Boredom, a Lotus, and a Bonus Robot
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The use and abuse of boredom
In parenting, boredom is a double-edged sword. Generally, I’m on team boredom: kids need to experience it, or at least learn to tolerate it for our sake, because child who can’t be bored is a child that can never be left alone.
“Go draw.”
“Go play with your toys.”
“Go get a book.”
“Go outside.”
“Go find your brother.”
These key phrases are essential if we’re to get even the time to take a crap, let alone make dinner.
But more than that, boredom is the opening our children need, to learn to relax, allow their curiosity and imaginations to lead them, to develop functional and creative skills at their own pace rather than being taught in some class or by a caregiver hovering over them.
Not every use of boredom is going to bear practical fruit—not every child who doodles becomes an artist, and not every kid who shoots hoops becomes a professional athlete. But leaving those gaps for our children to fill in themselves, rather than plugging them with helicopter parenting, enrichment classes or Grizzy and the Lemmings, helps make them whole. My family recently got back from a punishingly hot week at the City of Berkeley Family Camp, where boredom was definitely on the menu, and on their return I can see both boys being more independent and confident… for the time being. :)
But boredom’s poison is in its dose; especially for deaf kids, boredom isn’t necessarily Ned Ludd’s cure for a digital childhood. Boredom can be the daily beating they endure, and the measure of their missed opportunities. Many Deaf adults talk about the tedium of growing up without connections, where every day was full of isolation at home and in school. The impact is real, and visible on an MRI; you can describe language deprivation and dinner table syndrome as clinical outcomes of chronic boredom.
When I asked Minda about this, she made a distinction between the “boredom of things,” and “the boredom of people.” A kid who’s bored because they’ve already finished their Lego kit has an opportunity. A kid who’s bored because they don’t understand what their father is saying has a crisis.
Building a world that’s just boring enough, and in just the right ways, is really what parenting is all about.
Ethical AI Followup
On the topic of AI and ASL that I mentioned in the last email, Molly Glass, a Deaf ASL Specialist for Kara Technologies and a volunteer for the Advisory Group (AG) on AI and Sign Language Interpreting, was kind enough to share recent guidelines she and her colleagues are proposing for
“safe, fair and ethical development and implementation of automatic interpreting products using artificial intelligence (AIxAI), also called machine interpreting.”
The doc sets out four principles for AI interpretation:
End-user autonomy
Evidence of improving safety and well-being
Transparency of AI quality for the general public
Accountability for companies for errors and harm to end-users
Given that non-AI interpreting services seem to struggle with these principles, I’ll be interested to know how the recommendations here play out in the next couple of years. One thing I’ll say is that I hope this plants the Deaf community into the center of the discussion, like Desai et. al were pushing for in their paper.
You can read the entire thing here.
Committees, communities, crowds and marketing
Kamala Harris’ dramatic elevation to Democratic front-runner has got me thinking about small-d democracy and the ways that communities make decisions. Any organizer can tell you that politics starts long before you arrive in the voting booth, and it made me reflect on how Kamala’s name sign was chosen:
People don’t just vote with their ballots—they vote with their feet, words, cash and energy. In the case of this committee of Black and Indian Deaf women—Smita Kothari, Arlene Ngalle-Paryani, Ebony Gooden and Kavita Pipalia, and Candace Jones—the process of negotiating options as a group, and then bringing the best options back to the larger Deaf community to make the final call, seems to have been a smart move.
I’ve participated in some very local political projects myself, and it’s fascinating to me how much of a magic trick this is. In some ways, people (politicians in particular) are very sensitive barometers of human effort. Meet with a school board member and you can feel the math they’re doing behind their eyes: how many meetings did you have, how many of the names on the petition are just Facebook friends… how will this translate into crowds at the next committee meeting, or votes next year?
Now that I’m shopping The Deaf Baby Instruction Manual around, it occurs to me that these are the same calculations that an agent or publisher is making when they look at my 40-page book proposal. How much of the interest this thing is casual, how much is fake, how many people will really plunk down $19.99 (“in this economy?”) for a parenting book about deaf and hard-of-hearing kids? How do I show human investment?
If you’ve got thoughts on boredom, AI, Kamala’s name sign, or selling my damn book, you can reach me on Facebook, Instagram, or Bluesky.
This is an informational newsletter on raising a deaf kid. All opinions in linked articles are the views and copyright of their respective authors, not this guy. All original content is ©2024, William Fertman. Links are not endorsements.