The unintended uses of technology

Katie is still terrified of walking holding on to someone's finger with only one hand. It really seems to stress her out. Time and again, though, we see that she's better at balancing herself than she realizes: when she gets up and down from the screen on the sliding door, or that brief moment when she stands alone as she transitions between furniture and the floor.

Communications scholars have a theory, if you can call it that, called diffusion of innovations. In a couple weeks, I'll be much more adept at discussing it because it's on my exams reading list- the whole 500 page book. Anyways, diffusion of innovations scholars realized that sometimes, those they mistook as "early adopters" or even just "adopters" of a technology new to them had actually re-invented its use. I'm wondering if I can use Katie as an anecdote or example of my understanding of this phenomenon, because she has definitely adapted our efforts to get her to trust her ability to walk to suit her needs.

Today, we bought her a walker. Pushing stools and other pieces of furniture around seemed a little too hazardous, so we finally got her one. It has a lion face on it and converts into a bike she can sit on. But, even though she'll push around a stool, any piece of paper or cardboard she finds, boxes, and cans, she's hesitant to stand at the back of this walker and push it. Instead, she pushes it and walks with it in any other direction than its intended use.

She'll walk all around it, push the lion's nose over and over again so it'll light up and play music, and then grab its sides and push it forward that way. Any time we try and get her to walk the way it's supposed to, she takes a few steps and then starts to cry. I think I need to stop letting her see me watch it because that seems to fuel her outbursts. And she loves to actually ride the thing, but she seems determined to push it the way she finds fit, and not the way it was intended.

One of my professors said her daughter made decisions to do things: one day, her daughter just decided to use the toilet. It wasn't a process, but something she had to just decide to do. I think Katie operates the same way. She clearly has a mind of her own...I don't know where she could have possibly gotten that. Even though her independence often manifests in shrieks of frustration because the thing she was pushing ran into something or her bottle ran out before she was done, I hope this sticks around. She's spunky- and I wouldn't have it any other way.