Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion 'Outliers', anyone reading it??

I'm not sure you need that time machine. That seems pretty silly to me! Wouldn't it be more likely that you'd count so that you knew how many rocks to pass before you stopped at the good watering hole? Or how many pieces of fruit to cut up so everyone got one?

Some theories are just plain goofy!

Of course I don't need it, but I'd like one anyway. ((wink))

Re: Family and Medical Leave Act

Just curious as to how this works, Kriston? Is it leave for which either parent is eligible? Does the govt. pay your salary? How long is it? Is it just for a baby being born, or other medical conditions, too?

In Canada, parental leave is 52 weeks, and can be divided between parents (adoptive parents are eligible, too). The first 16 (I think) weeks are maternity leave, and the other 36 are parental; the government pays the standard employment insurance rate (55 or 60% of earnings, I think), and one's employer can choose to top it up. Frenchie's employer did top his up, to 93%, so he had 36 weeks off with each of our three kids, at 93% of full pay (I took the 16 weeks the first time, when I still had a job, but wasn't eligible for it the next two times). It was lovely having one's husband home, as you say--especially since I had caesareans every time, and was pretty creaky for about six or eight weeks--and it was very nice to be able to share the parenting for which we had waited (in great frustration) for more than a decade!

Just wondering if your system is similar--it's funny, we live so close, but I don't know much about how this kind of stuff works there (all the threads y'all write about the SAT are basically Greek to me, too!).

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

minnie

ps An old friend of mine is Hungarian; he told me that his wife had two years at full pay after each of their children were born--what a lovely thing!

No pay. That's definitely where the U.S. is not so good as other places. (Our taxes are lower though, so there's that...)

We saved up so we could afford to have DH take the time off. He first took his paid vacation time, then went to unpaid leave.

12 weeks is the limit of unpaid leave protected by the FMLA. It can be used for any medical or family issue that would require time off. It doesn't have to be used all at once, but can be split up over the course of the year to cover something like debilitating chemotherapy treatments, for example. Anyone working for a company larger than 50 people, I believe, is covered under the law. Companies smaller than that are not required to comply with the law in any way.

The big thing is that the company cannot fire you. Your job is protected. Before the FMLA, that was not guaranteed.

I know very few husbands in the U.S. who take more than a couple of days off for a new baby. It's usually just not feasible financially for most families to have both adults in the family not working for any amount of time.

No paid leave at all is granted by the government or by anyone else that I've ever heard of. It simply isn't done here.

I negotiated for 12 weeks off from my job with no pay after my vacation time was gone. 6-8 weeks is the more common amount, I think. Then I went to working half-time from home for a year before I gave it up to stay home full-time.

So, yes, very different from Canada! (Sadly!)

Interesting--thank you for taking the time to explain it to me!

I like the flexibility of yours--it's interesting that it applies to various types of leave. I believe that the government here at one point was talking about adding a family-related leave programme (for taking care of dying parents or spouses, for instance)that would work more or less the same as the parental leave, but for a shorter amount of time (13 weeks? can't remember). Not sure that got off the ground yet, though (and thankfully, I haven't needed to investigate that type of issue).

Of course, as you say, our taxes are much higher here--somebody's got to pay for this kind of stuff!

peace
minnie

Happy to help foster the cause of international understanding! I appreciated hearing about how it was for you, too. We tend to get exclusively politically biased takes on parental leave, so it's especially nice to hear how it really works, straight from the trenches!

Thanks!

Okay I read a little more of the book--the part where Terman looked at the records of 730 of the men with very high IQs and divided them into three groups. The top 20% was the A group and the most successful. The middle 60% were the B group and they were doing satisfactorily. The bottom 150 were the Cs, the ones who Terman judged to have done the least with their superior mental ability.

My husband and I both have family members who might have fit in this C group. We are doing what we can to make sure our son does not end up like this, including reading books like Outliers and Gifted Hands.

My husband has worked since he was 13 to support himself after the death of a parent, including work on a farm and any other kind of work he could find so he could have enough to eat, and he joined the military as soon as he was able where his intelligence and hard work allowed him to move up in rank faster than most people. I think not having money actually helped him in some ways because he did develop that work ethic and he also had to figure out how to fix things and make them last as long as possible. He always seemed to be able to fix anything. Also, even though it looked like he had less free time than other people, he always found time to read and learn because he needs less sleep and has more energy than most people. I always wondered if that was part of the reason he was smarter than me. He slept less, therefore he had more hours to learn things than I did. My dad also had to work at a very young age to help support his family after his dad died. They both share their stories of surviving hard times with my son. I think my son is listening, but his life is so different, so much easier, with the internet available to answer all of his questions and so many games to spend his free time on when his dad and his grandfather had very little free time as kids.

OT?

Working dads can do it, they just need to have the right schedule.

My DW stayed home for 6 weeks, but I did the 10 pm to 5 am shift with Mr W, slept for 3 hours, went to work from 10 am to 6 pm, came home for three hours so DW could sleep, then hit the gym, then came back home. DW got her 8 hours of sleep and I got to spend a lot of time with Mr W. I could get in some extra work when Mr W slept if I wanted. He'd sleep on a pillow on the couch while I worked or read.

Added to the list. Fingerspitzengefuehl is a wonderful concept.

Its called TEAMWORK!!!!