I-pod volume limit controls

Wow! Now that is a good idea!

Password-protected volume limit controls

To help prevent hearing loss that may occur when listening to audio at high volume over long periods of time through earphones, all currently available iPod models include volume limit controls allowing you to easily set the maximum listening volume. You can protect the maximum volume with a password, so it cannot be changed without permission.

Hat tip to my excellent anonymous pal who happens to be an old high school sweet heart!

Thanks Mitch! XOX

My new I-pod or thank god my kid can figure it out for me

Ok. Molly's brand spanking new Nano arrived today complete with jumping and shouting and many thank you hugs.

To review: Molly earned money to buy this contraption by playing her violin or busking.

She has been plugged in ever since except for the "no I-pod at the dinner table" rule. She did take some time out to set up my new I-pod or her old Shuffle.

Am I excited? Yes. Am I jumping around hugging and shouting? Not yet. But, I am very thankful that she could set it up for me and teach me how to do it.

Volume...check.
On, Off...check.
Ok. Good to go. I think.

Now, how do you download a song? She was proud to teach me how and I was very thankful my kid can help me with this 21st century apparatus.

So, I downloaded my first song.

What was it?

Yellow by Coldplay

Nice.

Carrots

No, this is not a blog post about my garden. This is definitely a parenting post.

Before I had kids, I had no idea how much negotiation went on.

"If you eat a good dinner, you can have ice cream."

"If you hit your sister one more time, you will get a time out."

Cause and effect. You know the drill.

Parenting seems to be deal with carrots and sticks all the time. Or bribes and punishments?

As the kids get older, the carrots and the sticks change. It keeps a parent on their toes to be a step or two in front so that the negotiation gets the desired effect.

When Molly first started violin she was 5 and stickers were her carrot. They lost their luster after awhile and nothing would do but sweets.

I remember sitting with her as she practiced her tunes adding chocolate chips one by one to a bowl for each song she played. That worked for a bit.

About a year ago, we shamelessly went to money. If she practices, she gets a buck. It has to be a good practice, her best effort. I consider it money well spent and better for her than candy.

Recently, we stumbled upon a new sparkly, dazzling, lusted after carrot. She wants an I-pod upgrade. Let me explain, she got a Shuffle a year or two back but is only really getting into listening to music lately. The Shuffle does not have a video screen. Gasp! So she wants a Nano which will hold 2,000 songs and 8 hours of video. My mind still reals; what the heck?

Anyway, she wants it, hence it is a new powerful carrot. No, you do not just provide the carrot, you make them work for the carrot, of course. That is the point.

I told her that I would buy her Shuffle from her for $75 but she would need to come up with the rest. Ah ha! With that statement she has swung into money making mode.

We made some plans and mapped out a strategy. She counted up all the money she has now and how much more she will need to make. We looked at the calendar and picked out some days for her to do her money making.

How does she make money? She busks. She sets up at the Saturday Farmers Market and plays solo violin with her case open. I "seed" with a starter buck and the rest is up to her.

Today was the first busk of the season and I have finally wised up and brought a lawn chair. I just sit somewhat nearby and stay out of her way.

Within an hour or so, she made $26.

Someone today started rattling off to me all the good life lessons she was getting; people skills, practical math, project planning and goal definition. He went on and on.

People are always incredibly kind and encouraging. They are dazzled at her bravery to stand there alone and play. So am I.

Unwritten

My daughter is just on the threshold of the i-pod years. At 10, she dips in and then almost as quickly recedes back to her 429 stuffed animals, cat's cradle and the comforts and routines of childhood.

During one of her recent sojourns, she downloaded "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield; a hauntingly beautiful pop song that I am sure we have all heard before. Click here to see the music video. Molly says that she heard it for the first time when she was 8 on an east coast airplane trip to see Jake's parents. She was bored and was cruising the in-flight headphones, stumbled upon it and has loved it ever since. This I believe, the kid has an amazing memory.

Well, i-tunes is easy enough to figure out in the end with luck, help and a kid nearby. Molly got i-tune bucks for Christmas so she spent some on this long beloved and remembered song. I haven't heard it since because the i-pod is either lost, misplaced, forgotten or in her ears. Usually in that order.

But, tonight she told me at dinner that the song had inspired her to write a story. Very solemnly with all seriousness, she said, "There is a life story in this song and I am going to write it."

"The story is about a girl who is born partially blind and as a newborn is struggling for her first breath. All the adults are freaking out but a small boy believes that she will make it. He is an optimist." she explains.

"The mother tears spill onto the baby's face because she thinks the baby will die but the mother's tears miraculously restore her sight."

"It is a life story and I want there to be a romance and it will end with her having a baby of her own."

She said she already wrote the prologue, which is from the optimistic boy's perspective. She stopped because she ran out of paper not because she ran out of ideas.

I don't really know what to say to all this. I am dazzled, proud, amazed and perplexed. As a parent, of course, we always, ALWAYS encourage our kids when they go off on these whims. But, it got me thinking about where does true inspiration comes from and how it is fostered? How do we keep it going without forcing or pressuring? When does encouragement turn into fawning, gushing over-praise? I doubt there is a parent out there that can be objective about their own kid. There in lies much of the struggle; no one else can really help with this job.

"Wow, Moll. I want to read that story." I added the slightly lame comment, "I will always make sure you have more paper for your ideas." It seemed like a promise I could keep. She takes it in stride, I am not in her way. She is creating, tasting, experimenting with and living different lives in her head corralling them to eventually give them life on a page.