Hannah Montana as played by Miley Cyrus

My 4.5 year old daughter is really into Hannah Montana now. In case you don’t know who she is: She is a live-action character Disney created. She is a teenage rock-star who leads a double-life as an ordinary high school student when she is off-stage. It’s strange that a 4.5 year old is interested in watching a sitcom about high school students. I’m not sure how much of what goes on in the show she is grasping. At first, she liked the idea of watching Hannah Montana more than she liked actually watching it. This is because she heard so much about it from her friends. The first few times I played it for her, she would get bored and stop paying attention half way into the show. But, then a few days later, she would ask for it again. Now, she seems to actually understand enough to enjoy it, and she is in the process of learning the opening song.

As a parent, there are naturally some questions about whether or not this is good for her. Honestly, I have no idea. My gut instinct tells me that the quicker she consume all the superficial things in life, the quicker she’ll get to more substantial stuff. I mean, let’s face it; she can’t skip ahead to Shakespeare. We all had to go through stages of development that we now consider superficial in retrospect. If we prevent them from enjoying superficial things, I have a feeling that we would simply delay their development.

When I first started graphic design, I was so eager to impress and please people that I would do whatever I thought was the coolest thing, and I over did everything. My work tended to be unnecessarily complex. Now that I’ve matured as a designer, I have enough confidence to understate and keep everything simple. I don’t regret going through the “look-at-me” phase. I had to go through it. It’s a natural part of learning and maturing.

Most of the shows that kids watch at the pre-school level (Sesame Street, Dora, Wonder Pets, and various princess stories) are relatively easy for parents to accept because they are so elementary that it’s beyond being superficial. The things that kids want at that age is quite innocent (ice cream, cookies, etc..), and the morals to the stories are usually very basic, like you have to eat your vegetables.

As our kids mature, their desires and aspirations become much more complex. Hannah Montana’s main appeal is the power of fame. The character is cool because she doesn’t flaunt the power, yet still enjoys it. It’s the stuff that teenage daydreams are made of. Desire for fame is superficial yet most of us parents have never completely grown beyond it either, so if we are not careful, we could easily project our own vanity onto our kids, and criticize them for daydreaming about being famous. In that situation, we would be using our own kids to feel superior about ourselves.

The question for me is: If my 4.5 year old daughter is already daydreaming about fame (becoming a rock star), what would happen when she is a teenager? Would her desire for fame get bigger and bigger? Or, would she grow out of it quicker? I have no idea.

With TV shows and movies, most parents are concerned about “the message”. This seems particularly true for girls. “Sending the wrong message” seems like a big concern. Apparently Miley Cyrus, who plays the role of Hannah Montana, was recently criticized for pole-dancing, or rather, dancing with a pole. The concern here is that it sends the wrong message to teenage girls. I assume “the message” is that it’s cool to be a stripper. But it’s rather absurd to think that mere presence of a pole determines what’s right or wrong. A dancing pole as a symbol of strip dancing is more a message for the parents than it is for the kids. That is, the parents are more concerned about what it means for their own image as responsible parents, than they are about what “the message” does to their kids. Teenagers are not stupid; I’m sure most of them see right through the respectable facades that their parents put up.

Like anything that is powerful, sexuality is powerful because of the danger and the risk associated with it. As teenagers, sexuality is a fear that we need to face and conquer. So, anyone who pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable would sure to get respect from their peers. It’s only natural. Our teenage years are all about being at the edges of the accepted boundaries, but not crossing it so far to the point where we alienate everyone else. It’s that sweet spot that we go after. In my high school days in California, being openly gay was too far beyond the sweet spot, and one guy I knew was constantly harassed and abused because of it. Now being gay or bisexual is within the sweet spot for most teens.

Parents play a big part in creating where the sweet spots are. I would imagine that many teenage girls now have more respect for Miley Cyrus because she hit the sweet spot by pole-dancing. It didn’t outrage enough parents to end her career; she got just enough criticism to win the respect of the teenage peers. What did not kill her will only make her stronger.

But at the same time, being too permissive would be problematic for kids too. Teenagers want to upset their parents. That’s their job. If they can upset their parents, it means that they are beginning to be on an equal footing. It means their existence has an impact on other adults. It means they are becoming ready to join the world of grownups. But if you are too permissive to your kids, your kids could never upset you, which in turn means that they can never get this sense of self-significance. I would imagine that some kids would push it really far just to be able to upset their parents, which could end fatally.

I’ve been noticing recently that most substantial things in life are always catch-22. This is one of them.

This article tries to explain why our old friends fall by the way side once we have kids, but they are all practical reasons, and I don’t think those are the real reasons. As parents, friends are more important to us than ever, because we come across a lot of deeply personal issues that we want to share with our friends, and it’s important to have some outside perspective. So, no matter how busy we become wherever there is a will, there is time. I don’t think the issue is practicality. I think something fundamental in us changes after we have kids.

This article covers only the situations where your old friends don’t have kids yet, but I’d like to know what happens after your old friends too have kids; do they become “best friends forever” again? I have a feeling that in most situations, they don’t. The things that used to bond us together are no longer relevant. Seeing your old friends feels like a high school reunion (although I’ve never been to one.).

I have one friend from before high school, but we happen to get along in a whole different way as an adult. What united us in our childhood is no longer relevant. The same could happen with our pre-child friends where our friendship gets a whole new lease based on something different. By the same token, we could become better friends with people who weren’t so good friends before even if they don’t have kids. Suddenly having a child brings out something in us, and our not-so-good friends who do not have kids become great friends.

I find the practical suggestions to keep up our old friendship to be pointless. What drives us to make such an effort is our idealization of the concept “forever”. For some reason, we think permanence and eternity is beautiful. I used to think that too, but now I find change to be more beautiful.

I was in a casual meeting of parents where we discussed various parenting issues. It became immediately obvious to me that many parents were concerned about not being perfect parents. Through listening to their individual stories, I began to notice a certain pattern. Those who are feeling guilty for not being perfect seem to have had difficult childhood and have blamed their parents for their difficulties. This appears to be more than a coincidence.

Think about it: In your 20′s and 30′s (before you had your own children), if you blamed your parents for all your problems, you have already set up high expectations for what parents should do and how they should be. Once you have a child of your own, the table is turned; now you are a potential target of your own criticisms. You need to live up to the standards that you have set for your own parents. As you begin to realize that some of those standards are untenable, you begin to feel like a failure. Even though we all know that nobody is perfect, in this specific scenario, perfection is a concept that you yourself created for your own parents. So, the failure to be “perfect” is not something you can brush off as a figure of speech. It can lead to depression and despair.

In order to believe in the notion of “perfect” parent, we would have to give a lot of credit to ourselves and very little credit to our children. We would have to believe that we are highly influential, and that parenting follows the principle of cause and effect. On one hand, this is very flattering and egotistically satisfying because it would mean that our children are sort of like our own artworks that we can sign once they are complete. We would be able to take credit for any successes that they achieve in their adulthood. On the other hand, this is also frightening. If they turn out to be a serial killer, we would be responsible for creating them.

In Japan, they take this view to the extremes. Whenever there is a hostage situation, the police often bring the parents of the hostage takers to the site, no matter how old they are, and try to have the parents convince the hostage-takers to give up. In Japan, parents are often seen as being responsible for their children all their lives.

In some ways, it’s a fair deal because it is common for the young Japanese people to receive monthly allowance from their parents even in their late 20′s, and for elders to be fully taken care of by their children. My parents are rare exceptions to this. They cut me off financially as soon as I graduated from college, and I feel no sense of obligation to take care of them in their old age (and they have no expectation of it either).

In comparison, the American culture places more responsibility on individuals. After a certain age, even if your child turns out to be a serial killer, you wouldn’t have to feel so guilty (in Japan, your life would be completely ruined, and so you might as well commit suicide). This is why I was rather surprised to hear so many parents feeling guilty for not being perfect enough.

I personally feel that our daughter Annika would be fine with or without me. We have a running joke in our family that the worst case scenario is not my death but me being disabled because my life insurance would not pay out if I just became disabled (I don’t have any disability insurance).

I also do not feel like I need or should teach her anything either. Annika teaches me many things without her intending to do so. Similarly, I think she simply learns from me without me intending to do so. Whatever I intend to teach her, probably would not teach her anything. So, why bother intending?

In some ways, this is a fair deal too. Beyond providing basic necessities and a generally happy environment, I don’t feel any responsibility for how Annika grows up. She would deserve all the credit for any successes that she achieves in her life. She would be her own person, not a product of my parenting philosophy. I hope that someday she would feel proud and entitled to sign her own name to her own life.

Praise efforts not abilities, is the message of the cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham, and I agree because praising their abilities would eventually convince our children that our achivements in life are predetermine by our innate abilities. It makes them feel helpless and powerless. Instead of saying, “You are so smart!” say “You must have worked really hard.” It makes intuitive sense. The essence of Williangham’s message is that we should not encourage our children to have a deterministic view of life. We should make them believe that if there is a will, there is a way. If this is true, what sort of message do we send to our children when we practice astrology?

Astrologers believe that much of our past and future lives were predetermined by the positions of the planets. I do not want to discuss the validity of this view here. (Personally, I happen to believe that some of it is true.) What is relevant to this discussion is that astrology has a deterministic view of life. So, how would this influence your children when you believe and practice it?

I feel that I need to first question the validity of determinsm. How true is it? I think most of you would agree that some aspects of our lives are indeed predetermined. Sure, Michael Jackson almost succeeded in becoming White, but there are obviously limits to our will. In other words, accepting a certain amount of determinism is necessary to be realistic and pragmatic, otherwise we could be considered psychotic. I think it is safe to say that determinism is valid to a certain degree. If so, what’s wrong with teaching it to our children? I believe the issue is timing.

When I was a 5th grader, I badly wanted a bicycle of my own. All my friends had their own. At the time in Japan, bicycles for boys around that age had all sorts of features that mimicked racing cars. The levers for shifting gears resembled the ones for cars. Most of them had disk brakes. And, some even had a pair of retractable headlights. Obviously these features were more decorative than functional, but I loved them. For years I dreamed of owning one, but my parents never bought me one, and I had to ride my mom’s bike, which was a typical lady’s bike in Japan. When I was in 7th grade, my father finally decided to buy me a bicycle, but he objected to buying the one that I had been dreaming about. He wanted to buy me a real racing bicycle. It was a kind of bike that college kids would have loved, but I couldn’t appreciate it especially because I had no desire to be a serious cyclist. Even to this day, I still wish that I had my dream bike. For this reason, I can relate to Michael Jackson who spent millions of dollars building his Neverland Ranch in order to relive the childhood he never had.

The point of telling you my sob story is that, at every age, there is an appropriate thing that we should have our children experience. Skipping or depriving any of them could lead to emotional hung-ups or complexes. I believe, for instance, that we should not teach Shakespeare to high school kids. They do not have enough life experience to properly appreciate it. Forcing them to read it would only make them feel happy that they wouldn’t ever have to read it again after they finish schooling. I don’t know any Americans who seriously re-read Shakespeare in their adult lives.

Now we get back to our original topic of discussion. I would argue that, although it is important for kids to accept a certain degree of determinism in life, I do not believe that it is appropriate for them to develop such a view of life early in their childhood. In that sense, I do not believe that exposure to astrological thinking is appropriate for kids. By seeing the adults trying to navigate their own lives by studying the planets, the children will come to feel that life is determined by forces beyond their will. It may be true, but it is not something they need to be exposed to. It’s OK for them to believe that anything is possible. Sooner or later, they will discover on their own that not everything is possible.

Astrology, especially the fortune-telling kind, attracts a lot of people whose primary drive in life is fear. They feel that the forces beyond their will are in control of their own lives. This drives them to learn about these forces instead of trying to improve themselves. They consult astrologers to find the easiest paths to get to their goals. If your ultimate goal is self-discovery and self-improvement, the destination is besides the point; it’s the path you choose that matters. There are many routes to the top of Mount Everest. Some are harder than the others. If the only goal was to get to the top, it makes no sense to take a harder route, but many mountaineers do just that. These are people who push the limits of their own will. They want to see where their will ends and determinism begins. Many people who rely on astrology to control their own lives have no such curiosity; they just want to get to the top in the easiest possible manner. This is not a recipe for a fulfilling life.

I’ve noticed recently that what children never fail to learn from us are our fears. On the other hand, ironically, children seem to always ignore what we want them to learn from us. If we are frightened by, say, a snake, our children become doubly frightened. They must be thinking, “If it frightens my parents, it must be really dangerous.” This must extend beyond obvious objects of our fears. For instance, if we dread or fear our jobs, our children will probably grow up fearing having to work. In this sense, I feel that it is important for us parents to put our deterministic views aside for our children until they are old enough to accept it little by little. This means that we should live like how we used to live when we were kids, believing that anything is possible. As an adult, we know it’s not true, but neither is Santa Claus.

We commonly assume that spoiled children are spoiled because they get everything they want. I now see that getting everything they want is actually a symptom, not the cause. They get everything because it is easier for their parents to give them what they want than to pay them proper attention. As long as you are paying your kids proper attention, I don’t think giving them what they want would cause any harm. Because most parents are so busy managing so many things that we are substituting proper attention with material goods. There is nothing wrong with the goods themselves; the problem is the substitution. If my thesis is correct, the term “spoiled” is not appropriate. What is actually happening is the opposite: They are being neglected.

Proper attention can sometimes mean deliberate inattention where the parent is ignoring her child’s persistent nagging or temper tantrum. This can be very hard for a parent. I often give in too, despite the fact that it is not good for me or for my child. Giving her what she wants is certainly the easiest and the quickest solution.

One time on the street, a stranger said to me, “Why are you torturing her?” because my daughter was crying very loud and I wasn’t giving in. I didn’t respond to him, but it certainly was one of those tough parental moments.

I believe that kids do this partly because they want to see how much their parents care about them. We do it as adults too. Sometimes we deliberately create conflicts to see how strong our love or friendship is. Although kids do this unconsciously, what they feel from the results of the tests are all the same. If their parents don’t seem to care, the kids will feel neglected.