High anxiety

I'm having a rocky second week of school here — trying to calm my daughter down about middle school while at the same time trying to keep myself from jumping onto every possible problem with guns blazing and blood pressure skyrocketing. I think I've already established a reputation at two schools as an overreacting, overprotective mama, and the year's barely a week old. We'll all settle in.

My son seems to be doing that already, as a matter of fact. I had a meeting with his teacher, who shows every sign of being as wonderful as I've heard, and she reports that he's having no problems in class. The meeting was entirely heartening ... until we started talking about the swimming class that all 5th graders go to, and how there will be no aide or teacher with him in the locker room because there are no male aides or teachers and no male lifeguards at the pool, and I started going on and on about what a bad idea it is to leave him unsupervised in a room with a lot of boys, and banging locker doors, and the stress of getting dressed, and the overstimulation of having been in the water, and no adult guidance or adult witnesses, and so many more things that make the red lights go off in my head. The teacher and the child study team leader and the behaviorist were of the "try it once and see what happens" opinion -- but we're talking about a kid with FAE here, and once can be enough for major trouble. Or maybe I'm just hysterical. At any rate, the class isn't until December (traditionally the most stressful time of the school year for him, inconveniently enough), so I have time to calm myself down and plead my case again. Calm myself down. Yeah, I can do that. Maybe. Next week.

For a different kind of anxiety attack, check the latest installment of Ken Swarner's "Family Man" column on Mothers with Attitude, as he tells his kids to Just Say No to drugs, and just says "never mind" when they ask too many questions.