My mom ROCKS!

Kelly Piepmeier has been in town since Tuesday.  She mentioned in passing today that one of the reasons she wants to get a house or apartment in Charleston is because she doesn't want to keep being a burden on us by staying in our house when she comes to visit.

Here are some of the ways my mom has been a burden on us:

• She made granola her first night here.  I have eaten, as of just now, six bowls.  It is so unbelievably delicious that, well, I can't believe it.
• Wednesday night and Thursday nights she made us dinner.  Wednesday:  grilled tilapia in mango salsa.  Thursday:  omelettes with zucchini and goat cheese.  Oh, and she bought all the groceries for both meals.
• Tonight she's not making us dinner because she offered to stay here with Maybelle so that Biffle and I can go on a date.
• She's taken me out to lunch every day this week, at three delicious restaurants.
• All day every day for the time she's been here, she has taken part in major spring cleaning of the house.  For instance, on Wednesday, we went through all the baby gear in the attic.  We filled the living room with stuff that we're not using anymore.  We distributed six full garbage bags of clothing, toys, stuffed animals, and books to friends and colleagues who have babies, not to mention swings, strollers, etc.

This is what mom has chosen to do with her vacation time:  come clean, shop, cook, clean, and play with Maybelle.  Can you see how burdensome this has been to us?  Now, I'm very excited at the possibility that she might someday have a place of her own in Charleston, but in general I highly recommend this type of burden.  It's wonderful in every way I can imagine.

Gendering my daughter: new post over at Girl w/Pen

I've been a bit lax in my posting over at Girl w/Pen, but I've put a new post up this morning:  "Gendering my daughter."  Head over and check it out!

Maybelle talking

Maybelle's been talking for a long time, but we're seeing some cool shifts recently.

She's been saying full sentences for months.  In the fall, I think, Biffle recognized the extent to which Maybelle would ask for things using one word:  "Music!" "Yogurt!" "Bounce!"  So we started responding to the one-word requests with, "Use a full sentence, please."  Quickly she learned to respond, "I want music, please."  That formulation became what "full sentence" meant to her:  "I want _____, please."

So that counts as speaking in a full sentence, but it was fairly limited.  She'd learned the code and was repeating it.  What's happening lately is that she's putting words together in ways that aren't just memorized repetitions.  This isn't to say anything bad about memorized repetitions--they're part of how all of us speak.  Much of our daily communication consists of memorized phrases that we insert because this is where they usually go ("How's it going?" "Alright, how are you?").  Maybelle, in fact, has a lot of phrases like that.  When it comes to jumping or swinging, she'll say, "One more time!" quite competently.  But Maybelle's moving beyond that, which is exciting to see.

The other day she pointed to her left elbow.  "Elbow," she said.

"Yep," I responded.  "That's your elbow."

Then she pointed to her right elbow.  "Other elbow."

"That's right!"

"Two elbows!"

"Wow, yes, ma'am!"

We had a kind of conversation there.  It was really cool.  And I'd never talked to her in that way about her elbows--she wasn't repeating a routine we've been through.

We're seeing a similar phenomenon with the "first, then" formulation.  We do this all the time, and they do it at school, too:  if there's something we need her to do, we often offer her something fun after.  "First wash your hands, then we can snuggle."  She now understands this formulation and how it works, so she uses it for her own purposes.  She knows how much we want her to sit on the potty (another post about that will be coming soon), and she'll use this to get things she wants.  We'll ask her to sit on the potty, and she'll say things like, "First potty, then 'Up with People,'" or "First potty, then Big Red Chicken [what she calls Dora the Explorer]."

And she remembers the bargains we've made.  The other day Biffle was trying to get her to eat some eggs and toast.  She requested yogurt, but he said, "First eat some eggs and toast."  He was hoping to distract her so that she'd have a full meal of eggs and toast, but several minutes in, after she'd eaten bites of the food he was offering, she looked at him and said, "Now yogurt."  We were impressed (both at her memory and at her appropriate use of "now"), so she got her yogurt.

Update suggested by Biffle:
Maybelle's also developing a sense of humor.  When I'm biking around with her, she often touches my elbows and yells, "Go go elbow!"  I have no idea where she got that--I think she made it up.  It's pretty cute.

A more substantial example:   because we are responsible parents, we've taught Maybelle the word "fart."  And let's be honest, because she's related to Biffle, she's able to produce them.  The other day she let one fly, and then announced, "Fart!"  I laughed and agreed.  And then here came another one, and the announcement, "Fart!"  "Yep," I said, laughing harder.  Then paused a moment, looked at me and said, "One more time," and there it was:  the third and final one, with perfect timing.  Now that was seriously good comedy.

Writing retreat

Today and tomorrow I'm taking part in a writing retreat on my campus.  This is a surprisingly cool thing:  each faculty member who's selected gets their own room, with a super-comfortable desk chair and a big empty table.  We get a white board with markers.  We get natural light, snacks and drinks throughout the day, and lunch with all the other faculty members.  And we have to commit to arriving at 8:30am, staying until at least 3:30pm, and not emailing throughout the day.  We're there to write.

We had to apply to take part in this, and it was somewhat competitive.  It's sort of fascinating to me that so many of us wanted to be chosen.  We don't get any money, or any prestige.  What we get is support to write, and accountability.  These things matter.  We've agreed to take part in creating space and time for our writing, so we all take it pretty seriously.

I'm a bit of a compulsive email reader, and I didn't check my email today.  I sat in my very own writing room, and I wrote.  As I said on Twitter this morning, it's like camp for nerdy adults.  I loved it!

In case you're curious, I'm finishing up an essay called "The Inadequacy of 'Choice':  Disability and What's Wrong with Feminist Framings of Reproduction."  Four years from now when it's actually published in a scholarly journal, I'll post a link here so you can read it.

Me and George Will

So far today George Will's op-ed about his son, Jon, has been forwarded to me five times.  Given that I am in the midst of grading and really, really out of touch with the world, I appreciate the fact that I have friends and family members looking out for me.  I'm sort of surprised I haven't gotten it more times, given that Jon Will has Down syndrome, and that's what the article is about.  Tomorrow is Jon Will's 40th birthday.

There's a lot of stuff I don't love about this particular article.  Some of the rhetoric is troublesome:  I resist the word "defect" being used in any context with Down syndrome, and I certainly never use the term "mental retardation" (and neither should any of you readers!  We say intellectual or cognitive disability now).  I think it's interesting that George Will frames his son Jon as imperfect, in a way that he implies his other children aren't.  I'm sure all his children are imperfect, because they're all human.  More importantly, my views of prenatal testing and abortion are quite a bit more complex than George Will's.  I'm no fan of the 90% abortion rate he makes mention of, but I'm also not somebody who sees abortion as the killing of children, and I believe that women must absolutely have the right to control their reproduction.

But the thing that's really interesting is that, because of Down syndrome, I'm actually able to find points of connection with George Will that I suspect I wouldn't find in any other context.  He makes some very nice points that I agree with, as when he says,

In 1972, people with Down syndrome were still commonly called Mongoloids.

Now they are called American citizens.

He also ends his article with the image of Jon at Nationals Park, at a Caps game, "just another man, beer in hand, among equals in the republic of baseball."  As my friend Claire pointed out, this is an image that works against so many of the infantalizing images we have of adults with intellectual disabilities.  I like it.  And as I shared with Claire this morning, one of the very early hopeful pieces we read shortly after Maybelle was born was an article by George Will about Jon, in which he expresses his pride that Jon voted for Bill Clinton.  His son, he made clear, is a person in the world who has his own opinions--opinions which might be radically different than his father's.  It's been nearly four years since Biffle read that piece to me, and I still remember it.

It's so easy to be divided.  It's so easy for us--whatever "us" you want, scholars or thinkers or citizens or folks living in a country together--to get polarized and to stop listening to one another.  We become stereotypes or soundbytes.  I'm grateful for the fact that disability gives me a way to step out of that polarization.

George Will and I have very little in common.  But we're both parents of people with Down syndrome, and I suspect that's enough to open a little crack in the door that would make it possible to talk to one another as people rather than being boxed in by the political stereotypes we have of one another (well, to be frank, I doubt that George Will has that many stereotypes of me, but you know what I mean).

Why Am I the One Digging Ditches?

Granted, in today's flood of media and immediate information, I could find an "expert" to back up just about any opinion I might have. Still, a headline--and the accompanying article--I noticed this morning kind of annoys me.  Here is the text copied and pasted.

America’s last competitive advantage — its ability to innovate — is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system, according to research by Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner. American schools educate to fill children with knowledge — instead they should be focusing on developing students’ innovation skills and motivation to succeed, he says: “Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today knowledge is free. It’s like air, it’s like water. It’s become a commodity… There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.” Knowledge that children are encouraged to soak up in American schools — the memorization of planets, state capitals, the Periodic Table of Elements — can only take students so far. But “skill and will” determine a child’s ability to think outside of the box, he says. Over two year of research involving interviews with executives, college teachers, community leaders, and recent graduates, Wagner defined the skills needed for Americans to stay competitive in an increasingly globalized workforce. As lined out in his book, “The Global Achievement Gap,” that set of core competencies that every student must master before the end of high school is: 

- Critical thinking and problem solving (the ability to ask the right questions) - Collaboration across networks and leading by influence - Agility and adaptability - Initiative and entrepreneurialism - Accessing and analyzing information - Effective written and oral communication - Curiosity and imagination

 For his latest book, “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World,” Wagner has extended his studies to address the problem of how we teach students these skills. He has come to the conclusion that our country’s economic problems are based in its education system.

And here is what I wrote here on the blog a couple of months ago in a post called "Re-thinking":

I think it would be great if we could just jump paradigms as easily as skipping a rope. The "+ one more thing" i wrote of up above is the notion of re-thinking what we teach in primary school. Realistically--and I'm not being silly here--I think we ought to be teaching a lot more critical thinking skills.  

Everyone should be able to read, write and know world history. And we know that as students grow to adulthood they'll gravitate toward whatever field interests them--whether its economics or the law or automobile design or automobile repair or woodworking. But where ever one's proclivities eventually take them, I think every student should be graduating the sixth grade with a degree in creative thought.
The Status Quo should be a laughable notion to them.  

Instead, most of our schools--all of our public schools--are becoming jails, daycares and places devoid of music, art and the concept of craft. That should not be the case. All silliness aside, if there's one place that needs to be radically rethought it's the education an American kid gets between the ages of 6 and 12. If we could wave a peaceful Harry Potter wand over elementary education and have there be as much interest in teachers as in American Idol, and have a kid learn what it means to really see the object they're drawing, recognize the way certain intervals in music vibrate in harmonious and gloriously inharmonious ways, embrace oddity, understand the power and subtlety of language...  

You may say that I'm a dreamer :) but I gotta tell you, I think if we could make our children critical thinkers instead of Memorizers-of-the-Pledge of Allegiance or On-Their-Way-to-College, come 2030 or so, when those kids run the world, they'd take a look at ecological damage and poverty and inflation and warfare and they'd just step back and thoughtfully say, yeah, I think we can make this work....

I'm thinking I need to be a Harvard Innovation Education Fellow, you know?

Thoughts on Elisabeth Badinter's book, The Conflict

A friend--or perhaps a sneaky enemy--gave me a gift the other day:  a 200 year old case clock, or Grandfather's Clock, as they are commonly called.  It has wooden works in it.  It doesn't run, or at least didn't before he gave it to me, but I've had the whole thing apart and have gotten it up to twenty minutes of continuous tick-tock now.   To get even this far I've had to go to the library for several books, spent multiple hours online looking at nerdy horological websites and have become an expert gear-maker (or, to clock nerds: wheel-maker).  The upshot is that I know a whole lot about clocks that I didn't use to know.

Here's one interesting thing I've learned:  back when my particular clock would have been made (an Eli Terry from around the 1800's) the clock maker usually just sold the clockworks.  It was the consumer's responsibility to build the case that went around it.

Now isn't that somethin?  Just think:  200 years ago your average American had the ability to build the case that was to be a Grandfather's clock.  How many people do you know could do the same today?  My guess is probably no one.  Well, you know me.  I can do it because I'm supposed to be an expert or whatever.  But the thing that gets me, is that 200 years ago, no one was an expert at making a clock case. They just knew how to do it because building something like that went along with the skills a person needed to survive.

Alright.  Hold it, you say.  Just what does all this have to do with a book about motherhood and Badinter's book, you ask?  Well, let me go to the dust jacket and supply you with a quick synopsis:

...Badinter...in an explosive new book (The Conflict:  How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women), points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women:  liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural."  Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, and especially breast-feeding--these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home....

Badinter names a reactionary shift that is intensely felt but has not been clearly articulated until now, a shift that America has pioneered....The Conflict is an impassioned cry against an ideal of motherhood that cheats women of their full potential.  

Here's the connection between case clocks and Badinter's book:  I've scanned the book and I have no argument with Badinter's thesis.  Just to keep this short, I'll go ahead and say, yeah, the new "liberal motherhood" has done a disservice to women.  But my question is this:  A disservice concerning what?  Women not realizing their "full potential?"   Whose yard stick is Badinter using?  Sounds like a male one to me:  I must be powerful.  I must be head dude at the office.  I must be successful.  Damn the family, full speed ahead!

I know I'm playing unfair here--after all The Conflict is a smart book asking smart questions--but Badinter is just asking all the wrong, smart ones.  How can we begin to address what's wrong with motherhood as it pertains to career when we haven't even debunked the concept of career.  The book jacket throws out that term potential like we're supposed to know exactly what is meant:  outside the home.  

I'm not gonna get into what gender the person was who was making that clock's case 200 years ago, but I do want to say that whomever it was was engaged in domestic labor.  Domestic labor: that whipping boy/girl of industry.  I find it amazing how the modern notion of "capital" and the supposed value of industrialization have so easily captured our imaginations.  Because of them we haven't noticed our own dwindling skill sets.  We haven't noticed our dependence on things bought and sold.  We haven't noticed--just like Badinter--that success can be measured in ways other than how far we can get by working hand-in-hand with some toxic, numbing process.  In essence,  Badinter has written a book lamenting that women, because of the pressures of modern motherhood, haven't gotten the opportunity to give up numerous valuable skill sets in exchange for a few limited, but specialized ones that would allow her to "realize her potential" as an automaton of industrialized society.