Of difficult children and intense adults

As a small child, I was variously known as “Squawk,” “Magpie” or “Anna Banana” among family and friends. These monikers all referred to my personality and vocal nature to one degree or another. I was, by all accounts—except my own— “loud,” “argumentative,” “obstinate,” “shrill,” “contradicting,” “willful” and “intense.” In short, I was what is called in today’s psychology literature a “difficult child.”

A neighbor reportedly once told my mother that if I had had a less patient mother, I would have been abused. I chuckle about it now, but I also have my own children and I’ve seen just how far “loud,” “argumentative,” “obstinate,” “shrill,” “contradicting,” “willful” and “intense” can be taken. This kind of parenting isn’t for the timid… or even for most humans.

I’m reminded of this because there’s an old meme doing another round on the internet which makes a simplified case for the pop psychology concept that children with such difficult, stubborn or argumentative personality traits will mature into adults with strong wills, solid analytical skills and independent spirits—implying that “difficult traits” in children often transform into positive adult attributes.

I don’t remember “being difficult” as a child. I remember trying to please adults, trying to navigate the world with very little vision, trying to keep up with my brothers, trying to gain inclusion into groups of other kids, trying to play games I couldn’t see, trying, trying, always striving, rarely being allowed to just be in a place where I didn’t have to fight to hold my ground. And so, for the most part, I believe the reports about my combative, willful and shrill nature as a child.

I was always in a battle to keep up and be included. No wonder I came across as if I was fighting.

Of course, I’ve known quiet, passive, sweet-natured blind children. In fact, most of the blind kids I met at “blind summer camps” were more like that. I was an outlier. Most blind kids learned that the best way to get by in the sighted world was to be sweet in order to attract good things and then to wait quietly for hours to be noticed or occasionally included when it was convenient for the sighted majority.

I remember observing how they were treated and feeling very angry inside—on their behalf, I thought, though now I wonder. Mostly I’ve known only those two types of blind children—willful, shrill terrors like me (and reportedly Hellen Keller) and the sweet, passive flowers. The world greeted me with exasperation and accusations of “being a drama queen,” and greeted the other type with occasional pity and long-term indifference.

I’m told pity is a horrible thing to endure as a blind or disabled person. I don’t have a lot of experience with it myself. I’ve always been so intense, willful and self-advocating that I think I have mostly avoided that fate. So, I’ll reserve judgement on which response is worse, having little experience with the shade of green on the other side of that particular fence. That said, being constantly seen as “irritating” and “overly demanding” just for asking for a place at the table has often been hard.

I don’t know if I had much choice about my intense personality. I grew up in a rough-and-tumble physical world in the woods and hills of Northeastern Oregon—not in a town near them, but in them. I’ve known several legally blind kids who grew up in small, rural towns but spent most of their time indoors, doing sedentary things and waiting to be taken places. That was never a choice in my childhood. I was outside in the woods even as a toddler, trailing behind other kids, tossing pebbles to hear the terrain in front of me and yelling “Wait for me!” after my brothers with irritating persistence.

And I did gain some things the more passive blind kids lacked as a result. I learned such good mobility skills that most people don’t realize I’m legally blind. I have a workaround for just about every physical task that takes vision—from threading needles to hammering nails to flipping pancakes. (Not driving, of course. There are limits.) In my twenties, I often said I was fortunate to have had the childhood I did and the personality I had.

So, is the meme right? I was most of the things the meme describes about difficult children—stubborn, defiant, clingy, argumentative... I wasn’t particularly disobedient, or not more so than other children as far as I’ve heard. But did my stubbornness, defiance, clinginess and argumentativeness serve me well and result in positive adult characteristics in the end?

Today, I’m not so sure. While I was able to gain academic success by being “willful, demanding and stubborn,” I’ve often run into situations in the professional world, where these traits are not helpful and result in being shut out of opportunities. I’ve seen some of the quiet, submissive blind people I used to think had things worse than me gain stable—if often boring—employment and a small but steady circle of friends. Their way definitely has its benefits.

Even more troubling than that is my ongoing worldview of constant struggle. It is very hard to argue that it is unwarranted. I have only rarely chosen to fight when I didn’t have to. But my experience of endless battle against a hostile world has been isolating, not to mention stressful on a deep level. I would not wish it on any young kid.

As an adult, I’m often told that I’m “too intense.” Only rarely is that ever given any specificity, but I believe it must be related to my childhood traits. While I learned to physically adapt to my visual disability to a high degree, I’ve never cracked the code of non-verbal cues, eye contact and recognizing faces that are only vague blurry ovals to me. And yet, because of my stubborn and defiant nature, I keep banging my head against that communication wall, often to the irritation of those on the other side of it.

And watching my own kids and my students mature, I have a broader outlook on the meme’s conclusions as well. While it is true that some level of argumentativeness and spunk in a kid shows a likelihood that the future adult will be able to hold their own and not be passive or wishy-washy throughout their life, the conclusions of the meme are simplistic and ignore less savory realities.

In response, I made my own list of where difficult personality traits can lead in anyone—child or adult—if not tempered. This is not to say that I or anyone else who has the “difficult trait” is doomed to a negative future. But these are pitfalls worth watching out for, especially when parenting teens and young adults.

Here is my list to counter the meme above:

• Stubbornness untempered may lead to an inability to see anyone else's perspective and in its extreme form to arrogance and self-agrandisement.

• Defiance of reasonable and healthy authority too often leads to problems with law enforcement and experiments in criminality. (There is, of course, a vast difference between defiance of reasonable authority, such as a parent protecting a child from real hazards, and defiance of dictatorial and abusive power.)

• Disobedience of healthy and safety oriented rules can and does lead to serious accidents, teenage drunk driving, a high risk of death among young adults, experiments with dangerous substances, bad teeth, poor health and other long-term consequences young people often can't foresee.

• Clinginess in children is usually a healthy attachment behavior and possibly a sign that the world appears confusing and overwhelming to the child, which today is confusing and overwhelming to many adults. Yet, clinginess in older children or teenagers can be a sign of deeper insecurity, and if n to addressed therapeutically, could make the young person more vulnerable to abusive and controlling relationships.

• Backtalk (i.e. disrespect, insults and contempt toward parents) may establish distant or broken family relationships, lack of empathy, problems with other intimate relationships where the same disrespect and contempt habits come up, domestic abuse and bullying of others. (This should not be confused with teenage sassiness or moodiness, which while irritating are likely to pass and don’t appear to correlate with much of anything in adult personality.)

• The meme claims that children who don’t do what their parents say are less likely to fall prey to peer pressure. And yet this simply doesn’t hold up to real-world scrutiny. Not doing what they're told by parents is the opposite of not doing what their peers tell them. The primary reason most teens ignore their parent’s instructions is because they are doing things their peers are telling them to do which are dangerous or unhealthy. Hence why their parents are directing them to do something else.

• Always touching things that they shouldn't (after the age when this is simply normal) is a symptom of impulsivity, often neurologically based and not necessarily their fault. But still impulsivity is something that will cause difficulty in adulthood for individuals who experience it excessively, because significant impulsivity often leads to unwanted debt, accidents, addictions and difficulty achieving one's own desired goals.

Trying to raise teenagers in a world of distractions, addictions, scams and seductive ideologies is hugely challenging. Trying to raise teenagers with neurological disabilities that cause a high degree of impulsivity, obstinacy, negative mood and insecurity is terrifying. When I run across this type of meme, I see the underlying message—one from those not responsible for a struggling teen with a lot of at-risk behaviors to those who are responsible for such a teen.

What that message says is: “People who are not actually raising kids with these difficulties don’t understand but they think they know better than those who are in the thick of it.” The myth makes a much better and simpler meme than the reality ever will.

And to those—like me—who have these “difficult traits” whether you are old or young, I say that we are the ones with a choice. Stubbornness can lead one into resentment of others or it can be an asset in self-discipline. Defiance can be turned against those closest and dearest or against those abusing the planet and the vulnerable in our society. Disobedience to authority need not mean making decisions that harm you just to make a point. It can give the strength to take a principled stand. Impulsivity need not be your master. It can be an ally if marshaled and channelled. Clinginess could lead to codependency or being trapped in abusive relationships, or it could mean allowing yourself to be vulnerable and open in relationships.

The results of “difficult traits” are what the individual practices over the long-term.

The long road to "That isn't on me."

A young girl wrote wrenching words to a group I’m in. So young. A pretty, thin teen with charcoal hair, umber skin and eyes that clearly move non-traditionally. .

She said she was struggling with the concept that she would never be able to do so many things she wanted to because she was born blind: ”I wanted to drive a car, sneak out with friends, go to parties, have a sleep over… And I wanted to see and flirt with cute guys. That was the life i was excited for. Now I’m realizing it wasn’t meant for me.”

A lot of people wrote back, telling her to believe in herself, not to set limits on her dreams. “Blindness doesn’t have to define you…” But others admonished her for appearing to ask for sympathy, even though this was a support group for blind people, not exactly mixed company. “Don’t fish for pity…” Yadda yadda yadda….

But I read her words over again and sat lost in thought. This girl wasn’t limiting her dreams. I don’t hear her saying she can’t be a scientist or a professional athlete or president. I hear her saying some very real things. Yup, driving a car is out for us. We learn that early on.

But then there are the other things—the social life, the little crowd of friends, the parties, the giggling under the covers when a friend spends the night, the staying out ‘til the streetlights come on or sneaking out afterwards.

Image via Pixabay - Two girls with arms around each other’s shoulders pumping their fists with a bleak gray background.

That isn’t a girl limiting her dreams. She has a couple of friends, kids of her parent’s friends, who have known her since before her difference was “weird.” But they also have their crowd and the cost of inviting along one’s geeky blind childhood friend with the creepy eyes is steep. There may be someone out there who would do it, but most blind kids aren’t lucky enough to have a badass, social daredevil for a friend.

This girl isn’t limiting her dreams or fishing for pity. She’s just expressing sorrow over coming to grips things that are denied to her. She’s young and she has probably been told she can do “anything, even if you’re blind” by people who mean well and who also don’t want to feel uncomfortable emotions. And she’s starting to find out that it’s not entirely true.

If she is making a mistake, it is only in lumping the social things together with driving a car, as if they too were a natural consequence of blindness. They aren’t. But I didn’t know that when I was that age either.

I remember being fourteen and noticing the blurry sunlight in my bedroom window turn orange, signaling the end to another solitary Saturday in June, listening to the happy yells of teenagers in the alley through that open window. That day—for the first time—I knew where the party was. Someone had let it slip within my hearing at school. I didn’t know who lived there, but it was just a couple of blocks over.

I put on my jean jacket, which had once been fashionable back when I went through a phase of studying fashion and trying really hard to be “with it.” I put my hair in a scrunchy and walked the two blocks to the place where the party was happening. I put a smile on, carefully rechecking it internally—not too big or obvious but enough to be friendly. The door was open with music blaring out, so I walked up the steps past a couple of guys sitting out front.

No one acknowledged me. I couldn’t see their faces. But my little bit of residual sight and their breathing and low conversation told me they were all guys. They might not even really know me, but I could tell they were my age, not grownups. I slipped into the doorway, which was festooned with streamers. The bold, cheerfully brash tones of the 1980s screeched from speakers and the sound inside was so loud that most of my skill at echolocation was wiped out.

There were girls dancing just inside. I could tell by their dim silhouettes and their giggles. There was a burst of laugher and someone slammed into me, pushing me against the wall and sloshing a drink across my chest. The girls erupted into gales of laughter. Then they were gone, scurrying away into the crowd of amorphous shapes.

I looked down and sniffed. Sprite. Well, at least it was clear and only a bit of my shirt was wet. I was used to rough and tumble with two brothers, so I wasn’t immediately sure that I wasn’t welcome. I stood against the wall for a long time, observing as best I could and trying to look friendly and “with it.”

I could hear the occasional voice I recognized from school. I didn’t know the names to go with those voices. The other kids were only ever introduced at the beginning of the year and then they only said their name out loud once in home room. That wasn’t enough to capture the voices and put names to the kids nearest me in school. But after a few months I did know when kids from my class were close by from their familiar voices.

Even so, no one spoke to me. A few dancers stepped on my toes or pushed me aside a bit with gradually increasing force. But no one directed so much as, “oops!” to me.

Finally, someone whose face I couldn’t see came up and took my shoulders, steering me toward the door. And I went. I made sure I was steady enough to keep them from pushing me down the steps, but I didn’t resist. I walked home along the sidewalk, my head up, pretending I didn’t care.

It wasn’t the first time I experienced that kind of cold shoulder and rejection, and it wasn’t the last by a long shot. But it was the last time I tried just going to a party put on by my classmates that I had heard about. And it was the only private party for teens I went to during high school.

Nope. No one ever invited me. There were a couple of kids I was friends with at the three different schools I attended during my teens, but they weren’t either the partying type or in a position to throw a party.

Is not getting invited to parties the worst thing in the world? Of course not. I lived in a sheltered, nice small town. I didn’t have to worry about hunger, violence or familial abuse. A lot of teens have terrible problems that I didn’t have. But when I crept out my window on Halloween to roam the streets, I did it alone, a real ghost walking in the dusk with kids speeding by, shouting and laughing in their own pursuits.

I wanted so badly to be part of a happy and inclusive crowd, to feel friends’ arms around my shoulders from either side, to share my excitement with someone, to laugh at their jokes and to know that if I fell behind they’d reach out pull me along because I was one of the pack.

All these years later, I know what the pretty teenage girl is talking about. I listened to well-meaning adults back then. I went to a self-esteem building program called “Wings” and I chanted affirmations before going to bed every night. All those messages from adults warned me that the worst thing a person with a disability can do is to complain or elicit sympathy from others.

Now, with the experience of an extra thirty years, those people telling this girl not to “put limits on her dreams” or “fish for pity” make me want to gnash my teeth.

Instead, I wrote to her: “I hope you know that you can do all those things as well as anyone, with the sole exception of driving a car. The problems you have doing these things are what we call a ‘social construct.’ It isn't ‘meant to be.’ It isn’t God or biology or your body that has taken those things from you. I snuck out of a windows as a teenager. I was quite good at it in fact. But no friends ever did it with me because I had eyes like yours. These things were ‘off-limits’ only because of social constraints.”

“As for putting limits on one’s dreams, I have been a war correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, a major international publication. I have published ten books and travelled in 35+ countries. I am raising two kids. I have built rock walls with my own hands. I have fed my family by farming the land. Believe me. I am not a blind person who puts limits on myself or spends time in self pity or in fishing for other people’s sympathy.”

“But society does put limits on me. For years, I beat myself up mentally because I wanted what you want and I thought it was me that was the problem. I thought I should learn to accept it. That’s what my mentors told me. And they didn’t blame me exactly but they implied that the exclusion was my fault, or at least a consequence of being visually impaired. I thought I just needed to try harder.”

“Now I’m almost forty-five and I want to tell you that that is bullshit. Certainly, avoid putting limits on your dreams. But your words don’t sound like that to me. I was a nice, friendly girl with a ton of interests and a good sense of humor. But I didn’t get to go to parties and I had precious few sleepovers, almost entirely with the kids of my parent’s friends. I didn't limit myself. Society and prejudiced people did. I was outgoing and friendly. I got kicked down, told ‘Oh, it's just for us and a few close friends!’ or ‘Maybe sometime!’ or just given a cold shoulder so many times there is no counting. That's society. That's prejudice, even bigotry. Call it what it is. Don’t blame yourself and I hope the people telling you to try harder and implying you are fishing for sympathy are reading this too, because putting this on you is abusive.”

“I wish I could give you a hug. I hope you will find your own dreams and follow them. But I’ve also got to tell you that this crap that is social exclusion has nothing to do with you. It’s all on them. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t likely to change soon, but you will find the occasional person who is open-minded and a real friend. Value them and give them your best side. Try not to let the negativity of bigots make you bitter, so that you can still turn around and be a good friend to those who are ready. But don't blame yourself because it just isn't about the blindness. It's about the same old sickness of our society that brings racism, sexism and all the rest of it.”

That may seem harsh, calling kids “bigots” because they don’t invite the blind girl in their class to a casual party. But that is actually putting it mildly and with a large dose of emotional distance.

I did meet a new friend that same year—when I was fourteen—who was ready to be friends with the blind girl next door. At least a little. Like a lot of friends, she didn’t act like she knew me in public. That was okay with me. Or at least it was worth the price. She was a good friend and we shared real interests, like the medieval history club.

Life happened and even though my life took me away from that small town and around the world over the next couple of decades, circumstances brought that friend a lot closer and into the circle of my family. There have been a lot of times when social things were tough, and I’d think of the handful of people I could really count on—my friend from that old neighborhood among them, even though thousands of miles lay between us. We’ve supported each other through some very tough times.

This past year, divisions split many friends in the US and while we agree on almost everything, there were some things we didn’t see eye to eye on. There came a moment when my friend was so angry that she lashed out at me in text.

As happens with a lot of arguments, my friend made it personal. But instead of just calling me argumentative or selfish or closed-minded or insulting my sources—all things that could at least be rationally argued—she went for my disability and my writing about my experiences, accusing me of making up the social difficulties related to my disability in order to “manipulate people and get sympathy.” To be clear, the argument wasn’t even vaguely related to disability or social exclusion.

I know my blogs have increasingly become about disability issues and maybe it bothers more than just this friend. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read my blogs, whatever your reasons. And I can see that it might seem like I obsess about this stuff, if you go on what I write here.

But the truth is that I rarely talk about these things in offline life. Last night, I mentioned something about my vision to a local friend because I had just spent the day seeing a major eye specialist in the city, and I was surprised at her shock. Then, I realized that I never talk about this stuff in person, even something innocuous like saying that I went to the eye doctor.

I spend most days thinking about kids, chickens, gardening, teaching students, preparing lessons, cleaning, cooking, doing the dishes, making crafts and now homeschooling. I don’t have a lot of time for disability issues, even being socially isolated enough that Covid lockdown barely changed my life at all.

Maybe that’s partly why I write about it, because it is an otherwise neglected part of my life. But I know it is also because these are issues I don’t hear anyone else talking or writing about. Or at least very little. And yes, while I don’t focus on the social impacts of disability every day, they underlie my whole life. They are defining factors that I have to take into account, like gravity or Covid. But unlike universal restrictions, that social exclusion is something I observe only affecting me and other people with disabilities.

So, I write because it is needed and silence hurts.

I don’t write this stuff to garner sympathy, and that’s fortunate because I haven’t received much sympathy since I started writing here. Instead, I have developed some great connections with people who experience similar things or who want to understand reality better. But even that isn’t really the point. The point is that I am a journalist. I write the things that need to be told and things that the world needs to hear. That’s just what I do.

If you’re a reader who came to my blogs for the general social justice stuff or to see what it’s like to live in the Czech Republic or to get books or to learn about herbs or earthy spirituality and you find my posts about social exclusion, disability and societal prejudices to be uncomfortable and out of touch with the reality you know, I hope you’ll bide a moment with your discomfort. It is okay to feel uncomfortable.

When someone tells about social injustice that they experience, the rest of us often feel an obligation to do something. And that is why it can seem like they are complaining or trying to manipulate others. But the fact is that there is no specific action I am asking for. It is really the understanding and the awareness that will help. If anything, share a post that opens you up to a new and uncomfortable reality.

But mostly just be open to the perspective. That openness alone will create the change we all need in this troubled world.

It is a stereotype like any other negative stereotype, that people with disabilities—or at least some of them—are “fakers” and “complainers.” Partly that stereotype comes from the (often-subconscious) fear abled people have of the inevitable disabilities of old age.

Partly it comes from the kind of jealousy my children have of adults. “You don’t have to do chores and homework!” They can’t see how much adults do have to do. Abled people see disabled people getting a few little curb cuts in life, and many think we have it easy and enjoy a little mooching… or that SOME of us must be faking or exaggerating just to get the bennies or at least to garner a little sympathy.

Just like I explain these things to my kids, you have really got no idea. The only breaks disabled people actually get are things that society has figured out will make us cost society a lot less because they allow us to deal with our own lives by ourselves better. That’s it.

Frankly, the only time I ever got “sympathy” for being blind was one time when I was a kid and some lady at a bus station prayed over me and it was a distinctly strange and uncomfortable experience. Most people with disabilities avoid “sympathy” like the plague for precisely that reason. It might feel moderately good from the giving end, but it is usually really weird and unrewarding on the receiving end. And that’s real sympathy, not even the toxicity of pity.

More than anything, if there is one thing I do want to try to manipulate people into it is to refrain from making abusive and prejudiced remarks that hurt people with disabilities. It doesn’t really matter if you once somewhere heard about a person faking a disability to get something or an actually disabled person trying to manipulate people’s sympathy, please don’t use that stereotype as an accusation or an automatic way to discredit a person with a disability in a disagreement.

That accusation is exactly like using racial epithets or calling a woman the slang equivalent of “sex worker.” If you go there in an argument, it isn’t about the argument or the person you’re arguing with. That’s on the person using the bigoted remark. It is a sickness that is within those fostering prejudice.

That isn’t on me. It isn’t on us.

"I don't have to be friends with everybody!"

It's so common that many people might consider it normal. A group of kids are playing with a soccer ball and one boy--a bit taller than most and with a forceful personality--gives orders. The others follow the orders gladly and one of the orders is that they don't play with "that kid." 

But common isn't necessarily okay.

I was always afraid my kids would be "that kid" because they're different from the other kids in our town, visibly and controversially. But when it happened, it was at a support group for kids like them, kids of a minority background who were supposed to be their best allies. And my kids weren't the one left out. 

Instead it was one of my people. The kid with a significant physical disability. It wasn't due to his behavior or personality. He's a fun kid. Because he was booted out of the boys' fun and he loved card games, I played Uno with him. I could wish my kids were as quick with Uno. 

And no, there is no excuse. This was not one of those situations where the child left out was too timid or too aggressive, didn't ask to be included or just felt offended and left. He was told to leave.

The others chased him with sticks because they wanted to play cops and robbers and he was handy as a robber. If he was near them the game was always everyone against that boy. It was all in fun. They never hurt him physically, but they absolutely would not play WITH him. 

Creative Commons image by Guilherme Jofili

I sat my kids down privately to understand the issue. 

"The leader doesn't want him to play," my daughter said

Why does he get to decide?

"We want him to be the leader. He knows how to make fun," she explains.

My son, younger and less verbal, just shrugs. He admits he doesn't feel great about leaving that one boy out, but he wants to play with the boys. He'll go along with whatever, even if it makes him feel a bad sometimes.

Finally, I directly witnessed the ringleader directing kids to gang up on the boy with a disability. So, I told the ringleader he was in time-out. He went to time-out but told me, "You can't make us play with him." 

The mother of the ringleader arrived shortly and took over. She told him, "That's not nice," and let him go. 

I gritted my teeth and started another Uno game. 

It wasn't really a new issue in this group, except before the issue had been me among the grown-ups. We have come to this group for four years now. During the third year, I was extremely frustrated. The same group of people met each time, and I still did not know who was who because people were never introduced again and I couldn't see their faces. When I asked, I was given awkward answers and then avoided.

Other parents formed little groups of friends within the support group and I was left on the outside. Once I was even explicitly told to give up my seat at a lunchroom table because a large group wanted to sit together and I wasn't invited. I was directed to sit outside the lunchroom in an area where there were large tables but also wasps that made the area less desirable. 

It was far from a "support group" for me. I only went for the kids to be with peers like them. But then one of the organizers decided to make the theme of this year's meeting be "the inclusion of people with disabilities," because her friend with the disabled child would be attending for the first time. 

I was asked for ideas for a disability awareness program. They wanted me to develop a blindness simulation, so people could see how rough it is to be blind. But the only ideas I am particularly interested in have to do with the social aspects of disability.

It isn't that rough to be blind. It's occasionally inconvenient. But it is rough to have people react to you being blind. 

The organizers weren't happy. My suggestions were ignored and the theme went ahead with little physical demonstrations of blindness and deafness. Gritting my teeth, I focused on the one thing I could explain in this context--that is the difficulty of recognizing faces when you are visually impaired. And somehow I managed to get through to the adults for the first time. By the end of the week, I knew everyone's name and could identify most by voice, stature or idiosyncrasies. It was a vast relief and I was even included in some conversations after that. 

Still, the child with a disability in our midst was left out and forced to play card games with the grown-ups. 

Toward the end of the week-long workshop, a guest came to give a presentation to our group. He was a man of the same minority background as the children in the group. Most of the guests to such a group are women, people in "caring" professions. So, having a male guest was a big deal.

The little boys were agog at this role model. He was buff, brash and a man. He had grown up in the ghetto and become the first minority city counsel member in his good-sized town.

He quickly noticed the disharmony among the children. As it turned out, once the disabled boy had been fully rejected from the pack of kids, the leader needed another target. And this time it was my son--quiet, not too well coordinated and younger than most. 

He joined me at the Uno table and pretended he didn't care much.

Our male guest gathered all the kids who had been involved in the shunning of the boy with a disability--and most of them were boys in this case--out on the soccer field and talked to them. The dynamics quickly became apparent. 

"I don't have to be friends with everyone," the ringleader said. "My father says I've got to be assertive. It's his problem if he's too weak to be in our club."

The man tried to reason with them and talked about compassion. He asked how they would feel if they were left out.

"I won't be left out," the ringleader said. "I'll make sure of that."

The other kids watched their leader and he did not back down. They learned. The adults were unwilling to lay down a law on this. Shunning may not be nice, but it isn't explicitly against the rules.

Creative Commons image by Duane Storey

The session on the soccer field broke up without any resolution. But I held back from leaving because I wanted to get an email address from the guest, who I greatly admired, although he seemed a bit lost being called in to help mediate this conflict among the children.

As the others trailed away, the ringleader among the kids and one of his closest friends stood with the man from the ghetto, their admired role model. I waited patiently for him to finish with them, so I could ask for his contact information.

"My father says there are people called Neo-nazis who might hurt me because I'm not white," the leader of the kids' pack admitted to the man, his voice still strong but his stance clearly seeking some reassurance or support from this strong mirror of himself.

The man told him, "That's true. Some people are like that, but here is the thing you need to remember. Not many people are like that. Only a few. Most people are good."

I have a hard time with my big mouth. The man hesitated. He rocked from foot to foot, obviously struggling for words.

And the words popped out before I could stop them, "And that is a good reason, why you should be friends with as many people as you can. You never know when you'll need them at your back." 

The man jabbed his finger at me. "Yes! That is the thing! That is it!" 

He was clearly grateful to be rescued from an awkward issue of teaching morals to children--particularly a moral concept that adults don't actually observe all that well. We grinned at one another. A pact of the grown-ups with a quick comeback.

I do mean it though. Sure, no one can force you to be friends with the less cool, the ones who take a bit of extra effort--whether it's a kid on the playground who you have to work to communicate with or a grown-up who can't recognize faces. But hard times are coming and you may need just such friends. There is no friend more steadfast than those who have been on the outside.

Still. I acknowledge that mine was an easy answer, given to kids. I think back to my own childhood, when I struggled with social ostracism on a daily basis. There is a part of that memory I don't like to think on. There was a kid in my school for a time who was very strange in appearance due to a physical deformity.

He was smart and nice, but he looked strange even to my weak eyes. He was also not cool. He didn't have the kind of forceful personality that can negate physical difference. And so, even though I said "Hi" to him on the street and in the halls, I was never really friends with him. I yearned always toward the kids who were moving and doing things. Even I, who should have known better. did it. 

Now I swear I'll do better. Instead of looking around for who I want to be with, I'll look around for who is there and ready. 

Smrak 1: Screen addiction and its pushers

I joke about being a Luddite but in reality I love technology. I’m legally blind and computers really do make the difference between freedom and imprisonment for many of us with disabilities. Many technologies are also essential for increasing the ecological sustainability of our lifestyles. 

Creative Commons image by  Lars Plougmann 

I even love the internet and social media. Social media is reason we have a serious presidential candidate in the United States who discusses issues of interest to people with regular incomes for the first time in my lifetime. The prevalence of social media has opened up opportunities for small businesses, homeschoolers, social justice activists and even organic farmers like never before. If we do ever find a large-scale solution to climate change, I believe it will be spread and activated through social media.

I’m not against technology. 

I’m just against kids being connected to some sort of electronic media more than SEVEN hours each day on average. That’s a staggering statistic. It’s often half of all awake time for kids. 
Yes, media is immediate, colorful, eye-catching, flexible and dynamic. It gives you the feeling of instant control. Change the channel, skip, scroll down, click a link, friend and unfriend. It’s all right there in a split second. No self-regulation necessary, no self-control required, no need to be flexible yourself and no time to notice slower things.

A terrifying phenomenon is building in this generation--people who don’t know how to deal with non-virtual reality. It isn't just the obvious stuff, like not knowing how to grow food or cook or get around without a map navigation system (although those are significant issues). It’s also the essential ability to observe the world in real time, to connect with one’s self and with the natural environment. It’s the ability to just be without the jitters reminiscent of an addict in need of a fix. 

Creative Commons image by  Devon Christopher Adams

You might say I should just manage my kids’ screen time and rest secure in the knowledge that at least my kids will gain technology skills without becoming addicted. But any of you who have actually tried this will be chuckling.

Easier said than done.

My kids are still in preschool and I am already under fierce pressure to allow them at least several hours of screen time every day. I attended a seminar on bullying prevention because my kids are in a high-risk category for being bullied, and the only concrete bit of advice the anti-bullying “expert” speaking had was: “Be sure to allow your kids to watch the fashionable TV shows and play enough video games, so they'll be up-to-date on what will be discussed at recess.” 

My kids report that some of their classmates already have smart phones. In preschool! For my second-grade ESL students, a smart phone is a basic school supply, like they used to have personal pencil sharpeners. 

Creative Commons image by  Yan Chi Vinci Chow

When my kids were toddlers, I eagerly awaited the day when their friends would visit us and they could visit their friends. But now their friends don’t want to visit us because, “the TV isn’t on.” And when I check or even just ask what they are doing at a friend’s house, there is no other activity other than TV, video games or Barbie dolls in front of the TV, in the case of girls. Their reading abilities are scanty for Facebook yet, but that won’t last long.

I’m going to catch some flak for mentioning that some other parents are becoming part of the problem on this one. But the thing is that most of these parents who put the kids in front of the TV or video games will tell you they don’t like to do it. They feel pressured to do it and they are exhausted. They usually insist to themselves that they are doing it "just this once" to save their sanity. Like me, they want their kids to have friends and be happy and this seems to be the price you have to pay. 

It’s a spiral of smrak, the term I am coining for the techno-social malaise of today's world, leading to kids spending most of their time in front of screens and having few real-world interests or skills. 

I’m not judgmental so much as tearing my own hair out. We need to stand together and stand up for a healthy amount of technology and other diversified activities for kids. We can’t use electronics as a way to avoid discussing life and health with our kids “just this once”--every single day. We must band together as humans of all ages to take back our lives and our minds. 

Technology is a wonderful gift. Let’s use it wisely.

The bottom line: I don't care what she said, you don't shove... or pull guns

I can picture the scene in McKinney pretty well. The organizers promote a party on the internet. More people show up than they expect. They didn't think parts of it through, like whether or not they could invite a bunch of kids, some of whom they didn't know personally, to their gated community pool. It happens. If you've ever organized an event for more than twenty people, you know how easily things can  get misinterpreted. 

Swimming - Creative Commons image by Cal Sr

Then when neighbors get upset with the loud music and too many "guests" in the private pool, the teenagers get mouthy. I've seen it with crowds of teenagers in a dozen countries. They don't want to leave. They assume that something with fliers and on-line promotion is "official" so they have the right to be there. They came all that way. They demand their right to have what was advertised.

And crowds are hard to disperse whether you're the somewhat disorganized organizer or the police, especially when no one has a ride home yet.

Now the residents of the area are upset because the media and activists have turned it into a racial issue, because a lot of the kids who showed up for this advertised party were black and the police who came in response to calls from white neighbors were also white. And they contend that a lot of the residents there are also black, so it isn't a race issue. They just have rules about guests flooding their private pool for a public event. 

I'm an ocean away and I wasn't there, so I'm not in the business of judging what I  didn't see. But how the party was organized or why the kids were there is really not the issue.

I'm sorry about highlighting the white witness here, but white people sometimes need to hear white witnesses explain to them that racism really does exist and he says it well.  -  Teenager who shot McKinney pool party video speaks out 

There is one thing I can see. I can see the video made by a fifteen year old without an ulterior motive, a kid who was obviously a bit confused and then increasingly concerned by the reaction of a police officer. I can't hear who yelled what very well, but I can see well enough what happened and so can everyone else. 

People all over the world can see.

And we don't care what she yelled or who said what. She was fourteen and the police officer was an adult. And you don't shove a person to the ground and use a girl's hair for a handle and put her face in the dirt over words, any words. 

Sometimes I have to explain about things in America because I'm an American living in another country. It's expected. I know that although there is violence in America and police are too ready to fire their guns and especially ready if they're facing a black person, most American police officers are not out-of-control or insane and many of them are black. I've held conversations with people in Europe about this and said, "Yes, there is racism in our society and it affects the police but not all white Americans are overtly racist and not all the cops are murderers." 

But what do I say now? The police officer in the video is clearly panicked, running from one side to another, shouting orders to random groups of kids who are walking around not threatening anyone, just looking confused and trying to figure out how to get a ride home.

Was there something violent that happened before that freaked him out? According to another video, there was a scratching, slapping fight between a woman and some teenage girls. But that's all. Why is this police officer so flustered? I have yet to see any reasonable reason reported. There was a restless crowd yes. Some of them may have yelled at him. But they were children, not even older teens for the most part. You expect me to believe that the police officer was that afraid of children, so afraid that he had to yank them by their arms, shove them down, use a girl's hair as a handle to force her head down and then pull a gun?

You can say this was just a cop with a mean, aggressive personality, but it didn't look that way. He didn't look like he was just abnormally aggressive. In the video he looks confused, irritated, panicked and frustrated that his orders are not being followed. Did he receive no training for dealing with a situation like this? Wait. No, as it turns out, he was the trainer, the senior officer in charge of new guys. 

How could he not know that the first duty of a police officer is like that of a doctor. First, do not make the situation worse. 

I'm sure there are plenty of rants out there on the internet about how bad cops are. This isn't one of them. I have seen police who lived and worked by the principle of mitigating harm and keeping the peace. I organized antiwar demonstrations in a major European city for a couple of years. We never had a riot or property damage or anything that made the international news, but there was the occasional tense incident. 

I remember one in particular. It was one of the first big demonstrations, thousands of people, crammed into narrow, echoing medieval streets. We only had megaphones, no sound system. there was no question that we were going to really do crowd control. The best we as organizers could do was stay ahead of the crowd and gently guide it in the right direction. 

Emotions were running high. The war in Iraq had just begun and European public opinion was aggravated by the policies of George W. Bush. And a fourth to a third of the demonstrators were Arabs, often very emotional Middle Eastern students. Riots had broken out in some cities. The police had reason to worry.

We arrived at the US Embassy to deliver our petition for peace and found that instead of the usual line of relatively friendly looking cops, we were facing a phalanx of riot police with shields and tasers, and no doubt, tear gas. The street was blocked with a barricade some distance before the Embassy. I definitely felt a bit nervous walking up to that in the front line of the march. I couldn't see it with my bad eyesight but others could see US Marines standing in the windows of the Embassy with guns.

Once we got the crowd stopped, we were negotiating with the police to let one of our organizers through the barricade, so that he could personally deliver our signed petition to the Embassy. A police officer asked him to take his backpack off and just as he was putting it down there was a deafening "bang!"  It must have been a cherry-bomb-type firecracker, the type that could blind you if it went off in your face.

I was sure that things were about to go to pieces. I ducked down against the police barricade, hoping against hope that when the police charged they'd just somehow go over me. There were screams and yells of anger from the crowd. But the police didn't come. 

Instead I heard a firm, loud voice of command moving down the line of police. "Everyone okay? Everyone okay?"  The police commander was checking with every section of the line to make sure no one had been hurt by the explosion.

Slowly I stood up and looked back at the police. They hadn't moved. 

I learned to respect the local police that day. They had trained to control their reflexes and not to panic in the face of a emotive and angry crowd. Over the next couple of years I was involved with several negotiations between them and demonstrators and we were always able to work things out. Not every city is that lucky. 

And what happened in McKinney isn't unique. It is only in the news because a fifteen-year-old shot a video of it. Things like that happen all the time - worse things, incidents where people end up hurt or dead. And we usually only hear about it when it is so well-documented that there is no way to escape the truth. 

I am not against police officers. I have deep respect for the job. I'm an activist but I don't believe that "the man"  is all bad and we don't need any law enforcement. All you need to do to see how bullies and mobsters rule when there are no police is to look at the international scene where the one with the biggest military calls the shots. 

But that does not mean that the police should become just another bully with a bigger stick and a readier gun. Just because someone wears the badge does not mean they are in any way outside either the law or basic ethics. 

If I've told my kids once, I've told them a thousand times.  I don't care what your sister said. I don't care if your brother spit at you. You don't shove. You don't yank hair. That's not okay. If you do it is the job of the police to come and stop you and put you in time-out. The police in your case being Mama. And Mama will be firm, but Mama won't swing you by your arm or use your hair as a handle to force your head down or scream profanity at you or bring out the big guns. Because the job of police (and of Mamas) is to mitigate strife and protect and to not make things worse.

The original video of the incident in McKinney: Worth watching if you haven't seen it.

As far as McKinney goes, I've heard the various accounts of the context. But just as when my kids squabble, context only matters so much.

Here's the bottom line. There's a fourteen-year-old girl and there's an armed adult. The adult has no reason to be afraid. She was not a threat. The guys who approached the police officer were not a threat. Drawing his gun was an escalation. It made things worse... much much worse than a crowd of young teens ever needs to be.

As to the racial tension inherent in the situation. How can that possible NOT come up? You have a white police officer attacking a black girl in a bathing suit, clearly treating her as a violent threat. He had just told a dozen or more black kids to sit down and ignored the white kid. Sure, the crowd was unhappy and milling in chaos. But no one with a day of crowd control training should expect any less. The kids weren't armed, and yet the police officer was panicked. 

And that is where it seems racial. 

The mayor and police chief of McKinney, Texas commented on Cpl. Eric Casebolt's resignation, calling his actions "out of control", referring to Casebolt throwing a teen girl on the ground during a pool party incident.

How might that officer might have acted if faced with a crowd of white seventh, eighth and ninth graders who were confused because they showed up for a party and it turned out to be a problem and they don't have a ride home right now?

I am pretty sure what he would have done. He would have asked them if they had phones to call their parents. He would have asked them in a concerned tone to move a bit away from whatever altercation was going on nearby, if there was one. I've seen officers do this in similar situations. 

But instead this officer panicked and went out of control. He didn't see those kids as reasonable or potentially in need of his protection and it's only chance that no one got shot. 

Such things are not made by just one bad, overly aggressive, poorly trained cop. It takes a society that views black teenagers as dangerous, hostile and potentially armed to do this. And in this case they were quite the opposite. Given the chaos, I'd say he was getting a fair amount of compliance. The kids close by sat down and did as he said. It was unclear what he was saying to those further away, but the fact is that legally you are not required to sit down or come hither when a police officer says so unless you are under arrest or there is a state of emergency. 

And so when European friends ask me about this I feel a sinking inside because I know this isn't just a bad cop. I know we've got problems far beyond that.

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