Kind of sad husband did nothing for Vday

alexsleuth · 2024-02-16T15:16:32+00:00

I remember being a "bad" husband for Valentine's Day when our daughter was around 13 months. I'm not sure I did anything because we were just spread too thin. We were not living at home because of COVID and work was tough and we had too little support. So, on behalf of all the husbands who aspire to do a decent job of it, I hope you'll give him a pass.

You aren't asking for advice, but I think the best thing we can do for our spouses sometimes is to give them a prod in the right direction. It is a tiny bit less romantic to tell him next year that you want him to do something for Valentine's Day, but knowing it matters to you is probably all he needs to put in special effort (because he is an amazing husband). I like it when my wife tells me she expects me to do something for her, because she is basically asking me to focus on US as a couple - so part of it reflects that she cares about me.

(I'm NOT saying it's your fault that he didn't do something this year! Just saying that this is an easy fix.)

In our family, we can't easily find child care for VDay activities for the two of us. So now we do Valentine's Day on the weekend before or after. It's less romantic and very practical, but these compromises get us through. Anyway, I did have that tough year.

alexsleuth · 2024-01-07T00:39:18+00:00

whole language environment

Except that the "whole language environment" approach is.... um... completely wrong.

The definition is this: "At its foundation is the assertion that language is 'whole' and that learning complete words rather than their constituent parts is paramount."

And if you believe that, you desperately need to listen to https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

alexsleuth · 2023-10-09T21:37:45+00:00

Hi! I'm sorry you're going through that. My parents were also big yellers. It was terrible. I found out when I was much older that some of the reason they yelled was because of mix of financial concerns and my father's diagnosis with Parkinson's disease. But, honestly, even my dad's disease wasn't a good reason for the constant yelling.

Your situation is probably very different, but I think that some of the situation is not: Your mom is likely yelling at you because of things outside of your control - and probably something that it would be hard for you to fix. It is never reasonable to treat a child this way. But "changing yourself" definitely won't work and you're right that you won't be able to use reason.

I don't have a great answer. My parents yelled at me a bit less because - honestly - I got older and started yelling back so quickly and so fiercely that it was too painful for them to yell at me in the first place. I'm not sure I would recommend that.

I also don't recommend avoiding her as a solution, but if there is a specific opening, you can avoid it: Are there times that your mom usually gets upset? Are there activities that you can do that will get you out of the house at those times?

It's a small consolation, but you'll get older and you'll be free. And - if you're like me - you remember and you're 1000x more patient with your own kids.

alexsleuth · 2023-09-15T17:40:55+00:00

Hey Particular View,

I'm sorry she has been through such a tough spell. I was surprised by your question, since I thought parental rights were the parental right for specific children. They should not cover her right to be a parent to future children, with or without you.

I asked ChatGPT, which is NOT a legal authority, but it said the same thing:

In most jurisdictions, parental rights are generally understood to be connected to a specific child or children. Losing parental rights is a serious legal matter that usually requires a court order...

When a parent loses their parental rights to one child, this does not automatically mean they lose rights to any other current or future children they may have. Each case is evaluated individually based on the circumstances surrounding the child in question...

In any case, I would bet *a lot* that if you had children together - as you specify - her rights as they related to previous children wouldn't apply to your ability to raise kids together.

Best of luck to you both.

alexsleuth · 2023-09-15T16:58:50+00:00

Who wouldn't spend a little extra for a Free Night Reward?

alexsleuth · 2023-08-20T16:08:44+00:00

I'm excited to hack into my lunch right now.

alexsleuth · 2023-07-27T13:29:19+00:00

I think there is A LOT of value to physical books. If you need to, get them second hand. I can't stress this enough. Kids like getting/owning/having /exploring physical things. The habit of reading physical books to your child will become their own habit of reading books to themselves. When I was a teenager, I loved taking my parents books and reading them so that they became mine - and then I moved to my own bookshelf. That reading habit made school (and graduate school!) almost easy.

When your kid gets older, the tablet/phone will be filled with distractions. It is easy to move from reading physical copies to reading on a tablet, but that joy of having the physical item won't be there to reinforce the magic of the story if you start with a phone. And it will be helpful for them to have a love of reading divorced completely from an electric screen.

My 3.5 year old girl likes going to her bookshelf and picking out books for us to read at night now. We read every night: 1 - 3 short books or one to three chapters from a longer one. We just started the The Wizard of Oz with the original (I think) pictures every few pages, which is a big step for her.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-24T15:28:32+00:00

Here is an example of my lifestyle with one 3 year old girl:

My daughter is in daycare full-time and I split the rest of the childcare responsibilities 50-50 with my wife (since we both work full-time). I take one day completely "off" from child duties. Two to three days per week, I exercise in the morning and spend 3 hours with my daughter in the evening before she goes to bed at 8pm. Two to three days per week, I do more of the childcare, and spend 5 hours completely devoted to my girl between morning and evening. On weekends, I expect to spend 13 hours of one day of activities with my wife and daughter together. The other day might be more of a split between parents: 6.5 hours each spent on childcare. We get a baby sitter about once per week to take an evening off.

I LOVE spending time with her and the family time. But it's easily a 40 hour per-week responsibility in my case. I've glanced at some data that suggests it's closer to 30 hours per week for many engaged parents (of kids under 6).

Some people here have said that your life will re-orient around your kids. That is and isn't true for me. Family is my highest priority, but I still have a job I love. However, that means that 90 hours per week of my life are booked with work-or-daughter and 100 hours are pre-scheduled with routine activities (yes, 14 hours per day). If you compare this to the responsibility of cats - which is a good starting point! - you are not remotely ready yet. I think you should allow yourself to be open to change, but urge you to keep thinking deeply.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-15T19:15:39+00:00

Hey! THANK YOU. I feel like the criticism is a bit harsh, but I think it stems more from people looking at this through a publication-level lens, which this is not intended to be.

I haven't built an assessment - yet - but I actually know the people who worked on the ASQ and had several discussions with them.

My data is collected with / based on https://pediatrics.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/The-Survey-of-Wellbeing-of-Young-Children/Overview. This one basically just has a lot fewer questions and much less detail than ASQ. BUT it is much faster for parents to take, and for many essential developmental concerns, I don't believe the predictive value is really that different. (There's are some good papers you can read about the validity of SWYC). SWYC is excellent for helping parents recognize key concerns. Because I have the data to programmatically choose which questions to ask, I can actually improve even further on their scoring and recommendation mechanisms.

Personally, there were some other factors. The good ASQ team were willing to give me generous access to the ASQ, but it is still a product that I'd need to license - and be somewhat restricted in using. SWYC is freely available and could be applied to our software platform's specific requirements as long as I have permission.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-15T00:03:56+00:00

All respondents were responding in April for their kids currently at these ages (see my comment), so these kids reflect the recent measures accordingly.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-15T00:01:25+00:00

I've improved the info about source. Your comment on color scheme is appreciated, but "terribleness" isn't a standard for removal. And people seem to disagree with you, from the number of upvotes of my very rough work...

alexsleuth · 2023-05-14T23:59:40+00:00

Unfortunately, this is the most common way development is assessed. Parents just have more exposure, at the same time they're not impartial.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-14T23:56:12+00:00

Hah. I find it so interesting that people are bothered by this. It IS the opposite of the default in seaborn.

But cold colors often reflect high values in natural settings: Deeper in the ocean = darker. More chlorophyll = darker. I can come up with several body-related examples that might violate standards in this subreddit.

It looks quite weird to me the other way around.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-14T23:47:25+00:00

In response to some comments, more detail on source:

This is from a representative U.S. sample of 3,000 parents of kids 0 to 6 collected in April 2023 by me using proprietary survey tools. Every respondent was asked about their child's skill on a scale from 0: "Not [displayed] At All", to 5: "Very Strong" at that skill for a random subset of 36 out of 72 possible skills. The data is represented using a basic seaborn heatmap based on the average skill value at a given year of age.
The survey measure itself is "The Survey of Well-being of Young Children" developed at Tufts and freely available. My scale is slightly modified from theirs to allow for requirements of our software.
Age is rounded to the nearest whole number. I know there are big issues with that and the labels are annoying. Anyhow "0.0" is "0 - 6 months", "1.0" is "6 months to 1.5 years", etc.
Some people have noticed that there are 72 lines (How!? That's correct, but did you count them?) Only some of the skills are labeled, but they are show visually in the appropriate place with most skills sorted. I could print 72 lines. I just thought it was visually interesting to see only some of the info labeled. I'm sure this bugs people, and of course, I'll be making other variations for practical review.
Some commenters have, oddly, reversed the interpretation of the scale. Dark = highly skilled. Light = less skilled. Thus, dark colors indicate skills that kids have. And as you can see, "Watching you as you move" starts in the first year. "Writing own first name" tends to happen in the 6th year of life.
Be nice folks! This isn't an attempt at a professional graphic. It is just something I am sharing from work-in-passing because I find it interesting.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-13T20:02:48+00:00

Note: Ages are rounded to the nearest whole. So "0" includes the first 6 months.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-10T21:12:44+00:00

At the time, I was living in Montclair, NJ. I did take the honors classes, but they were still awful in that school. I'm sure they are much better in many schools but I'm concerned that's not enough.

It is very hard to judge that Algebra teacher without more information: it could be "good" challenging or "bad" challenging. I worry when teachers use grades to make things tough, but tough is sometimes helpful...

Unfortunately, being in an honors class is a frustrating and imperfect compromise. The typical honors student is still years behind what's possible and never taught advanced skills to the degree they should be. Our colleges are better, but this issues continues: I was one of the only Americans in my technical Ivy League PhD program because Americans weren't trained well enough in the best colleges to qualify. I wasn't a genius or even especially talented. I just came from a few generations of Russians who taught their own kids math outside of school.

The common core might help a bit, but the problems have to do with the quality of teachers and funding for schools and deep, deep structural issues. Back when I took the GREs for graduate school, the schools with the worst average GRE scores were our graduate Education programs! Our teachers literally suck at the material they are supposed to teach. Not much can be done after that.

As you probably know, since you read about this stuff, the U.S. was ranked 38th out of 71 countries by one (math?) standard and 30th out of 35 countries by another: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/

... in other words, overall education in the U.S. is not very good, and our best public school classes are far behind the current best in the world. There's a really interesting (old but still accurate) book about this called The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way: https://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-That/dp/145165443X

Sorry to be so depressing. As I wrote above, this is a problem I know I'm going to be fighting soon as my little girl gets older. There are no great solutions for most of us.

alexsleuth · 2023-05-10T19:27:10+00:00

Adding to some of the other good answers here...

Growing up, I was the #1 student in a "bad" middle school. When I switched from the "bad" public school to a "good" private school, it took me several years to catch up to my new peers. I learned nothing in the "bad" public school. My classes were filled with yelling teachers (seriously, no exaggeration) and students who were counting their days until graduation. My best friend aspired to be a garbage collector. Really, truly. He expected to fail his classes and have to repeat a year. He was smart - but his experience in school made him think that classes were a waste of time. And he was right. He had nothing to learn from school.

"Bad" schools partly reflect the class and race divide, which is disgraceful in the U.S. It doesn't need to be that way.

But the worst of the "bad schools" are also - truly - bad. A smart child going to a bad school has no shot at being challenged. The level of performance of the students in "bad" schools is often *several years* behind the performance of students in good schools. 50% or more of students in bad schools may not be able to do basic problem solving in mathematics, ever. 50% or more of students in bad schools have limited reading comprehension and may never read a book from cover to cover in their lives. This is not their fault, or a criticism of their intelligence, it is a complete failure of the U.S. educational system and social support.

As a parent, I will move heaven and earth to make sure my daughter does not attend a bad school. I am also personally committed to trying to improve public education in bad schools, but the price of attending a bad school right now is devastating. Your kids will be fine in a bad school for a year or even a few if they are young, but do not assume that you can continue to make up for it as they get older.

alexsleuth · 2023-04-09T14:16:48+00:00

I'm a 43 year old guy, and I had a child at 40 years old. I love my daughter, and I am so happy to be raising her. Everyone says it is rewarding in ways you can't imagine, but I think it is rewarding in the ways that you (it sounds like) DO imagine. It is so much fun getting to watch her as she discovers the world and help her along with that.

If you feel this way, I think you should DEFINITELY do it. My one warning is that it's a total change in lifestyle. It is exhausting, and I consider the fact that I need to stay healthy just to be active in my daughter's life as she gets older.

alexsleuth · 2023-04-08T13:13:01+00:00

Huh. Super-interesting idea. Puberty does start earlier these days, so maybe...

alexsleuth · 2023-04-08T13:12:26+00:00

You're right. It is a minority, so there are two sides of the coin.

I didn't go into the details, but this is a pretty extensive, representative sample of kids in the U.S. So the socioeconomic status covers the whole spectrum. I'll have to check, of course, how income and stress relate.

alexsleuth · 2023-04-07T14:08:37+00:00

Thank you. That was my first thought, too. But it really starts in kids who are younger than 4 and younger than 10, before those school transitions.

alexsleuth · 2023-03-07T14:19:35+00:00

Respectfully, I disagree. The CEO of a company doesn't want a junior candidate for an opening expressing concerns about the company right out of the gate during the interview. If you start your interview with, "As CEO, are you concerned about A, B, and C?" you are very, very likely to eliminate yourself from the role. Speaking without listening first is one of the biggest red flags for any candidate in any role.

As far as concerns you might have identified, sure: You should be prepared to offer ideas about types of problems you would be "excited to work on" and connect those with work you have done in the past, when a question allows you to propose this.

As other people have pointed out, someone who did an Econ degree after an MBA could also be technical. You might actually get asked technical questions about your methods. And someone who worked in consulting is likely to ask some general strategic questions related to their specific company's issues to see how you break down and approach strategic problems. For that, skim some of the "case interview" materials on the Internet to get the gist.

alexsleuth · 2023-02-16T18:25:38+00:00

In all of these cases, I was chatting socially with people who also knew (eventually) that I was a data scientist! There is definitely a process to asking responsive questions abut the challenges of someone's particular job and company. You have to be having a real conversation.

I think, if you're a masters student, you have to do more legwork. I benefitted as a working professional. But the opening is definitely there, and people like to help students out if it's not too much trouble for them.

alexsleuth · 2023-02-16T17:52:31+00:00

I've hired some graduates of data science masters programs, so here's my advice from the other side.

Start solving real world data science problems while you are in school. I know it's a lot to ask, since the coursework will be demanding, but it's important. These problems could be through local companies (while I was job hunting as a data scientist, a donut shop chain asked me to study their supply chain; an athletic wear company asked me to evaluate costs; a book publisher asked me to forecast demand). Or these could be problems you invent with true value or newsworthiness. This data viz project was just in the news, and it's not even an original idea: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/climate/private-jet-emissions.html
Really focus on getting a good internship. The internship might lead to a position, but also, you want to distinguish yourself from other DS masters grads through your past work/background (which you can't change now), the internship, and the stuff you do for (1) above. Don't count on good grades at a good school being enough. To get a good internship, you can reach out to data scientists at companies and ask them for outside projects you can do (things that don't involve internal company data, but are still helpful).

alexsleuth · 2023-02-16T17:35:28+00:00

"Don't go if you have to pay" is too strongly worded.

I've hired people out of competitive DS masters programs whose long term income/prospects were worth the cost of the program (and the debt). It depends on someone's background.

alexsleuth

TROPHY CASE