Allison Unfiltered

Friday Foo

Guess someone was concerned I wouldn't know which lunch was mine.

A teacher on facebook? GASP.

In response to my Kid on facebook Gets Busted post, internet elf Alicia Lane commented:

Okay, 1) what is the TEACHER doing on Facebook during her class, and 2) what's with all the grammatical errors in her comment (good thing she's a math teacher, I guess?) and 3) the reference to math test scores - hello, data privacy laws?

Bwahaha. [thunks forehead]  Okay, forgetting for the moment that you people seem intent on ignoring my Look, there's little kids on facebook cry for mercy, these are valid questions, and Alicia's not the only one:

Adam called hoax, saying, "What was the teacher doing on FB? And right away the mother responded?" And James wanted to know, too, "[S]o...how did the teacher see this while in class?"

My response: ARE YOU NUTS, elves?!

No one is blinking an eye re: the idea of a kid on facebook during class? Seriously?  Am I going insane in a laundry hamper of my own?! AUUUUGHH.

But okay, fine.  FINE.  Let's talk about the teacher.

Point one, why is the teacher on facebook?

First, if no one cares a kid is on facebook, no one should care teachers are on there too.  Contrary to popular belief, teachers have lives outside of the classroom.  And if our classrooms are getting increasingly wired and plugged in, then it follows that teachers will be on facebook during the day, too, and I have no problem with them being facebook friends with their students either.

I personally prefer to wait until my students have graduated or, at the very least, have finished my class before accepting friend requests.  It's just easier in terms of perception around grading issues and all the political dynamics that happen in a classroom.  In class or in office interactions are no substitute for online exchanges.

But I've also seen other teachers on facebook who are friends with their students.  They manage to carry on an online friendship that's open and collegial without violating any ethical taboos like inappropriate fraternization, etc.  (These are also teachers who happen to be pretty private on facebook, only posting pictures and commentary that are appropriate for a very general audience.)  But this is, of course, something we need to police on an individual basis.  I have a hard time imagining how we can cover every inch of something like this policy-wise, other than becoming totalitarian about students' and teachers' online lives.

As we get more and more comfortable with social media and the internet playing a role in our daily lives and in educational institutions, we're just gonna have to figure out new rules for holding ourselves accountable.

Point two: grammatical errors?!

D'oh.  Thank you for pointing out one of my pet peeves.  I am so glad my kid's teachers communicate via e-mail or backpack mail.  That means I get to read their messages in the privacy of my own home, where I'm free to bash chairs against my walls and shake the foundations with my roaring and stamping when I see the people who teach L'il Red displaying absolutely atrocious grammar. 

And no, it's not a deaf thing.  Teachers both hearing and deaf (at both mainstream and deaf schools) have sent home formal letters that gave me hives from the lack of clarity or thinking.

BTW, I don't think being a math (or science or theater or...) teacher excuses you from not being a good model for the kids you teach.  But it's a widespread problem, one we have to face on a systematic level, and only symptomatic of bigger underlying issues regarding education in the U.S. 

Still, it takes every last drop of diplomacy I've got left in my body to remember that L'il Red's been blessed with mostly good teachers so far, people who actually care about L'il Red's ability to think and question and learn.  That trumps an awry noun-verb agreement any day in my book.

Point three: privacy re: scholastic performance?

Yep. Big problem there.  I happen to have been trained on the FERPA stuff, and it never ceases to amaze me the number of violations I see from teachers and other staffmembers privy to sensitive student information.  So, yeah.  That was bad.  Could have busted the kid without that reference to test performance.

...

As for Adam's hoax diagnosis... sure.  It's a good idea to be dubious.  But it's also a good idea to remember how wired we're becoming, and entertain the possibility that someday soon (if not already), we'll have instantaneous access to each other's public conversations. Hence my little mental seizure over finding L'il Red's young friends on facebook (with birthdates of 1901, no less).

A twitter buddy of mine said today:

"Internet is to kids of today what the library was to us. All the knowledge and all the creeps! But now portable." 

Yeah, that.  The comment came after Mashable reported studies yesterday saying 80% of kids under 5 are using the internet daily.  Holy bleep.

I am not letting my kid on facebook until I feel confident that her social boundaries are substantial.  I don't know very many grade schoolers who are ready for that sort of interaction.  So no, planting my feet firmly: NO FACEBOOK FOR MY KID YET.

Deaf kids and adults in bubbles

I've recently started reading Free Range Kids, and yesterday's post bowled me over.  Lenore posts a letter from a 34-year-old who is only now finding the confidence to use public transit (and says as a result, a driver's license is in the near future). 

Why "only now?" 'Cause the adult in question is partially deaf and still harbors anxiety passed on from parents related to that deafhood.

It's reading stuff like this that makes me grudgingly glad my mom was as hardnosed as she was about making me do stuff on my own.  In other ways, though, I've still got issues from my childhood I'm working out.

One example: I absolutely quake at the thought of complaining about service. I always had my mom -- and later, a husband -- to intervene for me.  So I never quite learned to go get the stuff I needed and to fix things when the things given me weren't quite right, even the mundane little stuff I know shouldn't be so hard. 

Not saying this is Momsie's doing at all -- not intentionally, anyway.  I still have very clear memories of sitting in a booth with my parents when I was still an only child one night at Chi Chi's Restaurant (before they closed after that dirty scallion scandal) and being bored by the table conversation.  A waiter walked by and I flagged him down and asked him for more Sprite.  I must've been going nuts with boredom, 'cause that's something I'd never do.   Like, ever.  So much easier to tug my mom's elbow and put in a request ... and protest that I didn't understand anyone or didn't want to use my voice when she urged me to get my stuff myself somehow.

My mom heard me talking, and then after a second it registered that I wasn't talking to either her or my stepdad.  She turned around, said, "What'd you do?!"  I told her I'd just run out of Sprite, that's all.  She gaped at me until the waiter brought me my new glass.  And then rained compliments and gushing praise down on my blushing little head.  My head spun with the audacity of what I'd just done.  I was seven. 

Still, I have never been able to do that little stuff anxiety-free.  I perceive it as making a fuss and becoming that trouble-making, rude, self-entitled deaf girl.

It's only now, as a single mom, that I'm learning to do that little stuff, anxiety be damned.  When L'il Red got the "boy" toy in kids' meals, it was really hard for me in the beginning to work up the ovaries to go ask to switch it out for the girly one (which annoyed the shit outta me, but that's a whole 'nother post).  But now I've got the task of teaching my kid to fend for herself.  And on my own, no one else is going to teach her as well as I can.

Many times, she tells me she won't do things like this because people are hearing.  That's a huge slap in the face for me -- I feel like I haven't taught her not to be intimidated.  It also reminds me it's a work in progress, putting that anxiety in its place.

I think being deaf influences my perception of experiences, sure, but that's not the whole of it either.  That's why I was so glad to see a deaf commenter named Anouk respond to Lenore's post in part:

If you instill fear in your children your children will fear, too. ... I drive, I work, I’ve travelled, I have a family (my husband is also deaf btw)...

"Are we there yet?" backfires

L'il Red: What time are we leaving?

QA: I dunno.

LR: When?

QA: Said I dunno, hon.  Let me finish your laundry then I'll think about it.

--

LR: What time are we leaving?

QA: I don't know. Later.

LR: Okay. [long, drawn out sigh] AROUND what time?

QA: Later.  Like, more than two hours.  We don't need to hurry, chill.

--

LR:  When are we leaving?

QA: Honey, I said not now.  Like, around three.

LR: Three? Or Three-thirty?

QA: Around there.

LR: Okay, then when are we having lunch?

QA: Not now.  Soon.

LR: Soon?  Like what time?

QA: Ask me in an hour.

--

LR: We gotta hurry!

QA: What for?

LR: We're gonna be late.  When are we leaving?

QA: Seriously... I told you I don't know.  Around three.

LR: Then when are we gonna do the shopping and lunch?

QA: Before we leave.

LR: When's that?

QA: Leah! God... Just stop asking me.

LR: But you told me to always ask you questions so we can have open, honest discussions. You told me you liked it when I asked.  You did!  Now I'm not supposed to ask?  What?

QA: *kersplat*

Kid on facebook gets busted

Tangential for those of you who liked this week's post on my kid wanting a facebook account:

...and more proof we still have yet to figure out how this sorta new zero-privacy tech-crazy society we're evolving to will shape our parenting skills.

*Pic originally posted over at failblog.org.

Mothers who find themselves again

Got surprised the other day when I clicked on the yahoo mainpage and found one of my Goddard teacher's faces looking back at me.  Reiko Rizzuto has an essay up on Salon, "Why I left my children," which I absolutely adore.  Go read.  I commandeth thee.

For school, I also read Maria Housden's memoir Unraveled: the True Story of a Woman Who Dared to Become a Different Kind of Mother, which I didn't much like, but related to anyway because of her search for the self she'd lost in marriage and childbirth.

It's funny... It's the 21st century, so I'd like to think we're evolving as a society past the medieval urge to marry and procreate at any expense, but still...

I am constantly surprised to read about and meet mothers like this -- mothers who decide to opt out of the 50's mindset that being a parent means overwhelming emotional and menial labor and -- more importantly -- the loss of yourself.  It's particularly telling that these women are getting published for doing what men have done for centuries: separate their selves from the parent roles they play. 

Like Reiko and Maria's, my marriage did not survive. 

But my relationship with my daughter did.

I am no longer the harried housewife worrying about food, daily routines, and the emotional wellbeing of my daughter at the expense of myself.  Instead, she and I have actual conversations.  Since moving into my own place, my daughter and I have talked about love, travel, languages, relationships, friendships, marriage, sex, politics, future plans, feelings.  She has become a whole human being in my eyes, something she wasn't before.

A few months ago I caught L'il Red telling one of her friends, "My mommy's sweet and nice to me.  She doesn't say no."  She's said it several more times since then.

Well, I do say no (I'm her mom, not a doormat), but I'd like to think Leah's saying that sort of thing 'cause she's noticed I've mellowed out; I'm not so hung up on the "supposed to"s and "have to"s of wifehood and motherhood anymore.  I'm more interested in the daily realities of our lives and individuality as two girls together.

And by the way, I am entirely convinced that the reason I am able to see her this way is because I decided to do the same thing for myself.

What's next, pacifiers with built-in GPS?

L'il Red and I got into a little sparring match last night over facebook -- I busted her snooping around my account and she asked me again for one of her own.  I repeated my rule: not till you're older. 

Then she went ahead and bombed me: her friends have accounts.  And this wasn't your ordinary "but everybody else is doing it" rebuttal. 

She was actually able to show me her classmates' facebook profiles. 

Let me repeat that: There are second and third graders on facebook right now.

I gotta say, dude, it was creepy seeing profile pics for eight and nine year olds I know in real life. When I repeated myself -- NOT TILL YOU'RE OLDER, DAMMIT -- she complained about the other parents who said it was fine.  That's when I pulled out the, "well, if those parents say it's okay, then they're even breaking rules" line.

Did that have even an iota of impact on her desolate mood? No.  And people, this family is a rule-biding family, her father included.  Telling her those are the rules and explaining the reasons for them has always been enough to placate my spawn.  Not this time.  *headthunk* 

I don't think rules are always good, but I play by them and I find ethical ways to circumvent them if I think they're stupid or arbitrary, but facebook's 13-year-olds-and-up rule is a damn good one.

I do not want my kid accepting friend requests from whoever.  I do not want her getting inbox messages from anyone, spam, scam, or otherwise.  She's already a master googler.  That's enough for now.  And there will be absolutely no negotiation on this (although I will sit down with the kid and hear her out and then discusss why we do what we do).

When she's older and more sure of her personal boundaries, I have no problem with her going online.  I want to be there to hold her hand as she does it too, as she learns to navigate the virtual world where anonymous words are slung without a second thought.  That's totally fine; it's a skill she's going to have to learn eventually.  But the time isn't now, not when she's still growing into her personality.

But I can't get this out of my head.  Kids on facebook?!  I'm not completely naive.  I know my kid is growing up as part of the generation that has no concept of privacy or being unplugged, but this is completely ridiculous.

The talent for non sequiturs is genetic, apparently.

The scene at 5:30 this morning -- two bleary-eyed girls in the kitchen pouring bowls of some oaty cereal thingy with strawberries (and no coffee, dammit):

L'il Red: Did you know that long, long time ago, every one was poor?

QA: [grunt]

LR: They had no computers, no VPs, no TV, no internet, no cars.  They even had to use horses instead of cars.

QA: [slightly more articulate grunt]

LR: So, wow.  Everyone was poor.

QA: Not everyone.  Some people were rich.  The technology just didn't exist yet.

LR: But they didn't even have Nintendo DS to play with!

QA: It wasn't invented yet, honey.  The internet wasn't really around yet when I was born.

LR: [GASP]

QA: Yeah.  And you know my mom?  When she was a kid, TVs were still new and not everyone had one yet.  They were black and white, hadn't figured out how to make color available to everyone.

LR: [GAAAAASSSP]

QA: So, yeah.  There's a difference between how poor or rich you are and what's available to buy. 

[We pause, crunching our cereal in the kitchen as the sun rises.]

LR: Back then, like, y'know, long, long time ago...

QA: Yeah?

LR: Was everyone hearing or deaf?

QA: Pretty much the same as now.

LR: Oh.   [Face looks like she's smelling her own fart.]  I wish more people were deaf.

QA: Uhhumm.

[Crunching resumes]

LR: Who invented electricity?

QA: Uhhh, nature.

LR: NO!  You're WRONG!!!

QA: Ok, if you yell that loud, then yes, I must be wrong. *rolling eyes*

LR: [mumblemumble] Mommy?  Electricity's weird.

QA: You're weird, hon.

LR: *giggle* I love you, mom.

 

Congresswomen turn their own vaginas into powerful political debate

It's been over a week and I have not yet been able to forget Kate Harding's post on two congresswomen who converted the floor of the House into a place of personal and political power.  They're listening to politicians who support the Pence Amendment, which would defund Planned Parenthood, and the things they say in response are amazing, just amazing. 

My fave is from Rep. Gwen Moore (Wisc.) who listens to Georgian representative Paul Broun express some serious passion on behalf of all the "African-American babies" that are killed in the US, more than any other color proportionally, during abortions.

Well, then, Moore gets up on the floor and immediately wrests any credibility from Broun -- he cites his credentials as a medical doctor giving services to women for years -- first by saying she's touched by his heartfelt concern, then saying, quite matter-of-factly:

"Well, I can tell you, I know a lot about black babies.  I've had three of them. And I had my first one when I was 18 years old, at the ripe old age of 18. An unplanned pregnancy."

Whoo-hoo.  You go girl.  Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.) is equally amazing, and I love her for saying the words "my vagina" to the world in a way that gave me goosebumps. 

I won't go on about this debate, as there are many people who are far more articulate on the subject than I could ever be. This post isn't about the Pence Amendment, but about the congresswomen who spoke and how they chose to speak. (Side note: the amendment passed in the House on the 18th and goes to the Senate next, which raises anxiety around the possibility of a government shutdown.)

What I find exciting is that instead of the tired, flourishing rhetoric we've gotten used to hearing from the likes of Broun, these women are telling personal stories.  And these personal stories are being told by elected officials who are volunteering information about their own bodies while standing on the floor of Congress. 

If that's not the manifestation of "the personal is political," I don't know what it is.  Plus, these congresswomen do it in a way that explodes the boundaries of power any lawmakers wield on behalf of their constituents.  The political maneuvers they seek to make become very real and paint a picture about living and breathing people walking the streets of our towns today and trying to feed their kids and pay the bills.

Perhaps this revelation is more personal than I'd like to admit. 

I signed a petition supporting Planned Parenthood last week (you can too, click on the link).  Afterwards, I was sent an e-mail listing additional things I could do to support the cause.  One of them was an option to fill out a form in which I could share my story of how Planned Parenthood had an impact on me personally or on my family and friends' lives.  I didn't fill it out.  I wanted to, but I didn't.  Didn't even know where to begin.

So I am in awe of these congresswomen for doing on the floor of a very public venue what I couldn't do behind my laptop in the security of my own home.  And that, to me, is more emblematic of the problems behind the debate surrounding the Pence Amendment than anything else.

This is how you postpone The Talk.

Kid was being all cute and shit yesterday... and then she took a deep breath and goes, "When I have kids and you're a grandm--"

"Don't want," I snap.

"Why?"

"Don't want."

"I want! I want kids!"

"For-for?"

"I wanna take care of them."

"Hard work. Don't want."

"No, no, I won't make you take care of them.  I'll be the mommy.  I'll take care of them and you can play with--"

"No. Do not want to be a grandmother. Period.  Discuss dry finish."

"But me birth kids, you accept."

"I know.  Accept me will, but don't care, still. Don't want."

Staredown ensues.  Then she says:

"When you're a grandmother and I'm a mother, my kids won't have any aunts and uncles."

"Oh."

"Me sad."

"Why?"

"Not fair, no aunts, uncles, no cousins."

"Well, what about your husband or wife or your boyfriend or girlfriend?"

Her face goes slack.

"You know, your partner.  When you have a baby you will probably do it with someone to help you take care of your kid."

"..."

"So, uh, ahem.  Who's the person you're having a baby with?"

"Don't need. My kid, not theirs."

"You know how I got you? I married your dad and we had you."

"No, me born first, then you marry!"

"Ah. Heh. Uh, right.  But I had to meet your dad first.  That's what I mean.  That's how babies happen usually -- you'll be with someone and have a baby together."

She giggles.  "I will have a husband!"

"Ohhhkay.  Yeah, so... what about your husband?"

"What?"

"Maybe this husband will have a brother or sister and then your kid will have an aunt or uncle."

"Oh. Yay!"

"Yeah. Time for bed."

"So later when you're a grandm--"

"Bed. Now."