I’ve had the privilege to name four children during my life, and the particulars of their names very much reflect my different and changing life stages:

My oldest son, Brandon Blake Knemeyer, was born when I was just 20. At the time I had a very poor relationship with my parents, was trying to break as far away from the family as possible, and – having been scarred growing up by being made fun of for my own unusual name – wanted to make sure his name was as cool, understandable and clear as possible. That was my sole criteria for choosing and I think I succeeded; my friends at the time certainly thought it was cool, and Brandon today is a pretty cool cat.

My second son, Alexander Johannes Knemeyer, was born when I was 22. Here you see the beginning of my shifting to show in interest in my family history. While my relations with both parents remained poor, I was starting to learn about my German heritage and take pride in it. I still wanted to make sure that he had a name that would always be easy and understandable (Alexander) but now also wanted to capture our family history in some way. The name “Johannes” shows up twice in our family tree – my great, great, great, great, great, great, great (that’s 7 greats!) grandfather (1675-?) and my great, great, great, great, great (5 this time) grandfather (1749-1817) – and is the ethnic name of one of my idols at the time, Honus Wagner.

By the time my third child and first daughter, Elena Marie Knemeyer, was born, I was 36 and had a much different view of the world. Enjoying a good relationship with my mother (and my father, before he passed away) and now extremely knowledgable about the history of our family, I also had enjoyed a great deal of real-life success and was largely a fully baked adult. Whereas I picked the names of my first two on my own, now my wife and I were working together and had very different ideas. I wanted something very classic and timeless – Katherine would have been my pick – my wife wanted names that, to me, had a “stripper vibe” – Katja was her favourite. “Elena” became a compromise name we both liked and I’m very happy it did. “Marie” is named after our mothers: mine Mary (Anglo), hers Maria (German), we went with the French form to bridge the two.

Finally now is Soren Morton Knemeyer. At 38 my self-esteem – contrary to when I was in my early 20′s – was very high, and as above my family relations were strong. I wanted a name that was different but not weird, something that conveyed some uniqueness and very specific personality. We actually had agreed on Soren for Elena (before we knew the gender, if she had been a boy) so it seemed a slam dunk as the first name. But Sigrid wanted to use the German pronunciation, I saw him enduring the ridicule that I did growing up, and we equivocated for a while. Finally we came back to Soren – I had liked it ever since first reading Kierkegaard, thought the “slash o” in the traditional form was awesome, and we seemed to be all set…except I decided that I really, really, really wanted a family name. The problem is all of my key male relatives are extremely German, and let’s just say that their names don’t really lend themselves to working in America.

The “best” from a historical perspective would have been Franz. That is the name of the Knemeyer who saved Regensberg castle (Bielefeld) in the middle ages and was thus gifted the farmland that is in our family (a distant branch) to this day. It is also the name of my great, great grandfather, who was the first person in my line to leave the farm and enter the knowledge workforce. After distinguishing himself in the Franco-Prussian war he and his wife left the homestead in the 1880s for the United States, leaving their eldest son – my great grandfather – behind. Ever since we have all worked with our heads. Franz is a tough one name to pass with in the U.S. though and Sigrid wouldn’t go for it.

Another good one is August, because it sounds really nice and is the name of my great grandfather, the headmaster of a school in the former Bokel who served in World War I. In fact, my family’s history of military service goes back over 500 years, until wimpy ol’ me opted out. The problem is many of my uncles/aunts/cousins have used the name August for their children and grandchildren, making it exceptionally common in the family. So, that was out.

My grandfather Siegfried was an important historical figure and would superficially seem like a good choice. But he treated my father terribly, a relationship that haunted dad until the end of his life. Out of respect for dad, I could not go with Siegfried. As it is the male version of my wife’s name, Sigrid, I bet she would have gone for it. But he does not deserve it.

Finally the name I wanted, badly, to go with is Morton. My maternal grandfather was named Morton, and he was my favourite person through much of my life. As he died before any of my children were old enough to know him, and since he is on the maternal side with no male heirs (his eponymously son adopted three children, none of whom used his name with their children) this would likely be the last opportunity to carry this name on. He was a prince of a man, deserving of being remembered, and in the last weeks it became very important to me to name the child Morton. But Sigrid just would not have been happy with it. I suspect that if I really dug my feet in, really took it to the limit, I could have had it. But, as much as that name would have meant so much to me, even more impactful would have been seeing my wife’s annoyance with it over the years.

And so, Soren Morton. Using Morton as the middle makes it less likely that it is really carried on someday in important ways, but at least it is in the mix and gives me a way to tell his story and have it mean something special to someone who shares the name.

I hope at least one of my children takes an interest in our history, and that somewhere along the line “Franz” returns. It is the oldest known name in our family tree and one of considerable importance – twice – to my particular line.

Anyway, I have four wonderful children and cherish them all! Now you know the story of how they each got their names.

Last week our son was born, Soren Morton Knemeyer. My mom says he looks just like me when I was born, and my wife says he looks just like me now (!) I am not seeing it but will take their word for it. Along with all of our excitement in getting ready for Soren, we were nervous about how his sister would react. Elena is used to being the center of the universe and very much holds herself as the “queen” we like to call her. When she first saw her brother, there was more than a little trepidation; when she first saw him breast feeding the world was officially over!

Happily, since then Elena is acclimating pretty well and being very nice to her brother. She still cries when she has to get her day started without Sigrid, or can hear the baby crying and getting cared for by their (her!) mother.

The little man was very quiet and peaceful the first day – likely thanks to the drugs from delivery – but now wants to be eating or held most of the time and knows how to complain when not! Still, he is healthy and sweet and all is well. I feel badly for his mother who is, not surprisingly, exhausted.

Soren, immediately after being born

Soren on his second day

Soren as a 2-day old

Elena, after first seeing Soren

Elena, after first seeing Soren

Elena first seeing Soren breast feed, 1

Elena first seeing Soren breast feed, 2

Elena first seeing Soren breast feed, 3

Soren's first picture

In so many ways, the most notable constant with Elena these days is the imminent arrival of her younger brother. Even as his bedroom begins filling with things that we clearly communicate are for her “brother”, Elena appears blissfully unaware that she will have someone else competing for our attention. Not the furniture, not the growing belly of her mother, not the various contexts in which we refer to her about it – none of them seem to make her realize the major change about to happen.

The remarkable thing of the birth of a new child is, you can’t really prepare for its arrival properly, and after it arrives the world is never the same. That is, while you can imagine the baby coming and the requirements it will have and the functional daily changes it will impose, the presence of another being, a unique personality and individual, re-frames your entire existence. It is not a matter of the logistics and lifestyle changes: it is an entire re-framing of the world as you know it. Truly profound. It is actually similar to when a family member diea: the vacuum that death creates is sudden, and everyone begins to flow out at various speeds to fill the spaces once occupied by the deceased. You can kind of functionally imagine aspects of it, but the realities of the world never again being the same remains profound and only realizable after the passing – or birth – is complete.

Anyway. Back to Ms. Elena:

- This month, for the first time, she happily is willing to have me put her to bed. I can take her in her bedroom, spend time long or short with her, and when it is time to go to bed she happily accepts it without crying for or otherwise seeming insecure about the absence of her mommy. Needless to say this is a wonderful bit of progress, certainly helping me feel closer to her.

- The most lovely recent thing is her emotional understanding of stories. One in particular creates a really beautiful expression of emotion. It is called Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. It tells the story of a young girl, going to school for the first time, and getting picked on for her long, unusual, hard-to-spell name. The eponymus protagonist is made to “wilt” again and again by her critical classmates, before a new music teacher toward the end of the story makes her feel special and the other students thus appreciate her name as well. There is a spread in the story where Chrysanthemum is first empowered by her teacher, and one page has four panels of her showing different expressions of pure joy and happiness thanks to her teacher. Well, when we get to this spread, Elena gets SO happy. She has a huge smile, she raises her shoulders up, she hugs me, and makes sounds of joy. When we move on to the next spread she turns back to this one and does it all over again! While I can’t imagine she literally follows the story, she absolutely understands the emotional trajectory of it. She is tentative and herself “wilting” like Chrysanthemum during the earlier parts and just bursts to life in the most wonderfully natural expression of joy I have perhaps ever seen in another human being during the climactic exchange. Really lovely and wonderful.

- Elena is now able to complete simple puzzles on her own. So far it is just the type of puzzle where there is a word carved into a board, and she places the letters in the proper places, correctly, on the first try. However she has a larger true puzzle – a “whopping” nine piece square, with the squares having art on all six sides to crete different pictures – that she is really interested in and watches us carefully as we create it. I bet by next month she can do this one herself.

- Elena continues to be very strong-willed. The latest example today, while I was traveling, is that Elena took part of Sigrid’s lunch from her and liked it so much that she refused to then share it! This is unusual for Elena, who typically shares pretty well, but I guess when she wants what she wants, she is going to take it!

- Elena continues to love Dora, Max & Ruby, and fire trucks. Two of those interests collided in a funny way recently as, when her friend Katie took her to the fire station, she proudly pulled down her pants to show the nice fireman her new Dora underwear! Oh dear! Incidentally, the firemen at the fire station in Granville are a great example of why small village living is so remarkable: whenever they are around and we walk by they invite us in, let Elena sit in the trucks, are very friendly, the works. It is heart-warming, and much appreciated by this parent.

Little Elena turned two while I was away in Europe the week before last. It has been a wonderful journey, watching her grow each day. However, even as I really focus on trying to remember the different moments as they pass by, already the particulars are blurring and I just remember shards that aren’t necessarily anchored to a moment in time. For that, and many other reasons, I’m happy that I’ve had the discipline to continue with this chronicle.

Over the last few months I’ve spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking about these posts in a larger context. I’ve already been self-conscious of the fact that I don’t have anything like this for my older children. It is exacerbated by the fact that my wife keeps a robust baby book for Elena with many details as well, while the boys’ mother did not do anything to preserve and codify their childhood. More, I am aware of how this effort is all going to change once Elena’s younger brother is born. The reality is, I won’t be able to keep this going for her and something comparable for him as well. I suppose that the result will be something watered down that covers both of them in a less specific and focused way.

All of this has made me think a lot about parental feelings for our children, and particularly the issue of birth order. It is almost inevitable that the first child is going to get more in the way of attention and investment because they are the only one. As parents we are sadly human and fallible, and presumably we are giving at near our total capacity with a single child, which is only divided not double when attempting to properly parent a second as well. In this way the first child has some inherent advantage. The impact of this can be negative. To this day my sister dislikes me because she feels my parents favoured me and that I monopolized their attention and parental investment. While this may involve things just beyond simple birth order, echoes of this sort of discontent stretch from Greek tragedies up to and beyond Peter and Marsha Brady. Of course the flip side of the coin is that my father’s father terrorized the oldest children who remember him as a brutal and cold man, while he softened with the younger children who remember him more affectionately.

The hard part of it all is that, in most cases, the parent’s behaviour is benign and not intending to favour one child, much less harm another. Yet it is perhaps inevitable that the children – young, developing, immature creatures – will internalize what they see and perceive in potentially detrimental or inauthentic ways.

Yes, I’ve gone a bit afield of darling little Elena, but her growth and the impending arrival of her younger brother are the catalyst for a lot of thinking about them both, about what made this relation of her life possible, and about the potential damage that this authentic, enthusiastic journal may someday have on her brothers, younger and older. My friend Juhan like to say that parents don’t/can’t love all of their children the same. While my children all have very different roles in my life, and the degree to which I enjoy them certainly varies, the love in some inherent way is, indeed, equal.

Now, onto Elena:

* At her second birthday Elena was 34.5 inches (65%) and 23.8 pounds (15%). She’s long and lean. She also has kept her blue eyes so far; her older brother Alex lost his blue eyes around the same age.

* Not only is Elena now speaking in full sentences, in some cases they are starting to show contextual awareness. As a counter-example, she will still some mornings run around saying “Trick or Treat!”, obviously not understanding what that really meant. But it is more common for her to, for example, after we stop an activity she enjoyed, reflect back and say “That was fun.” So right now it is a mix of understanding things in and out of context.

* While she doesn’t count without prompting and having something concrete to point at, she can consistently count to 10. However she most likes to say “7, 8, 9, 10!” so, when she is tired or unfocused, counting somewhat devolves into a series of “7, 8, 9, 10!”‘s.

* I mentioned a few months ago that Elena has all of the books she reads regularly memorized. Well, since we read a lot and Sigrid gets her many books from the library, We’ve figured out that after the second time through a book she knows the whole thing. Ah, if only my addled brain could memorize things with such clarity!

* Elena knows her entire ABC’s and recognizes some colours and numbers. Again, she has to be focused and not tired for this to come thru.

* During my trip to Europe Sigrid spent four days there with me, meaning Elena had her first extended time away from her mother. Staying with her grandmother in Toledo, we were not optimistic about how it would go. After all, Elena is quick to have a fit if “mommy” isn’t around and answering to her calls. But it turned out that it was no problem at all, with only even the periodic request for “mommy”.
And the visit was a very happy one from grandmother and granddaughter.

* To this day, as a result of my European trip, part of which was spent in London, any time I’m gone Elena explains to people, “Daddy’s in London.” Sadly, sometimes I am simply upstairs in bad.

* I used to, when I would give Elena a tight squeeze, say “big hug!” Well, Elena now uses that when she wants her mommy – and ONLY her mommy – to pick her up and hold her. Even though I did the “big hug” thing a long time ago, it was only recently that it has become such a daily part of her vocabulary.

* Elena’s play table and kitchen are her favourite toys, as she happily cooks and bakes and sets up tea parties. Of course, she far prefers sitting on the kitchen counter and overseeing/helping Sigrid cook and bake, a near-daily occurrence and – in my mind’s eye – one of the ways I will always think of Elena as a baby.

* Elena enjoys colouring and tries very hard to stay within the lines. She does not succeed in any practical way but watching her focus and try to do so is really cute. When her mother is colouring with her Elena will direct or correct Sigrid to make sure and colour all of the elements on a page. She has played a little with mixing colours, her first experiment being blue and yellow (green).

* Elena can assemble very simple puzzle-style toys without any assistance.

* As her drug-like obsession with TV/video continues, her favourite character is most certainly Dora the Explorer. She also likes MAx and Ruby. More recently she is also enjoying fire trucks, and has a little song that she enjoys. When we take her downtown on walks she typically insists on going by the fire station and looking at the fire trucks. In small town Granville, they are happy to show her around when she wants and even give her toys and a fire hat.

* Elena is starting to take on different traits of mine. Of course, not being experts in childhood psychology, it is impossible to recognize which are nature, which are nurture, and which are just accidents of development. For example, I am naturally drawn to seeing flaw and decay in things. It is one of the reasons why I am able to create well-designed things, getting fixated on that which is out of place. I see this same thing in Elena: if there is a small tear on a page, rather than paying attention to all of the other things or listening to the story, she will stare at and pick at the tear. This is exactly how I am turned, having had to train myself to downplay this tendency. Another example is she is starting to sit and lay how I do, and how I’ve seen other relatives sit. We like to cross our legs and, particularly when reclining, will have our legs sort of oddly situated so one ankle is up against the other knee. It is unusual, and Elena is also doing it now.

* Finally, and is also a similarity with me, Elena is never content. She’s either grumpy, or reaching for more, or just quietly discontented. I hope that is just a phase, because it is certainly a characteristic that I would not choose to have, much less pass along. With that, though, she has something of a regal air to her, a sense of self-control and detachment. We call her Queen Elena, and it is as if she will never have a “princess” phase, having been a queen from the very beginning. I know that, looking back, I felt like I was grown up from the time I was young in a certain way, as her oldest brother Brandon was. I suspect this is part of that same tradition. I hope she is able to relax and laugh a little more than I certainly was, and I try to parent in a way that encourages it.

Happy birthday Elena!

At least once a week, in a conversation or email, something is mentioned that I’ve never heard of. A name, a fact, a movement, a programming language…something that I am not familiar with. Still, today, as someone whose coming of age preceded the ubiquity of the Internet, my instinct is to immediately ask, in the case of the article I was reading today, “Say, what were the Boer Wars?”

Of course, in most cases, asking someone is entirely inefficient. Indeed, when I’ve responded to someone in email with a question about something they mentioned that I was not familiar with, more than once I’ve gotten the sarcastic, “Ever heard of that Google thing?” kind of response. While that snarkiness is less common in face-to-face contexts it is nonetheless becoming the default to, rather than asking, pull out the old iPhone and Google it for your damn self. When dealing with progressive, digital adults there is almost an assumption that knowledge is either something you should already have or, more commonly, simply tap the available networks to access. While certainly efficient, and in some cases clearly appropriate, something is being lost in the process.

There’s times when what I want is the interpretation, context and perspective of the person, not merely the “objective” facts I would receive in the Interwebs. There is even something social about it: I want to engage the person, have a more intricate series of conversations with them. Yet the de facto expectation is to look it up yourself; asking – particularly in asynchronous communication – for factual information just isn’t, many times, appropriate.

This is a small matter, hardly the decline of civilization as we know it. But I am very aware of it. Me, an introverted knowledge worker who spends well over half the hours of my life plugged into the network of machines, often doesn’t want the quick-and-dirty facts. What I want is the mind and time of the person, things which, as we become more and more plugged in, are in an ever-shorter supply.

We’ve gotten very comfortable with the “hard” sciences being so neat and tidy. Most of the scientific “truths” we accept today can be “proven” on the back of past theories and previously defended hypotheses. In the long now of humanity this is, most certainly, a luxury. And it has served to stifle potential progress in other areas, because any effort of human exploration and creativity is judged against the crucible of “definitive” proof. It is a mistake, and it is inconsistent with the grace we’ve allowed ourselves in epochs long past.

Prior to Copernicus and the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, the preponderance of human knowledge was, in essence, “winging it”. Aristotle’s theories and world views held sway over the west for more than 1500 years, an incredible duration. The process for us to get from Aristotle’s brilliant but terribly incorrect theories to modern insights into quantum mechanics spans most of the recorded history of the western world. However, the path to getting to this nice, tidy place was not itself nice and tidy.

The most celebrated scientist of the 17th century is someone you probably have never heard of. Athanasius Kircher was a fascinating Renaissance man, interested in almost everything and with fascinating theories on many things. His participating in the ecosystem of 17th century thought was integral to a variety of advances. The problem is, most of what he had to say was eventually proven wrong. He thought and produced at light speed, participating in that fertile period of human knowledge exploration and definition. Kircher, and many other ultimately “incorrect” thinkers were essential to establishing an ecosystem of exploration. And while scientific authorities such as the Royal Society spanked them for ultimately being incorrect, the overall culture of the time did not. They were celebrated, encouraged and rewarded. People were interested in their ideas; the drawings and publications of Athansius Karcher, as just one example, represented cherished artifacts to people of the time. Even as the alchemists continued trying and failing in their attempts to turn other materials into gold, they were encouraged to do so.

The scientific revolution was borne from the renaissance and the reformation, two massive, continental movements that shifted Europe from a tightly controlled dark age, into an emergent and open society, finally propelled into freedom of thought and idea by the organized challenge to the Catholic church. Those massive cultural shifts – over nearly 200 years – were required to get humanity to a moment from which the scientific revolution could develop. The scientific revolution, then, represents a miraculous ~150 year period in human history that has forever changed the composition and outlook of the world.

But as we’ve maximized and optimized the learnings of that period over the subsequent 300 years, a funny thing has happened. Like the Catholic church and unsophisticated social systems before it, the structure of the scientific method and establishment has straight-jacketed future, potentially remarkable, progress. For, even as we have developed incredibly detailed understandings of the world around us, and even the physical system operating inside each of us, our degree of understanding about our essential selves has evolved relatively little since the time of Aristotle. Why? “Hard” science is the problem.

Why do people call psychology, sociology and other social sciences “soft” sciences? Because they are hard to “prove” in the ways accepted in the “hard” scientific community. That reality is being used as a crown of thorns to repress and discourage individuals, organizations and movements from deeply exploring, theorizing and hypothesizing on essential truths in the human condition. Read about even those methods which do have decades of research and legitimate “hard science” validation behind them – such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – and they are surrounded by language and caveats that remind us they are not necessarily valid. While part of that, certainly, is the product of our litigious society and Byzantine issues with the legal system, the larger culprit is the institutionalized expectation that, in order to explore and publish about knowledge, it needs to resemble and pass tests borne from the scientific tradition. This is a fatal, fundamental flaw.

As many of you are aware, I’ve spent more than a year deeply researching these so-called “soft science” fields. I’ve easily learned more during this time than in my 6 years of university, which saw me get bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In the process I have been discovering absolutely remarkable things about the psychological, sociological and behavioural human condition. I’m developing theories that I can’t prove are correct, might turn our being absolute wrong, but at a minimum are very interesting and in the best case could be part of a larger movement that fundamentally changes the human condition. Yet, publishing many of them would be impossible. I would be attacked from all sides. People and organizations would haughtily question if the ideas met criteria expected in the “hard” sciences, which they most certainly would not. I would be dismissed as a dilettante. And perhaps I am. However, the very fact that attempting to explore these intellectual places – things that I consider the very most important questions and issues of and for humanity – is criminal. It is every bit as oppressive as the same Catholic church that the scientific revolution itself fought with such vigour to emerge our of. What an irony that the oppressed now so closely resembles its old oppressor.

To this day, Sigmund Freud serves more as a punchline than a person who dramatically advanced human understanding. When I, as a matter of routine, talk about the work of Carl Jung and ask if people are familiar with him, most aren’t. These paragons of knowledge are dismissed or ignored because what they provide insight on is “soft” and cannot be A-B-C proven as with the “hard” sciences.

I challenge humanity to do better. I challenge us to re-frame and create spaces of exploration that encourage people to tackle the most knotty problems of all – how we behave, why we behave, how we inter-relate, on our internal structure, on relationships between human essence and existence – and do so without the compulsion to destroy those who do. Yes, ultimately we need to be driving toward some kind of “hard” truth. But the process to get there, as it was in the so-called “hard” sciences, is necessarily squishy, imprecise and not immediately provable. It is the only way by which will we understand ourselves as well as we understand the plants, planets and rocks that we’ve spent so much intellectual energy on. I think we’re well worth it.

One of the best lessons I learned from my father was competitive humility. Dad was a tremendous racquetball player. For years he won the competitive “A” league at our Jewish Community Center, beating good players in their 20s when he was in his 40s and even 50s. He regularly played his friend Ted during this period, and one day I asked:

Me: Dad, who wins more: you or Ted.

Dad: Oh, I don’t know, it’s probably about even.

Me: Come on Dad, really. Who wins more.

(he thought about it for a few seconds)

Dad: Well, if we played 50 times, I might win 26, and Ted might win 24.

Some time later, when I was in my teens and he realized he couldn’t snow me in quite the same way, I asked him about playing Ted again. This time he opened up. He told me that, while he’s a much better player than Ted, he just enjoys playing and wants Ted to enjoy it, too. So instead of clobbering Ted he would make shots that he thought would lead to interesting play – but not necessarily win him the point. He talked about moving the ball around, setting up shots that Ted would return in ways that would challenge Dad. He also talked about letting Ted win to keep Ted’s enthusiasm in playing the game.

While there have been moments in my life where I emulated Dad’s approach, more often I was simply focused on winning. When I was younger, this was a mix of my natural competitiveness, drive for excellence, and a fragile ego. As I’ve gotten older the ego motivation is no more yet my natural drives along with competition being framed in the goal of winning lead me to play to win.

Yet, this becomes increasingly unrewarding. I already know that I’m going to win at least my fair share of games. What typically happens, when I am playing a game that is not rated or in a tournament, is about halfway or 2/3 of the way through – assuming I assess that I have a decent chance to win – is that I become self-aware and start regretting the potential of my winning. After all, I consider most of the impacts that come from my winning to be negative. Other players might perceive or even resent my winning too much. Or, they might feel badly for their winning less. Or, they might gang up on me in a future game, making the process of playing less fun and more antagonistic. Or, or, or. Besides, I certainly don’t like the attention of winning. Even when I win, I really don’t want it to be acknowledged or recognized. I have a set list of deflectors starting with good luck and continuing with more contextual specifics, to downplay my success to the greatest possible extent.

Despite all of this, I haven’t been able to change my framing the same way Dad did. It is only well into the game, when I think I have a decent chance of winning, that I begin to cogitate on the fact it would be a net negative if I actually won. But, even then, I want to play hard and do my best to see if I would win, and go on to sometimes do just that. Not that it is important to my ego, but that it is resonant with my intellectual curiosity. This is all despite the fact that I intuitively would have more fun if I re-framed my objective from before the game began, away from driving to win and instead to alternate objectives: creating a memorable narrative, or putting myself in difficult positions that I would really be challenged by to attempt and make my way out of, or acting as a catalyst to provide more fun for the other players thru my play choices.

I’m not quite there yet. I’ve got decades of experience and instincts operating the old way. But at this point I suspect it is only a matter of time that my awareness of and will for the new way surpasses my historical approach.

Somewhere up in heaven, Dad is letting his opponent win at racquetball, allowing them both to truly enjoy the experience. I hope he’s happy that his son finally internalized that lesson.

The last two months have been full for Elena: experiencing her second Thanksgiving and Christmas, traveling up to Toledo and having visits from her grandmother and brother. She also continues to amaze us with the little things she does…

* Just after Thanksgiving we accidentally discovered that Elena knows pretty much every word in all of the books we read to her regularly. Sigrid did not finish a sentence in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” because she got distracted and Elena finished it instead! Well, needless to say this was startling enough, as there was no indication she knew the words, and certainly she does not yet know how to read. But it didn’t take us long to start “testing” and, sure enough, when she is paying attention and engaged she can pick up mid-sentence and fill in the couple or few words missing in a sentence that has already been started. We very much wanted to get this on video – in fact I was waiting to post this until we did – but since we use the iPhone which she LOVES as a video device – it has proven impossible to capture her. It has been remarkable to watch the onion unpeel here: from the first moment in the Grinch, to her doing it on every page of the Grinch, to her (again surprisingly) revealing she could do it with another book.

The process of learning and discovery is remarkable. To see the child go from an unformed animal to gradually put together the pieces of a thinking, functioning person continues to be something.

* I try to do things for Elena to make her feel good, but ultimately much of it just ends up tickling her and she doesn’t really like it. So I was particularly happy to find something that she likes: my putting my mouth against her head and kiss-kiss-kiss-kissing it, moving my mouth around in the process. After 5 or 6 kisses she pulls away and says “Again! Again!” So, I do it again. This time when she pulls away she’s smiling: “Again! Again!” By the third or fourth time she’s laughing sort of a happy tickle sound of a laugh. Now we’ve done it enough that she’ll come up to me and sort of burr her head into my mouth to start the process. It is pretty cool!

* Elena’s counting continues to improve. She recognizes “7, 8, 9, 10″. She can get other smaller numbers sporadically, but for whatever reason she’s really focused on the “7, 8, 9, 10″.

* Elena is very manipulative with her mother. When something is happening that she doesn’t want – especially when being put to bed at night or for a nap – she screams and screams. When does she stop? When dad comes in, because she knows that dad is there to shut it down, she is immediately quiet. From a young age she learned that her mother would sacrifice herself to meet Elena’s needs and make her more comfortable. So she will push the screaming button until she realizes her mom won’t give in. And, often times, that requires dad to come in and deliver the bad news.

* So Elena’s first popular culture favourite is Dora the Explorer. She looooves Dora. The good news is, when Sigrid needs Elena taken care of so something important can get done, if Dora is put on Netflix Elena is transfixed for as long as it lasts. The bad news is, like other things in the past, watching Dora is like a drug. When it’s over, she’s a wreck. When she’s watching, she’s a zombie. It’s weird to see, but certainly reminiscent of how people generally are when plugged into their consoles.

* This year, Elena was more aware of Christmas but certainly not fully. On Christmas Eve we brought her before the tree with her handful of presents and, while she already knew the tree and presents relate to Christmas, she did not understand the notion of the presents being for her and she was to open them. This changed as we helped her open the first one, but she sort of opened half of the paper on a present then set it aside and moved onto the next one. Her main gift was a large wooden kitchen set – envisioned by her mom, picked by me, purchased by her grandmother – which is her favourite toy and is the first thing she plays with every morning.

* Elena is beginning to copy things she experiences in imaginary play, in ways we are able to clearly see and understand. Recently we’ve been reading her a book about a little birthday part where children are putting their stuffed animals and dolls in chairs around the table. Well, now Elena is putting her stuffed animals in chairs around her table, pretending to have a little tea party. It is super cute and, again, remarkable to see her now learning, internalizing and modeling what she sees in the real world.

* It appears that Elena will grow up never having had baby food. She went right from milk to the food we eat. My sons certainly ate baby food, I remember well feeding them every day. But Elena…she’s graduated right to favourites like salmon, cheese and scones. Of course, when I was a 20 year old father I wasn’t eating the kind of food Elena is eating now either, so certainly my increased sophistication is trickling down to the younger generation. It would not have crossed my mind to skip baby food though, that was all her mother. I have to think fresh, organic foods are better for her than processed baby food would have been.

* Her younger brother is now just under 4 months away from being a reality. He is already 2 pounds as of Friday’s ultrasound, massive for this age. Sigrid and I are both very tall which certainly is the driving factor. Sigrid is showing so much more with the new baby than she did with Elena. Despite the massive bump, Elena does not seem to comprehend that inside is a new person who will completely change her life. That said, Elena is very possessive of her mother and I’m expecting there will be some interesting psychological battles and moments as she comes to grips with taking a back seat to her younger sibling who will count on mom for survival far more immediately than the quickly growing Ms. Knemeyer.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Not much impresses me. I like plenty of things, but there are very few that I look at and am genuinely impressed by. That is what makes Risk Legacy by designer Rob Daviau all the more impressive.

Risk Legacy is a new board game by Hasbro, the largest and leading board game company in the world, which also makes the most bland, disinteresting and soulless games possible. They have old, groaning, tired properties that they attempt to keep on life support as cash cows with one lukewarm design after another. Monopoly, Clue, Life, Risk…each of these and many others have now been spun in many different directions that are only interesting to people who don’t know any better. Hasbro is to board gaming as Marvel is to comics: where the masses go but the insiders shun. Which, again, makes the achievement of Risk Legacy all the more impressive.

You see, Risk Legacy is the latest version of the old Risk board game. Most U.S. board gamers played Risk at one time or another. In its basic form Risk is a simple wargame that is almost entirely luck-based. The balance of power and diplomacy are the only really interesting aspects, all but obfuscated by the die rolling and particularly the capricious “bonus card” system which is the only thing that really matters. It is just a bad game. Yet, Hasbro has continued to churn out many varieties of Risk over the years, with different themes and rules. I’ve played a couple and disliked them enough not to play any more. Yet, with Risk Legacy, designer Rob Daviau is doing things in board games that simply haven’t been done. On top of the basic Risk engine, along with some theme-specific chrome, he has done a variety of brilliant things that are designed to create rich narrative around each and subsequent games and bake shared history into the very DNA of each set:

1. The game is progressive. The box includes various, sealed bags and packs that you are not allowed to open. As you play thru games of Risk Legacy, as different things happen at often unpredictable points, they “unlock” these goodies. Each one adds new and different elements to the game, making it dynamic, fresh and linking the progress in the overall game experience inextricably to your playing of it.

2. The game has memory. You are encouraged to write on the board with permanent markers. You are instructed to stick permanent stickers on the board – and making decisions insodoing – that permanently change, define and guide future games. Board gaming is a hobby of devoted collecting and obsessive-compulsive wanting to keep the game/box/components “perfect”. In service of creating a rich experience, Daviau has completely blown up this expectation of the genre.

3. The game has irrevocable choices. There are moments when you can pick from two cards with different powers for your faction. After you’ve picked the card you want, you are instructed to tear up the other card so it no longer exists as an option in your present or future world. You are on a one way path to a unique story that only your game group can appreciate.

This is not a game; it is a special experience. Daviau and – God forbid – Hasbro are taking us on a special, personal, meaningful journey filled with magical moments. I’m a gamer and enjoy playing lots of games. Risk Legacy literally sends chills down my spine and gives me goose bumps as these wonderful moments come about, where I wait to see what the bag another player opens will do to transform our experience, or when I am empowered to mark and permanently name a territory on the map anything I want it to be. This is wonderful, magical, and truly innovative in the best possible way.

I’ve been privileged to work in the technology industry for the past decade, and I’ve seen the great advances that have transformed our digital lives up close and personal. And I can say without hesitation that Risk Legacy and designer Rob Daviau have innovated as powerfully in the humble industry of board gaming as anything else I’ve seen. If you like board games, you absolutely have to try it. If you don’t like board games, but are interested in design, innovation or storytelling, it is also a must-buy to see a very creative take on transforming paper and plastic into something that delivers as rich, powerful and personal a story as any media or artifact I can think of. So, so impressive.

Daviau was recently on the peerless Three Moves Ahead podcast which I encourage you to listen to.

This article was originally published at Johnny Holland.

The Surgeon General of the United States says that “youth violence is an ongoing, startlingly pervasive problem.” Despite the fact that “the majority of aggravated assaults, robberies and rapes are never reported to the police,” one out of every 3,000 youths aged 10-17 are arrested for serious violent crimes – homicide, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault – each year. While the predictive risk factors include family aspects we might all expect – low socioeconomic status, poor parent-child relations, broken home – many of the individual risk factors apply only to males and the most predictive risk factor of all in this troubling laundry list is simply “being male”.

By now you are surely wondering, “Um, isn’t this supposed to be an interaction design publication?” Yes, of course, it is. But the domain relevant to digital products that is most important, least understood, and represents the greatest opportunity for remarkable growth and advance is the degree to which we understand our users.

To be sure, a focus on users is nothing new. In computing devices it dates back at least to the long-standing Scandinavian tradition of cooperative design, later applied to IT artifacts around 1970. There is an entire subculture in the digital design community built around the idea of user-centered design. Memes about narrative, storytelling and ethnography punctuated the 2000s, and we generally believe we have refined, evolved framing and methods for considering users as part of the product development equation.

Hardly.

Divining Human Understanding
Going back to my opening about the epidemic of violent crime in young males, how well do we understand that problem? It is certainly recognized as a problem, by the highest governmental authorities. A litany of risk factors and predictive models exist, so people more likely to participate in violent crime can be identified by parents and teachers and kept track of as they wind their way through adolescence and young adulthood. Yet, as a society, we dismiss such perpetrators as criminals, animals, evil and inherently bad. We do this despite the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that their gender – a coin toss at birth – and socio-familial situation are the drivers behind their destructive behaviour.

Let’s break those two things down: why gender? To better understand that we need to learn a little about endocrinology, the field of medicine focused on our hormones. Androgen is the term for hormones that stimulate and control the development and maintenance of male characteristics, including those in the Surgeon General’s laundry list of risk factors. There is a long history of castration in human cultures all around the world, as even before the science behind it was understood, people learned that men without testes were far less aggressive. Enlightenment era hero Thomas Jefferson even created legislation in the state of Virginia after the Declaration of Independence was signed, making castration the punishment of choice for a handful of crimes. The amount of testosterone production varies widely from one man to another, and indeed those who are – from the standpoint of modern civilization – cursed with very high levels of testosterone are far more likely to prove unable to stay within the behavioural bounds dictated by our society.

Another critical discipline for understanding behavioural differences by gender is neuroscience. Like most of the United States sick care system, the preponderance of investment in and attention to neuroscience has to do with the work of neurologists, curing brain tumors and other diseases. But it is also the field that best understands from a mechanical perspective how and why we function. Male aggression is actually one of the more complex dynamics within the brain, involving all of the amygdala, hypothalamus, prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, hippocampus, septal nuclei and periaqueductal grey of the midbrain. While the complexity of each of these disparate brain factors’ impact on male aggressiveness is beyond the bounds of this article, needless to say there is a startling amount of science and real understanding into mapping observable brain structure, condition and operation to many critical human behaviours, male aggressiveness that leads to violent crime being only one.

Now, let’s consider the other main group of predictive risk factors for violent behaviour, socio-familial background. As just one example, MIT’s Abhijit Banerjee and Harvard’s Sendhil Mullainathan have done wonderful work on the psychology of why people can’t escape poverty. In a nutshell, they illustrated that since buying small, everyday comforts is far more costly to the poor than to the wealthy – representing a substantially larger proportion of their net worth – that poverty limits free will and in the process has a resultant drain on one’s overall willpower. Needing to make tough decisions and sacrifices much more frequently than their more affluent neighbours makes it far more likely that the poor will have willpower issues in other contexts. Such as, say, testosterone-fueled moments that spiral out of control. These are economists, studying issues of psychology and sociology, deconstructing behaviour in remarkably insightful ways.

While socio-economic status is only one vector of the socio-familial milieu, the example highlights the ample research and science which illuminates the conditions that finally culminate in serious violent crime. And it underscores an important point: while some criminals might be “bad” in some objective way, many of these criminals are simply very unfortunate people who are victims similar to those they’ve victimized: they happened to be born male, they happened to have high testosterone levels, they happened to be born into poor or broken families. Armed with this knowledge, surely we as a society can do better?

Truly Understanding Users
I’ve chosen the issue of serious violent crime in young males as my example because it nicely applies to all of the five sciences that should be essential learning to anyone serious about understanding users: endocrinology, neuroscience, economics, psychology and sociology. In each of these, crucial pieces of the human behavioural puzzle are provided:

Endocrinology: the study of the endocrine system which secretes hormones into the bloodstream and regulates the body;

Neuroscience: the study of the central nervous system which uses neurons to coordinate our actions;

Economics: the study of the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services – crucial to the understanding of individuals in a fiercely capitalistic, free market society;

Psychology: the study of people and groups in order to best understand them;

Sociology, the study of a society in order to best understand that society and its inhabitants.

Needless to say that the role of some of the more social sciences on this list – particularly psychology – are already seen as having a role in successful user studies and understanding. However, the preponderance of research and publications on user studies deal more with principals and practices of the discipline and less with understanding the users themselves, much less in a deep, multi-disciplinary scientific way. The future of design will belong to those who are able to untangle what people do and why, even those who can predict and understand – using a scientific basis – what people are likely to respond to and why and how, as opposed to simply making gut decisions.

As it is a fairly straightforward matter to untangle the objective dynamics behind serious violent crimes in young males using these approaches, imagine the impact you can have on your product, service, company, market or even society if you have the vision, rigor and discipline to start truly unpeeling that most complex and layered of onions, ourselves.