My Son Has a Super Power

You simply have to read this post by the Attack of the Redneck Mommy blogger. Her son has a super power: invisibility. He is disabled. His disability is visible, so he is unseen.

I want to drag into the glare of honest criticism as a mom of a special gift like my son a few points.

1- You can use any excuse to laugh or rail at the disabled. The more shallow of you use the fact that the child's looks or sounds or drools makes you exempt from being decent. The more subtle of you use the fact that mommy is an annoying Republican as your excuse. When you laugh at the Trig jokes, mothers like me hold our children a little closer. We are protecting them from the likes of you because we know how easy it is to delete the word "Republican" from your excuse and insert any other word--for me it might be "Catholic" or "blogger" or even just "annoying." Once you cross the line of decency, it's crossed. It isn't funny. Not even when the mommy is.

(You may want to brace yourself for this one, folks. It's a hard truth.)
2 - It has always been a capital crime in our societies to be disabled in some way. We used to expose our special children. Our more modern and enlightened evolutionary impulses insist we abort them before they are born. We who have given our special children a stay of execution for various reasons (for some, yes, it was a mere matter of timing) know, deep inside, that the world is appalled at us. Your laughter stirs a fear in us mothers that is directly related to this unacknowledged knowledge.

3 - My son is singing the Kyrie in this moment. In this very moment when I am very near tears at the heartlessness of the world toward him, he sings in Latin, "Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy." It is one of many reasons he is such an incredible gift to me and to you, ugly world. My son who will always struggle, who is the ultimate outsider, who is such a gift, he gives me hope for you and yours.

From The Attack of the Redneck Mommy (go thou hence and read)

My son has a superpower.

He is invisible.

Most disabled people are, you know

They are born with it, alongside twisted limbs or broken minds.

My son, he can’t walk, or talk, or eat

He can’t hear and he will never fly. But

He is invisible.

You may not have seen him. But he saw you

He smiled at you. A smile

Bright as a ray of light shining through a cracked window.

He looked at you.

Hoping you would see past the invisibility tattooed on his skin, cloaked around his wheelchair.

He stood beside his siblings

His cousin and he smiled. For you.

You didn’t see him.

Or you wouldn’t see him.

Was it the drool on the side of his mouth which

scared you off?

Was it the twisted way he held his hands?

Or the way his head flops slightly to the left?

He smiled still

As you overlooked him, tossing pieces of candy into the bags

Other children held out.

His bag, empty

Invisible.

He smiled still as his aunt explained why he sat at the bottom of your stairs.

“His legs don’t work.”

He smiled when you refused eye contact with him and handed a piece of candy to me to give to him.

Refusing to touch him.

Refusing to come out of your warm bright homes to see him.

My invisible monkey boy, he smiled for you.

I stood beside him, willing you to see him

Wanting my pride, my love for him to be a beacon for your eyes.

Wishing for your eyes to land on him and see his value.

To see him.

For him not to be invisible.

House after house

We tried.

Door after door, princesses, vampires, Spidermans

 they all wished they had super powers as they begged for treats

My boy,

he tricked them all.

He still smiled

even when you didn’t see him,

couldn’t see him,

wouldn’t see him.

Everybody should have a superpower.

Nobody should be invisible.

If I could pick a power

I’d use it to shine the light on every person with disabilities,

I’d make you see.

My son. He is NOT

Invisible.

I see you, kid.

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Into the Silence

Population Control - The Kenyan (and Zimbabwean) Perspective

Most American citizens don't have the opportunity to chat with citizens from African nations very often, so you might not know that a lot of the general population of Africa think Americans hate and despise children. When I first met my friend Peter Ndamba, an African born minister on one of his trips from Zimbabwe, I was very surprised to learn this. He shared with me a perspective on America totally at odds with my own. We only want dead African children or none at all is the message that we send to the mother holding her dying son. The doctor could hand over a lifetime supply of condoms for the baby from the shelves in the hospital, but not bleach for cleaning the water, not the shot of Penicillin that would save him, not even clean sheets for the hospital bed he will spend his last moments on. We send boatloads of contraceptives to people whose children die in their arms. Is it any wonder they wonder at us?

About a year after this conversation at a small get together to celebrate Peter coming to the States again, Peter insisted on having these pictures taken to show his congregation proof that some Americans love children. "Some," he said. I don't think I did a fair job convincing him otherwise.

The Hands Family and Peter

The Ohmes Family and Peter

 

The Martin Family and Peter

 

Population Control - The Kenyan Perspective(click title to jump to original article)

By Dr. Stephen K. Karanja, M.B.CH.B.M.MED O/G - Consultant Obstetrician/Gynaecologist 

 

The first birth control clinic was opened in Nairobi, the Kenyan Capital, 44 years ago. The second one opened a year later in 1956 at the Port Town of Mombasa. These two amalgamated into the Family a Planning Association of Kenya (FPAK). In 1963, FPAK was affiliated with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, thus becoming the first association in Africa south of the Sahara to join this monster which has nearly destroyed our society. Our nightmare just began.

Following publication of a report on the demographic trends by the Population Council (New York; 1968), which partly talked of still unproven adverse effects of rapid population growth on socio-economic development, the Government of Kenya was coerced to become overtly involved in birth control. Thus a young nation then bustling with enthusiasm, hope and ambition for its people who had endured the yoke of colonialism suddenly offered itself to imperialism like it had never seen before, as we will soon discover.
We were then only 7.9 million people in a vast empty country rich in resources but no people to exploit them. Believe it, we were said to be overpopulated—34 years from then we are only 23 million—in this vast still empty land.

The United States of America has used vast amounts of money over time to destroy the people of Kenya. USAID and other Non-Governmental Organizations funded mainly by the U.S. Government have targeted our people with a ruthlessness that makes one shudder. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council (a subsidiary of the Rockfeller group), Population Action International, and the United Nations through its agencies like WHO and UNFPDA have targeted Kenya for depopulation at the expense of the integral development of its people. Some examples of the stark realities living side by side with the millions of dollars for population control include:

• Our health sector is collapsed. Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of Malaria whose treatment costs a few cents, in health facilities whose stores are stalked to the roof with millions of dollars worth of pills, IUDS, Norplant, Depo-provera, most of which are supplied with American money.
• Some of these contraceptives like Depo-provera cause terrible side-effects to the poor people in Kenya, who do not even have competent medical check-ups before injection. Many are maimed for life. The hypertension, blood clots, heart failure, liver pathology and menstrual disorders cannot be treated due to the poor health services. The American Government seems to want to solve the problem of poverty by reducing the number of the poor.
• Special operation theatres fully serviced and not lacking in instruments are opened in hospitals for sterilization of women and some men. In the same hospitals, emergency surgery cannot be done for lack of basic operating instruments and supplies. Most of the women are sterilized without even knowing it is final. Some with only one child. Some are induced with financial assistance to accept sterilization. Horrified sterilized women now trot from hospital to hospital looking for reversal of the Tubal Ligation. This is breaking marriages especially when the single child or two succumb to the myriad tropical diseases—with easy treatment that is not available.
• Millions of dollars are used daily to deceive, manipulate and misinform the people through the media about the perceived good of a small family—while the infant mortality rate skyrockets. Some of this money is not used to educated people on basic hygiene, proper diet or good farming methods that would be useful development, but it appears that the aim of population controllers is to decimate the Kenyan people.
• I am a practicing gynecologist in Kenya and I would like to share with you facts about some of the patients I see daily:

A mother brought a child to me with pneumonia, but I had not penicillin to give the child. What I have in the stores are cases of contraceptives.

Malaria is epidemic in Kenya. Mothers die from this disease every day because there is no chloroquine, when instead we have huge stockpiles of contraceptives. These mothers come to me and I am helpless.

I see women coming to my clinic daily with swollen legs — the cannot climb stairs. They have been injured by Depo-provera

America has been a blessed country. This nation saved the world three times. During the first World War, the second World War and the Cold War. The American people can still save many in the world from preventable diseases. I do not believe that Americans want their taxes used to hurt other people. Why do you not stop this money being used for contraceptives and use it instead to provide clean water, good prenatal and postnatal care, good farming methods and rural electrification. Do the American people know that the millions of dollars spent for population control are used in the ways I have described? Why does your government not deal directly with our government but instead uses a third party like IPPF, which has no respect for the values of our people and our laws?

It is therefore clear, that contrary to what one is led to believe, American Aid to Kenya is not a reasonable attempt to bring about integral development, rather it is a comprehensive and highly organized campaign to kill off as many of our people as are necessary so that the U.S. and other developed countries can continue exploiting our national resources.

Therefor, for the first world to dominate the third world through contraceptive imperialism under the big stick of withholding development assistance for non-compliance makes us conclude that, not only the so-called Population Assistance to third world countries but even the "development assistance" has been tailored first to serve the interests of the richest of the rich of this world.

USAID is the single biggest supporter and promoter of population control in Kenya. The programs it funds are implemented with an aggressive and elitist ruthlessness. In Kenya the target are always the poor and the illiterate who are pressured and tricked into using dangerous drugs which are often banned in the west, or who are sterilized during childbirth without either their knowledge or consent.

You in the media, those in the White House and many in the United States Congress continue to deny these facts. We in Kenya are a people like you who are entitled to the same human rights and dignity as yourselves, but our right to live a normal human existence is ignored by globalist decision makers. If the funds you use to kill, maim, subjugate, dominate and break us to nothingness were used to cultivate our extraordinary resources, Kenya alone could feed more than half the African continent. Dear Americans, you cannot build your own security on the insecurity and degradation of others. You cannot build your own wealth on the poverty and destitution of people in the least developed nations.

Math anxieties

I have been on the hunt for a decent math program for a little over a decade now (this includes my years as a public school teacher). My problem is that I am about 30 years too late. I am almost to the point of ripping up my current math book and stapling it back together in the right order.

Here's the deal

It seems like every stinking math program since the 60s is based on the idea that human beings learn in the following manner: we try something new, leave it, try something else, leave it, then review. Sounds very sensible until you put it into practice. It's called spiraling and even when a program swears it is unit based, it isn't. It just takes the spiral longer to unwind: spending a day or two on a skill as opposed to spending one or two problems a day on it. 

Here's how it looks in a math book for a 7 year old. This is how you regroup. Here are 15 problems of regrouping. Moving on! Here's how you tell time to the minute. Don't forget how to regroup. Moving on! Here's how you add columns of numbers. Don't forget that regrouping now. Or the time thing. Moving on! Remember subtraction? Here's some of that. Now back to that regrouping thing: can you regroup even bigger numbers? Try it. Moving on! Let's do shapes now! Back to the subtraction. Don't forget time. Moving on! Now to regroup columns of numbers! Test Monday!  




Sounds like a recipe for confusion doesn't it? What it turns out to be is the probable reason behind our continual slide down the worldwide comparisons of math comprehension. We used to teach math differently. We also used to excel in the world's arena of math and science. However, I am less interested at the moment in world-wide performances. What I'm more interested in is allowing my child to feel competent at any given math skill before Moving on! to the next one.



This compares math performances by state with the other countries. Sobering and interesting*.
(click for larger image).

*Please note that I said I was "less interested" not that I wasn't interested. Besides, I like graphs.



As a teacher and as a mom I've learned one thing about children's learning styles: for the most part, when children are working on a skill, they stick with it. They play the same game over and over, want that same book every night, try the same somersault again and again. Kids don't like dribbles and drabs of knowledge. They like to wrestle with a concept for a good long while.



Meanwhile, as it turns out, my math program is so hopelessly dribbly-drabbly that I can't repaginate and staple it back together because no two pages go together! Gah! That's what I get for thinking that since the first grade math program was structured fairly well, that the second grade would be, too. I'll never buy without a review again.

Meanwhile, I'm going to do some time traveling for third grade and teach like it's 1959!

Oh yes! Please, please, please if you know of a better homeschool program than Saxon, MCP, or Alpha Omega, let me know! andychrism@yahoo.com