Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte

COLUMN

ANNIE HO

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 26 August, 2014, 10:23am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 26 August, 2014, 10:23am

Book offers an antidote to intensive mothering

Annie Holife@scmp.com

For me, the period between the start of the school year and the end of the calendar year is traditionally even more hectic than usual. Earlier this year, I made a resolution to simplify my life.

To help me understand how I became so "time-starved", and what I could do about it, I read (and highlighted 40 per cent of the statements contained in) Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time.

Schulte is an award-winning journalist whose book has given a comprehensive picture of being busy by interviewing sociologists, scientists, CEOs and at-home mothers.

She cites studies on leisure time, gender bias, the impact of technology, and the modern workplace.

First, Schulte explores today's expectation of busyness, this maniacal need to be productive and give meaning to our lives. Having children means we devote countless more hours to making their lives productive. Schulte moves on to "the cult of intensive mothering".

You are a part of this cult if you have ever wondered, aloud or silently, "Where can I find harp lessons for my two-year-old?" Or, "Should I start my six-month-old on Putonghua?"

Schulte writes: "Time studies show that mothers' time with children has been climbing steeply, at the expense of sleep, personal care and leisure, ever since 1985. Educated at-home mums have turned motherhood into a profession.

"The inertia of going along with doing what everyone else is doing becomes the default mode because it takes so much conscious effort to pull back."

Next, Schulte looks at the mental burden that seems to be the sole domain of mothers. Fathers help with childcare more than previous generations. But they are delegated tasks by mothers.

When mothers act as the "maternal gatekeeper" and are still in charge of everything, having a helpful spouse around does not necessarily translate into more free time for mothers.

One of Schulte's interviewees describes how a holiday often meant more work: "A resort vacation where even a swim with the dolphins was one more item to be checked off my to-do list, along with getting up early to grab seats by the pool, slathering sunscreen on kids. I perpetuated what I do at home."

True co-parenting means that husbands need to help their wives clear mental clutter. When my husband asks me what I want for dinner, he does so with the purest of intentions. He recognises that I'm busy and wants me to have a meal that I will enjoy eating. He has now taken charge of our date nights and our meals at home because he realises that, most of the time, all I want is to not have to think about what I want for dinner.

What is Schulte's solution? The book's appendix comes with a list of tips, but the main message is: presence is more important than productivity.

• Leisure does not mean "being slothful, idle or frivolous. It is simply being open to the wonder and marvel of the present". I reflected on my own feelings of inadequacy when my day was not filled to the brim with lunch dates, play dates, exercise dates, home projects and work projects.
• Leisure activities should be undertaken for play, connection and reflection, and not merely for checking off a to-do list item.
• List your priorities, and spend your day accordingly. No one would prioritise "Handling of all electronic communication/Sorting through email" over "Spending quality time with loved ones". And yet, many of us are guilty of stopping whatever we're doing as soon as we hear the beep of a new message.
• Let go of the modern obsession with providing children with amazing life experiences and Facebook-worthy photos. We expend effort and resources on excursions to enrich our children's lives, but what they remember of their childhood will invariably be the simple joys of their daily lives.

Another interviewee says, "The most special moments are the spontaneous dancing or jokes that can break out while the family cleans the dinner dishes - moments of unadorned grace that unfold when you're not distracted and rushing into the next big thing."

As author Annie Dillard once said: "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives."

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of Bring Me a Book HK

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Taking care of busyness

Teaching Children to Celebrate Differences

Between the lines: teach your child to celebrate being different

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 29 July, 2014, 10:41am

UPDATED : Thursday, 31 July, 2014, 6:57pm

Annie Holife@scmp.com

I recently had coffee with friends who were emigrating to a small town in Australia. Aside from envying how the idyllic environment would influence the positive growth of their young child, we also pondered what it would be like for a Chinese child to grow up in a community where he would be the only non-Caucasian child.

We considered the need for my friend to stock up on books about Chinese children living in a non-Chinese community.

Wouldn't it be ideal to find picture books showing a Chinese child who enriched his life and those in his community through acknowledging their cultural differences as well as their common humanity, we thought.

Fitting in is part of the universal experience of growing up

We explored the range of books featuring Chinese children, and only came up wit those littered with Asian stereotypes: studious girl, dutiful boy, racist bully, tiger mum, new immigrant family, and so on.

My friends and I then reflected on our own childhoods in Canada, where we were among a handful of non-Caucasian children at school. We realised that back then, all we wanted to do was simply assimilate. Would a fictional story showing a Chinese child being different, even if in a positive way (cherishing best of both worlds), have made any impact on our younger selves?

Fitting in is part of the universal experience of growing up. It's not until we reach college that individuality is valued, and even considered "cool".

In the end, my friends and I agreed that perhaps the best books for their child would be those that celebrate differences. Picture book creators are amazingly inventive when it comes to the using anthropomorphic characters to show differences.

Chen Chih-yuan has written and illustrated two storybooks about characters that try to conform, with funny and poignant consequences. Guji Guji is a story of a crocodile that grows up among ducks, but has his loyalty tested when he encounters other crocodiles for the first time. The Featherless Chicken is a playful spin on the ugly duckling fable, and follows the adventures of a featherless chicken as he attempts to acquire beautiful plumes like the other chickens.

Because Amelia Smiled by David Ezra Stein is a gentle rendering of vignettes around the world with different cultures, faces and sceneries. It is an ode to the power of spreading goodwill, illustrating the possibility that one little girl's smile can influence many lives in direct and indirect ways.

What I Like About Me! by Allia Zobel Nolan is an enjoyable picture book for children to embrace and be proud of the things that make them special, such as glasses, braces and big feet. I appreciate that the differences of the children are presented as positive attributes, rather than shortcomings that need to be accepted.

It is important to teach children to be compassionate, not just about skin colour but any kind of difference. 

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of the non-profit organisation Bring Me a Book Hong Kong bringmeabook.org.hkdedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Books that celebrate being different are crucial for children

Book Series for Beginning Readers

Between the lines: The joy of book series

PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 01 July, 2014, 9:41am

UPDATED : Tuesday, 01 July, 2014, 9:41am

Annie Holife@scmp.com

I am an advocate for parent-child reading, so my children are in the habit of bringing books to grown-ups for them to read out loud. In the past year, my eldest daughter has started to take books from our bookshelf and read the words silently to herself.

And then one day, I heard her reading Maurice Sendak's One Was Johnny to her younger sister. The sight warmed my heart: she held her sister on her little lap the same way I hold them when I read to them. Only then did I discover that she reads quite well on her own.

Her strong reading skills make school life a little easier. For example, rather than trying to memorise the letters comprising a vocabulary word, she is aware of words that don't quite look right when spelled incorrectly. Solving maths questions don't confuse her because she is able to pick out the needed hints to determine what is required.

To prepare her for Grade One in September, our reading strategy has evolved into book series. I will read aloud the first chapter, to introduce the characters and give them life through animated reading using different voices. Then I leave the rest of the chapters and other books in the series for my daughter to read at her leisure. Book series are helpful tools for developing literacy skills because they often use repeated vocabulary words.

My daughter has happily graduated from Mo Willems' Elephant & Piggieseries of short, repetitive sentences accompanied by wildly funny illustrations. I have devoted so much column space to Willems in the past few years, that I have nothing to add except: if you have a child between the ages of three and six, you must pick up any one of the almost two dozen books in the series. These are exponentially more enjoyable than "The cat sits on a mat" types of first readers' books.

For beginning readers, reading well is more important than reading extensively. This summer, I hope my daughter will read over and over the two series that we are enjoying.

E.H. Minarik's Little Bear series has happy pastoral stories with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. The first four books in the series each contain four short stories. Although each is a self-contained tale, there is continuity in that a later story may make reference to an event from an earlier story. The fifth and final book, published a decade after the earlier books, is one short finale about how a kiss for Little Bear results in the marriage of two skunks.

The book set which I have is the bilingual edition from Taiwan publisher Hsin Yi. The illustrations are accompanied by Chinese text, with the original English at the back of each book. Each book also comes with a bilingual CD.

Available from the same publisher in the same format is the equally pastoralFrog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel. While the Little Bear stories encompass a wide variety of family and friends, Frog and Toad stories centre on the friendship of the two main characters, with a larger dose of humour. Frog and Toad embark on a number of adventures that are silly and delightful.

Both Little Bear and Frog and Toad are quality children's picture books that also happen to serve as appropriate material for beginning readers. This is different from books made specifically for new readers. Books for new readers generally use large fonts to display sight words, and they tend to be created by educators rather than authors and illustrators.

The above two series also expose readers to different forms of writing as natural enhancements of the stories. For example, in Your Friend, Little Bear, when Little Bear writes a letter to his new friend Emily, readers can become better acquainted with letter-writing, with its specific punctuation and indentation. In A List, a Frog and Toad book, the first illustration in the story shows Toad's "list of things to do today". As the story progresses, the text of the story presents handwritten words that are crossed out, in order to show completed tasks.

The aim with book series such as Little Bear and Frog and Toad is that by the end of summer, my daughter will confidently master this familiar material. This will give her a better foundation than hesitantly muddling through dozens of chapter books that are only read once.

Annie Ho is board chairwoman of the non-profit organisation Bring Me a Book Hong Kong bringmeabook.org.hk dedicated to improving children's literacy by reading aloud to them

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Serialised stories open world of fun