[lbo-talk] Baby thoughts

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Thu Sep 3 03:30:30 PDT 2009


Critical in sighted children's imitation and learning process is also the identification of the imitator's self and body with the self and body of the imitatee, je pense?

--------

Sure absolutely. This is a really complicated topic. My grand kids have developed better and faster than their father, and I think it is because they are around each other and play together, mostly in torment mode. Dad was an only child, sans torment.

Blind children do have early problems with self-image and appropriate social behavior. They tend to develop a variety of little expressive gestures, tics, and facial expressions that are quite strange. Well because they have no visual patterns to imitate and emulate. You have to learn to ignor their face and listen intently to the subtle modulations of their voice. When they are happy they don't smile and when they are angry they don't frown. Deaf children are often vocal, but inapropriately so. In this case you have to totally concentrate on the face and gesture and ignor all the voice stuff. Communication with the deaf is very intense because most people are not used to the extraordinary drama of facial expression and body expression. They seem hyper and you have to ignor that. So both kinds of kids seem crazy at first and are often categorized as crazy or stupid.

Kids with cerebral palsy with heavily affected or `involved' speech are in even worse social shape. On the other hand the cp kids that I've visited at home who have siblings who accept them do much better. This takes a kind of intuitive sort of family acceptance that is actually more common in poorer families with several children around, several adults running the household, and closer quarters. So family socialization is (like with other children) key to success in school and later society.

It seemed to me both at home visits and shop when there was a cluster of kids and grown-ups involved the disabled kid did a lot better.

Over the years I got to know two girls from about age nine when they got their first power chair. Both had severe CP and their mothers hovered over them. The mothers often drove the chair through auxilary controls They used head arrays which are difficult to learn how to steer. The electro-mechanical responses through the electronic controls systems become the resplacement for the missing or damaged kinesthic body.

It looked like the mothers were pretending their children were not total vegetables. I saw no evidence I was not dealing with cauliflower. I learned to ignor those impressions and just talk to the kids like they knew what I am saying. What the hell, hedging my bets.

Years along slowly I could see some light of recognition of what I was doing and why they were getting their chairs fixed or refitted. Meanwhile computerized communication word and alphabet arrays had developed so they could make sentences which made sense of course. I have to confess I was astonished at their level of socialization as teenagers. They had those careless, `whatever' type attitudes.

One of them went to UCB and got politically active in the feminist-rad-lesbian crew. Her girlfriend-attendents were a little on the combative protective side, complete with shaved head and tatoos---so there was that whole other social negociation... The other went to SF State and I lost track of her.

This stuff is really strange, when you try to develop even modest social relations with none of the usual social clues.

I've been very lucky in these lessons on the plasticity of being human.

And yes, among my nick-names were Chuck-a-Luck, Chucko, Chug-a-lug, Chuckie, Chuckie Cheese, Chuckster, Chucker... Everybody had a shot.

Some of the more sly black folk used to smile when I pronounced my name without evident embarrassment because they knew and I knew it was short for Mister Charlie, and of course my real name is Charlie in exactly the tradition of the bad time, not quite passed...

CG



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list