My thighs are on fire right now, and the stairs at school this afternoon were a little bit tricky. Almost on a a whim, I lugged out my fitness DVD collection last night and attempted Bob Harper’s Cardio Conditioning DVD for the first time. I lasted fifteen minutes, but there was a lot of squatting in that fifteen minutes. I also drank more water yesterday and today. I know these are small steps, but at least they are moving me in the right direction.

In other words, Coach Yourself Thin is helping so far. A lot. I have read to chapter 11, and am reading about myself more than I expected to. This section consists of several short chapters which collectively discuss “seven undermining obstacles to weight loss.” Each of these “obstacle” chapters includes a quiz filled with yes/no questions for self assessment.

Lo and behold, one of them was “all-or-nothing thinking,” my nemesis. It was odd to read myself on the page, particularly after I recently wrote about this obstacle (of course, I have been thinking about it as a character flaw – if it’s just an obstacle, maybe I will finally be able to move past it). The authors compare new dieters to new-car owners. I remember the “no food or drink rule: I instituted not quite a year and a half ago when I got my new/used car. Now the back seat is full of crumbs and melted crayons, and we aren’t going to discuss the front/passenger side.

Here is a quote: “The more gung ho and extreme your initial effort, the greater the chance that you will swing to the other extreme as soon as you hit a rough patch. You go from eating wild salmon, quinoa, and kale to downing cheeseburgers, fries, and regular sodas, or from exercising like mad to being mad that you have to exercise.” I am so sad that this is me. My initial efforts are epic. And short-lived.

That’s why I did a monthly resolution this year – instead of just saying “My NYR is to lose weight,” I said “ten pounds a month until I’m happy with my shape.” Still, it is humiliating that I only lasted two months without jumping off the wagon (notice I didn’t say “falling”). But because my goals are monthly, I can still turn it around. Before reading this chapter, I was thinking I should try to lose 20 pounds this month (how many days are left in April?) in order to “catch up” on my goal. Now I am thinking I will start where I’m at. If I can catch up along the way, I will be pretty proud of myself, but I’m going to aim for 3-4 pounds lost by the end of this month, then start with a new goal of 10 in May. I don’t know what the authors of this book would say about this plan, but I think it’s a reasonable one.

Another obstacle is labeled “feelings of unworthiness.” When I began this chapter, I did not expect to identify with it. I do not feel unworthy. I am successful in other areas of my life. I work hard at my job, I feel fulfilled as a mother, wife, daughter, etc. (the house could be cleaner, but we all have our priorities). I take the time to read and blog because it makes me a better teacher, conversationalist, and person. I also take the time to paint my nails once or twice a week because it makes me happy and I love the compliments I get. That doesn’t sound like someone who feels unworthy, right?

I DO feel overwhelmed, though, at the enormity of my task, and I feel frustrated that it’s not easier. I am not saying I want to be easy, but I shouldn’t be my own worst enemy, you know? I AM self-critical, and I DO avoid certain situations because of my weight. There were so many quotes in this section that resonated with me that I copied several of them down and I keep thinking about the.m. Somehow, this feels like a breakthrough, but them I think about my “all-or-nothing new car feeling” and it seems more prudent to just be cautiously optimistic.

There is one more quote I want to share, and it’s from the obstacle titled “not listening to the signals from your body and mind.”

[T]uning out from what your body is telling you will lead to poor health decisions. Your body’s natural signals (like hunger, fatigue, and pain) get progressively more difficult to hear amid the buzz created by caffeine, alcohol, sugar, fat, and medications. Eventually those natural signals may disappear altogether; they might still be there beneath the surface, but because you’ve spent so much time ignoring or suppressing them, you’ve lost the ability to detect them. And underneath it all, health problems are brewing. As the health problems worsen, new signals—such as reflux, low blood sugar, or painful, swollen joints—emerge. These are symptoms of disease or injury, and they’ll be much harder to ignore.

Think about that a second. Re-read it. “Your body’s natural signals (like hunger, fatigue, and pain) get progressively more difficult to hear amid the buzz created by caffeine, alcohol, sugar, fat, and medications.” That’s pretty serious. I am afraid of a lot of substances, in part for this reason – I don’t like to take medicine unless I have no choice (I even opted against the epidural), I limit caffeine, and you can count on me to be your designated driver. I have never placed sugar or fat into this same category. And with all that I have read about processed foods (and some of you have read it right along with me), this should not have sounded so groundbreaking, but it did. (Maybe it’s that “all-or-nothing” thinking again.)

My New Year’s Resolution this year was an ambitious one – I resolved to lose 10 pounds per month until I am happy with my shape. Coming off of a great success from 2011 (no McDonald’s – I still haven’t consumed so much as a french fry!), I felt that I could finally handle a biggie. January and February went according to plan, and then some; by March 1, I was down 25 pounds. Then came March, which was a terrible month, full of stress and sadness. I have no one but myself to blame for my five pound weight gain, which became eight pounds as of this morning. I can’t even say that I am consumed with guilt about the fact that I haven’t logged my food in weeks, nor have I exercised. I have been so busy with everything else I have to do that I haven’t even given it much thought (fleeting guilt, at the most).

Hence, this book. The premise is that, if you don’t have access to an actual coach, you can coach yourself towards weight lost, not by finding a quick-fix type diet, or by engaging in turbo-restrictions (did I ever tell you about the time I stopped eating carbohydrates? – I looked really cute and fit until my hair started falling out), but by changing your mindset. This shift will allow you to develop better habits, which will lead to real weight loss success.

I read through Chapter 4. I haven’t decided how to read/blog this book yet, because much of it includes activities, some of which take several days to accomplish (for example, the first one asks you to set a small non-scale-related goal, such as drink four glasses of water a day, commit to it, and see how you feel after a few days of practice). I may take it super slowly and do the exercises as I go, or I might just read it through, and then either review it right away or wait and review it after I have made some progress.

From the beginning chapters, the authors are pushing in the direction of positive change – no processed food, don’t just hang out on the couch without moving, etc. I’m feeling a bit twitchy because, of course, I know this stuff, but I’m counting on the part where they help me change my mindset. Oh, and “people who get 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep each night are thinner than those who get fewer than 7 hours.” This is not news to me – maybe hearing it a thousand times will finally convince me to try sleeping more consistently.

Here is a quote:

The Coach Approach is that negative thoughts don’t lead to change. Transformation is the result of positive feelings that build you up rather than tear you down, so improving your self-esteem and confidence actually precedes weight-loss success.

The Coach Approach is that you may need to lower the bar in order to jump over it. Keeping your weight-loss expectations realistic from the get-go will motivate you to move forward instead of frustrating you so much that you give up before you’ve even started. You can continue to increase your standards as you make progress and gain confidence in your abilities.

I finished the book. It left me feeling a bit down, thinking about my overachieving friends when I was in high school and the years that I, too, tried to live on very little sleep to be the best. Sometimes I think the lack of sleep might have stunted my growth (I don’t quite clear 5’2″). Even now I give up sleep to get things done, and when I read that this is a likely factor in my struggle to lose weight, I feel angry and consider drastic measures like attempting to grade papers while riding an exercise bike or maybe spending eight hours a day on a treadmill (I can read while I’m on there, and I have plenty to read).

I have a bit of a problem in my head sometimes, thinking things have to be all or nothing. It’s very hard to walk the moderate path. I pour myself into teaching at the expense of a clean house (which I tend to completely ignore until someone wants to come over and visit); when I try to lose weight, I am either firmly and extremely committed, or I leap off the wagon after taking a running start. Blogging is one way I try to practice moderation, and I admit that I’m not very good at it yet – - ideally I would like to do at least a little bit every day (maybe take one day off a week), but more often I walk away from it for days or weeks at a time if I can’t fully commit to a self-designated weekly post minimum. Reading about the overachieving kids, who stress themselves out to be the best, I was perversely reminded of myself at various times in my life.

But enough about me. The book ends with updates on the students featured in the case studies. Robbins mentions that further updates are available on her website, but I could not find them. With few exceptions, these are “all” kids – pushing themselves in every aspect of their lies, even if it’s painful to do so. It sounds as though some of them will be able to relax a bit once they enter college (and the Harvard Freshman featured in the book sounds as though he is going to be just fine – I really wish I could have found updated information about him on Robbins’ website). She also gives suggestions to parents, students, and others involved in education.

We live in an extremely competitive society, and it’s only getting worse. I look at my smart, talented, beautiful little daughter and, with all my heart, I want the best for her. We work hard to encourage her without pressuring her, but I think she has already internalized some of the socially-driven expectation of perfection. Here is an example: lately, she will only write her name in capital letters. Her name is Noa, so there is only one real lowercase letter to write, and she won’t do it. She has been writing her name for a very long time, but she had been using upper- and lowercase letters until very recently. I asked her about it yesterday – dismissively, she said, “It’s okay. I don’t know how to make a lowercase ‘a’ so I don’t write my name like that anymore.” I let it drop so it doesn’t become a “thing,” but she’s right – she did struggle with that “a.” Hers looked like a “p” so her name would look like “Nop” whenever she wrote it. I would try to work with her, and presumably so would her teachers at school, and she was really improving – the tail on the backwards “a” was getting smaller and smaller. Then one day she “fixed” the problem by reverting to all-caps. This way, no one corrects her writing – her capital “A” is excellent. How can I help her fix this (the fear of imperfection, not the imperfect penmanship) without making it worse?

This weekend our daughter had an Alice in Wonderland themed birthday “tea” party with a few of her friends (the tea was really lemonade). One of the girls finished her tea early and wanted to go play outside, but her mother told her she had to “keep [her] bottom in a chair” until the other girls had finished up. Kids are so smart – she waited until her mother wasn’t looking, then quickly moved into Little Mama’s “little red chair, ” a light-weight, child-sized chair that is easy to carry around. Careful to keep the chair firmly attached to her rear end, she then walked herself outside to play. No rules were broken (unless you count the second or two it took her to switch seat).

This section of the book is all about loopholes (I read through Chapter 14). There were plenty of exceptions to the prohibition of alcohol in the United States, and people used these as loopholes to have alcohol if they wanted it.

Loophole One: each person was allowed a certain amount of homemade fermented fruit juice (it wasn’t technically assumed to be alcoholic, and was supposed to allow people who grew fruits to make use of some of their harvests). Grape growers got exceptionally rich by shipping mashed up grapes all over the country. Okrent says that, for a time, grape prices got so high that former wine makers were earning nearly exponentially more by just shipping grapes than they did making and selling wines (of course, some of them lamented that the quality of home-fermented wine was sub-standard, but they kept ion shipping the grapes. I vaguely remember making my high school science class making wine – as I recall, it wasn’t that hard to do (of course, no one was allowed to taste it, and it might not have been potable at all).

Loophole Two: Alcohol remained legal for religious purposes. In short, their motives were noble ones and, in the end, some priests and rabbis also managed to become very wealthy because of Prohibition. Also, a surprising number of people became Catholic or Jewish during this time. Here is a quote:

American Jews had opposed the Eighteenth Amendment with the near unanimity and absolute vehemence that seized American Catholics. For both groups, it wasn’t simply a matter of protecting the free practice of their respective religions. Like the Catholics, the Jews peered behind the Prohibition banner and saw the white-hooded hatred of the Ku Klux Klan and the foaming xenophobia of the nativist pastors who dominated the Methodist and Baptist churches. It was a view summarized by a speaker at the annual meeting of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1914: the effort to place Prohibition in the Constitution, the rabbi declared, could be attributed to “the ambition of ecclesiastic tyrants.”

Loophole Three: Alcohol remained legal for medicinal purposes. Evidently a lot of doctors and pharmacists prescribed straight whiskey or other spirits for various ailments, or used it in their various tonics. Some of them fancied up their prescriptions by calling it “Spiritus Frumenti” which means “spirit of the grain.” This reminds me of the current situation with marijuana – it is legal for medicinal purposes in California and other places, and I often hear people joking about how easy it is to get a prescription for it: Headache? Medical marijuana. Hangnail? Medical marijuana. Seems like the same thing was going on with whiskey back in those dark days of Prohibition.

They still put alcohol in some medicines, don’t they? When we were kids, they used to give us “Baby Percy Medicine” whenever we had stomach problems. That stuff contained quite a lot of alcohol, and it worked every time – as I recall, it made us fall contentedly to sleep, but you’ll have to check with my mom or grandma as to whether this was really the case. I Googled it and found an assortment of websites listing the alcohol content at 5% (don’t quote me on this – I made no attempt to verify this). Hm – doesn’t Nyquil have a fairly high amount of alcohol too?

Evidently, you can still buy it (you'll never guess where). The URL (and where this image was taken from) is printed as a footnote.

Here is my favorite quote from this section:

Charles Walgreen…had built his Chicago-based chain from nine locations in 1916 to twenty just four years later. In 1922 Walgreens introduced the malted milk shake, which family historians have credited with the chain’s next growth spurt. But it’s doubtful that milk shakes alone were responsible for Walgreens’ rocketing expansion from 20 stores to an astonishing 525 during the 1920s. The author sites, as evidence, a quote from one of the heirs, about having to call the fire department to the stores and hoping that they would leave quickly “because whenever they came in we’d always lose a case of liquor from the back.”

Not another loophole, but the book mentions that soft drinks did well during Prohibition, and not just because they gave the compliant something besides water to drink. Soft drinks were also used to mask the awful taste of home made spirits.

Footnote: The URL for the Percy Medicine is (wait for it): www.walgreens.com

When I attended community college, they used to give us a “welcome pack” every semester, containing a really cool planner, and several product samples like breath mints and deodorant. One time the sample pack contained “NoDoz.” I am not a coffee drinker, and, while I have had my share of chocolate, I have not been one to consume caffeine in doses high enough to brink about what I have heard people refer to as “caffeine headaches” whenever they are away from the stuff for too long. Anyway, I put the caffeine tablets in my purse and pretty much forgot about them until one day, after I had pulled an all-nighter and was feeling like I could barely hang on. I was trying to will my eyes to stay opened when I remembered – impulsively, I swallowed them down without any water, and hoped that I would be able to stay awake in my next class. I was awake alright – awake and jittery. At one point, I tried to speak, and my words came out all jumbled because my brain was running faster than my mouth could. It was horrible. Admittedly, I have attempted it since this – in tea form, but after about three cups my fingers don’t type properly and my whole body feels shaky and uncomfortable (I’m awake, but I’m not sure how efficiently I work in this condition). [I read through chapter 14.]

I guess my caffeine sensitivity is probably a blessing in disguise because it keeps me from being tempted by other things – admittedly, like so many others, I sometimes wish that there was some magic substance I could take that would enable me to skip the need for sleep [that was the most compelling part of The Twilight series for me - can you imagine how much you could accomplish if you didn't ever have to sleep, and you didn't ever feel sleepy?]. This part of the book talks about teenagers using much more than coffee to stay awake, including prescription drugs. Here is a quote – see how tempting it sounds (if you aren’t afraid of strange potential side effects, like I am)?

The pills are considered universal enhancers, meaning that even students without ADD could gain a longer and more focused attention span from the pills. “It won’t make you smarter, but if the material is hard, you’ll be able to stick with it longer, plow through it. You’re able to concentrate better,” said California pediatrician Lawrence Diller. “People with ADHD who are performing below average on mental aspects that require continued concentration and attention to detail, when you give them Adderall or Ritalin, their performance improves to normal levels. If you give [non-ADHD] people who are performing normally in these tasks low doses, their performance improves to supranormal levels.”

Some kids get a false ADD diagnosis in order to get the pills (by convincing a psychiatrist that they have it). Others make a fortune selling the pills to overachieving students who want an edge. None of my students admit to this, but they sometimes mention knowing someone who has, typically in high school. I am so afraid of taking unnecessary medication that it seems shocking that anyone would do this – then I remember the feeling of sleeping only a few hours a night for weeks on end. And I guess the drugs would be pretty easy to get in high school – I remember reading about ADHD drugs being over-prescribed to kids (are they the same drugs as for ADD?) and now I wonder what percentage of diagnoses for older kids are for those who really just want a “magic pill” to help them get more schoolwork done. Someone Robbins interviewed for the book actually refers to these drugs as “academic steroids.”

The other most interesting part of this section is about the SAT. I hadn’t realized that so many colleges no longer require this test (for many it is optional). The most disturbing quote: “Until 1994, “SAT” stood for “Scholastic Aptitude Test.” But generally, students’ “aptitude” increased by thirty points for every $10,000 their parents earned in yearly income. A California study found that the level of parents’ education alone explained more than 50 percent of the difference in students’ SAT scores. The SAT has historically been accused of racial bias, with minorities regularly scoring below the national average for white students.” I knew about the racial bias, but combined with those other two statistics, it sounds as though the SAT is a form of “affirmative action” for upper middle class white people. Go figure. I am curious to see the actual results of these studies.

So, as it turns out, alcohol never really was prohibited in the U.S. Some might have done without, but if you wanted it, there were ways – and it wasn’t too tough, really. I know I would not have been a rum rummer, but it sounds like it was probably kind of fun. Loading up boats and keeping ahead of law enforcement, traveling, creative bookkeeping – at the very least, it would have been exciting. And lucrative. The key was to find the right people to bribe. But even if you had to hand out a lot of bribes, it really didn’t make a dent in the bottom line. I read through Chapter 11.

It wasn’t hard to find customers either. Some of them were even law enforcement (although some law enforcement planned raids for when they ran out of their own personal stash, so they could stock up for free. See, selling alcohol was illegal, but having it was not. Some made it themselves, but the very wealthy used the time before Prohibition took effect to build extra wine cellars or storage rooms and stock up on as much legal alcohol they thought they would want.

Others purchased stills and made their own. Every time I think about “moonshine,” I think of Miss Hannigan from Annie, with her bathtub gin. I always thought she was breaking the law by making her own alcohol. Now I’m wondering – did Daddy Warbucks have a private alcohol stash somewhere in that mansion of his? Was this addressed in the film? I don’t remember – do any of you?

The President of the United States had a stash – in this section of the book, the president was Warren G. Harding, and evidently he had plenty of alcohol-filled parties while in the White House. Reading about one hypocrite after another made me think of marijuana – I wonder how many politicians vote against legalization and enjoy at least a puff every once in awhile.

It was also legal to take alcohol through the United States on the way somewhere else. Some rumrunners would officially transport liquor from, say Canada to South America – if something (wink, wink) fell off the truck on the way down, well – that wasn’t anyone’s fault. One woman in Canada made her own alcohol – really, her own, just for her own use – that was what she told investigators anyway; it’s common for a single person to drink ten bottles a day, isn’t it? Another story Okrent tells is of a U.S town just across the Canadian border. There was a raid, so the people went out in the snow to hide their bottles of wine, but law enforcement found some of it. They started breaking the bottles and dumping out the alcohol. What would you do if you witnessed something like this? We are told that some dropped to the ground and started eating snow.

Honestly, to me it is a wonder that we kept up the pretense of prohibition for as long as we did. I guess the Anti-Saloon League must have been really powerful for so many politicians to vote for it when they very clearly had no intention of following the law. I feel as though the theme for this post is “history repeats itself” – so many politicians get into trouble (at least by being publicly humiliated because they did something they politically object to.

One more bit of trivia – some of the words we use today came out of this period in our history. My favorite example of this (and yes – I fact checked it) is the term scofflaw. The word was the winning entry in a radio contest to come up with a word to refer to the countless rumrunners/bootleggers who deliberately broke U.S. law in this regard.

I remember back in high school, receiving tons of mail from various college. I was always being asked to fill out some sort of survey about what I was looking for in a college, and soon after I submitted it, more mail would arrive. The funniest one I received was from a college I had never heard of, thinking me for asking for information about their riding program (riding, as in horses) – I had to laugh, because I had never ridden a horse (still haven’t) and certainly hadn’t requested information about any riding programs. We concluded that someone had read my survey out loud and the persons stuffing envelopes had heard “riding” instead of “writing.” Or maybe they were just really working hard to recruit horse enthusiasts and sent it to everyone on their list. In the end, I attended a community college for my general ed requirements, a decision I do not regret, and may even suggest for my kids when they reach that stage (don’t hurry, Little Mama – you’re getting big much too quickly as it is!).

According to Robbins, studies show that Ivy League grads don’t earn more money than the rest of us, on average. Also, and perhaps the most important thing, is that teaching quality is not better at Ivy League schools. (One major study found Harvard to be nearly at the bottom based on student surveys of teaching quality “[availability] of faculty, the quality of instruction and advising, the [presence of] sense of community, and the campus social life.”) I know a little something about teaching in college, and I completely understand why this would be the case. At the more prestigious schools, the main job of a professor is to conduct research. Some of the more famous professors don’t actually step into the classroom at all, and their classes are actually taught by graduate students. Others just spend the minimum amount of time necessary to deliver a lecture/lesson without allowing their research to suffer. The rest of their time is spent writing for publication, speaking at various places, securing funding for future research, and other assorted non-classroom-related duties.

It’s easier to find great teachers at less prestigious colleges that do not place their primary emphasis on research. Some community colleges are excellent places to find great teachers (some of the best professors from my undergraduate days were at community college, and I hope to be one of those great professors someday as well).

This section of the book discusses the U.S. News and World Report annual college ranking report. As it turns out, there is overwhelming evidence that the entire list is a big scam. Colleges blatently cheat to score higher on the list (anything from falsifying SAT averages to reclassifying non-donating alums as dead so they will have a higher percentage). Some also manipulate their selectivity rating by actively recruiting students they know they will deny. Here is a quote from the book:

When the magazine’s first rankings algorithm produced a number one school that wasn’t considered elite, the algorithm (which rewarded diversity) and the statistician who created it were dumped. Instead, U.S. News went with a formula that resulted in a top ranking for Yale. Washington Monthly reported that since then, U.S. News “essentially put its thumb on the scale to make sure that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton continued to come out on top, as they did every year until 1999.” [I checked the 2011 list: Harvard, Princeton, Yale...]

Robbins interviews admissions directors in this section. According to these decision makers, it’s not necessary to play multiple sports, head multiple clubs, and engage in hundreds of hours of community service in order to be accepted into a top school. One, Matt Lawrence, said, “We’re not looking for a well-rounded student; we’re looking for a well-rounded student body.” In other words, you are being compared with the other students in the applicant pool, but not in the sense that the person with the most activities wins, but rather, your skills and experience must complement and add to theirs.

Two other items in my reading were of particular interest to me, one because I am a parent and the other because I am a sociologist:

Helicopter Parenting (again recalling A Nation of Wimps): I had already read about kids being diagnosed with false developmental disorders so they could get unlimited time on the SAT (in A Nation of Wimps – how have I not finished that great book?!?) The part that really struck me this time was parents getting their “regular” kids labeled “gifted.” These parents link their personal self esteem to the success of their children and then devote inordinate amounts of time toward helping their children achieve parent-determined measures of success – “gifted” status -> advanced classes – > perfect SAT scores – > Ivy League college – > prestigious career…

I have been struggling with this one (public confession time): I am convinced that my daughter is gifted. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be. It bothers me that she can’t read yet, because I could read well by age three, and I just KNOW she has it in her. There are other things I’m certain she could do (like using the computer to do more than watch Netflix, play mp3s, Angry Birds or – heaven help us – poker) if I just pushed a little. But I don’t want to push too hard and have her burn out by the tenth grade, so I’m hanging back and letting her set the pace (which is very hard to do). For her birthday, I got her several learning books, (actually, I’m holding them until her party, but since she can’t read, I can post this here) and I’m thinking that I’ll “home school” her this summer if she wants me to.

The other interesting bit is about teacher expectation and students: As I tell my classes, teacher expectation can doom a student. If they are convinced you can’t handle the material they might write you off by “dumbing down” the material instead of challenging you to succeed. I hadn’t heard examples at the opposite end of the spectrum until now. Robbins describes a kid who is a “stealth” overachiever, meaning that he doesn’t publicize his high test scores or college plans. Because his teachers don’t perceive him to be in the same league as the “Ivy bound” students, his subjective grades are not as high (his English teacher gives him lower grades on his essays than her grader does – the grader does not know the reputations of the kids, and grades them only on merit). Robbins also mentions teachers (even at the college level) being pressured to raise the grades of kids who are on scholarships and those who are perceived to be particularly smart/worthy of Ivy league acceptance. That’s terrible.

I remember falling asleep in class when I was in high school. One time a teacher told me off in front of everyone else – I had gone to class at 6 am for an optional study session for Honors Chemistry after only sleeping about three hours, and I pretty much slept through the whole thing. I was convinced that something was wrong with me, that maybe I just didn’t have the drive necessary to stay awake even though everyone else seemed to be able to. Another time I was so excited to see Nelson Mandela interviewed on television – I slept through the interview and felt like such a failure afterwards.

It turns out I was just a normal, sleep deprived teenager, trying to juggle AP classes and extracurricular activities and finding that there were not enough hours in a day. The author mentions (but does not link to – at least the digital version does not include many notes – to me this is a major flaw of the book) studies about sleep deprivation and teens. (By the way, I read through Chapter 7.) Teenagers who juggle too many activities on too little sleep are, according to Robbins, more likely to be depressed, have “negative moods, decreased school performance, increased likelihood to try stimulants, and a higher risk of accidents and death.” I am inclined to believe her, because we heard similar things, and more, in NurtureShock (for example, that SAT and math scores improve when teens gets more sleep).

Another challenge students increasingly face is the emphasis on test scores over actual learning. Sometimes they tell me about their experiences with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and, because we are in Florida, the FCAT. I have heard so many horror stories. It is extremely stressful, and there doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually retention of knowledge. And I wonder how much fun it is for the teachers? – if they have to devote the majority of their time to making sure one test goes well in order to keep their jobs, I don’t think we are best utilizing their skills and talents. how are your skills and talents. Here is a quote from the book:

No Child Left Behind has already changed the face of the United States classroom, and the results are disturbing. The exclusive emphasis on tests has left students sick with stress in even the youngest grades; some schools reported that on testing days, up to two dozen children vomit on their test booklets. In Florida, when a seventeen-year-old honor roll student failed the state test and was told she wouldn’t graduate with her class, she attempted to kill herself.

The book explains that NCLB was modeled after a program in Houston, which sounded as though it was extremely successful at increasing test scores and discouraging kids from dropping out of college. Evidently the program, which hasn’t been successful at the national level, didn’t work in Texas either – those impressive results that led to a national program turned out to be fraudulent. (Robbins gives specific evidence of this, but I haven’t fact checked her.)

There is so much in these chapters – I could go on and on. Here are a few more highlights:

Cheating is an epidemic among smart kids. One student explained it this way: “The whole reason cheating is popular is because it’s busywork, for the most part, and you don’t feel you need to learn the material because it’s not important. For teachers I respect, if they make the effort to teach me something useful, I’m not going to cheat.”

I try to make my assignments as engaging as possible, but I have caught some cheaters. It feels terrible to be the one the students don’t respect. On a positive note, I assign a lot of writing in my classes, and the blatant cheating has only happened a few times. And sometimes the student “accidentally” plagiarized by copying and pasting large passages of text, then slapping a citation at the bottom of the page. For me it is more common for students to speak to me about their papers as they are writing them – some show me drafts, other ask questions here and there, and sometimes they give me regular updates on papers they are particularly invested in.

Not only do we pressure kids too much in the classroom, we do it on the sports field as well. Robbins gives the following statistic: “Every year, more than 3.5 million children age fourteen and younger are treated for sports injuries.” That’s a lot, particularly because many of them are the types of injuries that can only occur with many hundreds of hours of repetitive activity. I remember reading about this in A Nation of Wimps, too, and I repeat that I don’t want to ever lose my head and make my children believe that being the best at any sports is worth permanent, irreparable injury. If this keeps them out of the Olympics or the “Big Leagues,” I’m alright with that.

This section also discusses private preschools for children, and highly competitive kindergartens that involve standardized testing and personal interviews with both parents and children. Naturally, I read these paragraphs with great interest. I’m not sure how Little Mama would do on the tests. As a parent, I know it’s hard to resist the urge to compare our kids to other people’s, so I tried to imagine our girl in the interview room when the author was describing the ones she got to witness. At nearly four, she is decent at math, and spends a great deal of time voluntarily filling pages with letter practice. She isn’t reading yet, but enthusiastically points out her sight words (from school) when I read to her. She can draw a few shapes (she has been practicing stars lately – her attempts look pretty much like “A’s”), and I think she is excellent with scissors. I’m proud of her, of course.

Coach Yourself Thin: Five Steps to Retrain Your Mind, Reclaim Your Power, and Lose the Weight for Good, by Gregg Hottinger and Michael Scholtz – My New Year’s Resolution this year is to lose weight, ten points a month until I’m happy with my size. January and February went extremely well, but I stalled/backslid a bit in March. I’m a stress eater, and March was a very rough month. (If you’re curious, I have lost and kept off 21 pounds so far this year, so I certainly don’t feel like a failure in this.) I hope this book helps me get back on track, and if any of you are struggling to meet similar goals, maybe we can help keep each other accountable. [Digital]

Matched, by Ally Condie – I’m on a young adult fiction kick and this book (the first in a trilogy) has been sitting on my shelf for over a year. [Hardcover]

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband, by David Finch – I read about this on in a book newsletter a few months ago, and am super excited to read it. [Digital]

The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children, by Wendy Mogel, Ph.D. – My child turns four this month, and I have a shelf full of parenting books I have yet to read that were purchased when she was about two (specifically aimed at parenting small children). I’m going to try to get one in every month. Maybe I can get them done before she either starts kindergarten or gets the sibling she has been campaigning for and I need to order a new set of books. [Paperback]

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand – My mom read this one over a year ago, and she loved it – she still talks about it sometimes because it left an impression on her. One of my readers (who is also a friend, and whose book opinions I value) also recommends it. [Hardcover, courtesy of my mom]

A couple of weeks ago when we were in California, we went to the roller derby. During half time, some little girls from a local dance studio got to perform. My daughter was mesmerized – I don’t even think she blinked. She watched one dancer with particular interest, a child maybe eight years old, doing some of the moves we see on our favorite show, So You Think You Can Dance. “Mommy,” she whispered, “I have to learn how to do that. Is my dance studio going to teach me how to do that?” She is in a tiny tot dance class for an hour a week – they do ballet, tap, and tumbling, and nothing as impressive as these dancers performed. Of course, the girls that night were much older than the preschoolers in Little Mama’s class, but I found myself wondering if I am going to become one of those moms who drives her kid all over the county in pursuit of a dream.

I keep thinking about Little Mama, of course, as I read this book about teenagers preparing to attend college. It’s about kids who sleep four hours a night, take every AP class they possibly can, and juggle so many extracurricular activities they it seems impossible that they can physically manage their load. Some of them can’t, of course, and three chapters in we already know about a girl with thinning hair, a boy (now labeled a “slacker”) who suffers such extreme test anxiety that he finally just gave up studying in order to avoid the physical and emotion torment, and kid who (although the book doesn’t use the word) sounds dangerously suicidal, even after being accepted to Harvard. We are told that some overachieving kids develop eating disorders as a means of having control over something in their out of control lives,, and that the majority of bulimics and anorexics get excellent grades in school.

As with everything, social class factors into the equation, of course: at a school in New Mexico, Robbins interviews overachieving kids who don’t expect to be able to pay for expensive Ivy League schools, while several of the lead “characters” [all of whom attend(ed) a prestigious D.C. high school] have parents who shell out upwards of $30,000 for private guidance counselors to help shape their high school careers with the aim of Ivy admission.

It all seems so contrived, like a ridiculous game, and I can’t help but think that the admissions boards should feel insulted that they are being manipulated this way – why do they allow it? Sometimes the applicants don’t even write their own college applications because the highly-paid college counselor writes it for them.

The saddest case study introduced in this section centers around “AP Frank” – a kid who took every single possible AP exam (his mom actually complained to the school because they didn’t have an AP physical education class so he could get an extra point on his weighted GPA). Robbins explains the unique cultural pressures felt by some Asian students, as well as other groups in other countries. Here is just one quote from that section:

In Korea, Mrs. AP Frank’s birthplace, a popular saying is “Four in, five out,” a reference to how many hours of sleep students can allow themselves nightly if they want to get into an elite university. Three-year-olds must display skills on a musical instrument before being admitted into some preschools. In a typical Korean schedule, students work straight through their waking hours, from classes to homework to “cram school”—costly private lessons to supplement classwork. Competition for grades can be cutthroat, as some students steal classmates’ notes to sabotage their test performance. The college tiers are so crucial that a Korean’s career, life, marriage, and family pride may depend largely on where he attended school. Even into middle age, an employee’s salary, position, and reputation can be based less on his job performance than on how he did on the college entrance exam he took as a teen. In China and Taiwan, a recent uptick in the number of student suicides was attributed to the intense pressure to succeed in school. Indian officials report increased student suicides as well as traumatic disorders and hysterical psychoses due to fear of exams.

For me, for my kids, I want them to be as successful as possible. If this means I have to push them a bit, I think that’s fine. But I don’t want it to be about my goals instead of theirs. Since the roller derby halftime show, Little Mama has gotten much more interested in dance practice. When we watch the singing competitions shows (our new favorite is The Voice), she spends a great deal of the show practicing her dance steps. Who knows? Maybe I WILL be that kind of dance mom – as long as they are HER dreams, I don’t mind helping her chase them.