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.

What I learned in quarantine

Our family therapist suggested, somewhat plaintively, that most people appear to have learned something constructive from COVID-19 lockdown. She left unsaid-—but obvious enough—that our family seems not to be among those gaining positively from it.

I’ll give her credit for tackling our case. I wouldn’t want to be our family therapist either. My husband and I aren’t perfect or perfectly coordinated, but we’re skilled parents. We talk through issues. We’re patient and loving. We know how to handle emotions and how to be consistent with the kids. But we’ve been hit with one thing after another and there simply are no easy psychological fixes.

Image by Arie Farnam

Since that session, I have noticed a rash of saccharine blog posts on what people are learning from the crisis—from “community is what really matters” to “self-care is what really matters” conclusions and everything in between.

I do think I learned a lot during the two and a half months in isolation with my kids. I never stop learning in this life. But it is true that a lot of the things I’ve learned aren’t very positive or therapeutic.

Here are the top dozen things I learned:

12. I learned, as so many people in major crises throughout history reportedly learned, that times of fear and hardship bring out the worst in a lot of people and the best in a few.

11. I’ve learned that my pantry, when well stocked, can support my family for at least a month, despite requiring some creative cooking after a couple of weeks. (Learning this gives me both a small sense of security and a more concrete sense of what long-term disaster might be like.)

10. I learned that you can make sourdough from one package of yeast and then use it for months to leaven bread. (This is moderately useful in general.)

9. I became an expert in parental controls on both Android and IOS systems. (I wish this wasn’t a basic survival skill in our world but now it is.)

8. I learned how to kid-proof most of my house and lock myself in my bedroom, when that is all that can be done and when to come out again. (My husband learned how to install several locks around the house.)

7. I learned to prioritize, utilize micro-moments and how to clean and cook faster than I ever thought possible. (This is not fun but it does represent stretching of personal capacities.)

6. I learned to gauge the lung and vocal-cord capacity of my kids and schedule scream-time into schoolwork sessions. (This should not be confused with having learned “patience.”).

5. I learned just how little Netflix Europe has for kids. (I could really do without this knowledge.)

4. I learned which tiny chores my kids can be motivated by video game rewards to do and which actually entail a savings of time over simply doing them myself.

3. I learned to do a full shower and bathroom routine in less than four minutes.

2. I learned overwhelming gratitude for an hour or two of alone time and learned that the pre-COVID routine that used to seem hard was actually incredibly easy.

1. The number one thing I learned during COVID-10 lockdown is what living in the present moment actually means and sometimes I can even pull it off.

The situations people are living in during COVID-19 vary widely. Some people are learning to cope with solitude. Others are learning to cope with overcrowding. Some are learning to cope with a ton of free time. Others are working frantically just to keep up with basic needs. That’s why making assumptions about what someone else should be gaining or learning won’t be very effective.

Things have been hard—really hard—in so many ways. I try to take a deep breath. It isn’t easy. My chest is tight today but eventually it comes.

I glance up from the keyboard and out at the fading evening sky above the greenhouse. The trees on the ridge above us are in full leaf now and the clouds glow pink and cobalt behind them. I take a deep breath.

This moment is okay. The children are in bed. The sky and the trees give me the gifts of their beauty. The garden plants in the greenhouse are well.

I used to be confused by instructions to “live in the moment,” because it seemed like the naive advice of people who don’t need to plan for how they are going to eat in a month or a year or the advice of people who are fortunate enough not to need to process painful past events on a regular basis.

“Don’t focus on the future. Don’t focus on the past. Focus on the now.”

But I have learned this much from COVID-19 lockdown. It isn’t that you don’t think of the future or learn from past mistakes. It is that emotionally you react only to the moment. We cannot plan much now. And if we think too much about the future, we are likely to start crying. Thinking over the past day is rarely any better.

Yet this moment is OK.

If you focus on future plans or mull over the past, be it bright or dark, you will inevitably miss the present moment. And even in the bad moments, it is better to focus on that one moment and deal with it, rather than adding up in my mind all the days it has been happening and anticipating all the days, months and years this will continue.

The question is always, “Can I survive this moment?” And if the answer is “yes,” then it becomes, “What should I do in this moment?”

And if the answer is “no,” then it is okay to cry out in that moment of despair, but then it passes and I realize that the answer was actually “yes.” I did survive.

This I think is the same for all of us, whether what we are surviving is isolation and a crisis of inner mental health or chaotic and unhealthy circumstances. “Can I survive this moment?” is the question.

I used to be all in my head. My primary entertainments and tasks were intellectual, reading, listening to audio books or podcasts while I worked, writing, research, teaching, preparing to teach, studying medicinal herbs and so forth.

I was bored with random chatter. The first days of COVID-19 lockdown were an agony of boredom amid frantic work for me. I had to rush from one task to another and still never catch up, yet my mind screamed for stimulation.

I learned to stretch my interest. Now my mind finds stimulation in the mingled aroma of the soup or in the grain of the wood in the cutting board or in the understanding of the child raging in front of me, the face and the posture, the exact type of cry.

I pay attention more. I am less in my head and with that I am less self-absorbed. I am less concerned by what my small ego wants and more focused on what is needed in the moment. Somehow, with that has come a greater focus on the joy found in rare moments.

Isolation is hard, but I already knew that

The past month of national coronavirus lockdown has been hard on my family.

We have a kid with serious behavioral, psychiatric and learning disabilities and another kid with dyslexia. We are coping with the excessive demands of insensitive and disengaged teachers. We’ve been learning to cook from scratch faster than ever before. There have been a few weeks in there where supplies were hard to come by and we had to get creative with our prepper techniques.

But I hear a very different kind of suffering echoing across the internet. Other people are suffering from social isolation, a loss of control in their lives and a complete disruption of their routines. Anxiety levels are skyrocketing and clinical emotional problems are exacerbated.

For awhile I was a bit mystified, at times even dismissive. How can all these people be so wimpy? Most of them don’t have kids with complex challenges and no one is emailing them with threats of failing grades for an assignment that was thirty minutes late due to internet problems. They’re just stuck at home, alone, resting!

I always did have sympathy for the people stuck with kids in small city apartments, but oddly those aren’t the complaints you hear most about. By and large, the loudest wails of distress are coming from the privileged suburbs. Those who I expected to be most vulnerable seem to be stoically silent.

At first, I wondered if this was because they didn’t have access to the internet. I contacted a friend who is a single mother in the inner city and asked in depth about their well-being. She assured me that they were coping well. She can still go to work and her ten-year-old has been semi-parenting and supervising homework for the eight-year-old and the seven-year-old for years already. Homeschooling them and herself isn’t that much more. They’re used to hard times.

I shook my head in wonder and went back to my own struggle, feeling decidedly inferior to the ten-year-old in the inner city.

But as the weeks have passed and I have observed the struggles of others (and read a certain amount of psychological analysis), I realized something significant.

That social distancing that is causing so much havoc for so many people… I know it well. I’ve lived it for years as a socially excluded person with a disability. The amount that I leave my house has only decreased slightly, despite the fact that we’re on national COVID-19 lockdown with only essential supply runs allowed.

Photo by Arie Farnam

My social contact has only been reduced a little, since there was very little of it to begin with. The only change in my daily routine is that my kids are home and I can’t do my work because they are so overwhelmingly needy and their teachers are insanely demanding.

That loss of control in people’s lives… I have always lived in a world where I had very little power in the outside world and I was forced to make harsh choices to build a life I love in the small area I can influence.

For years the decisions of others to exclude or include, to harm or to take have hit me like successive waves that I was powerless to deflect. My only power was always in how I took the waves and what I did with driftwood that washed up.

And that disruption of routine and the resulting rudderless confusion… I remember when I was in my twenties and I first left the shelter of structured education. It was terrifying for a few years. I spent almost every day alone. My work was independent and no one was giving me daily feedback. I had to create my own structure, my own schedule and routine. If I got any reward or consequence for my work or lack there of, it was in terms of months, rather than minute by minute or day to day.

And it was hard. I recall the months I spent struggling against depression, sitting among the boxes in a little room I rented at the time in a city where I had few friends and no family.

I knew that my life was in my own hands, that I had to get up and do the work despite the isolation, that no one else would do it for me and no one would help me. It was paralyzing and demotivating and such a heavy load.

As I start to realize these things, my empathy grows in bounds for the people experiencing this for the first time. Suddenly, the people who were out in the free world, who had a social life and regular jobs and culture and community have been thrown into a life that is much more like mine.

I remember the six years I spent almost entirely alone—often on two-week bouts of lockdown and enforced rest—while I struggled with intractable and medically unexplained infertility. I remember the many resolutions I made to study something, to use my open-ended time wisely, to be calm and to practice good grooming habits. Day after day, month after month, I started new schedules and forced myself into healthier routines.

Then as an inexperienced, new mother of traumatized children adopted from Eastern European orphanages, with no women friends to advise me, I spent the baby days battling the demons of despair, guilt, shame, depression and extreme loneliness. Without the ability to drive, it was nearly impossible to get to mommy-and-me classes for toddlers and when I made the mile-long trek into town, other mothers told me that my inability to make eye contact due to my disability made me unacceptable for their group.

So, I made my own music circle with my two kids. I put up colorful posters on the walls. I had an art project scheduled for every day. I tried to teach my preschoolers to cook. I started early reading programs with them and learned to garden.

But it took years! I’m not bragging. I’m aching for all the people facing isolation just now for the first time. If it feels really really hard. That’s because it is.

I’ve been there. And I didn’t overcome it in a few days or a few weeks. I did overcome it, but it took years.

In the end, I did learn a lot of great skills. I can now make my own schedule and I get up happily before dawn, meditate and go out to tend to my garden and animals all before the kids get up. But I didn’t start out that way. I was a wreck, a mess, like a lot of people report being a mess now.

It might help to listen to those people you know who have traditionally been somewhat isolated. Ask them how they stay sane and healthy. If you’re struggling with this, consider that while whole societies being at home in lockdown is unprecedented, you aren’t really the first people to experience it. And those of us who have known isolation and didn’t succumb to extreme depression, addiction or unhealthy living have skills that you can learn.

I have read several self-care articles out there on the web that try to teach these skills and I remember when such things sounded very unrealistic to me. They tell you to keep to a routine, to try to set a time to get up, to shower and get dressed as you used to when you had someplace to go. They tell you to eat regular meals and make sure they’re healthy. They tell you to limit your time staring at social media and scary news reports on TV. They tell you not to beat yourself up mentally when inevitably you fail at all of this.

So from experience,, are they right?

Yup, they’re right. Routine helps. A lot.

Regular bedtimes and waking times help. Personal hygiene isn’t just for the physical health concerns. It really helps the whole situation. It helps you feel purposeful and gives back some of that sense of control. Healthy eating and healthy sleeping both have major psychological effects. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid the unpleasant price for wasting half a day on social media.

But the thing I rarely find in these lists, the skill that I think I developed over time that has helped the most, is actually making a schedule for yourself with a purpose greater than daily survival in mind.

About ten years ago, I realized that my life was probably never going to change, that I was never going to be accepted and welcomed into the community and a wonderful group of friends. And somehow, against all the weight of years of depression and media programming that said friends are the sum total of a person’s worth, I decided to build a happy life anyway.

I started building it step by step, by deciding what I wanted in my life and scheduling it. I scheduled a daily spiritual practice and did it.

For the first few years, I didn’t manage to do it every day. Then there came a year that I did manage it every day, except once when I was really sick. For the next two years, it felt like an accomplishment. Then it became indispensable and something I would never voluntarily miss.

I’m close to that level on daily exercise, but not quite to the point where it is automatic. I have managed to get daily contact with nature, animals and gardening into my life. I’ve managed to make daily writing part of my life.

I now manage to keep a schedule for my kids schooling despite their vehement protests and natural disinclination. I manage to have regular and healthy meal times for the whole family. But it all started with scheduling a few things I wanted in my life, like spiritual practice and exercise.

If you’ve read this far, you are intrepid and I know you can do this. Focus on the essentials and on your core values.

Here is a method for developing a fulfilling life even when you’re in isolation:

1. Figure out a practical routine of waking, grooming, eating and sleeping that actually works for you in your given situation.

2. Set alarms and push yourself to stick to it.

3. When it falls apart, look at the routine and the clock and get back into it at that point. Don’t spend time and energy berating yourself for being lazy or lacking self-discipline. Like they say with meditation, just gently return to your focus.

4. Once those basics have been mastered, you will have somewhat more energy and less chaos around you. Use some of that mental space to think about your core values and what you really want in your life. If you have to work at the same time, consider your work to be one of the priorities.

5. Write down your daily routine with times when it works for you to fulfill it. How strict you are with those times depends on your personality and whether or not being relaxed about the times results in the routine being fulfilled or results in chaos. Learn from disasters and adjust the routine as necessary. There’s always another day to practice on.

6. Then choose one thing you really must reintegrate into your life. That could be the thing that provides income or it could be physical exercise. Both are essential. But choose just one for now, and write it into your time schedule. Try it for a few days.

7. Then choose the next most important thing and write that into the schedule.

8. As you add more priorities to your life, you’ll run into problems. Some things take longer than you think. You may start to experience real fatigue again and need to adjust your sleeping hours. Tackle each issue as it comes. There is nothing you can’t fix or at least improve.

9. When you have integrated the priorities you don’t want to live without, stop adding things to your schedule, at least for a while. Get the schedule down really well before adding optional extras. Then when you add something else, pay attention to the effect on your whole daily routine.

This is the basic method. Of course, it sounds easier than it is. If it was easy, everyone in quarantine would be fine. But I know from experience that it can be done. It can be done alone and it can be done with a spouse and kids. Each variation has its own challenges. The key is focusing on building a life that you enjoy, bit by bit.

A word about self-discipline: Yes, self-discipline helps. But society tends to view it as something you have or something you don’t have. Many people will fail at this routine again and again and think that means they lack self-discipline. The thing is that the discipline is the starting over every day. That’s the crux. Yes, there are people for whom sticking to the routine is easier and some for whom it is harder. Some of that is about tenacity but a lot of it is about whatever circumstances you find yourself in. The discipline part is failing and getting back at it again… and again… and again… and again.

A note about depression: Your propensity to sink into depression in isolation or due to failing at your routine is largely biochemical. You can’t entirely control whether you do or not. Healthy food, meditation, positive thinking techniques, contact with friends and (pleasant) family over the phone, exercise and sleep will all help ward off depression. Comparing yourself to other people with different biochemistry generally will not help.

A note about purpose: One of the greatest and least discussed antidotes to depression is purpose. You can’t feel purposeful very well unless you have mastered the basic routine, but once you have, it may help a great deal to choose something you want to accomplish during this quarantine time. It can be as simple as building some abs through a lot of exercise on your yoga mat in a small apartment, or it can be as grand as preparing applications for graduate school or writing that book you’ve always wanted to write.

If you are, like me, stuck in a situation where purpose is elusive because each day is still a massive struggle to get through even the basics, whether that is due to harsh physical conditions, crowded conditions or disabilities, you likely already know there aren’t a lot of simple answers. But keeping to a little bit of greater purpose still helps me.

Hang in there. Keep getting up, even when it feels hopeless and useless. The use is always in the fact that your life will be more enjoyable if you create your own routine and schedule, even if just vegging out may feel enjoyable in the short-term. You’ve probably done that enough by now to know it doesn’t actually pan out that way.

Stay in touch with those you love far away, stay awake inside yourself and build what you want your life to be like within the external conditions. These are the things I learned through isolation.

A lesson for grown-ups from online schooling

Scientific studies and child development textbooks tell you that positive messages matter. What the don’t tell you is precisely what happens to messages from teachers and mentors inside a developing mind.

This forced online schooling resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has provided me with an interesting insight into that secret.

Our schools closed weeks ago. In fact, our local school was likely the first school in Europe outside of Italy to close due to COVID-19. The closure took place directly after spring break and many teachers treated it like an extended vacation, except that they were required to send lists of assignments to the kids. The assignment lists were initially ridiculously long and repetitive, causing huge stress in families.

Slowly some of the teachers have begun teaching online in one form or another and their assignment lists have become more realistic and engaging. My two children probably have the extremes when it comes to teachers.

My fourth-grade daughter has three teachers covering language arts, social studies, science, math and foreign language. None of them is very engaged with students. The homeroom teacher spent the first two weeks of the quarantine trying to avoid contact with parents and students, but he has finally agreed to brief phone check-ins with students on an individual basis. This at least gives kids a chance to clarify assignments and gives a feeling that it isn’t just parents forcing kids to do the endless work.

Image by Arie Farnam

The math teacher is the one teacher who continues to have extreme expectations and who refuses all contact with students other than assignments being turned in through an online form that makes any back-and-forth impossible. She regularly threatens to give failing grades if assignments are late due to lack of internet access or other technical difficulties.

My third-grade son, on the other hand, has a teacher who spends time in a private social media group with students, engages in individual and group calls, gives assignments through brief, entertaining videos and gives assignments that cross the boundaries between subjects.

Recently, she gave an assignment that students were to write a report on the section of their reading books which they had read that day with a few lines of writing and a drawing, which was required to include the use of their geometry compasses. In this way, she noted that they would be covering reading, math and art in one project.

My son was relatively unmotivated anyway, tired of weeks shut away from the world in our little house during a chilly early spring. But I got him working on the project and gave him an idea for how to employ his compass in the picture. With a little encouragement, he spent more than an hour on the report and picture and felt better and better about it along the way.

He then took a photo of it and sent it to his class WhatsApp group. He immediately got several enthusiastic replies from the other kids. Then the teacher sent him a private message of praise, exclaiming, “It’s an excellent picture! You worked hard at it and it turned out really well.” There was real joy in her voice and a bit of a chuckle, likely because the subject matter was about two boys pretending to saw into a magic-trick box with a person banging on the lid from the inside.

It was fairly average praise, but with some feeling behind it. No more than two seconds in length in the voice recording.

For the next two days, every time my son had his phone we heard him replaying that two-second sound clip over and over again. He would lie curled on the couch and play his teacher’s voice again and again.

It reminded me of how a sharp comment or criticism from someone whose opinion you really value can cut deep and echo endlessly in the mind. In this case, it was praise that echoed, but it wasn’t just inside his mind. For once, because of the necessity of online schooling, we could hear the message he was replaying to himself again and again.

Two days later the teacher had another creative assignment for the kids, asking them to write an instructional essay about how to do some simple household task or craft, practicing step-by-step language and taking photos with their phones to document the process. Instead of his usual reluctance, my son was out early in the morning looking for something to write about and document with his camera.

A week later I noticed him going through sound clips of his teacher on his phone, playing one after another. It dawned on me that he was searching for that clip. He was having trouble finding it because there were a great many new clips of his teacher kindly but firmly correcting his math or spelling, both of which present significant challenges due to dyslexia.

Again it was a glimpse into the workings of a kid’s mind, searching for that one bright point of hope amid what seems to him to be a pile of criticism and bewilderingly uninteresting detail.

On the other extreme there is the disinterest of my daughter’s teachers. It isn’t criticism necessarily that is the polar opposite of heartfelt praise but rather disengagement and a focus on quantifiable results, like grades. My daughter’s teachers are not harsh to her. They simply are disengaged. Their harshness is reserved for threatening emails to the parents to ensure their children’s cooperation or face the failing grades.

And the result is complete lack of interest no matter what the assignment is. The only way my daughter gets through assignments is by being bribed with the prospect of time on video games and social media. And even that is hit and miss. Every minute of schoolwork is torture both for her and for me.

I’ve always tried to find the bright bits that can bring out a spark of emotion in my voice when praising my kids or my students. It isn’t always there and maybe part of its magic is in its relative rarity. But clearly such heartfelt praise is very helpful and motivating.

It is worth noticing that my son’s teacher praised him or let him know he was right on math or spelling at other times. It wasn’t all criticism, though he does make many mistakes. There were other positives, but those weren’t the things replayed over and over again. It was the one with feeling that counted.

So, I will try to remember this and be present enough to put that heart in when I can. It isn’t easy but seeing the inner results played out loud makes the need clear.

Who's racist or ableist: the Implicit Association Test

When you aren’t on a deadline or scrambling to get done the essentials (but your brain is too tired to either pursue your serious interests or get you moving toward something truly restful), there is something you do at your computer in that state of numb fog.

It might be browsing through pictures of cute animals on Facebook or playing Tetris or Solitaire. It might not always be the same time waster, but chances are you have certain habits. I wonder if those habits say something interesting about your personality.

My numb-fog habit is browsing through sociological and psychological statistics. If one’s numb-fog habit does say something about one’s personality, I am pretty sure mine says I’m a hopelessly weird variety of nerd. But there you have it.

Creative Commons image by Whisperer in the Shaddows photostream

Sociology and psychology statistics are like mental candy. I know that they don’t always mean what they appear to mean and they aren’t always good for me. But they strip things down to outlines and make the world appear much more orderly and predictable than it actually is, even if its predictability is in how absolutely nuts and irrational most people are.

This is why I’m the type of person who takes the Myers-Briggs personality test for fun and tries to get my friends and family to take it too. And yes, I got a very weird (or at least statistically uncommon) result on that test.

On one of the rare days when my kids were away and I didn’t have to work during the winter break, I indulged in my numb-fog hobby instead of either sleeping (which would have been the responsible choice) or doing something fulfilling or useful. And what I found was an intriguing online study out of Harvard called the Implicit Association Test.

It’s actually a series of mini tests that cover everything from your subconscious preference for light skin or dark skin to your preference for randomly selected previous presidents versus Trump and from your positive feelings toward straight people versus gay people to the degree to which you subconsciously view Native Americans as “American” or “foreign.”

If you’re curious, I turned out to slightly prefer African Americans over white people, have no preference on gay versus straight, harbor a moderately strong assumption of Native Americans as more American than white Americans and (weirdly) I subconsciously slightly preferred Trump to Richard Nixon.

Needless to say, my results on these tests tend to be on the minority side, with the exception of my subconscious lack of interest in the difference between gay versus straight people, which appears to be fairly common.

The results of these tests can be surprising, both on the individual level and when taken as an overall statistic. I went into the race test knowing that the vast majority of respondents present a subconscious bias against African Americans, including more than half of African Americans themselves who subconsciously prefer white people over people who look like them.

The test goes so fast that you can’t really try to control it or even remember much of it, but there was one of the black faces with big, beautiful eyes that looked kind of like one of my friend’s kids, and maybe that’s what tipped the balance for me subconsciously. I’ll never know because the test doesn’t explain why we have subconscious associations, it just ruthlessly alerts us to them.

Many people find that even though they state vehemently anti-racist views and truly believe they are “color blind,” they still have implicit, subconscious biases, even against their own group. This study is proof that we don’t live in “a post-racial world.”

It is one thing to fight discrimination and prejudice through equality laws, but what do you do when the people perpetuating problems of inequity and prejudice don’t even know it or condone it? It’s tough, but there are people whose test results come back without bias or with a bias in favor of those who have been historically marginalized, like mine did.

In addition, though society makes much of sexual preference as a scandalous personal detail, most people actually don’t much care about other people’s bedroom activities, according to the Harvard test results. So there must be some way to mitigate prejudice.

I am pretty certain that, if I had taken this test twenty years ago, the results would have been different. I remember how, as a college kid coming from rural, eastern Oregon, I was nervous whenever I saw a black person coming toward me on the sidewalk.

I had nothing “against” black people. And in fact, I couldn’t understand why they had faced discrimination “years ago.” I didn’t really know any black people, except for my mom’s college friend who died of cancer when I was a child, but I did secretly wonder if the continued ruckus over “race” wasn’t just coming from a few who wanted to “feel special.”

I report this all with a bit of shame, but I think honesty helps. This was my view around 1995. As hilarious as it may sound now, I thought that we were completely “over it” back then. And had I taken the Implicit Association Test on race at that time, I am sure I would have had implicit bias against black people, though I would have consciously believed I was unbiased.

What changed? Both life experience and conscious focus.

First, I spent four months in Zimbabwe as a student, almost always the only white person in a room or on a street. Even though most people were wonderfully kind to me, I learned what it is like to be a highly visible racial minority in a country with hot political and racial tensions. I then spent several years covering racial and interethnic conflict as a journalist, mucking around in every type of divide from South America to Eastern Europe.

Finally, I adopted children who are not white and we live in a country where racial boundaries and prejudices are deeply intrenched. When my children were little, I started to experience first hand how race is truly viewed in majority-white societies. And I started reading copious amounts both on race theoretically and from Black, African, Native American and Asian authors. I chose racially diverse reading and dolls for my children and spent hours to find them, not to mention several times the amount of money necessary to buy “white race” toys.

It has taken years, but now I have very different views than I did as a young student. Not only do I know very well that our society is far from a post-racial world and I am hyper-aware of things like police brutality toward black people in America, I also have gained enormous gratitude and respect for the persistence, courage and patience that so many people of color have given our society throughout history.

That last is what I think made my test result skew in favor of black faces. After two decades of focusing on the positive contributions and articulate stories of people of color, my subconscious attitude has shifted. It is that also which causes so many African Americans to harbor more negative views of black faces.

Most people in our society are not immersed in stories, media and images that present people of color positively. In school or in the mainstream media, one cannot help but absorb mostly negative images of people of color and mostly positive images of white people. But I do not consume much mainstream media and it has been a long time since I was in school.

After all that, of course I was curious about what the test would say about attitudes toward people with disabilities. Popular assumptions would tell us that most people do not really dislike people with disabilities but possibly pity them or objectify them. Despite the occasional discrimination and harassment I’ve encountered which was clearly due to my disability, I thought surely actual hatred was reserved for people of some marginalized racial group or non-standard sexual orientation. I assumed, before seeing the results, that most of my difficulty with inclusion in social groups has to do with my physical inability to make eye contact and read non-verbal cues.

Here again, the results upset my assumptions and those of wider society as well.

I wondered if I would personally have a slight bias against people with disabilities myself. I have a rugged, self-sufficiency streak and people with disabilities often do better in a more collaborative and mutually supportive community. Even I do, though I might wish otherwise. So, I was prepared for the test to tell me I am just as “self-hating” as all the anti-black African Americans.

But that isn’t what happened. I turned out to have a slight implicit positive bias in favor of people with disabilities or at least in favor symbols associated with them.

Only 9 percent of people who took the test share that implicit bias in favor of people with disabilities, while a whopping 78 percent associate people with disabilities with negative thoughts, including roughly half of that number who have strong negative associations with disabled people.

That left me gaping and shocked. The negative bias against people with disabilities outstripped racial or homophobic bias. The words associated with people with disabilities on the negative side were things like “selfish”, “dishonest”, “hate”, “anger,” “despair” and “disgust”. It wasn’t even primarily about pity.

Those results are deeply disturbing to me and my afternoon of casual browsing through statistics turned sour.

To be strictly accurate, let me emphasize that these were the views of nearly 80 percent of the people who happened to take the Harvard Implicit Association test, which is mostly something people run across online or are assigned to do for a class. That isn’t really very comforting, however.

It is likely that if the demographic of the test takers is weighted in some way it is skewed toward more educated and connected people. And these are the people who have such overwhelmingly negative implicit associations when shown images and symbols associated with disabled people. This wasn’t measuring a sample of mostly uneducated or isolated people.

It is particularly concerning given that people with disabilities are usually the last group added or are completely left off of those ubiquitous lists of people we should include and center in progressive circles. I always figured that people with disabilities got left off of such lists or added as an afterthought because people thought we were generally viewed positively and there wasn’t much need to emphasize non-discrimination against people with disabilities.

Now that dismissal takes on a different connotation. People with disabilities are often left out even in diversity culture and when they are added in, it is as a prop, never as a voice. At this point I’m still reeling from seeing these results and I don’t have any idea why there are such negative stereotypes about people with disabilities.

But my own experience with overcoming racist biases makes me think that what we need is a significant, pervasive promotion of the voices, images and stories from people with disabilities with an emphasis on our altruism, unselfish contributions, intelligence, helpfulness, capabilities, honesty and dignity. Without such promotion throughout society, I doubt these attitudes will change.