How freaking crazy can you be? No, seriously.
Lots of people dream of living a completely debt-free life. In the absence of being independently wealthy, most people decide to manage debt responsibly by restricting debt to secured debt like loans to purchase a new or used car or a house, debt that raises the income of the person like educational debt and limiting the amount of unsecured debt like credit cards. On a more personal level, people committed to living debt free chose to delay child-bearing until one or both people are in secure careers and often choose to limit their family size. Homes are quite expensive and large families cost more money.
On the other hand, a lot of CP/QF large families live in poverty while idolizing families who live in even more extreme circumstances. A common lament of huge CP/QF families where the mother is reaching the end of her reproductive years is that domestic foster care and adoption has ridiculous requirements like that prospective adoptive families who will be adopting unrelated children can show income over the federal poverty level for their new family size. For new readers, the federal poverty income guidelines in the US are agreed to be absurdly low by people who work in poverty prevention. A good rule of thumb is that most families need at least 200% of the poverty guidelines to live a frugal middle class life - so the US poverty guideline of $20,730 for a family of three should be closer to $42,000. To size this up to QF families, Kimberly at Raising Olives used to complain that their family of 12 kids and two adults couldn't adopt domestically because the family lived on less than $72,620 per year.
Back in 2005, Amy at Raising Arrows wrote a blog post about a family she idolized who had nine kids living in a garage for one year so they could build the home of their dreams. In 2018, I wrote my response to the major reasons I could think of why living in a garage is probably illegal; my more obvious concerns were a lack of exits, too little area of windows, too little square footage per person, infestation prevention issues and the fact that the taxable value of the land is affected by having a second dwelling onsite. It turns out that Amy managed to get a hold of that family and write a follow-up in 2017; I'll refrain from guessing as to why it took 12 years to catch up with them.
Turns out some of my unspoken assumptions were just plain wrong. Silly me - I assumed that living in the garage would start when the family had all of the money set aside to build the house so that the time living in the outbuilding would be limited to a single building season. Oh, boy, was I naive! FIVE YEARS! The family lived in a garage for 5 freaking years!
I'm still shocked and horrified - so I guess I'll start with the size of the garage. The family says that the garage was 24' by 30' and at least partially built to purpose for living in. The square footage is 720 square feet. Now, the 1986 guidelines for safe living spaces stated that the minimum square footage could be calculated by 150 + 100(n-1) so a family of nine would need 150 + 100(8) or 950 square feet minimum.
Now, if I was living in a garage, I would be on like 5 forms of birth control - including "we're not having sex until we get a real house or apartment" followed by 4 other forms. Apparently, I'm crazy because the family happily admits that two children were conceived and born while living in the garage. That pushes the minimum square footage to 1150 feet - but I'm more horrified at the idea of adding two newborns sequentially to a garage home. The family mentions that the time they lived in the garage was extended because of unexpected building costs and high medical bills. I wonder how much of those medical bills were due to two labor and deliveries; childbirth is expensive even when everything goes perfectly.
In terms of exits, the garage did have two external doors that were not garage doors. Assuming the drawing provided by the family was reasonably accurate, the garage was not compliant in terms of emergency window egresses from the bedrooms. Personally, I'd be very worried about exiting from the kids' bedroom in case of a fire. There was one small window, an internal exit towards the main area of the garage and an external exit across the room where the washer, dryer and hot water heater were located. If anything happened involving the washer, dryer or hot water heater, the kids' fastest exit would be compromised.
Speaking of the garage doors, the "front" of the garage included a large standard garage door. This threw me a bit at first; why would a family waste that much wall space on a garage door when they were making plans like building 10 foot ceilings on the garage to make it a workable future temporary home? Then I remembered - the local tax authority would notice in real time if a family wanted to build a second home on a plot. Silly me and my beliefs about obeying civil codes and taxation.
Really, the author of post sums it up better than I can. The 5+ years of living in the garage are great in hindsight. Looking back at my life, I have a lot of memories that are far more fun in hindsight than they were at the time. After all, memories allow me to enjoy the fun, exciting or satisfying bits without reliving the pain, frustration or tedium. For example, I chaperoned a group of teens on a mission trip to Beaver Island when I was around 26. I had lots of fun on the trip - but I also broke my tailbone early in the trip, one of the other chaperones was having what I can only describe as an untreated manic episode, and I was going on slightly less than 5 hours of sleep a night for over a week. My memories are of teaching my small group to pain sets and watching sunsets over the lake - not the pain of hiking miles each day with a light pack with a broken tailbone.
Be cautious of taking advice from people who enjoyed an experience only in hindsight.
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Friday, October 12, 2018
Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter 10 - Part Three
Subbing for a few middle school classrooms last week brought back memories of how new, wonderful and completely exasperating the waves of adolescent emotion are. Watching and dealing with pre-teens and young teenagers was rather tiring for me - but that's nothing compared to the exhaustion that comes from managing the sudden thirst for independence that hits right around the time that young people first look at another person in their age group and think, "I really want to kiss them!" One of my strongest memories was of a substitute teacher we often had. Most of the other students didn't like her because she was rather strict, but I liked her because she generally brought a knitting or crocheting project to keep her hands busy. In other words, pre-teen Mel saw a kindred spirit. One of my compatriots asked her if she missed being in junior high. Without missing a stitch, she laughed and said "Never. No one could pay me enough to be a junior high school student again. I know well meaning people are always telling you that you have it made - no job, free schooling, no worries - but I found junior high to be one of the most frustrating and least enjoyable experiences of my life. High school was better. College was much better - but being an employed adult was far better than any of those times." Hearing that was such a relief to me! I wanted to do more, to know more, to be more - but I didn't know if I was ever going to feel less haphazard, lost and angst-ridden. What if the rest of my life I kept feeling like I did at 11 or 12 or 13 - but picked up more responsibilities? Would I ever be able to talk to a boy without turning beet-red and alternating between awkward silence and a torrent of words? Would a boy ever like me? Would I find a boy that I liked - and who liked me?
Everything felt completely overwhelming at the time - but looking back 25 years later I have to admit that the substitute teacher's statement that junior high sucks was dead-on. Academics got harder as time went on, but I also became much more skilled in logic, mathematics, critical thinking, research, writing and speaking so the overall process was easier. Working at a job did bring different demands, but even being a bagger-utility-worker-janitor brought a feeling of satisfaction and spending cash. As I became more skilled at communicating with boys I was attracted to, I realized in hindsight that I probably could have gone on "dates" - such as they were - with 4-5 of my classmates in junior high if I had recognized the fact they were attracted to me. The biggest breakthrough I made in my life was realizing that if I avoided romantic relationships to prevent the pain of a broken heart, I'd end up suffering more pain by closing down otherwise healthy, happy relationships. I'd be paying interest on a debt that never came due. Equally important was the realization that broken hearts heal. I've had more crushes than I can remember, more first dates than I can remember easily, and a handful of long-term relationships. Obviously, all of those except one ended. Sometimes I was crushed, but the pain does fade over time.
Presumably if you ask Steven and Teri Maxwell or Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin to honestly recount their romantic experiences prior to marrying their spouse, you'd get a story not dissimilar to mine. Lots of crushes, some dating experience, dating your future spouse and eventually marrying your spouse is a pretty standard trope. And yet, they state that the dating process has ruined marriages beyond repair. They've created an alternate, non-standard form of romantic pairing known as "courtship" that is supposed to protect the hearts and bodies of their kids prior to marriage - but the track record on protecting hearts, protecting bodies and finding suitable marriage partners is shaky at best. The Maxwells have married off four of their sons, leaving one son and three daughters unmarried. The Botkins have fared worse with three married sons along with two unmarried sons and two unmarried daughters. Sons have a better chance at marrying for a few reasons. Males are allowed to earn a living which takes them out of the family enclave into the wider world where they can meet eligible women. Males are allowed to initiate courtships without the involvement of their families of origin. The reproductive penalty of age is much weaker for men than women so that a CP/QF man who decides to marry at age 35 could still have a very large family if he marries a woman in her early twenties. For example, Sarah Maxwell's brother Christopher married a woman nearly 10 years younger than him when he was 32 and they currently have 5 children. Meanwhile, Sarah is unmarried at 36.
I bring this up because the Maxwells use the end of Chapter 10 to harp on the importance of deciding in advance how unmarried children should deal with conversations with people of the opposite gender. The Maxwells try to seem impartial, but based on the stories they chose to share, they show a tendency towards preventing communication between girls and boys. Let's move into the quotes:
The first memorable fact in this quote for me was the fact that the guidelines that my husband, myself, and everyone I know from our generation who is happily married was completely skipped over. My parents didn't worry about me talking to boys. I could initiate the conversation or the guy could. They trusted that my crushes of my tween and early teen years wouldn't kill me - and emotional purity wasn't on their radar. Actually, it was barely on anyone's radar since "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" wasn't written until 1997 when I was a 9th or 10th grader.
The second interesting idea for me was how absolutely silent our junior high years would have been if only guys were allowed to initiate conversations with girls. Looking back, there were two...perhaps three.... guys in my class of 34 6th graders who might have been brave enough to start a conversation with a girl. Not letting girls start conversations with boys is crazily archaic - and I'm pretty sure it would make a church youth group an ice-cold war zone with all of the girls staring wistfully at boys who are mostly oblivious to the romantic longings of the boys. Since the girls can't talk to the boys to realize that the boys are just not that into them yet, the girls would end up jockeying for position with other girls to catch the boy of their dreams.
CP/QF land has a truism - no matter how crazy one idea is, there is someone who holds a more extreme idea that make the first crazy idea seem sane. Teaching daughters to let guys lead a conversation seems surprisingly sane compared to making them wait to talk to boys until the teens are courtship age....or actively in a courtship. I'm assuming most families put off courtship until a teen is of marriageable age so I'm thinking there are families that instruct their teenagers to avoid conversations with the opposite sex until age 18-20. For the Maxwell males, courtship age is based mainly on their ability to own a home outright which means they can't court until they are in their early 20's. Many people put off dating seriously until at least their early twenties - but I've never met anyone who avoided conversations with the opposite sex before then. I'm sure people of certain groups who prefer extremely structured arranged or semi-arranged marriages do that, but I've never known someone from one of those groups well.
Putting off any conversation with the opposite sex until a young adult is in a courtship sounds like a recipe for disaster for fundamentalist Christians. The leaders creating the courtship models are trying to force the most extreme form of parental involvement available in arranged marriages along with highly chaperoned interactions with the opposite sex without changing the US narrative that people fall in love first and get married second. Let's write out what that looks like in the ideal outcome: two extremely sheltered young people who have had very little experience outside of their own family system are talking to each other trying to decide if they should get married. That would be insanely awkward at best - and a total train wreck at worst.
For any poor deluded souls who think like I do, the Maxwells spell out the possible consequences:
The Maxwells must have much looser standards for physical intimacy than I do. I can safely say that I've talked to a few hundred thousand men in my life between school, church and, oh yeah, working as a cashier/bagger/pharmacy clerk/ men's department clerk for eight years. Of all of those men, I probably went on dates with 15 of them total and have had sex with one of them. In other words, talking with a guy - even an attractive, funny, smart, kind guy - is not even associated with sexual activity in my life let alone a causal effect.
The emotional purity component is even stupider. Why are romantic attachment the only form of relationships that "give pieces of your heart away"? The only time I've felt like I lost a chunk of my heart is when I had my younger brother die and when my best friend died. I have fallen deeply in love with men other than my husband and the break-up of those relationships hurt - but even that pain paled in comparison to losing a sibling and a friend who was like a sister to me.
I love my husband in a way that is similar to and yet completely different than the ways I loved other men. We had that whole infatuated-walking-on-air-he's-the-bestest-person-ever phase that I've had with other men - but my husband is the only person I've built a life with. We own a home together. We've weathered career changes together. We've cared for elderly relatives together. We produced an amazing child whom we are raising together. None of those life-giving activities have been undermined by the fact that we had kissed other people (and each other) before we married.
Our last vacation together before our son was born was a trip up to Mackinac Island. We had both been there previously with other people we were dating - and our trip together was phenomenal! Being up their gave us a chance to share all of our previous memories with each other and create new ones. Awesome new memories like trying to help a guy in a rented surrey get his understandably confused horse to turn left. See, the guy was reining his horse in and holding the reins out to the left which made the horse stop while failing to signal the horse to go left. We explained that he needed to release the reins so the horse could move its head, then gently pull the left rein back so the horse could move her head to the left and her body would follow. My husband and I started encouraging the horse to move left by talking calmly, but firmly to her like "Hey, now, boss* now. Let's go left, girlie. There you go. Goooood, boss. Gooood, boss" while pointing left. The horse looked relieved like "Oh, Thank you, Horse God for sending these nice people to help the weird stranger to stop pulling my head back." The horse was easing into a nice left turn when the driver decided to pull back on the reins again causing the horse to prop to a stop. We wished him a nice day and wandered off since we only had so many times we were willing to help someone who wasn't listening to directions :-).
Guess what? That's a unique memory that I share with my husband that is completely different from my memories of other trips to Mackinac. Corollary: If I am widowed or divorced someday, I may well remarry. Visiting Mackinac with my second spouse would be equally awesome because we'd create our own memories separate from our previous relationships.
I'm so over this EmoPure crap.
In case there was any question about where the Maxwells fall on the spectrum, they included this lovely guideline from some other family shared with them.
*blinks*
Here's a conversation that's never happened to me in 8 years of customer service:
Me: "Hello! Did you find everything you needed today?"
Customer: "I sure did! You are so great!"
Me: "That's great. Can I interest you in a fountain pop?"
Customer: "I love you so much! I want to spend my life with you!"
Me: "......so that's a "no" on the pop, I guess."
Customer: "Ha, ha, ha! No pop - just a lifelong romance with you!"
Me: "Huh. I could do worse, I guess. Let's have sex. I'm scheduled for a break in 20 minutes."
Yeah, that's palpably absurd - but it's the type of situation that the Maxwells and Maxwellite followers imply will happen if Morgan is allowed to give out tracts to men or Isaac answers a woman's questions at his family's business. I'm starting to believe that the CP/QF folk have much lower boundaries for sexual activity to occur since they live in dread fear that their kids will have sex with random business customers if left to their own devices.
Good news: The end of this book is rapidly approaching!
*I'm really not a horse person, but I'm aware the term "boss" is supposed to be used for cows, not horses. Since I spend most of my time around cows, "boss" just slipped out. Ironically, most of the people who staff stables during the busy season on Mackinac Island are ex-Amish or Mennonites who speak Pennsylvania Dutch so the horse visibly relaxed when I said "boss" because the professional teamsters pronounce "horse" as "hoss"....so from the horse's point of view I must know what I was doing.
Everything felt completely overwhelming at the time - but looking back 25 years later I have to admit that the substitute teacher's statement that junior high sucks was dead-on. Academics got harder as time went on, but I also became much more skilled in logic, mathematics, critical thinking, research, writing and speaking so the overall process was easier. Working at a job did bring different demands, but even being a bagger-utility-worker-janitor brought a feeling of satisfaction and spending cash. As I became more skilled at communicating with boys I was attracted to, I realized in hindsight that I probably could have gone on "dates" - such as they were - with 4-5 of my classmates in junior high if I had recognized the fact they were attracted to me. The biggest breakthrough I made in my life was realizing that if I avoided romantic relationships to prevent the pain of a broken heart, I'd end up suffering more pain by closing down otherwise healthy, happy relationships. I'd be paying interest on a debt that never came due. Equally important was the realization that broken hearts heal. I've had more crushes than I can remember, more first dates than I can remember easily, and a handful of long-term relationships. Obviously, all of those except one ended. Sometimes I was crushed, but the pain does fade over time.
Presumably if you ask Steven and Teri Maxwell or Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin to honestly recount their romantic experiences prior to marrying their spouse, you'd get a story not dissimilar to mine. Lots of crushes, some dating experience, dating your future spouse and eventually marrying your spouse is a pretty standard trope. And yet, they state that the dating process has ruined marriages beyond repair. They've created an alternate, non-standard form of romantic pairing known as "courtship" that is supposed to protect the hearts and bodies of their kids prior to marriage - but the track record on protecting hearts, protecting bodies and finding suitable marriage partners is shaky at best. The Maxwells have married off four of their sons, leaving one son and three daughters unmarried. The Botkins have fared worse with three married sons along with two unmarried sons and two unmarried daughters. Sons have a better chance at marrying for a few reasons. Males are allowed to earn a living which takes them out of the family enclave into the wider world where they can meet eligible women. Males are allowed to initiate courtships without the involvement of their families of origin. The reproductive penalty of age is much weaker for men than women so that a CP/QF man who decides to marry at age 35 could still have a very large family if he marries a woman in her early twenties. For example, Sarah Maxwell's brother Christopher married a woman nearly 10 years younger than him when he was 32 and they currently have 5 children. Meanwhile, Sarah is unmarried at 36.
I bring this up because the Maxwells use the end of Chapter 10 to harp on the importance of deciding in advance how unmarried children should deal with conversations with people of the opposite gender. The Maxwells try to seem impartial, but based on the stories they chose to share, they show a tendency towards preventing communication between girls and boys. Let's move into the quotes:
We encourage families to discuss and to set guidelines for boy/ girl conversations. Some think nothing of girls initiating conversations with boys or vice versa. Other say that they shouldn't be allowed until the young people are ready for courtship. Some families only want their children involved in conversations with the opposite gender once a courtship is started. (pg. 170)
The first memorable fact in this quote for me was the fact that the guidelines that my husband, myself, and everyone I know from our generation who is happily married was completely skipped over. My parents didn't worry about me talking to boys. I could initiate the conversation or the guy could. They trusted that my crushes of my tween and early teen years wouldn't kill me - and emotional purity wasn't on their radar. Actually, it was barely on anyone's radar since "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" wasn't written until 1997 when I was a 9th or 10th grader.
The second interesting idea for me was how absolutely silent our junior high years would have been if only guys were allowed to initiate conversations with girls. Looking back, there were two...perhaps three.... guys in my class of 34 6th graders who might have been brave enough to start a conversation with a girl. Not letting girls start conversations with boys is crazily archaic - and I'm pretty sure it would make a church youth group an ice-cold war zone with all of the girls staring wistfully at boys who are mostly oblivious to the romantic longings of the boys. Since the girls can't talk to the boys to realize that the boys are just not that into them yet, the girls would end up jockeying for position with other girls to catch the boy of their dreams.
CP/QF land has a truism - no matter how crazy one idea is, there is someone who holds a more extreme idea that make the first crazy idea seem sane. Teaching daughters to let guys lead a conversation seems surprisingly sane compared to making them wait to talk to boys until the teens are courtship age....or actively in a courtship. I'm assuming most families put off courtship until a teen is of marriageable age so I'm thinking there are families that instruct their teenagers to avoid conversations with the opposite sex until age 18-20. For the Maxwell males, courtship age is based mainly on their ability to own a home outright which means they can't court until they are in their early 20's. Many people put off dating seriously until at least their early twenties - but I've never met anyone who avoided conversations with the opposite sex before then. I'm sure people of certain groups who prefer extremely structured arranged or semi-arranged marriages do that, but I've never known someone from one of those groups well.
Putting off any conversation with the opposite sex until a young adult is in a courtship sounds like a recipe for disaster for fundamentalist Christians. The leaders creating the courtship models are trying to force the most extreme form of parental involvement available in arranged marriages along with highly chaperoned interactions with the opposite sex without changing the US narrative that people fall in love first and get married second. Let's write out what that looks like in the ideal outcome: two extremely sheltered young people who have had very little experience outside of their own family system are talking to each other trying to decide if they should get married. That would be insanely awkward at best - and a total train wreck at worst.
For any poor deluded souls who think like I do, the Maxwells spell out the possible consequences:
Please realize that there can be dangers with boy / girl conversations. While it starts innocently, heart attachments can easily grow. That is a total unknown when of the first conversations occur. Many grieving parents have come to us when a child has become emotionally and then sometimes physically involved. That could have been avoided if the family had boy/girl conversation policies in place and adhered to. (pg. 171)
The Maxwells must have much looser standards for physical intimacy than I do. I can safely say that I've talked to a few hundred thousand men in my life between school, church and, oh yeah, working as a cashier/bagger/pharmacy clerk/ men's department clerk for eight years. Of all of those men, I probably went on dates with 15 of them total and have had sex with one of them. In other words, talking with a guy - even an attractive, funny, smart, kind guy - is not even associated with sexual activity in my life let alone a causal effect.
The emotional purity component is even stupider. Why are romantic attachment the only form of relationships that "give pieces of your heart away"? The only time I've felt like I lost a chunk of my heart is when I had my younger brother die and when my best friend died. I have fallen deeply in love with men other than my husband and the break-up of those relationships hurt - but even that pain paled in comparison to losing a sibling and a friend who was like a sister to me.
I love my husband in a way that is similar to and yet completely different than the ways I loved other men. We had that whole infatuated-walking-on-air-he's-the-bestest-person-ever phase that I've had with other men - but my husband is the only person I've built a life with. We own a home together. We've weathered career changes together. We've cared for elderly relatives together. We produced an amazing child whom we are raising together. None of those life-giving activities have been undermined by the fact that we had kissed other people (and each other) before we married.
Our last vacation together before our son was born was a trip up to Mackinac Island. We had both been there previously with other people we were dating - and our trip together was phenomenal! Being up their gave us a chance to share all of our previous memories with each other and create new ones. Awesome new memories like trying to help a guy in a rented surrey get his understandably confused horse to turn left. See, the guy was reining his horse in and holding the reins out to the left which made the horse stop while failing to signal the horse to go left. We explained that he needed to release the reins so the horse could move its head, then gently pull the left rein back so the horse could move her head to the left and her body would follow. My husband and I started encouraging the horse to move left by talking calmly, but firmly to her like "Hey, now, boss* now. Let's go left, girlie. There you go. Goooood, boss. Gooood, boss" while pointing left. The horse looked relieved like "Oh, Thank you, Horse God for sending these nice people to help the weird stranger to stop pulling my head back." The horse was easing into a nice left turn when the driver decided to pull back on the reins again causing the horse to prop to a stop. We wished him a nice day and wandered off since we only had so many times we were willing to help someone who wasn't listening to directions :-).
Guess what? That's a unique memory that I share with my husband that is completely different from my memories of other trips to Mackinac. Corollary: If I am widowed or divorced someday, I may well remarry. Visiting Mackinac with my second spouse would be equally awesome because we'd create our own memories separate from our previous relationships.
I'm so over this EmoPure crap.
In case there was any question about where the Maxwells fall on the spectrum, they included this lovely guideline from some other family shared with them.
Here's an example one family shared with us on the boundaries they place on the boy / girl conversations for their family. " When we hand out tracts or do any ministry, we always pair the children. Even in business, we try to have Isaac talk with a male customers and Morgan with the female customers. We know there could be danger with lengthy conversations with those of the opposite gender." (pg. 171)
*blinks*
Here's a conversation that's never happened to me in 8 years of customer service:
Me: "Hello! Did you find everything you needed today?"
Customer: "I sure did! You are so great!"
Me: "That's great. Can I interest you in a fountain pop?"
Customer: "I love you so much! I want to spend my life with you!"
Me: "......so that's a "no" on the pop, I guess."
Customer: "Ha, ha, ha! No pop - just a lifelong romance with you!"
Me: "Huh. I could do worse, I guess. Let's have sex. I'm scheduled for a break in 20 minutes."
Yeah, that's palpably absurd - but it's the type of situation that the Maxwells and Maxwellite followers imply will happen if Morgan is allowed to give out tracts to men or Isaac answers a woman's questions at his family's business. I'm starting to believe that the CP/QF folk have much lower boundaries for sexual activity to occur since they live in dread fear that their kids will have sex with random business customers if left to their own devices.
Good news: The end of this book is rapidly approaching!
*I'm really not a horse person, but I'm aware the term "boss" is supposed to be used for cows, not horses. Since I spend most of my time around cows, "boss" just slipped out. Ironically, most of the people who staff stables during the busy season on Mackinac Island are ex-Amish or Mennonites who speak Pennsylvania Dutch so the horse visibly relaxed when I said "boss" because the professional teamsters pronounce "horse" as "hoss"....so from the horse's point of view I must know what I was doing.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Ten - Part Two
Steven and Teri Maxwell's book "Making Great Conversationalists" offers parents worried about their children's speaking skills a fool-proof way of teaching their kids to be brilliant speakers. That's the premise of the book - but I'm wondering by this point if the real purpose of the book is to raise a generation of children as socially isolated as the Maxwell offspring are. After all, the main themes in the book so far are "ignore nonverbal cues from other people", "demand information of the other person" and "prattle on about topics of interest to your family". If a kid has any friends around the same age as them, the next section of the chapter is filled with pieces of advice that should drive away their friends within days.
Topically, the chapter has covered naturally quiet kids, wanting to talk to kids their age instead of adults or "littles", the use of filler words, and angry responses from adults who don't appreciate being lectured to by 15-year olds. This chunk teaches us about pride and shyness, people who interrupt, overly talkative people, mocking, criticism, gossip, crude words, and inappropriate questions. I feel compelled to point out that these topics could be arranged thematically or in order of severity instead of being mixed together like a salad.
Let's discuss pride and shyness first. Obviously, in CP/QF land, any trait that is not attractive to parents is always rooted in some big shortcoming in the kid's personality. To me, the logical issue behind shyness is anxiety. Talking to someone you don't know well can be anxiety provoking for adults; it's even more nerve-racking for kids since this is a new skill. CP/QF homeschool super-sheltered kids are at even higher risk for this because they don't get the conversational skills practice that traditionally schooled kids do when placed in a classroom of 15-30 peers and left to their own devices. In the Maxwell world, the besetting sin that causes shyness is pride. On the positive side, the Maxwells skip bashing shy kids for being prideful after the first sentence. On the much more negative side, the Maxwells advocate pointing out shy children and how hard they are to talk to. From that disturbing habit, kids are supposed to decide that they don't want to act like that shy kid and start talking. There's no data to support this idea - not even a Maxwell story - and I'm highly skeptical it would work. As a shy kid, I'd be more likely to take comfort in the fact that other people are shy too and that our combined shyness didn't cause the world to end. When a reformed-shy kid meets a shy kid, the Maxwells recommend the following course of action:
I really doubt blurting out a personal testimony about God's power in helping a person overcome shyness is going to matter at all to the under-5 crowd where shyness is most noticeable. For kids older than that, there's a definite risk of offending them since the Maxwells are pretty extreme in their condemnation of shyness. A confounding issue is that not everyone is highly social and very few people are open to a conversation at all times. As an adult, I'm quite social once I've gotten the lay of the land at a new location. When I first arrive in a new situation, though, I tend to hang back and wait to see what the social norms of the group are. If the group is chatty, I'll chat. If the group is quieter, I can be quiet, too. Assuming that everyone and anyone is willing and able to chat with a Maxwellian follower simply because the Maxwellian follower wants to talk is absurd and self-centered. The Maxwells, however, throw it back as a sign of sin in the other person:
I agree with the Maxwells that not talking all the time is a form of self-love. I view self-love as a good, nay necessary, thing! The Golden Rule is to love your neighbor as you love yourself - so clearly there is an assumption that we care for ourselves and make choices that are good for ourselves. There is a different solution to the problem of trying to talk to someone who is not responsive: asking the person if they want to talk or not. That's respectful of both people and acknowledges that the other person has agency. The current Maxwell stance is far too self-important and too self-centered since there is never a point where kids are taught to be respectful of other people's wishes, wants or desires if those cravings are to avoid conversation with a Maxwell.
The next topic crams avoiding mocking, criticism and gossip into a single page. For me, I clump mocking and negative gossiping into the category of discussions I avoid - but some gossip is positive and I welcome that! I'm not comfortable with a blanket condemnation of criticism. People learn to look at the world around them and see ways in which the world comes up short. Criticism is simply recognizing that mismatch and thinking of ways to rectify it. Constructive criticism from administrators, other teachers and students greatly improved my teaching skills. Similarly, my husband and I give each other feedback on a wide variety of domestic matters. Women and children in CP/QF land are disproportionately affected by lack of power. One way to change that is to teach children how to provide constructive criticism at appropriate times. For example, complaining that a field trip sucks is not very helpful because the complaint is very non-specific. On the other hand, saying that having to wait for lunch until 2pm when lunch is usually at 12 noon makes going to the zoo less fun is constructive criticism. Well, I've now devoted more words to types of criticism than the Maxwells have so I should get back on track. The Maxwells close by giving an example of how a kid could bring a conversation that has veered into mocking back to safe territory:
I can't speak for Danny, but I'd honestly be less bothered by people being rude about my clothing than I would someone stopping the conversation by declaring that my family is poor. At best, I'd be embarrassed by the public declaration that we were poor. At worst, my defender has just said that the only defense for my clothing is dire poverty. What if I just like that outfit or outfits? Personally, I think the kid would have better luck if they said "This is boring. Let's talk about ..." and inserted any topic other than Danny's clothes.
By the way, that quote is completely messing with my understanding of what the verb "to convict" means. I thought it meant to have a deep and abiding set of principles about a behavior - but I don't see how that definition works in the quote. I assume the writer meant that the kid was convicted talking about Danny's clothing was rude....but that's not clear from the quote alone. I ask again that the verb form of "to convict" be allowed to simply stand for judicial proceedings.
In the next topic, the Maxwells recommend talking about God a lot or using the term "blessed" as a hedge against hearing crude or even curse words. The Maxwells' rationale is that doing that will remind the other speakers to police their own words. I can see where they are going with that - but this is a method that can backfire massively depending on the audience. Personally, I watch my own speech and let other people do the same. I avoid cursing in front of children and in business situations. If I'm around other adults, I swear occasionally. My live-and-let-live attitude is unknown to the Maxwells who gift us with this gem for use when cursing starts:
Allow me to tell a quick story.
At my college, all student organizations were required to have a student senate member who would attend monthly meetings for voting on items of varying importance to receive funding. This requirement was ragingly unpopular and finding members of clubs to be the senate rep was like pulling teeth. My junior year I missed the organizational meeting of Tri-Beta because I had my wisdom teeth pulled and was voted in absentia to the position of senate rep.
I realized when I went to the student senate that there were about 5 members who enjoyed being a part of the senate and 40-odd reps who were either bored, checked-out or seething with rage. The way this silent disinterest was shown was that most reps would vote "Abstain" instead of "Yes" or "No".
After a few months, the governmental board pitched a fit when a vote on some minor issue had 20 "Yes" votes, and 0 "No" votes with 20 abstentions. One of the board members went on a verbal rampage about how reps were failing to do their moral duty....that abstain should only be used if there is a conflicting interest....failing the college and clubs.....I don't really remember the rest because I was really irritated at the amount of time being wasted.
We moved on to the next topic of minimal importance. A vote was taken. The measure passed with 10 "Yes" votes, "0" No votes, and 30 "Abstentions". Pitching a hissy fit about abstentions caused 10 reps who normally voted "yes" or "no" to abstain with no people moving into the voting category.
Similarly, I probably wouldn't swear in front of a random stranger who dropped God into every sentence. If said stranger started yelling at me about Jesus not wanting to hear swear words, though, I'd be dropping F-bombs like they were going out of style.
Of course, using the "Jesus doesn't wanna hear swears" will also greatly reduce the number of conversations that kid will be in once they've reached puberty, fyi.
Finally, the Maxwells share how to free a kid from tricky conversations where the kids are lured into theological conundrums like this:
Surprisingly, my first irritation with this question comes from the Maxwells' cavalier dismissal of genuine theological questions. American Fundamental Christianity has a tendency to dismiss out-of-hand both the study of theology and the history of the Christian churches outside of their own. Both of those questions were not originally asked as questions to trap poorly educated Christians, but rather as ways of trying to deepen our understanding of religion as it interacted with science and logic. The question about Adam is trying to reconcile a scientific understanding of how the umbilicus forms with the mythical understanding of the Book of Genesis. And honestly, I'm not sure why that question would trip up a young Earth creationist since their answer is "no". My answer would be "I doubt that was an important point in the story." The question about God and a rock is trying to understand how God could be omnipotent in a physical world. I don't have a great answer for that one either - and I have no problems saying so.
I prefer to appear ignorant or backwards over assuming that everyone else has a hidden agenda.
Man, I'd be really hesitant to send a Maxwell out with a fall-back of "Quick! Ask pointed questions about the other person's salvation status if you are flustered". I suspect - or perhaps I hope - that the Maxwells would be able to handle pushback against their own salvation status - but could they handle a fast pivot where the stranger points out that the Maxwells cannot know the salvation status of the stranger without blaspheming? After all, the Maxwells are not God and do not know what God's plans are for us all. That assuming that someone else is unsaved due to external features is exactly what Jesus reproached the Pharisees for?
There is one more post from this chapter because the Maxwells decide to handle the really tricky topic of boy-girl conversations. Because apparently conversations between boys and girls can be...really....tricky.
Topically, the chapter has covered naturally quiet kids, wanting to talk to kids their age instead of adults or "littles", the use of filler words, and angry responses from adults who don't appreciate being lectured to by 15-year olds. This chunk teaches us about pride and shyness, people who interrupt, overly talkative people, mocking, criticism, gossip, crude words, and inappropriate questions. I feel compelled to point out that these topics could be arranged thematically or in order of severity instead of being mixed together like a salad.
Let's discuss pride and shyness first. Obviously, in CP/QF land, any trait that is not attractive to parents is always rooted in some big shortcoming in the kid's personality. To me, the logical issue behind shyness is anxiety. Talking to someone you don't know well can be anxiety provoking for adults; it's even more nerve-racking for kids since this is a new skill. CP/QF homeschool super-sheltered kids are at even higher risk for this because they don't get the conversational skills practice that traditionally schooled kids do when placed in a classroom of 15-30 peers and left to their own devices. In the Maxwell world, the besetting sin that causes shyness is pride. On the positive side, the Maxwells skip bashing shy kids for being prideful after the first sentence. On the much more negative side, the Maxwells advocate pointing out shy children and how hard they are to talk to. From that disturbing habit, kids are supposed to decide that they don't want to act like that shy kid and start talking. There's no data to support this idea - not even a Maxwell story - and I'm highly skeptical it would work. As a shy kid, I'd be more likely to take comfort in the fact that other people are shy too and that our combined shyness didn't cause the world to end. When a reformed-shy kid meets a shy kid, the Maxwells recommend the following course of action:
If your child has struggled with shyness, he might be able to encourage the other child that he too was shy once, but God has helped him overcome it. He could share how happy is to be beyond that shyness. (pg. 166)
I really doubt blurting out a personal testimony about God's power in helping a person overcome shyness is going to matter at all to the under-5 crowd where shyness is most noticeable. For kids older than that, there's a definite risk of offending them since the Maxwells are pretty extreme in their condemnation of shyness. A confounding issue is that not everyone is highly social and very few people are open to a conversation at all times. As an adult, I'm quite social once I've gotten the lay of the land at a new location. When I first arrive in a new situation, though, I tend to hang back and wait to see what the social norms of the group are. If the group is chatty, I'll chat. If the group is quieter, I can be quiet, too. Assuming that everyone and anyone is willing and able to chat with a Maxwellian follower simply because the Maxwellian follower wants to talk is absurd and self-centered. The Maxwells, however, throw it back as a sign of sin in the other person:
Not speaking to someone, or ignoring them, indicate self-love. Your child appropriate response is not to be offended, but to pray for the other person, and to continue to try to break through communication barriers. (pg. 166)
I agree with the Maxwells that not talking all the time is a form of self-love. I view self-love as a good, nay necessary, thing! The Golden Rule is to love your neighbor as you love yourself - so clearly there is an assumption that we care for ourselves and make choices that are good for ourselves. There is a different solution to the problem of trying to talk to someone who is not responsive: asking the person if they want to talk or not. That's respectful of both people and acknowledges that the other person has agency. The current Maxwell stance is far too self-important and too self-centered since there is never a point where kids are taught to be respectful of other people's wishes, wants or desires if those cravings are to avoid conversation with a Maxwell.
The next topic crams avoiding mocking, criticism and gossip into a single page. For me, I clump mocking and negative gossiping into the category of discussions I avoid - but some gossip is positive and I welcome that! I'm not comfortable with a blanket condemnation of criticism. People learn to look at the world around them and see ways in which the world comes up short. Criticism is simply recognizing that mismatch and thinking of ways to rectify it. Constructive criticism from administrators, other teachers and students greatly improved my teaching skills. Similarly, my husband and I give each other feedback on a wide variety of domestic matters. Women and children in CP/QF land are disproportionately affected by lack of power. One way to change that is to teach children how to provide constructive criticism at appropriate times. For example, complaining that a field trip sucks is not very helpful because the complaint is very non-specific. On the other hand, saying that having to wait for lunch until 2pm when lunch is usually at 12 noon makes going to the zoo less fun is constructive criticism. Well, I've now devoted more words to types of criticism than the Maxwells have so I should get back on track. The Maxwells close by giving an example of how a kid could bring a conversation that has veered into mocking back to safe territory:
For example, a child might say something like this: "Hey, guys, I'm convicted about the way we are talking about what Danny wears. Maybe his family doesn't have money to buy him nicer things." (pg. 168)
I can't speak for Danny, but I'd honestly be less bothered by people being rude about my clothing than I would someone stopping the conversation by declaring that my family is poor. At best, I'd be embarrassed by the public declaration that we were poor. At worst, my defender has just said that the only defense for my clothing is dire poverty. What if I just like that outfit or outfits? Personally, I think the kid would have better luck if they said "This is boring. Let's talk about ..." and inserted any topic other than Danny's clothes.
By the way, that quote is completely messing with my understanding of what the verb "to convict" means. I thought it meant to have a deep and abiding set of principles about a behavior - but I don't see how that definition works in the quote. I assume the writer meant that the kid was convicted talking about Danny's clothing was rude....but that's not clear from the quote alone. I ask again that the verb form of "to convict" be allowed to simply stand for judicial proceedings.
In the next topic, the Maxwells recommend talking about God a lot or using the term "blessed" as a hedge against hearing crude or even curse words. The Maxwells' rationale is that doing that will remind the other speakers to police their own words. I can see where they are going with that - but this is a method that can backfire massively depending on the audience. Personally, I watch my own speech and let other people do the same. I avoid cursing in front of children and in business situations. If I'm around other adults, I swear occasionally. My live-and-let-live attitude is unknown to the Maxwells who gift us with this gem for use when cursing starts:
If that doesn't work, your child can interrupt the other person and explain that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior, and therefore, he doesn't want to hear those words. It is possible your child might have to choose to leave the conversation. (pg. 169)
Allow me to tell a quick story.
At my college, all student organizations were required to have a student senate member who would attend monthly meetings for voting on items of varying importance to receive funding. This requirement was ragingly unpopular and finding members of clubs to be the senate rep was like pulling teeth. My junior year I missed the organizational meeting of Tri-Beta because I had my wisdom teeth pulled and was voted in absentia to the position of senate rep.
I realized when I went to the student senate that there were about 5 members who enjoyed being a part of the senate and 40-odd reps who were either bored, checked-out or seething with rage. The way this silent disinterest was shown was that most reps would vote "Abstain" instead of "Yes" or "No".
After a few months, the governmental board pitched a fit when a vote on some minor issue had 20 "Yes" votes, and 0 "No" votes with 20 abstentions. One of the board members went on a verbal rampage about how reps were failing to do their moral duty....that abstain should only be used if there is a conflicting interest....failing the college and clubs.....I don't really remember the rest because I was really irritated at the amount of time being wasted.
We moved on to the next topic of minimal importance. A vote was taken. The measure passed with 10 "Yes" votes, "0" No votes, and 30 "Abstentions". Pitching a hissy fit about abstentions caused 10 reps who normally voted "yes" or "no" to abstain with no people moving into the voting category.
Similarly, I probably wouldn't swear in front of a random stranger who dropped God into every sentence. If said stranger started yelling at me about Jesus not wanting to hear swear words, though, I'd be dropping F-bombs like they were going out of style.
Of course, using the "Jesus doesn't wanna hear swears" will also greatly reduce the number of conversations that kid will be in once they've reached puberty, fyi.
Finally, the Maxwells share how to free a kid from tricky conversations where the kids are lured into theological conundrums like this:
When someone is trying to trick your child with foolish questions such as "Did Adam have a navel?" or "Can God make a rock so big he can't pick it up?" That individual has a hidden agenda. (....) Your child could say something like, "To be honest, that's a question that one doesn't really need to answer. The more important question to be able to answer, though, is where will you spend eternity? Have you thought about that question? Do you know the answer to it?"(pg. 170)
Surprisingly, my first irritation with this question comes from the Maxwells' cavalier dismissal of genuine theological questions. American Fundamental Christianity has a tendency to dismiss out-of-hand both the study of theology and the history of the Christian churches outside of their own. Both of those questions were not originally asked as questions to trap poorly educated Christians, but rather as ways of trying to deepen our understanding of religion as it interacted with science and logic. The question about Adam is trying to reconcile a scientific understanding of how the umbilicus forms with the mythical understanding of the Book of Genesis. And honestly, I'm not sure why that question would trip up a young Earth creationist since their answer is "no". My answer would be "I doubt that was an important point in the story." The question about God and a rock is trying to understand how God could be omnipotent in a physical world. I don't have a great answer for that one either - and I have no problems saying so.
I prefer to appear ignorant or backwards over assuming that everyone else has a hidden agenda.
Man, I'd be really hesitant to send a Maxwell out with a fall-back of "Quick! Ask pointed questions about the other person's salvation status if you are flustered". I suspect - or perhaps I hope - that the Maxwells would be able to handle pushback against their own salvation status - but could they handle a fast pivot where the stranger points out that the Maxwells cannot know the salvation status of the stranger without blaspheming? After all, the Maxwells are not God and do not know what God's plans are for us all. That assuming that someone else is unsaved due to external features is exactly what Jesus reproached the Pharisees for?
There is one more post from this chapter because the Maxwells decide to handle the really tricky topic of boy-girl conversations. Because apparently conversations between boys and girls can be...really....tricky.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Ten - Part One
This chapter is worth its weight in comedic gold! Steven and Teri Maxwell's "Making Great Conversationalists" has plenty of stretching Bible verses to the breaking point along with monotonous stretches of tripe - but the Maxwells are great at trying to put a positive spin on some family stories. This chapter includes several stories that if the Maxwell parents reflected on their children's gift of conversation...well, this book might never have been written.
Chapter Ten is about "roadblocks" that might occur during teaching conversations or during conversations themselves. The first category in this chapter is essentially "what should you do if your kid balks at learning to converse with people?" Perhaps I'm missing something - but isn't a given that kids will whine about anything? My toddler grumbles about the fact that his parents won't read him "Hop On Pop" for the 59th time today. Yesterday, I had a student complain that the clipart on a worksheet was ugly. I had a student today complain that they didn't want to go to the gym for a pep-rally; his complaint was something about it being too early in the morning and not caring much about the activity for the day. Most teachers have to create detailed plans for determining when a window can be opened. Without one, classes can deadlock between the "I'm too hot" and "I'm freezing" kids. After eight kids, I'm sure the Maxwells know to expect whining.
Not only should the Maxwells expect whining - but there is no way that the answers to kids whining about conversational skills should take three pages to work through! The Maxwells attempt to argue that "I don't know what to say", "I'm a slow thinker", and "I don't have anything interesting to say" are three different situations. The only reason the divisions makes sense is to take up additional space in the book. In the wider world, no one would have repeated conversations - or consequences - about a kid who wasn't that into conversations. Being a quiet kid has its own set of natural consequences. The consequences are hardly bad - in fact, they work well for kids who are quiet - but unless the kid wants to be more talkative I don't see the point of the Maxwell's ideas of spending time helping a kid pre-plan a conversation or convincing the kid that God will tell them what to say.
After exhausting the topic of whining, the Maxwells jump to the next logical topic: peer dependency. When I searched "peer dependency" on a whim, I was glad to see that the search results pulled up lots of semi-obscure coding websites instead of the CP/QF belief that people of all ages should want to spend time around people of all ages without any sort of preference for being around people in their own age cohort. As near as I can tell, this is used primarily as a cudgel to shame preteens and teenagers for wanting to spend time with their friends instead of their siblings and parents. After some haphazard discussion of brainstorming topics for younger and older audiences with the peer-dependent child, the Maxwells created this surreal gem:
*rubs forehead until the strained muscles relax*
Teri and Steven Maxwell graduated from college.
In spite of that, the quote was thought, written, edited, proofread and published.
Let's take this to the natural conclusion in this simulated dialogue between a mother and daughter:
"Lise, I need to talk to you about something I've seen at church. You primarily spend the time after church with Stephanie, Emily and Maria. Why do you do that?"
"Well, Steph, Em and Mari are nice. They ask about how my week has been. We talk about what we've been doing during homeschooling. Plus, we're all learning how to cook together and share recipes."
*Mom falls to her knees in anguish and howls* "Why, God, why? Why does my daughter spend time with people who care about her and share her interests? Please help me show her that true love means pushing into conversations with adults and stifling boredom to interact with children at their level."
"I can do that, Mom.... but the kids looked happy playing together and the adults were having an intense conversation that they shooed all of us away from in the first place."
"Oh, Lise, when will you learn? Love means never being happy or content; it's an itchy feeling of isolation and self-repression."
Yup.
After giving that sage advice, the Maxwells transition naturally into the next topic: filler words. According to the Maxwells, people shouldn't use filler words and the best way to break people of using filler words is to remind them every time the person uses the filler word. I use a lot of filler words and having people point them out works with a few caveats. First, only do this with the other person's permission. Being interrupted every time you say "uh" or "like" is frustrating and irritating even when you've asked people to do it; do it to an unwilling person and you might get hit. Second, set a time limit for this activity. Filler words are a minor linguistic quirk or oddity. People still have the right to communicate even if they do so with a less than perfect gloss.
What follows filler words? Oh, yes. Anger. (Let me know if anyone can figure out any sort of patterning in Maxwell topics; my only guess right now is drawing topics randomly.) The Maxwells launch into an amazing story about how well their conversational training worked for Jesse Maxwell when he was a teen:
Your kid can be like this too if you follow the Maxwell Plan for Making Great Conversationalists! Yay!
An adult man tells Jesse Maxwell a bit about his son's future plans. The deliciously naive, completely self-assured and exceptionally sheltered 15-year old decides the best response is to educate this adult man on why his son shouldn't go to college. Oh, I know, the Maxwells try to spin the story to make it sound like Jesse was just discussing his personal choices - but precious few adult men would be angered by the statement "I don't think I'm going to go to college myself" from a 15-year-old they've just met.
Oh and a few paragraphs after the story, Maxwell inserts the warning that teens shouldn't use absolute terms like "always" and "never" and shouldn't sound like know-it-alls to adults. Hmmm.....wonder what prompted that bit of advice?
Look, Jesse learned an important life-lesson; people do not appreciate having their choices criticized by an ignorant stranger. The only sad thing is that he would have learned that long before if his parents hadn't kept their family chronically isolated.
The Maxwells also imply that Jesse was right because he was "logical" while the stranger was "emotional" - but the Maxwells use appeals to emotion all the time! One common example is the argument that a college education is synonymous with drinking alcohol, premarital sex, and rampant atheism. Each of these issues is possible on a college campus just as it is possible in the backseat of a car, or the edge of a field, or a back porch. Conversely, at no point when I was filing the paperwork to finish my college degree did I have to demonstrate that I had gotten drunk, had sex or become an atheist! Most of the appeals to courtship and stay-at-home daughterhood work along the same lines. The logic is scant - but following the CP/QF way will lead to happiness while leaving the path will lead to despair.
Jesse's reflection on the whole conversation is meant to seem mature - but it is full of contradictions. Jesse took a stand about an issue he thought he knew a lot about. When he received unexpected blowback, his response is that he wouldn't have taken a stand if he knew there would be mildly unpleasant consequences. Tell me: if Jesse can't handle one man being mad at him when Jesse "educates" him, how on Earth is Jesse going to handle the level of scorn he's going to get from people when Jesse starts telling them how to raise their daughters or become real Christians or convert their families into personal cults? For all that CP/QF folks rail on about converting the US, they sure raise their children with thin skins and poor ability at reading other people.
The next post fill us in with more Maxwell maxims about shortcoming in conversations. Until then, may your life be filled with real love and not CP/QF love!
Chapter Ten is about "roadblocks" that might occur during teaching conversations or during conversations themselves. The first category in this chapter is essentially "what should you do if your kid balks at learning to converse with people?" Perhaps I'm missing something - but isn't a given that kids will whine about anything? My toddler grumbles about the fact that his parents won't read him "Hop On Pop" for the 59th time today. Yesterday, I had a student complain that the clipart on a worksheet was ugly. I had a student today complain that they didn't want to go to the gym for a pep-rally; his complaint was something about it being too early in the morning and not caring much about the activity for the day. Most teachers have to create detailed plans for determining when a window can be opened. Without one, classes can deadlock between the "I'm too hot" and "I'm freezing" kids. After eight kids, I'm sure the Maxwells know to expect whining.
Not only should the Maxwells expect whining - but there is no way that the answers to kids whining about conversational skills should take three pages to work through! The Maxwells attempt to argue that "I don't know what to say", "I'm a slow thinker", and "I don't have anything interesting to say" are three different situations. The only reason the divisions makes sense is to take up additional space in the book. In the wider world, no one would have repeated conversations - or consequences - about a kid who wasn't that into conversations. Being a quiet kid has its own set of natural consequences. The consequences are hardly bad - in fact, they work well for kids who are quiet - but unless the kid wants to be more talkative I don't see the point of the Maxwell's ideas of spending time helping a kid pre-plan a conversation or convincing the kid that God will tell them what to say.
After exhausting the topic of whining, the Maxwells jump to the next logical topic: peer dependency. When I searched "peer dependency" on a whim, I was glad to see that the search results pulled up lots of semi-obscure coding websites instead of the CP/QF belief that people of all ages should want to spend time around people of all ages without any sort of preference for being around people in their own age cohort. As near as I can tell, this is used primarily as a cudgel to shame preteens and teenagers for wanting to spend time with their friends instead of their siblings and parents. After some haphazard discussion of brainstorming topics for younger and older audiences with the peer-dependent child, the Maxwells created this surreal gem:
Perhaps that is a self focus that indicates that the child wants to talk to his friends because he is interested in them, they in him, and he likes what they talk about. In that case, you will go back to the reason why conversation is important-- to communicate love. (pg. 162)
*rubs forehead until the strained muscles relax*
Teri and Steven Maxwell graduated from college.
In spite of that, the quote was thought, written, edited, proofread and published.
Let's take this to the natural conclusion in this simulated dialogue between a mother and daughter:
"Lise, I need to talk to you about something I've seen at church. You primarily spend the time after church with Stephanie, Emily and Maria. Why do you do that?"
"Well, Steph, Em and Mari are nice. They ask about how my week has been. We talk about what we've been doing during homeschooling. Plus, we're all learning how to cook together and share recipes."
*Mom falls to her knees in anguish and howls* "Why, God, why? Why does my daughter spend time with people who care about her and share her interests? Please help me show her that true love means pushing into conversations with adults and stifling boredom to interact with children at their level."
"I can do that, Mom.... but the kids looked happy playing together and the adults were having an intense conversation that they shooed all of us away from in the first place."
"Oh, Lise, when will you learn? Love means never being happy or content; it's an itchy feeling of isolation and self-repression."
Yup.
After giving that sage advice, the Maxwells transition naturally into the next topic: filler words. According to the Maxwells, people shouldn't use filler words and the best way to break people of using filler words is to remind them every time the person uses the filler word. I use a lot of filler words and having people point them out works with a few caveats. First, only do this with the other person's permission. Being interrupted every time you say "uh" or "like" is frustrating and irritating even when you've asked people to do it; do it to an unwilling person and you might get hit. Second, set a time limit for this activity. Filler words are a minor linguistic quirk or oddity. People still have the right to communicate even if they do so with a less than perfect gloss.
What follows filler words? Oh, yes. Anger. (Let me know if anyone can figure out any sort of patterning in Maxwell topics; my only guess right now is drawing topics randomly.) The Maxwells launch into an amazing story about how well their conversational training worked for Jesse Maxwell when he was a teen:
A few years ago while attending church after a conference weekend, fifteen year old Jesse was talking with a father. The conversation moved to the subject of college, with the father telling Jesse about his son's plan for college. Jesse entered the conversation by asking the man some questions about college and sharing why he was choosing not to go to college.
Suddenly the man became quite emotional and angry with Jesse. Jesse said the man's anger flared when confronted with why Jesse was choosing not to go to college. The logic of Jesse's no college points shared innocently in the spirit of a typical conversation exchange sparked emotion in the dad without warning. Jesse was able to remain calm when confronted with anger.
And talking about the situation afterwards, Jesse said he realize that he wouldn't have given his thoughts on college had he known it was a touchy point for the dad. He said he also gained experience on when to quietly drop off point and when to continue the exchange. (pg. 164-165)
Suddenly the man became quite emotional and angry with Jesse. Jesse said the man's anger flared when confronted with why Jesse was choosing not to go to college. The logic of Jesse's no college points shared innocently in the spirit of a typical conversation exchange sparked emotion in the dad without warning. Jesse was able to remain calm when confronted with anger.
And talking about the situation afterwards, Jesse said he realize that he wouldn't have given his thoughts on college had he known it was a touchy point for the dad. He said he also gained experience on when to quietly drop off point and when to continue the exchange. (pg. 164-165)
Your kid can be like this too if you follow the Maxwell Plan for Making Great Conversationalists! Yay!
An adult man tells Jesse Maxwell a bit about his son's future plans. The deliciously naive, completely self-assured and exceptionally sheltered 15-year old decides the best response is to educate this adult man on why his son shouldn't go to college. Oh, I know, the Maxwells try to spin the story to make it sound like Jesse was just discussing his personal choices - but precious few adult men would be angered by the statement "I don't think I'm going to go to college myself" from a 15-year-old they've just met.
Oh and a few paragraphs after the story, Maxwell inserts the warning that teens shouldn't use absolute terms like "always" and "never" and shouldn't sound like know-it-alls to adults. Hmmm.....wonder what prompted that bit of advice?
Look, Jesse learned an important life-lesson; people do not appreciate having their choices criticized by an ignorant stranger. The only sad thing is that he would have learned that long before if his parents hadn't kept their family chronically isolated.
The Maxwells also imply that Jesse was right because he was "logical" while the stranger was "emotional" - but the Maxwells use appeals to emotion all the time! One common example is the argument that a college education is synonymous with drinking alcohol, premarital sex, and rampant atheism. Each of these issues is possible on a college campus just as it is possible in the backseat of a car, or the edge of a field, or a back porch. Conversely, at no point when I was filing the paperwork to finish my college degree did I have to demonstrate that I had gotten drunk, had sex or become an atheist! Most of the appeals to courtship and stay-at-home daughterhood work along the same lines. The logic is scant - but following the CP/QF way will lead to happiness while leaving the path will lead to despair.
Jesse's reflection on the whole conversation is meant to seem mature - but it is full of contradictions. Jesse took a stand about an issue he thought he knew a lot about. When he received unexpected blowback, his response is that he wouldn't have taken a stand if he knew there would be mildly unpleasant consequences. Tell me: if Jesse can't handle one man being mad at him when Jesse "educates" him, how on Earth is Jesse going to handle the level of scorn he's going to get from people when Jesse starts telling them how to raise their daughters or become real Christians or convert their families into personal cults? For all that CP/QF folks rail on about converting the US, they sure raise their children with thin skins and poor ability at reading other people.
The next post fill us in with more Maxwell maxims about shortcoming in conversations. Until then, may your life be filled with real love and not CP/QF love!
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