Tag: motherhood

A Spell to Keep Us Human: In conversation with Enid Baxter Ryce

Enid Baxter Ryce is an artist who is a writer, she’s a professor who tells her students to put the computers away, she’s a mom who asks her kids to go dig a hole. In this wide-ranging conversation, we learn how Enid moved from a “feral” childhood to a life of the mind, never forgetting to keep her hands in the dirt and her self open to possibility.

Minibabble: Pointing the finger at moms

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.

Take the scaffolding down: Mothering neuroatypical adults

“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.