Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Eleven - Part Two

I had an interesting week.  Two of my subbing positions were standard secondary classroom positions - nice kids, interesting enough lessons, but nothing much out of the ordinary.  The other two days I subbed in an SXI (severe multiple disabilities) classroom for 3-5th graders and as a gym teacher for K-5th graders at a regional EI (Emotional/Conduct disabilities) program.

 I had an absolute blast in both programs! 

The SXI classroom had six kids who each had a slew of goals for physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech, academics and living skills.  Two of the kids were working at speech and academic goals of 3-4 year olds while the rest were at goals between a few months to two years.  As I'm writing this, I realize this sounds rather grim on paper - but the kids had lots of fun during the day.  Each kid spent at least an hour a day integrated into a traditional classroom.  I worked with the most severely affected kid - and she loved having a third-grade buddy who would read her stories.  Her third-grade buddy was super-excited when I showed him that the other student could pick between two books if he held them about three feet apart.  Most of the day, the students were in a self-contained classroom within a 4th-5th grade building.  Students from that building would volunteer to take the students to play in the gym before school, eat lunch together and take the kids in wheelchairs for adventures during recess.  The biggest help was having a mass of helpers to keep track the one boy who was independently mobile.  He was the littlest kid in the class, showed the most skill at pre-planning escapes and was a fast and silent runner.  The only problem I had was that when chasing our little escape artist, I tripped over a PT mat, flew through the air and landed on the mats.  If all of me had hit the mats, I'd have forgotten the incident by now - but my right thumb landed between two mats.  The mats held my thumb in place while most of my body weight crashed down onto my thumb while my thumb twisted slightly.   I managed to sprain both of my thumb joints on that hand about two hours into the day.  This greatly messed with my ability to fasten the scads of belts and harnesses needed by the kids when they were in various adaptive devices.  Luckily, the kids were big enough that I could use my forearms as the main lifting points under their arms rather than hands/thumbs.

My day at the EI program was pretty much the same as every other gym class I've ever taught.  The youngest group of K-2 (who were mostly 2nd graders) enjoyed trying to shoot baskets and working at dribbling basketballs.  The oldest group of 5th graders took to shooting soccer balls and passing back and forth like future soccer phenoms.   The group of 3rd and 4th grade boys played more tag than I've played in years - and they were very careful to avoid touching my visibly bruised and taped right thumb.

I had a blast - and I feel kind of sad.  See, both programs had an insanely hard time recruiting subs and paraprofessionals.  I look at all the blogs of stay-at-home daughters who are young, unencumbered by needing to earn enough to live independently and bored out of their minds waiting at home for someone to marry them - and I wonder how much more enjoyable their lives would be if they filled one of those empty parapro positions in a local school.   Sure, sure - they wouldn't want to parapro in a "traditional school" since that would be turning their backs on homeschooling as the only way to Jesus - but working in a self-contained classroom with severely disabled kids is so clearly one of those Christian things to do that only a lunatic would object to that.  Plus, it's so very motherly; I joked that both days I pretty much did what I would normally do with my son - but for cash.

Seriously - what's a better preparation for being a wife and mother: writing occasional blogs / instagram posts / vanity-published books while mostly doing nothing at home OR helping kids learn the skills they need in day-to-day life?

This struck me as I was reviewing this chapter.  Steven and Teri Maxwell spend most of chapter 11 in "Making Great Conversationalists" explaining that the major goal of conversation is to convert random stranger to fundamental evangelical Christianity.  Now, I've never hidden my skepticism around the likelihood that these methods provide any long-lasting conversions to Christianity.  Reading this chapter failed to change my mind mainly because the following conversation feels so contrived:

Bob goes to church with his wife, but over time it has become obvious to Jim that Bob doesn't have a relationship with Jesus. Jim has been praying for Bob's salvation ever since he realize the Bob wasn't saved. Today appears to be the perfect time to share the gospel with Bob. After some small talk, Jim decides to take the plunge.

[...]

"Bob, I used to go to church just like you, but there came a time when I realized heaven isn't just a matter of going to church. That was the best day of my life, and that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I'd like to share a few of the Ten Commandments with you and ask how you have done in keeping them. Bob, have you ever told a lie?"

"Sure I have, Jim. Hasn't everyone?"

" Bob, I have too, but that doesn't mean it is acceptable to God. God's law says," Thou shalt not bear false witness," which means to lie. If we have ever told a lie, we have broken one of God's commandments. Have you ever stolen anything, even a paperclip? (pg. 179)

Yup.  Every bit of that conversation feels so natural and realistic, doesn't it?   No, seriously, this reads like how the Maxwells' dream of conversations going instead of the normal response of people visibly trying to get out of a conversation that has turned awkward as hell without insulting the other person. 

Let's run over the weirder bits one by one. 

People inside CP/QF land - heck, evangelical Christians in general - must not realize how arrogant they sound when they decide that another person must not be a saved Christian in spite of the target attending a Christian church.   Here's a little hint: the idea of needing a personal relationship with Jesus that includes a deeply emotional moment where they realize how much of a sinner they are is a relatively recent construct in Christianity.  This idea popped up in a few different Protestant branches.  The older denominations including Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Coptic Churches along with the majority of Protestant denominations do not require moment of being born-again for salvation to occur.   The absence of born-again theology in the largest groups in Christianity doesn't mean that being born-again is a bad thing; the experience is clearly deeply moving and important for many Christians.  My issue comes when people decide that their salvation requirements trump the requirements of the church that a person belongs to.

Bob launches himself into "The Good Person Test" disseminated by Living Waters Ministry.  If you've never taken "The Good Person Test" the link above takes you to an entirely online version.  The Maxwells drag Jim through recognizing that he's a thief and a liar and stop before Bob attempts to convince Jim that Jim's an adulterer, a murderer and a blasphemer. 

There's a reason the Maxwells stopped there; the test falls apart hilariously over the next few steps in real life.  See, the test becomes super-creepy when a random person starts pressing in casual conversation to make the other person admit that they've looked at another person with lust.   The conversion-hound is forced to imply the other person is lying or change the meaning of "lust" to include "desire".  The Bible, of course, views desire as being natural and healthy.  Lust requires treating the other person as an object for the purpose of sexual pleasure only - and that's not a major issue for a lot of people.

Let's say the conversion-pusher gets through adultery and decides to try to convince the other person that the fact that they've been angry means they are a murder.  People who have read the Bible realize that the conversion-o-holic is really stretching Jesus' teachings to make that connection.  A more accepted understanding is that a person who allows anger to mutate into hatred and a desire for revenge is moving in a dangerous direction.  Jesus spends most of the Gospels being angry.  He's angry at his disciples for being prats, at various religious groups for being judgemental, at religious authorities in general and goes a bit bonkers on the money-changers at the temple.  Christians are allowed to feel anger when treated unjustly or when seeing others being treated unjustly.   Anger can be a motivating force - but it must not be allowed to change into hate. 

The blasphemy bit is relatively easy. 

Most of the time the conversion target will simply nod along while regretting letting this person into their life.   Added fun occurs, though, when the target refuses to play along.   One option is arguing about the meaning of the verses as I did above.  A more amusing option is to ask the conversion-eer if each of the statements about them is true since they've been saved.   Imagine if Jim - poor Jim who was expecting a social conversation with Bob - asked Bob if Bob has lied since he's been saved.  Bob, I assume, would say "no".  What if Jim pushed a bit?  After all, this entire test is a series of lies.  Bob lies when he says that his goal is to talk to Jim about what commandments Jim has disobeyed; Bob's goal is to convert Jim.   The Maxwells lie by omission all the time when it suits them.  The Maxwells set up a balloon animal and face-painting booth at the county fair every year to attract people to give out informational fliers to.  That's a pretty mundane and harmless activity - except that the Maxwells allow their daughters to paint images that the Maxwells view as improper for their own family to view.  The Maxwells teach that professional sports fandom is a one-way street to alcoholism, underemployment and marital discord - but they let Mary paint little Kansas City Royals logos on kids' faces in hopes the kids will pick up a tract.   That's a bit discordant, isn't it?

I hope someone calls Steven Maxwell on the hypocrisy of using this test when he dishonored his father and mother in "Preparing Sons....Families".   In that lovely book, Steven Maxwell blamed his dad for Steven Maxwell's teenage drinking.  Was his dad abusive?  Neglectful?  Absent from the home?  No, Steven Maxwell's dad let young Steven have a sip of his beer when Steven brought him one from the kitchen.   That's insanely disrespectful towards his father because I also had sips of alcohol as a kid....and didn't drink prior to turning 21.  Steven Maxwell didn't drink as a teenager because his father gave him sips of beer; he drank because he wanted to drink beer. 

According to the online version of the test, eventually the converter will lead the convert-mark through a theological awaking of their need for Jesus.   I've never made it to that part because I leave after pointing out that the other person's born-again moment didn't seem to make much of a difference if he or she is still a lying, murdering adulterer who is also saved. 

After getting "The Good Person" test out of their system, the Maxwells gush over "Roman's Road" (sic) as a method of conversion.  The Maxwells lost me as soon as they misspelled "Romans' Road" - the book of the Bible is the Letter to the Romans so the correct possessive form is either "Romans'" or perhaps "Romans's". 

Personally, I've got a soft spot in my heart for Romans' Road because some of the most fun I've had with former evangelicals is asking them to remember the verses in Romans' Road after trying to remember how many verses are in Romans' Road.  As a Catholic for whom Romans' Road is supposed to magically lead to born-again salvation, my experience is that even the most excited Romans' Roadie gets completely turned around and lost by about the third verse in.   I don't blame my roadie friends for that; the verses are taken from all over the Letter to the Romans so there's not a very good connectivity between them.  That lack of connectivity also makes it nearly impossible to finish if a person completely forgets a verse.  Since Romans' Road has five, eight or ten verses that need to be delivered in the correct order, I'm always amazed that anyone thinks that this is likely to end well.

Added bonus: getting out of a Romans' Road conversation is so easy! 

• Option one: When the person is struggling through a verse, say "I don't think that's the right verse.  I'll catch you later." and run away.    
• Option two: Wait until the person is visibly lost in the middle of a verse, get their attention and say, "Wait, I was just thinking about the previous verse, but I can't remember the exact words.  Can you tell me that one again?"  Then loop to option one.   Ok, it's a bit mean, but no one practices Romans' Road in reverse.   
• Option three can be used if the person includes the chapter and verse and makes it to the third verse.  The first verse is from chapter 3 followed by a verse from chapter 6...then a verse from chapter 5. Remark on that fact then ask, "If this is such an integral part of the Letter to the Romans, why are the verses so scattered and so out of order?"  
• Option four is for church members who listen to entire chunks of scripture at church each week including Catholics: When you get bored, interrupt the person and remind them that your church reads ALL of the Letter to the Romans yearly.  Follow up by asking how the person thinks the Romans' Road fits in the broader theme of the salvation of Christians through the salvation offered to the Jewish people found in the Letter to the Romans.
• Option five - Romans' Road Drinking Game!  One drink of whatever you have handy for each awkward pause in a verse. Two drinks every time the person starts a verse over.   Three drinks if they realize the verse they are reciting is out of order.    Another drink for every less than smooth explanation of what the recited verse means.  One drink for every nervous gesture, tic or involuntary bodily reaction like sweating the other person shows.   Finish the drink when the other person gives up in exhaustion. This is a good option when you feel sympathy for the other person and want to seem engaged....but you know it's not going to end well.

So...you can spend a lot of time trying to teach your offspring hokey or misleading ways to convert random stranger or you could teach them the skills needed to genuinely help other people.  Use your time wisely.

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:

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.

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:

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)

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!

Making Great Conversationalists - Chapter Eight

Traditionally, people tend to learn items best in groups of three.  I think the Maxwells heard that precept somewhere and decided that they should divide the process of teaching kids how to hold conversations into three parts.  The problem occurs when there isn't enough material to create three distinct groups.  In Steven and Teri Maxwell's self-help book "Making Great Conversationalists", the chapter on training kids at the intermediate level is scant.

The chapter launches with a conversation between the entire Maxwell Family and a nine-year-old who clambers into their bus for a tour.  The author of this section swears the entire family remembers this kid - but fails to attribute the conversation to any individual family member.  The nine-year-old asks some sensible questions about the bus and the Maxwells answer the kid...in unison?  In another jarring moment, one of the Maxwells states that the odometer had been replaced before they purchased the bus so they are assuming there was one million miles on the 1995 bus before they purchased it and have added 60,000 miles since then.   I guess that's possible - but from my informal internet searching 500,000 miles is what most transit buses put on when used for 12 years in a dense metropolitan area.  It's not that I doubt that the Maxwells found a bus that had one million miles on it; I'm questioning the sanity of buying a million-mile bus unless they know an experienced mechanic who gave the body a through inspection prior to buying it.  The nine-year-old shares my skepticism apparently because he points out that their family uses a school bus to get around and it's only got 200,000 miles on it.  In spite of that, the Maxwells declare that the kid is in the intermediate stage of conversation because he's better at talking about what they want to talk about than most adults!  (Ok, the last bit is my spin  - but they don't explain why he's an intermediate stage conversationalist.)

The next topic glossed over is the importance of teaching kids Bible verses so they can use those verses in conversations later on.  The topic takes up a page and a half - but I've summarized both the main topic and all pertinent details in ....*counts quietly to self* .... 23 words.  The rest of the space is taken up with single verses from Proverbs or Psalms that involve conversation.

After that topic is duly crossed, the Maxwells discuss how important enthusiasm is in a conversation.  Apparently, a good conversationalist should be like their neighbor's dog who goes into a riot of excitement whenever anyone comes by.  And like the dog, the child shouldn't differentiate enthusiasm levels based on the age of the person they are talking to or the subject at hand.   Personally, I find indiscriminate enthusiasm disconcerting.   I know that a lot of topics that I like talking about are esoteric, geeky or appeal to a niche market; I don't expect strangers to begin to fawn when I say that I've been subbing at local high schools recently.   Plus, acting highly enthusiastic about a subject that a kid either knows very little about or dislikes is setting up an untenable situation.  Eventually, their relative ignorance of a subject or dislike is going to come through - and I'm going to be far more annoyed or upset when I realize they were play-acting.  As always, the Maxwells included some fake dialogue to show the difference between a teenage boy who is trying to get out of a conversation with an adult man at their church and the same kid describing his vacation in great detail to the older guy.  My confusion is pretty simple:  If the teenager is close to the older guy to start with, the kid is being rude by not explaining why he doesn't want to talk right now.  If the two aren't close, why is the older guy asking a bunch of questions to a teenager about his vacation?  That's a weird place to start a relationship.

I kid you not: the following section is titled "Are questions important in a conversation?" 

Yes.

I just saved the Maxwells a few cents of printing costs taken up over a page of ramblings.

The last three pages of the chapter are a review of alternating between asking questions and giving answers in a conversation and how to practice conversations.   This sounds familiar because both ideas have been covered extensively previously in the book - and there are no new additions in this section.

Finally, we reach an abbreviated list of questions that parents can teach their kids to ask other kids followed by a list the kids can ask adults.  I'm going to start with the kid-to-kid questions and chunk them as I see fit:

Tell me about your family.

Where do you live?

Tell me about your house.(pg. 138)

When I was in grade school, we discussed the question words - who, what, where, when, why and how.  Notice the absence of "tell me" from the question words because "tell me" is a command rather than a request or a question.   Let's not train children to be tiny drill sergeants demanding information from their peers. 

I know the Maxwells travels quite a bit for conferences - but the question "where do you live?" doesn't scale well to local areas.   It's not like the kids are going to be meeting people who live terribly far away.

I can't imagine launching into a description of my home to a new person I've met as an adult.  I think I might have described our house as "the green one between the two yellow ones on the left side of the street" when giving directions.  Outside of that, I really don't remember talking about my house as a kid.    As a question goes, it feels like a form of bragging.

What are your interests?

What do you do when you have free time?

What activities are you involved in?

What is your favorite thing to talk about?

How do you most enjoy spending your time?

Why do you enjoy that? (pg. 138)

This section is the same question phrased slightly differently over and over and over.  The larger issue I see is that the Maxwell kids are likely to get answers that are forbidden to their family.   "I like to watch Paws Patrol on TV.  What do you like to watch?"   "I play soccer as a midfielder.  Do you play sports?"  "I read books.  What's your favorite book?"

 Oh, heavens.  I just realized that the Maxwells would probably pipe up that their favorite book is the Bible - or the books that their sister writes and you can buy one at their website!

Where is your favorite place to go as a family? (pg. 138)

That's a good question.    The Maxwells skip the obvious follow-up question of "where's your favorite place to go?" since not everyone in a family goes to the same place.

Do you play an instrument? If so what is it? How long have you played it? Why did you choose that instrument? Why do you like playing it? Do you ever play for other people? Where?(pg. 138)

Oh, the Maxwells approve of people playing instruments.  That's allowed.  I think they allow people to sing as well.   I'm curious how the Maxwell kids would respond to the common complaint that a kid badly wants to give up (pick an instrument), but their parents won't let them.  Oh, wait.  Bible verse about disobedience and witchcraft. 

Do you have or have you had any pets?

What kind? What do you like about them/it?

Did you train your pet to do anything?

If you could have any pet, what would it be and why? (pg. 138)

Whoo-hoo!  The Maxwells had a section of age-appropriate and not weird questions!  YAY!

Where do you go to school?

What do you like best in school? Why?

What do you like least in school? Why?

What are you studying in school that you enjoy? Why?

What have you learned recently that you could share with me?(pgs. 138 and 139)

Again, the two questions about things the person likes at school are the same question.  I'd pay to be the fly on the wall when a bored homeschooled teen responds that the thing they like least about school is being homeschooled. 

Let's not turn what little peer-to-peer time CP/QF kids have into enforced tutoring times, ok?  It's a bit nightmarish from my perspective as a teacher to expect kids to update other kids in different school systems about random topics.   There's a lot of way that could go wrong - and not many ways it could go right.

Corollary: At what age do the Maxwells learn about human anatomy and reproduction?  Does it match all the kids they might meet in CP/QF land?

Next up are the questions for kid-adult conversations:

What is your name?

How many children do you have?

Do you have any grandchildren?

What are their names and ages?(pg. 139)

There's an odd missing question in this list.  Do the Maxwells really want their kids to ask unmarried  adults if they have children?  This oversight is quite odd considering their daughter Sarah is single in her late thirties.  Presumably she's had the awkward situation where a well-meaning kid assumes she's married with kids of her own at some point.

More broadly, it's not a great idea to send kids off to ask adults if they have kids or grandkids.  That's a rather rude question to blurt out at people - and potentially hurtful to people who badly want a spouse, children or grandchildren but do not have any.

Where do you live?

What do you do for a living?

Where do you go to church?

What do you like to do? (pg. 139)

I think we can agree that kids shouldn't be telling adults they don't know well where the kids live, amiright?  That was agreed to be good practice when I was a kid in the 1980's and I've seen no sign that's changed.  With that assumption, don't set kids up for a situation where an adult shares their address and then asks for the kid's address. 

I don't want to know how the Maxwell kids respond when someone tells them they belong to the Catholic Church...or the local synagogue.....or the local mosque. Oh, wait.  Bible verses.  *rolls eyes*

What is your salvation story?

Do you homeschool your children? (pg. 139)

Yes!  Yes!  Open the door to hearing random strangers' salvation stories.  Remember, the greater the sinner, the greater the glory of God when they are saved!  Be sure to share the utter depravity of your life before Jesus to the Maxwells; don't hold back!

The next chapter begins the most unintentionally hilarious sections of the book. 

Making Great Conversationalists - Chapter Seven

After two weeks of working outside of the house again (YAY! YAY! YAY!), I can confirm a sneaking suspicion of mine surrounding Steven and Teri Maxwell's book "Making Great Conversationalists".  The Maxwells have created a problem by severely restricting homeschooled children's chances to talk to other people - and are now profiting by selling a book on how to correct the problem they created.  That feels something the horrifyingly dysfunctional Bluth family would pull off - or the craven capitalist Montgomery Burns on the Simpson - rather than something a nominally Christian family would do.   I've been working with kids from age 8-19 from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, ability levels and English fluency - but all of the kids were capable of starting a conversation without needing extensive teaching.

That's one of the benefits of traditional schooling methods.  Most societies encourage kids and teens to interact and form relational bonds with other kids and teens.  These bonds benefit communities because most teenagers will eventually marry other teenagers and form economic entreprises with other teens.  Peer-to-peer bonds provide a form of insurance against bad events in the future.  For example, women in the Hidsa people formed sororal bonds with girls of a similar age.  If a woman was ill or recovering from childbirth when her garden was supposed to be planted, her sororal sisters would plant the garden for her - just as she would do for them. 

A side-benefit of being expected to spend time among unrelated peers is learning how to talk to other people.   Dumping a bunch of toddlers together means that the toddlers will eventually use words to work out who gets what toy or what game they want to play.  From there, it's just a natural progression of adding new topics while teaching societal expectations.  The first part of Chapter Seven is about teaching "beginning" conversationalists about basic US norms for non-verbal cues during conversations.   Kids are expected to look the person who is speaking in the eye and smile.  I have no problem with those conventions per se - but they are not universal.   I've worked with international students from diverse areas where the convention of looking directly at an authority figure and smiling while they talk is viewed as being disrespectful and rude.   Since the Maxwells are supposed to train their kids to convert people to Christianity all over the world, they probably should introduce the concept of cultural norms early on....

The Maxwells move on to the idea that kids should speak slowly and clearly.  I agree - but again, this is an issue that the Maxwells' obsession with extreme sheltering created.   In a traditional school setting, kids pick up pacing and volume control naturally over time.  When kids speak too fast, their friends can't understand the words and the kid slows down.   Yup, kids occasionally need tweaks, but parents aren't doing all the work of teaching kids to speak more slowly and calmly.  At the end of this section, Teri Maxwell includes an intriguing quote from her mother:

Recently, I (Teri) was talking to my mom and sharing the section with her. Immediately she said, " Please tell your readers to let their children answer when someone is interested in the in their children to ask them a question. So often when I try to talk to a child, his parents will answer for him rather than letting him speak for himself." (pg. 115)

I...have never had that experience.  My general experience with talking with small children is one of two outcomes.   Outcome one is that I ask the kid a question and the kid responds.  Outcome two is that the kid has no response when I ask them the question and after a long-ish pause the parent answers the question.   I've not known many parents who jump in to answer a question before their kid has had a chance to answer. 

There is a tad more ironic possibility.  Steven Maxwell has stated frequently in this book that he dislikes it when his kids act like knowledgeable experts in areas where the other person knows more than the kid does.  Maxwell has created many dialogues in this book that imply that the main purpose of children's conversation is to keep the conversation on topics of interest to their father and listen rapturously as the father holds forth on his personal favorite topics.   Finally, Maxwell seems to live in dread fear of being embarrassed by his kids talking like a normal kid.   With that background, I wonder how often Steven Maxwell answers questions for his kids when asked by his mother-in-law.  Maxwell doesn't strike me as a person who handles a request to change his habit gracefully - so maybe his mother-in-law took a different method of passing on a request.

The worst advice comes in a section about dealing with shyness.   The Maxwells seem to take shyness as a person insult instead of a passing stage that many kids go through - and also age out of.  The first bit from that section is odd, but most likely harmless advice:

This is also an important time to teach your children to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They aren't the ones responsible for coming up with an answer to a question. The Lord will do that for them. (pg. 115)

Mmmm-kay.  That's strange advice.  First, what does it mean when an observant, saved kid has one of those moments when their mind blanks out during an attack of social anxiety?  As a kid, I would have been terrified that the Holy Spirit was mad at me or was somewhere else.   Second, how the hell do all of us unsaved folks manage to talk?  I'm religious - but I'm not saved under the Maxwell/Botkin/CP/QF theory of salvation.  In spite of that, I'm delightfully chatty!  I have a point of personal pride that I can talk to any willing person about a topic of interest to them for as long as they want to talk - but how can I have that skill if I'm unsaved?   Finally, why would the Lord have two or more saved people talk to each other anyways?  That would literally be the Lord holding both sides of the conversation....

The next bit of advice is a quick refresher on how to be a helicopter parent in case any of the readers have forgotten:

You could talk to the adult beforehand, explaining how you are working with your child and what you are trying to teach him. Give me adult two or three questions to ask your child that you will have had your child practice giving answers for. That way your child will have extra confidence because when the question is asked, he will know the answer. (pg.116)

Or....and I'm just spit-balling here....the parent could practice the 3-4 most common topics that adults ask kids they know.   If the nervous kid knows how to answer "How is school going?", "How is (choose an after-school activity) going?",  "Do you have pets?" and a stock response for "Wow! I like your item of clothing!", the kid should be golden for over 90% of conversation starters from adults.  If this is a kid in the real world, adding "What do you like to do/watch on TV/read/favorite movie?" covers 99% of the conversation starters. 

I bring this up repeatedly - but how many of the issues in conversations for excessively sheltered homeschooled kids come from lack of exposure to any activity of wider interest?   When families are prevented from doing sports, theater, dance, watching TV, movies, listening to most music and highly restricted in reading habits, they've reduced their kids down to a handful of topics to talk about.  Since many of these families are also paranoid that the government is going to crack down on homeschooling, I suspect many of the kids have picked up some level of nervousness around talking about school.  By my count, that leaves pets as a safe topic of conversation....

The last quote clarifies that shyness is a sin:

Prepare the children ahead of time for answering questions they are asked. Don't excuse shyness. Don't even use the word! If your child refuses to speak, treated as a discipline issue just as you would treat any other disobedience. Do not discipline in public, however, but keep the discipline for when you are home, whether it is a simple verbal correction or a consequence. If you allow a child to choose not to speak when spoken to, you facilitate that behavior. Their disobedience is a symptom of a heart that isn't willing to listen to you or follow you. (pg.116

To be clear, the Maxwells believe that if parents want their kids to talk in public, the kids should do it - and failure to do so is disobedience which is a sin.   Presumably, the converse is also true - if parents don't want their kids to speak in public, kids who do so are sinning and should be punished. 

The problem with this belief is two-fold. 

First, social anxiety is a real thing.  When I was a kid and a strange adult asked me questions, my mind would go blank and I'd hear a loud buzzing in my ears.  I wanted to respond as smoothly and well as my parents did - but I literally couldn't do it.   My parents were sympathetic; they gave me time to answer and if I couldn't, they answered the question for me.  That took the stress off of me - and generally let me respond to the next question or ask a question of my own once my body settled down a bit.   They also told me to watch how they interacted with other adults and mimic that.  That was a great tip for me; I find practice conversations stilted - but watching my parents let me connect stimuli found in real life.   This is a pretty common story among shy or timid people; you want to be involved - but your body gets in the way. 

Understanding and patience is helpful.  Having parents who both support you - and challenge you within reasonable limits - is helpful, too.  In my case, while my parents knew I struggled at the first exchange with a strange adult, they expected me to be able to greet them with a polite "Hello" and say goodbye as well.  They gave me positive feedback when I joined the conversation.

If my parents had punished me in any way, I believe my social anxiety would have gotten worse over time rather than better.   It was hard enough to push through when I was anxious, but I knew my parents had my back.  If I was anxious and knew I was disappointing my parents and that I would be punished....well, yeah, I'd be even more blank....and probably progress into a crying ball of Mel.  That'd be impressive to the poor adult who asked me how school was going....

The other problem is the Maxwell belief that parents have the unquestioned right to control their children's every action.   That's completely nuts - and totally insane coming from parents of eight children.   My son is a whopping 18 months adjusted and I can't control his every action!  Honestly, I would never try that.  Right now, I demonstrate appropriate social customs like saying "Hi!" "Bye!" and waving at people.  Sometimes my son mimics me by saying "Hi, car!" or "Hi, cat!" and he's just started waving spontaneously when he sees people - but I'd never try and reinforce that through negative consequences.   I let the natural positive consequences happen like when he waves at a cashier the cashier smiles at him and verbally reinforce that behavior by saying "Oh, it's so nice when you wave at people!". 

I want my son to be a functional member of society - but I also want him to be able to follow his gut, too.  That means that he's allowed to have people he likes and dislikes.  That means he can say "no" to a hug from a family member and offer a handshake instead.  That means he can choose not to talk to random strangers - even if doing so would make me proud. 

The rest of the chapter rehashes topics covered previously so I'm going to stop there.   The next chapter is really short.  The Maxwells try to create an "intermediate" level of conversation and fail miserably.  The most memorable bit for me - and presumably you - is the list of questions that kids should be taught to ask each other...and adults.

Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Six - Part Two

Everyone survived the goofy conversational start to Chapter Six, I hope.  I wish I could tell you that the chapter improves immensely from there, but this is written by the Maxwells. 

 "Making Great Conversationalists" by Steven and Teri Maxwell rarely brings helpful advice or sensible activities.  This strange lack of useful information, however, is off-set by quirky insights into their writing process or the general rhythms of their lives.  In Chapter Six, the Maxwells decide to answer the question "Can Conversational Skills Be Taught?" .   I agree that teaching conversational skills is possible and an admirable goal - but I question the wisdom of waiting to answer the question until page 96 of a 200 page book.  I think I would enjoy the book more if the Maxwells admitted at this point that they personally are not the people to each this skill.

With the standard absence of transition between subjects, the Maxwells insert a page of rhetoric about why movies, television, video games, computers and books stifle conversation rather than promote it.  The crux of their argument is that when people are engrossed by media, they do not talk.  If someone interrupts them while they are engrossed by the media, the person will be shushed and conversation will be crushed. 

The problem I see with their logic is that good media either allows for conversations while being consumed or inspires topics of conversation after the media is done.   When I was college-aged, my teenage brother saved up and purchased an X-Box along with Mario-Karts.    Within a few months, my mom, my sister, my brother and I ended playing marathon sessions of Mario-Karts against each other.   We were capable of talking while playing Mario-Karts - although it was generally a series of rants about how horribly we were doing interspaced with hysterical laughing when one of us realized we were doing so badly that we were screwed.   

Now, my dad would join us when we went to see local theater.  Unlike video games, other audience members do appreciate silence during acts.  In exchange for two hours of silence, we gained hours of conversational material.   Most recently, Dad played Firs in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard".   We've discussed the staging, casting, costume and lighting choices of the play - but the longest lasting topic of conversation is Anton Chekhov's surprise that a play he wrote to be a comedy is at best a tragicomedy...and most of the play is simply tragic.

The subject of the evils of modern media wraps up with a very detailed description of how Teri Maxwell always turns to see people who enter the room where her computer is and states that she needs to finish up before talking to the person if she cannot talk right away.   I am astonished by the detailed description of what should be a mundane and workaday habit related to common courtesy.  It's like the Maxwells have cut themselves so far off from most humans that they've forgotten which pieces of information are common - like the phrase "Gotta finish this; be with you in a minute, kiddo" - leading to them feeling like they've made a major breakthrough by being polite.

Speaking of being isolated from all people, the next section about ideas for good talking times with your kids contains no new ideas.  The only one I remembered after reading was the decent idea that some kids relax more when a parent lies on a bed with them.   The reason I remembered that is I ran into a set of pictures of the bedroom of the Maxwell "girls" where Sarah, Anna and Mary sleep.  Anna and Mary share bunk-beds that might not work so well for those two girls.

The benefits of setting up relaxing talking times evaporate if readers follow the questionable advice over the next two pages.  Steven Maxwell is all about having individual meetings with each kid once a week to talk.  If families followed that idea, I'd think it a bit hokey, but harmless.  The problem comes when people follow Maxwell's ideal of using those meetings to go over the personal failings of the kid with an occasional sop of pretending to take the kid's feedback about where Maxwell is currently failing.  I don't remember having major character flaws when I was growing up that required in-depth serious conversations weekly; if I did, the repeating nature of the conversations would make me nervous.

Once we've slogged this far in the chapter, we are rewarded with plans to carefully - oh, ever so carefully - allow kids to practice conversations with people outside of their family.  Let's be honest; this is crazy even for CP/QF families.  Most people let their kids interact with other kids at school, at church and in the neighborhood.   Not the Maxwells - and the control freak moments seep out.

You can also invite another person or family over from your church for dinner. It is certainly a bit easier if it is just one person, such as a young, single adult or a widow or widower. That allows the conversation to focus on that particular person so it doesn't have to be spread among a couple or a whole family. (pg. 102)

Imagine you are a teenager in a family of eight kids with two adults.   In which scenario would it be easier to talk: when one adult visitor is over for dinner or when a similarly large family is over for dinner?   Based on my experience, it's a lot easier to find a person to talk when there are lots of available people to talk with.  The only reason that I can think of for the Maxwells to restrict the visit to a single person is to control the access of their kids to conversation and possibly to control the conversation focus to remain on the parents.

As conversation experience grows, having a family from church over for dinner allows a greater degree of not only practice but also ministry. The girls can have conversations with the visiting daughters and mom while the boys engage the other families' sons and father. (pg. 102)

Goody-goody-gumdrops!  Once the kids have demonstrated that they will not spill deep family secrets or embarass the parents (like 5 year-old Cynthia when she didn't want to talk to a stranger), the kids will be allowed to interact cautiously with other like-minded families.  Now, I'm not sure how that would work for the Maxwell Family since they've always managed to skirt the theology mind field of home-church vs. joining a congregation by running a "congregation" that consists entirely over retired home aged-folks.   The best bit, though, is training kids early to not interact with kids of the opposite gender.   Romeo and Juliet can't be emotionally impure - let alone secretly married and having sex - if they've never spoken to each other, after all.

The next rung on the experience ladder will the conversations with non-believers. When you invite them into your house, you will be cautious to oversee conversations between them and your children. They will not have sensitivity to what a Christian would consider appropriate topics for children's ears. Parents can stop or forestall what they don't want their children to hear. (pg. 103)

Boy, I had so much fun imagining the type of non-believer that couldn't handle being around children or teens without launching into profanity, epic stories of drug use or hedonistic orgy stories - while also trying to figure out where the average CP/QF adherent would find this interesting of an adult.  And then I realized the problem: I was using the standards of mainstream USA to determine what stories are inappropriate for kids.   In Maxwell-land, I am a great example of a non-believer who could warp their kids.  I attended college - and liked it!  I have worked in a career - and found it beneficial!  I married late in life and *gasp* waited to have a baby for several years!  I watch TV! I believe in evolution!  Oh - there are so many ways I could contaminate their children...and I'd never even know.

Anytime your family is out in public, there are conversation possibilities. It could be talking to the checkout person while at the store. Maybe it is the teller at the bank when you stop by to do some banking. What about when you were waiting in line to return or purchase an item and there are people in front of you and behind? When you are out, be watchful for people with whom your children could begin a conversation, and help them initiate the conversation. (pg. 103)

Um.... yes.  That is a possibility - but why do the Maxwells need to explain this?  I generally strike up conversations with people in the wider world - and presumably my son will learn that from watching me like I learned it from watching my parents. 

The next chapter discusses teaching children how to have conversations....which is so weird.....

Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Six - Part One

It's official!  I have now had more ear infections as an adult as I did prior to age 4!   Honestly, I didn't have many ear infections as a child - but I am apparently the oddball adult who has one Eustachian tube that doesn't drain well when my allergies act up and about twice a decade I manage to get a real-honest-to-goodness middle ear infection with the resultant fever, crabbiness and ear/tooth/side of head pain.   

The funniest bit is that the well-meaning nurse practitioner, resident. or physician's assistant always starts by explaining that adults don't get ear infections....they just get fluid buildup without infection which can hurt a lot.  I nod understandingly - because that's generally true - and then have them look at my ears followed by "Oh...yeah.  That's infected.  Huh." 

Thankfully, my husband was working from home studying for an insurance licence so he could watch our son while I slept most of the day.  Also - thank God for those prescription ear-drops that end pain. 

Anyways, Steven and Teri Maxwell's "Making Great Conversationalists" includes two example conversations at the beginning of Chapter Six.   The starting example is the "bad" conversation - which doesn't seem that bad to me: 

After praying for their evening meal, Dad says, "Tell us about your day, kids."

"It was fine," sixteen-year-old Morgan begins.

"Mine too," fourteen-year-old Hunter adds.

"What did you do?" Dad works towards getting more conversation from the children.

"Oh, not much," Hunter answers.

"Hmm, I don't know," Morgan says.

Dad gives up on the conversation with his children and focus on finishing his dinner so he can get to his computer to answer some pressing emails. (pg. 93-94)

I find the fact that Dad is "praying for their evening meal" rip-roaringly funny.  "God, we...really need food for dinner.  Oh, wait.  Here it is!  Thank you!"  That's why the standard preposition used is "before" as in "After praying before their evening meal....".  An equally acceptable phrase would be "saying grace".

Dad is not good at soliciting conversation from his kids and the Maxwells never point out that he's doing worse at getting them to talk as they are at responding.   He essentially commands his teenagers to entertain him with stories from their day without providing them with a conversation point.  His original request has nothing for the kids to grab onto and respond to.  Because of that broad, bland request, most people will blank out and have little or no sensible response.   Simply bounding the request with a time frame and an emotional reference like "Tell me your favorite event from this morning, kids" is much easier to respond to.   This is supposed to be a family, though, so Dad should be able to fit the question to his kids.   I went to a traditional high school and my parents knew which classes I was taking and what extracurricular activities I was in.  Homeschooling is supposed to make parents more informed about their kids' lives - so what went wrong in this family?

Dad's not demonstrating persistence or determination for his kids to model at all.  He tries to talk to his kids for 30 seconds.  When the kids don't give him the response he wants, he shovels down dinner and returns to work.  That's underwhelming for an adult.

There's a minor issue in play between the two kids.  Morgan sounded like she had more to say after "It was fine" - but she was cut off by Hunter.   For quieter kids, once someone shuts them down, they might not get back into the conversation so the family should work at teaching Hunter to wait his turn - even if he is a boy in a very patriarchal culture.

The second response from each of the kids seems odd in a homeschooling family.  If I was Hunter's mom-teacher and I heard that he didn't do much today in school, we would be having a serious conversation about if he wanted to have his assignments picked by me in detail every day.   Similarly, Morgan's response that she can't remember what she did in school - at all - should set off warning bells.  I was taking 7 subjects a day in high school.  I might have some difficulty remembering exactly what we did in a class that was easy for me like history or religion- but I could generally discuss what I was doing in math, science and Spanish which were very challenging for me.  Is Morgan not being challenged?  Is she in classes that are completely overwhelming her?  Does she have memory issues? 

And now I present the "good" conversation.  It makes me laugh so hard that I kept causing my transcription software to freeze up.  I have broken the conversation into small chunks because I can't make it any further before I have to bring up some issues.

After praying for their meal, Dad says, " Tell us about your day, kids."

"It was a normal school day for me," Hunter response. "I have been struggling with equations in my algebra. Mom has been encouraging me to pray and ask the Lord to help me. Today I finally felt like I was making some progress. It felt so good." (pg. 94)

Steven Maxwell needs to guard against getting whacked-upside the head by an elderly Dominican nun in a short habit.   I went to a Catholic high school and was taught AP Calculus by Sister Robert Anne.  She was probably the last remaining of the old school religious math teachers.  She didn't hit anyone with a ruler in my class....but we were never entirely sure that she wouldn't hit us if she thought it would teach us math.    SRA was didn't pull any punches - but she wouldn't let anyone mess with her students - and she showed up at most athletic and artistic events regardless of weather, distance or skill of the performers.    We always had a few students who enjoyed messing with her - and she messed right back.   She appreciated hard work and spunky students.    I can't imagine the spunkiest student telling her that they've been praying for God to teach them Algebra.   I'm sure she'd reply tartly that prayer can't replace studying and getting help when you need it.....or maybe that the student should simply jump to invoking St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.  After all, she was crystal clear that attending monthly Mass as a high school cut into her teaching time and that if students really wanted to attend Mass they should get up earlier and go to 6:00 am daily Mass at St. Isadore or St. Adelbert.    So, yeah, Maxwell should look out for an angry nun who is going to whack him for the good of all those homeschooled kids.

Just out of curiosity: has Hunter made some progress in praying for help or in learning algebra?  Both are possible based on his response.....

" You know, son, math was hard for me, too, but there was a great a sense of accomplishment when I understood something. I didn't know the Lord when I was a teen so I didn't have His help like you do," Dad encourages. " What about you, Morgan?"

"School was fine, but what I was really excited about was starting to work on an apron I am making. I had washed and dried the fabric yesterday. Today I was able to cut out the whole thing so tomorrow afternoon I will be ready to begin sewing." (pg.94)

Dad's first sentence was great!  His second sentence....well, let's say that I doubt anyone can find a correlation let alone causation between skills in Algebra and salvation status.  I hate to think that there are kids and teens out there that believe that being saved makes you better at skills you struggle at. 

Now...Morgan.  The Maxwells are reinforcing the worst excesses of CP/QF homeschooling for daughters in a few sentences. In the first conversation, she had no memory of anything she did in school.  In the second conversation, nothing she did in school is as fascinating as discussing the symbol of domestic femininity that she's making as a budding young woman.  I have the bona fides of an accomplished homemaker; I can make clothing, grow a garden, preserve the produce, raise a baby, and build kitchen organizers from scratch.   My parents taught me how to keep a home - and they would have been horrified at the implication that the only way to learn housekeeping skills is to cut back on academic accomplishments. 

Ironically, Teri Maxwell should have been allowed to write Morgan's dialogue.  She would have realized that even a detailed farmhouse apron doesn't take that long to cut out - and that the most time-consuming part of preparing fabric is ironing the laundered fabric.

Once the kids have entertained their dad for a few minutes, the family can launch into the only subject left:

Then Hunter introduces another topic for discussion: " Dad and Mom, I'd like to tell you what the Lord has been teaching me through my Bible time in the morning. I'm reading in Jeremiah, and it is so convicting. I wonder if there aren't a lot of similarities between today and Bible-time Israel."

"Son," Dad responds. " I have felt the same thing as when I read Jeremiah. Whenever I read that book, I come away so amazed at God's patience with Israel and then with the world today."

Morgan chimes in: "Dad, do you think God could be running out of patience with mankind?"

"He certainly would be justified if he is. It is amazing how little interest people have in the Lord Jesus or anything that has to do with the Bible.." (pg. 94-95)

This goes on for another full page.  The important thing is that the kids - or the mom who finally speaks up - ask questions of Dad that let him expound on his views of how modern America sucks and how God's gonna smite everyone God dislikes. 

Maxwell never brings up an example where a kid comes to a very different conclusion from their personal Bible reading time than the parents do.  He's probably never experienced that since his kids have been carefully protected from any dissenting Bible views - but I'm curious how families are supposed to respond to that.

Of course, neither of the Maxwell parents, any of their children who read the book or the proofreader that they swear that they use found it strange that a 14-year-old used the term "Bible-time Israel"  rather than "Biblical Israel" or "Biblical times" or...well, there's a lot of options other than "Bible-time Israel".    In fact, "Bible-Time Israel" sounds like an attraction at Ned Flanders' Praiseland on the Simpsons or a Little People toy set marketed to Christian families. 

Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter Two

I've been a mom for exactly 21 months as I write this post.  I've had a lot of experience with various medical and rehabilitation professions having the awkward conversation about issues or delays that my son has.  Let's see....there's been blood transfusions, an infected PICC line, a super-active baby who required special ventilator settings, the time he started showing signs of a NEC infection but was really just thermoregulating as a very young age, lungs that were a bit messed up and the joys of choosing the right type of feeding tube.  That lead to meeting therapists who got to tell us that he was mildly delayed in gross motor skills and fine motor skills.  The fine motor skills improved and the motor skills continued on the right timing just delayed by 3 months.  Most recently, we learned that his gross motor skills had developed more of a lag and that it was time to think about outpatient PT.

I say this because I heard many different, but kind, sweet and caring ways of letting me know that my kid has some issues that need specialized treatment while still respecting my son's awesomeness - and he is freaking amazing - and my feelings as a full-time caregiver

I am so grateful that no one decided to follow Steven Maxwell's method of sharing concerns in his book "Making Great Conversationalists" co-authored with his wife Teri Maxwell. This lovely paragraph comes at the end of 2.5 pages that I would summarize as "Jesus loves us more than you because we've got a successful conference ministry":

Something else grew out of our travel, conferences, and personal conversations with those who attended our conferences. We became concerned about your children. This is a typical conversation one of our children would have at a conference with a young person of, perhaps, 16 years old. (pg. 24)

Yes!  This is how you attract people to your business - sorry - "ministry": insult their children!  How have other people missed this?

Oh, wait.  Successful businesses and ministries cultivate positive relationships with potential clients; the Maxwell habit of insulting the intelligence and parenting skills of their past customers is related to the current dearth of interest in Maxwell conferences, I suspect.

I should feel more insulted - but again, this is one of those paragraphs that drives the author's level of pompous isolation home.   The Maxwell kids are phenomenal conversationalists as evaluated by their parents.  When other kids fail to hit all of the Maxwell expectations, the fault is with the other kids, obviously. 

This next "bad" conversation follows immediately after the last sentence in the previous quote.  Not surprisingly, I believe my gentle readers will recognize that the conversation issue diagnosed by the Maxwell Parents is not the actual issue that's occurring:

Our Anna would initiate the conversation. "Hi, my name is Anna."

" Hi," the new girl responds.

" What's your name?"

"Stacy."

" It's nice to meet you Stacy. I'm so glad you were able to come to the conference. I hope that you will like it and learn something from it. Where do you live?"

"Simpsonville."

" How far is that from here? I am not very familiar with the geography of this area because I am from Kansas."

" Don't know."

" What do you like to do, Stacy?"

" Read."

" Tell me about your favorite book."

" I don't have a favorite."

Through this conversation, Anna is working to engage Stacy. Sometimes Stacy looks at Anna, but other times she is looking around. Stacy halfway manages to answer Anna' questions, but she doesn't give more than basic information, and she never asks Anna a question. (pgs. 24-25)

*PSSST*

Before Stacy goes down in history labeled as a "bad" conversationalist, we should discuss the importance of non-verbal signaling in conversations. 

Stacy - to be blunt - does not want to talk to Anna. 

Stacy is looking for a specific person or persons who is NOT Anna while Anna continues to blithely assume that Stacy has nothing she'd rather be doing than making small-talk with a stranger.

Now, how did we reach this sad impasse? 

The first problem is that we've got two 16 year-old girls on our hands.  The finer social graces of being able to disengage a conversation without insulting the other person can take a long time to work out.  Saying "Anna, I'm so glad to meet you, but unfortunately I promised my friend Hannah that I would talk with her between the first and second session about a skit we are doing at church tomorrow so I have to go now" is something I couldn't do smoothly on the fly until I was in my twenties.  I doubt I would be as monosyllabic as Stacy - but I would have been stammering and vaguely inchoate.

The second problem is that homeschooled CP/QF teenagers have so few chances to interact with their peer group that every second is precious.  When I was the same age, I knew that I'd see my school friends five days out of seven and work buddies at least twice a week.  Using a passing period or even a whole lunch period to have a conversation with a stranger was not an imposition at all.  For poor Stacy, this may well be the only time she sees another homeschooled, home-churching friend for a month or more!  Stacy would have to be a martyr to pass up time with a friend - let alone potential suitor - to amuse Anna Maxwell.

The last issue is the forced yet transient nature of this relationship.  Anna is different than most of the teenagers here; she's a traveling speaker.  She's stuck being a model teenager on display for other families to admire.  That's an ok schtick - but it's not the most attractive to other teenagers.  Plus, Anna is visiting from another state altogether.  How much effort should a local CP/QF teenage girl spend cultivating a relationship with Anna when the relationship is going to be long-distance and highly monitored by one or both parent sets?

One last concern of mine: look at Anna's use of questions in this one-sided conversation.  I know that Anna's trying to start a conversation with someone who doesn't want to talk - but Anna's use of questions implies that Stacy is under some obligation to share whatever personal information Anna wants to know.   The only piece of information Anna shares about herself is that she lives in Kansas.  In return, Stacy's supposed to share her favorite hobby and produce a fascinating synopsis of her favorite book on demand. 

My tip for the Maxwells: Since your family only reads a highly restricted subsection of religious writings, don't be surprised when some people who are genuinely well-read react with visible annoyance to the question "What's your favorite book?"   I have a stock answer ready for that question - but a lot of avid readers find that question deeply annoying because there are so many good books in different genres that it's a bit like asking "Which of your kids do you like the best?"

The next quote is the "good" conversation.

Two 16 year old girls should be able to have a delightful conversation, perhaps a little like this:

Our Anna would initiate the conversation. " Hi, my name is Anna."

" Hi. My name is Stacy. I am excited to be at the conference with my family," the new girl responds.

" Why are you excited about it?" Anna asks.

" Our family has been really growing in the Lord lately. My dad shared some of the session titles and descriptions with us. They sounded really good. I especially like the one about brothers and sisters. Do you have many brothers and sisters?" Stacy continues the conversation.

" I have two sisters and five brothers. It is from those relationships that the Lord has given us the material we share in the Brothers and Sisters Best Friends Forever session. How many siblings do you have, and what is your biggest struggle with them?"

When we realize the good conversation was the exception rather than the rule, we decided that maybe we could assist parents and doing what is the most important to them-- helping their children. (pgs 25-26)

Well, I can see where the conversation is much more enjoyable from Anna's perspective - but Stacy's still not getting to see or do whatever was distracting her during the earlier vignette.

It's still a weird, stilted conversation, though. 

I grew up Catholic so I've never heard anyone use the term "growing in the Lord" to describe how a family is doing.    My twisted sense of humor wishes that Anna had followed up with the question "How has the Lord been active in your life?" so that Stacy could unload about how much better her life has been now that her dad's alcoholism has been in recovery for a month.   It sucks when he falls off the wagon, but at least he's trying now - and the family has enough money for food again!

The fact that Stacy's dad shared some - but not all - of the session titles with the family brought back a funny memory from the spring after my husband and I started dating.  My husband's brother-in-law and sister are highly active in a local Linux conference that has morphed into a sci-fi-fantasy-alternate lifestyle-fiction writer-gamer extravaganza.   By that point, my husband had known me long enough to realize that I would enjoy this conference - or at least be able to roll with it.   Well, we checked into the hotel and I started leafing through the conference program while we waited for an elevator.   I stop on one page and ask, "Is there something you want to talk about in our relationship?" My husband is completely thrown and blurts "No?".  I follow-up with "Is there something you need to tell me about your personal preferences?"  My husband is completely lost so I flip the program over so he can see that I have it open to the quick-reference for the BDSM community activities and workshops.   He and I laugh pretty hard. - and agree that that would be a horrible way to start a discussion about sexual preferences.    I doubt that the Maxwell conferences are that interesting...but I've never been to one.

Getting back to Anna and Stacy's conversation, I feel like part of the reason the conversation is "good" according to the Maxwells is that Anna is getting feedback about what clients of Titus 2 Ministries want.  The current clients like the descriptions and choices which is a good piece of info to have - but man, Anna's life sound more and more conscribed every second.

Let's talk about boundaries for a second. 

Healthy people have boundaries around their personal lives and respect boundaries set by other people.   Anna and Stacy met less than a minute ago - so Anna is massively transgressing a basic boundary by asking Stacy to disclose the foibles of the relationships between her siblings and her.    That question is a conversation-stopper rather than a conversation opener.   A far more acceptable option would be to ask "What are the strengths of your relationships with your siblings?".   Talking about the positives that happen in a family is generally viewed as non-threatening and acceptable.

Why would 16-year old Anna make that mistake?  The Maxwells are super-shelterers. Steven and Teri Maxwell have taken the CP/QF norm of restricting contact between their children and wider society to an absurd level.   As near as I can tell, the Maxwells can go weeks without having more than work-related or forced conversion conversations with strangers.  Learning societal norms require a bit more interaction with non-family humans. 

I can guess why the Maxwell kids don't recognize crossing a boundary.  What I don't understand is why Steven and Teri Maxwell don't remember basic courtesy and boundaries in conversations.  These two grew up in mainstream homes and they both went to college at the University of Missouri - Rolla.  Yeah, they've gone over to a very different life - but that was after their early twenties.  They should know better.

In the next few pages, Steven Maxwell shares his understanding of how communication is different than conversation.  I've pulled out his definitions:

Conversation is the verbal exchange of information between two or more people. (pg. 26)

Communication is the giving or receiving of information such as thoughts, opinions, or facts via speech or writing, whether electronically or by other means. (pg. 27)

He's not wrong - but that's not the same as being complete. 

I dragged out my notes from my one and only college class in Communications.  I learned that communication is the process of converting ideas or thoughts or feelings in a person's head to a form that can be shared with other people.  The advantage of that definition is that it includes lots of non-verbal communication methods as well as media methods.     Maxwell's description misses the scads of information that can be passed by facial expressions like "Continue doing that and you're in SO much trouble!" or "Wow, this has gotten weird fast...."

Conversation, on the other hand, describes interactive communication between two or more people.  A lot of time we think of conversations as being verbal and happening at one time - but conversations can be written and asynchronous.  An excellent example is the circle letters that used to be used to share information among families and groups focused on similar interests.  A more modern example is discussions in comment sections of websites and blogs.    A funny example of an asynchronous conversations involving random and unknown users was the time the guest service team manager placed a sign over the time clock that used "Your" when the correct usage was "You're".  Post-it notes, correction tape, Sharpies and a wide variety of ballpoint pens created a highly annotated sign divided among the "If the word is a contraction of 'you are', the correct form is you're" group and the "get over yourselves" group.   

From here on out, Maxwell treats all conversations where one person is predominating as communication - which is a bit shaky on either Maxwell's or my definition of communication.  Equally oddly, he doesn't seem to recognize that his definition of communication doesn't require that all participants share equally while requiring a balanced back-and-forth in the sample conversations.

We can see some of these quirks in a long story about a pre-screening for Jesse's wisdom teeth removal:

Recently we were at an oral surgeons office who was going to remove our son's wisdom teeth. Jesse and I ( Steve) were escorted into an examining room and instructed where to sit. The assistant turned on a DVD that played for 10 minutes, telling us all about wisdom teeth removal and follow-up care. That's the surgeon came in and began to tell Jesse about the procedure and certain things we should know.

(...)

To this point in the pre-surgery appointment, they were strictly giving us information, first via the DVD and then in person as the oral surgeon recited facts that he had repeated many times before. There was no exchange back from us other than to indicate we understood what they wanted us to know. We were interested in what we were hearing because it would impact Jesse's health. It was neither enjoyable nor awkward-- just the passing of information.

However, after the medical part was completed, the surgeon transformed from a sterile doctor into a conversationalist. He asked Jesse some questions about himself, and the flow of information went both ways. We entered a conversation.

Jesse and I asked him questions on a personal level, and he interned asked us more. He asked about Jesse's school and future plans. He asked about what I did for a living and where we went to church, among other topics. We were able to ask him some questions and learn a bit about his life, including his love for going on medical mission trips to Haiti. For 20 minutes we carried on a conversation. When the communication turned into an enjoyable conversation, it was no longer cold and dry communication but a pleasurable, relationship-building experience. He was a warm, caring person who had a heart for his patients. (pgs. 27-28)

In the first two paragraphs of this quote, Maxwell can't use his own definitions to correctly sort "watched DVD" and "listened to oral surgeon and assented that we understood the procedure" into the right categories.   Maxwell and I agree that his definition of communication fits watching an informational DVD.  What Maxwell blanks on is that he and Jesse were having a conversation with the oral surgeon when the oral surgeon described the procedure, common and uncommon side effects, and after-care for the procedure.  Yes, the oral surgeon was doing most of the talking - but Jesse and Steven Maxwell's indication that they understood what the surgeon was saying and were accepting of the risks and required after-care was critically important.  Jesse and Steven were sending equally important information back to the surgeon by saying "Yes" or "I understand" or "We can do that."  If the Maxwells had wanted, they could have engaged in a more dynamic conversation with the oral surgeon by saying "No, I'm afraid I don't understand the risks" or "Oh, dry sockets aren't a real thing" or any response that made the oral surgeon have to describe things differently. 

The last two paragraphs clarify what Maxwell really means by "conversation".  A Maxwell conversation is an informal exchange of information that is enjoyable to the Maxwells.  This remembered conversation strikes all the topics that a good Maxwell conversation should have - homeschooling, rejection of college or vocational training, bragging about their home church located in a retirement home and a chance for Steven to brag about his family business.  Really, the only flaw was that the doctor pulled out a higher "Jesus" trump card by having participated in medical mission trips to Haiti than Steven could pull.  An ideal conversation would have included the oral surgeon having a conversion experience right then and there with Jesse and Steven Maxwell.  Alas, we live in a fallen world :-P

Rapid topic change: How do the Maxwells choose their doctors?  I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was in my early twenties. I talked to my oral surgeon then for 15 minutes total and about 8 of those minutes were when I was being put under anesthesia or groggily returning to consciousness.  After my son was born, I became a hard-core tooth grinder and cracked a tooth so deeply I had to have it extracted.   I talked to the oral surgeon for 10 minutes at the pre-appointment (mainly because I was in the middle of filling out the medical history when he arrived so he finished it orally with me) followed by a tooth extraction that took less than 15 minutes start to finish.  I really don't remember anything about the oral surgeon who removed my wisdom teeth - but I'm certain I never had a very deep conversation about anything except the oddities of having a small baby attached to a lot of cords with the second surgeon. 

Oh - and that conversation was while he was extracting the tooth.  (I love laughing gas. It kills my anxiety about having pointy metal objects in my mouth while still letting me chat.)

I don't assume that a doctor who is quiet, business-like or even brusque hates their patients.  I pick my doctors for competency in their field and ability to communicate clearly with me.  The anesthesiologist who cared for me during my C-section was very brusque - but that was at least in part because I had two IV pumps fail...simultaneous....in the middle of a C-section that was projected to need at least one blood transfusion if not more.   In the middle of it, I didn't understand why my complaints about nausea seemed to be on the back-burner - but afterwards he explained what happened.  From my point of view, the anesthesiologist focused on the really important issue of keeping fluids in me and handled the less severe issue of nausea and vomiting when he got a free hand.

In case anyone missed it, Steven Maxwell outlines the real importance of teaching your kids to be conversationalists:

As a father at that moment, I was grateful that my 16 year old son had learned the art of conversation. When the oral surgeon ask Jesse questions, he spoke up and articulated his answers. Not only was Jesse able to do that, but he was able to continue the conversation by asking the doctor questions. That is a tool Jesse will use throughout his life. (pg. 28)

Remember, the Maxwells are all about image management.  Jesse earns points in that conversation because he can answer clearly and think of questions to ask the oral surgeon about his life.  Jesse performed well and therefore Steven is proud.   Notice that Steven doesn't seem concerned if Jesse understood the risks of tooth removal....or if Jesse had worries about the procedure...or even if Jesse could correctly fill out a personal medical history.  Nope, as long as the kids make Steven look good, they're fine.

Next post: the real reason those two neighbors don't talk...and a few remembered Maxwellian conversations.