Field trip frenzy

I don't know if our school district is trying to make up for all the field trips cancelled last year in the wake of September 11 or what, but they seem to be field trip crazy this year. For my son's class, anyway -- all I can remember from past years is one lousy field trip somewhere in May or June, but now it's just November and they've already got their second outing scheduled. And I don't mean to seem ungrateful for the enrichment and all, but -- sheesh, can't the kids just stay in their classrooms and learn stuff? Please?

Maybe for "regular kids" (whatever that means), multiple expeditions are a magical source of hands-on education, or at least a break from boring predictability. But for a kid like my son -- with fetal alcohol effects, sensory integration problems and a general overreliance on order and routine -- well, with a kid like him, you're just asking for trouble. The first field trip was to an outdoor historical park, and though I worried like crazy, he came through okay. (My mother would say it's because I worried like crazy that he came through okay, but that's a different subject.) The second one, coming up in a few weeks, is to a play. A play. I hear all you moms of kids with sensory integration disorder laughing, or maybe gasping, at that one. I would never take him to a play, because the likelihood of him staying still and quiet for an hour is pretty slim, and the likelihood of him screaming and jumping and disrupting the theatrical experience for everybody is pretty high. But his teacher thinks he'll be fine. I told her to make sure he's sitting on an aisle.