Since before I became a mother I have loved reading Brain, Child. It's tagline is, "The Magazine for Thinking Mothers," and it's been called "The New Yorker for Moms."
One of the skills Levine emphasizes is resilience, something I see in my own research on competitive kids' activities as well. Last week if you watched the Scripps National Spelling you saw this directly. The winner, Arvind Mahankai, won on his fourth attempt (after finishing third the past two years in a row and going out on a German word each time-- though he won with a German/Yiddish word this year). Please click through to my latest at Psychology Today to read more on how competitive children's activities like the Spelling Bee can help boost kids' competitive kid capital, and build more resilient individuals.
My biggest issue with Allegra was that I found the story ended rather abruptly given the serious issues raised by depression and leaving school due to sexual allegations and a form of bullying. The school Allegra attends in Canada doesn't seem nearly as competitive as other performing arts high schools I have read about and seen, as many students seem to collaborate across their artistic fields (visual arts, dance, music, etc.), but that doesn't stop feelings of jealousy between friends causing serious fallout for both teens and adults.
Unlike in Allegra, competition is front and center in The Lucy Variations. For the eponymous Lucy though this competition is organized and not between peers. Lucy and her younger brother Gus are considered prodigies on the piano competition and festival circuit. Lucy abruptly left the circuit eight months before the story begins after her grandmother passes away. The story focuses on her return to playing as she learns to balance attending school full-time (and not being tutored or attending a music academy) and a social life. And, again, those feelings for an older male teacher. The Lucy Variations has a great deal of layered nuance, along with an air of mystery that surrounds all of the characters (both central, like grandpa, and more tertiary, like Aruna). I seriously devoured the book in a few hours and loved the insight provided by Zarr about the impacts of serious levels of obscure fame and competition on teens.
The three main observations about competition that I found apply to many kids across competitive activities include: 1) Grandpa's attitude described on page 14 that "everyone is the competition" even if the child doesn't agree. 2) Reyna, Lucy's best friend, when she observes that, "You miss having an audience." Reyna thinks that Lucy seeks out attention in all aspects of life because she has become so used to performing and having people watch her from a young age. 3) Teacher Will's confession about young prodigies who grow up and find, "We grow up, and we aren't so special anymore." This is one of the most difficult things that haunt those who excel earlier in various endeavors, even on a small scale, because their identities are so wrapped up in being the best and always doing well.
Both stories will interest young readers who are piano players or musicians themselves, though I think The Lucy Variations will also appeal to those who have no other interest in music and who are interested in being enveloped by a good story. I love that YA novels cover these sorts of topics and I look forward to reading more books like these soon.
It's been a busy week; and I suspect it will continue to get busier as I prepare for the release of Playing to Win-- or at least I hope so!
Before detailing those though, some thoughts on making all this work as a mom: On the day I did the two TV appearances described below, which bookend-ed my work day, I thought I had *finally* figured out how to be a mom, work, be a friend, etc. I did NECN early, dropped off breakfast for a close friend with a new baby where we talked about the "usual" postpartum issues, ran to exercise, and raced home to put Carston down for his nap since I didn't get to do our usual morning routine earlier. During the day I managed to get our garage door repaired and give Carston some extra Mommy kisses while preparing for Greater Boston. After the WGBH appearance I again raced home, and Carston and I headed off to dinner with a friend at the local mall. As I drove there I remember thinking to myself, "What a day! After 15 months this is really clicking!" My husband was out of town for work and I felt like this was proof I could make all this work. Famous last words, right?! Well, Carston and his friend (who is almost 3) had a great time at P.F.Chang's. They were so cute together mimicking one another-- one would laugh, and vice versa, one would babble something and so would the other. The "problem" with this is that Carston is very into screeching. Can't figure out why this is, or whether or not this means he will be an opera singer, but no matter what we have tried to do, he still screeches like a little screech owl. Of course then, his friend screeched back. While most of the people around us were very understanding, one man in particular, sitting behind me, kept telling me how wrong I was to bring my son out and that this wasn't Chuck E. Cheese. I chose not to engage with him, but I did feel his comments were way out of line given that P.F. Chang's has a children's menu and the Natick Mall is one of the most baby/family-friendly places I have ever seen. I could have let this man put a damper on my day, and he did a bit (so much so that I am writing this), but other people around us were so nice, and as my friend pointed out there are SO many more good people in the world than bad. I ended the day by eating my carryout P.F. Chang's Lo Mein (couldn't eat while dealing with this man and my little screech owl), watching my WGBH appearance, and waking up around 1 am when John got home. All in all though, I still hope we are *finally* figuring all this out, despite people telling me where I should or shouldn't take my Little Man...
The other piece is about a young man who took competition too far, punching youth soccer coach Ricardo Portillo in the head during a game in Utah. Portillo died from his injuries a week later-- a sad incident that should prompt legal changes to protect sports officials and reflection about what increasing competition is doing to youth. This article, "Youth Soccer Shouldn't Be A Blood Sport" is on WBUR's Cognoscenti blog, a site where I have long desired to see my words appear (and that I got the YES on my birthday was a nice treat).
I've also done both TV and radio recently, talking about competition. In a radio appearance on The Larry Fedoruk Show on NewsTalk 610 out of Canada, I spoke about links between bullying and competition. You can hear that by clicking HERE.
Speaking again and bullying, and links to violence and social media, I appeared on WGBH's Greater Boston with Emily Rooney for a very interesting discussion about boys, terrorism, and violence. It was triggered by the arrest of an 18-year-old high school student, Cameron D'Ambrosio, in the Boston area for making terrorist threats on Facebook, but the discussion went much deeper into youth culture today.
Finally, another discussion about youth culture and competition took place at NECN's The Morning Show about how college graduates can navigate the increasingly competitive labor market after graduation.
This time of year is filed with competitive experiences- both victories and fall-out from losses- and I look forward to thinking, writing, and discussing more about these topics. Thanks for reading and listening/watching!
I've been writing so much lately, partly in preparation for the release of Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture (have I mentioned you can pre-order it now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the University of California Press' website?!), that I decided to do a writing round-up this week.
These four different pieces give you a sense of different outlets for competition, especially in childhood-- including the athletic field, the classroom, the stage, and the television screen.
1) “Qualities of the B (aka Bench-Warming) Player” at PsychologyToday.com- I am very excited that I now have a monthly blog, Playing to Win, at Psychology Today where I will write about the intersections of competition and childhood in America. Stay tuned for topics like the National Spelling Bee and measuring ambition.
3) Oxford Bibliographies entries on Child Beauty Pageants and After-school Hours and Activities in the Childhood Studies volume- I was honored to be recognized as the leading social scientist in these two areas and to write the entry for them. While they both include some of my work (obviously!), they also suggest other areas to explore including books, articles, television shows, and documentaries to help you learn more about these often misunderstood areas of children's lives.
Every year around April 1st we get a wave of news coverage about college admissions. Even though research has not (yet) shown that attending an elite school means you'll make more money, lots of other studies suggest that it does matter. Often the ways it matters are difficult to measure, but they include social networks and access to resources, information, and opportunities.
This year three much talked about op-eds were published within a day of one another. First there was the New York Times piece by Claire Vaye Watkins, "The Ivy League was Another Planet." Then the next day brought Suzy Lee Weiss' "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me: If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity)" and Susan Patton's letter in The Daily Princetonian, "Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had." The Weiss and Patton pieces have been extremely polarizing (if you haven't read them, click through and you'll immediately see why). The Watkins piece has a much more measured, even sociological bent to it, making a connection between information (and lack thereof) about the Ivy League to an abundance of information about the military option in poor American communities.
I haven't seen anyone connect these three pieces, but to me they all address what sociologists call cultural capital. Weiss and Patton-- who I kind of see as same sides of a generational coin-- know that attending an Ivy brings you a particular type of cultural capital; it's why Weiss wanted to attend one and why Patton says Ivy Leaguers should practice assortative mating (a college classmate, Ross Douthat [who incidentally also married a fellow '02er like I did] wrote about this exceptionally well in the the Times). Now both women seem uncomfortably and unlikelably elitist (Patton claims her ex-husband went to a no-name college and in an interesting Today Show appearance Weiss seems to put down Penn State) but that doesn't mean there isn't a kernel of truth in what they are saying. Watkins' piece is evidence of that. Attending an Ivy means knowing enough to get there, and getting access to lots of other information once you are "in."
Of course, that's not always without complications: It can also mean a permanent inferiority complex. This is spoken by an outsider who has since managed to become an insider, albeit while trying to retain an outsider's perspective. I actually write about this at the beginning of my forthcoming book, Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture, as so much of the focus of many parents I met is how their elementary school-age kids will get to an elite college someday (oh, have I mentioned you can now pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the University of California Press' website?!).
Watkins, a published author and professor, doesn't seem caught up in an inferiority complex. Weiss' self-deprecating humor may yet give her an out and she can enjoy her infamy. I suppose there's still hope for them that they can marry Patton's youngest son, since in Patton's world Princeton men can marry "down"... Although I'm guessing both young women have other foci and aren't just focused on getting married to an Ivy Leaguer. And if they are, I suppose there's always graduate school.
