Those of us with grandchildren already know how precious time spent with them is, and how much we miss when we are apart for long stretches. Sometimes it’s illness that keeps us apart, sometimes it’s distance and travel but oftentimes it’s because, well, they just don’t want you over because your grandparent comments and behaviour make them crazy.

New parents are already stressed out by the realities of bringing a baby home and being ultimately responsible for this little human, so they have thin skin when it comes to advice, observations, and suggestions. And, because the best communications are strategic, what you say and do should be tailored to the circumstances and preferences of the new parents. Truly, it is not about you!

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My grandchildren range in age from 6 months to 14 years so I undertook a wholly scientifically-invalid survey, beginning with their parents. Then it spread out to a new parent Facebook group where I hit the motherlode of grandparent cautionary tales.

The Facebook commentary was also telling in the number of YESSS comments; seems insensitive grandparents are everywhere.  Here are some Hells ya and Hell no’s, based on those comments.

VISITS

One of the most common complaints has to do with out-of-town grandparents who move in shortly after the baby is born but do nothing to help, instead expecting to be catered to as in the childless past. This also applies to in-town grandparents who think it’s okay to drop in on the new family, with no intention of doing any chores or helping out.

Not helpful: 

“We’re going to swing by in a bit to meet the baby!”  This is the cruelest thing you can do to a new mom, especially if you come empty handed. The house is a mess, I JUST got the baby down for a nap or I have full tits out trying to feed her and really don’t want everyone to just “swing by” on a whim to share their germs with my newborn or overstay their welcome or, heaven forbid, need me to entertain them.

Big one is don’t come to my home and tell me to change my routine to make you more comfortable in the days after I just gave birth and had an extended hospital stay with my premature son. Instead let’s have a conversation about what I need and options for us to both be comfortable that aren’t more taxing on me.

Rearranging my kitchen during your five day stay, folding laundry different than how we are used to after being asked multiple times to not do the laundry, and telling the neighbours the baby is “yours” when they ask. Just tell them you are his grandparent.

“While you’re up will you get me ‘xyz’”- when I’m one week post partum and my MIL invades my space and doesn’t help and expects me to wait on her. I was up getting myself water after she refused to get it for me.

Any advice or “buck up” reply after begging for help or opening up about having a hard time. A simple “you’re right that sucks” or “you’re right that sounds difficult to experience”. Or “go nap/eat/shower/get your nails done and I’ll pick up/fold laundry/cook some freezer meals/do dishes” would’ve been nice when my MIL & SIL ‘visited’ when our baby was 1 week old and I was still having uterine contractions that took my breath away.

Helpful:

“I’m here to ACTUALLY help you. I stocked up the fridge and freezer, and I’m going to go clean your kitchen.” - My mom took full charge of keeping our house clean and had three meals a day, plus snacks, ready to go for all of us. She knew we wanted to bond with the baby and made sure we had a clean/calm environment and sustenance to help us focus just on the kiddo.

My mom and mother-in-law cooked and did the dishes for weeks, along with some tidying and laundry, after my babies were born (they took turns staying with us). When my babies would not sleep on anything but a person, my mom would sit in the nursery holding a sleeping baby for hours so I could shower, nap, etc. The best thing my mom ever said to me when I was going through a lot of issues with my first (breastfeeding, sleeping, etc.) and was not in a good mental place was "I know this is so, so hard, but remember that now you have a daughter for the rest of your life". It helped put things in perspective without downplaying my feelings.

Grocery shopping, bringing water while I pump/feed, cleaning the kitchen while we were in the hospital. Being respectful of masking up and covering clothes with a receiving blanket. Being clear from before baby was born about what you are comfortable helping with (how often and how I can ask for help when I need it).

Any variation of “what can I do to help?” “What would you like to eat?” “Would you like me to hold the baby so you can go take a nap/shower/ take a walk?” “Can I do the laundry for you? - Better yet, don’t ask-- just do it. Or “You are really doing a great job,” or “Being a parent is hard, I know, but you’re doing great!”

COMMENTS

Adding insult to injury, things spiral out of control pretty quickly when grandparents beak off with potentially hurtful and insulting observations.

Not helpful:

“The one that makes me the most crazy is “You should do this or that”. It feels like I’m being judged.

“Well back in my day we did it this way.”

 “You look terrible.”

“She can skip a nap every once and a while. Just let her stay up later and she’ll sleep in later in the morning” 🙄

Suggesting that they’re disappointed in the sex of your newborn (10 day old they’re holding) and encouraging you to try again.

Judging the way you choose to feed your baby (breastfeeding vs formula feeding) or making comments like "you probably don't have milk in there" "the baby must be starving, you don't know how much she's getting" etc.

If I tell you not to do something with my baby, if I tell you to stop, If I tell you it’s not okay, if I tell you no, YOU NEED TO STOP. Don’t tell me you did this and that with your children and they turned out just fine. You are not my baby’s parent, I am. MY BABY, MY RULES.

"Well we never did that and you turned out fine"... this pisses me off...and my response (if it’s an unsafe practice) is usually “well some kids weren’t fine. Some kids died.” Usually that shuts down the argument.

I usually say "you used to smoke indoors around children, was that also okay?"

“It’s our job to do whatever we want when we have your kids and not follow your routine.”

My mom has said things like, “She really should be sleeping through the night at this point.” Or “She really should be eating x amount per feeding by now.”

Most of the time, I want to vent. Unless I straight up ask, “What would you do in this situation?” Or “What do you think?”, then don’t offer advice. If I don’t ask for it, then the job as my parent (grandparent of my child) is to be there to listen and offer support aka to watch the child and give me a break. Support is not telling me what to do and how I’m doing everything “wrong” according to you. I’m so sick of feeling like I can’t do anything right.

Constantly saying how much harder we were for them than our baby is for us… it’s not a competition about who’s had it harder in life. It doesn’t make you look more experienced; it makes you look insensitive.

When your baby has a great temperament and eats/sleeps amazing and is generally a happy baby, and EVERYONE says to you “just wait until the next one”, “the next one won’t be so easy”...

“Just wait ‘til they’re 4, 14, etc.”

My MIL asking me if the mess in our master bedroom was ok with my husband. 😡😡😡 I’m sorry, I’m super sick with my pregnancy, can’t keep up on the laundry and YOUR SON is the one who recommended we let laundry go for a while. Flippin’ rude.

When they refer to them as their baby 😂

Even seemingly benign critiques of the baby can sting, especially in the first few months, like, "is he always this fussy?"

“Don’t worry about it! He’s a baby. Just let him sleep whenever he wants sleeps.” - Or any equivalent of “you just need to relax”. Infuriating. I NEED the baby to sleep at night so I NEED him to nap at the right time. So back to the fuck off or YOU can get him at 2am when he won’t calm down because he’s over/under tired from a shitty nap schedule.

“You look tired.” - No shit, Sherlock. Thanks for your amazing observation. How ‘bout you take this screaming poop machine and get me a damn glass of wine and maybe I’ll look more refreshed.

Helpful:

“Wow, that sounds hard. I’m sorry the both of you aren’t sleeping through the night yet. Let me know when I can come over to watch the girls so you can take a nap.” Like my mind would literally explode if I heard those words 

My son was very colicky and my mom would come over every day (while my husband worked 7-7) to give me an hour or two to nap, take a bath, just walk away from my crying baby — she had so much patience with him, and me when I was a hot mess of emotions trying to navigate being a new mom with a baby who was always crying… Sometimes you just need a break and to hear that you’re kicking ass even when you feel like you aren’t all of the time. I hit the mama lotto. ♥️

When I was struggling with breastfeeding and my mom told me it’s ok to use formula, and that she also struggled with breastfeeding, and that I’d already lasted twice as long as she had.

BABY TALK

Grandparents talking to baby in front of us (husband and I), telling them (in "baby talk" voice) things they think we (the parents) should/ shouldn't be doing in hopes we overhear, rather than telling us directly.

Ex: *baby starts crying and grandparents immediately say to them "Oh! You must be soooo hungry. Are you hungry? Do you want milk? Aww, you poor thing. You're so hungry." .... all while I'm sitting right there next to them with sore nipples and baby isn't crying because they're hungry, but more likely over-stimulated by all of the loud cooing from people holding them (who also don't want to put the baby down) and it's now past the time for them to take a nap. It would be more helpful if once baby starts crying and isn't consoled with simple rocking or didn't just poop, etc., then they turn to me and say something like, "oh, she seems upset. What do you think is the reason?"... that was way longer than I intended. I guess I had some emotions to get out 😂

OMG - THIS. I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I've tried to talk directly to my MIL so many times but she will only address her commentary on my parenting to the baby.

Ugh, that drives me and my husband crazy! I feel you girl!

FOOD

Feeding people is the way I have traditionally expressed love so it’s great to hear how many of these new parents absolutely crave home cooked meals, delivered at convenient times, and suitable for the diet they’ve chosen.

Unhelpful:

When you (grandma) come visit a new baby (literally day 2), bring or make food. Don’t ask your daughter-in-law, ‘what’s for dinner?’

I think every time my parents have visited it’s been “what’s on the menu?”.

Stop trying to stuff processed carbs down my son. I am teaching him to eat vegetables and have a broad palate. Stop assuming he needs Mac and cheese and pancakes because he may not be eating all of or everything that we are serving him. Soooooo annoying…

We don’t warm her milk after refrigerated (I exclusively pump) and almost everyone asks “Does cold milk cause more gas?” no. We always have to repeat our pediatrician confirmed it makes no difference in regards to gas, and if we don’t have to warm her bottles that’s one less thing!

Comments that I was starving my baby by just giving him breast milk. Oh and don’t get me started on his poor sleep due to me not feeding him rice cereal.

Same -- they were telling me to put cereal in a bottle since she was a month old 🥴

yes! Same 😵‍💫

Helpful:

Oh, and definitely offer to bring dinner whenever possible.

Actually, every time you visit, bring food. Because raising kids is a lot, working full time outside the house is a lot, hosting people is a lot, and coming empty handed and expecting dinner is the opposite of helpful.

“I’m going to drop dinner off at your front door. What is a good time to do that so it’s hot and ready for you?” - Like once a week from an amazing neighbour who knew exactly what was up. New moms don’t want visitors all the time. Food is always welcome, people are not. Be considerate.

If I can offer some unsolicited advice to all you grandparents, when it comes to interacting with your kids and kids-in-law and their new babies, listen and ask questions. Offer concrete help based on what they ask from you. Try to bite your tongue rather than make comments or give advice that may be outdated, irrelevant or just plain thoughtless. Walk the dogs, buy diapers, clean up the kitchen, bring food, and don’t overstay your welcome.

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I baked a beautiful cheesecake today, the traditional New York dense kind, not my recently acquired favourite, the fluffy Basque cheesecake. (Fabulous flavour but keeps wanting to separate, GROAN.) I even smashed up chocolate wafers to make a chocolate crumb crust as the Christie cookie company has discontinued its bags of crumpled up Oreos.

As I worked on it, swirling the melted chocolate into the cheesecake batter before popping it into the oven, in my mind were all the nears and dears who would be eating it in short order. I imagined presenting it to them in individual little containers, feeling the warmth of their pleasure and appreciation, and my satisfaction in the whole thing. For me, food is love, or more correctly, feeding people is love.

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Some years ago I fell into a soup swoon, simmering giant pots of leek and potato or curried coconut pumpkin, and would take great pleasure in pouring it into glass jars and delivering it to my neighbours. One particular day, after a soup delivery, I received a message from my neighbour, Dianne. She said she’d had a tough day, got home to find an empty house, but also a jar of soup on the doorstep and it was still warm. She told me that was exactly what she needed to remember that people cared about her and the family would be home soon.

Baking is only a recent passion, but cooking…. oh my, yes!

It's partly about choosing the foods according to the ones consuming them, what they like, what they look forward to from me, then assembling the ingredients and putting it all together, with love. The ultimate step is parcelling and labelling for those who live away from me, and delivering it to the door.

I’m thrilled to say that my children have inherited this mass prep for others gene. My daughter just prepped 5 different one-pot dinner ingredients in labelled freezer bags, to deliver to a friend who could toss the whole frozen thing into an insta-pot and have dinner in a hot minute.

In many cultures, offering food is an automatic part of welcoming someone into your home. Although it sounds like a joke question, "did you eat?" is almost universal. It is not unusual for a family to share food with guests, even if they don't have any to spare.

During the second world war, my parents, as children, often went hungry because normal life was so disrupted that there was precious little food to be had. People would scavenge horses which had fallen in the street and cut them up to sell for meat, something that would have been unthinkable a few years before. If you got an orange as a Christmas present, you were over the moon.

In some people, the postwar relationship with food became one of hoarding to ensure there would never be another time of privation, but we never ascribed to that. Instead, my parents shopped once a week, and it was the height of excitement when they pulled into the garage and we helped carry and then, joy of joys, unpack the bags to see what wonders were in store. Menus for myself and my friends were much simpler in those days. If you had asked me, age 12, what my favourite desert island last meal would be, I would have said roasted chicken, white rice and an iceberg lettuce salad with cucumber and tomato, dressed with Thousand Island. The food may change, but the impetus to share food, prepare and serve food, and feed those we love is as strong as ever.

In many of my best memories over time, food looms large. Ski weekends that featured oatmeal for breakfast, vats of spaghetti and sauce for dinner, and smoked oysters and pickled herring shots for New Year's Eve parties. Sorry, absolutely no video included!!!!

Traditional Polish Christmas Eve is built around a set number of courses, always an odd number and often 13. In her memoir, my mother recounts the interminable dinners before the war:

So back to the cheesecake and ensuing dinner prep. I had the chicken in the air fryer, the potatoes simmering in their pot and the vegetables partially prepped when my sweetheart called me out on the deck to observe someone else's dinner.

And this happy tippler:

For almost an hour this black bear ransacked the neighbour's tree until he'd had enough and climbed down.

Meanwhile, the potatoes boiled dry, leaving the pot suspiciously compromised, the chicken was done long ago and semi cold, and the prep work was an hour late. Sometimes you just have to sit back and watch others enjoy their food.

Today’s special is the ultimate combination of thing and place: the eternal cheeseburger in Paradise.

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During my time in junior high school, a boy in the senior grades committed suicide in the family home. This wasn’t a boy who was in trouble, skipped school and so on. He was an A student, a little quiet but popular and friendly. The overall conversation, after the initial shock, was stunned disbelief that someone with “everything to live for” could commit suicide.

Recently, two young men whose lives are within the circle of my adult children, took their own lives within a couple weeks of each other. In both cases the same description applies: they had everything to live for, careers, friends, family, children.

In the ensuing conversations we’ve touched on mental health, suffering in silence, economic, social and political anxiety and pressure but also an intangible yet very real hopelessness, young men’s confusion about their roles. As one friend put it, “men don’t know what it means to be a man anymore”.

Once a journalist, always a journalist so I am attempting to take an enormously complex and multi-faceted issue and present it in digestible bite-sized pieces, in hopes of coming to some understanding of this tragic landscape. Maybe we can be more aware of the men around us, as this PSA from the Norwich FC suggests, but even more importantly, we have to come to grips with this monster if we are to raise healthy sons because, if our sons are not fully functioning humans, our daughters will also suffer the consequences.

Because I’m an observer of men and not inside your heads, I reached out to men I know and trust, over a broad age range. Here are some of their comments.

* I think one of the key elements leading to despair amongst young men is social media. Economic times and opportunities and social connections are changing very quickly,  and from the perspective of age, one can see a lot of opportunity, but when you're much closer to the immediate difficulties of seeing jobs, industries, housing and whole ways of life disappear, it can seem overwhelming. Doomscrolling is a self-reinforcing activity, and given the tendency of many young men to be less confident than they appear (or wish to appear), it takes a toll. In Canada , the suicide rate among men is least double that of women, and in the States, it’s closer to 4X, and I think it's because men are less able to see the upside of what's in front of them in the longer term. There is a lesson here somewhere.

* Men have not been well socialized to be resilient to challenges in life which require emotional intelligence. We've been raised by a generation of men not up to the task of creating well rounded, emotionally and mentally grounded boys and men. In my circles I've lost two friends and a colleague to suicide in the past few years. A friend passed away from suicide and I blame his religious conservative family for never accepting he was homosexual.

Most of my very successful friends come from a good household with present, understanding parents, usually two of them. They typically are engaged in the work of knowing themselves deeply, they're typically aware of the shortfalls of their fathers and are conscious about navigating a new path.

It’s not only sexual orientation that erodes resilience but also racism, he noted.

* There is a lot of pressure on men to comply with the new and emerging ethic which diminishes the role males have historically played and still do in many parts of the world. This must be framed with more than one lens. One of those is the emerging fear of the future which frightens many and I have little doubt we will see an increase in this trend in coming years. Those fears include degrading political climates, changing climate, financial disparity, social media addictions, cost of living and a subsequent sense of hopelessness. How will I ever match up? In the Western world men feel this more acutely.

We are entering a generation where future prospects do not look better than the past. On some measures they are already worse. This runs contrary to much of the cultural conditioning that suggests we can lead better lives. Again, for men they feel this more acutely.

Another pressure is men not understanding the changing landscape in relationship to women…Roles are becoming confusing. It's like I must carry the collective guilt of every man who has raped a woman. Is the media coverage of all the ruthless pricks who have exploited women when in positions of power, being constantly played somehow infusing a collective guilt in men?

In a fit of inspiration, I accosted a group of retired men who had met up at a local coffee shop, asking them if they often, or ever, discussed their struggles and feelings when they got together. They said, “nah, we’re car guys. We talk about cars.” One of them offered up that if he had a real personal issue he might confide in one of his closest male friends, another said 3 beers usually fixed everything up. Another of the group, however, said the biggest problem facing men today, young and old, is the lack of hope. That’s all he was prepared to say on the subject.

A physician friend throws up her hands when I broach the topic and says, “I could talk about this for days”. She endured the scorn of other parents when she allowed her three sons to play, responsibly, with water guns and toy weapons, and to chase each other in flashlight tag. Today, she believes, we have let our boys down, suppressing their natural proclivities for rough play at an early age and leaving them rudderless on a choppy sea where the landmarks are no longer visible, or comprehensible as they age. She acknowledges that there’s an aspect of hyper masculinity that’s toxic but also a confused, watered down masculinity that’s equally disturbing, and confusing for the young men caught up in it.

Recently, we’ve seen research into how badly children need risky play to build resilience, another aspect of childhood that has been suppressed, ostensibly for the benefit of the child. These things are clearly related.

It’s not as if any of this insight is actually new, but decades of ignoring it has brought us to a time where young men are truly adrift. It’s no good blaming women for “taking all the jobs”; we can certainly find room for both genders to pursue their individual potential. It doesn’t have to be winners and losers.

This pressure to reject the feminine in order to be masculine is the subject of Justin Baldoni's TED talk where he recounts his upbringing and how he resented his father for not teaching him to be tough and “manly”, a decision he now understands and embraces. Baldoni has created a men’s community where sharing those personal anxieties and fears is encouraged and celebrated. This has also spawned a podcast.

As Richard Reeves writes in his excellent Substack:

* Young men see feminism as having metastasized from a movement for equality for women into a movement against men, or at least against masculinity.

* Young men are struggling on lots of fronts, especially in terms of education and mental health.

* Young men feel like these concerns are not being addressed, or sometimes even acknowledged, by mainstream institutions.

Here’s the thing: they’re not wrong.

Reeves goes on to characterize the current wave of right wingism as a political response to this lack of visibility and hope and dissects the stats to show that it’s mostly young men moving to the right, with young women moving in the opposite direction. At its extremes we get incels and trad-fanatics, insisting women should go back to “their place”. Luckily this is the extremist view, and not broadly held, but we are seeing scary premonitions in all the places I’m finding it increasingly difficult to look.

I will leave you with this beautiful video of the late, immeasurably great, John Mann, introducing and performing his song, “When I Played Around With Knives”.

I caught an interesting piece from CBC news recently, which described a new-ish trend amongst young women (and men) who have chosen to remain celibate and, in many cases, forgo dating and that whole hot mess of online match-ups. It’s called “boysober” which I thought was pretty darned clever so I’ve adapted it to suit what I hear from my own demographic, i.e. not 20s and 30s anymore. It’s more than simply celibacy; it’s about taking time away from the relationship struggle to focus on yourself and what, rather than who, makes you happy.

Increasingly we’re hearing about more of our friends taking alternative paths to the traditional husband/wife/kid/home/jobs. I’m not getting into the pros and cons of thruples in this post but by all means, keep me updated. I’m talking about the move to LAT, living apart together. I recall a fairly high-profile couple I knew in the 70s who were married but maintained separate homes. At the time it was a unique arrangement but according to some initial research, there’s been a jump in the frequency of LAT over the past decade. Some say it reinforces independence and takes off the pressure to conform to traditional roles.

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During one of these conversations, a friend recalled a very old clip of Carol Burnett, which hugely predates the LAT acronym and the frequency of this trend. Carol was definitely on to something when she said her next husband would have to live next door. This idea of being together, but not entirely, is catching on in various permutations. We all know couples who have their own bedrooms, usually prompted by snoring, wild variations in nighttime temperatures, shift work or simply sleep preferences. Having a permanent, separate bedroom is on the upswing, from about 15% of Canadians in the early 2000s, to a possible 40% today. Naturally there’s a new term for this as well: “sleep divorce”. Many who have made the move say it’s improved their relationship because better sleep means less crankiness in the morning and less conflict overall.

Lucy and Ricky had twin beds in the old TV show, separated by a shelved nightstand with its kitschy statuettes. That, however, was not a social trend but rather a mandatory requirement of TV shows of the 50s and 60s, enforced by Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code. Who knows what they kept in those drawers. I particularly like the gendered ballet dancers above the beds; reminds you where you belong, I suppose.

It’s not just sleeping arrangements that are evolving. Many couples have shaken loose the shackles of travelling strictly together, recognizing that not everyone shares the same travel values or destination preferences. For many, making travel arrangements that attempt to address both sets of priorities means making compromises that satisfy neither.

Men seem to “re-pair” much faster after a death or breakup and more and more women are vowing to remain unpaired and realizing they actually prefer it to the lifestyle they were raised to pursue. Like the cartoon snowball rolling downhill, it’s picking up speed, picking up mittens and scarves and people as it gets bigger and bigger. And we’re not even surprised to see it whiz past.

One friend, married for 22 years, watched her marriage implode thanks to conflict over gender roles, child-rearing responsibilities, career conflicts and frequent geographic moves. At the time it was the classic, acrimonious split from which many people never recover. In her case, however, she and her ex have forged an unusual partnership whereby he spends two weeks every summer and five months (!) every winter, living in a cottage in her yard, spending time with their children and being a welcome part of the household, without any messy relationship. She says they are best friends now and while a new coupling for either party would likely not damage the friendship, the co-habiting arrangement would likely end.

Like many women at this semi-retired stage of life, she says she’s happier than she’s ever been, has found comfort and joy in friendships with women, something she came to later in life. While she doesn’t deny the potential for another one on one relationship, she can’t see herself going back to the compromises and concessions she shed. Some relationships require more of that effort than others but I would bet good money, and lots of it, that there isn’t a relationship out there where some compromise isn’t required. Ideally it’s equally distributed. Realistically it’s not.

And while many women, and some men, are entirely content with their single status, others are forking over significant dollars to learn how to find a happy relationship. A young woman in Colorado claims to have cracked the code on how to make a woman “irresistible” and how to use that superpower to attract the perfect mate. Part of her program includes large gatherings of women where personal storytelling and sharing past experiences with relationships is de rigeur. Each session leads to an invitation for more sessions and so on. Ironically, it appears that women become hooked on the energy of sharing their stories with other women so even though the ultimate goal is to find that forever man, the journey happens on the coattails of female energy.

Two songs and two different perspectives come to mind. First, we’ve come a long way since Etta James told us she’d rather go blind than see her man walk away. Performed here by the outrageously powerful Beth Hart.

On the other hand, another favourite anthem, Unstoppable.

The good news is, we all have options on how to pursue fulfillment.

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For the better part of a decade, I taught an executive development course in Persuasion, with the inimitable David McPhillips.  We searched the world for the latest research into the art and science that makes up the body of knowledge of how people make decisions, and what triggers us to say yes.

And yet….

And yet knowing how it works doesn’t always prevent us from being worked!  To wit this encounter outside the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Front Street in Toronto.

A reasonably presentable, albeit casually dressed for downtown Toronto, fellow approached me, holding a piece of paper, the contents of which seemed to confuse him.  The first thing he asks me is, “do you speak English?”  Naturally, I say yes. 

At that moment he pretty much had me.  Research tells us that saying yes to something puts you in a frame of wanting to be consistent, even if the first question is unrelated to what comes after.

In this case, what comes after is a bit of a muddled account.  Waving the paper about I thought he needed help finding an address but, on closer inspection and with his explanation, the paper was a list of half-way houses and other locations for the newly un-incarcerated.  As recounted, he had just been released from prison that morning and was looking for money to get home.  He showed off his T-shirt and ponytail and informed me he was Chippewa and wanted to head back to the reserve.  Not only did he tell me he needed $12.90 to make up the amount of the fare for the train, but he insisted that he didn’t smoke or drink and, indeed, he didn’t smell like he did either – not a whiff.  He invited me to join him at Union Station and witness him buying the ticket but, naturally, waiting for a ride in the loading zone he knew I wouldn’t take him up on that offer.

To top it all off he told me he had been approaching many people and most of them ran away from him, or appeared to be afraid of him so, naturally, I felt proud to be such a compassionate Canadian, on the side of the angels….so really, in the final analysis, I had no choice but to give him money.  I tried to get away with a toonie but he looked crestfallen that this angel was so cheap…so I gave him a five instead.

I know, I know but I got my money’s worth in terms of a teachable moment which I can now share with all of you.

You may recall this example the next time you are flying and have cleared security, heading to your departure gate. Undoubtedly you will notice several pop ups hoping to entice travellers to apply for a new credit card. These days I have noticed they are pretty limp, basically standing there gazing into space but in the Denver airport I came across a great example of the consistency principle at work.

Rolling my carry-on down the long hallway, I was approached by one of the credit card purveyors who asked me, “are you flying today?” Completely nonsensical given that we were well past the security gates and in an area entirely for actual passengers. This time I was ready. Rather than falling into the trap of answering “yes”, with all attendant consequences, I blurted out, “obviously”! Forewarned etc.

Tags:

art of persuasion, good canadian, kind canadians, persuasion, power of persuasion, tendency, why we say yes

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When I was a kid, growing up in a small mountain town in the West Kootenays of BC, summer Sundays meant gardening and washing the concrete sidewalks. My dad was proud of the steps and sidewalks because they were the product of the combined efforts of the neighbourhood’s men, who used a hand mixer and countless wheelbarrows and spades to fill, smooth and edge the layouts. Like barn-raisings of old, this is the way things were done back then.

We kids did a bit in the garden, mostly turning the soil to find the new potatoes, but the desired job was hosing down the concrete. This also involved sweeping and sometimes raking up errant grass thrown onto the concrete by the lawnmower. There were four of us and competition was fierce. I don’t recall there being any fancy pistol grips for the hoses with shower, jet, angle, mist, or full settings. If you needed more pressure on the hose you jammed your thumb over half or more of the open end and squeezed for greater PSI. If your siblings wanted to spray you all it took was grabbing along the hose and folding it on itself to stop the flow.

Another regular feature of summer Sundays was the regular arrival, post- church, of our elderly local Catholic priest, Monsignor MacIntyre. He didn’t show up every week but often enough that my mom knew to have tea ready to steep and some baking to offer him. It was always homemade, a favourite being the pastry with half plums baked into each two-inch square, tart and sweet at once. I believe Father Mac liked them. There we’d be, filthy, grass-stained, soaked by the hose spray and sweaty to boot and he would appear around the corner of the house, at the backyard, without his cassock but still wearing black pants and shirt over a white priest’s collar. The first time it occurred there was some consternation and embarrassment at the state in which he found us, but eventually everyone got used to it.

Once the sidewalks were pristine and everything was put away there might be time to relax in the pool which my dad made from 2x4s and poly. It was great as all six of us could all fit in it at once.

After dinner, and a piece of leftover plum square, there was generally a couple hours to ride bikes, head up to the park to play or pick mystery berries, until the streetlights came on and we heard all the neighbourhood’s kid names being called up and down the street. Even when we were older we’d still head to the park but, too cool to actually swing, we’d sit on the swings, twist the chains, and talk.

Just the other day I was helping my partner soak down and fertilize the cedar hedge. No sidewalk washing these days as there’s a drought and water restrictions are a regular feature. As I stood there with the hose, turning it so the spray caught and sparkled in the sunlight as it hit the hedges, I realized how desperately I’d love to be back there, a kid in a small town, hosing down the backyard patio, horsing around with my sister and brothers, while the local priest enjoyed snacks in the kitchen.

I’m not talking about a do-over; I’m talking about a do-again, a chance to relive those times when I wasn’t encumbered by adulthood, when the future seemed endless and full of boundless potential. I experienced a sudden pang of the smell of the hot rubber hose, the delicious feel of bare feet on baking concrete being cooled by water from the hose. There was also that incredibly satisfying feeling when the stream of water pushed the dust along like a small receding tide of dark on the white bleached sidewalks.

It’s not a memory so much as a sensory echo. It reminds me that potential doesn’t simply evaporate, that as long as you’re breathing you have a future, that opening yourself up to simple sensory delights can evoke a joy you might find tough to access in daily life.

Ultimately, is there a more bittersweet, a more umami phrase, than “remember that time when…”?

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Peter Drucker noted that what gets measured, gets managed. Other iterations evolved to suggest what gets measured gets done.

My take is that what gets measured becomes addictive and compulsive.

I received a FitBit many years ago, as a gift from a good friend, and used it slavishly for months until it stopped holding a charge. I never did replace it. I remember one summer when I was relaxing on the sundeck with my daughter. She would, every once in a while, leap from her chair and pound the 85 feet of deck from end to end a few times before throwing herself back into her lounger and picking up her book. She had set her FitBit to remind her whenever she was indulging in a lengthy period of inactivity and when it buzzed, she jumped to the pump.

Depending whose research you access, fitness tracker abandonment runs anywhere from 33% after a few months to 75% within a year. Researchers point to various reasons for abandonment, among them adherence to technology, lack of results, inaccuracy of tracker information or politics. (When Google purchased FitBit, many users switched to something else, believing Google would downgrade the tech in favour of promoting its own product.) Perhaps it’s the relentlessness of the tracking which induces guilt and remorse when targets aren’t met or results are less than had been hoped for.

I’m not just making up this addictive appeal; I’ve been there and recently at that! For two weeks last month, I wore a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor. Once the sole domain of people with diabetes, you can now order or purchase one without a prescription, simply to learn how different foods and activities affect your blood glucose or just to add to your arsenal of physical measurements. Having moved to a ketogenic eating regimen several years ago, I was interested to see if the assumptions on which I have been operating, were sound. In the early days that required a finger prick onto a test strip and a blood glucose reader. Needless to say that activity didn’t last more than a week.

So what did I learn? Partly what I wanted to learn and partly something that hadn’t occurred to me when I launched this experiment. First, for all you blood glucose aficionados, the biggest blood glucose spike I saw in two weeks came after dim sum, largely thanks to all the rice based dishes and their gluteny carbs. The biggest meal I had, a lovely steak with about a dozen spot prawns and drawn butter, had ZERO impact on my blood glucose. The fastest drop in blood glucose came thanks to 20 minutes of walking the deck of the ferry on my way home after a sushi dinner (moderate spike, rice again!).

A friend recently told me of her vague sense of guilt and disappointment when, upon awakening in the morning, she found her blood glucose high-ish, despite having “fasted” all night while sleeping. Ah hah, I observed, having noticed the same thing and researched it to find “dawn phenomenon” whereby the body, wanting to set you up for a productive day, infuses your person with cortisol and human growth hormone which elevates blood sugar. Otherwise we might languish abed all damned day and forget to head out to forage for berries and kindling.

And now for what I learned about this whole measuring, data collection and interpretation thing.

Towards the end of my two week experiment I couldn’t wait to be done. Much as I valued the insights and confirmations of my eating and exercise regimen, I was tired of being glued to the screen, watching for any fluctuation and analyzing it based on intake and output.

I know various people who measure glucose, whose watch or other device measures the length and quality of their sleep, tracks their food intake and analyzes its nutritional value, that monitors blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen. There is talk of a wearable device to constantly monitor our hormone levels so we can decide if it’s the hormones or if we’re just being really nasty and irritable for GOOD SOLID REASONS, DAMMIT!

Data is useful in so many endeavours: market analysis, product uptake, segmentation, advertising, research spending and on and on. What we’ve also learned over the years, however, is that we can make data dance to whatever tune we choose to play so I wonder if we’re truly learning anything new, or just hunting around in the sock drawer, looking for support for something upon which we’ve already made up our minds.

Because I’m such a fan of anecdotal, completely not empirical, information, I’d love to hear what tools, devices and apps you use to figure out who and what you are.

Did your social graces suffer a massive setback during the pandemic? Are you only now finding your way back to navigating dinner parties, networking events and conversations involving more than one person at a time?

It’s not a trivial trend because, as we lost our opportunities to socialize, we also lost our comfort in communing with strangers and that’s bad for them and for us.

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Smart people who study these things say loneliness has gripped the planet, leaving more and more people isolated, either by choice or by circumstance, and loneliness is known to be a contributing factor to mental health issues and also physical ailments such as dementia, stroke and cardio-vascular damage. The research on how this happens is relatively new and unfolding but the evolutionary theory makes a tonne of sense. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee recently interviewed the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, on loneliness. In their conversation they rolled back the hands of time to the days when we all began to cluster in caves and socialize around fires. If you were alone in those days, you weren’t so concerned about the long term impacts of loneliness but rather much more aware of being vulnerable to any predator who might have otherwise overlooked you in a crowd. When the brain senses danger, or threat, signals go out to increase heart rate, adrenaline, cortisol and testosterone, to help you run or fight. The problem is, this response is intended to be temporary, not a permanent state of being. When it becomes your status quo, inflammation sets in and we all know by now that inflammation is the devil incarnate.

Compounding the issue is the devil’s henchmen, social media and technology in general. When you can order food and necessities online, to be delivered to the doorstep or mailbox, when you can download books rather than go to the library, when you can “play” sports while sitting in your ergonomically designed gaming chair, you slash the number of real human interactions which serve to curb isolation and loneliness.

No doubt you’ve seen the reams of research and opining about how this kind of truncation of socialization is killing our teenagers but in case you’ve missed it, here’s a great place to start reading. In a bold move, the very same US Surgeon General just came out with a health advisory about the risks and damage done to children by being online.

Some years ago, I worked with a brilliant ER physician, Dr. Alexandra Greenhill, who was then working on using technology to combat the negative impacts of technology. This was long ago, when COVID was just a twinkle in some wet market’s eye, but I vividly remember her stories of the Emergency Department, and her personal Eureka moment that tied the physical toll she saw on humans presenting to Emergency, to their lives of isolation and loneliness. Sometimes that manifested as drinking and driving, or simply drinking or substance use gone amok, but other times it was stroke or heart attack, or other non-accident mishaps. She began to wonder if tracing back to some root causes could divert these people from becoming acute care patients. It was Greenhill who first told me that giving, and accepting, help from others, gave you as much physical benefit as a trip to the gym. Now I see that stress response and inflammation are what she was positing. Clever woman!

“Stop being lonely” is about as useful a piece of advice as telling a child not to spill their milk but the good news is there are small, simple steps everyone can take to up their humanity and downregulate their inflammation.

I’ve written about these small steps before, but more through the lens of improving customer service. Rather than rote asking, “how are those first few bites tasting” or “did you find everything you were looking for today”, add a couple more words and start a mini conversation. It’s not a lifelong commitment to friendship but a measly 3 minutes while your groceries are being tallied and bagged; so much healthier for you than 3 minutes at the self-checkout. If the server/cashier doesn’t make the first move, you can do it. Honestly, you can!

A random observation or question could lead to a longer conversation, could lead to a friendship, could lead to avoiding the heart attack that’s heading your way. If you search for “approaching strangers” you will find hundreds of thousands of results including a vast library of how-to videos. I kid you not. We are at a stage of human history when we require a textbook on how to strike up a conversation. It’s a skillset that’s easy to trivialize until you come to recognize the health impacts on an individual and societal level.

This is not for everyone but I try to find opportunities to compliment complete strangers or otherwise engage them in one or two moments of conversation. Every time I do, my heart lifts and I remember that the world isn’t all dungeons and dictators. Yet.