Making Great Conversationalists: Chapter 11 - Part One

I apologize for the sporadic posting recently.   Life is good - and rather busy right now.   Because of the severe teacher shortage in my state, I've been subbing 4 days a week on top of multiple-medical appointments Tuesday with my son. 

Honestly, the added income has been nice. I know in CP/QF land the fact that I'm working outside of the house while my husband looks for more steady employment is supposed to end in affairs, divorce, wayward children and the complete collapse of Western Civilization - but this seems to be a tenable and fairly pleasant situation for us.   My husband misses having a consistent job - but I think he'll be settled into a new industry pretty soon.  I find working out of the house to be invigorating and allows me to enjoy the time I spend with my son more.  My husband is really good with our son - and he and Spawn are getting even closer as my husband is the primary caregiver more of the time than I am.

 My son is doing well across the board. Weekly PT has greatly increased his torso strength and I suspect he'll be walking independently in 3-6 months. His current goal is to get his physical therapist to admit that she's really a demon sent to torment him - which is deeply ironic since she'd go to the gates of Hell and back for him.  Toddlers may not be the best at judging people.   ( :-P )   He'll be having eye surgery in early December.  Patching and glasses have corrected his lazy eye a bit - but not enough, so his opthamologist will be performing outpatient eye surgery to loosen a muscle in each eye to correct his vision.   I'm amazed what a difference nearly 2 years makes; if he had needed surgery when he was tiny, I would have been a nervous wreck.  As the mother of a robust, thriving toddler, my main concern is that applying "eye ointment" for a week after the surgery sounds....gooey.  (I think my actual words were "Man, that's a skill I was hoping to wait for the next kid for.")

And then our house was hit by the plague.  There is some evil, evil cold going around that hit my husband hard and had me laid up for the better part of a week.  The little guy, however, seems to be getting over his bout with it in good time so we are very, very grateful for that.

And then I realized that I managed to erase the few thousand words of transcription I had done for the blog before the plague hit.   Turns out that while my transcription software is good there is no software good enough to handle Michigander accent complicated by stuffed-up nose.   Today is the first day my transcription equipment was reasonably accurate so I can start blogging again!  Hurray!

More good news: The end of this book rapidly approaches!

Chapter 11 of Steven and Teri Maxwell's work "Making Great Conversationalists" has a title of some kind - but it should be titled "How to Lose Friends and Isolate Yourself through Evangelizing Badly".   Here's the very beginning of the chapter where little Thomas approaches his grandmother with CP/QF created fear:

"Why, Thomas, you are way too young to be worried about anything. What is bothering you?" Grandma asks.

"I have been thinking about how Jesus saved me last month. I was so excited when I prayed and asked Jesus forgiveness and accepted him as my savior. I have Jesus living in my heart now. I haven't heard you talk about Jesus saving you, though. I am worried that you don't have Jesus as your savior and that you won't go to heaven when you die but will go to hell! Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I love you so much, and it scares me to think of you not being in heaven with daddy, mommy, Christie, and me. Grandma, are you saved?" (pg. 177)

Thomas should be doing normal little kid things like convincing Grandma that an extra chocolate chip cookie is critical for his optimal growth or trying to pet Grandma's ancient, ornery cat.   Being terrified that Grandma isn't going to be in heaven when she dies isn't normal.  It's certainly not healthy for Thomas.

This kind of fear-mongering-meets-childish-pleas-for-others-salvation places the adult in a super-uncomfortable situation.  What is Grandma supposed to do?  If Thomas was an adult, I'd pull out the Bible and read through Matthew 25:31-46 which is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  Once we've read that, I'd point out that on Judgement Day God seems to put no stock in how often a person talked about having Jesus in their heart but relied on whether they helped other people.  Because of that, I don't talk much about having Jesus in my heart but instead work on helping others.   Thomas, though, is a kid.  Am I supposed to tell him that his parents have mangled the Gospels beyond all understanding and are using him as a form of emotional manipulation? Am I supposed to flip the emotional manipulation around and ask him how he feels about the fact that I doubt his Mommy and Daddy are going to heaven - but there might be time to save Thomas and Christie if they get to work now?    See, I feel queasy and slimy at the idea of doing that - but the Maxwells encourage their followers to do the same things with their children.

I wonder how much of the "success" of cold-calling evangelical techniques is due to the fact that most people are far too polite to tell their neighbors or random strangers that their sudden impulse to "share the Gospel" is as obnoxious as if I tried to convince the Maxwells that they need to start watching Star Trek - right now!

 Here's a great example of why neighbors in Maxwell-land learn that no good deed goes unpunished:

When John was 14, we had a neighbor who was unsaved. The neighbor was retired school teacher who asked John to help him troubleshoot a problem with his lawn mower. While they were working, they talked. John was able to lead the discussion to spiritual things and eventually present the whole plan of Salvation. The neighbor rejected what John told him, preferring to remain agnostic, but he John knows he did with the Lord wanted him to do. (pg. 178)

The Maxwells are so oblivious to other people that it makes my eyes water.

Why did the retired school teacher ask John to troubleshoot a problem on his lawnmower? 

Teachers know people in the community and finding someone to fix a lawnmower is not hard so if the retired schoolteacher asked John to help him, we can safely assume there is a better reason than that the best choice was the local 14-year old.

 Most, if not all, of the Maxwell boys had lawn mowing businesses during their teenage-years; the Maxwells include daily schedules for Joseph and John with "mowing" time in "Managers of the Homes" and "Managers of their School".   Asking the neighbor's teenage kid to "help" you fix an issue you are pretty sure you know how to fix on a lawnmower would be a nice way to give them some more business while showing the kid a new skill.  Plus, teachers like to teach so an afternoon or two with a teenager fixing a mower is likely to be fun for the retired teacher as well.

How do the Maxwells repay him for this kind - and rather sweet - act?  They remind John that the guy is an agnostic and have John try one of the Maxwell traps to convince people that they should be saved. 

Ironically, as a retired teacher, I'm sure the Maxwell's neighbor has been a mark for salvation attempts before.   I had well-meaning students try and save me in alternative-ed so I'm assuming it happened to this guy, too.  Personally, I fell back on a very dry, detailed and dull explanation of the separation of church and state and how I choose to keep my religion (if any) out of the classroom to prevent undue influence on minor students.  The important part is to keep talking about minutia until the teen's eyes glaze over just a bit before changing the subject to the next task at hand.

In the next post, we'll see how the Maxwells think "The Good Person Test" and "Roman's Road" should be used - and yet they have no examples of anyone being converted by either test.

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 Nine

Chapter Nine in Steven and Teri Maxwell's self-help book " Making Great Conversationalists" amuses me every time I read it.  This chapter - for people who hadn't already caught the pattern - explains the skills an advanced conversationalist is supposed to have.   Honestly, I had no idea of what an advanced conversationalist looked like before  I read this book and I am no better informed after reading the book.  The great part about the chapter is that the Maxwells have crammed all sorts of different types of speaking in between various other topics they forgot to address in earlier sections.

The chapter starts off with a very Maxwellian boast that people who teach their kids how to converse like a Maxwell will be better conversationalists than the average American adult.   That boast is walked back slightly in the next sentence, but mainly because the Maxwells needed a chance to slam how bad most Americans are at talking to Maxwells.  I suspect the Maxwells haven't connected the Maxwell Family's obsession with tracting and judging random strangers with the "bad conversational" skills of the people they meet.  There are a lot of people who will happily shoot the breeze with complete strangers; there are relatively few people who will continue a conversation once the Maxwells make it clear that the only reason they are talking to you is to convert you.

I wonder what would happen if people were more vocal about why they are leaving the conversation with the Maxwells.   I'd be tempted to say something like "Entering a conversation with an unstated external motive is something conmen do, not Christians.  I'm disappointed the fact you were afraid to be upfront about your reasons for starting this conversation.  Goodbye."  Of course, I'd have to practice that a few more times before I could say that on the fly, but you get the idea.  And, truthfully, I am much more willing to listen to someone who states upfront that they are trying to teach me about their religion.   Sneaking it into a conversation is creepy and unbecoming of people who are supposed to be a city on a hill and a light shining in the darkness.

The first major topic in the chapter is that conversations require back-and-forth exchange of information.   I agree with that - but very few of the "good" conversations involved mutual back-and-forth earlier in the book.   Really, the good conversations either had an adult male say "Amuse me!" and his family compiled by talking at him or a kid say "Dad, hold forth on your most recent Biblical obsession!" and the father did.   Most of this section is an extended bitching fest about how an adult career woman told one of the Maxwell sons who was traveling for business all about her job, but failed to ask him any questions about his job.    I was genuinely surprised that any of the Maxwell men travel for business until I remembered that Nathan Maxwell does consult some professional computer security specialist organizations and that Christopher Maxwell travels to take wedding photos.   I'm also surprised that neither Maxwell parent realizes how catty this story sounds:

(...) However, sometimes all one can do is to keep asking questions when the other person doesn't ask any questions in return. That was the exact experience of our son as a talk to the lady next to him on his flight. She was delighted to talk about herself, but she had absolutely no interest in him. She didn't ask our son even one question about his life. Our son stepped off that plane having learned many new things. She left without any new knowledge. (pg. 143)

This enraged snippet says far more about the Maxwell Family level of entitlement than it does about the passenger traveling in the next seat over.  An earlier paragraph explains that the woman worked at setting up pharmacies around the US.   I've been involved in turning over retail areas to a new product before and the process is always chaotic, rushed for time, and physically demanding.  If she's also managing staffing as well, that brings in a whole new level of craziness.  The lady had probably been working 14-16 hour days during the entire trip and had no interest in hearing about the random stranger's life in the seat next to her. 

On top of the expectation that an unrelated woman should jump at the chance to educate and entertain a Maxwell man, the Maxwell son is strangely ignorant of a basic conversational truth.  If the other person is answering your questions - especially if they are giving the most basic answer possible - while not asking any questions of you, the person is trying to end the conversation without being rude.   Can you blame her?  She's stuck on a plane for at least 2-3 hours next to Chatty Chester but answering Chatty Chester's questions is safer than worrying he's going to turn into Grumpy George or Enraged Ernst if she ignores him.

Once the Maxwells have worked out that imaginary insult, they move into teaching your kids to lead conversations away from problematic topics.   Again, this is an important skill for people to have - but why are the Maxwells waiting so long for this idea?   In my childhood, I didn't run into potentially "inappropriate" topics until I was in 3-5th grade because my parents were sane.  They kept us away from sex, drugs, inappropriate alcohol use, and scary stuff that would keep me up at night - and didn't worry about the rest.  In CP/QF land, inappropriate topics start as soon as a kid can talk.  My son watches "Sesame Street" at 18 months old - so presumably a 3 year old CP/QF kid needs to be able to steer the conversation away from terrible topics like "Paws Patrol".

Smoothly changing the topic of a conversation is a good skill to have.  Don't do it like this:

"Hey, Joseph, did you watch that great paramedics show last night?"

" No, I didn't, Daniel. Last night I was working on a web-design project that I am creating for homeschool family that has a home business. I am doing the work for free because I need it to for my portfolio and because I want to help the family's business grow. What do you think are the most important components of websites you go to? What draws you to the site, and what makes you buy what they want to sell?" (pg. 143)

Allow me to summarize this stellar conversation:

"Hey, Joseph, let's bond over a common cultural experience!!"

"I'm gonna bulldoze over you, Daniel!  Hey, answer a few questions for me so I can skip market research, 'k?  How should I make a website that's not geared towards your demographic at all?  Like should there be colors or buttons or something?  Daniel?  Daniel, why are you walking away?  Not cool, Daniel!"

Really, the only thing that I could think of that would top that is if Daniel started describing everything he appreciates in a porn website without specifying that he's describing a porn site.....

The rest of the topic discusses how kids should work at steering the conversation to topics that they are knowledgeable about.   And - again - the Maxwells are far more heavy-handed about that idea than anyone needs to be.  People prefer talking about subjects that they feel comfortable with.  Heavens knows I feel much more confident discussing educational methods in secondary schools than I do discussing the differences in techniques in an artist's collection of works.   Being able to manage the discomfort that comes with being inexperienced in an area is equally important as turning every conversation to a topic that a person can shine in.

As annoying as having every conversation steered towards a Maxwellian topic of excellence, the next section manages to make conversations worse.   The Maxwells glorify people who jam references to God into every conversation.  Like many people who reference God incessantly, the examples the Maxwells find manage to be trite or insulting rather than edifying.   The Maxwells have a mutual friend who didn't recognize Steven Maxwell's voice on the phone, but did once he left a voice message.   When discussing this quirk a day later, the lady goes into a whole spiel about how missing Steven's voice made her wonder how often she missed God's voice in her life.    The Maxwells find that digression profoundly edifying; I am merely grateful that my friends would laugh about that and move on.    A different family has taught their children to redirect all compliments back to God.  If you said to the kid, "Jackie, you play the violin so well!", Jackie would reply, "Thank you.  I am so glad God has given me this talent!"   That quirk stuck with me because it's the same method that women and children in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints were expected to use to reflect compliments back to their husband or father as the headship of their home.

After that, we get a mild break so the Maxwells can discuss how important storytelling is as a conversational skill.  I love a good story - and the Maxwells use up a page and a half re-telling John's story of being instructed by the California Highway Patrol to drive 300 feet behind a cruiser to form one part of a slow-moving traffic wedge in the middle of the night.   The story caught my attention - but what I remember most is that the Maxwells have no idea what caused the need for a traffic wedge in the middle of the night.   Oh, they have lots of reasonable ideas - presidential motorcade? high-speed chase? - but John didn't turn on the TV and no one thought of using the internet to see if any news site reported on an issue in that area. 

If you guessed that the next topic is the importance of inserting religious references into stories, you win! 

The remaining four pages in the chapters are reviews of previously covered topics, so I'm not going to drag you through them again.

Chapter Ten is about how to teach kids to deal with common issues in conversations - or at least that's what the title implies.  My husband and I agree that the real outcome of following this chapter is to drive every human who talks to you far, far away....

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 Five

How many types of bad speech did you grow up with?  My husband and I brainstormed and we grew up with four different types of bad speech - swearing, being exceptionally crass (e.g. "potty mouth) lying and being hurtful to others.  As an adult, I think the list still stands.   By using the Bible very literally Steven and Teri Maxwell have found six separate ways that words can be harmful.  These six themes make up the beginning of the sixth chapter of "Making Great Conversationalists". 

The first theme is "idle words".  This theme was retrieved from the 36th verse in Matthew 12 about people being held to account by their idle words.  Looking at the entire chapter, Jesus has been irritated by some local Pharisees who have been nitpicking very action he's done.  Matthew 12:36 is the culmination of Jesus telling them off and to stop bother him.  The Maxwells use the King James Version and don't believe in crazy liberal ideas like using the context of a verse...so they struggle deeply to create an entire paragraph about idle words.   The Maxwells steal a definition of "idle" from Strong's Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries, make a few vague threats about how Jesus will punish people for idle words...and that's it.

The next theme is "foolish words" - based on the KJV translation of Ephesians 5:3-4.   The verse itself is clearly letting Christians know that they shouldn't join in existing pagan rituals involving drunkenness or sex.   I prefer the New Revised Standard Version that changes the sentence structure to "obscene, foolish and vulgar talk" instead of the "neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting" of the King James.  When I think of obscene, foolish, vulgar talk, I think of a rowdy party involving immature people imbibing lots and lots of alcohol.   The Maxwells, on the other hand, think of this:

In our family, we still occasionally talk about the foolishness of our children's Grandpa and Benny stories. They went through a phase of making up stories and recording them. The theme was a fictional Grandpa and Benny. The stories were total folly and foolishness. We didn't know enough in our parenting at that point to eliminate the foolishness and to direct your children to edification. Those stories have provided us with a good example of foolish talking and children. (pg. 77)

From that quick synopsis, I hear a lot of good practices for education of kids.  Grandpa and Benny stories required characterization, development of plot and anticipating the desires of the audience who will hear the story.  If they were recording the stories, they were either taking notes, writing a script, memorizing the story or improvising the story during the recording - all of which are excellent literary skills!  This is a great exercise for kids - not a descent into sinfulness.   

I feel awful for the younger Maxwell kids - Joseph, John, Anna, Jesse and Mary.  The lives of the older three kids were restricted over time but at least Nathan, Christopher and Sarah experienced some of the simple, innocent and carefree joys of childhood.  They played team sports, created goofy stories and read books.  The younger kids never had those options and that's so very sad.

In addition to losing those joys, the younger kids have apparently had "joking" taken away from them.  Now, the book conflates the term joking with using sarcasm or passive-aggressive humor as a form of discipline for children.   Using pointed humor in lieu of constructive criticism is a terrible idea - and is modeling poor responses to a kid.    There is an entire world of humor outside of pointed jabs, though.   I've enjoyed a good pun, situational humor or well-timed spit take for decades.  Personally, I have a very dry sense of humor that works well with teenagers once they get used to me as a straight guy.  For example, I had an entire monologue worked out in which I explained that a certain stuffed virus was given to me by my husband a few years ago.  I really like it because red is my favorite color and the virus fit well with the decorations we had up for Valentine's Day.  Now, the virus is out of scale for the bacteria near it - but the virus is the Epstein-Barr virus that causes mononucleosis which some people call "the kissing disease".  Now, most of my students' eyes had glazed over at that point - but there was always one kid who would sputter at that point and say "Your husband gave you the Kissing Disease for Valentine's Day?!?!"  I'd beam and say, "Of course!  He's a romantic!" 

*mimics a rim shot*  

As corny as my jokes are, I cannot believe that God dislikes me bonding with students over quirky jokes about science.

The next theme is that people shouldn't talk too much.   Even the Maxwells admit that there's no Bible verse that forbids being a chatterbox - but that doesn't stop Steven Maxwell from letting people know that their kids should be quiet and listen to him.  Also - Maxwell doesn't like it when his kids know more about a subject that he does ...I mean... act as experts in an area they know nothing about - but there's no Biblical support for requiring everyone to kowtow to Steven Maxwell, either.

The next chunk discusses "wrong words" which Maxwell defines as flattery.   He spends over two pages on how evil flattery is which is odd to me.  Flattery isn't really a major problem for small children or even most kids who are under junior high age; using flattery is a fairly high-level technique for winning someone over to your point of view.   Maybe other kids developed this skill long before I did - but I doubt I would have recognized obvious flattery between two other people let alone tried it myself before I was 11 or 12.   Plus, I've always though flattery was a cheap trick for people who weren't persuasive enough to convince people of their point of view so that made it feel slimy to me.    Apparently, though, the Maxwell kids picked up the skill somewhere:

As specific situations arise, we think you will find teachable moments to help you define and explain to your children the difference between flattery and praise.

For example, John notices that Anna is playing with his favorite toy. He walks over to her and says, "Anna, I love how you play with your doll Jennifer. You look like the perfect, happy mommy when you were holding your dolly."

" Really?" Anna replies as she puts down the toy to go find her Jennifer doll.

Obviously, John was not sincere and its complement of his sister. It was flattery. He had an agenda and figured out a way to accomplish his goal. How much better it would have been for John to ask and a directly for permission to play with a toy and pay its complement another time, when Anna was playing with her doll. Then it would have been sincere praise. (pgs. 81-82)

I believe this story snippet happened - but, man-o-live, this family is weird! 

I have an identical twin sister.  This means I have a same age sibling that I could theoretically attempt Machiavellian shit like this on - but I never tried to trick my twin out of a toy through flattery for two reasons.  First, my parents don't flatter people.  My teachers didn't flatter people.  My friends didn't flatter people - nor did their parents.  Because of that, it never occured to me to try it on my sister.  Second, she was WAY too savvy to fall for that shit.   She would have collected the toy she was playing with and carried over to her doll to play with both if I tried it.

I can't figure out an age for John - who is two years older than Anna - that doesn't make the story even more bizarre.  If John was 4 which is old enough want to get a toy through subterfuge - Anna was two - which feels young to care about how she looks with her dolly.  If Anna was 6, she's old enough to be a bit gullible still and young enough to play with dolls a lot - but that makes John a disturbingly calculating eight-year-old.  If John is 12, that level of planning feels more natural - but that makes Anna frighteningly gullible for a ten-year old.   

Most surreal of all is the fact that telling Anna she looks like a happy adult mommy when she holds her baby doll is enough to send her off after her doll.   I had plenty of dolls that I loved on and took care of - but never because someone told me I looked like a mommy.   In my life as a preschooler and elementary school kid, I assumed that my siblings, my cousins and my friends would all grow up, get jobs, get married and have babies.  Sometimes we played house and other times we played school or superheros or animal tamers or unicorns.  We had so many options of adult lives that another kid saying "you look like a teacher when you wear your dress-up clothes" would be greeted by a blank stare followed by "Huh?"  rather than running off to play school.

The next bit in this chapter that keeps dragging on is the fact that we have to teach our kids not to use words that hurt others.   Duly noted and it didn't take me four paragraphs to explain that tidbit to readers.

Avoiding hurtful words took less than a page.  Running away from other people's words that might shake your worldview takes up a page and a half including this gem:

We also want to educate our children by providing biblical cautions regarding the words others will speak to them. There are times when it is not appropriate for them to remain in the conversation. Recently Teri was talking to a woman who told her she had just read the history concerning a wicked profession. Teri did not want the conversation to continue so she quickly changed the subject. (pg. 83)

I really want to know what book this woman had just read.  Based on two minutes on Google assuming that the woman read a newly published book in 2013  gave a great list of books on prostitution, the history of birth control and being a drug-runner.  The problem is that I can think of scads of books that would terrify the Maxwells that were published prior to 2013.   "The Poisoner's Handbook" by Deborah Blum in 2010 is a favorite read of mine; I'm sure the title alone would terrify any Maxwell.  The similarly terrifyingly titled "Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Pornography and Fast Food Have Shaped Modern Technology" by Peter Nowak was published in 2011 so that's a possibility.  I read this section to my husband and he thinks the book was either Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"  or C.S Lewis' "The Magician's Nephew".     The sad bit is that this evil profession could also be a memoir of a public school teacher, a member of any non-Christian religion, or any woman who works outside the home because the Maxwells are that crazy.  (Feel free to add any personal ideas on books you know of thought of in the comments!)

Long-time readers know that I have a personal antipathy bordering on rage directed at people who use works that help disadvantaged people as a form personal therapy.  My general theme of digression on this point is the disturbingly common memoir written by an insanely privileged young white person who feels lost after earning a college degree in any subject besides teaching and decides that they wanna give teaching a shot.  The person joins Teach for America - or something like - receives a few weeks of "intensive" training and is dumped in an urban school with massive poverty, a fractured community, limited English speakers and preferably gang-warfare.  After bumbling their way through two to three years of marginally effective teaching, the person escapes back to Harvard, Yale, Columbia etc., and writes an award-winning best-seller about how the kids changed their life. 

No one in the book - especially the author - ever questions why we don't dump these late-blooming, badly-life-planning teacher wannabes in rich suburban districts instead of the inner city.  The author never questions if the kids and community are harmed by the carousel of young yuppies who capitalize on the shock value of the lives of their students.....

And I've digressed again - but I get to blame Steven Maxwell for this one.  The Maxwells brag all_the_time about the fact that they took their sons to minister at a homeless shelter when the boys were young.   In this book, Teri lets a fascinating little tidbit slip:

For example, for many years Steve took the boys to City Union Mission once a month to minister. Those Saturday mission services gave Steve perfect opportunities to discuss what Scripture says about alcohol and drug use, the physical dangers of it, and the destruction that does to families. The children were able to observe first-hand the points Steven would make in his conversations with them. (pgs 84-85)

God, that's gross!  Every time I think I've developed a thick skin for CP/QF crass shit I realize that I can still be shocked and disgusted by them. 

Notice that Maxwell implies that the men at the mission are homeless because of drugs and alcohol with the related implication that addiction is a personal moral failing.   Notice the similar lack of discussion of the effects of war, abuse, and untreated mental illness leading to alcohol as a self-medication.  I doubt Maxwell has ever discussed with another adult the spiral of poverty that is interlinked between unemployment, loss of permanent address and lack of reliable transportation let alone his kids.

For anyone who needs an excuse to be catty about how other people (read: women) dress, Maxwell's got you covered:

What about modesty? Do you want to teach your children to dress modestly and to avoid looking at in modesty? Being in public where there is much immodesty affords the opportunity to discuss modesty with our children. We can tell them why we have modesty standards and why we don't want to dress as the world dresses. These conversations come up naturally as we are exposed to the ungodliness of the world. (pg. 85)

Or....and I know this is out there....you could mind your own damn business.  My parents managed to raise three kids who dressed modestly without ever pointing out immodest dress in others.  Similarly, they've raised three kids who have not murdered anyone without dragging us into a SuperMax and pointing at an inmate while saying "That's a murderer!  Don't be like them!" 

The questions for this section are precious.   If you are looking for a way to make mealtimes with your family fraught with anxiety, sullenness and outbursts of rage, bring these questions up weekly:

1. Do you, your spouse, or any of your children talk too much?

2. Is anyone having trouble with the wrong words described in this chapter? If so, document in your notebook or on your computer who and which category.

• Idle Words
• Foolish talk
• Jesting
• Deceitful words
• Flattering words
• Evil words
• Hurtful words

4. At mealtime or other family discussions, have each person evaluate how he is doing in those areas listed above where you evaluated him. Record their personal evaluations. Encourage those who are not doing so well on how they can do better, and praise those doing well. (pg. 90-91)

Question number one has destroyed plenty of families, friendships and businesses.  Just....don't ask this question unless you can handle the fall-out.    In relation to the Maxwells, well, I suspect Steven Maxwell lets everyone else in the family know that they talk way too much since he's got a lot of control issues.

If your family is speaking to each other at the end of the first question...or when everyone calms down a few days later.... question two is likely to go over wonderfully.  In the hands of a family dictator, everyone else can be charged with something since all of the categories are completely subjective.    For me, the list demonstrates the frightening CP/QF habit of treating a minor issue like "idle" or "foolish" talk the same as a major issue like "evil" or "hurtful" words.  Idle and foolish talk harms no one and doesn't need a remedy.  If you've got a kid who is regularly using "evil and hurtful" words, the family need immediate intervention with a therapist before the kid turns into a psychopath.

Once the hurt feelings and temper tantrums caused by the second question subside, it's time to critique the individual progress of each person in front of the group.   After all, that's a great way to bond people tightly to your personal cult.   The trick is to alternate the love-bombing of children with the detailed tearing apart of their failures.    Once you find the right ratio - and it varies a bit from person-to-person - make sure you take notes of whether last week was a "good" or "bad" week for each person.  Remember the shock value is most effective if there is no pattern of how children's actual behavior affects their evaluation in front of the family.    Turning certain kids into continual scapegoats is tempting - after all, some kids never get with your program - but those kids are much more likely to escape the family as adults. 

 Wait....what do you mean a family isn't a cult?  Pshaw!  A good CP/QF family is indistinguishable from a cult.

*shudders* 
I see why C.S. Lewis never wrote a sequel to "The Screwtape Letters"; I can only put myself in the mind of a narcissist for a few minutes before I feel sick.

Chapter Six begins with an ideal fever-dream of a conversation that lets us learn way more about the Maxwell Family priorities than anyone should know......

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. 

Spiritual Self-Defense: Master Your Biggest Enemy - Part Three

I'm going to start this blog post with my overarching thought process about the entire "Spiritual Self-Defense" series on the Botkin Sisters blog:  Why is this series SO LONG?   I know that I often post long posts myself - but a six-part prattling reflection on why sexual abuse or assault won't happen to the Botkin Sisters as long as the Sisters stay firmly within the lines drawn by their father is five parts too long.

I digress.

After explaining all of the things that Emily did wrong that led to whatever the hell happened between her and Bryan, the Botkin Sisters decide to explain an entire list of vices that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth are certain put women at higher risk of being victims of sexual assault or abuse.  Now, I can see the argument - kind of - that indulging certain vices could lead a person to compromise their previously held beliefs on sexual purity.  That could lead to that person participating in consensual sexual activity.  It's a bit of a stretch, but I could see the rationale.  The problem is that this series is supposed to be about women who are victims - not consensual actors.  The Botkin Sisters' inability to differentiate consent from non-consent creates the galling situation where victims of abuse are told that they didn't do anything to deserve being attacked - but it's kind of their fault for being vain or needy.

That's not how the world works.

Vanity – the pride that makes us find our worth in how much men notice us, admire us, and want us. When men’s affirmation of us becomes something we’re dependent on, something we use to feed our egos and puff us up, something we’ll strive for at all costs (even the cost of sinning), we’re in trouble already.

That's not the definition of vanity.  Vanity is excessive pride in one's looks or achievements.  I highlight the second example because the Botkin Sisters drop the fact that they've written books in podcasts, blogs and lectures all the time.

I am not seeing how vanity would lead to breaking sexual mores consensually for the readers of the Botkin blog let alone how vanity would lead to being the victim of a violent crime.    I've known a handful of women (out of thousands of women) who might sleep with a guy who admired her or flattered her - but that's pretty rare and often time-limited.  As women grow up, most women I know are looking for longer-term relationships and raise the bar for men they want to be around.

Because this is a Botkin blog post, the prerequisite female-bashing comes into play:

By the way – though we pointed out in the first article that a man’s choice to commit the sin of lust is his own responsibility, we do need to acknowledge that doing anything calculated to provoke their lust is our own sin of lust (the lust to be lusted after), and our own kind of being predatory.

*Blinks*

That's all kinds of confused.  That convoluted "lust o' lust" rationale is extraneous on top of badly thought out; if the person is acting out of lust - they are guilty of lust. 

Equally importantly, there is a bright, clear, clean line between the morally acceptable actions of being attractive and approachable towards available romantic partners, the morally illicit action of being lustful, and the potentially illegal actions of a predator.    The Botkin Sisters have staked their livelihood on teaching young women that any movement towards a young man prior to paternal approval is immoral - and we can see that the proof of their system has lead to two women who are "aged-out" of the marriage market for their society.

Unbiblical neediness, or emotional idolatry – having needs that we feel cannot be or are not being met by God – whether for companionship, love, affection, security, comfort, or a sense of worth – that we depend on other sources to meet. If we feel like we would die without attention/a boyfriend/a particular guy, and attaining that is the main thing that drives us, we are putting our faith in an idol and not God.

I agree that placing a romantic interest in the first place in a girl's life or heart prior to engagement or marriage is a terrible idea.   A woman old enough to date is old enough to have responsibilities to herself, her family, her community and her church.   As two people date, it's natural and healthy for the romantic interest to move higher in the list of responsibilities - but not right off the bat.   Of course, CP/QF young ladies are at much higher risk of this because they are prevented from having a form of external employment or much involvement in the wider community.  When the only form of change available in life is finding someone to marry, women and men both are far too likely to invest in a relationship that should have been discarded.

 I don't believe that falling in love is a form of idolatry; CP/QF writers use the charge of idolatry to cover sloppy reasoning.   At the risk of being crass, God doesn't provide sexual satisfaction or the chance to bear a massive number of offspring to single women no matter how pious she is.

The Botkin Sisters' solutions the moral problems are vague or strangely detailed while being completely unbelievable:

This will probably involve an overhaul of the minute-by-minute choices we make throughout the day: to either spend 30 minutes shopping for a particular clothing item we hope will impress a certain someone, or to spend it engaged in the good works of (invisible) service that we know will please the Lord; to listen to a song that stirs up our inner romantic neediness, or to listen to a sermon; to spend an hour texting a particular person, or to spend that hour reading the Word and communing with Christ.

I have never spent 30 minutes shopping for clothes to catch a man.  The Botkin Sisters are old enough to realize women mostly dress to impress other women; picking an outfit for a date night takes a tenth of the time as it does for a women's ministry meeting.    In picking out an outfit to wear on a date with my husband, I only needed to see if the outfit fitted well - e.g., showed off my excellent chest and hips while minimizing my stomach.  For a meeting with other women, my outfit needs to complement my coloring, be fashionable without being overly faddish, be impeccably clean, and draw out the better features of my figure.

The fact that the Botkin Sisters view 30 minutes as plenty of time to complete a real work of service in their lives makes me believe they do little or no service work.    Most real service requires a few hours of work, not 30 minutes.

How long are songs in Botkin-land?  I can only think of a few songs that are longer than 2-3 minutes.  Perhaps sermons have been trimmed down to mini-sermons that fit in 2-3 minute frames.  Or perhaps the only secular songs the Botkin Sisters know are "In a Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly and "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.

I'm amused that the Botkin Sisters inadvertently implied that religious topics cannot be texted or discussed for an hour.....

Lack of steadfastness – the inability to persevere. After battling to make a hard decision, sometimes we’re not prepared for how many times we’ll have to fight the same battle over and over again. And we get worn down. We get tired of saying no. We say “Don’t call me again,” but we answer the phone as soon as they do. The ability to win the battle depends on having the steadfastness to stick to our own principles, and that’s hard when other people and our own flesh are battering, relentlessly, against our resolve.

I wonder how much of this moral exhaustion comes from being raised in a protected greenhouse of like-minded homeschooling families.  One of the benefits of traditional schooling is that students learn how to defend their right to live as they choose.  All of your classmates drink chocolate milk - but you prefer white or strawberry milk.  You want to play on the twisty slide when your friends want to play on the swings.  You realize that one of your friends isn't a good friend and need to confront them about their behavior - or cut off contact.   These are all real-life examples of drama I faced prior to third grade.  I learned how to stand up for my own wants in decidedly low-stakes times.  As I got older, the stakes got a bit higher - but so did my ability to deal with my emotions.

I bring this up again - getting education, vocational training or even a minimum wage job provides a form of relief from the "relentless battering of resolve".  If a woman is living at home - especially a home as monotonous and dreary as most CP/QF homes - she can obsess over how the end of a relationship would feel for hours or days.  Put the same woman in the same home with a job as a part-time cashier and she's got blocks of time where she has to ignore the obsession over a relationship to remember the PLU for kale or how to ring up a marked-down cut of meat.  Give her a chance at training to become a nurse, an ironworker or a chef and the appeal of obsessing over breaking up with Mr. Stud Muffin of the Soul drops more.

Next, the Botkin Sisters make it clear that victims who maintain a relationship with their abuser are at fault:

The recent flood of scandals, including in the Christian community, includes far too many examples of women essentially saying, “Oh, I did rebuff his advances – every time we went out! I was never OK with the things he was pressuring me into doing, and I would tell him so every time it happened.” As a critically-injured young woman said when asked by her doctor why she didn’t just leave her abusive boyfriend: “Oh, but I have, Doctor – dozens of times!”

Why is the person at fault the woman who said "I don't like that" and gave the guy another chance when he stopped?  The guy is the one who crossed boundaries that were clearly stated.  The Botkin Sisters are far too willing to give ground to men who misbehave when they state that women should leave when men act inappropriately.  Following their advice means that misbehaving people gain access to everything while moral people are hiding in their homes.  I don't think that's going to fulfill the Great Commission any time soon, ladies.

The Botkin Sisters are also old enough to realize that their little vignette about a critically-injured woman is manufactured and cruel.   I've been critically ill before; you don't have the energy to make small talk with doctors because you feel horrible - and I wasn't in much pain when I was in the labor and delivery ICU.  Being critically injured is even worse since that means the woman is dealing with major injuries from a beating, strangling or attack with a weapon which means she's in pain, shock and traumatized.  If the Botkin Sisters were as in to doing service work as they claim, they would have been around people who were ill.  Every congregation I've been a part of has plenty of elderly people who are in and out of the hospital and congregants with chronic health issues.   The fact that the Sisters believe that a critically-ill abuse victim would sound like a debutante at a tea party shows how sheltered the sisters are.

 Why does the woman bear the stigma of not leaving her abusive boyfriend?  He's the one who beat, strangled, stabbed or shot her!  Her mistake was believing that he chose to change or that she simply didn't get out in time - neither of which is a crime or a sin.   The most I could say is that the abuse victim lacked the self-preservation instinct that is so important in adults - but, hey, how many of the Botkin family friends were left without jobs or contacts when Vision Forum folded? 

Taking cheap shots is easy; practicing compassion and steadfastness in the face of real human mistakes is hard.

The actions to learn steadfastness are so vague as to be ironic:

So let’s practice sticking to our resolves (even the little ones) whenever temptation is calling to let them go. Let’s practice standing firm on something we know is right when the pressure of the crowd is against us.

You first.  Anna Sofia, go tell your dad that you are going to study to pass the GED and plan to start attending college next year.  Elizabeth, go get a job as an in-home caregiver and tell your parents afterwards.  Make sure you stand firm in the face of their disapproval. 

If the Sisters can't do that, they have no right to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

I looked at this post and realized that it's huge - and we're about half way through the subject of what vices lead women to be victimized.  I'll discuss the other half in the next post.  With a bit of luck, I should post that on Thursday or Friday - God willing and I don't get a migraine.  :-)