Tiger Moms

Still in Indiana; 10 days until our departure for Amsterdam.  I just read the review of the book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, in Time magazine. I have not read the book yet, and I am not sure I will.  I will be interested to see if this book is getting any play in Western Europe. To sum the main points of her book, according to Time:  American parents insulate their children too much from discomfort and distress; we assume fragility rather than strength; we slather too much praise on our children, for even the lowest of tasks; we all think our kids are "gifted" or "talented", rather than emphasizing hard work; we don't require our kids to drill enough on basic skills; we let our children off too easily, don't demand enough.
Have average middle class American children (and their parents) become lazy, averse to hard work? Too involved with TV, internet games, and other forms of entertainment?  Absolutely. Should we emphasize math more in public education? Yes. Do we over-protect our children and set our expectations too low?  Probably.  Should we set higher standards for our children and make sure they spend time each doing their homework? In many cases, yes. But is a narrowly-focused authoritarian, harsh, sometimes demeaning approach to parenting the answer?  I don't think so. As with many things in life, I think parenting and education is about finding a good balance-- striving for specific achievements and freedom to explore; accomplishing specific objectives and creativity; focused, hard work and flexibility; high expectations and acceptance; pleasing others and self-acceptance; future orientation and living one's whole life to the fullest.  Stepping back from the current obsession with standardized test scores, what kinds of persons do we want our kids to become?  That is a conversation we don't have often enough!

International Child Care Course

Plans for my 3 country child care research seminar are solidifying.  The course title is, "Child Care Quality Research & Policy in Germany, Netherlands, and United States." The tentative schedule has the course starting on April 20 and ending on July 29.  The course will include 10 students and a faculty member from each country.  Four of the classes will be via three-way video, so students will be at their home universities. The highlight will be a week long seminar for students from the 3 countries at the University of Amsterdam, from May 23 to 27.  The main focus of the course will be a comparative analysis of child care and family support research and policy in the 3 countries. The seminar week in Amsterdam will be exciting!  Lots of face to face meetings with the students and instructors, including seminars, student and faculty presentations, field trips to local early childhood programs, and of course many experiences in the Dutch culture! I will co-teach the course with colleagues from the U. of A. and the Free University in Berlin.

An Aside: Chimp stories

Dear Readers,
Although now I am a child development specialist, in a former life I once studied chimpanzees as a biologist.  Here are portions of a recent letter to Ms. Mildred Greear of Helen, Georgia, who asked me about some long-ago experiences with chimps on Ossabaw Island, Georgia.

Thinking of my time with the Ossabaw chimps--

Like Mark Wilson, I was a young biology graduate student at the time.

It was a truly wonderful opportunity for both of us to observe and take care of the chimps during those couple of years.

Mark was the first caretaker.  I believe he began when the chimps were first released in the spring of 1972.

I joined him as the "co-caretaker" in the autumn of 1972.

We did this job together until Mark left Ossabaw, in the autumn of 1973.  I continued alone in the job until I left the island in January, 1974.

You are interested specifically in our interactions with the male, Jiggs, and I am glad to share with you some of what I remember.

(I should say that I found the female chimps and the young chimps equally interesting-- though they did not perform the dramatic behavioural displays that Jiggs did!)

Mark and I were careful not to come into direct contact with Jiggs if possible, though we had many close encounters observing him, and being observed by him.

I remember that one of my early realizations regarding the chimps was that here was a nonhuman animal who, as I observed him and contemplated his world and what he might be doing and thinking, I had the distinct impression that he was likewise observing and contemplating me!

You asked about direct contact and an incident in which Jiggs came through the gate an into the people cage (aka the "exclosure.")

I can remember once at low tide, Jiggs while performing his typical "greeting" display, was able to edge his way down the exposed mud flat and somehow get around the fence and into the exclosure.

However, I did see him coming, and I quickly pushed the boat out of the exclosure and into the river, where I watched him from a safe distance, proudly continue his display INSIDE the people cage.  He was very creative with his dominance displays, always looking for new things to bang on or new implements to include.  Getting inside the people cage must have been exciting for him!

We did often get very close to Jiggs, but it was always with a strong fence between us.  We supplied fresh water and fruit treats to all of the chimps,  but from the confines of the people cage, which you may remember had an observation platform at the top, about 15 feet above the ground.  In the bottom of the people cage was a pen the chimps could enter and get a drink from the push button water tank, which we regularly refilled.  We also filled a hopper with Purina Monkey chow, to supplement their diets, especially during the cold months when foraging on the island was not so productive for them.  We usually brought some oranges or bananas along, and we would pass those treats through the chain link fence of the people cage to them.  We often touch their fingers as they extended them through the fence, observed them closely, and interacted with them when they came into the pen to drink, eat, or get these treats.  It was a chance for us to assess their condition and health.

One incident I remember clearly, and which you may find interesting, happened as the weather got colder, that first winter of 1972-73.  Mark and I became increasingly concerned about the chimps' health and well-being as the weather got colder and colder that year.  They are tropical animals, not well adapted to the cold temperatures and wind of semi-tropical coastal Georgia.  The staff at Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta had constructed two houses on stilts for the chimps when they first released them in the summer.  They anticipated the stress the cold weather might bring to the chimps, and these houses were installed to give the chimps a place to get out of the wind and preserve body heat.  They looked like large dog houses on 3 foot stilts, sturdily constructed with a few plexiglass windows on the front, and a hole to enter from below through the bottom.  Like the Yerkes scientists, we assumed that when the chimps began to suffer from the cold, being highly intelligent animals, they would use these houses for shelter.  But as Mark and I observed that winter, they did not!  Even as the temperature dipped below freezing, with the wind biting through our warm coats, the chimps simply sat out in the open clearing, huddling with their arms wrapped around themselves, shivering with cold.  They did not seem to have the "idea" of taking shelter!  We talked about this, and we remembered we had read about and seen photographs of chimps in Jane Goodall's study in Gombe Stream.  During the frequent rainstorms in the rainy season, she observed that the chimps did not seek shelter, even though they could have easily gone under a tree stay at least partly dry.  They simply sat out in the open, with the rain pouring down on them, getting completely drenched.  This lack of concern or reaction to rainy conditions apparently did not affect their fitness in Africa, where it remained warm even in the rainy season.  However, their lack of a sense of shelter we feared might prove fatal on Bear Island in the winter!

We discussed what we might do to convince the chimps to try the shelters.  Like humans, chimps are great imitators.  We thought that if we could demonstrate how to get into the houses, they might be at least curious enough to try it.  However, neither one of us had ever been out of the people cage, except for a moment or two, while the chimps were ranging freely outside-- especially when the big male Jiggs was out there. We also observed some attempts by the chimps to use material in the environment to get warm.  Chimps are nesters by habit.  Every night they make a nest for sleeping up in the trees.  They do this by climbing up and folding branches and other available materials together into a a sort of pile high in the tree, until it is soft enough and will support their weight for sleeping. Mark and I observed that when the chimps were very cold and sitting out in the open, some of them were scraping up with their hands leaves and branches that were nearby, making a crude nest of material around them, in an apparent attempt to stay warmer.  So we thought, "Ah, they DO know about nests!  How can we link this instinct to make nests to a new behavior of using the houses for shelter?"  We hit upon the idea of bringing a bale or two of straw out to the island, to provide them with some additional nesting material to use on the ground in the clearing near the people cage.  If they saw the usefulness of the straw for a nest on the ground, maybe then we could put some straw inside the houses, and they would get the idea that they could have a nest in there!  We had easy access to bales of straw on the main island.  But a major problem still remained:  How could we safely give the chimps the straw and demonstrate the use of straw inside their houses? 

We did not know how Jiggs would react to our presence with him, outside of the people cage, but we were not about to go out there and find out!  He was an impressive, imposing animal, weighing about 150 pounds and standing about 5 feet 6 inches when erect.  We had read that chimp muscles are 2 or 3 times stronger than human muscles, and we had been impressed with his feats of strength during his displays-- climbing trees easily, swinging from branches, tearing off large branches, etc.

Ultimately we decided we must lure Jiggs into the pen within the people cage, close him in there safely, and then proceed to take straw out into the clearing to show all of the chimps how to use it.  We were still a bit worried about how the 5 female chimps would react to our presence outside the fence.  But we thought that their reaction would probably be to keep their distance from us.  We hoped they would not flee entirely, so that they could still watch what we were doing.

As it turned out, our plan worked smashingly!  First we contained Jiggs in the pen, happily munching on fruits and nuts.  When we ventured out with the bales of straw, the females scattered a bit, but watched us carefully from the edges of the clearing.  I do wish now I had a video now of Mark and I taking the straw bales apart, doing our best to use the straw to imitate the chimps as they had made their "nests" the ground.  I am sure our being outside the cage was a great shock to everyone!  Add to that our strange nesting behaviour!   

After nesting for a while, we carried armloads of straw to the chimp housed, each climbing up into a house with straw in our arms and sitting in there for a while.  Then we retreated back to the people cage, released Jiggs into the clearing, and waited to see what the chimps would do.  I don't remember what they did that day, but from that time on they used the houses for shelter on the coldest days.  Looking back on these events, it reminds me of two opposing principles.  One is the strength of instinctive behavior.    These highly intelligent animals simply did not seem to have a natural sense of how to get themselves in out of the cold.  It's interesting to me that humans have evolved the concept of shelter and all human societies have figured out how to make shelters that effectively protect them from extremes in temperature and wind. On the other hand, I was impressed by the power of observational learning by the chimps.  They certainly were able to watch us do these strange things and somehow concluded imitating us was worth a try!  Not too many non-human animals would do that!

Mildred, I am sorry to disconfirm the grooming story!  But I hope you have enjoyed reading about how the chimps learned to use shelter.

Plans for Italy

I am excited to report that I will be going to Italy for the first time in March!  I have the opportunity to attend a one week study course in Pistoia, which is near Florence in the north.  They have infant child care programs that are well known.  The course is being led by my friend Carolyn Edwards from U. of Nebraska, who has studied and written extensively about the northern Italian early childhood programs.  My conception of the programs is that they are very child-and relationships-centered, with lots of ways of involving families.  It will be great to visit and discuss them with others!

Still in Indiana-Getting Ready!

Our upcoming 5 months in Europe seems more real everyday. We are rearranging our houses, getting ready for our renters/housesitters.  Booking flights to and from Amsterdam, plus for travel between AMS and Madrid.  I will be a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam.  I plan to do a lot of reading and writing, advise the U of A about one of their graduate programs, plan the next international child care research seminar, and co-teach the seminar. Patty will be in Madrid doing research on her sound in Spanish film project.  We plan to visit back and forth often, and we hope to take a few side trips. We depart for Amsterdam on Feb. 6.  Lots to do before then!