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.