The embarrassment thing - difficult child 1 was a shocker with this. From a very early age he rejected all attempts to get him to stand up in front of other people. In church, getting all the kids up the front to listen to a story - difficult child 1 would stay with us. Or getting al the kids to stand up the front to sing a song they had rehearsed - he would literally curl up on the floor in a ball and stay there, for hours, rather then do it. Singing happy birthday to him - even worse. At school he just wouldn't get up in front of the class for anything.
The breakthrough came at school with an Aussie phenomenon, "Tournament of the Minds". In this inter-school challenge his class took a children's book and turned it into a play that they wrote themselves. difficult child 1 with his classmates was able to become one of the characters and clown around. As long as he felt that he wasn't difficult child 1 but the character, he could get up in front of other people and ham it up. I didn't see it, because I was at home minding difficult child 3, but a few people we know who saw it said difficult child 1 stole the show!
Since then, difficult child 1 has appeared in a couple of short student films, with easy child 2/difficult child 2 got a role in a mini-series (as a convict, he is barely recognisable) and recently with easy child 2/difficult child 2 and difficult child 3, was in "The Black Balloon", a feature film released early this year starring Toni Collette. We never thought it possible - but the trick has been, as long as difficult child 1 can be someone else he can do it. And slowly he's gained confidence and can now actually enjoy the same things that used ti have him completely withdrawing.
The interviewing and documenting older people's stories - get him involved by YOU doing it and dragging him along to look after the tape recorder. Engage him as your technician. And with him involved, if you can see him getting interested in the s tory, see if you can get him to ask a question. Act as if you've run out of things to ask, and turn to difficult child and say, "I'm finding this very interesting, I'm not sure what to ask you next. difficult child - of the things that our friend here has told us so far, which should we ask about first? What do you think people your age would need to know, or want to know?"
His perspective would be of value anyhow, because the target audience for tihssort of work is difficult child's generation. As members of the older generation we sometimes forget that we know more about some things and we assume that knowledge in others. For example, in a Beatrix Potter book, "Mrs Tiggy Winkle", there is a mention of the old washerwoman ironing and goffering the frills on a pinafore. My mother would have known what goffering was, but I had to look it up.
In my great aunt's few pages she wrote about her childhood, there were many small things I didn't fully understand. Luckily my mother was able to tell me. But now they're both gone and my kids have no personal comprehension of what life was really like for them, it is difficult for ME to communicate this. We'll be visiting a sample pioneer village next week (I hope) and I want to link this in with my great aunt's story so difficult child 3 (and easy child, if she is with us that day) can understand. I visited that place once with both my mother and my great aunt, I can remember what they told me about how much memory the place brought back. Now I need to share it with my kids; but until they ask the questions they need to, I won't know what they don't understand.
difficult child 3 is currently very busy with school stuff, but I'm planning on using this same task for him when he's a bit older and needing to be occupied. It can begin at least, as a shared task. But more and more I hope I can send him to do the actual interview on my behalf (after he's seen it done a few times and feels confident, and especially if it's someone he knows) and we can subdivide the work.
Following it through to completion - either transferring the sound file to CD plus written text, plus any family photos burned to the CD as well, for distribution to the family or even the local historical society - it's got to be worth something in so many ways. And the range of skills it can build along the way are immeasurable. You could even put it in his CV in later years when he's looking for a job. It would also give him more confidence in speaking to people when he absolutely has to.
The idea came to me decades ago. I was in hospital after complex surgery and lying around in bed with nothing to do and nobody to talk to. I was bored, lonely, miserable. The hospital speech therapist came to me to ask if I would be willing to be interviewed by some of her clients who needed practice in talking. For these people the only taped bits that were being kept were of the interviewer, who needed to re-learn how to communicate.
I was intrigued and agreed to it. Because I was so young, the conversation was a bit strained but it did pass my time.
After that, a few years ago I was connected to a travelling War Memorial exhibition and was asked to not only tell father in law's story of his POW adventures, but to also "draw out" another couple of ex-POWs who wanted to tell their story but who were a bit shy and didn't know how to get started. So I did it interview-style but found very quickly that all I had to do was hold the microphone out to this man who quickly got lost in his tale and enthralled everyone else at the same time.
That man had never told his story to that extent, not even to his wife and kids. Sadly, it wasn't taped. But his wife came up to me afterwards and thanked me, although I had only been a go-between. The man himself - it finally validated the experiences he had hid, for all those years. He'd been a POW in Changi and later the Burma railway, and he'd held all of that in, for all those years. He'd never even fought, he was a new recruit on his first placement and they were captured weeks after he'd been deployed to Singapore. He never felt he earned his title of "soldier" because of this.
I really hope you can find a way to encourage difficult child to try this. You may not find a person like this man I found, but there are wonderful surprises hiding inside every person you see, and that also is yet another important lesson.
Marg
