Parenting | Michael R Lewis, ASJA

August 29, 2018January 2, 2024

Encouraging Your Children to Be Lifetime Readers

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When I was a child, my mother and I rode a bus to and from the downtown Wichita Falls, Texas library every Wednesday and Saturday morning. I can still see it now: a brick, three-story building with floor-to-ceiling windows and the children’s section tucked away in the basement. The librarian, a kindly woman with gray-streaked hair, was always there to help me find the three books I could check out with my library card.

Polished wooden benches were scattered across the linoleum floors, each filled with boys and girls looking through books as their parents made their selections from the stacks on the upper floors. Returning home, Mother and I would hurry to sit on the daybed that served as our sofa, where she would read aloud one of my treasures, each filled with colorful pictures and illustrations to enhance the excitement of the narrative.

Those early years of being read to by my mother, father, aunt, and grandmother spawned a voracious appetite for reading that has remained constant for threescore and seven years. In my experience, a love of literature of all types is perhaps the greatest gift any parent could give their child, a passport to distant lands and a time machine to other eras. It can also give your child many advantages in the years to come.

Here’s how reading can help your child succeed, and how to introduce them to the joys of reading.

Literacy vs. Reading

Stories have been a primary medium of communication since the first family clans. Storytellers capture our imaginations, link us to the past, and establish the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Myths and legends passed from one generation to the next explain the unexplainable and remind us of the human values considered essential and ethical, both now and in the past.

In the ancient Western world, only those wealthy enough to afford a life of leisure or those in religious positions had the opportunity to learn to read. With the advent of the printing press, which made reading materials widely available, as well as improvements in public education, literacy became the norm rather than the exception for the common man.

However, the ability to read and write does not necessarily equate to a love of the written word. Many people assume “literacy” and “reading” are the same thing, but the former refers to the ability to read and write, while the latter refers to the act of interpreting printed words. And while most people today have the ability to read, fewer and fewer are doing so for enjoyment.

The State of Reading Today

The percentage of American adults who read any work of literature declined from 56.9% in 1982 to 43.1% in 2015, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. This is even though the percentage of college graduates in the population more than doubled in the same period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Pew Research reports that one-quarter of Americans did not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017.

Read More. . .

July 11, 2018January 2, 2024

The Pros & Cons of Pool Ownership

“Success will be when I can have a real swimming pool instead of the fifty-dollar one I buy at Kmart every year,” quips singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff. For many, pools are a status symbol signifying “luxury, leisure, and above all, glamor,” according to Lucy Scholes of the BBC. They’re also a lot of fun.

Swimming is one of the most popular outdoor activities in the United States, behind only exercise walking, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It improves flexibility, stretches muscles, and helps you lose weight. According to Tom Holland, an exercise physiologist and triathlete, an hour of vigorous swimming burns up to 700 calories — more calories than walking or biking for the same duration.

It also offers mental health benefits. In his book “Blue Mind,” Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols claims that humans feel better when they interact with water, which can put us into a “mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life.”

Once considered a luxury only the wealthiest could afford, private swimming pool ownership has exploded since the 1950s and 1960s as a result of higher incomes, improved technology, and new pool financing sources. Today, approximately 10.4 million homes in the United States have swimming pools, according to the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals. Should your home be one of them? Let’s take a look.

Things to Consider Before Buying a Pool

While a swimming pool can be great fun for you and your family, pool ownership isn’t something to be entered into lightly. Here are the questions you should ask yourself when deciding whether to install a swimming pool or purchase a home with a pool installed.

1. How Old Are Your Children?

Children and teenagers tend to use swimming pools more than other age groups, spending more time swimming than doing other recreational activities, according to the Census Bureau.

I built a pool when my children ranged from two to seven years of age. They were in it almost every day in the spring, summer, and early fall until they left for college. However, having neither the time nor inclination to swim, my wife and I rarely used the pool after that until our first grandchild arrived.

Understanding Political Correctness (PC) – What It Means & How It’s Evolved

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This old English rhyme is often heard during one’s childhood, typically as comfort to a victim of ridicule by other children. Implicit in the advice is the unspoken admonition to the child to grow up and ignore the pain of verbal abuse – after all, it’s only words.

Many believe that the avoidance of words that may offend, marginalize, or insult a group of people – political correctness (PC) – has gone too far. According to PC critics, PC promotes a society of victimhood and endangers the public at large by limiting discussion about controversial subjects. Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, wrote in a USA Today op-ed about the Orlando mass shootings that the “administration’s political correctness prevented anything from being done about it.”

Conservatives claim that PC is a threat to the first amendment and our right to free speech. Columnists liken modern-day America to Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” or George Orwell’s future society in “1984“. In “1984”, Big Brother’s thought police relentlessly pursue anyone foolish enough to say anything that might be offensive to someone. Surprisingly, liberals – often blamed for the expansion of PC – have their own misgivings about verbal censorship. Ralph Nader, a former third-party candidate for president, says, “You can’t say this about that, and you can’t say that about this. And the employer tells you to hush. And perhaps your wife tells you to hush, and your kids tell you to hush. It’s gotten absurd.”

Does one’s choice of words matter? Have efforts to avoid offense stifled free speech as many claim? Is political correctness an expression of politeness, evasion of hard truths, or extreme sensitivity? Or is an expression of anti-PC sentiment simply incivility, indecency, or vulgarity, as Mark Hanna writes in TIME?

Read more . . .

August 30, 2016January 2, 2024

Life is What We Make It

My friends, Bob and Nelly, are the parents of a severely autistic child who is expected to need care for his entire life. I can only imagine the financial and emotional burden they carried, yet I have never heard either complain. I’ve known Bob since grade school. He was constantly in trouble with teachers, always in detention or getting licks from the principal because he couldn’t or wouldn’t follow rules. While not rich, Bob’s family was comfortable, getting a new car every couple of years, flying away to California for vacations, allowing Bob to pick the college of his choice without concern about cost. Bob, I believed, was destined to be one of Life’s winners. After college, he graduated from law school and married Nelly who was from a similar economic background. They waited until their early thirties to have a child, wanting to be sure they could provide all of the comforts they had enjoyed to their own children. When little Richard was born, they were ecstatic. In their opinion, life couldn’t have gotten any better. When their world fell apart two years later with the diagnosis of autism and the uncertainties that Richard faced, their faith in themselves, each other, even God, was shattered.

As might be expected, everything about their life and expected future changed. For a time, things were very, very rough. Bob’s law practice suffered, their marriage was under strain as each tried to understand the cause of their son’s autism. As the extent of Richard’s disability became apparent, worries about money intensified. Nelly, as a stay-at-home Mom, seemed to bear the worst of it, spending every day with Richard, chasing every “cure”, spending hour after hour on the latest recommended therapy. By choice, their activities outside of a few close friends and family members virtually stopped. As for Richard, he gradually improved as he grew older, but never to the point of independence or even where they could leave him unattended without worry.

Acceptance & Change

But, over the years, Bob and Nelly changed, almost imperceptibly at first but more apparent as the months went by. Instead of worrying about the future, they began to embrace the present, facing each day as it came knowing that whatever trouble, tragedy, or even triumph was temporary and would pass. They learned to look past Richard’s disability to his strengths – his constant good nature, his unfailing willingness to forgive any slight or slur, his constant joy as he listened to his favorite songs over and over. More importantly, they learned to forgive themselves and to be happy once again. Bob’s legal career never fully recovered, but neither seemed to care about the lost income and the prestige that accompanies wealth.

As I struggled with my own problems, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened? What had they discovered that I was missing? When I finally broached the subject with Bob, he simply replied, “I learned that I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted, fix Richard’s autism. Whether it was my fault, or Nelly’s from something we inherited from our folks or consumed during our college years, of any one of a thousand reasons didn’t make any difference since I couldn’t go back and change it. The only thing that I could do was change how I felt and what I did. So I did.” He smiled. “Life is what we make of it, not what somebody else does.”