I think the only assignment for next week is to read “Well Played: The Origins and Future of Playfulness” before class meets again.
I didn’t really enjoy this piece. The piece is quite heteronormative (everything-normative, really).
With eye contact a child can register and respond to facial expressions, opening up a whole range of emotions an infant and her mother communicate to each other. “Goo-goos” and “ga-gas” ensue as a call- and-response love song that often erupts into cascades of giggles. While we might think of these intimate exchanges as merely delightful, as ultimately frivolous byproducts of the mother-child bond
Apparently: people who give birth = mothers, which is rhetoric I don’t entertain.
Without a mother’s supportive presence, an infant cannot internalize a secure base from which to explore the world.
What about children with two fathers?
researchers have found that parents of children with autism can, by simply joining their children on the floor and playing with them on their own terms, generate measurable improvements in their children’s capacity for social engagement
Why do autistic children need to “improve”?