>>These are often straightforward to solve by involving each group in the providence of its own goods and services. They'll know what they need.<<
Absolutely. There's a reason we started getting shit done on this front after I said "hey, actually, can you not have the highly loud and much too short greeting people thing be a thing I have to do? That's why I'm taking forever to clean this up." The following year, there was space to escape if you didn't want to do it. Progress is slow and exhausting, but most of us are trying. I'm not representative of everyone, and it's hard to get people together in the off-season, which complicates really getting everyone in. That's not even accounting for the complications of getting actual youth in the room, interested, and working on actually important stuff. Still, even I get so caught up in our rules and The Way We've Always Done It I don't always see the solution. Or I decide it's impossible before I even bring it up.
>>True. But the other face of "Othering is bad" is "Have you tried not being gay?" 0_o People are different, and refusing to meet their needs because you dislike differences is harmful.<<
Next time I get othering questions I'm going to say "oh, we better cancel this whole thing. Let's go home. Pack it up, everybody, guess we can't have an event for queer youth, that would be othering." Okay, probably I'll be a little more diplomatic about it, but that's a great point. And people will probably get all "but that's different, we're doing our whole own thing" or whatever.
>>Common reasons for that are that they're too stifled. Kids are noisy and wiggly. They need lots of time outdoors to run and scream. They don't get it anymore. So then adult punish or drug the children for trying to meet their biological needs.<<
True. The nature of the thing involves plenty of opportunities for running around, but 45 minutes to an hour to eat can be a while, particularly for twelve-and-unders (it's not hard and fast, but it's much less of an issue with older youth, on average), and everyone needs to eat at the same time. The kitchen is already accomplishing really impressive stuff with preparing real food and accommodating every specialty diet under the sun, including individualized plans for those of us who can't eat any of the four standard options. It has been tried a little, doing a longer lunch period with part and part, but that wasn't very successful. We did make way more changes than we could handle that year, so maybe with more thought... but I suspect it's unworkable. We do try to corral them, but over the past few years we've made strides in not making An Issue of it if a kid is running around (or refusing to run around) while something else is going on as long as they're within sight and not disrupting the main activity.
I try not to make it an issue if kids are getting up or hanging out in the middle as long as they aren't making too much noise, but then we run into issues of adults not being able to find their youth, or youth coming out to the middle to hang out with their friends without cleaning up after themselves and their table or talking to their adult about where they're going. It's been insisted that we set a limit that on a per meal basis you have to pick in or out. I've encouraged people to make a judgement call there if someone is getting overwhelmed, but IDK how well it's being implemented. I can't really go inside during a meal myself, especially not and take in what's happening around me. For events I try hard to have ways to go back and forth (it's actually very helpful to give an overwhelmed kid who doesn't have a "problem" [whatever that even means] space to chill out a minute. Curbcutter effect for the win!) but the places where it makes sense to put us and where the events are aren't always close together. There's been talk about moving some stuff more centrally, but people are attached to inaccessible locations. Usually the objections are "harder to enforce not-running-off-into-woods" and "but TRADITION" and "setup is hard". This is not my sympathetic face. But most years we do a little better than the last. We do try to have "trains" of people moving back and forth when we aren't close together, but success has been mixed so far. I think we'll get better over time.
>>You can't bond in that situation, because bonding takes time. All you can do is set parameters for the place.<<
Ugh, true. But some of us do bond, because some of us are out here, every meal, every all-people event. So it's variable.
>>How big is the space? What resources are available? If some children are wiggly but not screaming, then possibly a quiet corner and a fidget corner would help separate them. Sound-muffling things like foam mats or blackout curtains can muffle modest amounts of noise. But if they need to run and scream, a quick trip outdoors would be better for that.<<
Well, right now, we're outside, within view of the main group but a good... 20 or 30 feet? (I'm very bad at moderate distances... like, you could probably fit a classroom between our table and the doors)... between us and the building, because those windows are 0% soundproof. This means that the difficulties of staying in ratio (having sufficient adults per child) when the age and number of children in the group varies and somehow EVERYTHING ELSE UNDER THE SUN is a higher priority than getting me backup. Okay, that's mildly unfair. And it's been getting better. And most of us are either on break or responsible for a specific group of kids already. Still really frustrating. So what we have within view is a nice sized space for running around, but running around is pretty much invariably loud, and the sound carries. What we need is to put the loud ones (or I suppose the quiet ones, the point is the separation) on the opposite side of the outside of the building, but I'm already understaffed, and it's much harder to keep the ratios correct that way. There's also the issue of preventing youth from running off into the woods and getting lost. Last time we held our event, I did pitch having a third group, but was shot down on lack of adults grounds. And the site is only allowed so many people, so we're bumping up on a hard limit of how many adults we can have. This doesn't even get into the problems of sticking people outside to eat when we have a wasp problem, but the other option is on the other side of a very thin door and not big enough anyway. I am going to look into trying to get removable soundproofing foam or something we can stick all over that wall, which would help. Probably not enough for it to be better than outside, but it's worth a shot. And sometimes we do get stuck in there if it's raining and we can't use the tables under the canopy. (These are not visible from inside and sometimes needed for staff meetings, so they're not preferred for most meals.)
>>As mentioned above, try using lists of options. If none of them seem to fit and nobody can find a way to get more, the problem may be unsolvable at that time due to short resources, whether personal or material. Are there ways to get more resources (e.g. ordering new materials, taking a class in facilitation skills) or not? If so, you may find new solutions. If not, it is probably not the fault of the people trying to solve the problem.<<
So often, the issue is the time to get together and make plans. I've wanted to get together with someone who has background in making programming for youth to try to build activities for my kids, but haven't managed to make it happen yet. We get a little better every year, but something more intentional would be better. As for money, it's complicated. Our fund development is in a highly transitional space right now, so it's hard to say what we have the funding for on any front. But we're not a huge org, and we can't fund everything. If you ask me, having options gets deprioritized too often, but I'm highly biased. Certainly, right now our first priority is getting that basic organizational health stuff done.
>>Yeah, bonobos seem to be the only species that does that fluently, but for Homo sapiens, sex makes people more envious, not less. <<
Yeah. It's annoying. I hate it when I have no good options.
>>Watch for frustration and people saying things like "But I am trying" or "Easy for you."<<
That makes sense. I do try to take that seriously, because people are the experts on their own experiences and I can't expect anybody to take me and my work seriously if I'm not taking into account that everyone has different needs. My success varies, because I get as frustrated as anybody else. I also get a lot of weird levels of admiration for my ability to handle, like, data entry and other repetetive tasks without losing my mind. I try to believe it's an extraordinary skill because so many people are like "I could never do that!" but it's hard to really sincerely buy it when it feels so easy. Of course, some people can send a goddamn email without rewriting it six times out of sheer anxiety, or ask for things, or like being in charge of others' work, so we all have our special skills.
>>That kind of diagnostic work requires that you understand the parameters for each possible reason, then figure out what would distinguish them, then test or watch for situations that reveals those differences.<<
That makes sense.
>>Neurodivergence is a two-way difference. Not only does the person have difficulty understanding neurotypical statements, they also describe things in ways that don't make sense to a neurotypical person. They just think differently. The pattern tends to be consistent, and they may be quite fluent both in speaking and listening to neurodivergent friends.<<
That tracks. It's so much easier when I'm talking to my neurodivergent friends. I do pretty okay at neurotypicals, considering, but it's confusing and frustrating and I [gollum voice]hatessssss it[/gollum voice] sometimes. And while I generally manage to be sufficiently helpful that putting up with my excessive directness and whatever the hell else they don't like is worth it, I'm still always reaching for an understanding that seems forever out of reach. And I maintain that sharing stories to show your commonalities with an experience somebody has shared makes way more sense than mouthing a bunch of platitudes/stock phrases. Though platitudes are useful when in a rush or not well acquainted. Platitudes simply communicate understanding of the social contract. Not connecty.
>>Intelligence is the most responsive to small learning aids. High linguistic intelligence will learn words just by reading or hearing them. Lower linguistic intelligence may show a notable boost in performance with the use of a dictionary, vocabulary cards, etc. 3-part cards are especially helpful.<<
Those do look nice. I have always picked up English vocab easily (though not without problems. For a while epitome was "epi-tome" [I am extraordinarily bad at discerning stress. Second syllable, I think?] and I thought vermilion was a green color for the longest time because I connected it with verde (as in Spanish for green) and verdant), but other languages are much more difficult. I tend to go on Duolingo, get through a bunch of Spanish, hit a wall, and give up. The weird part is, when I come back to it after six months, a year, two, whatever, I remember the old stuff easy and can get past the old wall. Of course, I'm not convinced Duolingo is teaching me anything more than how to match up words like a game, syntax and tense are still very hard. But maybe it needs more time. And it's not unpleasant to do until I get to the latest wall.
>>Perspective born of lived experience can be hard to spot. You mostly have to listen for people telling stories about their past that illustrated why they do or don't do certain things. If they're not sharing, try prompting for that. "You say X doesn't work for you. Can you tell me about a time you tried it in the past, and what happened? That might help us figure out what to do."<<
That reminds me of the time when my sibling, who has been experimenting in the kitchen since we were little, was cooking for me and screwed with the recipe again. I forget what ze did, but my texture or taste issues Did Not Like It, and in exasperation I was all "why can't you just follow the damn instructions? Consistent action, consistent result!" That's my experience of cooking (I do occasionally experiment, but on a day to day basis it's too much trouble). And ze told me that ze doesn't always get the same result when ze follows the instructions. And I was like "...??? weird that explains a lot" Great reminder that experiences are different.
>>Perspective born of ethnicity, nationality, etc. will act a lot like neurodivergence: a two-way difference that disappears in like group. Also look out for prejudicial or discriminatory speech or behavior from people to highlight why they might not interact well with such a person.<<
That makes sense. Hard to see when by definition if someone in a different group than you is in-group, you aren't there.
>>Work ethic varies across groups. Mainstream Americans think Native Americans are lazy because they only work when they need something. Native Americans think mainstream Americans are workaholics because they work whether or not they need something. Check the work ethic of the person's group and your own if different. Then there's personal motivation. Some people are always hard workers (or high-energy) and some are always lazy (or low-energy) but many vary depending whether the work is interesting or valuable to them.<<
And me, I annoy mainstream Americans (possibly all types, I don't have the data to know. Certainly plenty of queer people and Pagans and people of color. Insufficient data for other non-mainstreamnesses) with how much work I do. (Like, I end up making other people look bad, and my general eagerness is off-putting. I think. OTOH, some people actually appreciate me. They probably do not appreciate the constant apologies I have a great deal of difficulty suppressing even though what I mean is "please don't be angry that I'm editing this legal document at Maximum Nitpick, as requested" or something like that. People are always assuring me it's okay, but it's still very difficult to stop.) I just can't stand doing anything by half-measures. If it's worth doing, it's Worth Doing, and worth looking for better methods. I'm allergic to inefficiency, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to shrink corners. No cutting corners, though. Even in paid work I'm not happy with, it's really hard for me to not put more effort in than required, and if I'm not I'm certainly doing something else, like writing. At the very least, I'll be listening to an audiobook or the like. What else am I gonna do? Sit around? I mean, it's definitely to the point of pathology at times, I'm insecure and it's sometimes problematic, but hey, I'll reformat and reprint your damn thing in the one day break I have because I get why it needs doing and it didn't work well last week. Okay, after that incident I decided I had to draw a hard line over work during that time, but let's be real, if it was important enough and I absolutely couldn't fob it off on someone else, I'd fold like a foldy thing. Because this community matters. I'll admit only working when you need something doesn't quite make sense to me--when do you not need anything?--but it's not my business unless people are not meeting their commitments to me or my organization and interfering with my ability to get my work done or the ability of the organization to operate.
Re: Intelligence is confusing (1/2)
>>These are often straightforward to solve by involving each group in the providence of its own goods and services. They'll know what they need.<<
Absolutely. There's a reason we started getting shit done on this front after I said "hey, actually, can you not have the highly loud and much too short greeting people thing be a thing I have to do? That's why I'm taking forever to clean this up." The following year, there was space to escape if you didn't want to do it. Progress is slow and exhausting, but most of us are trying. I'm not representative of everyone, and it's hard to get people together in the off-season, which complicates really getting everyone in. That's not even accounting for the complications of getting actual youth in the room, interested, and working on actually important stuff. Still, even I get so caught up in our rules and The Way We've Always Done It I don't always see the solution. Or I decide it's impossible before I even bring it up.
>>True. But the other face of "Othering is bad" is "Have you tried not being gay?" 0_o People are different, and refusing to meet their needs because you dislike differences is harmful.<<
Next time I get othering questions I'm going to say "oh, we better cancel this whole thing. Let's go home. Pack it up, everybody, guess we can't have an event for queer youth, that would be othering." Okay, probably I'll be a little more diplomatic about it, but that's a great point. And people will probably get all "but that's different, we're doing our whole own thing" or whatever.
>>Common reasons for that are that they're too stifled. Kids are noisy and wiggly. They need lots of time outdoors to run and scream. They don't get it anymore. So then adult punish or drug the children for trying to meet their biological needs.<<
True. The nature of the thing involves plenty of opportunities for running around, but 45 minutes to an hour to eat can be a while, particularly for twelve-and-unders (it's not hard and fast, but it's much less of an issue with older youth, on average), and everyone needs to eat at the same time. The kitchen is already accomplishing really impressive stuff with preparing real food and accommodating every specialty diet under the sun, including individualized plans for those of us who can't eat any of the four standard options. It has been tried a little, doing a longer lunch period with part and part, but that wasn't very successful. We did make way more changes than we could handle that year, so maybe with more thought... but I suspect it's unworkable. We do try to corral them, but over the past few years we've made strides in not making An Issue of it if a kid is running around (or refusing to run around) while something else is going on as long as they're within sight and not disrupting the main activity.
I try not to make it an issue if kids are getting up or hanging out in the middle as long as they aren't making too much noise, but then we run into issues of adults not being able to find their youth, or youth coming out to the middle to hang out with their friends without cleaning up after themselves and their table or talking to their adult about where they're going. It's been insisted that we set a limit that on a per meal basis you have to pick in or out. I've encouraged people to make a judgement call there if someone is getting overwhelmed, but IDK how well it's being implemented. I can't really go inside during a meal myself, especially not and take in what's happening around me. For events I try hard to have ways to go back and forth (it's actually very helpful to give an overwhelmed kid who doesn't have a "problem" [whatever that even means] space to chill out a minute. Curbcutter effect for the win!) but the places where it makes sense to put us and where the events are aren't always close together. There's been talk about moving some stuff more centrally, but people are attached to inaccessible locations. Usually the objections are "harder to enforce not-running-off-into-woods" and "but TRADITION" and "setup is hard". This is not my sympathetic face. But most years we do a little better than the last. We do try to have "trains" of people moving back and forth when we aren't close together, but success has been mixed so far. I think we'll get better over time.
>>You can't bond in that situation, because bonding takes time. All you can do is set parameters for the place.<<
Ugh, true. But some of us do bond, because some of us are out here, every meal, every all-people event. So it's variable.
>>How big is the space? What resources are available? If some children are wiggly but not screaming, then possibly a quiet corner and a fidget corner would help separate them. Sound-muffling things like foam mats or blackout curtains can muffle modest amounts of noise. But if they need to run and scream, a quick trip outdoors would be better for that.<<
Well, right now, we're outside, within view of the main group but a good... 20 or 30 feet? (I'm very bad at moderate distances... like, you could probably fit a classroom between our table and the doors)... between us and the building, because those windows are 0% soundproof. This means that the difficulties of staying in ratio (having sufficient adults per child) when the age and number of children in the group varies and somehow EVERYTHING ELSE UNDER THE SUN is a higher priority than getting me backup. Okay, that's mildly unfair. And it's been getting better. And most of us are either on break or responsible for a specific group of kids already. Still really frustrating. So what we have within view is a nice sized space for running around, but running around is pretty much invariably loud, and the sound carries. What we need is to put the loud ones (or I suppose the quiet ones, the point is the separation) on the opposite side of the outside of the building, but I'm already understaffed, and it's much harder to keep the ratios correct that way. There's also the issue of preventing youth from running off into the woods and getting lost. Last time we held our event, I did pitch having a third group, but was shot down on lack of adults grounds. And the site is only allowed so many people, so we're bumping up on a hard limit of how many adults we can have. This doesn't even get into the problems of sticking people outside to eat when we have a wasp problem, but the other option is on the other side of a very thin door and not big enough anyway. I am going to look into trying to get removable soundproofing foam or something we can stick all over that wall, which would help. Probably not enough for it to be better than outside, but it's worth a shot. And sometimes we do get stuck in there if it's raining and we can't use the tables under the canopy. (These are not visible from inside and sometimes needed for staff meetings, so they're not preferred for most meals.)
>>As mentioned above, try using lists of options. If none of them seem to fit and nobody can find a way to get more, the problem may be unsolvable at that time due to short resources, whether personal or material. Are there ways to get more resources (e.g. ordering new materials, taking a class in facilitation skills) or not? If so, you may find new solutions. If not, it is probably not the fault of the people trying to solve the problem.<<
So often, the issue is the time to get together and make plans. I've wanted to get together with someone who has background in making programming for youth to try to build activities for my kids, but haven't managed to make it happen yet. We get a little better every year, but something more intentional would be better. As for money, it's complicated. Our fund development is in a highly transitional space right now, so it's hard to say what we have the funding for on any front. But we're not a huge org, and we can't fund everything. If you ask me, having options gets deprioritized too often, but I'm highly biased. Certainly, right now our first priority is getting that basic organizational health stuff done.
>>Yeah, bonobos seem to be the only species that does that fluently, but for Homo sapiens, sex makes people more envious, not less. <<
Yeah. It's annoying. I hate it when I have no good options.
>>Watch for frustration and people saying things like "But I am trying" or "Easy for you."<<
That makes sense. I do try to take that seriously, because people are the experts on their own experiences and I can't expect anybody to take me and my work seriously if I'm not taking into account that everyone has different needs. My success varies, because I get as frustrated as anybody else. I also get a lot of weird levels of admiration for my ability to handle, like, data entry and other repetetive tasks without losing my mind. I try to believe it's an extraordinary skill because so many people are like "I could never do that!" but it's hard to really sincerely buy it when it feels so easy. Of course, some people can send a goddamn email without rewriting it six times out of sheer anxiety, or ask for things, or like being in charge of others' work, so we all have our special skills.
>>That kind of diagnostic work requires that you understand the parameters for each possible reason, then figure out what would distinguish them, then test or watch for situations that reveals those differences.<<
That makes sense.
>>Neurodivergence is a two-way difference. Not only does the person have difficulty understanding neurotypical statements, they also describe things in ways that don't make sense to a neurotypical person. They just think differently. The pattern tends to be consistent, and they may be quite fluent both in speaking and listening to neurodivergent friends.<<
That tracks. It's so much easier when I'm talking to my neurodivergent friends. I do pretty okay at neurotypicals, considering, but it's confusing and frustrating and I [gollum voice]hatessssss it[/gollum voice] sometimes. And while I generally manage to be sufficiently helpful that putting up with my excessive directness and whatever the hell else they don't like is worth it, I'm still always reaching for an understanding that seems forever out of reach. And I maintain that sharing stories to show your commonalities with an experience somebody has shared makes way more sense than mouthing a bunch of platitudes/stock phrases. Though platitudes are useful when in a rush or not well acquainted. Platitudes simply communicate understanding of the social contract. Not connecty.
>>Intelligence is the most responsive to small learning aids. High linguistic intelligence will learn words just by reading or hearing them. Lower linguistic intelligence may show a notable boost in performance with the use of a dictionary, vocabulary cards, etc. 3-part cards are especially helpful.<<
Those do look nice. I have always picked up English vocab easily (though not without problems. For a while epitome was "epi-tome" [I am extraordinarily bad at discerning stress. Second syllable, I think?] and I thought vermilion was a green color for the longest time because I connected it with verde (as in Spanish for green) and verdant), but other languages are much more difficult. I tend to go on Duolingo, get through a bunch of Spanish, hit a wall, and give up. The weird part is, when I come back to it after six months, a year, two, whatever, I remember the old stuff easy and can get past the old wall. Of course, I'm not convinced Duolingo is teaching me anything more than how to match up words like a game, syntax and tense are still very hard. But maybe it needs more time. And it's not unpleasant to do until I get to the latest wall.
>>Perspective born of lived experience can be hard to spot. You mostly have to listen for people telling stories about their past that illustrated why they do or don't do certain things. If they're not sharing, try prompting for that. "You say X doesn't work for you. Can you tell me about a time you tried it in the past, and what happened? That might help us figure out what to do."<<
That reminds me of the time when my sibling, who has been experimenting in the kitchen since we were little, was cooking for me and screwed with the recipe again. I forget what ze did, but my texture or taste issues Did Not Like It, and in exasperation I was all "why can't you just follow the damn instructions? Consistent action, consistent result!" That's my experience of cooking (I do occasionally experiment, but on a day to day basis it's too much trouble). And ze told me that ze doesn't always get the same result when ze follows the instructions. And I was like "...??? weird that explains a lot" Great reminder that experiences are different.
>>Perspective born of ethnicity, nationality, etc. will act a lot like neurodivergence: a two-way difference that disappears in like group. Also look out for prejudicial or discriminatory speech or behavior from people to highlight why they might not interact well with such a person.<<
That makes sense. Hard to see when by definition if someone in a different group than you is in-group, you aren't there.
>>Work ethic varies across groups. Mainstream Americans think Native Americans are lazy because they only work when they need something. Native Americans think mainstream Americans are workaholics because they work whether or not they need something. Check the work ethic of the person's group and your own if different. Then there's personal motivation. Some people are always hard workers (or high-energy) and some are always lazy (or low-energy) but many vary depending whether the work is interesting or valuable to them.<<
And me, I annoy mainstream Americans (possibly all types, I don't have the data to know. Certainly plenty of queer people and Pagans and people of color. Insufficient data for other non-mainstreamnesses) with how much work I do. (Like, I end up making other people look bad, and my general eagerness is off-putting. I think. OTOH, some people actually appreciate me. They probably do not appreciate the constant apologies I have a great deal of difficulty suppressing even though what I mean is "please don't be angry that I'm editing this legal document at Maximum Nitpick, as requested" or something like that. People are always assuring me it's okay, but it's still very difficult to stop.) I just can't stand doing anything by half-measures. If it's worth doing, it's Worth Doing, and worth looking for better methods. I'm allergic to inefficiency, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to shrink corners. No cutting corners, though. Even in paid work I'm not happy with, it's really hard for me to not put more effort in than required, and if I'm not I'm certainly doing something else, like writing. At the very least, I'll be listening to an audiobook or the like. What else am I gonna do? Sit around? I mean, it's definitely to the point of pathology at times, I'm insecure and it's sometimes problematic, but hey, I'll reformat and reprint your damn thing in the one day break I have because I get why it needs doing and it didn't work well last week. Okay, after that incident I decided I had to draw a hard line over work during that time, but let's be real, if it was important enough and I absolutely couldn't fob it off on someone else, I'd fold like a foldy thing. Because this community matters. I'll admit only working when you need something doesn't quite make sense to me--when do you not need anything?--but it's not my business unless people are not meeting their commitments to me or my organization and interfering with my ability to get my work done or the ability of the organization to operate.