Writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur Brenda Laurel started in theater, moved to videogames and then virtual reality, and ended up as an academic. This mini-episode, based on the full-length interview….
A couple of months ago, my fellow K-Squid programmer, Debra Sloss, asked me to help with an episode of her show, State of Mind. She’d received some beautiful, thoughtful pieces….
In this conversation with Brenda Laurel, we explore how girls play and what that means for women and game designers. We talk about the relationship between theater and gaming, and how the gaming world grew to change the way children live and develop. We talk about the importance of teaching. But most of all, we talk about what it means to be a creator in this world, someone who asks others to entrust their minds to our work.
“Every time I danced, I thought about the gratitude I had to move my body when simultaneously my mother was bound to a wheelchair. It shifted my perspective on the gift of life.”….
In this “quick bite” episode of The Babblery, seven women talk about their lives as gifted girls and their work helping other gifted girls and women thrive.
Giftedness touches every area of gifted women’s external lives: treatment by parents, teachers, and peers; life options presented to them; sexist assumptions based on their looks and clothing. But giftedness also touches these women’s internal lives. In this episode, we explore the many ways that giftedness influences the lived experiences of gifted women.
When there’s something wrong with a young child but there’s no easy diagnosis, where do you turn for an answer? Often, we blame the mom. From professionals to teachers to other parents, when a child’s behavior is baffling, the mom is suspect. Historically, disorders from autism to depression were blamed on mothers. Cold mothers, smothering mothers, inattentive mothers. In this short episode, two moms of young adult children talk about the struggles they went through in the early years getting appropriate diagnosis and treatment of their children’s disabilities. What they learned sends a message to everyone about where to look when an easy answer isn’t available.
What is it like for mothers raising neuroatypical children? Host Suki Wessling reflects on how creating an episode on that topic led her back down Memory Lane.
“What to Expect”-style books are very popular amongst moms, and for good reason. Most children follow relatively closely to what we expect from them. But some children deviate from the norm in ways that create great struggle: for caregivers, educators, medical professionals, and most of all, the parents raising them. In this episode, Wendy and Rebecca detail the struggle to get support for their children, the toll it took on their own sense of self, and finally, the growth and understanding that they achieved in the process of helping them to adulthood.
There are many wonderful things about modern communication, including the fact that you could find this text and read it! Social media in particular has been instrumental in creating awareness….
