Rethinking Daylight Saving Time

The annual switch forward from standard to daylight saving time is always greeting with a moan and a sigh (and sometimes even greater anguish!) around my house. I didn't mind it too much when it came in April, but the recent switch 3 weeks sooner into March has bothered me. I normally rise fairly early, and I tolerate getting up in the dark all winter, but look forward to the spring and summer when I can rise with the sun – it is just so much easier to get up when it is a little light out than before! So, I've been fairly critical of the change for the past couple years, and often wished it could go back (or at least match the UK and have it the final Sunday in March!)

This morning, however (4 days since the change), I finally rose at my normal time, now in complete darkness, got ready, and headed off to work. I was greeted by a wonderfully colored pre-sunrise sky as I drove, something I hadn't seen for weeks. I enjoyed the colors and the awakening world, and realized how much I do enjoy catching the very earliest hours of the day. I thought back to the previous evening, where after dinner, still light, the kids were able to head out to play. It becomes tiresome during the winter months: As Lord Baden-Powell observed, “Boys are not sitting animals.” In my house, and I suspect in many others, neither are girls sitting animals, and as they run and play inside, sometimes the energy and noise becomes a tad overwhelming.

So, the switch to Daylight Saving brought my wife and I a glorious hour of house quiet, able to sit and converse as the sun dropped to the west and the kids ran off their youthful energy. The slanting golden sunbeams, the warmth, and the relative quiet raised our spirits, and the sounds coming through the open windows from the kids indicated that their enthusiasm for life was elevated, too.

All would have been perfect had little girl, not yet a shoe-wearing animal, not gotten a sliver in her toe from the winter-worn and dried playset. Nevertheless, it was cleaned and partially removed in pretty short order and the relative magic of the evening restored.

As I parked my vehicle and made the walk into work this morning as the last pinks and purples of dawn splashed across our mountains, recalling the wonderful evening before, I realized that perhaps I've been too harsh on the earlier switch. It certainly hasn't been a hardship this year, and if we were still on Standard time, we would have missed all these experiences.

Maybe ol' Benjiman Franklin was onto something, and institutionalizing it isn't such a bad idea after all!

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Rewards

So much of what we do is driven by extrinsic reward - do your homework to get good grades (and your parent's and teacher's praise), practice your skills (again, for praise and attentions), do your job (for the money). In a recent book club book, Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell, he pointed out that those who achieve the very highest levels of skill do so because they are able to replace extrinsic motivation for intrinsic (internal) motivation: They start doing the activity for the sheer pleasure that they derive. This internal motivation enables them to concentrate and practice for long periods - much longer than those who are just extrinsically motivated. And there is nothing like lots of extra practice to perfect a skill.

So, naturally, as parents, we want to provide motivations to our children that will ultimately lead to their developing intrinsic motivations. Unfortunately, most of what we know is to reward or bribe (Do this, and I'll give you something you want.)

I don't recall how I ran across her website, but Dr. Christine Carter has some good ideas driven by research on how that may be accomplished. And since a co-worker and I were speaking on this topic today, here is a link to her post on ways to motivate without extrinsic reward.