[blparent] Ryan Knighton's Book

[Steve Jacobson]

Jo Elizabeth,

I'm not certain how you feel about all this from your note, but one thing I'd like to be clear about is that I do not know 
the whole of his work to know how representative what I heard was of his work in general.  Some of the descriptions I 
read make me think that some of his characteristics are characteristics I would like.  However, I must say that I am 
skeptical of the reviews in your note because it has been my experience that the public tends to feel that sharing our 
exaggerated failings is heart-warming and represents honesty.  Those of us who try to represent what we do has being 
everyday life are often seen as thinking that we have to be supermen or something.  One of the paragraphs you 
included reads as follows:  "Knighton writes of his failures at diaper-changing and baby-minding. After a heavy 
snowfall, Knighton loses his daughter while they are playing outside and there is a sense of panic that infects the 
reader until they are reunited. More tales of near-disaster, or even near-death, are included. The toughest time for 
Knighton is trying to care for Tess while she is a baby. It gets easier for him when she is a toddler since she, even at 
the age of two, can walk and see and lead her father around."  This paragraph gets at what came across to me in the 
interview, and I find it depressing and very sad.  There are those who believe we want kids to have little ones to lead 
us about and to read for us free of charge when they get older.  We had to overcome thinking like this with our 
adoption agency, and I just don't see some of his contributions as helpful at all but rather as making money at our 
expense.  We all have had funny experiences and accidents that we would probably rather not share with others, but 
his portrayals, as Angie said, make one feel he is lucky to survive.  This just blew me away yesterday.

By the way, it turned out that the segment that I heard came from a CBC program originally, so it must have had some 
air time in Canada as well.  Suggesting that another segment be run on blind parenting is a good idea.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Sun, 1 Jan 2012 18:19:00 -0700, Jo Elizabeth Pinto wrote:

>Knighton writes of his failures at diaper-changing and baby-minding. After a heavy snowfall, Knighton loses his 
daughter while they are playing outside and there is a sense of panic that infects the reader until they are reunited. 
More tales of near-disaster, or even near-death, are included. The toughest time for Knighton is trying to care for Tess 
while she is a baby. It gets easier for him when she is a toddler since she, even at the age of two, can walk and see 
and lead her father around.