Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Making Great Conversationalists: The Appendices

I like to learn something new every day.  Today, I learned that there are two plural possible for the word "appendix" in the English language - and that the one with the "c" is more commonly used when describing added materials at the end of books.    For the title of the post, I originally entered "appendixes" which didn't look entirely right - but I couldn't explain why either.  I think most of my confusion came from the fact I'm certain I've ran into both spellings before but seen the "x" version more frequently due to my science education background.

The Maxwells end their self-help book "Making Great Conversationalists" with three appendices.  Appendix A is a list of questions to teach kids to ask other children.  Appendix B is a list of questions for children to ask adults.  Appendix C is Steven and Terri's testimony about becoming Christians.   There is a LOT of overlap in the questions from Appendices A and B from earlier chapters so I'm going to simply highlight the really, really, really bad ones.

I'm skipping Appendix C because a testimony about being saved written in first-person plural by two very straight-laced people is exactly as dull as it sounds.

Appendix A only had one new area that surprised me:

Vocations (for older children)

If you could spend your life doing any job, what would that be? Why?

What do you want to do in life?

Why do you feel God might be calling you to that? (pg. 206)

These questions are strangely open for the Maxwells. 

The Maxwells espouse that daughters should marry and raise children while sons should be small-business owners in areas that require no post-secondary education or training that can't be done at home.  Now, the Maxwells have failed to launch any of their daughters into their "adult" roles of wives and mothers and their sons have an equal track record of business failures as successes - but equally importantly, the Maxwells strongly believe in sheltering their kids from any ideas that might draw the kids to different paths or goals.    Did Steven and Teri Maxwell really want to risk little Mary, Anna or Sarah being told by a friend that she was going to be a teacher, a dancer, a doctor or a business owner when she grew up?  How awkward was it when Christopher was telling people that he really wanted to be a EMT or rescue pilot when Steven was working on crushing that dream through emotional manipulation?

See, resilience is a trait that extreme sheltering misses.  Kids who are exposed to a wide variety of ideas since childhood usually maintain basic levels of calm in the face of a new, foreign idea.   When I ran into kids or teens who espoused strict gender roles, my reaction was "That's odd and a bit disturbing" but it didn't really shake my core beliefs.   Keeping kids in a stripped-down, sterile intellectual environment where they are only ever exposed to the "correct" viewpoint leaves them highly vulnerable to throwing out their entire belief system when exposed to the broader world.

CP/QF people instinctively understand this because have terrible rates of converting and retaining believers.  That's why Christian Patriarchy has accepted Quiverfull beliefs so enthusiastically.  It's the only way of keeping their churches going.

Spiritual

Where are you going to be in a million years? Why?

Have you been saved? Would you tell me about it?

Do you read your Bible everyday? What are you reading now? Anything special you can remember from recent readings?

What person from the Bible would you most like to have a conversation with? Why? (207-208)

The first question messed with my brain.  Assuming that people believe that God and heaven exist outside of the physical universe that means that time ceases to exist after death.  It's kind of like asking "what color is a transparent object?"   Maybe that confusion is the point; the CP/QF kid can swoop in with some tracts and high-falutin salvation spiel while the other person is trying to figure out what the question means.

Please do not ask people for their salvation stories.  The fall before I met my husband I went with my best friend and her mom to a "Harvest Festival" in a local rural community.  At this point in my life, I was a confirmed urban or blue-collar suburban resident - but I did think that the pole barn that we were setting up various dishes we brought seemed suspiciously clean.  There were no oil stains on the floor.  There was no lingering smell of rotting vegetation or animal dung. 

Turns out that the "Harvest Festival" was a two-part gig. 

The first half was a tasty potluck and social event only marred by a daft, intrusive game where we got signatures from people.  Normally, I like games like that - but I could not ask anyone "Were you saved after age 30?" or "Are you a single person over the age of 25?"  Admittedly, I didn't have to ask the second question since my bestie and I simply signed for each other - but I signed that for a lot of people by simply saying "I fit number 18 if you've still got that open."   The process was weird - but not nearly as weird as watching a guy who thought he could recite the Gettysburg Address panic or when the enthusiastic announcer recommended that the single people over the age of 25 look around for potential marriage partners out of the other singles there.  I felt a bit better when I happily yelled back to the announcer that all of the single people there were ladies - so they must have been in favor of homosexual marriage, yes?  In hindsight, the ten or so people in charge of the party spent most of the night wandering around telling their salvation stories to anyone who would listen while the 90 or so locals avoided them like the plague.

Second half of the night was a play put on by the local youth group about how great it is to die as a teenager when you are saved.   Um....no.   Just say no.

I learned an important lesson that night - when locals leave a party en masse, follow them.  The locals knew about the crappy salvation pitch after dinner and made a hasty escape.  I also learned that hearing salvation stories is so unpopular that only hosting a meat-heavy potluck can get new blood on your property.

The questions about the Bible makes me wonder how many people who do honestly read the Bible blank out when asked about it.  On the flip side, I can talk fluently on my Bible readings - but I don't read the Bible every day.

I'd really like to visit with Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law.  I'm fascinated by the amount of intelligence and planning she used to get pregnant by Judah when Judah refused to do his duty to her by giving her his last surviving son in marriage.   Oh, wait.  Is this appropriate for children?  No - but most of the Bible isn't child-appropriate.

The remainder is from the appendix B - or question kids should ask of adults.  Personally, I survived by answering the adult's standard questions about my schooling and after-school activities then went on my merry way. 

Vocation

Do you enjoy your work? Why? Why not?

What are the biggest challenges of your job?

Do you plan to continue with this job long-term? (pg. 208)

Let's not encourage burnt out adults to unload on kids about what they dislike about their jobs, ok?  I've always thought the "kids should interact with all ages without restraint or preference" theme in sheltered homeschooling to be bonkers - but I assumed that adults were still expected to filter their thoughts and experiences when around kids.   Similarly, the ability to filter out emotional content from adults' work experiences is a lot to ask of a teenager let alone a kid.  Teens learn through interactions with peers and overhearing adult conversations that sometimes people need to vent about negative experiences at work - but venting doesn't mean that the person's job is horrible or in trouble.  Kids don't have that kind of filter for experiences so listening to Steven Maxwell describe all of his horrible coworkers may scare kids or make them think Maxwell's job is hideous when more mature listeners would take the same story with a large grain of salt.

 Experience

What is the most difficult thing you have ever had to do? (pg. 208)

People, do not ask this question of others! 

This strikes me as a question that a trained therapist in a solid relationship with a patient might ask cautiously due to concerns about the strength of emotions that could be unleashed.  Teaching children to ask this question of others is cruel in two respects.  The more obvious cruelty is towards the person asked the question.  No one deserves to have memories of having an animal put down, ending a long-term relationship, dealing with medical crises or being abused dragged up by a random kid.  It's especially insulting since the reason these questions are taught is because the kid's parents are too high-strung and controlling to let the kid watch TV, read books or participate in activities that most kids talk about freely.  Nope, they don't want their kid exposed to that - so it's ok instead to teach your kid to drag up memories of cutting off relatives who are addicted to drugs as a conversation starter!

The second cruelty is what happens when an adult with poor boundaries replies to a child who asked this question.  For example, if asked this question I would reply something like "My son was very sick when he was born and that was hard - but he's healthy now and I'm happy about that".   An honest although inappropriate response would be to describe what it was really like when my son coded in my arms.  Should I describe the horror of having your baby go from pink and wiggling to grey, unmoving and limp in less than a minute?  My mute desperation that I might be watching my baby die?  My terror that I may well go on breathing for decades after my son stopped breathing - and how could I survive that?  Should I tell a kid that I believe I aged 10 years in the two minutes from when his nurse called a code to when he was breathing again?   Do they need to know that I've spent hours working through the panic and helplessness I felt that day in therapy? 

Obviously, a kid - or even a teenager - doesn't need to know that.  Dropping my emotional burdens on a minor would be irresponsible - but so is teaching your kid to ask people extremely loaded questions.

We are done - DONE! - with this book!  My next review will be "Joyfully At Home" by Jasmine Baucham.

7 comments:

  1. I'm back!! Not just to this awesome blog, but to my computer! I haven't had access to it in about 44 days, since the storm I requested prayers for hit back in October. That storm..bastard did a number on our town, some businesses lost and a nearby town with lots of our property pummeled. But we're recovering and I have so much to thank God for, namely a healthy family and standing home! And now Internet service again (we had it by phone, but not computer and I hate typing by phone). I've been gone in word, but still reading your blog and it gave me some great distraction and food for thought during recovery time.

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    1. YAY! I'm so glad you are back! And yay for proper internet! I can't type in a phone - or at least with any accuracy. :-)

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    2. Aww thanks! :) I'm very happy to be back, and typing properly so I can talk! I don't get how people can be addicted to texting, those tiny keypads drive me bananas, but it sure answers the question of why teens shorten so many words.

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  2. Oh gosh, I read a chunk of Baucham's book after learning it was better than many other QF books, and a lot of it's good. She's one of the most independent-thinking girls in the movement (esp now that she's married and moved to Africa)..but knowing her crazy father, you're sure to find VF junk on some level anyway.

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    1. Her writing is superb; she's got a style that is easily readable and doesn't cause me to grind my teeth.

      There's a lot of un-objectionable material in her book - and a lot of sketchy material as well.

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  3. I never cease to be amazed at the obtuseness and just plain horrible ideas the Maxwells not just think up, but actually publish.
    These questions might be more appropriate for a kid who is training to be a journalist and is practicing interviewing skills. But for an actual conversation, they live in bizarro land if they think these things fly with the general public.
    Their poor kids are being intentionally taught to be pariahs. :(

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    1. Yeah, it's depressing - and the Maxwells can't seem to realize they are creating a downward spiral of isolation.

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