
• Toddlers will invariably have a million things to tell you as soon as you begin an important telephone call. Lock yourself in a room or go sit in the car before dialing. 
• Experienced parents always know which toys are best.
• Toddlers cannot distinguish between a new toy and a used toy. Accept all hand-me-down toys with gratitude, knowing they were once well loved and can be loved again.
• Unsolicited advice from experienced parents should always be received with appreciation. It should not be viewed as a criticism or indictment of your own parenting skills and can be easily ignored if need be.
• There is absolutely no reason for a child under eighteen months old to be watching television on a daily basis.
• Consignment shops are some of the best places to find children’s clothing and toys unless you are a pretentious snob.
• Parents seeking the most fashionable or trendy stroller, diaper bag, and similar accouterments are often saddled with the least practical option.
• Little boys and little girls are entirely different animals. They have almost nothing in common, and it is a miracle that they might one day marry each other.
• The ratio of happy times to difficult times in the first four years of your child’s life is about one billion to one. Some parents have an unfortunate tendency to forget the billion and accentuate the one.

I’ve also separated out three rules out that are closely interconnected and exceptionally important for expecting parents and the parents of newborns to understand.

• Taking care of a child during the first four years of life is not nearly as difficult as many people want you to believe.
• Telling people that raising your child has been an easy and joyous experience will often annoy them. Do it anyway.  
• Experienced parents who are positive, optimistic and encouraging to the parents of newborns are difficult to come by and should be treasured when found.

At least we don’t throw knives at our children

Next time someone older than me complains that my generation (and subsequent generations) lack manners or spend too much time on our phones or don’t save enough money, I’ll say, “At least we don’t throw knives at our children for fun.”

Every generation has something to be embarrassed about, as I rather aggressively pointed out to an older gentleman last week.

This one is pretty horrifying.

6 things you should never talk about, plus 2 of my own

This American Life’s producer Sarah Koenig's mother lives by a set of rules about conversation, including an actual list of off-limits topics.

I want to go on record as supporting this list wholeheartedly.

The list:

1. Diet
2. Health
3. Your period
4. Sleep
5. Dreams
6. Route talk, which is discussion of the route you took to arrive at your destination.

Of all the items on the list, I find route talk and dreams tied for the most egregious of offenses, but they are all admittedly dreadful. 

She actually has a seventh item on the list, money, which This American Life excludes from the show, and I agree. Discussions about the stock market, the health of certain businesses and even recommendations on how to lower insurance costs or where to buy the cheapest cantaloupe are all fair game.

But I’d like to add two items to the list:

• Weather
• Sales pitches
  

While there are occasionally reasons to talk about the weather when it is most extreme, those times are few and far between. Err on the side of caution and find something else to discuss. 

And the last thing I ever want to hear is a sales pitch for the products that you sell or for products that you want me to sell for you as part of some pyramid scheme. While there is nothing wrong with these businesses (except for this), the friends of such salespeople should be awarded a permanent zone of protection from any and all such sales pitches. Otherwise we feel like we are being taken advantage of, ALWAYS, regardless of what assurances we offer that we are do not.

Crying at work

The Telegraph asks: Is it ever OK to cry at work?

Sheryl Sandberg says yes. Nigella Lawson says no.

I agree with Nigella. I have no idea who she is, but I agree with her anyway.

Other than tears of sadness upon saying goodbye to graduating students or retiring colleagues, I have cried at work exactly once in my life. It happened while managing the opening shift at a McDonald’s restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut about 18 years ago.

At the time, I was attending Trinity College and St. Joseph's University more than fulltime while working more than fulltime at McDonald’s and part-time in Trinity’s Writing Center in order to make ends meet.

A busy time in my life to say the least.

And it was exam week.

When I arrived at work at 4:30 in the morning for my opening shift, I hadn’t slept in more than 48 hours because of the mountains of end-of-semester work that I was attempting to complete. While handing food out the drive-thru window, I started to cry. I wasn’t feeling sad or even overwhelmed. I was simply exhausted. One of my employees turned to me and said, “What’s the matter?”

Between sobs, I said, “Nothing. I’m just really tired.”

My tears were a physical reaction to a lack of sleep.

Other than that moment, I have not cried in the more than 25 years in the workforce. The reason I have not cried is simple:

I have yet to face a workplace situation that might cause me to cry. Regardless of the pressure, conflict or stress of a situation, work has never been so overwhelming to bring me to tears.

Unfairly so, perhaps, I tend to see people who cry at work as lacking perspective or significant life experience. Between their sobs, I find myself wanting to remind them that their job does not constitute a life or death situation and that there are far worse things in the world than a tough day on the job. We didn’t just lose a patient in open heart surgery. We didn’t just cause two planes to crash in midair. We didn’t cost 10,000 people their jobs because of a stupid financial decision.

Perhaps if I were in one of these positions, I would cry more often.

I’m not.

As a teacher, I have an enormous responsibility to the children who are in m classroom and the families who depend upon me to educate their kids. But a poorly delivered lesson, a less than glowing evaluation from an administrator or a meeting with a disgruntled parent will not make or break my school year, and it will not permanently damage the future of my students.

On most jobs, no single moment  on the job will cause irreparable damage to anyone. 

The same goes for every job that I have ever had. In fact, the highest pressure job that I’ve ever held is probably wedding DJ, where a faulty piece of equipment or the accidental press of a button can ruin a moment that a bride has been dreaming about for years.

As a wedding DJ, I have five or six hour to ensure perfection, and if I don’t, a day that has been planned for months or years can be ruined.

Still, I’ve never cried, perhaps because I’ve never ruined someone’s wedding day, but even if I did, tears would not help me in that situation. I would be too busy repairing, recovering and attempting to salvage the day as best as I could to spend a moment consumed with my own emotions.

I realize that it’s almost always wrong to base my opinion of this or any other subject on my own personal reaction. The way that I handle a situation is not automatically the correct way to handle a situation. It’s at the very least stupid and self-centered to think, “I don’t cry at work, and therefore it’s wrong and no one else should, either.”

But I’m stupid and self-centered, so I’m saying it anyway.

Save your tears for home. No one wants to see you sobbing at the workplace. It’s awkward. It makes people uncomfortable. Unless something legitimately terrible has actually happened (and it almost certainly hasn’t), crying only serves to undermine your credibility and demonstrate your lack of perspective.

Save your tears for something that really matters.

And if you must cry, take a walk or go to the restroom.

Seriously. No one wants to see it.