Monthly Archives: September 2011

Confused Ten Years On

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Has it really been ten years?

When it comes to remembering the horrific events of 9-11, I have to admit to a certain confusion.

I don’t understand people’s profound fear of subsequent terrorist attacks relative to other more serious threats to their health, longevity, and quality of life. One half of the U.S. population is expected to be obese by 2030 meaning heart disease and related health problems will explode. One in eight women will get breast cancer. And add Alzheimers, drunk driving, gun violence, and driving while texting to the list of everyday domestic threats to our health, longevity, and quality of life. As a road runner, road cyclist, and driver, I’m much more likely to die from someone in my community texting while driving than I from foreign terrorists.

Of course evil exists and we have to continue to be vigilant, but the “fear paradox” is probably explained by the scale of the 9-11 attacks, the surreal images of the damage permanently etched in our minds, and the fact that we’re more emotional than rational beings. Also, gun and traffic deaths are sporadic, happening in different locations at different times, each death like a drip from a leaky faucet, remaining unconnected and relatively inconsequential in our minds. In contrast, 9-11 was an unprecedented gusher of violence and death replayed on television over and over and over. But I don’t understand why we’re settling for thinking so sloppily.

I don’t understand people’s self-congratulatory “there haven’t been any attacks since” mindset. In terrorism score-keeping, only large-scale attacks on American citizens count? People forget how many foreign nationals were killed on 9-11 and ignore how many terrorist attacks have occurred throughout the world in the last ten years. I don’t understand how many of my fellow Christians in particular emphasize their nationality at the expense of their humanity.

I don’t understand what we’ve learned about the terrorist threat. Ten years on do we have any better understanding of why we were attacked? Or of our fellow citizens of Muslim faith?

I don’t understand why we’re content to let our government fill foreign skies with as many drones as they want. Are young men less likely to die for their religion today? A focus on preventing additional terrorist acts is of course necessary, but we shouldn’t lose focus on the other threats I’ve highlighted, and we shouldn’t pretend military might is a long-term fix.

On Sunday, besides watching football, consider pressing pause with me and reflecting in silence for a few minutes on not just the tragic events of 9/11/01 and the lives lost and the families shattered, but what we can do to create healthier, safer, and more secure neighborhoods, cities, states, provinces, countries, and world over the next ten years.

Should Schools Screen for Mental Health Problems in Teens?

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From a recent WSJ article by Laura Landro:

With rising concern about adolescent depression and suicide, more schools are turning to screening tests to identify those at risk and, if necessary, help them get treatment. Voluntary screenings are being offered through school health classes, school-based health clinics and community agencies, which then can refer children for diagnosis and treatment to school psychologists or local health care providers.

. . . According to the National Institute of Mental Health, half of all cases of mental illness start by age 14, and about 11% of adolescents have a depressive disorder by age 18. Left untreated, such issues can lead to high dropout rates, substance abuse, violence—and suicide, the third-leading cause of death in adolescents. In a study of 2,500 students who went through the Fond du Lac program at six public high schools between 2005 and 2009, published last week in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, nearly 20% were identified as at risk, of whom 73.6% were not receiving treatment at the time of screening. Among that group, more than three-quarters completed at least one visit with a mental-health provider within 90 days after referral to school and community services.

Some groups oppose mental health screening programs because: 1) they believe the screenings interfere with issues that should be the domain of the family and 2) they lead to over-prescription of psychiatric meds. Opponents to screenings are also afraid 3A) kids who aren’t really depressed may answer questions in a way that makes them seem so and that 3B) children will be wrongly identified as problematic and stigmatized, or that 4) parents will be penalized if they don’t seek treatment. And 5) Howard Adelman, co-director of the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA believes that teachers are adept enough at picking out kids at risk without screening programs.

Marian Sheridan, coordinator for health and safety for Wisconsin’s Fond du Lac school district, counters that it is a “false perception” that schools and parents know which kids need help.

Sheridan is right, Adelman wrong.

“It’s not something a lot of kids like to talk about with their parents,” a 24 year-old who first started experiencing symptoms of depression in the eight grade contends, adding, “they may not want to bring it up at school either.”

Sixty percent of Fond du Lac’s eligible students were screened last year which I guess means 40% of parents didn’t provide consent. Obviously school-based mental health screenings are something upon which reasonable people can disagree.

I’m opposed to mindlessly holding teachers accountable for childhood obesity and more and more obviously non-academic responsibilities, but this quick-hit program has proven to make a positive difference in the adolescents that participate in it. As a result, I’m all for the expansion of voluntary mental health screening test programs for secondary students.

Parenting Styles and Self Esteem at Age 33

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At first glance Tina Fey’s autobio Bossypants is a quick, light, summer beach-type read that some may assume she wrote to capitalize on her growing fame. In actuality, it contains lots of important insights about class, sexual orientation, parenting practices, sexism, and the creative process. I dig her humor, her writing, her politics, her toughness.

One would have to credit her dad, Don Fey, with her toughness. In an early chapter she tells his story. She ends that chapter with this:

My dad has visited me at work over the years and I’ve noticed that powerful men react to him in a weird way. They “stand down”. The first time Lorne Michaels met my dad, he said afterward, “Your father is. . . impressive.” They meet Don Fey and it rearranges something in their brain about me. Alec Baldwin took a long look at him and have him a firm handshake. “This is your dad, huh?” What are they realizing? I wonder. That they’d better never mess with me, or Don Fey will yell at them? That I have high expectations for the men in my life because I have a strong father figure? Only Colin Quinn was direct about it. “Your father doesn’t fucking play games. You would never come home with a shamrock tattoo in that house.”

My dad, also named Don, would have liked Don Fey. My siblings and I, like the peeps who worked for him, had a healthy fear of my dad. He was tough-minded, but never even close to abusive. We were taught to answer the phone, “Byrnes residence, Ron speaking.” Of course he just answered it, “Don Byrnes”. We learned the planets didn’t revolve around us.

In the later stages of Bossypants TF writes:

I have once or twice been offered a “mother of the year” award by working-mom groups or a mommy magazine, and I always decline. How cold they possibly know if I’m a good mother? How can any of us know until the kid is about thirty-three and all the personality dust has really settled?

Amen to that. I have a good fifteen years to go before you can judge my parenting. I don’t pretend to have it all together.

In a chapter titled, “The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter,” Fey writes:

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, for I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

Fey, based upon her unparalleled genius for self-deprecation, has self-esteem to spare. Similarly, I would score well on a self-esteem eval. My guess is, Alice Fey, TF’s five year old, is going to have above average self-esteem. Why? In part because her mom will not have that Shit.

I suspect many of my peers with children would say the “old school” parents named Don from the 60’s and 70’s weren’t nearly affectionate enough. But sometimes modern day affection-based parenting crosses over into an “I’m going to be my child’s older more stable friend” approach to child-rearing that I’m guessing results in 33 year-olds with more self-esteem issues than the children of more strict, less therapeutic “old school” parents like the Dons.

I think the GalPal and I have done an admirable job splitting the difference. We’re affectionate with our daughters, but they also know we have clear limits and always expect to be respected. They’d probably say we’re one-part touchy-feely, one part, will not have that Shit.

[Postscript—thinking about this further, maybe strict but loving parenting contributes to children’s later resilience more than it does their self-esteem. I’ve theorized about where self esteem comes from before here.]

Jacking Around

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From the Associated Press:

Jack Nicklaus is trying something new to get more people to play golf. He is holding events at his Muirfield Village Golf Club in which the cup will be twice as large and the tournaments only will be 12 holes.

Nicklaus is concerned that fewer people are playing golf. He says it’s important to think beyond the traditional rules and try something different to make the game more appealing.

That would be THE Jack Nicklaus I idolized growing up, making his “make it two-thirds as long and far easier” logic all the more painful to process.

When marathon participation someday drops off, race officials will no doubt make marathon running more appealing by Jacking it, making it a gradual downhill 17.5 mile “fun run”.

We should probably Jack the 500 free in high school swimming too. The new more appealing “335 yard free” will be even more popular now that participants can wear fins.

And paying taxes shouldn’t be such an onerous task. Let’s Jack them. Just do your best to pay two-thirds of what you would normally owe and try to do it by June 15th if at all possible.

Time we Jack the fence at Safeco and move it in a third of the way. At least when the M’s are at bat. Offense is appealing. Similarly, let’s increase the size of soccer goals by a third. On fire now. I’m going to Jack the house-cleaning, the yard work, and my exposure to Tea-Partiers.

Obviously we have a lot of work to do making things more appealing, but at least now, thanks to the Golden Bear, we have a model. What do you say, let’s start Jacking around.

Trapped Deep in a Fem Vortex

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In 1998, shortly after we moved to the upper left-hand corner of the lower forty-eight, we discovered a wonderful lake less than a mile from our crib. Once the GalPal and I became full-fledged lake swimmers, I felt it my duty to caution her about the “vortex” in the middle that swirled in violent secrecy and pulled down any unsuspecting swimmer that dared too close to it. She half-bought it, which was so gratifying I of course had to pull the same stunt on the daughts once they got old enough to venture across the lake.

What goes around comes around.

Just recently, when I got to one of the later chapters in Tina Fey’s very humorous bio, Bossypants, I suddenly realized that I have been pulled down by a seriously strong, all pervasive female vortex. TF had to know I was thoroughly enjoying her book, but a chapter on breast feeding? Really?! That’s taking serious advantage.

I took the time I would have spent reading that chapter and instead reflected on the fact that I’m surrounded by at least two or three women almost all the time. Afternoons in the fall, I help coach 40+ young womens. On my visit with my mom right now in FL, the GalPal, daughts and I are overlapping with my sister and her daught. What do you call a gender ratio of six to one? Normalcy.

Would it really have been so hard for the GalPal to give me a son?! Prior to my first move, did she conspire with my mother, her mother, and my sister, to put some sort of feminist hex on me as some sort of twisted joke?

I pray to God that you didn’t see me sitting among the sisterhood (mom, sissy, and GalPal) at The Help in an Orlando theater last week, dabbing back tears near the end. That confession alone introduces the possibility I may be too far gone. For shitsake, I refer to romantic comedies as “romcoms”, I routinely pick up feminine products at Costco, and I’ve been known to watch Glee, SupperNanny, and the Home and Garden channel.

In the life of this blog, this is post #507. Thank you very much. And I’ve never dedicated any of the previous 506 to anyone. But I’m dedicating this badboy (can I use that term?) to a fellow brother dangling dangerously close to the fem vortex—18 month old Kai UptheStreet. Too innocent to feel the tug of the vortex. His army dad gets deployed occasionally. His mom just gave birth to his fifth sister. Someday he’ll have his “Tina Fey” moment.

Hang in little man, hang in.