Celebrate citizenship

Today is more than just a day to feel patriotic, to celebrate international adoption and tell happy stories in the press. It's more than a day to dress kids up in red-white-and-blue and take them to parties with other adoptees, more than a day for reciting oaths, more than a day for waving flags. All that will go on, of course, because today is the day that the Child Citizenship Act 2000 goes into effect, and about 75,000 internationally adopted children nationwide become citizens.

But to me, the day means so much more. It is a day to celebrate procrastination. It is a day to celebrate triumph over paperwork. It is a day to celebrate a rare moment of helpfulness and accommodation in the adoption process. For all those children will become citizens automatically, without a paper filed, without a line waited on, without a bureaucrat phoned and yelled at. It's a beautiful thing.

And how much more beautiful for those parents who have been nagging themselves for months and years to get that citizenship paperwork going, gotta fill out one more form, gotta gather one more set of documents, gotta do it, gotta do it. If there's one thing you learn in the process of international adoption, before and after, it's that there's always another form, and nobody's going to do it for you. Gotta do it, gotta file it, gotta wait, gotta go to the courthouse and pick it up, gotta do, gotta do.

And now, you don't. Poof! One step, one obligation, one link in the neverending chain, gone for good. If you adopt a child under 18, and you or your spouse is a U.S. citizen living in the U.S., your child is a citizen the moment he or she becomes your child. Rather as if you had given birth. And that's a good thing.

Now, of course, if you want any actual proof of that citizenship, you will still have to fill out and send in and wait on and call up and chew out. We applied for our children's citizenship long before anybody had the good idea to just do it, and for our waiting and trouble we got very pretty citizenship certificates and letters to each of the children from President Clinton. (I'm sure he hand-stamped his signature himself.)

People will still want to get that stuff, to be sure. But how nice to be able to make the choice. How nice to know that if you don't ever get around to dealing with that one more form, your children will still be legally American. It's enough to make you want to wave a flag, and shred some paperwork into tickertape.

Medical morality

Is it ever okay to sacrifice the life of a child for the greater good? For the good of other children in general? For the good of other children in the same hospital? Is it ever okay to give some babies a placebo instead of a life-saving drug, knowing that without the drug they might die? Is it okay if they never had a chance of getting the drug anyway? Is it okay if their death is the only way for other babies to live?

These are the moral questions posed by a proposed drug study currently under consideration for FDA approval. The drug under examination is a new version of the surfactant sprayed into the lungs of premature babies to prevent Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a potentially fatal affliction to which preemies' underdeveloped lungs are susceptible. To test it on U.S. babies, who have access to existing versions of the drug, would be clearly unethical; it would mean depriving a baby of a life-saving drug he would otherwise have.

Yet the drug needs testing. And testing with a placebo control group is the fastest, most efficient way to do this. The drug company, feeling its new product to be superior and safer than existing versions -- and, undoubtedly, eager to start cashing in on its research -- feels time is of the essence. What to do?

The solution they hit upon falls somewhere between altruism and oppression. Why not do the testing in a poor Latin American country -- say, Ecuador -- that can't afford the existing drugs. Babies in hospitals there do not get their life-saving lung spray. And so giving it to them, for testing purposes, would be an enormous boon. It would literally be giving life to poor children. It would seem to be the best combination of idealism and technology, a pursuit of the greater good that also achieves the smaller good. It turns a necessary evil into unecessary benevolence.

Unless, of course, you're the baby getting the placebo.

If you're the baby getting the placebo, you are specifically and deliberately being denied a drug that could save your life. Scientists are watching you, hoping you will not do as well as your drugged hospital-mates. Indeed, your death would rather boost the statistics. Although there are drugs on the market right now, well past their testing phase, you will not have them. You will not have the experimental version. You will suffer even as people who could help you refuse to do so.

This, of course, has the people who make a business out of ethical concern concerned. The group Public Citizen has urged the Bush administration to put a stop to the planned testing, calling it "unethical and exploitive." One could hardly argue with that. And yet, what will the result of stopping the testing be? Instead of a small number of poor babies not getting the drug, a large number of poor babies will not get the drug. The placebo babies will be no worse off. But the babies who would have received the medication will be enormously so.

There is, apparently, a third option here. The drug could be tested solely against its competitors, skipping the placebo step altogether. The drug company argues that this would double the time the testing takes. Since it plans to sell the tested and approved drug in poor countries at a deep discount, this would prevent poor babies who aren't involved in the test from getting a chance to receive the drug. So again, the greater good. Those placebo babies will suffer not just for their fellow test participants, but for all the babies who would receive the drug in the extra year it would take to test without placebos.

And besides, are companies from richer nations obliged to give medication to poorer nations? Cannot a giver of gifts choose who receives them? If the testing is not actively harming the placebo babies, but merely keeping their care at exactly the level it would have been, why should any more be required? The babies that are helped are helped enormously; are the drug developers really obligated to do more?

As a citizen, as a Catholic who tries to hold a moral center in a world where morality becomes more and more of a liability, and as a person with a deep distrust of drug companies, my tendency would be to feel that yes, there must be a moral obligation in there somewhere. And yet -- as a parent, I can say unequivocally that I would jump at the chance to get my child a previously unattainable drug, even if there was a possibility that what he or she would get would be a worthless placebo. At worst, my child's care would be just the same as it would have been without the test; at best, it would be miraculously better. Those are odds I would take in a heartbeat, and I would be impatient with people who would argue about ethics if it slowed the onset of the testing for even a day.

As a parent, the choice seems clear. As a citizen of the world...not so much.

Which is why I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make the decisions.

Vacation elation

The kids are out of school this week, and they just keep asking, "Why?" Why can't we go? Why is the school closed? Why aren't the teachers there? I tell them that the teachers really need a week off from all the kids, but they're not buying it.

There was a time when I'd be asking "Why?" too. Why do we need a whole week off just a month and a half after Christmas break and a month and a half before Spring break? Why do schools believe that kids can have their year chopped up like that and still learn? Why do they think parents can drop everything and provide care for their kids during hours they've depended on them being in school? I'll be the first to admit that people who deal with kids deserve breaks, but what are weekends for? At least the teachers are paid to kid wrangle. Parents do it for free, and we never get a vacation.

This time around, though, I'm just enjoying the freedom. Freedom from homework. Freedom from making lunches in the morning. Freedom from dragging kids out of bed, through breakfast, and into the car. Freedom from drilling test material into my daughter's head. Freedom from wondering what my son's behavior chart will look like. Freedom from drop-offs and pick-ups. Ah, sweet freedom.

School vacations -- when we haven't actually planned a trip, when the kids are just going to be hanging around and underfoot -- have always seemed like a burden, but this year, when we are working so hard day and night with our daughter to keep her afloat in mainstream third-grade, it seems like a release. Of course, we're supposed to be working with her throughout the week, looking at her next reading story and next math chapter. But if we just float along on a cloud of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel for a few days, who's to know? No hurry, no worry, there's plenty of time.

I have been making her read a couple of chapters from a book with me every night. The current volume is that classic of children's literature, "Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in 'Billboard Dad,'" a novelization of their Academy Award-winning film. Not. I should be worried that although she can read the words, she has absolutely no idea whatsoever where the story is going or what it's about. Not that the plot's so worth following in this case, but does she understand the words she reads at all? I'll think about that next week.

Or couldn't they just make vacation last a little longer?

Talking about adoption: Are you? Why not?

It's happened more times than I can recall: I open my big mouth and mention to somebody -- an acquaintance maybe, maybe a stranger -- that my kids are adopted, and they tell me that they know someone who is thinking about or in the process of adopting. It's nothing we would ever have discussed if I hadn't volunteered my information, yet often I'm able to give suggestions or advice, or just stress to them that what their friend/relative/self is doing is a Very Good Thing.

I hope this means that there are some prospective families out there who occasionally hear from a friend or loved one that they met someone who adopted and was really happy about it -- as opposed to the usual scare stories adopting couples are treated to. Maybe instead of, "Oh, I read all kids from Russia are psychopaths," or "I keep reading about people disrupting or even killing their Russian kids!" or "You'll ruin your life," somebody is hearing, "Well, you know, I talked to someone the other day who adopted from Russia, and she was really very happy."

Maybe not. My kids do have pretty significant special needs, and so maybe the message that gets out is, "This lady says she's happy, but boy, those kids, it breaks your heart." Maybe they're just counting up, hmmm, one with learning disabilities, one with FAE, to add to their total of tragedies. The message I want to get out -- the one I think is far more important than "There are many perfect and problem free kids -- go get one!" -- is, "There will be problems. They are problems you can handle. You can love a child with problems, and be deliriously happy to be their parent. Look at me!"

That's the best I can do, because that's what my situation is. I deal with issues related to my kids' institutionalization every day, and so maybe that's why it's so easy for me to bring up adoption; it's not possible to pretend that my little ones had no life before me. Which makes me wonder about why we always hear "bad" stories about adoption -- international or otherwise -- in the media. Whenever one appears, a big cry goes up in the adoption community: Why don't they ever tell the "good" stories? But are the people who have the good stories telling them themselves?

I suspect that the more happy the family, the more seamless the fit of child and parent, the less damage the child brings to the relationship, the more "normal" everything seems, the more likely that family is to make adoption a non-issue. This may be done in the name of privacy -- it's the child's story to tell when the child is old enough to tell it -- or in the name of protection -- kids will tease the child if they know, and adults will treat him or her differently -- or in the name of good old-fashioned secrecy. But the effect is the same; people don't hear the good stories. They only hear when something goes wrong, and the veil is lifted.

What, then, do we expect the media to do? Send out investigative reporters to comb our communities looking for happy adoptive families, ambush them by their minivans, force them to confess that, yes, our kids are adopted and look how happy we are! Bad news is always way easier to find.

If that bad news rankles you, though, if you feel that the story of happy families like yours is not being told, then my advice is, start telling it. Tell it to strangers. Tell it to acquaintances. Tell it to people at church and people at school. Get a free website from Blogger and tell it on the Web. Call your local newspaper and give them a good, inspirational reason to do a story about you. Write one yourself.

Or enjoy your privacy, but don't complain when unhappy people don't.

Weighty matters

So now that our new president is targeting education, and working to raise standards, and assure every child a right to excel on standardized tests designed for middle-class white kids without learning disabilities, perhaps he can also tackle one of the greatest education-related health hazards facing our great nation today. I'm talking, of course, about the Backpack Problem.

Simply put, all those high standards are causing kids to have to drag home enough books to start a small library. And rather than toting those books in the crook of their tired arms, as generations of students have done before them, they are toting those books in backpacks, some of which weigh as much as a small horse. They are putting these weights on their slender shoulders and turning their tender little spines into question marks. Or they are pulling these weights behind them in stewardess-size suitcases that must surely be putting undue strain on their arms, and really just look ridiculous.

Doctors are starting to worry. A recent study of Massachusetts fifth- through eigth-graders found that on average they carried packs whose mass exceeded 15 percent of their body weight. A third of the students complaned of back pain. It is unknown if they were being asked to, say, take out the trash at the time the pain was reported.

It would help if students wore backpacks that offered good support instead of trendy ones that hang down below their bottoms. It would help if they would wear them squarely over their shoulders with a belt buckled around their waist, instead of slumped over one shoulder. And it would help if teachers would just knock it off with the homework already. But it's more likely that schools will start giving kids sets of textbooks to keep at home so that the need for toting is minimized. This will happen when, like, money starts dropping from trees.

As it happens, though, our little household has indeed had a set of my daughter's textbooks since the beginning of the year. She is classified as special-ed, and was supposed to have an instructional aide helping her in her mainstream class; when we waived that, and decided to let her go it alone, just sending us a lousy set of books must have seemed like a budget bonanza over paying an additional teacher's salary. Perhaps I should have asked them to send us some furniture to go with it.

So my girl has not had to carry more than folders and lunch and the occasional paperback workbook in her big ol' backpack. It's been positively featherweight. No back problems here! And so, of course, she's been unhappy. This is a child who loves to fit in and be like everybody else. If everybody else is eating Lunchables, she wants Lunchables. If everybody else is buying Britney Spears paperbacks from the Scholastic Book Club, she wants a Britney Spears paperback, even though when it comes to actually reading the thing she is not as able as everybody else. And if everybody else is stooped over from the weight of a textbook-stuffed backpack, well, she wants to be stooped over too. Moooom, why won't you let me?

The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was when another student noticed she wasn't putting the assigned books in her bag and accused her of not listening to the teacher. Now, she is a child of many weaknesses, but one of her strengths is listening to the teacher. She is probably the most organized child in that class. She knows when to take her book out, what book, what pencil, what assignment. She may not always understand the content, but she's got the form down cold. She's the one who tells kids who've been out of the classroom for some reason what they ought to be doing now. So the suggestion that she isn't taking books home because she isn't paying attention is insupportable--and the idea of telling everybody she has the books at home alread because she needs help is embarrassing.

So, she's now a member of the too-darn-heavy brigade. She is so excited to be weighted down. Surprises, a little, by how heavy it is, but proud to be one of the bent and crooked. Mr. Bush, could you start working on this problem now, please? Or set aside a lot more Medicare money for back surgery in the year 2050.

Yours, mines, and ours

My kids have trouble saying "mine." Not that they're not possessive about their things. Oh, no, no, no. Noooooo, no, no, no, no. Sitting here at sibling rivalry ground zero, I would never makes such a foolish statement.

It's just that they can't say the word quite right. It comes out "mines," every time, no matter how apoplectically Mama and Papa try to correct them. "It's mines!" "That's mines!" "Where's mines!" "He has mines!"

We hear it a lot. And generally, we've been blaming the misconstruction on their five-year-old cousin, who's been saying "mines" for as long as she's been claiming things that weren't hers. So distinctive to this cousin was the word "mines" that we figured our kids were just mimicking. That's how we wanted them to learn English, right -- by mimicking homegrown kids? Be careful what you wish for.

Lately, though, I've been thinking about the English language -- an activity, to be sure, fraught with peril. The more you think about English, the less sense it makes, and the more you get caught up in the idiocies and idiosyncracies, until every word you look at looks wrong and every grammatical rule seems ridiculous and you spiral down and down and down into utter incomprehensibility... Or just decide not to think about it much.

But when you have children, especially children tackling English as a second language, and most especially children for whom language is difficult to start out with, you are from time to time called upon to understand the way that English works. And explain it. Or at least say, "Honey, it makes no sense to you, it makes no sense to me, it makes no sense to your teacher, but this is the way it is, and you'll just have to memorize it."

And so it is with "mine." Perhaps it is an enduring habit with my two not because they're imitating, but because they're using logic and good sense. And of course, if you're using logic and good sense with the English language, you're most likely going to be wrong. To their way of thinking, no doubt, all possessives end in "s." His. Hers. Ours. Theirs. Its. Mama's. Papa's. The children's. They all end in s, and if they don't, you put an apostrophe on and add an s to the end. Adding an s is how you make a possessive. So why on earth would it be "mine"? Why would one word be so different than every other word with the same function? And why do Mama and Papa keep telling us to do it wrong? They must have trouble with the language, too.

They're not wrong there.

Movie deprived

We've talked here before about what it means to have no life -- that is, of course, to be a parent. Probably most parents notice a precipitous decline in their nights out when they have children, but I wonder if parents of children with special needs notice it more accutely, since our absence from the household even for an evening is more fraught with peril. Is whatever we're going to do worth the risk of a behavioral decline from our challenging child? Is it worth the time we won't be working and interacting with him? Is it worth disrupting everyone's routine? And most importantly, who the heck can we find that's willing to watch him?

We've been lucky lately to have a grandma living right downstairs, so the last question is less troubling. But the others remain, and I find that the kids are not the only ones who cling to their routine -- I cling to it too, and it's hard to rouse myself to plan an evening, get in the car, go somewhere, see something, and get home late. Few movies are so compelling that they give me a reason to break out.

And most of the time it doesn't much bother me. I read Entertainment Weekly cover to cover, so I know what's going on at the cinema. I can have a conversation with adults about popular culture, if I'm ever alone with adults long enough. I know what the folks on late-night talk shows are plugging. But once a year, when the Oscars roll around, I realize how much my life has changed. I used to at least make an effort to see everything; now -- nothing.

I did have high hopes this year, because I did see one film that had Oscar aspirations. That film was Almost Famous, and I love it dearly, but it got robbed in the nominations. I guess I can follow the supporting actress, original screenplay, and best song races with particular interest now, but the major line-ups mean nothing to me.

The other two films I saw this year -- is it possible I only saw three altogether? I'm not counting Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Return to Me is another film I loved, but it slipped off the radar almost immediately. No Oscar noms there. And while I found Disney's The Kid charming, clunky title or no, even I wouldn't try to make Oscar claims for it. So I'm looking at a sort of so-what Oscar night, though I intend to boo Gladiator throughout. I'm not fond of films where families are slaughtered as motivating factors for the hero.

Physically uneducated

Talked to my 7-year-old son's gym teacher this week about the recurring "needs improvement" on his report card, and it turns out that he just flat-out doesn't want to participate in physical education activities.

Which proves that, adopted or no, he's my boy alright.

I didn't have low muscle tone, delayed motor skills, or fetal alcohol effects to blame my low phys-ed grades on. I was just short, slow, and uncoordinated. But if I could have gotten away with, say, telling the teacher I was just too tired to do all those exercises, you can bet I would have.

Severe sleepiness, apparently, is my son's current common gym state. Now, it may be that he really is awake for large patches of the night and therefore sleep deprived; he's always content to lay in bed humming and rocking and not bothering anybody, so unless we sit awake in his room all night, there's really no way to know. (And of course, if he knew we were sitting in his room, he wouldn't sleep at all.)

It may also be that, in sensory-integration-speak, his engine is running low when he's in gym. He may react to his many morning transitions by shutting down, and shut-down looks like sleepiness to him. Since I read entirely too much, I could probably map out a very detailed case for this, though it would likely not include any very constructive things to do about it.

What I really think, though, is that the sleep-deprived act is really a variation on the "spaghetti boy with limbs of lead" technique with which I am so sadly familiar. It's not noisy, it's not actively resistant, it begs sympathy, but what it translates into nonetheless is: "I don't want to and you can't make me." The gym teacher reports that he lays down on the floor, exhausted. I'll bet.

It's still an improvement over the beginning of the year, when he resisted by running around the gym screaming. But it's still not participation, and the teacher is puzzled because she feels he can do everything she's asking. It's a special-ed-only class, with just his 9-child group, and so she's not exactly asking them to slam dunk. Still, I know my boy, and until he's absolutely confident and comfortable and completely able to do a skill, he doesn't want to do it at all. It happened with walking, talking, toilet training, reading--months or years of resistance, and then suddenly complete competence, bam.

Which means that one day, one year, he'll be running and jumping and walking balance beams like a champ. And until then, he'll be fighting it in one way or another, becoming at least the third generation of gym-balkers in my family. I do want him to succeed, but I'll confess I can't be too upset about this particular avoidance on his part. It will, however, make a fine excuse to make him go to bed earlier.

Prematurely mature

If you think little girls today are looking more and more grown up, sophisticated and sexualized, it may be more than just their clothes or their MTV-spawned attitude. Endocrinologists are finding that girls are starting puberty at younger and younger ages, sprouting breasts and pubic hair as early as age 7. Previously, those physical changes weren't seen until around 10.

The theories for this precipitous onset range from fat (today's kids are more apt to be overweight, and that can increase the production of hormones) to lack of exercise (think about how asexual all those ballerinas and gymnasts are well into their teen years) to chemical pollutants (plastic byproducts called phthalates are suspected culprits). And the concerns are that all these early bloomers may attract attention from older kids and adults that they have no idea how to handle or even understand.

If the thought of second-graders with cleavage is disturbing to you, it...well, I have to selfishly admit that it's not so disturbing to me. In fact, secretly, I'm glad to hear it. It means that my two-grades-behind daughter, now a 10-year-old in 3rd grade, will not be the only kid in class with breasts. Since the age of menstruation is holding fast at 12 or 13, she may be the first to go through that transition, but at least she doesn't look freakishly more mature than all of her classmates.

The sad thing is, she's a couple of years away from full puberty, and she already has a bigger chest than me. I wonder if I could get me some of those phthalates?

Good news?: A TV report on adoption remains calm

Well, who knew I was so all-fired powerful? Yesterday in this space, when considering a couple of recent "All children from Russia are psychopaths" news stories, I wondered:

Alright, can someone explain this to me? We have, over the last few week, had several stories about domestic adoptions that could have caused reporters to do some really probing, negatively charged examination of how babies get handed out in the U.S. How does an unmarried actress plagued by reports of eating disorders and passing out at work get the okay to adopt an infant? Are internet agencies and, by extension, anybody involved in arranging private adoptions really just matchmaking, or are they selling babies? If a celebrity couple work apart so much they can't keep their marriage together, how did a social worker suppose they'd be able to parent children together? Are their no safeguards in domestic adoption? No sense? Can anybody with enough money get a baby? Those stories would make my blood boil, to be sure, but I could understand why they were coming up now. I was vaguely aware at the time that our local CBS news affiliate was touting an adoption-related story -- called "Adoption Can Break Hearts," of course -- and given the current trends I was sure it would be another flogging of Eastern European adoption. So imagine my surprise when I heard lines like this coming out of my TV:

America's crowded foster care system keeps adoptable children in limbo for years at a time, even though it is estimated that there are about six adoption seekers for every available child.

In the meantime, however, Americans are bombarded with images of high profile celebrity adoptions. The wealthy can easily afford the fees in this sellers market, which can quickly top $35,000.

Critics say American adoptions lack uniform regulation or consistent enforcement. For instance, the time period in which a birth parent can change his or her mind can range from 12 hours to 90 days. But the biggest problem is when desperate adoption seekers try to go it alone and get lost in the maze. So nice to have a news story not say that the biggest problem is when desperate adoption seekers bring damaged kids from overseas. That's the slant that rankled so much in the recent pair of AP articles on Eastern European adoption. Of course, the local Channel 2 report didn't mention Eastern European adoption; the desperate adoption seekers in its story went to China, where as everybody knows the kids are perfect and not damaged at all by living in orphanages. You can almost hear the news director whispering: "You know, them kids from Russia, they ain't right. We're just not going to mention them."

But I'm being defensive. This was a program with a generally less-than-hysterical tone and an appropriate point of view: People who want to adopt are left with few options because the American adoption system and foster-care system are not operated in a responsible and appropriate way. It was relatively non-demonizing of all the individuals involved; even the father who was choking back tears at the thought of returning his nearly adopted infant to her birthmother admitted that it was the birthmother's right. My blood remained its appropriate temperature through the entire segment. For a report on the problems of adoption, it was remarkably hyperbole-free, and so I would like to present those responsible with the first Mothers with Attitude "No Attitude" Award, for reporting on adoption and special-needs issues in a nonalarmist manner. May there be many more.

Still, though, couldn't they have called it "Uncompleted Adoptions Can Break Hearts"?

Another round of international-adoption scare stories

Alright, can someone explain this to me? We have, over the last few week, had several stories about domestic adoptions that could have caused reporters to do some really probing, negatively charged examination of how babies get handed out in the U.S. How does an unmarried actress plagued by reports of eating disorders and passing out at work get the okay to adopt an infant? Are internet agencies and, by extension, anybody involved in arranging private adoptions really just matchmaking, or are they selling babies? If a celebrity couple work apart so much they can't keep their marriage together, how did a social worker suppose they'd be able to parent children together? Are their no safeguards in domestic adoption? No sense? Can anybody with enough money get a baby?

Those stories would make my blood boil, to be sure, but I could understand why they were coming up now. But in fact, no one much questions how celebrities adopt (do they even need homestudies?), and after a flurry of righteous indignation, the saga of the biracial twins caught in a tug-of-war between two sets of adoptive parents has pretty much faded from view, taking all those sticky private adoption questions with it. And so, in need of a cheap readership or ratings boost, the media has gone back to one of its favorite bloodsports: attacking international adoption.

There's actually nothing new on this story, no fresh outrage, just the same old statistics to pump and sad parents to pity. Many of the folks quoted in stories like the one by Deborah Hastings, which has been circulated by AP to papers across the country, or the one that popped up recently in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, have been telling their tales of woe for years, whether in the news or on internet e-mail lists. Our heart certainly goes out to them. But must it continue to go out, over and over again? For no new reason?

And must the tone of the article always be so grim? And must the title always be something like "Foreign Adoption: Bringing Heartache Home"? And must they always contain lines like these, from Hastings' piece:

"It has taken a decade for Americans to realize that hidden in a deluge of children adopted from Eastern Europe are untold numbers of violently and profoundly disturbed youngsters."

"Two Russian children, a boy and a girl, lost in America with little hope of redemption, seemingly destined for prison or worse and adopted from agencies that lied or misled, their parents claim."

"They arrive by the thousands from loveless orphanages in Romania and Russia, adopted by Americans desperate for children. Among the immigrants are deeply damaged youngsters who will try to kill new siblings and family pets."

And must they always ignore lines like this, also from the AP story:

"Since 1990, more than 100,000 foreign children, the majority from those two countries, have been adopted into American families. Most fit fine."

Hello? Most fit fine? Then why don't we ever hear about them?

Or, for that matter, about the percentage of children adopted domestically through foster care, babies adopted privately, or for that matter children who are not adopted at all but living with perfectly nice birthfamilies, who grow up to be psychopaths? Surely we've got enough homegrown ones of those that we could lay off the little immigrants for a while.

How I booked my flight

High up on the desk in the corner of my bedroom, I keep stacks of books I'm meaning to read. The stack of light, fun reading stays pretty static, because I never get to it. The stack of serious books on neurology and child development gets higher and lower as I buy new books and plow through them. It's been stacked high lately because man, some of these books, brimming with good content as they are, are murder to get through. The ones written with parents in mind fly by, but are often so fluffy you wonder if you're missing some heavier content. But the ones written for professionals have such heavy content that it's often hard to pick yourself up off the chair afterwards. Sometimes this is because you are asleep.

On a recent plane trip sans kids (and have I mentioned how very pleasant air travel is when you don't have to spend the entire time entertaining and shushing small persons?), I was able to knock two books off my pile. Well, not really; I knocked one book off the pile, bought two new books, and read one of them, for a total transition of one additional book.

But I did read two. The westbound choice was Ann Streissguth's Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Guide for Families and Communities, which is one of those volumes that leads you to shout "Yes!" periodically, to the dismay of your fellow passengers. I'm happy to recommend it to anyone dealing with FAS/FAE, or contemplating adopting a child who might be affected, which for my money would be just about any child in Eastern Europe. The great thing about the book--and the thing that's hardest to find in literature on this subject--was that it held out hope that the secondary effects of fetal alcohol (prison, teen pregnancy, drug abuse) could be ameliorated by early diagnosis and intervention, forthrightness about the disability, and an understanding that things like consequences and cause and effect will always be difficult if not impossible for these individuals to grasp. Realistic expectations and a willingness to head off problems before they start are key. I can do that for my little FAE guy. I have been for a while, and it's good to know I'm on the right track.

And helpful in that mission would be a book like the one I read on the way home, The Explosive Child by Ross Greene. The author posits that, just as some kids with neurological or other challenges may be delayed in speech or motor skills, they may also be delayed or inmpaired in their ability to handle frustration. And kids who can't handle frustration will get stuck and not be able to find a reasonable way out of a frustrating situation. So the pressure builds and builds until they explode. Parents of these kids, Greene suggests, will do better to head the problem off early, before rational thought becomes impossible; adding to the pressure by discipline and demands only makes the crisis worse, and reasoning with the child when the incident is over does no good because reason isn't something the child can access during an implosion.

I can sure see the wisdom in this approach. It's fairly similar to the one in Raising Your Spirited Child, one of my all-time faves in special-needs parenting. My son doesn't explode so much as freeze, like a computer that's stuck on one page and won't get off no matter how many keys you pound or curses you shout. I've definitely learned that heading off problems is hugely more effective than trying to deal with meltdowns once they've started. If that's a new concept to you, or if your child is having problems with aggressive behavior (as seems to be a trend now on so many of the mailing lists I belong to; is it the moon?), check out Greene's book. I read it in one sitting, but of course, I was thousands of miles away from my own spirited kids at the time.

Married with adopted children

The recent breakup of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, splashed across the TV and the internet and every supermarket tabloid in creation, gives me cause once again to think about the media's ever-so-sensitive treatment of adoption. Every report I heard or read was careful to mention that the couple had been married for 10 years and had two adopted children. What their adoption status had to do with the story is never revealed. So why does it even have to be mentioned?

Maybe because it always has been. You never read anything about Tom and Nicole's two except that they're adopted. It's been in every news story about this power couple. And somehow, I've never felt it was intended in a positive light, never an indication of how nice it is that these two beautiful people formed their family through adoption. It's always seemed to me to be a snide little comment on how something's not quite right with these two. Sure, they look great, they're big stars, they have everything, but their children are adopted. Not quite perfect, are they?

Maybe I'm just being sensitive. It's not like I keep my kids' adoption a big secret. I've been known to blab about it and then wonder why I felt a need to. But I think, in my own defense, that the revelation usually has at least some relevance to the story I'm telling. The media seems to feel no such compunction.

At what point, one wonders, does a family just become a family and not an adoptive family? Alas, the Cruise-Kidman kids may never find out. As their parents move on to other relationships, they will always be the kids adopted in this one. But even for non-celeb, non-divorced, non-disrupted families, I suspect that the adoption label never really goes away. In happy times, that may be fine. But in tragedy, it becomes a curse. A child with problems is heartbreaking under any circumstances, but an adopted child with problems is a heartbreak you asked for.

I'm reminded, in all of this, of the time recently when someone pointed out a young woman in a wheelchair to me and said, "Now that's a real adoption horror story." Turns out she was adopted as an infant, contracted a degenerative disease in her teens, and was now paralyzed. And yet, of course, the most important fact about this was not the tragic disease, but the fact that she was adopted. Would someone, in a similar situation, call it a real childbirth horror story?

About as likely as the media talking about childbirth methods used the next time a married-with-children star couple implodes.

They need me, they need me not

Last week, I had to go out of town, alone, for the first time since we adopted our children in 1994. I'd never been away from my son overnight; I'd only been away from my daughter one night, when I took her brother to a way-out-of-town specialist. At that time, years ago, she was hysterical in my absence. Knowing how much my son needs his routine to keep in even precarious balance, I worried that he might melt down. Both kids have been doing well in school this year--would missing Mama disrupt that? Put them in a tailspin? Have repercussions months from now?

I worried, because that's what I do. I wrote notes to the teachers, to make sure they would be extra understanding and supportive through the inevitable tears and tantrums. I drilled my husband in all the reasons he should expect and tolerate worsened behavior. I talked to the kids on a daily basis about how I had to go away and it was okay to feel sad and everything else would be just the same and everybody they knew would help them. I determined to call once or twice a day from my remote location. But given my kids' various disabilities--language and learning for my daughter, fetal alcohol effect and all its attendant memory issues for my son--would it be enough? Would they process my absence? Would they remember I'm coming back?

Well, I'm back now, and...well...um...I have to admit that it appears my being away made no difference at all to anybody. They did just fine. Teachers report no major behavioral changes. Father reports no major behavioral changes. Children report no particular unhappiness. Oh, they missed me. They were glad I was back. My son's special-ed class even made a Welcome Home poster for me with everyone's signatures on it. But in terms of falling apart without my healing presence...hey, Mom? Get over yourself.

And I'm glad, of course. Of course I'm glad. It's what I hoped. It's a big milestone. It's huge, really, this new ability for both of them to handle change. Good for them. Really. I'm proud of them. And I should be. I should be delighted.

So why do I feel like chopped liver?

Short story: Space aliens ate my car

Every so often, it is the privilege of a publication, even so meagre an online one as this, to introduce the work of a promising new talent. And so it is with great pride that Mothers with Attitude presents the first work of fiction produced by ... well, by my son, age 7.

To be more accurate, he is creating works of fiction constantly, sometimes to amuse himself, sometimes to get out of trouble. This is the first to be recorded in print and, significantly, the first not to be merely a creative recycling of the normal, everyday activities of his family and friends. It is entitled, simply, "Outer Space People."

An alien from outer space took our engine and he never brought it back. He ate it for lunch yesterday. It's in his tummy. He will never show anybody the engine. I looked under the hood and there's no engine.


The alien is big. He's red and the alien has a big car on his head. He has a big long tail that can go around the world. My grandma saw it and she said "Whoa!"


I told my mom when I was playing with my big red car. And I told my dad too after he came home from work. And my sister saw the engine was missing and she cried. And I'm sad too. And that's it.

Agents, publishers, please send your queries directly to this Web site.

The story has already had its first public reading, in my son's special-ed class, and I am told the audience enjoyed it very much. It's all quite heartening because it's been apparent to me for some time that although my boy will never be able to be in the world in an ordinary way, he may be able to find an extraordinary one. Unless we start medicating him with horse tranquilizers, he's never going to be a desk-job kind of guy, but I feel (and his teacher agrees, God bless her) that he might be just fine in a creative field, one where energy and lack of discipline and following your impulses are not necessarily detriments. He could be an artist, an author, an actor, a comedian, a composer, a computer visionary. Anything where somebody serious handles your day-to-day details and you just get to be your own special spontaneous self.

Politically inexcusable

I never watch the ABC late-night talkfest "Politically Incorrect" because...well, frankly, because I can rarely stay awake much past the kids' bedtime. And also because I can hear plenty of political incorrectness in my very own home, workplace and place of worship--I don't need to tune in for more.

But word of a recent episode has been buzzing around special-needs circles, and so I made a point of hopping over to ABC's Web site and checking out the transcripts. To save you a trip, I'll go ahead and quote them here--just in case you, like me, enjoy a good dose of righteous indignation of a morning to get your motor running.

The episode aired on Thursday, January 11. Appearing with host Bill Maher were guests Cynthia Garrett, former host of NBC's "In Concert" and the late-night talk show "Later"; Jay Nordlinger, managing editor of "The National Review,"; Sarah Ferguson, sometime royal and Weight Watcher's spokesperson; and Martin Short, who just really needs some TV exposure right about now. The part of the chat we're concerned with this morning went something like this:

Bill: But I've often said that if I had --
I have two dogs --
if I had two retarded children, I'd be a hero.
And yet the dogs, which are pretty much the same thing --

[ Laughter ]

What? They're sweet.
They're loving.
They're kind, but they don't mentally advance at all.

Cynthia: I'm going to throw my shoe at you for that one -- oh!

Bill: What? Dogs are like retarded children.

Jay: The show is living up to its name.

[ Scattered boos]

Sarah: Boo.

Cynthia: My 9-year-old nephew is retarded.
I've never thought of him like a little dog.

Bill: Well, maybe you should.

[ Scattered boos ]

Sarah: But I don't think you ought to use the word retarded.
I don't think that's right.

Bill: Don't use the word "retarded"? Well, what word should we use?

Sarah: Just a regular person.

Bill: But they're not a regular person.

Sarah: Well, they are regular people.
They have a heart and a soul.

Cynthia: Limitations.

Bill: They have a heart and a soul and a brain that's retarded.
That's a fact, people! Excuse me!

Sarah: No, because you can't say that.
Do you know their brain is retarded --
this word retarded? They could just be lacking in the ability.

Bill: That's what we call retarded.

[ Laughter ]

I mean, people, are you all retarded? I mean --

[ Laughter ]

That's a fact.

Martin: I'm not gonna comment.
You're a hideous, cold person.

Bill: I'm a truthful person.

Now before you start flexing your angry e-mail fingers, you should know that, contrary to everything his show stands for, Maher has already apologized for his insensitivity. It is not known how many ABC-owned guns were pointed at his head, but he has even told the New York Times that he feels terrible about what he said. Sure you do, Bill.

Still, though it's possible to doubt the sincerity of the apology, it is nice to know that there is still a line, somewhere, over which it is possible to step. And that the demeaning of disabled persons is still on the unacceptable side of that line. So many people are taking so much pride these days in being so insensitive, one can never be too sure about these things. Perhaps it's good, every now and then, for someone to go too far, just to be sure there's a too far to go.

Does paying a fee buy you a baby?

No sooner has Ally McBeal and her baby faded from the front page than another adoption story takes its place, this one considerably less warm and fuzzy. Those of us who have jumped through the adoption hoops may wonder how celebs like Calista Flockhart get babies so easily, and gossip about how much money must have changed hands, but that's never part of the media's take. But this latest tale has even nice-guy Matt Lauer from the Today show talking about baby-selling.

It's certainly a tale that brings "buyer, beware" to mind. An Internet adoption broker matched a pair of twins with a California couple, for a $6,000 fee. Then--because the birthmother changed her mind? because they hadn't made enough money? because they could?--the broker placed the children with a couple from Wales. Since California gives birthparents 90 days to change their mind, the birthmother was able to take the kids from couple one on the pretext of a closure visit, deliver them unto couple two, and presumably pocket some of the $12,000 that changed hands.

Not wanting to wait 90 days--they'd sure seen the pitfalls of that--the Welsh couple hightailed it to Arkansas, which waives any wait, and obtained a legal adoption. They then headed home, way off in Great Britain, leaving the California couple crying foul and threatening lawsuits.

This is the sort of thing that makes adoption look bad, to be sure. But as we tsk about paying brokers, anybody who's gone through an international adoption will have to admit that they paid money they would not want Matt Lauer to look too closely at. We think of it in terms of paying for the service of being matched with a child, not paying for a child, and that's no doubt the trappings of this new situation, too. Unless you're adopting a child from foster care--and good luck doing that--money is going to change hands somewhere. Whether you pay a birthmother's pregnancy and birth expenses or make large donations to foreign orphanages, the process costs money, and has no guarantees. If you were indeed paying money in exchange for a child, you'd at least have some recourse. But since we don't do that, adoptive parents are pretty much acting on good faith and prayers.

So it's hard to feel too sorry for the California parents, who may have been moving toward adoption but presumably knew that the birthmother had a right to restake her claim. They may be unhappy that she did so, and unhappy that she misrepresented why she was taking the children, and unhappy that she turned around and gave them to somebody else, but it's hard to believe they have any legal resource. It's not like someone stole their TV set. They did not yet have a legal right to those babies, and the person who did exercised hers.

And at the same time, it's hard to feel too good about the Welsh couple, who knew about the Californians, fled from any chance of contact with them, arranged what can only be thought of as an inappropriately expeditious adoption, and left the country. The mother has been quoted as saying "It may not be moral, but it's legal," and she's right--it's not moral. What kind of start is that for a forever family? If you can get away with it, it's okay?

And it's certainly uncomfortable to make a justification for the birthmother and agency, although they are probably the ones most within their rights here. The birthmother, under the laws involved, had the right to choose her babies' birthparents. And if the broker was indeed paid not for the specific child but for matching the parents and birthparents, then she certainly had a right to collect again if the first match went bad. It's a service, don't you know. If you pay a matchmaker and you have a bad date, you don't get your bucks back.

All of which is why so many people find international adoption to be so appealing. No birthparents to return, no laws sympathetic to them, and a world between you and your baby's past. There may be bumps along the way, but chances are, if you get those children home, you're going to keep them. Hey, it works for the Welsh.

Coaster caution

Good news for us chickens! There is now a serious, studious, medically-sound reason for not riding roller coasters: They make blood clots on your brain.

That's right, we no longer have to admit to being scared or worried about wetting our pants or losing our lunches. Neurologists in Japan have found that riding those super-monster-mega roller coasters that every amusement park is erecting, each one more towering than the last, can actually rupture tiny blood vessels in your head, causing subdural hematomas. Who knows exactly what subdural hematomas are, but they sound nasty, and you need to have surgery to remove them. Victims have suffered from terrible headaches before being declotted. One 73-year-old man died. And what was he doing on a roller coaster, anyway? His grandkids have a lot to answer for.

Kids, of course, think they're bulletproof; they'll never say, "Wow, that roller coaster looks awesome, but I might get a subdural hematoma. Better go on the merry-go-round instead." They'll gladly risk blood clots for a few minutes of sheer terror. And that's why they have parents. To ruin their fun, dampen their sense of adventure, and guard their tiny blood vessels. It's a thankless job, rife with wrestling and whining, but one I'm up for.

Especially if it means I don't have to ever ride a super-monster-mega coaster ever again.

Watching the watchers

We're not one of those families that outlaws television. Are you NUTS? Parents who do not sometimes need to tie small children in front of the TV to get a few moments blessed peace are made of stronger stock than I. We try not to let it interfere with homework time and meal time, but sometimes TV-watching is our family time. And I won't apologize for that. Though I will be defensive about it.

My kids' taste in programs often skews too young; they'll both be happy, at ages 7 and 10, to watch the little-kid cartoons on Nick Jr. My 10-year-old daughter watches Zoom, which is somewhat age appropriate, but also watches DragonTales, which is somewhat not. Happily, though, she seems to have lost her interest in Barney.

My son does enjoy the evening Nicktoons, and my daughter does watch the horrible Nickelodeon variety and comedy shows as well as the way-earnest Disney channel dramas. But each of them is starting to make non-kid-oriented choices in their viewing, and I wonder if it says something about their future tastes and directions in life.

My son, for example, will sit rapt in front of the Food Network. For him to sit rapt in front of anything is a small miracle, since he is a boy who needs to move. But to watch him watch, say, Martha Stewart make pancakes with such unwavering attention makes me wonder if we have a budding chef on our hands. He does like helping his Papa in the kitchen. He does have the play stove that originally belonged to his sister in his room now. I've always felt he would have to find some creative way to be in the world because the normal ways would not contain him; I suppose cooking is creative. I can see it now, 20 or so years down the road: "The Hyper Chef!"

My daughter's TV tastes, on the other hand, are more spiritual. Her channel of choice: the PAX network. Hardly a night goes by when she doesn't finish her dinner quick so she can go watch "It's a Miracle" with Richard Thomas. It's a show with all the cheesy hallmarks of reality TV--cheesy reenactments, fervent descriptions by the real-life participants. But in this case, the stories aren't about crimes and mysteries but about miracles, ordinary and extra-. The woman who found her long-lost friend in a diner after car trouble stranded her there. The man who saved people from a car crash at the very spot where he earlier crashed. The people who by sheer coincidence were in the right spot to save a drowning boy. The adoptive mother who fell in love with an ailing baby while somehow not noticing the daunting array of machinery surrounding him. The planeload of passengers who should never have survived an airline disaster.

Pretty predictable stuff, all of it. Not profound, really, and yet it does bring a tear to your eye. Even as I realize that just about any story that involved any degree of coincidence could become a miracle just by editing and Thomas's gentle urging, I do believe there is a higher force guiding us. And while it's hard to believe that He has enough time to guide not only the humans on "It's a Miracle" but the animals on "Miracle Pets," it's nice to think so. I mean, how else could that blind dog have saved that rip-tide-caught teen swimmer?

My daughter loves this stuff, though how much she really understands is debatable. She's something of a miracle herself, my girl. They thought she was going to die! She languished in an orphanage for nearly five years! A New Jersey couple who never wanted to adopt overseas was mysteriously led to look at her referral! Authorities in Russia delayed, but this family was meant to be! Tests shows her to be severely delayed in language; would she ever be able to function in her new land? They said a regular-ed classroom would destroy her, but she's thriving now in 3rd grade!

That is, if she doesn't waste too much time watching TV.

No battle zone

My kids started a new school this year, and I have to say, it's nice. It's very nice. It's too nice. Nice things keep happening, and my fight-the-school reflexes are twitching. I'm used to doing battle. It's hard to do coffee instead.

Yet that's what I was doing last week. I arrived early for a meeting with my son's teacher, and the principal took me down the teacher's lounge for a cup of coffee. This is a refreshing change from last year, when the principal regarded me as Public Enemy #1. Had I consumed any cup of coffee she offered me, I might not be here typing today. But of course, she never offered.

On the way back to the office, New Prinicipal made a point of telling me how well my children are doing. He thinks my son is funny, and will grow out of his behavior problems. Old Principal liked him just fine except when he was jumping and making noise and disturbing her assemblies, which was pretty much all the time. She wanted him OUT of her school, and only the fact that I wanted him there--and that principals can only make life miserable for special-ed students, they can't actually evict them--kept him around.

Am I remembering the old school in too harsh a light? Probably. We were happy there for many years. I got along fine with everybody until I forced my daughter to be in a mainstream class nobody thought she belonged in, and forced my son to be kept in a special-ed class where everybody thought he was disruptive. Folks, that's why he's in special-ed. Deal with it. They did, but not happily. The year was far more of a struggle than it had to be. When the opportunity to transfer the kids to our neighborhood school arose, I jumped at it. The time had come to cut and run.

And what a nice place we've run to. The principal is friendly. The secretary lets me roam the halls; no more waiting outside the office for somebody to come and fetch me for meetings. The teachers think my kids are in the right place and doing fine. The Child Study Team has gone out of its way to accommodate my parental whims. It's nice. Nice, nice, nice.

Alright, the principal did yell at me once, when I dropped the kids off in the wrong place. There's no proper parking lot, so I have to battle sidestreet parkers and then hike to the school. And they still have those ridiculous Christmas pageants that take up weeks of class time for rehearsal. But at least the kids only had to learn a few songs, and the thing didn't go on forever. It was really very ... nice.

Star child: Another celebrity adopts

Call her Ally McMom: The big celebrity news yesterday was that Calista Flockhart, she of the dancing baby and anorexic physique, has adopted a baby boy. The birthmother is reportedly a medical technician who already has four children, and the actress was there on New Year's Eve to watch the birth. The new mama says she's always wanted to adopt, and may do so again.

And so, we wish her well, and offer congratulations. We guess.

It's hard, when celebrities adopt, to not feel just a little bit catty about it. Or maybe a lot catty. How long did she have to wait for that baby, we wonder. Many of us normal mortals who have adopted have jumped through hoops for the privilege, gone through months and years of paperwork and forms and suspense and heartbreak; why is it that celebs seem to be able to order up a baby like they were ordering a pizza? (Not to suggest that Ms. Flockhart actually orders pizza.) How much money changes hands? Who handles these transactions? And how on earth do some of these people pass homestudies? Don't social workers ever read the National Enquirer?

And why do they always adopt healthy newborns? When you think of all the money and time and support and resources celebs possess, it seems a shame that they're not all adopting older children with special needs, who need all the resources they can get. It's nice that they want to form their families through adoption, but why does it always seem they're bopping to the head of the line to score those perfect infants, probably plucking them from the arms of perfectly nice unknown families who have been waiting years and years.

And yet... If we all had had the ability to bypass all those hoops and headaches, would we not have done that? We can wish that the system was that streamlined for everyone, but I don't know that I can begrudge stars that ease. Should they insist on waiting? The upside of celebrity is that some things just come easier, and while it's uncomfortable to think of a baby in the same terms as a table at a chic restaurant, there's probably an analogy there. The downside of celebrity is that every problem that kid has down the road to adulthood will be recorded, analyzed, and overexposed; and when he finally reaches adulthood, he'll write a nasty book. In the long run, I think I'll take the extra hassle at the beginning in exchange for being able to make all my parenting mistakes in private.

None of us much likes to have our adoption choices and family make-up second-guessed, though that certainly doesn't keep our friends and relatives from doing so. Perhaps we should extend a little grace to celebrity adoptive parents, and give them the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, stars' adopting publicizes adoption in a positive light and makes it seem a more desirable thing to do, and that's got to be good for all adoptive families.

So congrats, Calista. Good luck with that little guy. And keep your strength up, okay? You're going to need it.

Buying is easy. Reading is hard.

You remember the Scholastic Book Club. You get the little flyer from school, and you pick out the books you just must must must have or your life will be dark and dreary, and you beg your mother to buy them, and she does because she believes reading is good and enthusiasm about reading is better, and a few weeks later the slender little paperbacks come home, and go into a pile with the other slender little paperbacks you've had to have and then never looked at again, and the overall clutter of your house increases by .05%. That's the way it works around here, anyway.

This time around, we are adding to our clutter a 107-page book about a dog, "Red Alert"; a trio of small chapter books called "Winter Love Pack," and an unauthorized biography of Brittany Spears. I will be thrilled if she reads them. I will be thrilled if she even ruffles the pages. But why should they be unlike any other books? She'll admire the covers, and put them away.

Yet when the next flyer comes, we'll buy more. And one of these times, we'll institute a reading program to make her read. How we'll do that with the 17 hours we already spend on homework, and the four hours a week of Sylvan, and the remedial sessions I've just had the teacher add, and pesky things like sleep and eating, who knows. And given the pace at which she reads, that 107-page book should do us for a few years.

But at least she's asking for chapter books and Brittany Spears, and not picture books and Barney. That's a step up. Her TV tastes run toward "Dragon Tales" and "Clifford," hardly suitable material for a 10-year-old, even a 10-year-old who's in 3rd grade due to learning disabilities and general developmental delay. She's already taken some heat at school for not denouncing the purple dinosaur; good thing I don't let her watch Teletubbies.

So let her friends see her buying books. Let them fill up her room so there's no space for the Sesame Street toys. Let her at least aspire to appropriateness. Let's hope that one day, she'll actually crack the things.

And let's hope she doesn't notice how many books mama buys and never gets around to reading.

Smelling trouble

My son won't go near me in the mornings.

I creep into his room, gently rouse him from slumber, and he opens his big blue eyes, fixes me with his solemn gaze and says, "Go away! You smell bad! Take a shower!"

It's a touching moment.

If I were the sensitive type, this would cut me to the quick. But I have learned not to be sensitive with this child. He repeats phrases he's heard. He gets into routines. He sometimes says, "I hate you!" with the same loving tone as "I love you" (though thankfully, he says "I love you" more.) He understands language and uses it creatively, but he doesn't understand feelings and sort of disregards them entirely. He's a sweetheart, but tact ain't his strong suit.

So it doesn't bother me when he says I stink. Much. I can pop on my therapist-mom hat and speculate that his sensory-integration difficulties make him sensitive to certain smells, and therefore it's a medical thing, not a judgemental thing. Though, come to think of it, there are no other smells that bother him. And in my humble olfactory opinion, his Papa has smelled worse and received no such objection. It's just me who's banished until he detects the gentle bouquet of Lever 2000 on my skin.

I could let it worry me. I could obsess about bonding, and whether this represents a snag in our fabric of attachment. I could worry about cruelty, and whether he thinks its funny to say mean things. I could reflect on all the times I cleaned his stinky, poopy butt when he wore diapers, and hold a grudge. I could punish him for hurting my feelings, I could force him to be in my malodorous presence, I could report it to a neurologist, I could drag him to a psychiatrist.

But mostly, I just take a shower. And I think about the day when inevitably his body will change and he will no longer smell sweet for days at a time. It is then that I will get my revenge. For now, I wait. And use extra deodorant.

'Tis the season

Holiday highs and lows: Are the holidays finally over now? Is it official? Can we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives? Can no new toys enter the house now until birthday time?

Let the conspicuous consumption end. Even the kids -- the very same kids who nagged us to put it up -- are nagging us to take down the Christmas tree. Time to put away the lights and the bulbs and the garlands and the outdoor decorations we never quite managed to get up this year. Time for the kids to get back to school and not have any days off again, ever. Or until the end of February, whichever comes first.

We had a good holiday season, considering I was too exhausted to appreciate most of it. Against all odds, the presents that needed to be bought got bought and the packages that needed to be wrapped got wrapped and the mail order that need to be shipped got shipped. And the mama who needed to collapse collapsed. Maybe I'm a Grinch, but I'm glad it's over. I now have nearly a year to gather the will to gift again. And if I ever wonder how many days I've got to go, my children will be happy to tell me.

The low point was probably Christmas mass, when my son was so out of control he had to go to the baby room for the first time in months. There, he developed an elaborate little routine for himself wherein he collected all the programs from all the pews and pretended they were Christmas cards he was going to mail. One little boy watched him, and then said, loudly, "Somebody's loony," and made the spiral around the ear that is the universal sign of contempt for crazy behavior, and kept doing it and making faces until I had to go over, put my hands on his little shoulders, and say, "You are in church. It is not okay to be mean in church." He stopped, but he still rolled his eyes any time my son went by. Didn't phase my boy in the least. He had mail to deliver.

The high point, though, came at a party where we saw a number of old friends who we knew as singles, and then through all our marriages, and now with all our children. I hadn't met some of their kids, and the kids hadn't all met each other, but they all played together fine. My son had a bit of trouble sharing, but so did all the other kids. No one called him loony, and I had to issue no threats.

Just as a parent and a friend of the families, it was nice to watch the little ones interact. (Plus watching the kids gave me an excuse to hide out in the basement instead of interacting with the adults, but that's another story.) But as a parent of special-needs kids, it was especially interesting to observe the different levels and abilities. For one, I was shocked by how old some of the kids looked -- kids I could have sworn weren't born that long ago -- and then I realized that I was judging them by my son, and that kids who looked about his age were actually only four or five. He's seven, but tiny and developmentally delayed; when I don't see him around "normally developing" kids, I lose track of that.

Then there was another boy, a huge child, bigger than my son, who turned out to be only two. His mother has a problem I've never experienced: Everybody thinks her son is much older than he is, and expects behavior he's just not capable of. What a blessing that my guy, whose behavior lags so far behind his chronological age, has a physical appearance that lags far behind, too. I think he gets away with a lot that he wouldn't if he really looked seven.

I watched one little girl, adopted from China early last year, warily take in the scene of playing kids, and then orbit on back to her mother. No attachment problems there. I watched how a pair of energetic little boys loved to jump off a step and onto a beanbag chair, and wondered if they might have sensory-integration related issues that made crashing a desirable feeling for them. Or perhaps they're just little boys. I watched how jealous my niece got when somebody tried to play with my daughter. And I watched how nicely my daughter -- much the oldest kid in the room, having been adopted at age 4.5 when most of our friends were having babies -- played with the much younger children.

Maybe a career as a teacher isn't that farfetched for her. My son, on the other hand, has decided he wants to be a principal. Good thing they're both getting back to school.

Standing ovation

Yesterday was the holiday concert at my children’s school. The songs were pleasant, the performances generally tuneful, the performers cute as could be. Grades Kindergarten through 5th took the stage one at a time, sang three songs with accompanying hand gestures and dance moves, and got off. As school holiday concerts go, it was painless and prompt. But what pleased me most about it wasn’t the music or the costumes or the moves. It was this:

My son stood still.

I think he sang, too, though from our seat in the way-back it was hard to see if his lips were moving. But easy to see that he stood in his place, without jumping, without screaming, without wandering away. He did suck his fingers between songs, but otherwise he was, in all senses, with the program. And this is an achievement even greater than getting 50 1st-graders to stay on-key.

Standing still and staying in one place are not my son’s strengths, by a longshot. And the sort of constant disruption to his day presented by program rehearsals have been a problem in the past. Last year, the rehearsing got so out of hand that he didn’t want to be in the show, and I told the teacher to yank him. His behavior took such a notable dip during the weeks of daily concert drills that it took him a month or more afterward to recover. I thought that he’d probably rise to the occasion and behave for the actual concert, but they burned him out way before it ever got to that point.

I’ve nothing against holiday programs, but I do wonder why the planning for them has to take so very much time. Rehearsals weren’t as out of hand this year at his new school, but they were still having practices on the stage more than a week before the actual event. With so many days lost to holidays in the first part of the school year--sometimes it seems that weeks go by without five days of school in a row--one wonders if there aren’t more important things for kids to do than rehearse. Like, maybe, study? I don’t mean to deny the educational value of music, or the disciplinary value of learning to perform as a group, but unless I’m sending my kids to the Elementary School for the Performing Arts, I don’t expect it to monopolize their time.

For most students, maybe, it’s not a big deal. But for my special-ed son, the practices are a problem. They’re disruptions in his carefully memorized, dependable routine. They’re opportunities for overstimulation. They’re chances to misbehave in front of the whole student body. And, Grinch that I am, I haven’t always felt that the payoff of being in a show was worth all the stress and strain to get there.

But yesterday, at any rate, the payoff sure was sweet. He stood where he was supposed to, he did his hand motions, he probably even sang. He didn’t wander around, as he did at his preschool graduation ceremony, or bat at the decorations, or kiss the kid next to him. He stood still and did what needed to be done. And though that’s probably a small victory in the greater scheme of things, it’s one I’m pretty proud of.

Cold weather

How sick is too sick to go to school?

Tell me now, because my son is coughing and I’m going to have to decide within the next hour whether he’s ailing sufficiently to earn bedroom time or whether he’s well enough to go to school and cough on his classmates.

If it was up to me, I’d rely on the equations that have defined illness for me since I was 7 years old myself: Fever = sick = stay home. No fever = well enough = get your butt out of bed. I know I’m not alone in this understanding of what it means to be sick, because there have certainly been enough movie and TV scenes of kids doctoring thermometers in order to attain the magic 100+ figure that allows them to cancel class. And considering how many days of snotty, sniffling grossness a kid can amass of a winter without actually breaking 98.6, the fever benchmark has seemed essential in keeping children in school long enough to actually learn something.

But it’s felt at times as if school personnel have not shared my zeal to keep my mildly ailing kids in their seats. One winter, when my son’s snottiness had reached biohazard levels, his teacher asked me to keep him home when he had a cold. I pointed out that he had had a cold since October, and would probably have it until February, and did she want to come to the house and tutor him? Moreover, being as he’s in special-ed, he gets all his much-needed physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy at school. How could I keep him home if he was alert enough to attend, ooze or no? I did keep him home a few days, then sent him back. Our pediatrician’s advice was to not panic or bring him to the doctor unless he’d been oozing for weeks. Then again, seeing the SRO state of the waiting room that winter, she may have had her own agenda.

And I may have mine. I like sending my kids off to school. I like it a lot. I need the break. I need to work, and whether I’m working at home or working in the office, a kid-free state is preferable. Even when my son was only in school half-days, those half-days were gold to me. I don’t give them up easily. If the kids are really, debilitatingly, feverishly sick, there’s no question I’ll keep them home and care for them. But it’s those days on the borderline, where they’re not quite well and not quite sick, where judgment comes into play. I judge them well enough. The school judges them gross and disgusting.

I don’t suppose I can blame them. They’re concerned for the health of the other kids (who in fairness probably gave the cold to mine) and for their own as well. My feeling is that if you don’t want to be around snot, you probably shouldn’t go into early childhood education, but that’s just me. Truth be told, I don’t particularly want to be around sickish kids either. That’s why I send them to school.

Making a list, checking it twice

I’m sure I’m not the only parent who wonders if the holiday season of amassing new toys should be preceded by a purging of all old, broken, unused toys from the home. In that spirit, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has come out with its annual list of 12 toys that it would like you to seek out and get rid of right now. Go! Do it! They’re not kidding!

The toys in question have been recalled from stores, but since the CPSC can’t actually come to your house and rifle through your toy box, they have to rely on parents to stay informed and zealously pursue safety. To this end, they’ve posted detailed information on their Web site about the disgraced toys, and are releasing a public service TV spot in which folksinger Tom Paxton will sing about them.

I can’t quite imagine what a recalled-toy folk song might sound like, so I’ll have to reveal the terrible twelvesome in somewhat less poetic form. More information is available at the CPSC’s site.

Item recalled: Pokemon Balls given out in Burger King kids meals.
What’s wrong with it: Suffocation risk--half the ball can fit over small child’s nose and mouth.
Where to return it: Any Burger King restaurant.
What you get: Free small fries.

Item recalled: Tangled Treeples Toy given out in KFC kids meals.
What’s wrong with it: Suffocation risk--container can fit over small child’s nose and mouth.
Where to return it: Any KFC restaurant.
What you get: Free individual-sized food item.

Item recalled: Fazoli’s Pasta Pals given out in Fazoli’s kids meals.
What’s wrong with it: Suffocation risk--container can fit over small child’s nose and mouth.
Where to return it: Any Fazoli’s restaurant.
What you get: Free lemon ice.

Item recalled: Kent Kickin’ Mini-Scooters and Kash ‘n Gold Racer X20 Scooters
What’s wrong with it: Crash risk: Handlebars can unexpectedly break off or break apart.
Where to return it: For the Kent scooter, call 1-800-451-5368; for the Kash scooter, bring it back to the store.
What you get: New handlebars or a new-and-improved scooter, respectively.

Item recalled: Toy Basketball Nets from Ohio Art, Little Tikes, Today's Kids, Fisher-Price, Franklin Sports, Huffy Sports, Lifetime Products.
What’s wrong with them: Strangulation risk: Small child’s neck can get caught in net.
Where to return it: Call the manufacturer; numbers are on CPSC Web site.
What you get: Newer, safer nets.

Item recalled: Sky Dancer Flying Dolls
What’s wrong with it: Collision risk: They don’t always fly where they’re supposed to.
Where to return it: Call Galoob at 877-598-5599 for instructions.
What you get: Product of equal value.

Item recalled: Wiggle Waggle Caterpillar
What’s wrong with it: Choking risk: Small balls can come unattached and stick in little throats.
Where to return it: Call Child Guidance at 877-586-1006 for information.
What you get: Another toy of similar value.

Item recalled: Battery-powered toy riding vehicles from Tek Nek Toys, Empire Industries, Fisher-Price.
What’s wrong with it: Fire risk: Battery charger on the Tek Nek and Empire vehicles can overheat. And an inability-to-stop risk: Foot pedals on Fisher-Price motorcycles can get stuck on “on.”
Where to return it: Call Tek Nek at 877-446-7719, Empire at 800- 872-1869, or Fisher-Price at 888-289-9292.

What you get: Replacement battery charger or foot-pedal repair kit.
Item recalled: Busy Poppin Pals
What’s wrong with it: Choking and laceration risk: Small springs inside toy can come loose.
Where to return it: Call Playskool at 877-518-9743.
What you get: Free redesigned toy.


Item recalled: Klackeroo
What’s wrong with it: Choking risk: Small pieces can break loose.
Where to return it: Call Playskool at 888-671-9764.
What you get: Redesigned replacement toy.


Item recalled: Leapfrog Alphabet Pal electronic pull-toy
What’s wrong with it: Choking risk: Small piece on pull string can come off.
Where to return it: Don’t; just cut the piece off.
What you get: Apparently nothing but a mutilated toy, though you can call Knowledge Kids Enterprises Inc. at 877-477-6641 and complain.


Item recalled: Xylophone Mallets from Stand-Up ‘N Play Tables
What’s wrong with it: Choking risk: Mallets can stick in a child’s throat.
Where to return it: Call Shelcore at 800-777-0453.
What you get: Free replacement mallet.

Drug detective

Here’s a bulletin from the Food and Drug Administration: Don’t trust your doctor.

Well, they didn’t put it quite that way. Instead, in an effort to defend themselves from accusations that they approve new drugs too quickly, administration officials are warning that your doctor may not be reading all the fine print before prescribing the latest miracle medication. And that it’s doctors’ heedless ignorance of precautions--not the FDA’s heedless, drug-company-urged rush to put drugs on the market--that causes people to die from side effects. And then the drugs have to be banned, though they might have helped so many.

Drug tests are necessarily limited, the FDA admits, and it’s not always clear how millions of people will respond to new drugs until millions of people are taking them. But often new medications do come with advice on who they should not be prescribed to, and, apparently, often doctors just can’t be bothered to read that advice. So whose job is it to make sure the wrong people don’t take the wrong pills? Why, us, the patients! As if we don’t have enough to do.

Now I know we all feel sorry for our doctors, poor overworked and underpaid wretches that they are, and don’t expect them to actually read the reams of material that comes with...oh, wait a minute. These are the folks that charge us $75 for ten minutes and keep us waiting an hour for the privilege. Surely sometime in their busy schedule of golf and conferences, they could find time to actually find out what it is they’re prescribing. Or at least hire someone to figure it out.

But no--we expect too much. We are to take that prescription slip home, hit the internet, and figure out if it’s right for us or not. The FDA recommends questioning doctors about new prescriptions--Why are you giving this to me? Why is it better than what I was taking before? Do you have a clue what you’re doing? Hey, where are you going with my clothes?--but there are of course two problems with that. One: If the trouble with these new prescriptions is that doctors don’t know what their prescribing, how is asking them going to help? They don’t know! And two: Doctors don’t like to be questioned. Particularly if they don’t know. But even if they do. Sometimes I think Nike got its slogan from the medical profession: Just do it.

Amusing as this carping between the FDA and the doctors is, I know where it’s going to end. The next time you hear about this dispute, the doctors will have an answer: It’s the patient’s fault. They come in here clamoring for some medicine they saw on a commercial, and though we haven’t had time to fully investigate it, we have to give it to them to keep them happy. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Hey, it worked with antibiotics.

Get smart

The other day in the paper, I saw an ad for one of those after-school tutoring places that’s guaranteed to raise your kids’ grades and diminish your savings account. In big letters, it said something like, “When smart kids can’t learn.” And it made me wonder: Is everybody smart now? Is no kid allowed to be average, or less than? Are we all smart but for various reasons just can’t get with that smartness? The thinking seems to be, if a kid’s getting a C, it’s not because he’s a C student, it’s because he’s an A student with issues.

And that’s fine, I guess. Good for the self esteem--of the parent, if not of the kid. But sometimes, I feel like I’m living in a giant Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. And since my daughter clearly isn’t, where does that put us?

Smartness seems to be the gold standard of international adoption. How many e-mails have I read on Russian parenting lists that start with, “She’s really smart, but...” and go on to list any number of dire problems. Maybe they’re RAD, maybe they’re OCD, maybe they’re sensory-integration impaired, maybe they have a host of ills that post-institutionalized kids are heir to, but at least they’re smart. One mother recently lamented that they could accept all the other problems her child brought, but now it appeared that he was just not intelligent, and she didn’t know if she could deal with that.

That sort of thinking rankles me, but in truth I have been known to hold out my own son’s smartness as a point of honor, though his behavior and developmental delays put his smarts in a pretty big shadow. Until he can control his impulses, his intelligence is kind of a moot point. He can’t be in a regular classroom, he can’t do regular work, he can’t be with kids his own age, he can’t be with mainstream kids at all in any productive way. But hey--at least he’s smart.

And then there’s my sweet, friendly, pretty daughter, who can be competent and who can acquire skills and sometimes retain facts, but who is hardly on her way to being a leading intellectual light. She can appear smart; the teacher says she’s a whiz with math facts, and her classmates probably notice that she always calls out the right answer more than they notice the really basic mistakes she makes on tests. She is certainly hampered by learning disabilities--and yes, we have her at one of those tutoring factories--but I wouldn’t characterize her as a smart kid who can’t learn; I’d characterize her as a hardworking kid who’s eager to please and is doing the best she can with the brain she’s got. And what’s so bad about that?

We all like to believe that smartness is what counts, that brains will get you ahead, and that therefore lack of smartness--or at least the appearance of smartness--will be an insurmountable hurdle. But you don’t have to look too far to see that there are many successful people for whom “smart” would not be the first or second or fifthieth thing you’d say about them (insert your own George W. Bush joke here). And there are undeniably smart people whose smartness tends to work against them (okay, insert your own Al Gore joke here).

Can’t we restore some glory to being average? Are we so snobbish that we can’t acknowledge and appreciate averageness--in our children, or in ourselves? Being average may not be the most glamorous of jobs, but somebody’s got to do it. Maybe the reason those smart kids can’t learn is that they’re just not that smart. And as my daughter the philosopher would say, “It’s not the end of the world.”

Maybe she’s smarter than I thought.

Growing girl

For years, people have been telling my daughter that “Pretty soon, you’re going to be taller than your mom!” I got tired of hearing that pretty quick. Soon even she got tired of it. Other people did not, and we’ve heard it constantly.

So the good news, now, is that we’re not going to hear it anymore.

And the bad news is, it’s because she has finally passed me by.

It’s not unexpected for a daughter to eventually be taller than her mother, but age 10 seems to me to be a little soon. By the time she’s a surly teenager, she’ll be towering above me. Goodness knows I’ve still got the advantage in the weight class, and can push her around if need be, but that won’t last, either. She has all the makings of a big, strong, sturdy woman. And I have all the makings of a weak little shrimp.

I suppose nobody really expects adopted children to have the same body type as their adoptive parents, but to have a daughter who so clearly did not come from my stock is a little disconcerting. It’s one of those things that forces you, in the course of casual conversation, to choose between giving out private details of your child’s life or lying about it. It surely will not be long before people, innocently, will look at tiny me and towering her and wonder about recessive genes in my family, or statuesque siblings, or height hidden somewhere in our roots. Perhaps I can get away with a smile and a “Yes, there sure must be some height in her family tree somewhere!” without specifically mentioning that it would have to be in her birth family tree. Just nodding and allowing the implication that my genes somehow hold the secret of hers seems dishonest; but do I really have to say “Well, she’s adopted” every time someone comments on our size disparity? Surely not.

My son actually does have a body type that looks like it could be all in our family--short like me, skinny like his dad. It almost makes me grateful for the developmental delays that stunted his growth. My daughter is delayed in everything else, but her physical growth just keeps on keeping on. It will be interesting to see where it ends. In the meantime, I’ve got to start wearing higher heels.

Here's looking at you

A recent report on the intellihealth Web site has got me thinking. It concerns a new high-tech system for neonatal intensive-care units that allows parents of premature infants to visit their little ones via the internet when they can’t be at the hospital, check on the child’s status at any time, access information about any medical conditions their baby may be suffering or prone to, and videoconference with doctors, nurses, even the tiny patient.

I think this is just an awesome idea. And I think it should be expanded. Specifically, I think such systems should be installed in every school in the land. Now. Today. I’m waiting.

This is the sort of constant access to information on my children I’ve been craving. What does my daughter look like when she’s taking a test? Is she really resisting the urge to peek at the paper of the person across from her? Turn on the camera, and I’m there. What is my son doing to warrant those sad faces on his daily chart? How precisely is he torturing the music teacher? Let’s have a look. Six hours is a long time to be away from my kids (though don’t get me wrong, I NEED those six hours), and it’s not like I can count on them to give me anything more than a one-word answer to “What did you do today?”

Some day cares have been offering parents live internet views of their youngsters at play for years, so the technology does exist. But I do so like the extras that the NICU parents have had access to. No more hassles about scheduling meetings with the teacher; we’ll just videoconference. No more waiting for report cards; daily progress reports can be posted. No more wondering about third grade math; tutorials online, anyone? No more failing to bring home homework assignments; it’s all there on the Web site.

Now, I suppose this would probably raise my property taxes. Technology is cool, but it’s not cheap. And the schools would of course have to hire teams of techies to keep it all going. But I don’t care. I’m consumed with curiosity. And they do so discourage parents from hanging around outside the school and peeking in the windows. Give me the hidden cameras. Now. My daughter’s got a test today.

Do you hear what I hear?

Here’s a new medical study from the ‘But we already knew that’ file: Men, researchers have found, only listen with half their brain.

Women, when listening, show activity in both the left and right temporal lobes. Men, in only the left. Since the left lobe is the one most closely associated with language, one wonders what women are doing over there in their right brains. Empathizing? Intuiting? Judging? Exercising telepathic abilities? Thinking about what to have for dinner? Silently willing small children to be quiet so she can keep listening?

Maybe women’s brains are just organized better, so that they share the load evenly. Everybody knows that if you use one side more than the other, the other gets flabby, and who wants a flabby brain? Keeping things even is more efficient, and leaves you more brain left over to think about other things. Researchers noted that women can listen to two conversations at once, and maybe it’s because they give over more of their brain to the task. Of course, the researchers being male, they also posited that women use more of their brain to listen because listening is harder for them.

Their wives probably told them that was hooey, but they weren’t listening. Perhaps the most surprising part of this study was that men listen at all. No wonder only half their brains were active--they were forced to actually sit in a lab, with earphones on, and do nothing but listen. What torture! No newspaper, no ball game, no distractions, just pure unadulterated listening! Half their brains were probably in shock. And it’s not like they had to pay full attention anyway--they knew they could always ask their wives later, “Hey, what was that stuff we were listening too, anyway.”

And maybe that is the ultimate reason why women use more brain to listen--they’re listening for two.

True feats of daring

Much hype in the media recently about some magician fellow in New York City trapping himself in a block of ice for days on end as a test of survival and endurance. New Yorkers could allegedly walk by and watch him freezing in there, and be awestruck. Or more likely amused--confinement in a cake of ice is hardly the height of physical challenge for New Yorkers. You want endurance? Try a long subway ride in a crowded car. You want to live in a block of ice? Try an apartment with a chintzy landlord. You want survival? Try jaywalking.

Or, I’d suggest, try being a parent. I don’t know if this David Blaine has children, but his rather unimaginative notions of what constitutes survival in tight spots indicates not. Therefore, I’d like to help him out by proposing a few more frightening stunts for his next foray into feats:

* One car. One parent. Two kids. One Sesame Street audiotape. (May I suggest the one where Grover sings “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea”?) One long drive. Can he survive with his sanity intact?

* One pediatrician’s waiting room. Fifteen sick children spraying germs. No ventilation, no air-conditioning, no way out. Can he survive with his immune system intact?

* One set of Chuck E. Cheese tubes, high overhead. Trapped in a cylinder barely big enough to move in. Toddlers to the left. Toddlers to the right. Puddles of unkown origin. Can he escape without injuring small children?

* One small schoolbus-shaped playtent. One determined child who wants you to PLAY. Endless scenarios that make no sense. Extreme heat and discomfort. Cramped muscles. Numbing boredom. Can he endure the ordeal without injuring anyone’s self esteem?

* Many noisy children. One harried mom. One dad who goes off to perform silly stunts and leaves her with all the work. He’s never seen a block of ice like he’s going to see when he gets home. Can he thaw her out, or will he run down to the basement and hide in his old glass coffin?