Computer games

A while ago I bought Cora a little toy "computer" - you can play number and letter games with it and it makes the most annoying monkey sound imaginable. We watch a fair amount of "Curious George" so I feel qualified to make that judgment. I think I bought it two years ago, and periodically she has pulled it out and pretended to work at her computer while I work at mine. But in the last six months she has begun to actually play the games.

I love watching her as she listens to the prompt and thinks about the answer.

And I love her victory dance when she gets an answer right. (Note the awesome skeleton pajamas. They glow in the dark! Although, Cora tells me that it kind of scares her when she looks at her legs under the covers and the bones glow. But she also likes it, so she keeps looking.)

Is there anything better than getting the answer right?!

As a rule, I don't like to get all Chicken Little about the state of the world...

...okay, that is a complete lie. Consider that most of my favorite books involve some sort of post-apocalyptic landscape that even while I am reading I know will give me day-horrors for weeks (or months, or years), but I still can't keep from reading. Few people know this, because I like to mostly keep it to myself, but I can get very Chicken Little indeed...

but the other day I did an online poll at a parenting web site. The poll was this: What is the most important value for kids to learn? And the possible answers were:
Empathy
Respect
Generosity
Responsibility
Honesty

In a bit, I'll reveal what the voting was when I was last there, but first I'll tell you which one I picked and why. Ready? Got your guess?

Empathy, of course. I think it really contains all the other choices, for one thing - it is hard, perhaps impossible to empathize without having respect for the person, situation, etc. you feel empathy for or with. Feeling empathy would seem to lead directly to being generous and honest, and also to responsibility. In fact, I would say that empathy is the only choice that can possibly encompass all the others, so it is my favorite kind of answer: the carpetbag answer.

Now, I know not everyone might think this way, trying to get the most out of his or her vote, but I still expected results to be pretty evenly distributed among the possible responses. Here are the results up to the point I cast my vote:

Empathy: 17%
Respect: 41%
Generosity: 2%
Responsibility: 19%
Honesty: 21%

While these are all fine values, I'm a little taken aback by the low score of generosity, and that honesty scores second-highest. Do people think it is a quality too often taken advantage of? Why the low interest in generosity as something to teach kids? Does respect or honesty also contain the promise of generosity? I suppose respect might, but I don't think there is anything in honesty that also promises generosity. I think there are a good many people who are very honest, but hardly generous - who, if they were being honest, might actually see generosity as a weakness.

In fact, honesty seems to me to be the quality on this list that is the most discrete, the one with the least overlap with the others. I confess I think that scrupulous honesty is overrated, is, in fact, on some level dishonest, disrespectful, and definitely lacking in empathy. Of all the qualities on this list it is the one I feel most ambivalent about. Honesty is good and to be encouraged, but not at the cost of everything else. If you want my honest, respectful opinion.

If you don't, well, I will try to understand how you feel.

Another quiz? No, not the briar patch!

I found this through another blogger's posting - I am such a sucker for any kind of quiz. At this website you can take a quiz to determine your liberal breed (not that I don't already know my breed, of course). (Note to BrotherR: I don't know that this quiz skews left enough for you, but give it a try!)

My Liberal Breed: Reality-Based Intellectualist

I like the sound of that...even if it does sound a little gloomy and snooty, now that I think about it. A little ivory-tower reserved. But doesn't that just go to show how freakily accurate the quiz really is?