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(P)raising Kids

Posted on April 21, 2009
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My sister sent me a link to a recent article published in New York Magazine, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids”. The article is based on the work of a Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, about the effect of praising your kids. She found that if kids were praised for their effort, they were willing to take up much harder challenges than if they were praised for being smart or somehow naturally talented. In other words, praising them for what they did rather than what they were thought to be, resulted in happier kids, kids willing to raise up to a challenge.

Why did this happen ? According to Carol Dweck, “When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.”

The article further states: “Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.”

Carol Dweck has written a book about her work, “Mindset“, and even has a website devoted to the subject. Dividing the world into two camps (ever since Descartes, it seems that the West is forever carving up the world into two camps): those with a “fixed mindset” and those with a “growth mindset”. From the website:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

Coincidentally, I was talking with a friend of mine who mentioned that he had heard about a research on the radio in which they found that kids who were praised for being smart were found to lie more often to not disabuse the belief that they were smart.

Not picking up harder challenges to avoid the cognitive dissonance that arises should they fail at accomplishing the task, lying to calm the cognitive dissonance already awakened, all because they were praised for being smart. For a long time, I was haunted by the passages in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that described the brilliance of one of the main protagonists, Francisco D’Anconia. How I longed to be that brilliant. To effortlessly master a task. Here I was, bumbling my way through life.

Growing up, I learnt quite quickly that getting into my parents’ good books was easy if I topped the class. Everytime I stood first in the class, smiles were aplenty from my mom and my dad. If I came in second, I was grilled about what I did wrong, who had beaten me, to study their weaknesses and beat them the next time around. While they did say “Don’t worry, study harder and come first the next time, you’re smart”, it was quite evident that what mattered was coming first. In the Indian school system with monthly tests, quarterly and annual exams, there were lots of opportunities either win their affection or lose it.

Unconsciously, I equated being loved to being the first in whatever I did, beating everybody else. Inadvertently, my parents had pushed me into the comparison game, a game at which satisfaction was always transitory. It was like attempting to overtake vehicles on a highway; there was always somebody else ahead to overtake. It was exhausting.

In my attempt to top the class, I took to rote memorization of the subject. Sometimes, if I was very tense, I’d mix up the question and answer at first and had to work extra hard to undo the mistake and still finish the exam on time. To this day, I can expound on evolution, neuroscience and network protocols, but my basic physics is practically nil as is my basic chemistry and math. I memorized the rules without ever understanding them enough to know when to apply them in everyday life. It is a constant source of amusement to Shanthala who says that I got into college without ever passing through school.

This attempt to top the class also made me very competitive and jealous of anybody who could beat me at the game. It was in Davangere that I first learnt that there are other ways of learning, of being. When I topped the class the first time, Shanthala and another friend congratulated me enthusiastically. Surprised at what seemed like genuine praise, I asked them, “Are you not even a little jealous that I beat you to it ?”. Dumbfounded, they said no. I couldn’t believe my ears.

With the growing years, this urge to compete at everything, the urge to win every argument, to have the last word, made me a fairly abrasive individual. How I made the good friends that I have, I’ll never know.

I was never happy with where I was. Happiness and peace were always ahead of me, never with me. One day, a few years back, I was biking to work. A kid was biking ahead of me. He turned and saw me, and decided to peddle hard to stay ahead. Automatically, I picked up my pace and raced past the kid, who looked sad as I effortlessly passed him. A little later, I was horrified at what I had done.

I was talking to a close friend at work, many years my senior, about my competitive reflex. He told me a story that happened when he was new in the industry, and working at one of US’ premier research labs in computer science. His boss had just been listed by the Time magazine as one of the top 25 innovators in the country. The week after that article had come out, they were in a meeting with one of the gods of computer science, of distributed computing. My friend, Michael, told me how his boss, a publicly acknowledged paragon of brightness and innovation, stammered and fumbled through the meeting because he wanted this established figurehead to think that he was smart.

I was the same. I realized that if I didn’t give up this quest to top everybody and everything, I’d die unhappy, unsatisfied, malcontent. Since that day, I’ve worked to enjoy what I do, to focus on the process and not the end result.

I had resolved very early on that in raising Maya, I would never focus on the end result, only on the process. The research by Carol Dweck indicates that praising for what you do as opposed to what qualities you possess is another parenting mistake to avoid.

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Dirt is Good, More is Better

Posted on January 28, 2009
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Four days after we arrived in India, Maya came down with what seemed like a cold. She had a little fever on the first day, but not after that. Two weeks later, she continues to have a unabated runny nose. During the night, her breathing is a little ragged sometimes, especially if the fan is on, but quite normal at other times. We suspect what she has is more an allergic reaction than a cold, though friends here have colds that seem to last a month. We’ve been careful about boiling filtered water before giving it to her and so far she has not suffered any stomach disorders. One of my fears about bringing her to India was her developing breathing problems or skin conditions as an allergic reaction to the more polluted and dusty air. One of our friends had to hospitalize their child after she developed severe allergic reactions. When I had to cancel a social engagement because she seemed to be bothered more than usual by her cold, they commented that this was common, that their grandchildren all went through some allergic reaction or caught cold when they came to India from the US. One of them was even being treated with Ayurveda as the western counterpart was considered to be non-conducive.

One common folk wisdom is that children growing up in US’s sterile climate are less prepared to deal with the plethora of allergens and microbes that populate India. Shanthala pointed out an article in today’s New York Times titled “Babies Know: A Little Dirt Is Good for You”. The article alludes to what is called the “hygiene hypothesis”, a hypothesis first formulated in 1989 by a British professor of epidemiology, a hypothesis with a comprehensive entry in the Wikipedia. According to this hypothesis, now considered to be well supported by data, a lack of exposure to infectious microbes and symbiotic microorganisms in early childhood leads to a compromised immune system, a system that can’t differentiate between harmless agents such as pollen and harmful ones such as mycobacteria and so reacts to pollen producing an allergic reaction.

People of the new world were wiped out by diseases carried by the old world invaders, diseases to which they had no immunity. White settlers to the US deliberately and systematically sold small pox infected blankets and clothes to the native Americans, thereby wiping out broad swaths without firing a single bullet. Jared Diamond explored and exposited the reasons why Spaniards invaded North and South America and not the other way in his Pulitzer Prize winning book “Guns, Germs and Steel” (Paul Shepard walked similar ground but with a more incisive and unwavering commentary, see his Paul Shepard Reader for example). One of the theories he espoused is that with greater domestication of animals in the old world, people there developed better immunity and to more diseases compared to the new world where domesticable animals were far fewer.

Senses in infants is equal to the adult counterparts between three to six months. As adults, sight is our most advanced and used sense. So why do infants put things in their mouth ? The NYT article also postulates that infants and toddlers explore the world by putting things in their mouth because it provides an evolutionary advantage, by training the immune system. From the article:

“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

The article quotes another researcher, David Elliot, as saying intestinal worms may be the most significant player in training the immune system. Therapies based on injecting these worms into humans has shown to alleviate the symptoms of patients with autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis. Another researcher, Dr. Joel Weinstock says:

“Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.

This advice has practical consequences for people such as us, visiting homeland for a few weeks, trying to cram social engagements and valuable time with grandparents, close friends and relatives into a short span. A sick child with a runny nose and a runnier stomach is not likely to permit too much cramming. And I wonder if infrequent exposures help much. There is no dearth of pathogens here. Shanthala was down all of yesterday with a badly upset stomach. Today, she has a sore throat. Sigh. The dilemma of parenthood. Sometimes, I think our parents had it a lot easier.

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Parental Control

Posted on November 27, 2008
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Since Maya was born, people have been constantly opining which one of us she looks most like. Some see in her the spitting image of my family’s characteristics, some see Shanthala in her, some say that she looks like me but her eyes are unlike either of us, Shanthala herself says that Maya’s chin is unlike either of us. Comments pass from her features to her skin color. She’s much fairer than either of you, some have said while others have said that she has Shanthala’s skin tone. And then they’re amazed at her height (she’s in the 95th percentile for her age and sex) and wonder where that characteristic came from.

Shanthala and I joke (with a hint of seriousness) about the roots of Maya’s seeming impatience or her easy, smiling nature. My parents compare her to my sister in terms of how easy she seems to be to care for. Many say that girls are easier to raise than boys. Maya had a lot of eczema till recently. While she never seemed bothered by it, Shanthala and her parents worried that her skin maybe as sensitive as Shanthala’s was and that she may suffer from skin irritations.

All this is boringly normal, this ongoing back-and-forth between who a child looks more like and which characteristic comes from whom. But it appears that the battle rages inside in very fascinating ways.

It is well understood that a child inherits half the genes from the biological mother and half from the biological father (in a world of donor eggs, donor sperms, surrogate mothers and adopted children, the simple terms mother and father have become too narrow to capture the reality). Typically both copies of the genes are active in the child. But in a less than one percentage of them, one of the copies is turned off. In some cases, it is the mother’s copy that is turned off and in some cases, it is the father’s. Wait, you say, isn’t this what I learned in school about dominant and recessive alleles ? About how blue eyes are a dominant gene over brown eyes and so gets expressed ? Isn’t this what you’re talking about ? Sure, this is true only if both copies differ from each other, not if they’re similar. Also, the discussion revolved around whether a particular gene was dominant over the other.

Here is where a newly discovered technique differs. In some small percentage of cases, the same gene sequence will express a different behavior in the offspring depending on which parent’s copy is turned off. For example, if the copy comes from the mother it produces blue eyes and if it comes from the father, it produces brown eyes (the color of the eyes is used for illustration, it is not a real example of this technique). This seems absurd. The same gene sequence should produce the same behavior, independent of the source of the gene. This mechanism of inheritance where the behavior is determined by which copy of the parent the gene comes from is called gene imprinting (or genomic imprinting) i.e. which parent’s imprint is retained in the offspring’s copy. It is now considered a separate process of inheritance compared to the classical Mendelian genetic inheritance.

But wait, gene imprinting gets even more interesting. In an interview with the magazine Edge, the evolutionary geneticist explains:

This is a complicated process because the imprint can be erased and reset. For example, the maternal genes in my body when I pass them on to my children are going to be paternal genes having paternal behavior. If my daughter passes on paternal genes to her children, even though she got the gene as a paternal gene from me it would be a maternal gene to her own offspring. Molecular biologists are particularly interested in understanding the nature of these imprints, and how it is possible to modify DNA in some way that is heritable but can then be reset.

This would be merely fascinating if it didn’t have startling consequences on the offspring. There are children who always smile and laugh, but sadly also have symptoms that are similar to those with severe autism and they mostly never learn to read or write. Some other children almost not nurse as infants forcing them to be tube fed but in a few years time, they develop an insatiable appetite and develop schizophrenia. The first suffer from a genetic disorder called Angelman syndrome and the latter suffer from a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome, the first is caused by mutations to the paternal gene imprinting and the latter is caused by mutations to maternal gene imprinting. Many scientists now speculate gene imprinting to be the cause of many problems that plague us humans from asthma and diabetes to cancer. The reason for this is that one of the copies from the parent is bad, the other copy is present to be used. But in case of gene imprinting, the good copy is turned off and only the bad copy retained, making the offspring more susceptible to disorders.

In 1999, David Haig offered an intriguing hypothesis that suggested that in the battle for imprinting the child, each parental genome approached the union with a view that was beneficial to their side. Evolutionarily, for a mother, it is important to spread her efforts amongst all her children, striking a balance between putting all her eggs into a single child and spreading herself too thin by having too many of them. For a father on the other hand, it was more useful to ensure that his child got the most attention (and resources) from the mother compared to other children (biologically, monogamy is a culturally induced trance, and one that is frequently broken). Thus, mother’s side of the gene pool was growth moderation while the father’s side was growth promotion.

Interestingly, gene imprinting is not known in animals other than mammals. Platypus, for example, the earliest mammals, do not have any genes that are imprinted.

In a recent article in the science magazine, Discover, the excellent science writer, Carl Zimmer, explains all this and takes it one step further. He quotes the work of two evolutionary biologists, Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock, who suggest that “our minds too are shaped by this battle between the parental genes”. They hypothesize that autism and schizophrenia are the two faces of this evolutionary conflict between the parental genes expressed in the brain. Carl writes:

One of the most striking contrasts between autism and schizophrenia is how they affect the ability to understand others. Autistic people have a difficult time figuring out what other people are feeling. Schizophrenic people, on the other hand, sometimes do too good a job. They may come to believe that a refrigerator is talking to them, for example, or that people are conspiring against them.

Crespi and Badcock propose that these symptoms result from the genetic conflict. Empathetic children can see how frazzled they’re making their mothers and how much attention their siblings need. Maternal genes should therefore boost our abilities to get inside other people’s heads. Paternal genes, on the other hand, may benefit by reducing these distractions from the business of getting more resources from mothers.

Life is such a wondrous miracle. I’ve often times felt puzzled about how people can accept a simple explanation such as god when there are such fascinating explorations and reasons which can explain how this miracle actually happens. Most of the time, all goes well and we end up with a healthy, normal child. Most of the time. On this Thanksgiving Day, I want to offer thanks and express gratitude for the turns of time that have placed Shanthala and I where we are, with who we are and how we are. And of course for the healthy gift of life that almost didn’t happen, Maya.

References:
- Imprinted And More Equal, American Scientist, 2007
- GeneImprint: The main technical website that discusses everything pertaining to gene imprinting
- Alleles & Inheritance: A webpage discussing the difference between normal and imprinting inheritance

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