My troubled daughter and I do have a shared love of cooking and baking. She has asked me to help her with recipe ideas now that she has a busy life and I am eager to help her. In our family we have a few cherished food traditions.
One is every Fall, since I was a child with my mother, until today when my kids are in their twenties, we make homemade applesauce. Bushels from the Orchard, to the cutting board, to the stove, to the hand crank mill, to the sealed mason jars! No sugar ever. Enough to last the year and the children have helped since they could step up on a step stool, hold a butter knife or ‘Bob’ for the apples as they soak in the sink full f water. My Mom still helps us, so its a 3 generation all day affair.
Also, the kids love when I agree to move dinner from the family kitchen table to the family room for movie night while we eat cheese fondue! Everyone helps prepare veggies and breads for dipping and we gather around the coffee table passing food and sharing the pot of cheese. Yum. Come to think of it, I brought this tradition to my kids from my own childhood. It was a winter treat for me.
Sasha, thanks for helping me think today about the power of family traditions around food. We don’t often recognize how we have learned them and are passing them on from one generation to the next. ❤️ All 4 of my children and our new baby granddaughter will be here in a few weeks…
I really enjoyed your thoughts on trans identities as a way to escape adulthood responsibilities. I watched "Tell Me You Love Me" a few weeks ago and was stunned. I was raised by Skeptics and had read a lot about Facilitated Communication and how it had been completely debunked and, now that I have a nonverbal autistic child, have been exasperated when I see this resurrected in parent groups even though every time it comes back to life autistic kids and their families are the ones who get hurt. Sadly so many parents are desperate to help their children talk that when I bring up the risks they tell me this iteration of FE is different and not to rain on their parade. Parents of disabled children are prime targets for snake oil salespeople unfortunately and because of that harmful ideas persist no matter how often they are debunked. That said, this is (thankfully) the only case I know where a disabled person was sexually abused by someone claiming to communicate for him.
Because FE has been repeatedly and soundly debunked since at least the 1990s, I have a hard time having much sympathy for people who continue to promote and practice it. Several parents have been falsely accused of sexual abuse as a result of FE and rather than admit that it doesn't work people who promote it continue to promote and practice it. If you are practicing an intervention then you have an ethical responsibility to know about the risks and benefits and to stay on top of information that challenges your intervention. I don't see how Anna or her mother could not have known that FE had been debunked and had caused harm basically and even if they didn't know then they were negligent in not educating themselves about the risks.
I tend to see Anna as predatory. While I can't truly know what was in her heart, disabled people are easy targets for those who are manipulative and highly controlling. And people who sexually abuse others tend to say that the person they abused wanted it. My mom worked to prevent sexual abuse and she knew of one case where a stepfather raped his toddler, and when he was asked why he did it he said that he could tell she wanted it by the way she kicked her legs at him. This type of thinking is so common among offenders even though there is no way I believe that a toddler would want that. To me it doesn't matter whether or not the abuser believes this. If the abuser is so delusional that they think people who can't consent are begging for it then they need to be locked away for the safety of vulnerable people. And if they know they are lying then they still need to be locked away because they are a dangerous individual.
The scariest thing about having a child who can't speak is that if someone is hurting them they can't tell you. And this is one of the most stressful aspects of having a nonverbal child for me, trusting that the people who are there when I am not will take good care of him. I have had that trust broken on a more mild scale (thankfully nothing involving sexual abuse) and it was rather traumatic. My heart breaks for the family involved and I hope they are able to find healing and better people to support them.
Hi Kassandra. Thank you for this insightful comment and for sharing your wisdom here. Indeed, I see Anna the same way - her ability for self-deception is remarkable. I also can understand however, the belief that sometimes a person's appearance doesn't reflect their intelligence. For example, there was another professor interviewed in the film who has some sort of condition which affects the speed and quakiness of her voice. It took her about 3 or 4 times as long to form a sentence than it would for someone without this condition. On first glance, some might interpret this speech pattern to mean she's got a lower IQ or isn't as intelligent than others. In reality, though, she is incredibly bright and cognitively on par with anyone else in academia. Perhaps (to be generous) some of the "true believers" in FC might extrapolate that even those who are completely nonverbal or appear severely disabled may actually possess a rich and complex intellectual life. Maybe they really believe it? However, again, this self-deception can be used to justify abuse. Overall, the film was mind-blowing to me and I am so glad you shared your perspective here.
Also, "Parents of disabled children are prime targets for snake oil salespeople unfortunately and because of that harmful ideas persist no matter how often they are debunked."
- I saw this first hand when I worked as an ABA in-home therapist with some families who were so susceptible to all kinds of strange gimmicks, oils, diet fads, and other strange promises about interventions that could supposedly cure their child's ASD.
My troubled daughter and I do have a shared love of cooking and baking. She has asked me to help her with recipe ideas now that she has a busy life and I am eager to help her. In our family we have a few cherished food traditions.
One is every Fall, since I was a child with my mother, until today when my kids are in their twenties, we make homemade applesauce. Bushels from the Orchard, to the cutting board, to the stove, to the hand crank mill, to the sealed mason jars! No sugar ever. Enough to last the year and the children have helped since they could step up on a step stool, hold a butter knife or ‘Bob’ for the apples as they soak in the sink full f water. My Mom still helps us, so its a 3 generation all day affair.
Also, the kids love when I agree to move dinner from the family kitchen table to the family room for movie night while we eat cheese fondue! Everyone helps prepare veggies and breads for dipping and we gather around the coffee table passing food and sharing the pot of cheese. Yum. Come to think of it, I brought this tradition to my kids from my own childhood. It was a winter treat for me.
Sasha, thanks for helping me think today about the power of family traditions around food. We don’t often recognize how we have learned them and are passing them on from one generation to the next. ❤️ All 4 of my children and our new baby granddaughter will be here in a few weeks…
I really enjoyed your thoughts on trans identities as a way to escape adulthood responsibilities. I watched "Tell Me You Love Me" a few weeks ago and was stunned. I was raised by Skeptics and had read a lot about Facilitated Communication and how it had been completely debunked and, now that I have a nonverbal autistic child, have been exasperated when I see this resurrected in parent groups even though every time it comes back to life autistic kids and their families are the ones who get hurt. Sadly so many parents are desperate to help their children talk that when I bring up the risks they tell me this iteration of FE is different and not to rain on their parade. Parents of disabled children are prime targets for snake oil salespeople unfortunately and because of that harmful ideas persist no matter how often they are debunked. That said, this is (thankfully) the only case I know where a disabled person was sexually abused by someone claiming to communicate for him.
Because FE has been repeatedly and soundly debunked since at least the 1990s, I have a hard time having much sympathy for people who continue to promote and practice it. Several parents have been falsely accused of sexual abuse as a result of FE and rather than admit that it doesn't work people who promote it continue to promote and practice it. If you are practicing an intervention then you have an ethical responsibility to know about the risks and benefits and to stay on top of information that challenges your intervention. I don't see how Anna or her mother could not have known that FE had been debunked and had caused harm basically and even if they didn't know then they were negligent in not educating themselves about the risks.
I tend to see Anna as predatory. While I can't truly know what was in her heart, disabled people are easy targets for those who are manipulative and highly controlling. And people who sexually abuse others tend to say that the person they abused wanted it. My mom worked to prevent sexual abuse and she knew of one case where a stepfather raped his toddler, and when he was asked why he did it he said that he could tell she wanted it by the way she kicked her legs at him. This type of thinking is so common among offenders even though there is no way I believe that a toddler would want that. To me it doesn't matter whether or not the abuser believes this. If the abuser is so delusional that they think people who can't consent are begging for it then they need to be locked away for the safety of vulnerable people. And if they know they are lying then they still need to be locked away because they are a dangerous individual.
The scariest thing about having a child who can't speak is that if someone is hurting them they can't tell you. And this is one of the most stressful aspects of having a nonverbal child for me, trusting that the people who are there when I am not will take good care of him. I have had that trust broken on a more mild scale (thankfully nothing involving sexual abuse) and it was rather traumatic. My heart breaks for the family involved and I hope they are able to find healing and better people to support them.
Hi Kassandra. Thank you for this insightful comment and for sharing your wisdom here. Indeed, I see Anna the same way - her ability for self-deception is remarkable. I also can understand however, the belief that sometimes a person's appearance doesn't reflect their intelligence. For example, there was another professor interviewed in the film who has some sort of condition which affects the speed and quakiness of her voice. It took her about 3 or 4 times as long to form a sentence than it would for someone without this condition. On first glance, some might interpret this speech pattern to mean she's got a lower IQ or isn't as intelligent than others. In reality, though, she is incredibly bright and cognitively on par with anyone else in academia. Perhaps (to be generous) some of the "true believers" in FC might extrapolate that even those who are completely nonverbal or appear severely disabled may actually possess a rich and complex intellectual life. Maybe they really believe it? However, again, this self-deception can be used to justify abuse. Overall, the film was mind-blowing to me and I am so glad you shared your perspective here.
Also, "Parents of disabled children are prime targets for snake oil salespeople unfortunately and because of that harmful ideas persist no matter how often they are debunked."
- I saw this first hand when I worked as an ABA in-home therapist with some families who were so susceptible to all kinds of strange gimmicks, oils, diet fads, and other strange promises about interventions that could supposedly cure their child's ASD.
Thank you for writing!