Go Outside and Play Immediately

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO ARTICLE ON PLAY - worth the long read...On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era.

What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp."

I know - who's ever heard of the Thunder Burp?
Well, no one.

The reason the advertisement is significant is because it marked the first time that any toy company had attempted to peddle merchandise on television outside of the Christmas season. Until 1955, ad budgets at toy companies were minuscule, so the only time they could afford to hawk their wares on TV was during Christmas. But then came Mattel and the Thunder Burp, which, according to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, was a kind of historical watershed. Almost overnight, children's play became focused, as never before, on things - the toys themselves.

"It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."

Chudacoff's recently published history of child's play argues that for most of human history what children did when they played was roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and action heroes. Basically, says Chudacoff, they spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all.

"They improvised play, whether it was in the outdoors... or whether it was on a street corner or somebody's back yard," Chudacoff says. "They improvised their own play; they regulated their play; they made up their own rules."

But during the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically. Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber.

Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play - a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space.

But commercialization isn't the only reason imagination comes under siege. In the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff says, parents became increasingly concerned about safety, and were driven to create play environments that were secure and could not be penetrated by threats of the outside world. Karate classes, gymnastics, summer camps - these create safe environments for children, Chudacoff says. And they also do something more: for middle-class parents increasingly worried about achievement, they offer to enrich a child's mind.

CHANGE IN PLAY, CHANGE IN KIDS
Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.

It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.

We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In
2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.

"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."

Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain."

THE IMPORTANCE OF SELF-REGULATION
According to Berk, one reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what's called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.

"In fact, if we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play," Berk says. "And this type of self-regulating language... has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions."

And it's not just children who use private speech to control themselves. If we look at adult use of private speech, Berk says, "we're often using it to surmount obstacles, to master cognitive and social skills, and to manage our emotions."

Unfortunately, the more structured the play, the more children's private speech declines. Essentially, because children's play is so focused on lessons and leagues, and because kids' toys increasingly inhibit imaginative play, kids aren't getting a chance to practice policing themselves. When they have that opportunity, says Berk, the results are clear: Self-regulation improves.

"One index that researchers, including myself, have used... is the
extent to which a child, for example, cleans up independently after a free-choice period in preschool," Berk says. "We find that children who are most effective at complex make-believe play take on that responsibility with... greater willingness, and even will assist others in doing so without teacher prompting."

Despite the evidence of the benefits of imaginative play, however, even in the context of preschool young children's play is in decline. According to Yale psychological researcher Dorothy Singer, teachers and school administrators just don't see the value.

"Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time," Singer says. "I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills."

It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage - to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them - our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all.

One Ocean Cooler on the Rocks Please

The kids and I are fascinated by scientific news - I also like to keep the kids involved in their world so they will grow up to take care of the planet. I am also sick of politics and the daily depressing fare on the nightly news. Not that this is exactly GOOD news - but fascinating all the same - a huge chunk of Antarctic ice about 7x THE SIZE OF MANHATTAN collapsed this week, with an even bigger piece ready to go. It was on the Wilkins Ice Shelf - ice that was there for up to 1,500 years, according to scientists.

British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan attributed the melting to rising sea temperature due to global warming. Scientists said that while they were not concerned about a rise in sea level from the latest event, it was a sign of worsening global warming. It's got to be pretty hard for our administration to ignore global warming at this point - they refute it every time some cataclismic event happens. But one has to wonder - WHERE is this ice going to go? Eventually it just melts.

Such occurrences are "more indicative of a tipping point or trigger in the climate system," said Sarah B. Das, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. WHEN is the tipping point I keep wondering - the thing is - no one knows. Everytime something like this happens - there is much scientific arguing and revision of thought. It's hard to get a handle on it from my googling and research.

"These are things that are not re-forming," Das said. "So once they're gone, they're gone."

The rest of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Larger, more dramatic ice collapses occurred in 1995 and 2002.

Vaughan had predicted that the Wilkins shelf would collapse about 15 years from now. The part that recently gave way made up about 4% of the overall shelf, but it was an important part that can trigger further collapse. It's astounding the think of the SIZE of ice on Antarctic isn't it? Maybe there is some merit to our life existing on a speck in the universe much like the premise in Horton Hears a Who (we just saw the movie - which is great btw). Maybe Dr. Seuss was a visionary after all.

- LT

Pregnant Man in Oregon

Not sure WHAT to think about this story today in the Post that an Oregan man says he's is pregnant with a baby girl. So REALLY, he's not a man, just dressing as a man, but he was born a woman and kept the female parts, but dresses as a man and lives as a man. I can tell you now that the title of the article alone is getting millions of internet hits.

Here's the story:
Thomas Beatie's first-person story appears in the April issue of The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based newsmagazine for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.

According to the story, Mr. Beatie was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina.

Now identifying as male, Mr. Beatie legally married Nancy Beatie, the story says. The pair wanted a biological baby but Ms. Beatie was unable to carry a child. So they decided Mr. Beatie would carry the child.

"How does it feel to be a pregnant man," Mr. Beatie writes in the article. "Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child ... I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

Before getting pregnant he stopped injecting testosterone, and his body "regulated itself after about four months," he writes in the Advocate piece.

One year and nine doctors later, the couple got access to a cryogenic sperm bank and purchased anonymous donor vials for a home insemination. Without the aid of fertility drugs, progesterone or exogenous estrogen, Mr. Beatie got pregnant, he says. But the pregnancy was ectopic, and rarer still, with triplets. After surgery, Mr. Beatie lost all his embryos and his right fallopian tube.

But the second pregnancy has been a success, writes Mr. Beatie: "We are happily awaiting her birth, with an estimated due date of July 3, 2008."

The National Post could not independently confirm the story. But Michelle Garcia, an editorial assistant at the magazine, said The Advocate verified the pregnancy with Mr. Beatie's gynecologist. She said a photo on the site of a shirtless, heavily pregnant man sprouting facial hair is indeed Mr. Beatie.

Yesterday, the couple-- who run a T-shirt printing company called Define Normal -- refused to tell their story, citing U.S. deals with TV and print media outlets.

"It's a big deal and we want to be able to tell our story," Ms. Beatie told the National Post. "We'd love everybody on board as long as they're understanding and are going to tell our story and not their own."

Mr. Beatie writes in The Advocate that "wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.

"Our situation ultimately will ask everyone to embrace the gamut of human possibility and to define for themselves what is normal."

Ethicist Margaret Somerville says Mr. Beatie's story speaks to the uprooting of the biologically natural family, a process that began with same-sex marriage.

"Once you take away that fundamental biological reality, once you say that family is what you define it as ... then you can do this sort of thing," said Ms. Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

"Where I would do a reversal on this is to say, 'You've artificially made yourself a man. You're not a man, you're a woman and you're having a baby and you're actually having your own baby. Just because you put on a clown suit, doesn't mean that you don't still exist underneath.' "

She added: "It's a very touchy thing, this deconstruction of our biological reality and the institutions that have existed across all kinds of societies over thousands and thousands of years to establish stability, respect and certainty. I think we're just playing with fire."

It sure was different in the Schwarzenegger movie. A pregnant man would certainly turn heads on the street. Thoughts?
- LT

Happy Easter Monday.

It concerns me that this is what OUR President was doing on Easter rather than sit his butt in a church and pray for a way to get us out of the Iraq War.

While the military continues to claim that 'compared to other wars, the casualties are very low'; those 4,000 deaths are someone's mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, son, daughter, niece or nephew. Take a good look at your kids. My baby is eligible for the draft in 14 more years and one presidential candidate wants us to be in Iraq for 100 more years if needed. Can you imagine? There's something to think about today.

Want to take action? Please write your Congressperson or Senator today. It's easy to do online.

- LT