Publication Update

After a bad beginning, "Shrink: Odyssey of a Therapist" is now out and available from Eloquentbooks.com. It may also be ordered through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The original copies sent to friends and relatives had many typos. These have now been corrected. The sequel "Finding Jackson" presents a short (i4,000 word) further adventures of Morrie Schwartz. It will be out in June but copies are now available through PublishAmerica.com. Bronx Lyric is a self-published book of poems about growing up in The Bronx. It is available through CreateSpace.com. I am playing with another idea for Morrie Schwartz but, frankly, I am tired right now and will delay working on it. Instead, I am making some changes in my daytime job for the fall. More about that later. My trials in publishing something that people will actually purchase and read continues to convince me that I had better not abandon my real work as a psychologist.

Schools and self-esteem

Martin Seligman, in his resilience textbook for middle schools, The Optimistic Child," suggests that children shouldn't be praised without some genuine accomplishment.Even my four year old grandchild Julia criticized my wife when she praised her twin brother for being chosen as a line leader in preschool. "Everybody gets to be line leader, grandmom." It is a good point. The opposite side of the coin is that children should not be critizied for lack of accomplishment beyond their control.

Yesteray, I attended grandparents' Day at the private school attended by two other grandchildren, a four and almost six year old. It was an all-morning afffair
which started in the auditorium where five grade levels of children --Early education, Kindergarten, and First through Fourth grade--presented a musical concert. Later we sat in classrooms with each of the two children. It was interesting to note the increasing development, maturity, and self-confidence of the children, progressing from grade to grade. The principal explained that their curriculum required that children learn stage presence in front of an audience. The children differ in the degree to which the children enjoy that experience. Bella, a drama queen, relishes performing. Reagan couldn't care less. There were obvious gender differences. Boys went along with the singing but few of bothered with bodily gestures.

I remembered my own experiences at P.S. 80 in The Bronx. We had weekly assemblies where boys wore white shirts and blue knit ties and girls sported white "middy blouses" and orange ties. Each class rotated in presenting a dramatic performace and the entire school sang each week, including the hymn "Holy, holy, holy," in the days before school and church were separated by law. I was told by the music teacher, at an early age, not to sing. Labeled a "listener," because of my tone deaf monotone, I was instructed merely to move my lips. Now, I don't really know if I was scarred by that experience but certainly the message was that I was incompetent as a singer and could never improve so stop trying and don't ruin the efforts of others.

I assume that teachers at what is now Junior High School 80 in The Bronx are now more psychologically atuned to self-esteem. I talk weekly with high school students, assigned to emotional and learning support classes, about resilience, self-confidence, and the like.

When the kindergarten class at my grandchildren's school sang along with their guiitar-playing teacher, I sang along with them, loudly and with self-confidence.

Catch-up

I've been negligent in maintaining this blog of late for a variety of reasons. "Shrink," my first novel, was published by Eloquent Books and, embarrassingly, and despite my many editings, was launched with dozens of my typos. These are now being corrected and a short sequel titled "Finding Jackson" is being published by PublishAmerica, so far painlessly, on my part. On the other hand, my attempt to self-publish Bronx Lyric, a short book of poetry about growing up in The Bronx, has hit a snag. My terrible computer skills do not enable me to meet the formating dermands of CreateSpace, the publisher. I wasted hours enmeshed in the vaguaries of PDFs, jpgs, and a 6X9 format, without success. All of this is my lame excuse for not maintaining this blog. I read, with some awe an almost daily blog of a writer who documents her writing and reading progress. The author is verbose to a fault, but her ability to grind out words nonethelss impressive. I am a fast write--too fast it seems to detect errors, but I don't have daily blogwrite words and never will. I'll continue to do this blog, mostly with a psychology spin, but not always, and only when I have something to say.