Premature Peace Prize — CMB Post

This post originally appeared on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

Let me be clear, I'm a liberal. I lean so far left that there are days when I'm in danger of toppling over. I voted for Obama and think he's the best thing that has happened to this country in a long time. He makes me proud to be an American.

BUT, does he deserve the Nobel Peace Prize? I don't know. My immediate response is probably not.

Obama has only been in office for nine months and inherited an outhouse overflowing with messy situations. I believe he's trying hard to address these issues, but that it has been more difficult than he may have initially thought. This is probably true for every president who has ever taken the oath of office; I know it's true of every parent. It's always harder to change things than you think.

I heard one pundit say that Obama was awarded the Peace Prize because he has put a new face on America's place in the world. Well, OK, I'll buy that. I wasn't too crazy about the last face we showed the world.

According to the Nobel Prize Foundation, Alfred Nobel established the Peace Prize more than 100 years ago to honor "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

In that light, it's hard for me to see that Obama is a deserving recipient. I did a little more research, however, and discovered a broader interpretation of how the prize is awarded in an article by Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, 1991-1999. He explains:

"The Prize, in other words, is not only for past achievement, although that is the most important criterion. The committee also takes the possible positive effects of its choices into account. Among the reasons for adding this as a criterion is the obvious point that Nobel wanted the Prize to have political effects. Awarding a Peace Prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act — which is also the reason why the choices so often stir up controversy."

I get that the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize is a political act, intended to encourage actions that promote peace, not just to recognize achievements.

But as a parent, I worry about this particular choice. Upon hearing the news this morning, my 12-year-old son asked me what Obama had done to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, and I was honestly at a loss. I tried to explain the reasonings as I understood them, but he put his finger right on the nose by responding that "those are things he's going to do, but he hasn't done them yet."

There is a great deal of controversy in the world of parenting about the dangers of overpraising our children and giving them trophies just for showing up. While we certainly want to promote healthy self esteem, research has shown that overpraising can actually have the opposite effect. So instead of telling my son that he's the greatest soccer player in the world (which he is not), I try to say things like: "That was a really good effort. Keep up the hard work."

My middle son is studying for his bar mitzvah in November. He went through a balky stage and I found that we were fighting about it all the time. I decided to try a different tack and offered to help him by establishing an incentive plan, where he could earn money toward a prize if he did the work every day with only a gentle reminder and no complaining. He thought that was a great idea, but wanted to know why he couldn't have the prize up front if he promised to work hard every day toward his goal. I explained that that would not be an incentive, it would be a bribe. As Chicagoans, we know that bribes are usually not very effective motivators. Once you have the prize, why should you do the work?

I'm not disparaging our president or his good intentions and efforts toward making this a more peaceful world. I did not expect him to be able to solve the complicated problems we face over night. But, we are still waging two wars in the Middle East. Guantanamo is still open.

So, what about this Nobel Peace Bribe? Right now, it feels a little like Obama got the trophy just for showing up. Then again, according to Woody Allen, "eighty percent of success is showing up." Let's hope that's the case and that being honored with the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize motivates President Obama to evaluate every policy he pursues through the lens of peace, and that he uses it to help us all keep our eyes on the prize. And to President Obama, "Really good effort. Keep up the hard work."

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan Bearman isn't encouraging presidents and future presidents with reasonable amounts of praise, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.

Chicago, Let's Clean Up Our Act — CMB Post

This post originally appeared on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

Chicago's image has been severely tarnished over the last week or so. We lost our Olympic bid in the first round of voting, a defeat that happened so quickly, the crowds who had gathered for the announcement in Daley Plaza were left dazed and confused, while echoing strains of Peggy Lee's "Is that all there is?" seemed to float on the breeze.

Prior to the vote and the other recent events that have placed Chicago squarely on the world's front page, I had been feeling a great deal of civic pride. On my brother's last trip, he remarked again how clean Chicago is compared to other large cities. When good friends visited last month, we took the El from Evanston and spent the entire day on foot, starting in beautiful Millennium Park, where they ooohed and aahhed over the "bean" and Priztker Pavilion, then wandering north up the Magnificent Mile all the way to Oak Street Beach, where they marveled over our perfectly preserved lake front.

But then came the tragic beating death of young honor student, Derrion Albert, followed less than a week later by another teen beating that resulted in a cracked skull. The nation and the world are shocked by these horrific acts of violence, but are we, here in the Chicago area, equally shocked? Most of us would like to pretend that Derrion Albert's horrendous death was an isolated incident, but the fact is that more than 30 school-aged students were killed in Chicago last year. Chicago's Olympic plan promised "uncompromising safety for the games through a fully integrated security operation … without compromising the protection of the city and its residents."

Our city cannot even deliver uncompromising security to it's most precious commodity — its children.

A few weeks after school started this year, I was waiting around the corner from our high school to pick up my teenaged twins, who are now seniors. Across the street, a group of 10 to 12 students started a shoving match that quickly escalated when one young man picked up a brick. My younger son, who was in the car with me, was terrified. "Let's just go, Mom," he begged. Instead, I called the high school security department and waited for police to arrive, which took only a few minutes, since Evanston police routinely patrol the blocks around the high school campus at the beginning and end of the day. I remember my heart pounding as I anxiously watched the dustup brew into a potentially very dangerous situation.

My daughter is infuriated every time she hears of another act of school-related violence. "Everyone thinks Chicago and Evanston students are a bunch of gang-banging thugs. Most of us aren't like that." When I asked if she is ever afraid at or around school, she said "No, I feel perfectly safe." I wish I had that same sense of security.

It's a running joke in our family that the only time the house gets completely cleaned is when we're expecting company. While I won't totally cop to that, there is something highly motivating about an impending visit. One of the reasons that cleaning up for guests seems almost fun is that you can concentrate on the surface and feel fairly confident that, with the exception of a few nosy in-laws, no one will look under the bed for dust bunnies or check out your underwear drawer to see what you shoved in it.

In many ways, I feel Chicago's Olympic bid was just that — four years of cleaning up for company. We polished our lake front and swept up the streets of the proposed venues, but we didn't look under the beds or in the drawers. Dirty laundry, however, begins to stink after a while and it gets pretty hard to hide. Instead of welcoming the world's elite athletes, Chicago will be visited by Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who are both being sent by President Obama to address youth violence in Chicago. Let's hope we take this opportunity to clean up our act and protect our real future — the children of this city.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan Bearman isn't busy airing dirty laundry, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.

Segregation 2009 — CMB Post

This was originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

It was 55 years ago this month that the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. That historic event happened five years before I was born, and I grew up believing that segregation was just an ugly part of our past.

Just four months ago, we inaugurated our first African American president — an event that I never expected to see in my lifetime and a day when I was so proud to be an American.

On May 1, 2009, just a few weeks ago, a high school in Montgomery County Georgia had separate black and white proms — events that I didn't know still existed.

I'm so disappointed.

Perhaps "disappointed" sounds like a weak adjective in this context, but when I was a kid, we knew we had really screwed up when my mother said quietly that she was "so disappointed". She had expected better of us. We knew better. We had chosen to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. That's how I felt when I read about segregated proms in the new millennium.

Our family has chosen to live in a racially and socio-economically diverse community on the theory that at least our children's public school experience will look relatively like the "real world". That has proven to be both more and less true than we ever expected.

When my twins were little, there were two girls in their grade named Brianna — one caucasian and one African American. One day, my son told me that Brianna had helped him on the playground. When I asked which Brianna, he said "the tall one." I was pleased and excited to think I was raising my kids to be "color blind". I was also amused, since the two Briannas were relatively close in height and they both towered over my tiny boy. His world view was all about looking up.

All too soon, however, those innocent views of the world — those ways of choosing friends based on geographical proximity or a mutual love of trucks — began to mutate into standard societal divisions: the boys stopped talking to the the girls in about third grade, and by middle school there were clear divisions along racial and economic lines, as well. My naive vision of a rainbow-colored community disappeared in the black and white reports of achievement gaps, teen pregnancy rates, and drop-out statistics.

I'm so disappointed.

The high school prom may be a perfect metaphor for American race relations today: we all wait around for an invitation to the dance; it never lives up to our expectations; and once you bring alcohol into the mix, things are bound to get ugly.

Perhaps we need to make it a less formal affair — think of it like a spontaneous potluck picnic. Sure, there may be a few bugs, too much potato salad and not enough pie, but everyone is welcome and if we just relax a little, we'll probably have a good time.

When Susan isn't being disappointed by the latest news reports, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog. This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post.

Photo credit: Mirror Ball Amsterdam by yozza/Ewan Topping

Gift Giving 101 — CMB Post

This post originally appeared on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are good at gift giving and those who aren't. In fact, there are two other kinds of people in the world: those who are good at receiving gifts and those who aren't.

Gift giving and gift receiving are both subtle arts, as evidenced by the recent brouhaha over the gifts exchanged by President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Seems the 25 DVDs of American film classics that Obama presented to Mr. Brown did not quite compare to the ornamental pen holder made from timbers of the HMS Resolute, the sister to the ship that yielded the wood for the President's desk in the oval office. Oh, yeah, and a framed commission of the of the HMS Resolute. And a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert. We won't even get into the kids gifts.

If it is truly the thought that counts, it doesn't seem to me that a lot of thought went into the DVDs. As British columnist Iain Martin told NPR's Robert Siegel, "We do have television and DVDs over here."

I love choosing the exact right gift for someone. It's gotten harder, both due to tough economic times and lack of actual time, to put the same kind of thought and effort into my gift giving, but it still affords me great pleasure when I do it right. And doing it right has nothing to do with how much something costs. The question should always be "Will this delight the person receiving it?" The right gift can be something longed for, or something never even dreamed of. It can be huge or tiny or completely intangible. It can be the result of great effort or a serendipitous find. But the perfect gift is always personal — meaning specific to that person.

I once gave my father several DVDs as a gift for some holiday or other; not 25 of them, but several at least, maybe five or ten. My father is a movie buff and these were the films of Stanley Kubrick, his favorite director. He loved them. The DVDs were personal for him.

I've tried to instill this love of gift giving in my children as a sort of antidote to the constant case of the "I wants" that seems to infect the young (and the not-so-young). Even more importantly, I've tried to teach them the fine art of being a wonderful gift receiver. This isn't as easy as it sounds.

When I was a kid, we visited a distant elderly relative who gave my brother and me each a wildly inappropriate gift, hopelessly out of fashion and much too young for us. I seem to remember accepting it reluctantly and proffering a very weak "thank you." My mother was furious, and gave a lecture on the way home that still stings when I think about it. It ran along the lines of how lovely it was that someone who barely knew us took the time to go out shopping, spending perfectly good money to purchase a gift for each of us, and that that effort alone was a precious gift, and that if we were ever lucky enough to receive another gift in our lifetimes, we had best show profound and humble gratitude, no matter what that gift was.

I will also say that my mother set the best example, still reigning as the champion gift receiver of all time. We gave her some really lame gifts when we were kids, including an atrocious brooch with plastic turquoise cherries, some horrible perfume and a plastic cup that my brother melted in the oven for some scouting project. She loved them all. I swear you could wrap an empty box in the Sunday comics and my mom would say: "For me? Oh, thank you so much." And you would feel so good. I hope I have taught my children as well.

On the other hand, I know people who, no matter what gift is given, always ask if I kept the receipt so they can return it. How rude.

Sometimes we receive gifts that may not be exactly what we wanted or expected. Perhaps the gift giver was busy or preoccupied, say with a crushing economic crisis, mounting unemployment and a brand new job. This is where knowing how to receive gifts graciously can make the entire experience pleasant for everyone. After all, giving and receiving gifts is meant to be joyful.

So, on behalf of the American people, I would like to thank Mr. Brown for the lovely, thoughtful gifts he bestowed on our new President. I hope he and his family enjoy the movies. And to Mr. Martin and the rest of the British press, my mother says that a simple "thank you" will do.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan isn't busy wrapping presents and writing thank you notes, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.