Wampum

Claps and Cheers

Via Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post, I located a letter from a reader posted by Andrew Sullivan about the Bush press conference:

Did you watch a different press conference than I did? I mean, that the baseline is average means you're going in the wrong direction. Bush looked tired, nervous, easily confused; he had troubling answers questions, he couldn't address points, and at times he looked just purely uninformed. Two friends of mine, one conservative and one liberal, called me after the conference. The conservative said that "Bush looked like the first year (law student) who didn't do his reading and just wouldn't admit it to the [socratic] prof[essor]." The liberal said "The sad part about this is that conservatives are going to call it a strong performance. We now have a President whose not much different from a Special Ed student. We clap and cheer every time he has his shoes on the right feet."

I am in the relatively rare position of knowing something about being unprepared for a law school class as well as clapping and cheering for a special ed student. I must say that the conservative’s comment is closer to the mark.

The look on President Bush’s face as he searched for an answer to the “did you make any mistakes?” question was exactly the look on my face when Professor Van Alstyne asked me about Ex Parte McCardle and I was, shall we say, less than fully prepared. More than twenty years later, the wounds have healed but the memory remains vivid.

The liberal’s analogy to clapping and cheering for the special ed student who puts his shoes on the right feet is misplaced. The liberal misunderstands why we clap and cheer for seemingly simple tasks performed by our kids.

While on a recent vacation, we took the opportunity to cut Bobby’s hair. Bobby has never been able to tolerate hair cuts. The sound of the scissors, the feel of the cut hair on his body and the need to sit still are just unbearable. While getting a hair cut, Bobby will cry and scream, he will flail his arms and hands and thrash his body about.

We did it on vacation because we were at Grandpa’s house and it takes three adults to accomplish the task. One adult must hold Bobby’s lower body still to prevent his thrashing from injuring himself or one of us. A second adult must hold his arms and hands to keep the scissors from stabbing someone or putting out an eye. The final adult wields the scissors and tries to be quick so as to end the ordeal as fast as possible. Style and precision of hair cut were abandoned long ago. Instead of a specific style of hair cut, we just try for shorter.

As Deb, Grandpa and I set up for the haircut, Bobby’s older brother retreated to a bedroom with earphones and Grandma left the house. The crying, screaming and wailing that accompanies a hair cut is heart-breaking to Grandma and annoying to Bobby’s brother. We often imagine our neighbors listing to Bobby’s anguish while getting a hair cut and saying to company, “don’t mind that, its just the Meredith’s torturing their kids again.”

As we began, I was holding Bobby’s lower body, Grandpa his arms and Deb had the scissors. Instead of crying and screaming, Bobby began to chant a scene from a Disney video. He chanted the scene over and over. The chant had a calming effect on him. Tears were running down his cheeks as he struggled to tolerate the intolerable but he remained calm. The absence of thrashing allowed me to stand up, get an additional pair of scissors and have two people cutting hair. That reduced the total time needed substantially.

In the end, Bobby’s hair was shorter, if not of uniform length, and we had avoided both physical and psychic injury. No neighbor called the cops to report child abuse. For the first time in his life, Bobby had had his hair cut without screaming or flailing. Bobby had learned a technique to calm himself and tolerate a haircut.

We clapped and cheered, hugged and praised Bobby for his good work.

We clap and cheer when our kids show improvement. If Mr. Bush is to be treated as a special ed student, and if he seeks claps and cheers, he must first show improvement.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at April 16, 2004 12:20 PM | TrackBack