It's Normal to be Average.

It's called "The Lake Wobegon Effect," after radio host Garrison Keillor's fictional town where "all the children are above average." We all want our kids to be above average. But the very meaning of "average" scuttles our desire. It's perfectly okay to be average and all of us are, in one way or another. This means we need to cut our kids some slack.

In the grand scheme of things only 20% of humans are "exceptional" in any particular quality. The statistical plotting of probable outcomes and deviation from the mean dictates that only a few folks are exceptions to the general run. Half of those exceptions fall to the lesser side and half fall to the greater side. So, most of us possess average coordination. Ten percent or fewer of us have exceptionally bad coordination and ten percent or fewer have exceptionally good coordination. That's just the way it is. No amount of coaching or training or eating of Wheaties will change the fact that 80% of us are about the same when it comes to physical coordination.

The same is true of every other quality you can imagine. Physical attractiveness and beauty: 80% of us are average. Math ability: 80% are reasonably proficient. Musical talent: 80%. Social skills: 80%. Intelligence: 80%. Of the remaining 20% in each case, half are above average and half are below.

This is not to say that you (or I) might not be exceptionally good-looking but only average in cooking skill and far below average in ability to program a DV-R. Talents and abilities are individual and we can have a range of them. Even Einstein wasn't good at everything! But we are most likely exceptional in only a few things and pretty average in all the rest.

It's all fine and well for us adults to admit our average-ness, but we would like our children to be top of the class in everything they attempt. And this is not just impossible but probably damaging. No kid can be the best-behaved, the most popular, the smartest in science, the winner of the essay contest, the captain of the football team, and lead singer of a garage band that signed with a big label and sold out Qwest Field in their first stop on a 10-country tour. But parents tend to expect this sort of stuff. For many kids, just signing up for an activity means they have to become the top performer in short order.

That's not fair. It doesn't allow kids to grow and experiment and it saddles them with expectations that might exceed their abilities. Your kids, like mine, are average in most things.

Not only that, but the push to be exceptional drives parents to diagnose their kids with below-average performance too quickly. Developmental milestones are achieved over a range of ages and practice does make perfect. It's important to give kids time to grow into their abilities and not hurry to assume they need remedial assistance.

Children flourish best when they're allowed to be who they truly are and are given the time needed to get there.


What's been your experience? I'd love to hear your comments on this....

Happy Father's Day!

Research continues to support the notion that fathers are important to children, not only because of the financial support they provide but because of the unique perspective men contribute to the development of children. Dads play differently with their kids than moms do, are concerned about different things, and help their kids in different ways. The key is “different” not “wrong.”

Too often mothers get the idea that they have the one right method of parenting. This notion probably starts when the newborn comes home and parents are confronted with the possibility of making dangerous mistakes. In fact, of course, babies are pretty resilient – if they weren’t the human species would have died out long ago – and most parents do a decent job of keeping kids safe. But this impulse to impose the “one right way” to parent often freezes out fathers, who naturally do things differently than mothers do.

The point here is that moms and dads provide complementary support and guidance to their kids. Children need both perspectives. While general agreement on household rules and expectations for kids is good, parents’ interaction styles can be quite different. This is ok.

Today, when we honor fathers, honor also the unique contributions dads make in the lives of children.

... happens first at home.

Maybe you should move the crib

A new study from a major conference of sleep researchers reports that babies whose beds are in the same room as their parents and whose parents linger in the room while the child falls asleep take longer to fall asleep and wake more during the night than children who sleep in their own rooms. The quality of children’s sleep was better and they slept for more total hours when they were encouraged to fall asleep on their own and slept in a different room than their parents. This was a large-scale study, involving over 28,000 infants and toddlers from more than seventeen countries, including the United States.

The take-home message is obvious: if your older infant or toddler is struggling to fall asleep at night and seems wakeful for no reason, consider moving the crib to another room and consider letting the child fall asleep on her own. Within a few nights, you should see a new, more peaceful pattern emerge.

... happens first at home.

Setting a good example: A puzzle

This morning I took my dog for a walk, as usual. What was not usual was that on the sidewalk at the bus stop were the broken pieces of beer bottle. I clucked my tongue and carefully walked the dog past the glass.

On the return trip, the bus stop was crowded with middle schoolers. As I steered the dog around these kids, he kicked a shard of glass. The noise made me stop. I picked up the piece of glass (luckily, the dog was not hurt) and stood there a second with the glass in my hand.

What to do with it? Do I put it on the curb? Drop it back in the street? Hide it in the bushes? And then there was the rest of the broken bottle. What to do with that? I realized the middle schoolers were watching me. I took a baggie out of my pocket and filled it with all the glass, pocketed it and walked on home.

So here's my puzzle. I didn't feel I needed to pick up any of the glass on my first trip down the sidewalk. I picked it up only when my dog tripped over it and, even then, only because kids were watching. I doubt I would have done the good-citizen thing of picking up all the glass if the students hadn't been there.

I can tell you that I was acutely conscious of setting a good example. The reason why I didn't just drop the glass my dog had hit was because I realized that how I handled the situation would be a lesson, if you will, for the kids who were watching.

So, along with a whole host of ethical and socially-aware considerations this little incident brings to mind, how important is it to model what we want our kids to do while they are present? When we do the responsible thing - whatever that is - should we be sure to do it when we have an impressionable audience?

... happens first at home.