I Love You. Leave Me Alone.

Parents need time alone, but how do I explain that to my tween?

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 11, 2021 I Love You. Leave Me Alone. By Farah Miller Paola Saliby One of the best days of 2020 for me was in December when I got a root canal. I got to be horizontal in the dentist's chair without the ability to doomscroll or anyone asking me for fruit snacks. Afterward, since I'd already told my family and colleagues I'd be gone awhile, I wandered around downtown Manhattan, bought a $6 latte, browsed used books on the sidewalk and listened to a grown-up podcast as I drove home. It was glorious. For one, I was out of the house after eleventy months in lockdown. But I was also free, like when I was a kid and could stop to stare at the sky onmy way home from school. As an only child, exploring the world by myself was my default state — and one in which I was comfortable. In my 20s, I was "Lady No-Kids" following a goose just to see where we ended up. Of course I traded in that blissful, unstructured solitude to have a family, and I would do it again a million times over. But I thought once my babies became big kids, I'd get back some autonomy. I did not expect a pandemic to rob us all of time apart, nor did I realize older kids, adolescents especially, can hang onto their parents just as tight as toddlers. I tried to keep my frustration at bay while we hunkered down. But my children's keen senses detected my need to get away from them — probably because I ended up shouting things like, "I need to get away from you!" — and they didn't like it. At 6, my younger daughter was forgiving. If mom left to eat sushi or cry in the car (or both), she could watch tween Netflix shows her sister had gotten her into and all was well. But my 11-year-old would skulk away when I hit my breaking point, curl up on her bed with headphones and glare if I looked in on her. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT "It can be harder or more jarring for a kid to hear that you need alone time when it's reactionary to something that's happening," Dr. Hina J. Talib, an associate professor of pediatrics and an adolescent medicine specialist at Children's Hospital at Montefiore, N.J., pointed out. "They pick up on that. Adolescents especially are 'authenticity detectors.'" Kids her age are more apt to blame themselves, not the situation, if the people around them are anxious or unhappy, she continued. My daughter may have thought I was mad and frustrated because of her and not because of the thing that happened at work or whatever my husband did or didn't do, or just the pandemic of it all. And yet, none of that makes it any less vital for me to carve out time to run very slowly around the block. I want my kids to value the concept of independence, too. So I asked a few experts for help. Here are three things I learned. 1. It's time to teach kids about self-care. Discussing alone time is an opportunity to teach kids about good mental health. "Do not suggest that this is a strange thing for a person to need to do," said Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist who writes The Times' Adolescence column. "Say, 'When I'm with you I really want to be able to focus on you, so I need to do some mental housekeeping and I do that on my own. That way I can be much more present when we're together.'" Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT If you are asking for alone time in the reactionary way, Dr. Talib said, you can be specific about what you're stressed about — a change at work or feeling overwhelmed by tasks at home — and be clear that that's why you need time to clear your mind on your own. There's also a difference between being alone and being lonely, she said, and that nuance is worth talking about with kids. 2. Alone time should be part of your family's routine. Remember those godforsaken color-coded charts from the early Covid days? All the family dinners? "We talked about family routines" when the pandemic started, Dr. Talib said. "Why didn't we talk about creating a routine of alone time?" Her kids, who are 3 and 5, know she goes outside every day "to stare at a tree in the backyard." She's meditating, and they know not to interrupt "tree time" — and that it doesn't last very long. Lizzie Assa, the founder of The Workspace for Children, a website and Instagram account that helps parents teach kids to play on their own, has made sure her three kids, who are now 14, 11, and 8, have "quiet time" every day since they were toddlers. She said it took work, but the payoff is worth it. "Kids learn that they need downtime and they need alone time," said Ms. Assa, who is a neighbor of mine in Maplewood, N.J. "Even today when they're having a hard time or getting moody, I don't have to say, 'You need to get away from us,'" she said. "They say, 'I'm going to my room.'" If instituting daily quiet time feels like a nonstarter in your house, you can try other ways of building downtime into your kids' schedules. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a frequent Times contributor and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine, suggested I simply ask my daughter what she needs for self-care. You can do this with an 11-year-old, Dr. Lakshmin reminded me: "Ask, 'What do you feel like you need? Do you want to read a book? Take a bath?' Help them brainstorm too." Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT 3. It's OK for your kids to be upset. If you don't want to spend every waking hour with your children,"it's developmentally appropriate for them to be insulted," Dr. Lakshmin reminded me. "That's normal. Your job as a parent is to help them understand that it's OK to feel sad." She went even further to say that sitting with that discomfort teaches kids that they can take care of themselves even if it makes someone else unhappy temporarily. Dr. Damour put it even more plainly: "People deserve privacy, full stop." Plus, she reminded me that I'm heading full throttle into the teen years, when my daughter will likely become "allergic" to me. I might as well appreciate her wanting to stay close while I still can. Want More on Family and Solitude? NYT Parenting contributor Jancee Dunn laid out why giving your partner the gift of time apart is invaluable. She also suggested seven ways to reset your romantic relationship — among them is spending time solo. In a previous newsletter, Jessica Grose explained how a family of introverts and extroverts can live together harmoniously. One suggestion: Go to the party, but leave early. Times business reporters Ben Casselman and Ella Koeze looked at how Americans spent their time in "a lonely year" during the pandemic. Kelsey Osgood visited with a couple who are each happy to claim the title of "hermit" and teach others the way of solitude. Back in 2016, Dr. Damour said many teens would like to have potted plant parents, who are around the house but are mostly seen and not heard. Subscribe Today We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times with this special offer. Tiny Victories Parenting can be a grind. Let's celebrate the tiny victories. My truck-obsessed son was running away from me so I shouted, "Stop, back up, beep beep beep!" Low and behold, he started backing up toward me. I use it all the time now, and every time he will start backing up with a smile on his face. I'm mostly not embarrassed about repeating "beep beep beep" loudly in public places. — Miranda Hanna, Asheville, N.C. If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Parenting from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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The hard case for soft investment

Concrete and steel get you only so far.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story August 10, 2021 Heidi Kottas works with Teddy Lin, 3, center, and Adrian Figueroa, 4, in Union City, N.J.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist What a difference a few votes in Georgia made! Actually, about $4 trillion worth of difference. Upset victories in the January Senate runoffs gave Democrats narrow control of Congress, and they're exploiting that narrow control to push a hugely ambitious spending agenda. President Biden might not get all of the public investment and social spending he's asking for, but it looks likely that he'll get most of it. Part of the spending will come via a bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate today. The rest will come via a much larger bill, whose outlines were laid out Monday, that Democrats plan to pass on a party-line vote that bypasses the filibuster. This two-step legislative process is playacting, and everyone involved knows it — although voters might not. Republicans went along with some infrastructure spending to create the (false) impression that they aren't implacably opposed to anything Biden might propose. Biden chose to let them play that game to create the equally false impression that he really believes in the possibility of bipartisanship. One thing that struck me, however, is the interesting dividing line between what Republicans were willing to vote for and what they won't even pretend to support. The bipartisan bill is pretty much all about "hard" infrastructure; it's all steel and concrete. The Democratic resolution has some of that, especially things like clean-energy technologies. But the bulk of the proposed investment spending seems to involve "soft" stuff like child tax credits, child care, universal pre-K and free community college. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Why this division of playacting — I mean labor? Republicans appear to believe, or at least think their constituents believe, that only tangible, physical investment is real. This is, however, an outmoded view. Maybe we once had an economy whose productive capacity depended on visible assets like factories and machinery; these days our most valuable companies derive their value mainly from knowledge rather than physical capacity, and spending on intangible intellectual property accounts for more than a third of business investment: The private sector gets less physical.FRED Beyond that, it's a somewhat surprising fact that we have much better evidence for high returns on public spending on people, especially children, than we have for high returns on infrastructure investment. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Why? Assessing the payoff to infrastructure spending is surprisingly hard, because we don't get to observe the counterfactuals. We can surmise that America would be significantly poorer today if Eisenhower hadn't created the Interstate Highway System, but we can't directly measure that alternate history. We can guess that the New York metro area's economic prospects would look a lot better if Chris Christie hadn't killed plans for a new rail tunnel under the Hudson, but we'll never know for sure how much damage he did. Analysts can and do try to assess the benefits from individual infrastructure projects, like Boston's Big Dig — and it's far better to engage in that kind of analysis than to leave things purely subjective. But even for an individual project, that kind of analysis tends to involve a lot of assumptions — how much worse would traffic have been without the project? How much value should we place on time lost to traffic jams? And assessing the returns on a national infrastructure program in the hundreds of billions is, at best, an educated guessing game. When it comes to investment in people, by contrast, we often do get to observe the counterfactuals. The food stamp program, for example, was rolled out gradually across America, not introduced immediately on a nationwide basis. So was Medicaid, which was also enhanced in a series of discrete steps in the decades after its creation. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT These gradual rollouts provide us with natural experiments. Economists can compare the life trajectories of Americans who received food stamps or Medicaid in their early years with those of otherwise similar Americans who didn't, or the experiences of those who benefited from Medicaid enhancements with the experiences of slightly older Americans who didn't. And what these comparisons show are big positive effects of social spending. Children who had access to food stamps grew up into healthier, more productive adults than those who didn't — so much so that the government eventually recouped much, possibly all, of what it spent upfront in higher revenue and lower spending on things like disability payments. Basically, enhancing the social safety net for children is an investment in the future, and the available evidence suggests that it's an investment with high returns. In the months ahead, I'm sure we'll hear many conservative denunciations of wasteful spending and probably mockery of progressives who talk about "human infrastructure." But the evidence for big returns on spending on people is actually a lot more concrete than the evidence for payoffs to spending on, well, concrete. Quick Hits Scott Adams may have gone off the deep end, but in its heyday "Dilbert" was brilliant. Child care increases female employment. Which is not to say that inadequate physical infrastructure isn't a big problem too. For what it's worth, the Democratic agenda polls well. Feedback If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to friends. They can sign up here. If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week's newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at krugman-newsletter@nytimes.com. Facing the Music More Americana from Norway.YouTube Railways are infrastructure, right? IN THE TIMES The Senate passes the infrastructure bill, and turns to the Democratic budget. The bill's passage capped weeks of intense negotiations over the largest federal investment in the nation's public works system in more than a decade. By Emily Cochrane As the Delta variant tears across the U.S., vaccine and mask mandates gain momentum. By Ethan Hauser and Ron DePasquale Decline in Immigration Threatens Growth of Regions on the Rise Immigrants helped make places like Northwest Arkansas an economic dynamo. But their dwindling numbers, a big factor in slower population growth, could have long-term repercussions. By Miriam Jordan and Terra Fondriest Subscribe Today New York Times Opinion curates a wide range of views, inviting rich discussion and debate that helps readers analyze the world. This work is made possible with the support of subscribers. Please consider subscribing to The Times with this special offer. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for Paul Krugman from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018