This was originally posted on blogger.

Abiding interests

Next month I’m making a trip to Taipei, and I’m intending to stop by the Tang Bridge table tennis store. A fellow ping pong player at my club says it’s the best place to get high quality rubber and paddles in all of Taiwan.

Buying a ping pong paddle can get pricey if you’re going for something nice. The wood itself may be 100$, but the rubber can be just as much (on each side!), and needs to be changed every few months. But then, many hobbies can get just expensive. Buying video games, musical instruments, nice paints for drawings, you name it. If you like something then you can find a way to spend money on it.

Ping pong is something I’m never going to make money doing. But for me it’s an abiding interest. I’ve liked it since when I was little, and enjoy playing basically whenever I can.

But how do you know if a hobby is like that? I once bought a jump rope, thinking it’d an uber-efficient form of aerobic exercise, and you don’t even need to leave the house. But on the other hand, running is an abiding interest I barely spend any money on. Maybe new shoes every year. But it’s done wonders for my mental and physical health. Somewhere in between is my expensive saxophone. I’ve had it for nine years, but have only regularly practiced for about half that time. Still, music is an abiding interest of mine (on this note, I just heard this excellent saxophone quartet rendition of Nimrod by Elgar).

Discipline

I’m climbing Monkey Mountain here in Kaohsiung with my friend Tim and his 7-year-old daughter Mia (names modified to preserve anonymity). Mia’s happy for the first fifteen minutes; she’s thrilled to be climbing up again, and excited for the tea station at the top. Then she wants a break, so we take one, and head in a direction that looks good. Turns out the way we chose isn’t the one where you can find tea. Mia’s furious. “I hate you, Daddy!” she cries. Tim’s disappointed too, to be fair. Who doesn’t want tea? He tells her, “you weren’t going to drink the tea anyways.” Mia’s mood is like a yo-yo. Tim chocks it up to low blood-sugar. As we’re climbing down, Tim promises Mia an ice-lolly at the bottom of the mountain if we get there without her complaining. She perks up at the thought, and is happy on the way down. “Daddy, I can’t decide which ice-lolly to get” she says. Tim says, “that’s what life’s about, honey – making decisions.”

A couple months ago, a girl Yo-yo was going to join my beginning English class. She’s 6 years old, like her to-be classmates, and just entered first grade. But she cried incessantly at the thought of leaving her mother. Her mother bought popcorn for the entire class, hoping that Yo-yo would get a warm welcome when she eventually came upstairs. But none of the begging or bribing was a match for Yo-yo’s insistence not to go learn English. Her mother said she would come back next year.

The teachers at my school said that Yo-yo is actually a real princess. She gets whatever she wants and when she doesn’t, she cries until she does. One solution to Yo-yo isn’t more bribing. By giving more rewards, you’ll only encounter the hedonic treadmill, and have to heighten the stakes later on. But more discipline can make it clear that crying as a tactic doesn’t work. Discipline – ie. reprimanding when your kid isn’t doing the right thing – makes the default much easier to attain. It’s tugs at the heart-strings when kids whine or are upset, but as a parent, sometimes you gotta do what you don’t want to do.

Or that’s at least what the disciplinarians say. And I wouldn’t have thought it before I started teaching, but now I’m inclined to agree. When you’re an adult, discipline is an ethic you build inside yourself. Will kids who were bribed with sugary snacks have more addictive personalities when they’re older? Will they have less tenacity when they’re confronted with a problem? Probably. Taiwanese parents are notoriously strict, but Taiwanese people are incredibly disciplined. It shows in the quality of service here. But on the other hand, kids who are disciplined too much may develop perfectionism, chronic anxiety, or imposter syndrome. Or who knows, I’m really just spit-balling here. All I can say for certain is I’m sure glad I’m not a parent.

加油

Well, I’m learning guitar on my own, and a string broke. I got the guitar used, so maybe it’s about time to change the strings anyways. I got a pack of strings and started with the one that was broken. Then, all of a sudden as I’m installing the new one for that size, it breaks too! Sigh. Learning things on your has it’s drawbacks.