Every so often, we as a family need to write an application or a blog or some kind of communiqué as Timothy. Whenever we do this, we are representing Timothy to the world and must be very careful about making sure that representation is accurate.
We've been challenged a few times on the things that we write as Timothy. It generally comes down to "how do you know this?" or "has Timothy said this to you?". These challenges are very useful because they force us to re-assess what we're saying and really check if they represent Timothy. I enjoy every challenge we get because it can be a tough mental exercise, verifying and justifying the content of what we're writing. It also gives us some confidence that we're representing him correctly, because we can justify it.
Here's a few examples:
- "I enjoy photography." How can we verify this? Well, we imagine a hypothetical ordinary man who can verbalise his interests, and what his behaviour would be like if he enjoyed photography. We then observe Timothy and see if his behaviour matches. In the case of photography, we feel it does. On his last outing with a camera, he held the camera up, pointed it at something of interest, and took a photo an average of once every 22 seconds.
- "I enjoy going to McDonalds." Same basic process, but a lot easier to judge. Timothy is happier at McDonalds than when he's not at McDonalds. :)
- "I think McChickens are the best burger." Much trickier for us to verify. Before we could write this we want to observe that, given (almost) any other food choice, he would choose a McChicken. Fact is, he probably wouldn't prefer a McChicken as it doesn't contain a pickle.
- "I want to learn more about photography." This is tricky. What does it look like when someone wants to learn about something? Timothy tends to learn by mimicking and/or exploration. Timothy does not always mimic our behaviour, so when he does it is a good sign he is interested in doing the same thing as you are. When he explores on his own (eg. playing with camera settings, taking photos of objects you never even tried to photograph), you can be fairly sure he is trying to learn.
- "I hate that root beer looks like Coke. I always get tricked by it." Hehe, actual fact. He is not happy when he grabs a glass of root beer, drinks it, and finds out it's not Coke. Coke seems to be the only pop he actually enjoys.
- "I dream of being an artist." Yeesh, tough one. What does Timothy dream of being? Well, we'd probably look at how he tries to see himself. Does he prefer photos where he's holding a camera, or where he's learning to cook, or where he's playing with his niece, or... I don't think we've gathered enough information to know what Timothy dreams of being, and so we can't really write such things.
Anyway, this blog was primarily just to say thankyou to the people who challenge us to be as authentic and true in our representation of Timothy as possible. As you can read above, we are trying our hardest. At times we can slip-up and inject our own views or beliefs, and it is good to have someone there to call us out on that.
P.S. Sometimes we get suggestions to prefix statements with "My family believes..." For example, replacing "I will be happier in my new home" with "My family believes I will be happier in my new house". That kind of prefix doesn't really solve the underlying issue. It's actually easier to verify "Timothy believes he will be happier in the new home" than it is to verify "Timothy understands that his family believes he will be happier in the new home". We can observe Timothy smiling when he enters his new bedroom. We can't observe Timothy understanding our conversations.
