Otter Mommy’s blog

I've started watching a show on A&E called hoarders. Its about people with serious problems with letting go of their stuff. Watching it is horrible and I do it for motivation. A couple of months ago I was fascinated by this art exhibit at the MoMA where a Song Dong a Beijing based artist took all of his mom's years of hoarded stuff and arranged it very nicely at the MoMA. Craziness.

Whenever I see either the A&E Hoarders show, I think about my grandfather. My grandfather had a serious problem, with buying more supplies than he could possibly use. On Saturdays, when I was growing up, I would go over to his house and sometimes clean it. Added to his problem was that he was also very paranoid so would think people were stealing his stuff. Once he claimed that his enemy stole his can opener, so I went through all his drawers and found 8! I'm not sure why anyone would need 8 can openers. He told me afterwords his enemy probably returned it to trick him. I would also go through his closets and organize everything. I once found more than 10 bottles of rubbing alcohol. I arranged them all on his shelf like a store. I thought, Grandpa you are going to die before you use all these bottles of rubbing alcohol.  My dad told me this hoarding habit comes from the time of the war when boats with supplies wouldn't show up, my grandparents on my otherside would hoard things too though they didn't have and didn't spend very much money so their hoarding was kept in check.

The people on Hoarders have severe problems. I'm just lazy, but this hoarders show moves me to act.
Every weekend this month, we haven't had too many obligations so we are visiting the Salvation Army and giving them stuff. A friend of mine just had a boy baby and asked to borrow G's clothes. I gladly gave him a couple of bags. Today as we were going through the closet to haul somethings to the dump, I found a couple more bags of G clothes so I will give that to him too. I think we have several months to go to be at the state where I would like to be at -- where everything we own is currently being used or will be used.

G has been playing with our phones and pretending to talk to people for maybe about a month. but today as F's brother came over, G started taking pretend things out of a bag and giving them to F's brother who would thank him. It was quite funny. Until now G would hand people shoes and expect them to thank him, I guess he is seeing what he can get away with giving them.

Ideally I would be a responsible mommy and make sure everything is taken care of before the baby was born, but seriously it didnt even cross my mind. So now I am meeting with a financial planner and an estate lawyer to make everything clean. Right now I am just gathering up documentation and figuring out who we would like to be G's guardians. She had us pick 3. It was pretty hard to do. We had asked our first one already, and the second was natural, but picking the third was a little difficult.

What is sort of interesting was our lawyer's exploding turkey question. The question was this: You are having Thanksgiving dinner and the turkey explodes killing most of your close family. Who do you give the money to? Really distant family or some charity? Both of us have such a large extended family and we know most of them that we went with the distant family option.

We haven't made too much progress with the financial planner yet. Mostly because of our or my crazy schedule. It will be pretty interesting to see what she comes up with.

I read this article on npr’s website about lying and how conventional ways of getting a child not to lie are counterproductive. I’m not sure I know anyone who was raised like this, but it makes sense. I will practice this on my boy and in ten years tell you how it is going:

In other scenarios, Talwar's researcher will read the child a short storybook before she asks about the peeking. One of the stories read aloud is The Boy Who Cried Wolf — the version in which both the boy and the sheep get eaten because of his repeated lies. Alternatively, they read the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree, in which young George confesses to his father that he chopped down the prized tree with his new hatchet. The story ends with his father's reply: "George, I'm glad that you cut down that cherry tree after all. Hearing you tell the truth is better than if I had a thousand cherry trees."

Now if you had to guess, which story would you think reduced lying more? We ran a poll on our web site, receiving over a thousand responses to that question. Of them, 75% said The Boy Who Cried Wolf would work better. However, this famous fable, told all around the world, actually did not cut down lying at all in Talwar's experiments. In fact, after hearing the story, kids lied even a little more than usual.

Meanwhile, hearing George Washington and the Cherry Tree reduced lying a whopping 75% in boys, and 50% in girls.

We might think that the story works because Washington's a national icon — that kids are taught to emulate the honesty of our nation's founder — but Talwar's kids are Canadian, and the youngest kids have never even heard of him. To determine if Washington's celebrity was an influential factor for the older kids, Talwar re-ran the experiment, replacing Washington with a nondescript character, and otherwise leaving the story intact. The story's generic version had the same result.

Why does one fable work so well, while the other doesn't — and what does this tell us about how to teach kids to lie less?

The shepherd boy ends up suffering the ultimate punishment, but that lies get punished is not news to children. When asked if lies are always wrong, 92% of five-year-olds say yes. And when asked why lies are wrong, most say the problem with lying is you get punished for it. In that sense, young kids process the risk of lying by considering only their own self-protection. It takes years for the children to understand lying on a more sophisticated moral ground. It isn't until age eleven that the majority demonstrate awareness of its harm to others; at that point, 48% say the problem with lying is that it destroys trust, and 22% say it carries guilt. Even then, a third still say the problem with lying is being punished.

What really works is to tell the child, "I will not be upset with you if you peeked, and if you tell the truth, I will be really happy." This is an offer of both immunity and a clear route back to good standing. Talwar explained this latest finding: "Young kids are lying to make you happy — trying to please you." So telling kids that the truth will make a parent happy challenges the kid's original thought that hearing good news — not the truth — is what will please the parent.

That's why George Washington and the Cherry Tree works so well. Little George receives both immunity and praise for telling the truth.

Ultimately, it's not fairy tales that stop kids from lying — it's the process of socialization. But the wisdom in The Cherry Tree applies: according to Talwar, parents need to teach kids the worth of honesty just as much as they need to say that lying is wrong. The more kids hear that message, the more quickly they will take this lesson to heart.

I came across this article and photos about an exhibit by Song Dong. It shows all the collected stuff of his mother's apartment in Beijing. It is a little overwhelming and reminds me of the times I will go into my mother's house or mother in laws house and feel overwhelmed with all of their stuff. It always makes me want to go home and throw things away.

According to askMefi, horrible hoarding is a psychological response to an increasing lack of control in their lives decluttering for them often makes them even worse the consensus was you just had to wait for them to die.

I really want to go home and throw things away now.

F tells me that G will pretty consistently say doggie and slap his leg (which is the ASL sign for dog) when he sees a dog. He also kind of says nana when when he sees mommy eating a banana and wants to eat some.

Oh F has a job now it is with an XML database company in san carlos. So far he seems to like it and they feed him lunch for free.