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Posts by Paul Costello1

Trying to decipher a man’s mind? Now there’s a name for that.

April 3, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Nick Roberts March 27, 2024 at 8:02 a.m. EDT Washington Post

When Ellie Anderson, an assistant professor of philosophy at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., had coffee with female friends, she noticed the conversation often involved dissecting the meaning of comments or texts from their male romantic partners.

Together, they’d talk through an argument with a boyfriend, or try to interpret a vague text message from the night before. They’d game out the next step, deciding when, if at all, to bring up the issue, and then carefully prepare what they’d say or draft a text message in response.

Anderson says many of the women she knows “spend what seems to be an inordinate amount of time interpreting the pretty opaque cues of men they’re dating.”

Anderson felt she was observinga form of “emotional labor,” a term first defined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to describe how certain workers — typically women — have to suppress emotions, such as flight attendants who deal with unruly passengers.

But what to call the mental work women were doing in deciphering cryptic conversations and texts? In a paper published last year, Anderson penned a new term: “hermeneutic labor.”

Hermeneutics refers to the interpretation of language. Hermeneutic labor, Anderson says, encompasses three phases of emotional work:

  • Interpreting the feelings of others.
  • Determining when and whether to bring difficult, emotional conversations up.
  • Interpreting your own feelings.

Anderson argues that hermeneutic labor is largely performed by women who are forced to interpret the emotions and motives of male partners who lack the emotional vocabulary to explain themselves.

The men, Anderson says, “are often really taken aback and are like, ‘Oh, why are you causing a problem?’”

She argues this dynamic can have a particularly negative effect on women in heterosexual couples because their work to maintain the relationship is often met with disbelief, accusations of overreacting or fixating on problems their partner claims don’t exist. This, Anderson says, has the effect of punishing women for attempting to maintain their relationships.

It starts in childhood

Amy Warren, a licensed mental health counselor in Sarasota, Fla. has seen the pattern Anderson describes again and again over the course of her 29 year career. More often than not, it’s the woman in a heterosexual relationship who pushes the couple to seek counseling.

“Oftentimes, the man’s blindsided,” Warren says. “Men are unhappy in the relationship because a woman’s unhappy, and the woman’s unhappy because a man’s emotionally disconnected.”

But rather than blaming men for their emotional disconnection, Warren faults how men are raised.

“So many men think of their role in a relationship as the provider, the father, sometimes the protector,” Warren says. “That’s because they’ve been groomed to believe that is their role. Not really because they chose it.”

Warren, who is also a psychotherapist, says this lack of emotional expressivity arises from what she calls “little T traumas” in early childhood.

“When you tell a child, ‘Don’t cry; don’t be a baby; grow up; be a big boy,’ that’s definitely a little T trauma, because it teaches them to shut down their emotions,” Warren says.

The toll of masculine norms

Psychology professor Ronald Levant says he frequently starts lectures by asking the audience if they know a man who has trouble verbally expressing his emotions. The result has almost always been the same.

“Almost everybody raises their hand,” Levant says.Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

Levant, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and a former president of the American Psychological Association, has been studying emotionally inexpressive men for more than four decades.

While it’s true that many women and nonbinary individuals also have trouble expressing emotions, the stereotype of the emotionally inexpressive man persists. The reason, experts say, is because so-called masculine norms still dominate many cultures.

Levant’s research focuses on these masculine norms, which include dominance, toughness, self-reliance, a strong interest in sex, disdain for all things feminine, gay or bisexual, and restricting the expression of emotions. The result of these norms, Levant and other experts say, is that boys often are socialized to suppress the expression of vulnerable and caring emotions.

This inability to identify emotions with words also has a name — “normative male alexithymia.” The condition, Levant stresses, is “normative” not because it is common enough to be considered normal, but because it arises out of social norms associated with traditional masculinity.

A 2012 study co-authored by Levant found the condition was associated with higher rates of fear of intimacy and lower rates of relationship satisfaction and communication quality.

“If a boy is essentially punished for showing affection or crying,” Levant says, “he’s going to kind of not allow this emotion to come out.”

How to improve communication

When one partner struggles to put their emotions into words, it requires both parties to improve how they communicate. Here’s some advice.

Take turns being upset. Amir Levine, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Columbia University, has a rule for couples that come to his practice: Only one person is allowed to be upset at a time.

Levine, who also co-wrote the popular book “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love,” says that in relationships, one person’s mood — whether it’s miserable or happy — affects the mood of the partner. The person who is upset first should be the one who is allowed to be upset.

“You have to put your upset aside and find a way to make them not upset because that’s your job,” Levine says. “That’s kind of what relationships are all about.”

Reflect back the words. Reflecting back what your partner says has the effect of showing them you’re listening to them, and invites the opportunity to clarify what’s upsetting them.

Warren says it’s important “to say back to the person what you think you heard them say, so the speaker can then clarify.You get the whole picture, and you can respond accordingly rather than getting reactive and defensive.”

Let your partner know what you want. Warren says it’s imperative for intimate partners to let each other know what they want in their relationships, and “stand firm” that you won’t tolerate certain behaviors.

Warren notes that many people wrongly believe that their partners should intuitively know their needs without being told.

“It’s up to us to let them know in a gentle, loving way what we want,” Warren says.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/03/27/emotional-labor-relationships/

My 16-year-old twins’ attitudes are a ‘full-blown problem.’ What can I do?

April 3, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Dear Meghan: I’m the parent of twin 16-year-old girls. They have always been high performing in school and extracurriculars. Because of the demands on them, I have been permissive of their sometimes exaggerated personas. When they are happy, they can be very happy, but more often when they are tired, hungry or down, they can be loud, mean and rude. This is confined to our immediate family, for the most part.

Outside of modeling positive behavior and doing what I can to plan ahead with snacks, sleep, etc., I have done little to help them regulate their emotions. I do make occasional comments when I think they might be receptive and start conversations. Mostly I had hoped maturity would get them there. But it hasn’t. Seems like a full-blown problem now. Help!

— Calm in a storm

Calm in a storm: Thank you for writing in; I appreciate the courage that is required to raise the white flag and cry, “help!” Raising twins is a lot of work, period. From the jump, you are outmanned, and if you tend toward permissiveness, parenting twins can wear you down quickly. Generally speaking, rude children aren’t born, they are made, but that doesn’t make you the villain. Not having strong boundaries, consequences or expectations for your children over years and years gets you to today: a full-blown problem.

It is never too late to make changes, but I want to be honest with you: It’s not going to be easy. Once you realize that your permissiveness has created a monster (monsters), you may be tempted to course-correct and put the hammer down, but small and consistent changes are your best bet here.S

Meghan Leahy is a parenting coach and the author of “Parenting Outside the Lines.” She has given advice about toddler tantrums, teens and mental health and co-parenting.A

You need to ask yourself what support you need to make changes in your family. From reading books to joining online (paid and free) parenting groups to finding a good therapist or parenting coach, investigate why you have permitted the twins’ behavior and how to find your voice. Humans tend to overcorrect when making changes, but you can absolutely maintain your unique sensibilities while strengthening your boundaries. Establishing your authority is more about tone than action, but this can be challenging work. It will take courage to use boundaries, and it will take even more courage to weather the backlash they can bring. If you are co-parenting with someone, let them know your intentions and what you need. So often, I see parents try to make changes in a silo, and that just isn’t going to work.

Next, you are going to begin holding family meetings. I know most people think that these are for little kids, but family meetings are simply the most efficient way to communicate information. I don’t recommend you call a meeting and say, “I have raised a bunch of brats and will now no longer be catering to your bad attitudes and abuse.” Rather, you will be a bit more politic. Say: “I have noticed that you both work hard, and I am proud of you. When you come home, you are starving and very cranky. What can we do so you eat right away?” They may just stare at you because they are accustomed to you giving in, but you are going to wait, pen and paper in hand.

Family meetings work when the parent uses compassionate listening, so don’t be afraid to ask thoughtful questions and listen carefully. For instance, the twins may whine about not having food when and where they want it, but you also may realize that you have never taught them how to cook for themselves. We won’t use this information to blame or shame you or the kids; it’s just data, and you can work with them to teach them three simple meals.Share this articleShare

As you problem solve with them and assist them in their independence, be sure to also communicate new rules and expectations of them. Let them know that three nights a week, for instance, they’re responsible for feeding themselves and then make yourself scarce. On top of these new rules, set new consequences, too. For example, you will not make them dinner if they were expected to cook for themselves or won’t drive them to a friend’s house if they haven’t done their laundry. If you discuss these boundaries ahead of time, the twins won’t feel totally blindsided, but they probably still won’t be well-received (meaning, the twins may throw fits as if they are toddlers). The more you stick to what you have all decided, the faster the twins will learn that the family meetings are real.

You can also use these meetings to make it clear that while it is lovely they are skilled in their academics, part of leaving home for whatever is next is making sure they can take care of themselves. This includes, food, chores, laundry, snacks, cleaning their spaces and being a useful part of the family and community. And, by the way, everyone is allowed to have a bad day. We aren’t talking about punishing big emotions or valid upsets; you will place a boundary when the teen is verbally abusive, rude or demanding of you in a way that goes against the family values.

It has taken you 16 years to get into this pickle, so change will not happen overnight. But remember: Almost every human wants to be good needed, and competent, including your teens. It will be rocky as they test your boundaries, but with the right support, some consistency and a healthy sense of humor, you will be doing the family, the teens and the world a huge favor. Good luck.

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By Meghan LeahyMeghan is the mother of three daughters and the author of “Parenting Outside the Lines.” She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and secondary education and a master’s degree in school counseling and is a certified parent coach. Send a question about parenting to onparenting@washpost.com, and it may show up in a future column. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/03/27/meghan-leahy-twins-attitude-problem/

Screens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?

April 3, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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An illustration of a young student holding a pen and a digital device while looking at school lessons on the screens of several other digital devices.


By Jessica Grose Opinion Writer New York Times March 31st 2024

A few weeks ago, a parent who lives in Texas asked me how much my kids were using screens to do schoolwork in their classrooms. She wasn’t talking about personal devices. (Smartwatches and smartphones are banned in my children’s schools during the school day, which I’m very happy about; I find any argument for allowing these devices in the classroom to be risible.) No, this parent was talking about screens that are school sanctioned, like iPads and Chromebooks issued to children individually for educational activities.

I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t answer her question because I had never asked or even thought about asking. Partly because the Covid-19 era made screens imperative in an instant — as one ed-tech executive told my colleague Natasha Singer in 2021, the pandemic “sped the adoption of technology in education by easily five to 10 years.” In the early Covid years, when my older daughter started using a Chromebook to do assignments for second and third grade, I was mostly just relieved that she had great teachers and seemed to be learning what she needed to know. By the time she was in fifth grade and the world was mostly back to normal, I knew she took her laptop to school for in-class assignments, but I never asked for specifics about how devices were being used. I trusted her teachers and her school implicitly.

In New York State, ed tech is often discussed as an equity problem — with good reason: At home, less privileged children might not have access to personal devices and high-speed internet that would allow them to complete digital assignments. But in our learn-to-code society, in which computer skills are seen as a meal ticket and the humanities as a ticket to the unemployment line, there seems to be less chatter about whether there are toomany screens in our kids’ day-to-day educational environment beyond the classes that are specifically tech focused. I rarely heard details about what these screens are adding to our children’s literacy, math, science or history skills.

And screens truly are everywhere. For example, according to 2022 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, only about 8 percent of eighth graders in public schools said their math teachers “never or hardly ever” used computers or digital devices to teach math, 37 percent said their math teachers used this technology half or more than half the time, and 44 percent said their math teachers used this technology all or most of the time.

As is often the case with rapid change, “the speed at which new technologies and intervention models are reaching the market has far outpaced the ability of policy researchers to keep up with evaluating them,” according to a dazzlingly thorough review of the research on education technology by Maya Escueta, Andre Joshua Nickow, Philip Oreopoulos and Vincent Quan published in The Journal of Economic Literature in 2020.

Despite the relative paucity of research, particularly on in-class use of tech, Escueta and her co-authors put together “a comprehensive list of all publicly available studies on technology-based education interventions that report findings from studies following either of two research designs, randomized controlled trials or regression discontinuity designs.”

They found that increasing access to devices didn’t always lead to positive academic outcomes. In a couple of cases, it just increased the amount of time kids were spending on devices playing games. They wrote, “We found that simply providing students with access to technology yields largely mixed results. At the K-12 level, much of the experimental evidence suggests that giving a child a computer may have limited impacts on learning outcomes but generally improves computer proficiency and other cognitive outcomes.”

Some of the most promising research is around computer-assisted learning, which the researchers defined as “computer programs and other software applications designed to improve academic skills.” They cited a 2016 randomized study of 2,850 seventh-grade math students in Maine who used an online homework tool. The authors of that study “found that the program improved math scores for treatment students by 0.18 standard deviations. This impact is particularly noteworthy, given that treatment students used the program, on average, for less than 10 minutes per night, three to four nights per week,” according to Escueta and her co-authors.

They also explained that in the classroom, computer programs may help teachers meet the needs of students who are at different levels, since “when confronted with a wide range of student ability, teachers often end up teaching the core curriculum and tailoring instruction to the middle of the class.” A good program, they found, could help provide individual attention and skill building for kids at the bottom and the top, as well. There are computer programs for reading comprehension that have shown similar positive results in the research. Anecdotally: My older daughter practices her Spanish language skills using an app, and she hand-writes Spanish vocabulary words on index cards. The combination seems to be working well for her.

Though their review was published in 2020, before the data was out on our grand remote-learning experiment, Escueta and her co-authors found that fully online remote learning did not work as well as hybrid or in-person school. I called Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, who said that in light of earlier studies “and what we’re coming to understand about the long-lived effects of the pandemic on learning, it underscores for me that there’s a social dimension to learning that we ignore at our peril. And I think technology can often strip that away.”

Still, Dee summarized the entire topic of ed tech to me this way: “I don’t want to be black and white about this. I think there are really positive things coming from technology.” But he said that they are “meaningful supports on the margins, not fundamental changes in the modality of how people learn.”

I’d add that the implementation of any technology also matters a great deal; any educational tool can be great or awful, depending on how it’s used.

I’m neither a tech evangelist nor a Luddite. (Though I haven’t even touched on the potential implications of classroom teaching with artificial intelligence, a technology that, in other contexts, has so much destructive potential.) What I do want is the most effective educational experience for all kids.

Because there’s such a lag in the data and a lack of granularity to the information we do have, I want to hear from my readers: If you’re a teacher or a parent of a current K-12 student, I want to know how you and they are using technology — the good and the bad. Please complete the questionnaire below and let me know. I may reach out to you for further conversation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/opinion/schools-technology.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.hk0.SChM.QI9HOe4VZ8ZB&smid=url-share

The kids aren’t all right. Are phones really to blame?

March 27, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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In ‘The Anxious Generation,’ Jonathan Haidt argues that the move from ‘play-based childhood’ to ‘phone-based childhood’ has had disastrous effects

Review by Judith WarnerMarch 22, 2024 at 10:29 a.m. EDT Washington Post

If you follow the always abundant literature of What’s Wrong With Today’s Kids, then you’re already familiar with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

A professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, he’s most widely known for his 2018 bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which he and co-author Greg Lukianoff excoriated the new campus culture of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and tied the emotional fragility they believed underlay those developments to soaring rates of depression and anxiety in college students.

In the years since, Haidt has been a frequent research and sometime writing collaborator of Jean Twenge, the prolific and controversial psychologist whose Atlantic cover story in 2017, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” set the tone for their work.

Along the way, Haidt has picked up a cadre of haters (the “kids are alright” crowd, he calls them) who have accused him of cherry-picking examples, retrofitting tired old arguments about “kids today,” and stoking “moral panic” about new technology to puff himself up and keep Gen Z down.

His new book,“The Anxious Generation,”is not going to make his life any easier.

In it, Haidt builds on his previous work and beefs it up, arguing that young people today — specifically those belonging to Gen Z — are damaged products of a massive shift in the culture of childhood. Born in the late 1990s to fearful and overprotective parents, they were raised, unlike the baby boomers and Generation X, with almost constant adult supervision. They became the first-ever cohort of tweens and teens to go through adolescence under the thrall of smartphones, forming their identities in the largely unregulated, ill-understood universe of social media. The toxic combination of “overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world” (Haidt’s italics) made them super-anxious. Time spent on screens and away from in-person interactions layered in depression-inducing isolation, deprived them of sleep, fragmented their attention, and got them addicted to the dopamine hits of likes, retweets and comments. “Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable” and “unsuitable for children and adolescents,” Haidt writes.

By his calculations, technological innovation after innovation — “hyper-viralized” social media; front-facing, “selfie”-enabling phone cameras — added up to disaster: a 145 percent increase in depression among teen girls from 2010 to 2021, a 161 percent rise among boys in those same years, with big hikes in anxiety disorders, self-harm and suicide, too. “The Great Rewiring of Childhood, in which the phone-based childhood replaced the play-based childhood, is the major cause of the international epidemic of adolescent mental illness,” Haidt writes. And with that one tricky word, “cause,” he stakes his latest claim — and opens himself up to what’s likely to be a world of pain.

Even if you question the specifics of how Haidt slices and dices his data (and I do, up to a point: to generate those showstopping depression numbers, for example, he includes data from 2020 and 2021 — years of off-the-charts stress due to the onset of the pandemic, during which data collection methods dramatically changed), there’s no doubt that young people today are in the throes of a mental health crisis that’s unprecedented in scope and severity. The latest statistics are terrible: According to the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, for example, almost 1 in 5 of 12- to 17-year-olds had a major depressive episode in the past year, while nearly half of 18- to 25-year-olds had either a substance use disorder or a mental illness.

But proving causation (rather than mere correlation) is an iffy proposition. It’s especially risky for Haidt in the face of a large body of scholarly literature on the psychological harms of social media that’s ambiguous at best.

He acknowledges this, and tries to get around the problem with the sheer amount of correlational evidence he pools together and combines with laboratory experiments he ran with Twenge. He also gives himself a convenient out, saying he “will surely be wrong on some points”; he’s even set up a research site that he will maintain, inviting other researchers to weigh in.Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

That’s all well and good — clever marketing, for sure — but unfortunate for the book as a reading experience. For one thing, in assiduously working to prove quantitatively his very likely unprovable “Great Rewiring” hypothesis, Haidt spends the first two-thirds of the book writing defensively, as if speaking to an audience of straw-man detractors just waiting to score a gotcha against him. This results in a lot of artless rigidity: too much repetition, refining and redefining of dates and definitions.

Haidt’s investment in his “Great Rewiring” theory also leaves him with some blind spots. His call for anxious adults to let kids roam assumes that all overprotective parents live in areas that are basically safe, where kids can bike around or run errands or go house to house to play without, say, having to cross a six-lane highway. He misses the mark when he writes of Gen X parents “gleefully and gratefully” recalling their childhood independence; the kind of loud laughter he hears when he raises the topic, in my experience, is often more angry than nostalgic, children of the 1970s parenting as they do in reaction to the emotional absenteeism of their own parents. And his recollection of free and fun suburban childhood overlooks the fact that growing up is brutal for many — above all for kids who don’t fit the norms that prevail in their communities. To mock, as Haidt does, a playground sign at an elementary school in Berkeley, Calif., that includes “Tag Rules” like “Include everyone,” “No ball tag” and “If a player doesn’t want to play tag, then other players must respect that,” is to ignore that when children “manage their own affairs,” it’s often a “Lord of the Flies”-like experience.

Haidt also minimizes to the point of outright dismissal the sick-making potential of the unabating storm of miseries that Gen Z has endured in its not-terribly-long life span: 9/11 and its fearful fallout, the Great Recession, the climate crisis, hundreds of school shootings, crushing student loan debt, increased economic inequality, the opioid epidemic, and the spike in words and acts of hate targeting nearly every vulnerable group in turn. All are toxic stressors, and in the 2010s, all acted upon kids’ nervous systems, affecting them to different degrees, depending on their life experiences and their genetic propensity for mental illness.

Haidt could have done a lot with all that material. Because, when he steps away from his data — when he writes, as he puts it, “less as a social scientist than as a fellow human being” — his book can be quite wonderful. His chapter about the “spiritual degradation” of the phone-based life for all of us, regardless of age, beautifully grounds his critique in Buddhist, Taoist and Christian thought traditions. There’s no quibbling with Haidt’s suggestion, borrowing a phrase from the Tao Te Ching, that most of social media is “dust on the pedestal of the spirit.” His common-sense recommendations for actions that parents, schools, governments and tech companies can take (I should say “ought to take” in the case of governments and tech companies, because they won’t) are excellent. They include putting phones away in special pouches or lockers during the school day; keeping smartphones out of the hands of kids before high school (“basic” phones without internet connections are fine); and keeping younger kids off social media by raising the threshold for “Internet adulthood” (when a kid can sign a contract with a company to give away their data and some of their rights) from the current ridiculous age of 13 to 16, while also instituting enforceable methods for age verification.

There are a couple of big-picture questions Haidt doesn’t ask, much less answer: How did we end up putting electronic devices in the hands of children for hours on end in the first place? Why were we so collectively admiring of the “heroes, geniuses, and global benefactors” of Silicon Valley, who by their own admission sociopathically exploited “a vulnerability in human psychology,” as Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, put it — our hard-wired need for connection, validation and approval, especially acute in middle-schoolers — to hook us in and screw us over, at younger and younger ages?

I can’t help but think that online childhood is less a cause than a symptom of a society-wide mental pathology that has swallowed up adults and kids alike. It may be that the multiply layered traumas of recent years have pushed us past a tipping point. In the epidemic of mental illness in kids, we may really be seeing what it looks like when vulnerable people are “triggered.”

Judith Warner’s most recent book is “And Then They Stopped Talking to Me: Making Sense of Middle School.”

The Anxious Generation-How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness– By Jonathan HaidtPenguin Press. 385 pp. $30

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/03/22/anxious-generation-rewiring-childhood-jonathan-haidt-review/

America’s happiness score drops amid a youth ‘midlife crisis’

March 21, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Washington Post March 21 2024 Victoria Bisset

The United States is no longer among the world’s 20 happiest countries, according to a new report — with young people hit particularly hard and reporting lower levels of well-being than any other age group.

The United States fell from 15th in 2023 to 23rd in this year’s World Happiness Report, which was released Wednesday to mark the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness. The country’s results varied dramatically among different age groups, however, with young people under age 30 ranking 62nd out of 143 countries for happiness, while U.S. adults age 60 and above ranked 10th.

This is the first time the United States has slipped out of the top 20 since the report was first launched in 2012. But a similar downward trend in youth well-being is also seen in Canada, which ranked 15th overall but 58th among young people this year.ADVERTISING

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Center and an editor of the report, said in an interview Wednesday that the findings are concerning “because youth well-being and mental health is highly predictive of a whole host of subjective and objective indicators of quality of life as people age and go through the course of life.”

The report’s findings show “that in North America, and the U.S. in particular, youth now start lower than the adults in terms of well-being,” he said. “And that’s very disconcerting, because essentially it means that they’re at the level of their midlife crisis today and obviously begs the question of what’s next for them?”

The report is based on data from Gallup World Poll surveys from 2021 to 2023 that is analyzed by some of the world’s leading experts on well-being. The number of participants varies, but about 1,000 people usually respond from each country each year, rating their current life satisfaction on a scale from zero to 10. The happiness report is then based on a three-year average of those figures.

Nordic countries once again dominate the 2024 rankings, with Finland occupying the No. 1 spot for the seventh year in a row, followed by Denmark, Iceland and Sweden.Share this articleShare

The report found that happiness has decreased for all age groups in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand since 2006 to 2010, with a particularly notable drop for young people — and young females recorded even lower scores than males. Youth happiness has also fallen in Western Europe, albeit less dramatically.

De Neve said the findings for youth in the United States in particular were “really striking.” He said questions remain about the reasons behind the trend.

Normally, well-being is reflected in a U-curve, he noted, whereby “youth start higher, then they drop in well-being virtually all the way down to a midlife crisis, which is typically the late 30s, early 40s,” before rising again in later life — unlike in the U.S. data.

There’s “no real smoking gun” that explains this drop in youth happiness, which began just over a decade ago, he said. Issues such as polarization, social media use and growing health and income disparities could play a role, he said.

Many young adults began college or a career amid a pandemic and have faced high housing prices, misinformation exacerbated by social media, and a loneliness epidemic, as The Washington Post has previously reported.

The researchers met Tuesday with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who “spoke of K-12 high school students … talking about sort of a change in culture where there’s no longer a culture of speaking to each other,” De Neve added. “And that is really horrible because we all know from well-being science that nothing’s more important than your social capital — having quality connections and people to rely on and speak with on a very frequent basis.”

The study found that “social support” and “social interactions of all kinds” are important for happiness and reducing loneliness. But in many countries, including the United States and Canada, loneliness is “significantly higher for the Millennials than for the Boomers” — a pattern also seen in Southeast Asia and Western Europe, but not in Central or Eastern Europe, the report said.

De Neve noted that the “general negative trend for youth well-being in the United States [was] exacerbated during covid, and youth in the U.S. have not recovered from the drop.”

Yet the research found that the pandemic also had the effect of making people more likely to help others in need. “This increase in benevolence has been large for all generations,” the report said, but the increase was especially large “for the Millennials and Generation Z, who are even more likely than their predecessors to help others in need.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/03/20/us-world-happiness-report-youth/

How can I help an intelligent 5th-grader who shows signs of depression?

March 21, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Washington Post March 21 st 2024

Dear Meghan: How can I help or relate to a fifth-grade student who does very little work, barely talks but does show up at school. He shows up to the counseling group but says nothing. Parents work full-time, and the boy is alone after school until they come home. He seems depressed, but I’m not sure. He is intelligent.

— Worried

Worried: My first thought when I read this was Ross Greene’s words, “Children do well if they can.” I often think of this saying when it comes to all sorts of behaviors, from school problems to disobedience. The idea that children do well if they can means, if the conditions are right, every child will reach their fullest potential, whatever that may be. It doesn’t mean that there is perfection, but it does mean that the child has a chance at growing.

When it comes to this young man, I know precious little of what is going on in his life. If you are his parent, you have many options available to you, from outside supports for after-school activities or therapy to other school resources. If you are a teacher, your domain is truly just in the school, but please work in tandem with the family, the fellow teachers and administrator, and the school counselor to find the most effective solutions.

The best news is that he is still showing up; something in him has not given up! He could fight going to school, we know that chronic absenteeism is at an all-time high. He could absolutely refuse the counseling group, but again, he is there. His intelligence is also interesting. Giftedness in children often doesn’t show up the way you may guess. They aren’t all straight A’s and precocious stereotypes depicted on TV; the depression and lack of work could actually be a symptom of his gifted needs not being met (children do well if they can), or he could even be depressed and gifted. In either case, it could be a useful lens by which to see this young man.Share this articleShare

So often the child is seen as a collection of problems to be fixed (Love school! Do your work! Be happy!), but no one slows down to simply ask the child what is going on with them. Your theories don’t matter that much until you understand his life from his perspective. The Greene Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model is especially helpful as it gives you a script to follow and a worksheet to fill out. It keeps the adults from getting lost in the weeds as well as holds the child to real expectations. It takes some practice and may feel unwieldy at first, but with time and dedication, it is amazing to watch children begin to trust that adults want to truly know and support them. Starting with problem-solving, the smallest of goals (turning in one math sheet) can yield rewards that go across all sorts of domains, as long as the child is involved in the problem-solving.Skip to end of carousel

Meghan Leahy is a parenting coach and the author of “Parenting Outside the Lines.” She has given advice about toddler tantrums, teens and mental health and co-parenting.Ask her a question here.End of carousel

It is also useful to look at the basics every student needs to be successful and see what’s missing for this fifth-grader. First and foremost is safety: emotional, physical and psychological, both inside and outside of school. I cannot express how important it is that a child has a compassionate adult in their life, preferably both in school and at home, but I will take even one! And, yes, it is perfectly fine that his parents work full time, but it may help him to have contact with a mentor after school. Notice I didn’t say “more work” or “even more activities.” Some children benefit from after-school hobbies; some don’t. Some children need more guided activities; some don’t. Working with this young man and his family to find a solution that works for everyone is the best place to begin.

Depression is complicated, but it should still be addressed no matter if you are the parent or the teacher. If you are the teacher, please meet with the counselor to express your concerns with the details of the behaviors you’ve witnessed, when they started, and how long the behaviors have been happening. It is common in our culture to notice the loud, problematic behaviors first, but lack of school work, silence and being checked out are also red flags.

If you are the parents, the first place to look is the basics: sleep, exercise and nutrition. Many well-meaning adults create complex academic plans for kids only to realize that the child simply needs more protein, or they are getting only four hours of sleep at night. Can you force a fifth-grader to eat or sleep? No, but it is where the attention should go first! It is hard to help a child find their motivation when their primary human needs may not be getting met.

This boy is at an important age where the proper interventions can change the trajectory of his life. Don’t give up. Believing in him, staying involved, and caring about him, you could fill his bucket in ways that you don’t see right now. We are all eager for quick solutions, but sticking by him may yield good things when you are least expecting it. Good luck.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/03/20/meghan-leahy-help-fifth-grader-depression/

Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Monifa McKnight steps down

February 14, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Nicole Asbury Washington Post Feb 2nd 2024

Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight stepped down Friday amid questions about how the district handled sexual harassment, bullying and other allegations involving a former principal.

McKnight — the first woman to serve as the head of Maryland’s largest school system — said that she reached “a mutually agreed separation” with the county school board, effective Friday. She is departing about two years into a four-year contract with the district that was set to end in 2026.

“I have felt over the past few months, there has been a distraction,” McKnight said. “When the focus is no longer on whom I have agreed to serve, I must control my fate.”

The Montgomery school board met in closed session Friday afternoon to receive legal advice and get information on the status of an unnamed employee. Later, the board said it wished McKnight well in the next chapter and it would “work together with staff to ensure a smooth transition.”

Brian Hull, the district’s chief operating officer, will serve as acting superintendent. The school board plans to name an interim superintendent on Tuesdayand launch a national search for a new leader“in the coming days.”

“We must rebuild trust, begin to heal, and ensure that our school system is equipped to serve the students, staff and families who make up our great school community,” theschool board said in a statement.

McKnight’sdeparture comes weeks after shesaid that school board officers indicated “their desire for me to step away.” At the time, theschool board declined to address whether McKnight’s characterization of the meeting was accurate, sayingit was a personnel matter.

The fray came as the school system was the subject of county inspector general investigative inquiries related to its handling of sexual harassment and workplace bullying complaints filed about former middle school principal Joel Beidleman. The Washington Postrevealedin August that the school system hadreceived at least 18 written or verbal complaints about Beidleman dating back to 2016. Butlast yearhe was promoted to become principal of Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville. A subsequent investigation by Baltimore-based law firm Jackson Lewis unearthed more complaints, bringing the total to 25.

Many teachers said a principal sexually harassed them. He was promoted.

Beidleman has denied several of the allegations, and he was put on administrative leave in August amid The Post’s reporting. He has since leftthe school system.

In an interview last week, McKnight, who was joined by her attorney, vowed to defend her reputation and said the school board hadn’t conducted a fair process of evaluating her work.

“I love my job. I love supporting the children and families and staff and Montgomery County Public Schools,” she said on Jan. 23. “I think it’s not lost upon anyone that when you take on the superintendency at this point in time, particularly after the pandemic, you do it because you love it.”

McKnight’s attorney, Jason Downs, added that she was the first woman to serve as superintendent and she was being treated differently than her male predecessors who have “been allowed to finish their terms despite any high-profile incidents that may have been tried in the media.” Downs did notelaborate. However, in the past decade, former superintendent Joshua P. Starr abruptly ended his tenure in 2015 after questions about the direction of the district. Downs said McKnight was doing her job well and urged reporters to “look at those evaluations.” He did not respond to an inquiry about whether McKnight intended to release those evaluations.

Supporters of McKnight have come to her defense in recent weeks, includingshowing up to school board meeting sessions with signs pledging support. On Thursday, representatives from the county chapter of the NAACP, the Black Ministers Conference of Montgomery County and others penned a letter to school board members asking them to “rescind your request that Dr. McKnight step aside.”

“From the start she has been undermined by this Board and in the Beidleman case, not permitted to do her job,” the letter said. “In our view, the Board of Education is responsible for the six months of chaos and uncertainty that has accompanied this case.”

McKnight, who was named Montgomery superintendent in 2022 after previously serving as interim, has nearly two decades of experience with the school system. She was named Maryland Principal of the Year in 2015. Later, she briefly left the school system to join Howard County Public Schools, but returned to Montgomery County in 2019 to serve as deputy under Superintendent Jack R. Smith.

As deputy, sheled efforts to conduct an “anti-racist audit” to vet the district’s policies and curriculums. A 198-page reportreleased in 2022 foundthat students of color have a less satisfactory experience than White students in the school system. The audit said participants instakeholder group sessionsalso described a lack of coordination in the central office, skepticism that the school system would be honest about the results, and a “culture where there is a ‘cost’ to speaking up and power dynamics that stifle honest dialogue.”Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

When Smith announced his retirementas superintendent in 2021, McKnight became the interim.

She led the school system as it was trying to return from winter break, while the omicron variant of the coronavirus was surging and shuttering schools. A nearby jurisdiction, Prince George’s County Public Schools, had announced it would delay an in-person reopening after the winter break. But McKnight’s administration committed to offering in-person learning with an option for schools to switch to virtual instructions if cases were too high. A color-coded chart with infection rates was unveiled that showed which schools were at risk of temporarily closing to mitigate the spread, but the plan was scrapped three days later after state objections. She apologized for the confusion in a community letter.

Shortly after, the Montgomery County Education Association — the teacher’s union — passed avote of no confidence in the school system’s leadership, includingMcKnight and theschool board. The resolution cited the lack of “a coherent plan” and a failure “to provide clear metrics and criteria” to guide decisions aboutschools reopening.

In early 2022, the district was reeling aftera student was shot at Magruder High School, sending the school on lockdown for hours. An amended after-action report sent to the statein 2023noted thatsome students were released into the hallwayafter the shooting and some staff were able to get inside the school despite it being on lockdown.

The tensions came as the school board was finalizing a search for a permanent superintendent.

In February 2022, a group of Black pastors wrote in a sharply worded letter that McKnight was being “strategically and unjustly vilified” during her candidacy to be superintendent. They accused several county officials of participating in a backdoor political effort to discredit McKnight.

Later that month, the school board unanimouslyapproved the hiring of McKnight as superintendent. At the time, then-school board president Brenda Wolff called the appointment historic. McKnightalso is the second African American to serve in the role. She started with a base salary of $320,000.

“It is emotional because I don’t take this responsibility lightly,” McKnightsaid after the 2022 vote. “I care for the children in the school system as I do for my own.”

As superintendent, her administration privately negotiated an agreement that brought community engagement officers back into schools, angering student activists and criminal justice advocates. She also oversaw the school system as it was dealing with an uptick in antisemitic incidents and calls from parents to provide an “opt-out” provision for books with LGBTQ+ characters.

In aletter tothe district Friday, McKnighttouted the school system’s progress in increasing early literacy and mathematics test scores since the return toin-person instruction. She also noted that under her tenure, an agreement with the schools’ unions led staff to receive a 7 percent salary increase at the beginning of the school yearwith anotherraise of at least 3 percent set for July.

The revelation of the Beidleman misconduct allegations sparked intensescrutiny of the district in recent months, including from the county council and the county’s inspector general.

Montgomery leaders upbraid MCPS for secrecy in principal allegations

County residents havequestioned how much McKnight knew about complaints involving Beidleman during his promotional process. At a MontgomeryCounty council oversight hearing in September, McKnight said, “I was not aware there was an internal investigation against Dr. Joel Beidleman at the time of his promotion.”

The county inspector general launched two inquiries into the school system. The first inquiry looked into all allegations of misconduct by Beidleman, and a report released in December found he violated the system’s sexual harassment and bullying policies.

The second inquiry scrutinized the school district’s general handling of misconduct complaints. A January report determined that school officials had been warned multiple times since 2019 about issues pertaining to the district’s processes for investigating employee reports of misconduct. But the school system didn’t take “any substantive action” to address those concerns, according to the report.

McKnightwas charged by the school board to implement a “corrective action plan.” In January, her administrationsaid the plan would, among other things,nix candidates for a promotion if they are under an active investigation and create more rigorous background check protocols.

The school system is expected to face another hearing in front of the county council’s audit, and education and culture committees on Feb. 8.

County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said during a news conference Friday that he still seeking answers from the school board about the situation. Those questions “have to be answered at some point,” he said.

He added that the school system’s policies around sexual harassment would need to change.

“I want to be clear,” he said, “Rebuilding trust is not going to be as simple as replacing the superintendent.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/02/monifa-mcknight-leaving-montgomery-schools-superintendent/

Council members admonish Montgomery school officials’ handling of misconduct reports

February 13, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Nicole Asbury Washington Post Feb 9th 2024

The Montgomery County Council chastised school system officials Thursday for their handling of misconduct complaints involving employees, including the district’s release of a lightly redacted report on allegations involving a former principal that came out an hour before that day’s hearing with the county.

The meetingbetween the council’s audit and education and culture committees was meant to focus on a recent county inspector general report that concluded the school system was warned multiple times about deficiencies in its department that handles reports of employee misconduct.Investigators found case files were kept in “chaotic condition” in the department and employees had little guidance on how to look into complaints.

But shortly before the meeting began, the school board released a new version of a report by a law firm into its handling of allegations that former Farquhar Middle School principal Joel Beidleman sexually harassed, bullied and retaliated against school staff. The update — with less information redacted than a version made public last fall — revealed, among other details,that Monifa B. McKnight, then superintendent, knew that concerns about Beidleman’s behavior were “swirling around” before the school board approved his promotion.

Read the lightly-redacted Jackson Lewis report

Jackson Lewis, the law firm, was hired by the district after The Washington Post reported in August that at least 18 verbal and written reports about Beidleman were submitted to school officials dating back to 2016. Beidleman has previously denied many of the allegations. He did not respond to questions Thursday evening aboutthe release of the less redacted report. As of late January, he was no longer a school system employee.

The school system first released a version of the Jackson Lewis report in October. Much of the text was shielded to protect employee privacy, school board members previously said. But council members called for an unredacted version to be shared.

The report released Thursday does not name school employees directly, instead listing them by numbers. But its contents list enough details to make some of the people identifiable, including Beidleman, who is “Employee 25,” and McKnight who is referred to as “Employee 3.”

The report said that while McKnight was aware of concerns “swirling around,”she was not specifically aware of an ongoing investigationinto Beidleman and didn’t inquire for more details about the concerns. She and another employee recommended Beidleman over an external candidate to become Paint Branch High School principal. The school board approved the promotion in June.

MCPS official tampered with investigation of principal, report says

The report said McKnight was told by a friend on July 18 about a forthcoming story by The Post about Beidleman. She met with other employees on July 19, when they discussed an investigation regarding Beidleman and, according to the report, McKnight learned he was going to receive a letter of reprimand.

Yet, she did not tell the school board about the investigation or forthcoming story from The Post when they met the next day. She also didn’t place Beidleman on administrative leave until Aug. 4, after The Post sent detailed questions about Beidleman, the report said.

Jason Downs, an attorney representing McKnight, did not respond to a request for an interview with her Thursday. She left the school system last week after reaching “a mutually agreed separation” with the school board. McKnight was not present at Thursday’s meeting. Instead, interim superintendent Monique Felder represented school administration.

The less redacted version of the report also reveals that staff failed to notify the Title IX coordinator of certain incidents. Title IX coordinators are charged with overseeing complaints of sex discrimination.

At Thursday’s meeting,a few council memberswere seen reading through the report as they asked questions from the dais. Theyasked school board president Karla Silvestre why it took so long formore detailsto be released. Silvestre replied that the school board’s attorneys had a busy week and that it took time to review what could be unredacted from the report.

Montgomery school board apologizes for mishandling misconduct complaints

County Council President Andrew Friedson said the report was released “at the 11th hour … with really not enough time to prepare for our line of questioning in a meaningful way.”Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

“I think it begs the question of the commitment of transparency and accountability that we really need to see from the board of education and from MCPS,” Friedson (D-District 1) said. “What we have seen with this report and the sharing of information related to the report is not adequate.”

Chief among the county council’s concerns were whether any employeesinvolved in Beidleman’s promotion remained in the school system. The Jackson Lewis report said five employees who had been part of the process had been aware of an investigation into Beidleman.

Brian Hull, the school system’s chief operating officer, said thatof the five, two are being investigated, two are no longer with the school system, and one has been disciplined and returned to work.

The council also expressed concern about the employees in theschool district’s Department of Compliance and Investigations, the office charged with handling employee misconduct complaints.

Watchdog calls Montgomery schools’ handling of misconduct complaints ‘chaotic’

Council member Marilyn Balcombe (D-District 2) said the school system recently requested an increase in funding for the investigations departmentas a part of its recommended budget for the nextfiscal year.

“I’m really reluctant to look at additional funding for this issue if the people who were in place prior to allow this to happen are still there,” she said, contending that the department “has been completely ineffective.”

Silvestre said the department has new leadership. Many of the investigators are new.

In addition,experts in compliance and investigations are also offering further recommendationsfor changes to the school systemand the districthas added software to monitor trends in submitted complaints.

“So much of this stuff is 101,” said council member Will Jawando (D-At Large), who chairs the education and culture committee. “It’s just amazing to me that in a system of this size that we are this inadequately behind.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/09/montgomery-council-mcps-beidleman-complaints/

Montgomery school board apologizes for mishandling misconduct complaints

February 13, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Nicole Asbury Washington Post Feb 7th 2024

Montgomery County school board members apologizedTuesdayfor the district’s failures in handling of employee misconduct complaints and vowed to heal the school system.

“We are deeply sorry for the pain that this has caused so many employees and the harm to this district,” board president Karla Silvestre said during a meeting. “It has not always listened to its employees. It has not always properly investigated complaints, and it has not created a process that ensures employees feel free to speak up.

She added that it was “time for the school system to heal.”

The school board met to review findings from investigations by a private law firm and the county’s inspector general of how the school system handled allegations of employee misconduct.

The investigations were launched after The Washington Post published an investigation in Augustthat revealed former Farquhar Middle School principal Joel Beidleman was the subject of at least 18 verbal or written reports alleging sexual harassment, bullying and retaliation submitted to the school district dating back to 2016. While he was under investigation, the school board promoted Beidleman to become principal of Paint Branch High School. He has denied many of the allegations, and he left the school system in January.

Shortly after The Post’s investigation published, the school system announced it hired the Baltimore-based law firm Jackson Lewis to scrutinize its handling of the complaints. A heavily redacted report released by the school board found that five individuals who participated in Beidleman’s promotion processknew about an internal investigation into his conduct, among other findings.

Montgomery school board appoints Felder as interim leader

The Montgomery County inspector general later announced it would launch inquiries to review all allegations about Beidleman submitted to the school system by July 2023 and other allegations that were not investigated, as well as a broader evaluation of the school system’s handling of misconduct complaints.

A report released in November on the initial inquiryfound that Beidleman violated the system’s sexual harassment and bullying policies.

In itssecond inquiry, the inspector general’s officefound that school officials were warned four times of deficiencies within the Department of Compliance and Investigations, which is charged with evaluating employee misconduct complaints. However, the school system did little to fix the problems, according to the watchdog’s report.

Silvestre saidTuesday that school board members learned about the previous warnings for the first time in late November and early December, after making a request for documentation involving human resources. Through the request, the board saw a previous 2019 investigation from a law firm and two other internal reviews that noted some of the problems.

The school board spent about two hours discussing the county watchdog’s investigations. Brian Hull, thedistrict’schief operating officer; April Key, chief of human resources and development; and Stacey Ormsby, the acting director of the Department of Compliance and Investigations, answered questions about changes being made to the compliance department’s processes and policies.

Ormsby said since she became acting director earlier this school year, she has set protocols to investigate anonymous misconduct complaints, which at times were previously were ignored by the compliance office. The office has also added software to monitor for trends in complaints. She told the board she also is working to set timelines for when an investigation should be completed once more staff members are added to the office. Ormsby said experts in compliance and investigations are expected to offer recommendations for other potential changes.Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

School board member Lynne Harris (At Large) asked Ormsby if she wascreatingprocesses forhow to review“collateral complaints” — which are additional allegations about an employee shared by witnesses during an investigation. Harris explained that the school system had “no plan” for investigating those types of allegations, unless a witness separately filed their own complaint.

“What I’ve communicated very clearly and consistently is that all complaints will be reviewed and/or investigated,” Ormsby answered. “The investigation doesn’t end with that initial complaint.”

The school system also plans to refine its job descriptions for people hired in the Department of Compliance and Investigations. Harris said clarifying the qualifications and expectationsfor hireswas a necessary move.

“Human resources is a profession. Recruiting is a profession. Investigating complaints is a profession,” she said. “We have not put professionals in those role.”

She added that these changes were now one of the “non-negotiables in what the board expects.”

The school boardsaid it plans to update the county inspector general every 90 days on its progress on some of the office’s recommendations. It will also discuss its progress again during a board meeting scheduled on April 23.

In the meantime, the county watchdog reports also will be the focus of a meetingThursdaywith the Montgomery County Council’s Audit, and Education and Culture committees. Some county council members have recently called on the school board to release an unredacted version of the Jackson Lewis report.

Silvestre said the school board has been reevaluating its redactions to see if any more content could be shared publicly.

Tuesday’s meeting was the first without former schools superintendent Monifa B. McKnight, who announced Friday that she wouldleave the districtafter reaching a “mutually agreed separation” with the school board. In her resignation letter, McKnight said: “I have felt over the past few months, there has been a distraction. When the focus is no longer on whom I have agreed to serve, I must control my fate.”

The school board votedunanimouslyTuesday to appoint Monique Felder as interim superintendent. Felder is a former Montgomery County teacher and administrator who most recently was superintendent of Orange County Schools in North Carolina.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/02/06/montgomery-county-school-board-discusses-misconduct-investigations/

Public Untruths

January 29, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Reporting on Truth in an Era of Lies with CNN's Fact Checker Daniel Dale | Ottawa Public Library

John Lukacs in The Passing of the Modern Age (1977).

“The sometimes hopeless slowness in the movement of ideas makes life difficult for the young who, even more than adults, are very much dependent upon the ideas of others. This is why the dissolution of learning will not at all eliminate their dependence on teachers, rather the contrary. And the great teachers of the future will be those who, through a kind of wisdom, will direct their attention to all kinds of public untruths, very much including those propagated by the established public intellectuals.”