The Choice of Chance

"We go out in the world and take our chances

Fate is just the weight of circumstances

That's the way that Lady Luck dances

Roll the bones..."

—Rush, Roll the Bones

We hadn't even been drinking when we blew the stop sign. Up until that moment, we had just been driving around, cruising the main drag, listening to music, and talking about girls. For us, it was normal guy teen time in high school. 

My best friend and I decided to hang out with another friend one Friday night who had a pretty sweet old Mustang. He was in the passenger seat and I was in the back seat. After driving around for maybe an hour, we headed to 7-11 to get Big Gulps and other snacks. As we drove along a side street, our Mustang friend accelerated quickly. That wasn't unusual for any of us at the time when we'd decide to hit the gas and flex our testosterone a bit. 

But this time we weren't very far from a main artery in town, a four-lane avenue that usually had regular traffic at all times including later at night when we were driving around. He hit the gas and didn't let up as we headed to the intersection of the main avenue. I remember us cussing and yelling at him to stop -- and then we blew the stop sign. 

We thought we were going to die a horrible death. Unbelievably there were no other cars near us when we ran the stop sign, but when we got to the other side of the main avenue, our friend driving screeched to a stop, laughing hysterically. That was enough for us, though. Both my best friend and I were all done and demanded to go home. 

Teen risk is a ubiquitous rite of passage that transcends generations. It's a big part of the teen brain two-step of growing up and tripping over itself, hopefully learning and growing along the way. I was a conservatively safe kid and still took more risks than I'd like to admit, including those that were seemingly out of my control like the above example. 

When we were first dating and getting to know each other, my wife Amy and I both commiserated over our own risky teen behavior (and beyond teenage-land) that included sex, alcohol, drugs, dangerous driving and other dangerous activities (like jumping off our roof into the swimming pool), and the list goes on. Now that we have teens, we definitely have revisited these memories, the scary ones and those we remember fondly, no matter how much in danger life and limb were. 

For the past two years, even prior to teenage-land, our kids call us the safetyists. They think we're overly concerned with their emotional, psychological, and physical safety, and that we worry too much. And they're right; these are normal parent-teen time discussions we have every week during our family meetings. 

When it comes to risky behavior, teens have a different level of risk assessment than adults do (although adults don't do a great job at times either). Roll the dice and let's go! We'll be okay! Teen brains are still developing and decision-making is a work in progress for sure.

It's true that there's no reward without risk and risk without consequence is no risk at all. However, the realities of visceral life-changing consequence come from experience, something teens don't have a lot of, which is why we review safety plans with ours every week.

Does that mean we don't want them taking chances in life? Of course not. However, it's the choice of chance that makes all the difference. 

Magically Elastic

She picked up the tea bag and painted the blank page with it.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

Our oldest child, Beatrice, deftly swept the tea bag back and forth across the paper. "A special project," she said.

"Are you painting with the tea bag?" I asked rhetorically. Of course that was what she was doing.

"Yes, I am."

"Very cool."

She then explained to me how once the paper dried, she would pour rice onto the paper and trace around whatever shapes it made. 

"What's it going to be?" 

Bea smiled. "I'll show you later."

I couldn't wait. She's been into art since she was little and has become quite the artist. Yes, that's easy for me to say, being her proud father who loves her and who is biased, but she really has a unique eye. Nearly every day after school she's sketching and drawing, and nearly every night before bed she's sketching and drawing. She prefers pencil and ink, but has worked in different mediums over the years. 

She recently drew a self-portrait, which I wish I could share, but she didn't want me to. She beautifully captured the awkward unsureness of a teenager, while at the same time, a calm and confident determination centered inside the adolescent maelstrom. That is one thing we've worked hard to help instill in both our daughters, and it really did emanate from her self-portrait.

Back to her latest artwork -- she poured rice onto the dried tea-stained paper and traced the seemingly random shapes the rice created on the page. 

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Something," Bea said.

I couldn't wait to see what she'd do with it, although I did ask her not to make a mess, and to clean up the ultimate mess she would make. C'mon, I'm Dad. 

Beatrice finished her latest piece of artwork and shared it. It was an imaginative map of a fantastical land, something I used to do after reading Lord of the Rings when I was her age. Except hers came from a spontaneous idea of drawing random shapes around rice on paper and then making it all up in her head. 

Creative learning and expression are so important to our family. Especially through music, art, and meditation. Both Beatrice and her sister Bryce love art. Bryce is also now in musical theater and loving it. Amy is an avid puzzle person and meditates regularly to keep her brain and spirit sound and in shape. I meditate as well along with drumming. These learning quests began in earnest during the first year of the pandemic and haven't let up.

That's because creative learning through music, art, and meditation helps us all process life and map its endless possibilities, even when it seems like there aren't many. These mental maps are the creative expressions from learning and experience that empower us keep us magically elastic and living our best lives. Our latest meditative mantra was also "my life unfolds in divine order." Amen to that. Keep the maps coming, Beatrice. 

When the Tooth Fairy Flees

It's creepy when you think about it. The fact that we put our children's teeth under their pillow, and then overnight as they sleep, the Tooth Fairy leaves them a small reward, usually monetary, replacing their teeth. This as a reward for eventually getting their big kid teeth. 

Based on some quick research, cultural traditions like the Tooth Fairy have evolved over the years. In the 13th century, there was a Norse and Northern European tradition of tand-fé or tooth fee, which was paid when a child lost their first tooth. In the Norse culture, children's teeth and other articles belonging to children were said to bring good luck in battle, and Scandinavian warriors hung children's teeth on a string around their necks.

Creepy. And most historians believe that the tradition of ‘trading’ baby teeth for money or treats could link back to an 18th-century story in France, La Bonne Petite Souris (The Little Mouse).

Also of levity note, our kids used to watch a funny cartoon called Teen Titans (based on the DC comics Teen Titans), and there was a villainess character on it called the Tooth Fairy. Literally the Tooth Fairy with an creepy voice who would steal people's teeth and eat them for food. Both gross and super creepy.

Today, it's rite of passage ritual that remains for kids heading toward adulthood. I remember getting a quarter for each tooth I put under my pillow, and today our kids have gotten and get $1-$2 per tooth. What a creepy racket. Our oldest Beatrice is all done with losing teeth and having braces now (besides maybe wisdom teeth someday), but Bryce was later to the party to lose her molars. Developmentally she's still in the window of losing teeth, just later than Beatrice did. Multiple teeth in the past few months have come out and she's got a little dough in her hands. 

Kids are proud when they loose their teeth. "Look Mom and Dad" they tell us when one comes out, holding it up proudly as if they found a gold nugget. Which in a sense it is for them. Because Bryce is a little older than Bea was when she lost her remaining teeth, it's harder to pull off the Tooth Fairy. We know that they know that we're the Tooth Fairy, but like many other myths we teach our children, they want to hold onto childhood as long as possible. We don't blame them; I know I still hold onto mine. 

But it is harder to pull off the Tooth Fairy because both our kids are staying up later. Slipping the cash under the pillow unseen is a tough gig, one that Mom can still nimbly do. Until she forgets (and I'm no help). The latest Bryce tooth remained unpaid under the pillow the next morning, but Bryce didn't say anything until after school the next day.

"Mom, the Tooth Fairy didn't come," Bryce said. 

"Oh, we'll have to try again," Mom said.

"My friends told me we should just leave it on the kitchen table and try that," Bryce said.

"Good idea."

So that's what we did, we left her tooth on the table this time, no matter how much creepier that was than leaving it under her pillow. And presto -- two bucks were left on the table for Bryce the next morning. She was happy and we were happy. 

As adults, we do what we can to keep our grown-up teeth, because there's no payout for losing them later in life. There's only lots of dental work and ultimately false teeth or implants that'll cost us big time. No help from the Tooth Fairy here. That's all we get. 

In the meantime, we thought about buying Bryce out for the rest of her baby teeth, but then that's when the Tooth Fairy flees. Instead, we'll give her a few more payouts until that time, to keep the magic alive a little bit longer.

Encourage and Empower

Our oldest daughter Beatrice said some of her friends wanted to work at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk this summer and she was kind of interested, too.

"But you're only 14," I said. "I thought you had to be 16." 

"I guess you can get a work permit with parental approval for some positions when you're 14," my wife Amy said. 

"Got it," I said. "But Beatrice, I thought you wanted to be a junior leader again at the day camp this summer?"

"Actually, I do," she said. "I'd rather be a junior leader again."

That was music to our ears. Beatrice loves working with kids and she recently completed an online babysitting course. Once she was done, she was ready to get to work, and a dear friend of ours who runs a preschool recommended Bea put a resume together to be shared.

Of course she should, I thought. Considering I run a research organization called Talent Board that helps employers improve their recruiting, hiring, and candidate experience, I wanted to help her. 

"Let's write down your experience, Beatrice," I said.

"I don't really have experience," she said. I knew she was thinking literally about babysitting. 

"Of course you do. You actually have lots of experience that applies here. You were a junior leader at camp. You were a junior leader at the Kids in Nature program."

"I forgot about Kids in Nature," she said.

"You're a 6th grade teacher's assistant in class this semester, too. You definitely have experience."

"Oh yeah, I do."

In fact, Beatrice is interested in becoming a teacher someday, something we're behind 100%. However, while I helped her with her resume, I thought about the trials ahead for her and her sister when looking for a job. I know this all too well in helping organizations measure their job candidate experience, including in education. It's a small universe of organizations year after year that intentionally lean in to improve their recruiting and hiring experience for job candidates. Not everyone is qualified for jobs they're interested in, but everyone deserves a fair and positive experience. 

Developing professional and personal leadership is also something we'll continue to encourage our daughters to do. But I get even more disheartened when I think about what's been happening in the workplace today and the fact that women leaders are leaving the workforce at the highest rate ever. Based on Lean In and McKinsey research I recently found stated that 43% of women leaders reported feeling burned out, compared to 31% of men, according to Lean In and McKinsey data.

This is due to women in senior leadership who face more headwinds than men do, ranging from everyday microaggressions (like being questioned on their expertise) to carrying a greater responsibility in diversity and inclusion initiatives.

After recent progress for women in leadership, workplace burnout is painfully real, but we'll always encourage and empower both our girls to go for what they want to do today and in the future. To expect nothing less than to be treated fairly and positively whether qualified or not. To develop and nurture their leadership skills no matter what headwinds they face. And to not be afraid to put themselves out there and advocate for themselves and for other women.

For now, Beatrice just wants to babysit, so if you need a babysitter, let us know. 😊

Wearing School Well

What seemed simple at first turned into an engineering problem. School projects always do. This time it was youngest daughter Bryce's 6th grade special social studies project that was all about ancient Egypt. She chose to create a cat sarcophagus with a cat mummy inside it and do research around cats in Egyptian culture. That was the engineering problem -- how to help her make something that resembled a wooden cat coffin without being carved out of real wood. 

The cat mummy was the easy part. We picked out an old smaller stuffed animal (it wasn't even a cat -- it was a tiny goat) and wrapped it in a dirty ACE bandage. That worked just fine.

The sarcophagus was a different story. We thought about using all balloons of different shapes and sizes and then covering them with paper mache, but then what about being able to cut it in half like so we could put the mummy inside?

We had some old packing styrofoam in the garage that were nearly two halves of a big block. Bryce and her mom Amy felt like we could make that work as the body. But paper mache can still be messy and take a lot more work, so we found plaster cloth rolls online that just needed to be cut into strips, dipped, applied, and smoothed.

It ended up being a combination of items we used: the styrofoam, the plaster cloth rolls, balloon-like packing bubbles to add leg muscle contours to the body, an actual balloon for the head, old playdough to help shape the facial features and cat ears, and brown spray paint.

We made sure that Bryce did as much of the project as possible. That included her own Egyptian costume that Amy helped her with, and that she wanted to be as authentic as possible, plus the cat coffin that I helped her with. As parents (and I'm especially guilty of this), we want it to be the best final project product for them as possible. The good news was that Bryce really wanted to make it her own, and that's exactly what she did. 

At one point when I was helping Bryce shape the playdough for the face, she told me it looked more like a rabbit than a cat. She wasn't wrong. We adjusted it as best we could, covered it in plaster cloth, and when it was all dry, painted it splotchy brown for an aged effect.

After all the creative prep and engineering work, the payoff was seeing Bryce in her Egyptian costume presenting what she learned about cats, coffins, and mummies. She did a fantastic job (as did most of her class on their own individual or team projects). Amy and I volunteered to review each student presentation and rate them on how well they presented their projects (not on the veracity of the information itself). 

I learned some things I did not know either. I vaguely remembered that cats were special to Egyptians, but didn't realize how revered they were. They were considered magical creatures, vessels for the gods themselves, capable of bringing good luck to the people who housed them. To honor their treasured pets, wealthy Egyptian families dressed them in jewels and fed them fancy treats. When their cats died, they were mummified. When a cat died, the owners would have to shave their eyebrows in mourning. And if you killed another cat, even accidentally, you were put to death. 

Yikes. Although we're cat people anymore, I have a new found respect for them and their ancient godlike Egyptian glory thanks to Bryce, her research, and wearing school well. 

Empathic Knowledge Is Empowering For All

I had been telling my wife Amy a story about my day, when our oldest child called me a racist.

"So, there was a man standing there, an Asian man, and then..."

I don't even remember the exact context of what I said, but the story wasn't really about the Asian man. It was simply an identifier of those around me in my story as I told my story. I mean, he wasn't White, or Black, or Hispanic. He was Asian. 

"You're a racist, Dad," our oldest Beatrice said to me.

"No, Beatrice. I'm not. You're not using that word correctly. I'm just describing the race of the person he was," I said.

"Still a racist," she said.

"Nope."

This has happened more than once. Sometimes when I say something innocuous about Amy, or I tease her about something, and Beatrice is in the room, I hear her say: "You're being sexist, Dad."

"I don't think you know what that word means, Beatrice," I answer.

But maybe her and her younger sister actually do. I used to challenge my own parents all the time when I felt they said something inappropriate, offensive, sexist, and/or racist. We want our own children to challenge us while being compassionate about all people regardless of who they are. Not get in our face and call us a racist challenge us, but ask us questions about why we think what we think challenge us. 

And no matter how self-aware and antiracist I think I am (antiracist meaning actively working to dismantle racism), it doesn't mean we're not without fault. It's hard not to have racist and sexist ideas growing up in a world that devalues and degrades others because of skin color, gender, religious beliefs, sexual preference, and the list goes on and on, so that one group can be in power and reap what they want. So, I'm sure that there's some truth to Beatrice calling me out when I don't think I'm saying anything wrong. Subtle racism and sexism are still racism and sexism.

What I don't understand is how when we elevate those who have historically been underrepresented and suppressed, those in power feel like it's at their expense. That they're the ones now being discriminated against. Equality is hard to accept when the benefits of inequality for those in power have been embedded systemically for such a long time. Which is why we want our children to learn all sides of our history in school and to speak up and challenge others who don't want to acknowledge the realities of racism and sexism.

Again, we have our own racist and sexist beliefs no matter our background and it's important that we recognize that and work to upend them. We recently took our family to see Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone speak about their new collaborative book titled How to Be a (Young) Antiracist based on Dr. Kendi's previous work How to Be an Antiracist. Both of them acknowledged their own racist beliefs growing up and how they worked to dismantle them and now help others to do the same. It was exciting to hear that copies of their book were distributed to schools throughout our county.

Amy and I especially liked when Dr. Kendi talked about how we’re not taught how to be compassionate. How we’re taught to hate and judge other people. Compassion and empathy are things we should learn as young people, including the relationship between being compassionate and making social change.

That's definitely something we've done with our own children, to teach them compassion and empathy and to be the social change we all want to see. We want them to learn that from us and in school. And when all 1,300+ attendees at the event were asked to give a big round of applause to all the educators and students in the room, the rousing standing ovation was awe-inspiring. Knowledge may be power, for good and for bad, but empathic knowledge is empowering for all. 

Our Sleep Slide

Sometime before noon, my dad would tickle my feet. That was his ultimate way of waking me up when I was an early teen, sleeping in late after being up until past midnight reading and watching TV (yes, reading). No rattling pots and pans. No berating me to get up. No yelling at me. He'd just tickle my feet. Softly.

If that wasn't creepy enough, and highly efficient by the way, he'd say something softly like, "Time to get up, little Kevin." And just like that I'd pop up like burnt toast from a toaster, smoking and angry. 

But again, it worked well. Decades later our own children are now new teens and the sleep slide has only just begun for them. It's fascinating how our bodies develop and change over time. I remember when we put our daughters to bed between 7:30-8:00, and then it slid to 8:00-8:30, and then it slide to 8:30-9:00, and then 9:00-9:30, and now it's sliding past 9:30 PM. And sometimes they're still not going to sleep until after 10 or even 11. Except no TV late for them, but they can read, draw, meditate, etc., to get to sleep. 

They're not sleeping in until noon yet either, although on the weekends our youngest Bryce can sleep until after 9:00 AM. Our oldest Beatrice still doesn't sleep that late, at least not yet. Both their teenage journeys have only just begun. We don't tickle their feet to wake them up, by the way. Or use pots and pans. Or berate them. Just a regular "time to get up" wake up. Many times they tell us when to wake them when they have to get up earlier to do homework or work on a project before school. 

Sleep experts tell us that teens experience a natural shift in circadian rhythm, and this makes it more difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 PM. Teens also need 9 to 9½ hours of sleep per night—that’s an hour or so more than they needed at age 10. This is because teenagers are going through a second developmental stage of cognitive maturation and additional sleep supports their developing brain, as well as physical growth spurts. It also helps protect them from serious consequences like depression or drug use.

Amen to that. Sleep is so important for all people -- kids, teens, and adults. And yet as adults, we don't always get more than 6 hours of sleep on average. My wife Amy and I make it a priority to ensure we're getting 7+ hours of sleep per night, and hitting 7 can be a challenge at times. 

Because what's just as important as all of us getting our proper sleep? Amy and I getting our TV and reading time in. Seriously. The kids' sleep slide is causing us to now slide later and later for our nighty-night time wind down. 

That means our adult TV time and reading time are incremental. Any shows or movies we watch are usually in mini-installments, even staying up later, because sliding fast to the morning floors still comes early for us. Maybe we squeak in 30ish minutes, but most of what we watch are longer shows and movies sometimes, so it takes a few days. Plus, sleep science may tell us not to use our devices before bed, but that's how we read after TV time, even if it's only for a few pages at a time. 

I know, boo hoo for us. Dang kids. At some point there may be the waiting up past curfew due to them blowing past curfew, so for now we're going to make the best of our sleep slide.