Dammed Creativity

Posted on March 14, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Benjamin Franklin had little free time in his old age.  He complained of this cram-packed-with-politics schedule to close friends.  The very new United States– still fighting to survive needed his diplomacy, wit, wisdom and time.  And nobody else could fill his shoes. His science experiments lay unfinished collecting dust in his backyard laboratory.  Like some homeowners in my neighborhood are house poor–  great salaries funneled straight to paying the mortgage and fixing up the house,  Benjamin Franklin was energy poor. State-building sucked every last bit of Franklin’s remarkable energy–  and he felt his soul shrink.

A few days ago, my eight-year-old son asked us all at breakfast, What is the worse possible thing you can imagine happening? I immediately thought of losing my child to scurvy or a car accident.  But my six-year-old daughter said,  Oh.  I think living your entire life and never having done what you were meant to do–  without doing what you love. That would be terrible.

My daughter is right on.  I’m so glad she can say this out loud without a second thought.

But how could you die without ever reaching your potential?  For Franklin a new nation claimed his time, thus suppressing his exuberant creative pursuit.  But energy-claimers are most often historic only in your wildest dreams– masses of urgent incoming e-mails, houses to build, fortunes to lay out for the future. You could die without ever cracking your creative potential by failing to ever decide to start.  You could give up attending to your dreams when the phone starts ringing or when your wife complains about the yard.  If you must choose between keeping bargains you never made or owning your energy and creative potential– well, I think you can guess what I’d say.

Having a choice at all, is a privilege.  If you have no food, many sick children, a husband who beats you, no shelter and no work in sight,  your choices are much, much smaller.  But my guess is,  if you have time enough to read these words– you have at least some (education, time, money, space) options for creation.  The French philosopher Ernest Renan said,

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Ignored creativity–  no matter how plentiful or unruly at the start or how honorable the competition, dries up. And once you decide you’ve got to create come hail or high water, what you do with the truths you know–  that is what makes you Creative or not.

 

 

 

 

How about you?  Is your creativity still dammed up inside you?

Filed under: Choices, Creativity Killer, Making Time, Mistakes, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, Truth | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Sleeping Around in London

Posted on March 13, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

Before I start today’s post, I must disclose.  I sleep some,  but not enough to think and walk at the same time. My 11-month-old still nurses through the night.  I get up when she cries at night because I want her to fatten up and grow long.  And, she is my precious baby after all. So, against medical advice (my physician sister-in-law looks out for me–  she thinks I need more sleep),  I sleep some and figure, someday I’ll sleep more. And besides,  I can always find a chair to land on if I feel a thought coming.

It turns out, you don’t need a set amount of sleep at precise intervals to think original  thoughts.  Creativity scholar Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi found highly creative people work with their bio-rhythms.  They arrange their lives to sleep when tired but work when they’re sharp– regardless of hour.  My current baby-controlled schedule is not ideal ( i.e., running a 5k this morning seems impossible) but it’s not horrible for creativity.  I’ve had plenty of brilliant insights in between mid-night naps (unfortunately, I don’t always remember them by morning)  and I’ve found my sharpest hours seem to fall between 1:00 a.m. and dawn (if, I’ve slept early and deep the previous three nights).  I’ve made peace with my sleep issues and continue. My good friend Jennifer says, In a year, things will be different.  She’s right.  I can imagine longer nights a year from now.

Some friends– a high-flying London couple, are about to have their first baby.  She’s a novelist.  He’s a club DJ by night,  international lawyer by day.  Their spacious Hackney flat has plenty of space for the gear they’ll need and they both love kids. They’re more than ready;  they’re giddy non-stop with anticipation.  There’s only one small problem.  They love their current party-almost-every-night, sleep in, work late and do it all again life rhythm.  Last time I visited them,  the guy asked,

Do kids HAVE to go to bed early?  I mean,  that doesn’t make sense.  My sister is adamant.  She says, Just wait.  You’ll see.  Kids HAVE to go to bed super early. It’s just the way it works. But why would that be?  I mean, as long as they get the amount they need–  you know, like 8 hours,  or whatever.  Right?

I said,

I don’t know. I suppose you could convince your baby you live in another time zone–  you could carry around a full-spectrum light lamp in your diaper bag and shine it on your kid’s face at sundown.  And shut the blinds in her room in the morning,  so she still thinks it’s night. That shouldn’t be too hard–    days are pretty dark here in London anyway. I don’t know.  I haven’t tried it.

I don’t remember where our conversation went from there.  But now (two years later) I wonder if they’ll try to make the baby adjust to their time.  Will they lug her around London’s night-scene in a sound-proof bassinet?  I doubt it.  I think the novelist will nix any exceedingly silly plan.  But she is pretty flexible and does like to try things out.

In any case,  the man’s question is a good one.  Do babies need to sleep when 7:30 p.m. hits wherever they are?  I’ve always stuck to a traditional bedtime.  But, I’d love to watch the London couple trick their baby into sleeping exactly when they’d like her to sleep. If they pull this off,  they should write a book and I bet it would hit the bestseller list on Day 1.

Filed under: Biology, Creative Families, Following Rules, Living the Creative Life, Music, Parents, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

My Inner Map of Old Paris and A Bothered Researcher

Posted on March 4, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

This morning, my six-year-old ran to me waving a neatly folded twenty-dollar bill.  She said,  Mom. Is this yours?  I found it on the breakfast table.  Can I have it?  Please?

I have no idea whose bill she held or why she found it where she did.  Regardless, I didn’t let her keep the bill.  I said Thank you, darling, and mumbled something about $20 being a lot of money.  Still, my daughter’s open-faced honesty and hope impressed me.  Her stance showed she had no real expectations of keeping the money–  but she’d try anyhow.  Just in case.  As she handed me the bill and walked away,  my 11 month old, sitting on the carpet two feet away, coughed several times. I bolted off the couch to her, swept the inside of her mouth with my index finger and removed a flat,  juicy piece of wicker.  My baby crawls fast enough now we’ve nicknamed her “speedy”.  She’s more than just speedy though, she’s efficient too.  She constantly collects stuff from the floor to investigate. She even has a method. Here’s how it goes: pick up object, move it from right hand to left. Turn it about in various directions and angles.  Then, either drop it or continue research and taste the thing.  Chew and swallow if possible.

Through all this excitement my two-year old stayed kneeling in front of and using the couch as her desk.  She spread a stack of index cards haphazardly except for her “done” pile.  The “done” cards, stacked together, exhibited various slashes, circles and more of color.  One blue.  One red.  She kept enlarging that “done” pile oblivious to the rest of us.  Focused but just following whims.

Babies and young children constantly try things out on a whim. Cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnick says in her fascinating book, The Philosophical Baby,

Children are the R&D department of the human species– the blue-sky guys,  the brainstormers.

[Their] brains seem to have special qualities that make them especially well suited for imagination and learning.

Each try a child makes and each whim she chases ever-so-slightly changes the physical map of her very plastic brain. New information connects loosely to other (less new) bits to form networks of thought. We all have a zillion (OK, that’s not a true number, but it fits) connections running throughout our brains–  more complex than the Los Angeles highway system.  The younger you are the looser (bumpier and sub-developed) your connections and also the more varied.  Again, Gopnik says,

Babies brains are actually more highly connected than adult brains;  more neural pathways are available to babies than adults.

All these connections are loose, tentative and will fade with time and lack of use. They’re also jumbled about in a disorganized mess. But disorganized minds, whether attached to a baby, a teenager or a 40 yr. old, are more likely to come up with original ideas. Hyper-organized minds think in patterns and already know outcomes from the get-go.  Disorganized minds catch novel patterns but are open-wide about outcomes. Original thoughts have no precedents.

Louis Pasteur said,

Chance favors the prepared mind.

As it turns out chance favors a mind prepared on more than one dimension.  First, you need kick-butt skills– virtuosity.  The 10,000 hours of sweat put in.  Second, your brain needs a zillion loose neuronal connections with plenty of Glia for juice.  Entire sections of your brain need beautifully bumpy, tentative and divergent mental pathways–  like a map of old Paris.

My three little girls’ minds work just like that.  Yet, neuroscientists think my girls are less likely to keep disorganized (divergent-thinking) minds into adulthood than their brother.  Men  keep their childhood R&D capacities but women lose them in favor of more organized, predictable mental pathways.  That’s right folks, women’s thinking tends toward predictability and away from originality.  Since originality is a crucial part of creativity, I must ask:  Could this all be true?

Well.  It’s hard to swallow.  But read on.  Neuroscientist Kenneth M. Heilman found men store the bulk of verbal capacities in one hemisphere (the left),  leaving the other hemisphere (the right)  free for disorganized mental pathways.  Women use both hemispheres for verbal communication and so have less mental space  left for wild chance. Heilman also points out scientists, inventors and mathematicians need top-notch spatial skills to shine. And in test after test, men take the prize over women, in all spatial abilities.  And even in fields requiring rich language networks, men outperform women.  Why? Remember those darned language networks taking up so much mental space in both hemispheres.

Yikes.

I am a thinker,  so I will plod on without screaming or pulling my hair or crying into this evening.

Think about all the women you know and all the men you’ve ever met.  Make yourself a little mental chart and place each person into one of two categories: dependable/predictable thinker or unreliable/original thinker.  How many women make your unreliable/original thinker?  And of those who made it, how many have the education to rocket to the top of their field?  Still have some women on this list?  I hope you do.  This is the twenty-first century, after all.

Still, I’m hot and bothered.  Fortunately,  I’m not the only one.  Ten years ago, researcher Rebecca Jordan-Young began questioning neuroscientific gender studies. Eventually, she could stand it no longer.  So many studies she read simply did not jive with reality. So Jordan-Young spent 10,000 hours going over studies dated back to the 1950′s (actually even earlier).  Then she wrote Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences, to peel the layers of untruth within the field.

Note:  If you are a Neuroscientist studying sex differences, please read this book.  It’s solid.

On my end,  I’ll make sure my daughters get the education they need.  I’ll also urge disorganized thought patterns.  I may even require (I’m still wishy-washy on this one) mega-time mastering video games (the spatial/visual– super-challenging kind)  starting tomorrow.

I’ve had enough of organized thought-patterns for now.  I’m hyped to feed my inner-disorganized thinker. I’ll start with fish. Hay. Egypt. Schools for Girls.  Sleepy limbs. Boston. Charles River.  MIT. Dream interpretation. Palm-readers and medical office-types named Kathy, Parkinson’s disease, oligarchies.  I’m gone….. lost in my own old-Paris-map of a brain.

How about you?  Do you think more men naturally tend toward originality than women?

*If you’d like to read more about this topic check out these posts: The Second, Less Creative Sex and Characteristics of highly Creative People:  Intro.

Filed under: Biology, Complexity, Divergent thinking, Must Haves of Creativity, Neuroscience, The Brain, The Child, The Scientist | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Talking Real Science.

Posted on March 2, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

This morning before breakfast, I walked up the hill behind my house with my 11 yr. old to check out her new make-shift ant lab. She walked with notebook and pencil in hand, ahead of me.  Still, she turned often to wait while I coaxed the toddler with us to keep the pace.  I recognized the ant lab’s layout instantly from a sketch she’d shown me earlier–  open roof,  six-inch high wood-plank outer walls and cross-walls placed to funnel ants to imported sugar-water.

So,  my daughter said and pointed to one corner,  that’s where I’ll bury one magnet.  And, she pointed at a different corner, that’s where the other magnet will go.  I asked her questions, told her the study seemed interesting and we started back home, both satisfied we had done well.

I need to backtrack a bit here.

Last week, a few minutes before we left home to attend classes,  this same 11 yr. old asked,  Oh, mom.  Did you sign my science project proposal? I had not.  But she had the paper at hand,  ready to sign and a pen to sign it with.

Visually scanning the paper, I asked What’s this?

She said,  Oh.  We have to turn in our science project topics today.  You see, she pointed to the top of the paper I held, there’s the question I will work on. I read,  ”Is the direction a plant grows affected by light?”   I faced my daughter.  She raised her brows.

I started, Darling? but paused to find the right words.  I asked how she planned to run her experiment.  She explained.  Then I let loose, Everyone in the world,  including you,  knows plants grow towards light.  Everyone!

She half-smiled.  So, what should I do then?  I have to turn this in a few minutes from now and it can’t be late.

I said,  Yes.  But you can’t turn this in.  It isn’t a question a self-respecting scientist would ask. I launched into a mini-lecture on how the scientific process is to catalyze new discoveries,  not to serve as an end in itself.  She ended up turning in a question she thought interesting–  about the possible musicality of pond frogs. We both knew the science teacher would deny this project.

But,  I told her,  while your teacher is rejecting that question, you buy time to come up with a really great new idea.  The science teacher did reject the frog idea.  And my daughter did come up with a much better project and re-submitted a question.  Neither of us knows the answer to this new question and (as far as we can tell)  nobody else (in the entire world) does either.  Her new project?  ”The effects of increased underground magnetism on red ant colonial patterns.”  She’s got six weeks to figure things out and a good plan sketched out.  What she does not have, is an answer.

On our walk down the hill this morning,  she told me about some of the questions other students had come up with and we talked about those.  One student is studying volcanoes ( there’s got to be at least one, right?),  another is studying whether fruit floats.  But who cares?   My daughter knows her question is good and she’s excited she will discover something new— something no one in the world yet knows.  Now we’re talking real science–  and I couldn’t be happier to see her excited about it!

 

* Wait.  Please stay a little longer:  You may have noticed I’ve changed my blog’s look.  What do you think about that?  Is it better?  Worse?  In bad-taste?  Tantalizing?  I’d love to hear your opinion.  If you’re new here… I’d still love to hear what you think about my site, creativity…the Universe!

Filed under: advice and expectations, Biology, Childhood, Creative Families, Parents, The Child, The Scientist | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Rousseau and Me, We Don’t Agree– A Post in Two Parts and a Coda

Posted on February 17, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote A Mad Poet and a Sane Mathematician.

Part I:

Around this time– a year ago, I longed to walk outside with my toddler or stand by the pond with my five-year-old checking out brand-new tadpoles. I wanted to bake bread or travel to Ethiopia or  just drive an hour to visit my sister. But I couldn’t. I could wiggle my toes a bit and shift my weight from left to right, but no more than that– doctor’s orders.  If I moved more than that, contractions began immediately. But the tiny person growing inside me needed to swim around in amniotic fluid another 15 weeks.

The slightly-open window behind my chair let in crisp air in waves.  I heard swallows swishing around high in the sky and chirping. Birds so happy to have arrived safe from Argentina and ready to build spring nests under the eaves of my house.  My toddler wanted to share my chair,  but we couldn’t both fit.  She cried and begged me to pick her up.  Later, she dragged her wicker rocker and set it next to me.  I read her books.  My 7-year-old and 5-year-old brought me little snacks of oranges or cinnamon toast.  My 10-year-old made pasta for lunch.

Several weeks later, resting still, this time in a hospital bed, I couldn’t focus to read.  I couldn’t think in complete sentences either. I just lay there, with my uncomfortably quiet mind.  Living requires action–  and without it you seem barely human,  let alone a competent parent of little children.  I stared at their photographs taped to the wall in front of me. All those smiling faces kept me company. But I couldn’t touch them or kiss them.  They couldn’t tell me the stuff they thought or what kept them awake at night. So still, I drifted in and out of mind for hours.  One night, in a moment of both subtle desperation and fierce maternal agency a thought came to me.   My mind’s eye followed the thought as it entered and spread across my consciousness.  It is time to study my children in the way that thinkers do, with closed senses but open mind.  The timing could not be better.

This thought– It is time to study my children in the way that thinkers do, with closed senses but open mind, expanded until it took up so much mental space it squished the limbic helplessness out of my soul.

I’ve wanted to study the lives of sixteenth century Spanish monks or figure out how the Universe really began.  But figuring out Creativity from its simplest reduction to viral idea-spreading– that I could study until I die.  And here I had time!

Instantly I felt the luckiest woman in the world– with a laptop, speedy internet access and several bright children with budding creative powers to think about and later observe. That night I started Creating-Brains, this blog.  I also e-mailed my friends with the link so they’d read my first post and make it all official before I chickened out.

Part II:

Months earlier, I had read the most interesting book on human development theory–  Jean Jacques Rousseau’s classic Emile. Here Rousseau writes the life story of his young aristocratic charge– Emile and chronicles his growth to astonishing mental independence. When Rousseau ends his tutorship (20 yrs. long)  he introduces Emile,  a virgin thinker, to the world.

So how did Rousseau raise Emile?  Here are some highlights:

Emile…

  • Never wore binding clothes.
  • Ran around barefoot,  even in Winter.
  • Took frigid showers outdoors, even in Winter.
  • Lived in a bare cottage, alone with his tutor, in the countryside.
  • Ate plain food.
  • Cultivated one habit– Have no habits (no bed time,  no wake time,  no set daily schedule whatsoever).
  • Knew no books, was not read to and did not know how to read until age 16.
  • Had no friends.
  • Learned through experience only ( i.e., poking a real skunk to learn it stinks, and not reading about it).
  • Led his own life with little human interference.
  • Had a tutor who followed him from afar outdoors, but sat with him to discuss humanity’s grandest questions to close a day.
  • Could ask his tutor anything and get a question for an answer.
  • Ran free.
  • Lived happy.
  • Thought for himself.

Rousseau’s Emile was an imaginary character (Rousseau was a philosopher, after all).  But the methods used to educate Emile influenced Western thinking about childhood development and education for two centuries.  The Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts, the Idler in the UK and the International Unschooling movement are examples of today’s Rousseau-groupies.

But what does Rousseau’s Emile have to do with me hanging out in the hospital,  far from my charges?  Plenty (stay with me here). First, disclosure–  a host of loving , sometimes fun,  but always responsible people cared for the kids when I could not. Also, Super-man (a.k.a.my husband) cut his work days dangerously short to come home.  He also spent too many nights awake nursing sick kids (yes, they all got the flu) or warming midnight bottles for our toddler. But back to Rousseau and me: in gist– my children lived a lot like Emile. Rousseau theorized and Emile turned out super human. But real children, I learned by being away, do not thrive cultivating the habit of no habits. Also, real children grow confused, rather than fonder, for lack of gentle touch. But worse of all,  the independent life reeks of danger for little ones and free-thinking is small without limits.

I resolved, then,  as I began to study my children to also study their broken mama and by sheer mindfulness and consideration, we’d learn to live right.  Together we’d learn to live the Creative life,  which, as I’ve written often since my first post,  is not without habits or discipline.

Coda:

Several years ago,  I would have disagreed with every iota of Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother– the book I’ve mentioned several times in this series.  I would have suggested Emile’s lifestyle as the enlightened (and opposite) alternative.  Not today– Chua’s not totally wrong.  Discipline does breed brilliance. But Chua is fundamentally wrong,  because disciplined skills without philosophy make for hollow output.

So there it is.  I’ve told you another piece of my story and dragged you through contrived concepts.  But, stay with me…there’s more to come!

I’d love to hear from you and learn what you think.  Leave a comment.  I love reading comments!

 

 

 

Filed under: Childhood, Complexity, Constraints, Creative Families, Parents, Philosophers, The Child, The Scientist, What Hasn't Worked for Me | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Mad Poet and a Sane Mathematician

Posted on February 9, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote To Yell or Not to Yell.  That is My Question.

Young Ada Loveless lived on a grand estate with her noble mother in nineteenth-century England. The 9 year-old romanticized her father, a famous English poet living in Greece on self-imposed exile. She had never met him and as a child, knew very little of him. Ada asked her mother when he’d be back, but Lady Anne Isabella Byron never told her daughter the colorful truths about her dad– Lord Byron.  When he died a hero to the Greeks for financing their war of Independence from Turkey, all Ada knew is that he fell ill and died far away from her.

Ada’s father–no ordinary poet,  is regarded as one of the greatest British poets of all time and remains widely read and influential. He was also no ordinary man.  Good-looking to boot–he loved many women and men leaving broken hearts in his wake as he traveled the world. One English socialite once disguised herself as a page to enter his bed-chamber.  Of Lord Byron she said, he is “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.“

Ada’s dangerous-to-know father’s father (her grandfather) was “Mad Jack”.   And his grandfather (stay with me here) committed suicide.  Lord Byron’s mother ran the Byron estate while the men made ill and herself suffered from ongoing melancholy.

When Ada insisted on hearing stories of her father,  her mother sought the advice of a trusted neighbor– the Scottish polymath, Mary Somerville.  Somerville provided a sure solution:  rigorous education in mathematics.

Lady Byron took the advice and hired mathematics tutors for her daughter at a time when girls did not study math.  The helpful neighbor, Somerville,  became Ada’s lifelong mentor.  Together,  the two women (and the many hired tutors) educated any potential “madness” out of little Ada.

I’d say they did well.  Ada became a prominent mathematician in Victorian England and never showed a traced of madness. She worked with Charles Babbage drafting the blueprints to the world’s first computer and she wrote the first computer program in history.  Ada turned out not mad nor bad and probably not very dangerous either.

Filed under: Childhood, Creative Families, Parents, The Child | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

To Yell or Not to Yell. That is my Question.

Posted on February 9, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote Poor Baby?  Nope.  Strong Baby.

Sirena Huang started violin lessons at age 4 and made her professional solo debut at 9 with the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.  I watched her play on TED several months ago and she’s been on my mind lately.  Especially after reading Amy Chua’s book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. I’ve seen musical prodigies before, but what blew me away when I watched Sirena, is how articulate she is and how at ease she seems on stage.  This kid must practice six hours a day,  just like Amy Chua’s pianist  and violinist daughters.

This is what I’ve thought: Does Sirena’s mom use the same techniques–mainly (as seen from a Western parent’s perspective), verbal and emotional abuse?  Is Sirena so well-spoken because her mother makes her practice (the Chinese way–i.e., a million times with no bathroom breaks or dinner) speaking as well?  And, does Sirena get as little sleep as the Chua daughters?
I will have to contact  and interview Sirena’s mom soon,  or at least before she writes her own book on raising a musical prodigy.
Musical prodigies–more common today than fifty years ago because of  Sinichi Suzuki’s method of music education, learn to play the violin or piano, like we all learn to speak–through immersion.  With the Suzuki method, children begin lessons at three years old. Parents attend all lessons and learn the instrument along with their child.  Practice sessions, ideally short–but plentiful throughout the day, become a main ingredient of early childhood. Perfection is the goal.
Amy Chua (a.k.a., tiger mom) got the perfection part correct. But she missed Mr. Suzuki’s core belief:  children learn best surrounded by lots of love and approval.  For Suzuki, the hard work of learning the violin, such as, is not experienced as hardship by a young student;  like learning to speak your native language is not a hardship.  The point of early music education is to make the learning seamless. And the point of music education is to uplift the human spirit through inspiration.  Suzuki said,
It is necessary to be concerned about the importance of educating a really beautiful human spirit.
But Suzuki wasn’t the first to think young children quick-studies of difficult instruments. The first young musical prodigies– Nannerl and Wolfgang,  lived in18th-century Austria.  The siblings (11 and 7 ) traveled Western Europe by horse-drawn coach on cobblestone streets and muddy roads with their father, who had taught them ( the piano and violin, also respectively) with love and encouragement.  The girl, Nannerl, played the piano for her family the rest of her days, and that is about all we know about her. But the boy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music.  His music became part of Western popular culture. You can hear Mozart’s music in TV commercials, movies and cartoons, even today.
When the Mozart children performed in Germany 235 years ago, a young tenor of the German court sat in awe listening in the audience.  Eight years later, when his son Ludwig learned to speak,  he began teaching him music. Beethoven’s father, Johann, used Amy Chua’s methods–well, she actually used his.  He yelled, screamed and beat his son to the point of sobbing at the piano.
Is there a lesson here?
Yep.
Here’s what I take from these stories:
I am partial to Beethoven because his music is so much more emotionally charged than Mozart’s– it makes grown men cry spontaneously, still today. But, both men were Highly Creative musicians.  The loving-inspiration method worked to make Mozart one of the top musician/composers of all time.  But the angry-yelling Johann, also seems to have produced musical genius–as shown in his son, Beethoven.  Regardless, both parents did have something in common. Both sat or stood beside their children as they practiced and helped them along every step of the way–in the beginning.  That, is the lesson.
The lesson for Amy Chua is: She did not have to yell at her girls to get them to Carnegie Hall, after all.  She could have been more like Mr. Mozart,  if she had been so inclined.
I’ve included Sirena Huang’s TED performance below.  For the sake of my personal comfort (and with best wishes for little Sirena) I will assume her mother raised her like Mozart –not the Chua girls.  Check it out!

Filed under: Childhood, Creative Families, Expectations, Music, Passion, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

No Mother–No Whips

Posted on January 30, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

For five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types. Yesterday I wrote the intro. to this series: Baby, Who Cares If It’s Cold Outside!

Amy Chua, the author of the controversial new book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the unabashed, if occasionally faux-contrite, heroine of her story.  The message is clear: her musical prodigy daughters could not have attained their brilliant success without their tough-love mom. Chua is more than queen of her home. She’s more of a micro-managing-manic, dictator/empress combo.  Chua’s emotionally abusive tactics aside, today we place tremendous value on a mother’s involvement in her childrens’ lives. But the truth is, loads of brilliant people from the past had little maternal influence as they grew-up. Still, the most striking truth I’d like to tell Amy Chua, is that the extreme tough-love stuff, may not be necessary either.

Read on for one super-interesting example that makes both my above points:

In early sixteenth-century France, the mayor of Bordeux, Pierre Eyquim read much and talked philosophy with whomever would listen– but his ignorance of Latin (the language of books), left him but a well-regarded dabbler. His son would have no such limit. Pierre Eyquim would make sure of that.

Before any Latin lessons, Pierre’s third baby boy–Michel needed to survive past infancy. The best way to do this, thought this father, is to raise him among peasants–and away from the soft life of the Eyquim family chateau.  The elder Eyquim also hoped the boy would acquire, by osmosis, an intuitive knowledge of the commoner’s ways.  This, Pierre seemed to think, would come in handy and even endear Michel to those  same commoners he would surely rule some day.

So to toughen his son up, Pierre had baby Michel’s wet nurse remain in her own home. Michel went to her –instead of the other way around, and she raised him barefoot alongside her own children– plus the goats and chickens, in a thatched-roof peasant’s cottage. Michel did not smell, see or feel the soft touch of his real mother until his third birthday.

Then, the next phase of Pierre Eyquim’s plan began. Historian Sarah Bakewell says,

The second element of [Michel's] experimental education would prove totally incompatible with the first.  Back in his family home [the grand chateau], little peasant Micheau was now to be brought up as a native speaker of Latin.

The little boy leaped–rather abruptly, from the peasants’ rough Perigorian to full Latin immersion, totally bypassing French.

Again, Sarah Bakewell says,

This was an astonishing project for anyone even to think of, let alone put into effect.

No one at home spoke any Latin. Finding a native Latin speaker would be almost impossible.  But Pierre remained undaunted. He  found a German tutor–who spoke flawless Latin but not a word of French, for his son. Everyone else in the household was banned from speaking to or around the little boy–until they could speak in educated Latin.  The tutor became the most important person in Michel’s early childhood.

Whatever happened to this little child so oddly educated?  He grew to become the most influential philosopher of the Renaissance–Michel de Montaigne.

Through the years, Michel de Montaigne recalled with fondness his father’s plans and ways.  Of his early education and skills acquisition, he later wrote,

[I learned] without artificial means, without a book, without grammar or precept, without the whip, and without tears.

He also said,

My father and mother learned enough Latin…to understand it, and acquired sufficient skill to use it when necessary, as did also the servants who were most attached to my service.  Altogether, we Latinized ourselves so much that it overflowed all the way to our villages on every side, where there still remain several Latin names for artisans and tools that have taken root by usage.  As for me, I was over six before I understood any more French or Perigordian than Arabic.

What would compel Michel de Montaigne’s father to follow such a plan? Historian Sarah Bakewell says,

Command of beautiful and grammatically perfect Latin was the highest goal of a humanistic education: it unlocked the door to the ancient world…as well as to much of modern culture, since most scholars still wrote in Latin.

If you spoke well, you must be able to think well. Pierre wanted to give his son the best advantage imaginable:  a link both to the lost paradise of antiquity and to a successful personal future.

Michel de Montaigne maintained a love of learning throughout his entire life and often credited his father for that gift. In turn,  Michel gifted the Western world with some of its greatest ideas.   He influenced Blaise Pascal, Shakespeare and Ralph Waldo Emerson and even helped usher in a new era of religious tolerance throughout Western Europe.

Not bad for someone who’s mother did not hold him or talk to him much!  And also, not bad for someone who never really cried over his lessons.

Filed under: Parents, Philosophers, The Child | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Baby, Who Cares If It’s Cold Outside!

Posted on January 28, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

I’m only a quarter-through Amy Chua’s new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, but I can barely help myself from commenting. So, here goes:

Chua tells the story of how she raised her daughters, the Chinese- mother way– with grueling hard work by both mother and child, belittlement of children as a valid disciplinary tool and practice, practice, practice. Chua writes,

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereo-typically successful kids…Well, I can tell them because I’ve done it.

  • Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do:
  • attend a sleepover
  • have a playdate
  • be in a school play
  • complain about not being in a school play
  • watch TV or play computer games
  • choose their own extracurricular activities
  • get any grade less than an A
  • not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
  • play any instrument other than the piano or violin
  • not play the piano or violin

She also says,

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.

For Chua, fun equals achievement. Her book is a good, fast read–but I can see why so many reviewers are shocked by its clarity and transparent motive.  Chua comes across as honest and deeply selfish and makes the group she calls “Western parents”– liberals with big hearts but ultimately naive about the truth of getting on in the world.

At one point, when Chua introduces her three-year-old daughter to the piano, her daughter refuses. Chua sends her outside in a little skirt and t-shirt–on a January morning with a wind-chill factor of 20 below zero.

Am I shocked or outraged?  Far from it.  History is packed with parents raising children unconventionally (for their time) and ending up with brilliant children.

For the next five days I’m writing about the most interesting methods people have used throughout history to raise brilliant children of all types.

Filed under: advice and expectations, Expectations, Parents, The Child | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Must Squash Play-dough?

Posted on January 27, 2011 by galarzamonsalve

This morning, while the baby took a nap in her stroller, my two-year-old and I opened our little beach pop-up tent to full size in the Music Room. She ran to the game closet in the hall and brought back a small container of play-dough, entered the tent and zippered the entrance shut.  I sat inside the tent, on the carpet with her.  She took the play-dough out of its container and squashed it into a lumpy pancake. Then she poked the pancake with the container in time to the music playing. She had no plan–but kept herself totally occupied for at least a half hour.  Then suddenly, she stood and said, Mom, can you make chocolate milk?

My daughter plays without a plan all the time.  Until she needs help.  And she does need help often.  Toddlers generally need help every three or four minutes. Their impulses are bigger than their capacity. Still, she needs less minute-to-minute attention than my ten-month-old. Babies and toddlers require so much adult help on so many levels.  I often marvel at the resources necessary to raise just one little person to adulthood. But why is this so?  Why do young humans need so much care?  Why can we not be more like, say, puppies, maturing much sooner? Wouldn’t we progress faster as a species if adults weren’t so preoccupied, so much of the time, with the needs of children?

Cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik has studied babies for more than a decade. She says,

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use.

Children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined.

The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

My two-year-old can keep the electric mixer steady in the batter bowl when she helps make pancakes and she can dress herself pretty well. Still, she spends hours following her whims–trying things out.  She hops. She puts on lipstick.  She cleans the interior of my car with baby wipes.

We all used to play this way, but most of us live very directed lives as adults.  Yet, Creativity requires us to play with thoughts, ideas and mediums, pointlessly–like a two-year-old.

Improvisational violinist Stephen Nachmanovich says,

The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.

Writer Julia Cameron suggests you take time to find this inner muse by taking yourself on an Artist’s Date.  She says,

The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery.

If my two-year-old’s impulses are bigger than her capacity–my capacity is bigger than my whims. Looks like I need an Artist’s Date–but I doubt I’ll spend it squashing play-dough!

Filed under: Art Concepts, Childhood, Making Time, The Child, Time Alone | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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