We're Neither All Orchid nor All Dandelions, so says Dobbs

In an attempt to clarify the seemingly binary categories of "orchid" and "dandelion" temperments, David Dobbs in a conversation with David Shenk (also of The Atlantic) says, "(I)t would be a rare person that was all orchid, so to speak, or all dandelion."

I agree. While the orchid-dandelion metaphor is useful in expressing different levels of sensitivity among children and adults, it fails to capture the wide range of in-between where dandelion-ness makes way for orchid-ness, and vice versa.

I recommend reading Dobbs' and Shenk's lively conversation here.

Nature + Nurture = Healthy Relationships

I like what Bruce had to say on his blog about parenting orchids and dandelions:

The key to understanding orchids, dandelions and parents might be in conceptualizing the relationships between us all as the central point of focus, moving away from the notion of stand-alone gifted or troubled children toward an emphasis on trusting and nourishing vs. troubled and destructive relationships.

Amen, Bruce. We're all in this together.

Channeling Your Orchid's Yetser Hara

I am really not up on my Torah, but the concept of "yetser hara" as described in Wendy Mogel's "Blessing of a Skinned Knee" makes a lot of sense. The way I understand it, yetser hara is one's inclination toward rule-breaking and adventure. Its counterpart, yetser tov, is our inclination to hold these desires in check, to toe the line.

Using these concepts to better understand how parents must tailor their parenting style to a child's personality, it may be useful to think about how orchids may have a more generous dose of "yetser hara" than their dandelion peers. This inclination toward risk-taking, while useful in many settings, seems an obvious disadvantage when breaking a rule might lead to a lack of safety, such as in failing to look both ways to cross the street. With orchids, parents would be wise to choose which rule-following battles to fight. Perhaps a parent might be more lenient about their orchid daughter climbing to the top of the monkey bars unassisted, while sticking to their guns about having an adult present in the kitchen while operating the stove.

I was thinking about how yetser hara would also apply to discipline, namely, that old stand-by, the time out. Children with more yetser tov, might do fine to sit compliantly for three minutes in a time out chair, but orchids might need some help bringing their yetser hara in check. Perhaps parents might prefer to model how one brings oneself under control by sitting quietly for one minute next to their "timed out" youngster. A parent could practice yoga breathing techniques (see early posts for ideas), repeating a mantra, or simply sitting quietly in a meditative, seated position. Whatever one chooses to do to model controlling one's own yetser hara, it seems that getting into a battle of wills with an orchid over discipline is a losing propostion. And yet plenty of well-intentioned parenting books would have you believe otherwise.

I think that's the "art" part of parenting. While parenting books would have you believe there's one magic formula for parenting children, the reality is that our children's temperments run the gamut. Yes, they need to learn discipline, but they also need to challenge themselves to grow and become the unique adult they are meant to be. A skinned knee is indeed a blessing if it allows a child to test her limits safely.

Four Steps to Becoming Fully Bully-Proofed

It occurred to me after my last post why I felt so compelled to write about bullying after my recent string of posts about dandelions and orchids. While low self-esteem and poor school performance are serious consequences of bullying--ones in which dandelions and orchids face--it's self-harm and suicidal thoughts and behaviors that are likely to affect orchids who've been bullied. Bullying for an orchid, thus, is potentially a life and death issue. I think that's why I feel so strongly about it.

I had a fantastic experience co-creating an anti-bullying stance among Ms. Courtney Humphrey's class at Dearborn Park Elementary. I'll share their story as a way to illustrate the basic principles. I'm sure every group could adapt these steps to fit their group's dynamics. And so, here are the 4 steps any group can use to bully-proof their relationships:

1. Make explicit the group's anti-bullying stance
Ms. Humphrey's students were very astute in recognizing the negative effects of bullying in their class. Kids said bullying made them feel "sad" and "not like" being at school. No one said they wanted to bullying to continue.

2. Explore what a bully-proof zone would be like
Students said they thought they'd be "nicer", would "cooperate more" and "have more fun" if bullying were no longer a part of their classroom

3. Take time to recognize anti-bullying tactics displayed by others
During group circle time, students recognized each other's good deeds performed during the day. Students cited "helping" someone with their work, "not teasing" another's gaffe, and performing other acts of kindness as anti-bullying tactics.

4. Reward the group for reaching anti-bullying goals
This last one is optional, but who doesn't love a reward? Every student in the class was recognized by another for exhibiting anti-bullying behavior at some point during their classroom bully-proofing, and for this hard work, Ms. Humphrey took the class on a field trip to a nearby island.

I can't express enough how incredibly impressively Ms. Humphrey and her class worked to bully-proof their classroom. The change was dramatic! I saw fewer outbursts from students, more time devoted to academic work, and a marked increase in cooperation and civility between students. They were a joy to work with from the start and their anti-bullying efforts were truly inspiring!

Bullies and Anti-Bullies

The other night I was watching "This Emotional Life" on PBS. I was particularly moved by the segment about bullying, in which the friends and family of a Florida boy named Jeffrey retold the story of how he was bullied relentlessly by a classmate. His mother reached out to the school for help, but the school staff was ineffective in addressing the culture of bullying. When Jeff could no longer handle the torment, he hung himself in his bedroom.

This got me thinking about children I've worked with and known who've been targets of bullies and have bullied themselves. Often, it's the same kids. The children I've known who bully often pre-emptively bully as a strategy (a maladaptive yet effective strategy) to avoid being bullied themselves. The kids I've known who've bullied/been bullied tended to be dandelions. They had low self-esteem, behavioral problems, but none were suicidal. When an orchid is bullied, are the effects of the bullying amplified? Is that the "environmental trigger" that could drive a kid to suicide?

While I was deeply saddened by Jeff's story, I was heartened to hear the outcome of Jeff's mother's saga to change the culture of bullying in schools. She was successful in pushing the Florida legislature to pass "Jeffrey's Law", which states that schools are responsible for providing safety from bullying while children are in school. Kudos to Jeff's family for taking a stand against bullying and ensuring that no family will have to go through what they did.

In my next post, I'll share an experience I had with an elementary class that took a stand against bullying and outline the steps any group can take to make their space an anti-bullying zone.

The Upside of Orchids

After reading my last two posts, one might conclude that it's better to be a dandelion than an orchid. Sure, one forgoes the shot at the particularly odd brilliance of a well-nurtured orchid, but doesn't being an intelligent, well-adjusted dandelion outweigh the risks of emotional instability that come with orchidness?

Maybe. Maybe not. In thinking about children I've known, one set of siblings stuck out immediately as a clear illustration of the upside orchids and, by extension, the risks involved in dandelion-ness.

Years ago, I was a substitute teacher in a rural New Mexican school district. I taught all grades, so I got to know several sets of siblings fairly well. In one family of six siblings I taught the eldest 6th-grade girl Shania, a second-grade boy David, and the kindergartener Brianna. Brianna and Shania were in special education. David was not. When I taught Shania, I would ask her about her work. She would answer, "I don't know" to my questions often, but with further probing, I often found she did know. She knew a lot. She lacked confidence in herself, and risking being wrong seemed a safer option than being proved wrong. Shania, I suppose, fits the dandelion mold well.

Brianna I taught in the beginning of the year, and then again toward the end. When I first met her, her teacher was drawing dots on her paper for her to trace in order to write her name. When I began teaching her special education class in late April, she sat waiting patiently as I asked the class to write their names on their papers. "Brianna, does your teacher still make the dots for you?" She nodded. "Phoney, baloney, I know you can write your own name! You may have her fooled, but you're not foolin' me!" (Okay, I didn't know if she could write her name, but it was a gamble that ended up paying off, luckily.) Brianna, in shaky handwriting wrote her name, looked up at me, and beamed. She did it!

How did she manage to go through almost an entire school year without once being asked to write her own name? I don't mean to cast blame on her very over-worked teacher, but I can see how Brianna managed to slip through in this case. First, she looks really young. She's petite, and looks much younger than the other five and six year-olds in her class. And she rarely speaks. (I remember she got pulled out by the speech therapist quite often. I often wondered if her speech pathology was a motor problem or just one of extreme shyness.) Brianna mostly sits quietly, smiles, and looks heart-breakingly cute. In an otherwise rowdy kindergarten class, she's every teacher's dream. And an unmistakable dandelion.

David is everything his sisters aren't. Prone to outbursts, tears, and frustration, I know he drove his regular teacher to fits of screaming herself. When I subbed David's class, not one minute into our day David had his first meltdown. I asked the class to take out their pencils and paper. David erupted, "I don't have a pencil! I don't have a pencil!" "Maybe you can borrow one from a friend?" I offered. "I don't have any friends. Nobody likes me! They all hate me!" "Nonsense," I said. "I know your class is very kind and helpful. I'm sure somebody here would like to be a good friend and loan you a pencil. Now, who here has a pencil they'd like to share with David?" Hands shot up among cries of "me, me! I do! I do!" David, within his family as well as his class, was an orchid among dandelions.

After reflecting on my experiences with these three siblings, it's apparent to me how Brianna and Shania tested into special education and David didn't. David, when faced with a problem he couldn't solve, would dissolve into tears and cries of "I can't do it! I can't!" And someone: a teacher, a parent, a fellow student, would come to his aid and help him solve his problem. Brianna and Shania, on the other hand, would say nothing about the difficulty, and thus, never gained mastery over tasks. Not because they couldn't do it, mind you, but because no one noticed that they needed help. And so their brother's orchidness became a cumulative advantage that determined his testing above the threshold for special education while his sisters fell below it. His orchidness expressed itself in such a way that allowed him to get the help he needed while his dandelion sisters slipped through the academic cracks.

It makes me wonder, as a parent, when do I fail to notice when my more dandelion-leaning daughter needs help simply because she doesn't express it in a way I've come to recognize in her older orchid sister? Perhaps there are other downsides to dandelion-ness that have gone unnoticed. I hope that for Shania and Brianna, someone recognized that despite quiet, good-natured ways, they needed academic nurturing just as much as their orchid brother.

One Orchid, One Dandelion

I don't usually write about my own children here. I tend to think of this blog as my "professional" writing space, and the "personal" stuff I put elsewhere.

But in reading David Dobbs' article in The Atlantic, I found my personal and professional selves were equally piqued. See, I have two daughters, both of whom are wonderful, loving, and endearing. And while they may look much alike from the outside, they could not be more different temperment-wise.

As an infant, the elder required at least 1-2 hours--and sometimes more--of nursing to fall asleep at night. At 20 months, she began crying at any song that was in a minor key. At 3 years-old, she recalls emotionally-stirring incidents that happened well over a year ago. She's my orchid.

Her younger sister is pure dandelion. At bedtime, you can lay her in her crib, she'll pop her two favorite fingers in her mouth, and within a few minutes, she'll be asleep. She weaned herself at about 8 months--just decided to move on one day. She just learned to climb the stairs on her own--not the way her sister learned, mind you: by trying and falling, mastering a few more, falling and trying again. Oh, no. She'd try one stair, fall down, and quit. She seemed content to remain downstairs until one day when she found she had mastered that first stair, she proceeded to climb the entire staircase. She wasn't willing to risk falling the way her sister did to master the skill. She also hasn't learned to walk at 12 months the way her sister did, or figure out how to jump out of her crib at 9 months. She's careful and cautious in a dandelion (and, admittedly, greatly-relieving-to-me) kind of way.

Before I had children, I really believed that environment--not genetics--had the greatest influence on who we become as people. Raising my daughters, however, it's unmistakable to me how parts of personality are hard-wired. Granted, I have a sample size of 2 for this study. And birth order, naturally, must play a part; but, my daughters were different babies in utero. We know the younger self-soothed with her fingers from her ultrasound pictures. Her older sister never seemed to learn to calm herself, was always dependent on her caregivers to help her. I don't know how else to explain these differences in personality other than through genetics.

I hadn't really reflected on it before, but I suppose I'm a different parent to each of them. I tend to think of them as a unit, "the girls," but I'm recognizing that my bond with each of them is different, is based on a unique set of needs and wants. In my coming posts, I hope to explore more the (sometimes ugly, sometimes lovely) truth of who I am as a parent to one orchid and one dandelion.

Raising Orchid Children

I just finished reading a fantastic article in The Atlantic by David Dobbs entitled, "Orchid Children." The "orchid hypothesis" of child development, as Dobbs explains, is quite similar to my own hypothesis about postpartum mood disorders: "Genetics loads the gun; environment pulls the trigger." In other words, genes are responsible for our sensitivity to mood problems, but it's the particular ecosystem in which we live that determines if mood problems develop.

Let me try to explain this "orchid hypothesis" that Dobbs reported on in the article. We all know someone who survived some terrible childhood trauma. This person may have survived verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse. These people should be complete emotional messes as adults. And yet, maybe with therapy, maybe without therapy, they are pretty well-functioning adults. There's a whole sub-genre of memoirs out there written by such people. ("Once in a House on Fire" by Andrea Ashworth is a fine and much-recommended example.) These people, according to the hypothesis, would be called dandelions. They flourish under all kinds or stresses and in adverse environments, much like the dandelions in lawns--chemically-treated and otherwise--everywhere.

And then you have the orchids. Orchids are much more sensitive to their enviroment. They are highly reactive to even seemingly small amounts of stress. In children, they may be quick to throw tantrums; cry easily; hit, kick, punch or bite their parents or caregivers. In adults, "orchid-ness" often manifests itself as anxiety or depression.

So then, the theory goes, there are 2 types of the same gene that determines whether you have a "dandelion" or "orchid" temperment. You may be thinking it's better to get the "dandelion" variation over the "orchid" form, but it's not quite so simple.

A well-tended "orchid" when it blooms, blooms magnificently. When "orchids" are raised in highly responsive, stable, and emotionally-attunded ecosystems (which includes every caregiver with whom the child has contact), these children channel their propensity for risk and excitement in, well, exciting ways. You may know some of these people, too. They take on interesting and creative projects. They maintain a network of fun, diverse friends. They may be empathic beyond the norm. They have that vision thing, seeing possibilities where most see nothing at all.

So, this hypothesis has got me excited for all kinds of reasons. Here are some of the possible implications I've been thinking about: What if the orchid hypothesis also applies to parents who suffer postpartum mood disorders? Does being an "orchid parent" mean that recovery from ppmds or baby blues makes one a more intuitive, sensitive parent in the long run? In raising "orchid children," how do we best help them succeed? In successfully raising an orchid, do "dandelion siblings" reap benefits, or does the dandelion-parent bond suffer?

In my coming posts, I hope to explore all these (and more) questions further. In the meantime, peace to all the dandelions and orchids out there.