Category Archives: commercial exploitation

overthinkers anonymous

Posted on by

Dear www.baby.geek.nz

You are a dear wee website.  You have given me a place to file my thoughts and preserve a gigantic number of links (* or portals to wonderlands of learning and discovery, as I like to think of them).

You’re a bit of a secret, though, which is cool, but there is this thing I love to imagine you doing.  Just quietly.  I love to imagine that you, www.baby.geek.nz, have improbably become a useful launchpad, catapaulting conversations between thinking parents and scattering chat among other assorted family-folk.

In a world gone bonkers, only you manage to somehow bring together a pot pourri of links that is JUST SO MY CUP OF TEA.  Which shouldn’t surprise me, because I posted every darned last one of them.  Beginning with THIS, my very first blog post.  Awww, cute.

I do love you, darling website, and I promise I can change.  Please, baby(geek), just give me a little more time.  I dream of a bright future for us,

love,

Me xx

End scene.

Anyway, I’m obsessing more than usual about these notions of communication and internet and purpose because last week I went to a Social Media 101 training day.   Holla, Enterprise North Canterbury!  Tumeke, Simplify & Amplify!

It’s all very fascinating, and I kinda dig learning about the psychology of marketing, and why people do stuff and how to get them to do the stuff you think they oughta, I am horrified by what my dear late mother would’ve called the Coca-colonisation of the world.  The blatant and aggressive enslavement of populations by corporations too slick and sneaky to be outfoxed.  Really, I think we should all buy less.  Use less.  Do more for ourselves.  

And the whole technology of twitter and facebook and all their chums is flippin amazing.   As a tool, it’s the way to find all the peoples who care about the things.  Nana over here has to do some work … cos I’d love to find some thinking mamas and I think that’s where they are and yet I FEAR the lure of the devices.  Both for myself and for all of us!

Pads and Macs and smart phones and regular (dumb?) phones … OH … behold these amazing ads from China about resisting the phone addiction FOR THE CHILDREN …

… here’s the thing …. I’d love it if we could all get the fact that societies of useful adults – that is, adults who are kind, competent, smart, healthy, capable, or at least not incompetent dicks – those sorts of adults are more likely if they were gifted responsive, warm, calm, loving care while they were babies.  There.  It’s that simple.  I said it.

Not just me.  Heaps of people.  Like Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child.  Heaps.

And you cannot tell me, not even for a second, that the brains of human young will be as effectively nurtured by distracted adults whose faces glow from their device du jour than they will be by an adult available to meet their gaze, respond to their vocalisations, and make up lame songs.

Ladies and gentlegeeks, I think we gotta unplug more.  For ourselves, and sure as the dickens for our babies.

I mean, I’m all for the flow of mindfulness teaching, (at school!  Love it.)  I am generally very Mindful of Mindfulness, but I can’t help but think we wouldn’t need quite so much mindfulness training if we just spent a wee bit less time skittering between devices and leaping between operating systems.

It’s like how we eat tons of fatty food and then obsess about weight loss.  I’m talking about us as a culture, not YOU.  Or ME.  Just all of us, you know?  Truly: if we did like Michael Pollan … “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” and then went for walks and did some yoga then VOILA!  Wellness.

Sorry.  I’m a bit didactic and grouchy tonight.  I’m angsting.

Yeah, I angst about encouraging folks deeper into the digital world and further from the juicy messy deliciousness of real life.  And yet I love the handiness of a magical box that sings the commercials of my youth and finds me amazing recipes and connects me to people I love, all over the world.

What the flip.  Modern life … I need me my online yoga before bed.  Love you, Adriene, my electronic friend!

Irony, she lives.

linkin’ like a maniac

Posted on by

Kia Ora geeks, friends, and onlookers,

Snow all over the ground at my place.  Winter wonderland, etc.

Let’s get cracking with a variety of juicy links, shall we?

First: our chums from the CBC in Canada have a story here about the fun and beauty of a crocheted playground.  Enjoy!

My three-year-old is currently obsessed with birthing (*specifically, umbilical cords.  She keeps asking for hers back …) and she loves nothing more than to watch this amazing video from TED.  I know I’ve linked to it before, but here it is again.  It’s sensational.  Also from TED – this summary of the ACE study, giving more reason for deliberate care of our youngest.

This is a write up from the Daily Mail in the UK about the summary of Happiness research completed by the Mayo Clinic.  LOVE this.  The 5-3-2 thing is revolutionarily simple and deluxe.  To contrast, here is a summary from Health.com of some of the worst habits for your mental health.

A couple of treasures from Early Childhood Australia now – this one about bringing the benefits of mindfulness to the classroom, and this stunner is from the most excellent Anne Stonehouse about the challenges of documenting learning in ECE.

More from our Australian cousins: a link here to some research confirming that mandatory naps for older children (ie in childcare settings) leads to less nighttime sleep.  Which is just what parents need … (how I long for a sarcastic font!)

This link will lead you to a piece that considers the ways that bullying from peers can be more damaging than abuse from parents, and meanwhile, here is some writing from Scientific American describing how harsh parenting will likely contribute to anxiety.  Sigh.

From the good folks at Hand in Hand Parenting comes this little article about Sharing, here’s an article about the super power that comes from being raised in a bilingual home, and a cautionary tale about the potential damage from cellphones being more intense for children.

From Slate now: a piece about how doing good unto others will bring benefits onto ONESELF.  Bonus!

And FINALLY … the Washington Post bring us the data around how the top few hedge fund managers (*which I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with topiary) earn more than all the kindergarten teachers in the US combined.  We live in crazy, beautiful, messed up times.

Elsa-ish

Posted on by

fake elsa I have ideas.  Ideas about promoting what has been proven to work in our lives -like healthy relationships, a practice of gratitude, joyfully moving our wonderful bodies.  These things make us happier.

What doesn’t make us happier is buying stuff, succumbing to small-thinking, and accumulating more plastic.

And the Disney channel are having their way with my daughters, again and again.  I have tried dumb strategies to try and disentangle my kids from Elsa’s icy webs.  It may (not) surprise you it makes no difference to grizzle about how tired I am of all things Frozen, or lecture my daughters about feminist worldviews and conspiratorial marketing departments (in black masks and satin capes) .

Instead of watering the weeds and focusing on the things that aren’t wholesome in the scheme of raising my children, I know I gotta try to pull the weeds and water the flowers – to actively emphasise what I value instead of grousing about the stuff that violates my values.  Much nicer to be around.

And what do I value?  Relationships.

So I let my (just) three year old express her connection to the wider world and her love for the intimate world of her home by indulging her love of Elsa. Just a bit.  And Let it Go.  Not really the film – stuff you Hans – and not even really the whole soundtrack.  Just Elsa.  Just that song.  In the sparkly dress, tumbling plait persona.

I ponder lovingly “I wonder who made the decision to put Anna on a nightie?”.  Instead of my current technique of grousing about Frozen I can use the magic of “I wonder” to introduce an awareness of the deliberate scheming of marketers while I introduce a relationship-focused thread to the whole shebang.

Relationships: like using “Oh, do you remember who was with you when you bought the Elsa and Anna lunchbox?”  highlighting the family relationships that are real and concrete and supersede the Disney craziness.

And we discuss the finer details of Elsa’s relationship history, thus highlighting the value of relationship even within the crazy: “Oh, Elsa seems so much happier at the end when she’s ice skating with her sister!  They really seem to love each other a lot!”.  Familial love – I can handle that.

If all that fails and I’m succumbing to my grumpy self around all this, I take solace in the glorious ridiculousness of the dubious toys my husband just purchased on his recent trip to China.  That’s where today’s comical picture comes from.  Take that, Disney.

 

quick, before lunch

Posted on by

Lunchtime is my favourite time.  Hey, it’s Lunchtime!  (a prize for whomever can name that artist …)

Quick: some links.  No snazzy segways or classy intros or even categories.  Just random links … GO:

This is from Scientific American and it’s about how to get more parents to vaccinate their kids.  I have.  This is a link to the American Mindfulness Research Association, and here is some explanation as to why smiling makes us happier and more successful.  Even a faux smile!

This is a YouTube clip about the lovely Tree Change Dolls I shared a while back and this is a blog post about the relentless branding of children’s toys.  Ugh.

Here’s an interview urging rebellion against ‘the gospel of money’ and this article from v. good North & South magazine features the most excellent Rick Hanson who I heard speak a month ago.  Still reeling.  In a good way.   You could also do this wee yoga practice and be happy.  Especially if you smile whilst doing so.

Finally, boycott your biology.  Supress the sociology.  Dance and sing in public!

tell the children the truth

Posted on by

Hey friends and geeks

I came to a life of Baby Geek-ery via the wonderful world of early childhood education.  And I’m pretty sure that I trained as an early childhood teacher during a Golden Age – the early nineties, when funding wasn’t that bad and when Te Whariki -the glorious curriculum of New Zealand ECE – was just being published.

We were taught about cool, mildly radical ideas like the Anti Bias Curriculum, which is a way of thinking, being, and organising life in an early childhood centre with a view to actively promoting social justice.  Instead of ignoring the racist graffiti, teachers with an Anti Bias focus arm their children with paint and brushes and explain the need to obliterate the ugly sentiments.

I’ve been wondering where this gentle activism is, in light of the influx of princess play and the pinkification of girlhood.  (re: pinkification … Enjoy this awesome blog by an at-home dad, Man Vs. Pink, which I learnt of here thanks to a geeky observer).

Meanwhile, I am as ever conscious of the way that children are marketed to and how marketers prey upon our young.  And while the adults who care are signing petitions and lobbying corporates, I wonder who’s in the trenches, actively teaching mellow radicalism to young children.  Children need to be taught the truth about the adults who will try to exploit them for money.  Those selling things to our kids don’t make decisions about what or how to sell based around love and concern for our beautiful children, they make decisions that serve their shareholders.

Just this past fortnight, my very own Little Girl’s third birthday included more Disney product than I am comfortable with.

So I am wondering what has happened to the Anti-Bias idea, whether it stops at issues of race and ability or whether we need to be stirring up a bit of awareness around commercialisation, sexism, and sexualisation of childhood.

Tell the children the truth!