Love that technology

I have no plans to buy a big expensive video iPod -- my old iPod mini is working just fine for me -- but I'm way excited over the fact that the iTunes store is now selling episodes of TV shows that can be watched on the computer, too. Talk about filling a niche I didn't even know existed! For now, the only shows available are a few ABC shows (including hot tickets "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives") and a couple of Disney Channel sit-coms (which my daughter's going to be bugging me for), but surely it won't be long before other networks jump on, and I'll be able to, say, do something else on Sunday night at 8 p.m. knowing I'll have a $1.99 episode of "The West Wing" waiting for me the next day. Sure, I could tape it, but history shows that I'd probably forget (even if I did have a working VCR). How cool to have backup.

Having "the talk"

I've been trying for some time to think about how, when, and whether to talk to my son, now 12, about sex. On the one hand, he's probably past the age at which he should know the nuts and bolts about the birds and the bees. On the other hand, giving his impulsivity and tendency to perseverate on words and phrases, I'm afraid he might share any information given to every stranger he meets, or maybe shout it out in the cafeteria. Is no news good news? The authors of Sexuality: Your Sons and Daughters with Intellectual Disabilities say no: You've got to tell, and you've got to tell now. Children with special needs are extremely vulnerable to abuse, and all the more so if they're ignorant of the way things are supposed to work. The book spends a lot of time dealing with the need to give intellectually challenged kids satisfying, full lives, and not as much dealing with problems like my cafeteria nightmare, but it's still interesting reading for parents who are trying to figure out how our kids will fit in the real world, and how we can best get them there.

Somebody put some clothes on this girl

Here's yet another story to make me feel ancient: Esquire magazine has named Jessica Biel as its "Sexiest Woman Alive." Now, I'll acknowledge that I'm not exactly Esquire's target audience, and so its selections will always be somewhat inscrutable to me, but ... Jessica Biel? My daughter watches DVDs of early "7th Heaven" seasons on a more or less constant basis, so it's hard enough for me to think of the actress who plays tomboy Mary as a woman, much less the sexiest one alive. I know she's 23 now and all, and has spent a lot of time and effort and publicist dollars to be seen as anybody but tomboy Mary, but sheesh. The sexiest woman alive? Really? Hmmm.

Another view of autism

I've been reading a lot about autism lately -- whether it's a disorder or a difference, and whether curing or even treating it is approriate. Those seem like bizarre questions to parents who devote so much of their lives to finding ways to help their children fit in and succeed, but a lot of people with autism are starting to stand up and say, "Don't cure me!" There's a very effective portrayal of that point of view at Getting the Truth Out, but although some of it may be difficult reading you have to keep going all the way through, because it starts out saying something very different than what it actually means.

Middle school torture

Reasons why I'm glad I'm not in middle school #1,565,823: My daughter has to do something in her social studies class involving current events. She has to find a story in the newspaper, write a summary of it, pick three vocabulary words and find definitions for them, and then present the whole thing in a mini-oral report to the class. The prep work is hard enough for a reading- and writing-challenged kid, but it's do-able. But standing up and saying it in front of everyone! Talk about torture at a time in a kids' life when what they most want to do is be either a) cool or b) unnoticed. I was worried about whether my girl would be able to pull it off, but she went today and got a 90 on her presentation, and whether that's a mercy grade or a true reflection of her ability, at least it's over. She won't have to do it again until everyone else in the class has had their first turn, and since the teacher gives kids who aren't ready one day the chance to do it the next, that could take a while. My daughter didn't believe me when I told her that it was good to be one of the first people to go because then you can spend a long stress-free time of not having to worry about it and watching others squirm, but she's learning. More about that than about current events, I'm thinking.

What does RAD mean to you?

Here's a headline in our local paper that caught my eye ... and made my jaw drop: "Children learn it's good to be RAD." Of course, as it turned out, the subject of the article was not Reactive Attachment Disorder, which was what I automatically assumed and something I think we can all agree it is not good for children to be. It was for some dopey-sounding self-defense program called "Resisting Aggression Defensively" that trains kids to assault strangers who may be trying to abduct them. I think they might want to consider changing that acronym, but maybe this is just one of those things that separates those who read and think too much about special needs from those who don't know their RAD from their ADD, and don't much care.

You have HOW MUCH HOMEWORK?

We're singing the squandered-our-homework-time blues tonight. The kids had a day off from school today, so last night getting the homework done was no big deal, and this morning they still had all day, and this afternoon there was still plenty of time, then all of a sudden -- hoo-boy, where did all this work come from! Big page of hard math problems for my daughter, lots of pages of words to write for my son, lots of stress and nagging for their Mama and Papa. Looks like time management isn't much of a strong suit for any of us this week, is it?

TV or not TV

I can still remember a time, pre-children, when the start of the TV season was a big deal for me. I would read every word in the "TV Guide" Fall preview issue, plot out my viewing, eagerly anticipate those start dates. Even right up until we adopted our kids, I was still into the new shows. I remember being sorry when we went to Russia for the adoption that I would be missing episodes of two new programs I liked, "Friends" and "My So-Called Life." By the time we got back a month later, the shows had gone on without me and I had gone on without them into a world where it was hard to make a commitment to any TV that started before bedtime and hard to stay awake for anything after.

This year again the TV season sort of snuck up on me, and now there are premieres all over the place and I'm watching them sail by. As I posted earlier, I did catch the "Everybody Hates Chris" premiere last Thursday, but missed the "Commander in Chief" one last night because homework went waaaaay beyond 9 p.m. "Lost" repeated its season opener tonight and my husband and I actually sat together and watched that and the second episode that followed, but I don't know; I was badly burned by "Twin Peaks," and might not have it in me to invest in another More Mysteries Than They Know What to Do With kinda series. About the only series I've watched with any regularity in recent years is "The West Wing," which is now on Sundays at 8 p.m., virtually assuring that I will either forget it's on or be otherwise child-occupied. As with most shows, come to think of it.

Have you caught up with any new or returning shows this year -- anything that's impressed you, or depressed you? Tell me about it in the comments, 'cause that's about as close as I'm going to get to watching any of this stuff.

Cursing kiddies

So here's how young it starts: My son was playing video games with his cousins yesterday, with much yelling and competitive chatter, and every now and then I would hear my nephew, who just started first grade, yell Jesus! in frustration over some losing move or other. I let it go a few times, but then I just had to go out there and do my "Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain" speech. Is leaving the tender confines of kindergarten and hitting the mean streets of first grade all it takes to turn kids into little blasphemers now? I don't know what sort of sociological conclusions we can draw from this, but if I try really hard I'll bet I can find some way to blame 50 Cent.

Hey, I'd GIVE him the coins

I'm beginning to think you can tell who is a parent of a child of a certain age by noting their response to this question: "Do you have 50 Cent?" My son's been asking that question wherever he goes, and parents of younger children or those who have limited child-exposure tend to pat their pockets, looking for quarters, and maybe correct his grammar or his greed. Those with kids who are taking an active and peer-pressured interest in music, however, know that he's trying to find someone with a CD by that rapper his mom won't let him listen to. They also know the right answer to the question: "No."

Everybody hates commercials

I've been looking for a nice family show to watch with my daughter for quite a while. Most family shows these days, even those in the "family hour," are pretty likely to have more double entendres and jokes about sex than I really want to have to explain to a language impaired middle-schooler. The Disney sit-coms she likes to watch are clean, alright, but aren't anything I'm eager to spend any time in front of. So "Everybody Hates Chris," the new sit-com about Chris Rock's childhood on UPN, sounded promising, sharp and funny for me, focused on kid-problems and situations for her. And indeed, I found very little that was objectionable about the show itself when we watched the premiere last night. But the commercials. Oh, my. The ones for "Eve" and "Love Inc." featured jokes that were sex-related enough to make me uncomfortable but not enough to go on my daughter's radar. The ad for "Sex, Love and Secrets," though, was way over the top; couldn't they have kept the sex more of a secret? UPN may not have enough child-friendly programs to air during a child-friendly sit-com, but couldn't they be a little more discreet with what they do advertise? It's hard enough to find a show a family can watch together on TV these days; when I do find one, I don't want to be diving for the remote every time the commercials come on.

Brought to you today by the word "rotten" and the number 50

The word of the day is "rotten." That's what my son says I am. And says and says and says. He said it when he got in the car after school. He said it to every person at my office when I stopped by to pick something up. And what is the cause of all this maternal rottenness? I won't let him download songs by 50 Cent for his iPod shuffle. Or songs by Green Day. I perform the unpardonable offense of looking up song lyrics on the internet, and refusing to buy those whose words aren't intended for the ears of 12-year-olds. My son is pretty sure this makes me the meanest mom in the world, since his friends at school get those songs. But a funny thing happened when he proclaimed my rottenness to the folks in my office: Most of them said they wouldn't buy those songs for kids, either. Maybe he just happened upon a little pocket of meanness in an otherwise tolerant world. Rotten luck for him, that. ... If you're mean, too, check out my tips for being a music monitor on About.com. You, too, can be rotten.

Catching up

How the heck did it get to be Wednesday already? I've fallen way behind in my blogging duties. Before I move on to more important things, I did want to follow up a little on the Emmys. I was amused, watching the red carpet entry show, that all the stars were making such a big effort to look like just plain folks, albeit just plain folks wearing fabulous dresses and jewels. They kept talking about their kids and the normal things they did while getting ready for the evening. It was pretty hilarious when the glamorous Mrs. Trump went on about how she cooks dinner, but the best by far was Jennifer Love Hewitt, who claimed to have spent her day eating In-n-Out burgers and cleaning her refrigerator. Uh-huh. I think if I were at all successful as an actress, the very first luxury I would give myself, before I bought the sportscar and the house in the Hollywood hills and the pricey shoes, would be somebody to clean out my refrigerator for me.

Anyone up for an Emmy chat?

The Emmys are on tonight, and even though I hardly watch TV anymore, I'm always up for a good awards show. Or a bad awards show, although I reserve the right to hit the mute button if some poor celeb is really humiliating him or herself. I can usually count on my daughter to watch award shows with me if only to make fun of the dresses, but tonight there's some sort of must-watch Aaron Carter event on the Disney channel followed by a special, send-the-parents-screaming-out-of-the-room revival of the beloved big-ol'-dog movie "Beethoven," so her evening is otherwise spoken for. So I am going to try again to do what I have failed so resoundingly at in the past, which is to find other homebound but Emmy-watching folks to chat with during the event. If you've subscribed to the Mothers with Attitude Daily Dispatch and get posts from this blog sent to your inbox, you can go to the chat page of our Yahoogroups site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mamatude/chat and crack wise with me. I'll be passing through regularly starting about 6 p.m., when the dress dissing begins on E! and the TV Guide channel, and then park myself there for good around 8 p.m., when the ceremony starts on CBS. Stop by for a short or a long while and keep me company, why don't you? If you're not a group member but want to chat, go ahead and join for tonight (click on "Subscribe" under "Links" at right) and ditch out tomorrow. I'll forgive you.

The nonsense continues

It looks like I'm going to be getting a new part-time job: Calling and bugging people in special education offices. Not to mention writing letters to people in special education offices, sending faxes to people in special education offices, stressing out about why people in special education offices are such *@/$%)# obstructionists. I've been trying to avoid taking things to the next level with my son's aide situation because, frankly, I don't need a new part-time job. But the clock is running, and if the situation's not resolved satisfactorily by 5 p.m. Monday, at 9 a.m. Tuesday I go to war.

Meanwhile, today an administrator at my kids' school gave me some work to do and then was shocked to find out I was a parent; she thought I was an aide. So I appear to have moved up from being taken for a child to being taken for an employee. Take that, cafeteria lady!

Special-ed staffing nonsense

Honestly, wouldn't you think that the special education department of a largish school district would at the very least want to be organized? Or at least look organized? I'm dealing with ongoing 1-on-1 aide nonsense with my son, and so far every skirmish, every misunderstanding, every angry phone call, could have been easily avoided with the simple provision of a list to the school administration of which kids need aides and which aides have been assigned to them. Yet such a piece of paper does not seem to be forthcoming. I've been stonewalled, and I've sat in the principal's office listening on speakerphone while he was stonewalled. I've escalated my phone manner from apologetic to polite to firm to livid, and we still don't seem to have an answer. All of which leads me to believe that either 1) There is no such list, and they're just throwing people wherever somebody's yelling for one; 2) There is a list, but it has such significant problems that they don't want anybody looking at it; or 3) They have a list and could provide it but prefer to play political games with handicapped children. That third possibility is scary, but would at least indicate that somebody has a plan. Honestly, though, I think the answer is probably #1, and that's just inexcusable. It's not like a truckload of children needing aides suddenly enrolled in the district on September 1; we're not in Baton Rouge. They've known about these needs since the spring. How is it possible that no firm and comprehensive staffing plan was made? I'm sympathetic to the challenges of managing a large number of cases with multiple service needs across a large number of schools, but wouldn't that make you want to be more organized?

I guess I should just shut up and be grateful that nobody thought I was a child today.

I'm not a 'girl,' either

So yesterday, I griped about people at my kids' school, present and past, who would cheerfully tell me I looked like one of the kids, in a friendly way that indicated I would think that was flattering or funny. Bad enough.

Today, I got yelled at by the cafeteria lady.

I had gotten permission for my daughter to enter the school early if she stayed with me. We went to the room near the cafeteria where she stores her trombone during the day, and as we were leaving the room the bell rang, at which point it was okay for her to be unescorted. She headed off to her locker ... just as the cafeteria lady came out, guns blazing. "You girls!" she yelled. "What are you doing back here?"

Excuse me?

I looked back to see who might be getting in trouble along with my daughter, and to come to her defense, and saw that the Guardian of Hallway Correctness was wagging her Finger of Justice at me! When I hesitated, a little incredulous, she barked at me again. "You girls! Why are you back here?" And maybe if I hadn't just been grumbling about this, I would have laughed or at least been a little gentler in my response. But instead, I marched up to her and said "I'm a MOM. I'm her mom. And she has permission to be here." My daughter, poor thing, added "It's okay if I'm with her." Pointing at me. You know, that other girl. We were finally allowed to pass without further hassle, but without apology, either. And I think I was owed one. With extra groveling.

Sheesh. I've been doing great at school this past week, working at the library, meeting all the people who will work with my son, conferring with the principal over one thing and another, feeling like the very model of a responsible adult, and people keep cutting my short little legs out from under me. What do I have to do? Wear high heels and a business suit whenever I'm in the building? Invest in a grey wig? Wear a placard, front and back, that reads "Hey! Parent Here!" This is getting ridiculous.

I am not a child

At what age, I wonder, is it flattering to be told you look like a child? Children might not care one way or the other, although the fact that they count their birthdays by half- and quarter-years indicates that even little ones don't want to be taken for littler ones. Preteens and teens, certainly, expend an enormous amount of energy and fashion cash trying not to look like children. People in their 20s are pretty determined to be taken for adults. Maybe at some point in one's 30s, the thought of recapturing childhood has a bit of allure, but at some point beyond that it just becomes insulting, doesn't it?

So why do people think it's so cute to tell me, as I walk around my children's school on parenting business, that I look like one of the kids?

I look at myself in the mirror, and I can see that my wrinkles have wrinkles. My chin has a chin. My hair is thin, and more than a few strands are grey. I do not look like a middle school student. So any remarks to that effect must really be comments on my height (all 4'10" of it), my style of dress, or the way I do (or don't do) my hair. And in no case would those be considered complimentary. Yet I'm supposed to smile and be flattered that I've been taken for a 12-year-old? What's up with that? It happens so frequently (and happened even when my kids were in elementary school) that I can't just take it as a mistake of someone with bad eyesight. Perhaps I'm being oversensitive, and most 46-year-old women would love to be mistaken for a 6th-grader. But I think not.

Fundraiser fatigue

I can see already that creative fundraising for Hurricane Katrina victims is going to be a thing this school year. So far, I have a memo from the physical education teachers at my kids' school about some complicated touchdown event they need to get pledges for, and from the junior high group at our church about participating in a car wash benefit (although, isn't a fundraiser that involves water in pretty bad taste?) I know it's good to get kids involved in altruism and all, but I can see a long fall of fundraisers ahead and it just makes me wonder, as with so many school benefits for the band and the Home and School and charities many and sundry, can't I just write a check? Our family has already contributed to the Red Cross, but I'll make another big donation just to avoid soliciting pledges from friends and helping out at car washes and, I don't know, buying pies. I guess this makes me a Grinch or a bad sport or something. But the school year's only a few days old, and I'm already starting to feel fundraiser fatigue.

One disaster after another

It's odd seeing all the Sept. 11 remembrances this weekend playing out against the backdrop of the ongoing Hurricane Katrina drama -- sort of like, "We interrupt your current disaster to bring you these images from a previous tragedy." For the people directly affected by the terrorist attacks, I don't suppose the memory ever fades, but for the rest of us, time just keeps on passing. Back on Sept. 11, 2001, my kids were in their second year at an elementary school they've both graduated from now. I was in the second year of a job it looks like I'm going to be leaving now. Since that frightening day, my daughter's become a teenager, my son's grown to within about an inch of my height, my children's last grandparent has passed away. Life goes on, as impossible as that may seem when the tragedy is fresh, and four years from now we'll be having memorials for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and looking back, vaguely through all our own personal history, to remember what it was like when New Orleans was underwater and on the news 24 hours a day. Those of us, that is, who are blessed to not have had our whole lives washed away.

What would you have done?

My son started middle school this week, a perilous time even for the most socially adept kiddos. He's not that, for sure, but I thought the fact that he was in a self-contained special-ed class with as many layers of protective personnel around him as I could manage might keep him from attracting the attention of his judgmental non-special-ed peers for at least a few weeks. But no. Today, after I'd picked him up and tucked him away in the minivan and stood nearby on the sidewalk waiting to flag down his sister, I heard a knot of girls gossiping. And what they were saying was, "Did you see that boy in special-ed, always doing this?" They used my son's name, and imitated his flapping-jumping-bobbing walk. And maybe because I work in the school library and lead a book group and talk to kids there all the time, I said, "Hey, girls? That's my son you're talking about, and he's right in the car here. So shhh!" They sort of closed ranks and moved away as I added, "He's trying his best." And then proceeded to spend the rest of the time before my daughter finally found us trying to keep him from getting out of the car and putting himself back on display.

When I told my husband the story later, he said he wouldn't have talked to the girls at all -- "they're just kids." So now I'm wondering -- did I make it worse? Having a pushy mom who walks you in and out of school and chastises classmates on your behalf isn't exactly the coolest middle school accessory. Is he now going to be that weird kid with that weird mother? I'm not sure the girls were even saying anything all that mean about him, except that he was noticeable, which he certainly is. If you'd been there, and it was your kid, would you have spoken up? Blown it off? Or stood there and silently suffered?

Uninterruptedness has its drawbacks

Aaaaaahhhh.. A nice long day with the children at school and no one home but me and the dog. A day for writing and working without interruption from small boys yelling "Play with me! Play with me! Play with me!" A day for finally tidying up my desk, straightening up the living room, cleaning up the bathroom. A day with no excuses for not getting all those things done. A day that I darn well better have something to show for at the end. A day when ... hmmm. How long until the next school vacation, now?

Back to school ... almost

The back-to-school countdown is really on now. My kids have their school supplies. They have their new school shoes (although my daughter has already decided that the lace-up yellow Skechers she just had to have hurt her feet). The anticipation is so thick, it's actually going to be kind of hard to get through the last, idle day of vacation tomorrow. Maybe we'll all get up early and take a test drive to the school, although without the normal morning traffic it's not going to be much of a test. We're kind of itching to be at it, though. In a couple of weeks when we're up to our ears in homework, I'm going to be wondering what was the darned hurry.

Perspective is good

I've been meaning to come by here and share the results of my Thursday meeting with the administrators and teacher at my son's new middle school. I was going to say that the meeting went really well, everyone said the right things, it looks like my son's going to have a great year, but of course there's a screw-up, they have him sharing an aide instead of having a one-on-one, and I had to call the special-ed office, and now everything appears to be straightened out, though I'll believe it when I see it ... but you know, I spent some time tonight posting this essay by a mom in Baton Rouge who in addition to dealing with all the frustrations and inconveniences that accompany a natural disaster, and all the upheaval that comes from a large number of newly homeless people coming into your community, is facing the likelihood that her child's nicely arranged special education program will be disrupted by the volume of new students at his school, and now it feels kind of silly to be fretting about aides. We've got a house. We've got lights and water. We've got food and clothing and mobility. And we've got only nine kids to a self-contained class. Really, what could there be to complain about?

School report

I finally got my kids' school schedules on Tuesday, and everything was in order. My son had the teacher he was supposed to have and the all-self-contained classes he was supposed to have. I was a bit surprised to see that my daughter has all male teachers this year except for one, which will be an interesting transition. Her music teachers have always been male, and her art teacher in elementary school, but to have one for every subject but science will be pretty different. Not sure whether it will work for her, but we'll see. Tomorrow, I'm going to the middle school with a couple of moms from my son's special-ed class to pester the vice principal with questions about what the day will be like for our little ones and what we should expect. The teacher should be there, too, and maybe after this I'll be able to just relax and anticipate the beginning of school without nagging doubts and nervousness. Naaah, probably not.

Getting old

I know I've been sort of ridiculously all-about-the-celebrities lately, and I'll knock it off soon, I promise. I've been procrastinating a lot instead of, say, writing insightful blog posts or buying school supplies, and if I wander the Web enough I always seem to wind up on the celeb gossip pages -- some sort of internet tractor beam, it must be. So this morning, I saw an item that said something to the effect of "Keanu Reeves, 40, is once again dating Diane Keaton, 59." And I know I was supposed to think something like, "Whoah, check out that age difference!" or "You go, Diane, getting a younger man!" or "'Bout time we reversed that old-guy-young-babe Hollywood double standard!" But all I could think of was: Keanu Reeves is 40? When the heck did that happen? Maybe it's just the fact that I'm sending my youngest to middle school that's making me feel so ancient.

Whine dining

When you're in a restaurant and somebody else's kids are misbehaving -- I mean really acting up, making noise, running around, getting in the waiter's way -- what is your first reaction? A) Annoyance that those parents just can't control their children; B) annoyance that the ruckus made by the out-of-control children of those parents might cause your own angel babies to fuss; or C) boundless relief and gratitude that it is somebody else's child this time, and not yours. God be with you, fellow traveler! Have mercy on me next time when it's my child who's a-fussin'.

I guess it's clear that I'm a C), and occasionally a B), but only very rarely an A). Which means I'm probably one of those parents, the kind that the restaurant mentioned in this Blogging Baby post would advise to make alternative dining plans. I don't like to think of myself as a spineless, child-whipped bad parent. I try to keep my kids quiet in restaurants, within reason. I don't bring them to restaurants where they're obviously not welcome. And I try to get them out when they've really met their limits. But you know, my son has fetal alcohol effects, and impulse control is really kind of a nice dream. I try to give him as much slack as I can without completely letting him run wild, but it's a fine line. From where I'm sitting, we're usually just on the OK side of it. From where you're sitting, right behind him when he's jumping on the seat or right in front of him when he's racing down the aisles to the salad bar yelling "Out of my way! Out of my way!" we might appear to be quite decidedly on the other side.

We've gotten glares from time to time, usually from elderly people who grew up in a time when they used to beat kids like mine, or single people who still have big dreams of what great parents they'll be. But people who are parents right now would understand, wouldn't they? Surely we've all been in a position in which our child was acting up in awkward circumstances and we couldn't easily stop it. Haven't we? Haven't we? Maybe not, judging from the comments to the post mentioned above, which tend toward "My child knows how to behave, and if those parents can't be bothered to properly train theirs, they should just never leave the house." Such a lack of camaraderie with one's fellow parents, such superiority, such assuredness! If there's one thing parenting has taught me, it's that assuredness goeth before a fall. I'd like to think that one day I'll see those parents in a restaurant, and their child will have hit a phase in which throwing crackers at other diners is the height of comedy, and they'll be all apologies and scolding, and I'll give them my smuggest, smuggest look. But you know, in the end, I'll probably be glad it's their kid throwing crackers and not mine. And I'll just wind up nodding and sending a little "Hey, thanks!" in their direction.

Baby bummers

Saw two thoroughly depressing news items on the Celebrity Baby Blog tonight:

1) Britney Spears has been spotted drinking multiple alcoholic beverages despite being very pregnant. Apparently the stress of being with child is causing her to need margaritas, but honey, let me tell you, you don't know stress until you're dealing with a child with fetal alcohol syndrome, okay? There seems to be some doubt as to whether the story is actually true, and let's just hope for the sake of Britney and her baby-to-be that it's not. But good judgment doesn't seem like one of this girl's strong suits, does it?

2) Donny Osmond is a grandpa. Okay, this is a lot less serious than drinking while pregnant. It's just that ... sigh ... I'm old now, aren't I? Very, very old.

Sticks and stones

My daughter hates me. That's what she tells me on a regular basis, anyway. I don't let it bother me because I'm pretty sure she doesn't mean it -- she hates what I'm doing at that moment, not me -- but people who hear her say it tend to leap to my defense. I mostly just say, "I don't think that's true," and it's not, and it's our little joke. So the other day, when she really wanted to cut me down, she had to dig a little bit deeper into her bag of middle-school insults. And this is what she came up with: "Mom, you are not cool." Ooooh, burn. She kept saying it with ascending levels of scorn, waiting, I guess, for me to crumble into pieces over the public revelation of my uncoolness, but no; I just kept doing whatever geeky thing I was doing, making it worse by laughing at her insults. I'm a hard nut to crack, alright. She'll have to stock up on much worse stuff than that when she goes back to school to really ruffle my feathers.

Stalking celebrities

Alright, I'll admit, I followed a link to read this story, which I guess makes me part of the problem. But reading a story about Scarlett Johansson's call to 911 when she got into a fender bender while evading paparazzi is one thing. Actually listening to it is another, isn't it? After reading the story on People magazine's site about the way photographer's invaded the young actress's privacy, you can invade it your very own self by listening to an audio file of the actual call. Now, I don't waste a lot of time feeling sorry for celebrities. A certain amount of privacy loss goes with the territory of being successful and famous and fabulous, and stars need to acknowledge that with a certain amount of humility. But they should also be allowed to go about their daily lives without being constantly trailed by photographers. Some of this stuff crosses the line between aggressive coverage and stalking. And they should probably be allowed to call 911 without worrying that anyone with a computer is going to be able to download their most stressful and upsetting moments. (But if anyone does listen, hey, tell me if there's anything interesting!)

Information drought

I'm going into serious information withdrawal here, with two weeks until the start of school. Usually my kids' school schedules arrive somewhere in the middle of August, frequently on a week when we're on vacation and then I have to wait until we get home to see it. Bad enough. Bad enough I have to wait until August to be sure that they're in the right classes, at the right schools. Special education means never being entirely sure that things will be what you expect. But again, usually by mid-August I have either the comfort of knowing things are A-OK or the ammunition for fighting the good fight. This year, though -- this year, when my son is starting middle school and I am therefore particularly concerned about getting him in the right place with the right person -- there's some new computer program and personnel gaps screwing things up, and we won't be getting the schedules until next week. As in, one week before school starts. As in, almost the entire summer spent fretting and worrying with no solid info whatsoever. I am not a happy mom. I could probably make calls and knock heads and sneak into offices at night and search through files and find out whether things are as they should be, but that would be starting the year out on a pushy foot and I like to save that for when I really need it. Maybe I do really need it. And maybe I don't. I want to know NOW. It's going to be a long week.

The laughter police

I mentioned a few entries ago that I went a little crazy running interference for my son at a science museum, and wondered whether, if I had just let him be his own exuberant self, everything would have been okay. I was second-guessing myself big time, but today I read a news story that made me think I was probably right to be absurdly protective of the rights of other people not to be annoyed by him. I'm talking about the tale of the boy with autism and cerebral palsy who was ejected from a New York movie theater for laughing too loud. Now, this wasn't the case of a family bringing a child into a dialog-heavy adult picture and expecting everyone to just live with the distraction. This was a midday showing of "March of the Penguins," the popular kid-friendly nature documentary. The theater refunded the family's money, and has apologized now that a bit of a furor has been raised. On the one hand, I have a hard time imagining how this kid could have raised enough of a ruckus to deserve ejection from a kiddie show, and I think it's worth asking whether he was unfairly targeted because he was in a wheelchair. On the other hand, all the heartfelt comments people have made to the effect of "these poor little handicapped kids suffer so much they should be allowed to have these small chances at happiness" rub me the wrong way, too. A kid in a theater is a kid in a theater. If your kid's being disruptive, you should try to minimize it. If you're making an effort, the ushers should be understanding. At some point, you may just need to get your kid out of there, whether it's a crying baby or a chatty six-year-old or a child who can't control the exuberance of his laughter. I'm probably too quick to get to that point. And maybe the management at this theater was too quick to get there in this instance. But the point does exist, doesn't it? For everyone? Or should kids with disabilities get a free pass?

Back-to-school readiness

Are you ready for back-to-school? I know some districts have already started up again, but hereabouts we're three weeks and counting. My kids are finishing up their summer homework assignments, but I haven't quite gotten with the schoolclothes shopping and equipment checking. Regardless of where my family's at with this back-to-school thing, though, I did finally get my website act together. I've spent the last few weeks stalling and procrastinating and starting and starting over and starting again, but the whining is over now and I've finally got my index of 107 web pages with back-to-school-related content up and running on my About.com site. They're all articles or links lists that I'd posted previously, gathered together here for your school-panicking pleasure. Reading through all this wonderful content will allow you to continue putting off getting your kids ready for school, and isn't that really what it's all about?

Call too late, visit too early

Now that my daughter is big into talking to her friends on the phone, we've had some conversations about how late it is acceptable to call someone you are not related to or who is not expecting your call. Before 10 p.m. is my rule, but even after 9 p.m. I feel awkward. (I don't even like hearing from family members much after 9 p.m., to tell the truth.) But something happened yesterday that made me think of another rule of polite communication that seems to need defining: What's the earliest time in the morning it's okay to show up at somebody's house? My son has a school friend who lives across the street from us on the alternate weekends he's living with his dad, and this kid (who roams the neighborhood way more freely than a control-freak mom like me can comfortably abide) showed up at our door at about 7:50 a.m. Sunday morning, just as we were rushing out the door to church. We told him to come back later, but that almost-playdate was enough to set my son on "I don't want to be in church" mode for the next hour. Who lets their kid go to a friend's house at 7:50 a.m.? On a Sunday? I'd say anytime before 10 a.m. on a weekend's pushing it, and then you should call first. But not before 9 a.m. (and even then, I'm liable to bark at you for waking me up). What are your time-and-communication rules?

The music mom

I'm walking on the knife-edge now of being the sort of mother who encourages her child to make the most of her talents vs. the sort of mother who pushes her child to follow paths in which the child has no interest. My daughter's been playing the trombone since 4th grade, and I've really kept the pressure on for her to keep at it and practice and take lessons and try out for things and take the instrument seriously. Sometimes she seems interested, sometimes she hates it, most of the time it's more my thing than hers. And philosophically, I believe that's bad: Parents shouldn't put their thing on their kids. The fact that music was a big help to me in getting through high school shouldn't mean that my children have to pursue music, too. Maybe she is meant to bloom in another direction. But then, down here at street level in the real world, I worry that if she's not cultivated with a heavy hand, she may not bloom at all. It's not like she's passionate about something else. She talks about joining sports teams but doesn't pursue it. Music is something she has some ability in, and learning it has increased her brainpower for reading as well. And darn it, I do worry about her getting through high school. It's a big school, and band is a tight community. Is it bad for me to push her in that direction? Hard? How do you know when you've crossed the line?

Museum manners

I spent the day with my son at a science museum yesterday, and although he had a good time it left me with an uneasy feeling. I was monitoring him fairly constantly, advising him to give other kids turns, telling him not to push, guiding him from crowded exhibits to less-occupied ones, and generally being the external brain I feel it's so important to be for a child with fetal alcohol effects. Some kids were nice to him, some completely ignored him, some gave him a weird look, some were fairly rude, and I wonder now if their reaction to him was not so much due to his particular disability as to the the fact that he had this mother hovering over him all the time. Dude, uncool! Maybe I was giving out signals that "There's something wrong with this boy! Back off! Let him through!" I don't know. There were other parents that seemed to be manners enforcers; but there was also sort of a free-for-all mentality -- maybe among camp kids especially -- that made it very hard to get a turn if you did not force your way into one. So while I would have my boy stand quiet and wait, kid after kid would just push right on ahead of him. I wound up yelling at a couple of little girls one time, dragging my son (who was offering a very conciliatory "That's okay! I don't care! I can wait!) away from the place where he'd been cut in line. Maybe I should have just left him to his own devices. It hurts to see him taking advantage of other kids, and it hurts to seem him taken advantage of. Do I have to just not look?

Sensory shopaholic

I've admitted before that I have a real obsession with sensory-integration and learning-aid catalogs, and tend to buy up lots of cool-looking stuff and throw it at my kids, hoping something sticks. Things usually prove useful for a short time, and then either the kiddos or I lose interest, leaving us with piles of unused therapy thingamajigs all around the house. At one time or another, I've purchased just about every item on this list of Special-Needs School Tools. We're still using the pencil toppers (although I probably enjoy twiddling with them more than my kids do); the Alphasmart gets some use now and then (though again, more likely because I want to do some writing while I'm out and about with the kids); and I personally enjoy the EZC Reader bookmarks with their easy-on-the-eyes colored cellophane. Maybe I should just stop pretending that I'm buying this stuff as a serious therapeutic option for my children and just admit that I like shiny fun stuff. Would that blow my "good mom" cover?

If you give a kid a computer ...

It used to be that when kids got into trouble at school, their parents would punish them. As schools got more befuddled or parents got more weak-willed, depending on your point of view, parents started to protest the schools' actions, defending their offspring to newspaper reporters and blasting the school in public meetings. Now, of course, there's no reason to deal with the middleman: Don't like the way your school is treating your kids? Start a website!

Such is naturally the case with the computer-confrontation going on in Kutztown, Pa., where 13 students are accused of hacking the nice laptops the school district gave them, cracking administrative codes, monitoring administrators' computer use, and so on. Kid stuff, you know? What do you expect? These kids know all about computers! You can't stop them! You've got admire them, don't you? What little geniuses they are! What? Punish them? Suspend them? Call the police? What a bunch of no-talent killjoys! Where's the harm here? Why did you give them the computers in the first place if you didn't want them to mess around? That seems to be the opinion of the families of the so-called Kurtztown 13, as expressed in their site, www.cutusabreak.org (and the bumper stickers and T-shirts offered there).

It's hard to feel sorry for the school here. It's not a big secret that kids are good at this sort of thing, and have the patience and single-mindedness to go after it. If you're going to give kids computers, you really ought to be able to stay ahead of them on security. It sounds as if the whole thing was poorly handled from beginning to end. On the other hand ... now, you know, I can be a loudmouth mom and take schools to task as well as the next parent, but I wonder what it is you teach kids when you attack schools for enforcing rules. You can be amused by what your kid does, you can be impressed with it, you can secretly feel that sticking it to the man is a cool thing to do, but when you knowingly allow him or her to break school rules, encourage him or her to do it, defend him or her against any repercussions, what are you teaching that child? That rules don't apply to him or her? That they only apply if they make sense to you personally? That they only apply unless it's easy to break them, or fun? And where does that lead? No place good, I think.

Wired and tired

*!@#$?& technology! Science was not my friend yesterday. Some stupid little splitter piece connecting me to the internet frizzled, and I had to crawl around under furniture and into dusty nether regions of my living room to find the spot at which the cable enters the house, unhook the modem and router from their spot across the room and wire them up on the floor under the side table, and monkey around with wiring while a superior-sounding woman from the cable company assured me that yes, all this is really necessary. I was so sure that it was their problem and not mine, but of course, that tiny stupid widget was something I'm responsible for replacing. Unwiring and moving and rewiring tech stuff is high-stress work for me because, although I'm generally able through trial and error and swearing to get things going, I don't feel sure enough of myself to want to have to do it more than once. But I did, and it's fixed, and I'm wired, and I'm tired, and I've had my tantrum and am uneasily at peace with my machines once again. Why do you suppose it is, though, that I'm suddenly having problems with my cable connection just weeks after I finally let my old dial-up back-up service lapse?

Pod person

My son has been going crazy for his iPod Shuffle lately. Wearing it and listening to music at bone-rattling volumes seems to have a proprioceptive sort of calming effect on him. Of course, I make him turn it down, because he's got enough problems without hearing loss; and I try to make sure that he doesn't listen to it for long hours straight, although the peace and quiet this buys me are powerful incentives to the contrary. But I'm sort of fascinated by the therapeutic and behavior-management possibilities of this little plastic gadget, particularly since technological solutions like GameBoys and computers have never held much interest for him. We've already had some success with him listening calmly during a usually disruptive doctor's appointment, and I'm thinking hard on a way to use it appropriately during our last remaining frontier of untamed behavioral uncontrol: Church. Do you think if I loaded it up with Gregorian chants, he could wear it to Mass?

Can you ever have too much chocolate?

So on the one hand, we're reading news reports every day on how people are getting fatter, obesity is an epidemic, we need to cut the fat and calories, yada yada yada ... and on the other hand, they're making M&Ms bigger. Not the packages, mind you, but the actual candy-covered chocolates. Was this really necessary? Regular plain and peanut M&Ms seem to be of an adequate size to give us all sugar highs and fat thighs. We need 55% more with each bite? Maybe this is the only way people will cut down: "Hey," you can say, "I ate half as many M&Ms." Coupled with the news that Atkins is going under, I guess you could say this was a very good week for carbs.

Sit! Stay!

I've written from time to time that a good way to handle the behavior of a child with neurological problems like my son's -- problems that place a child on the "can't" side of the "can't or won't" debate, problems that get worse in the face of emotion and anger and stress -- is to speak as you would to a dog. Sharp tones, but not angry ones. Straightforward commands. A bit of physical business, like a clap or a hand on the shoulder, to gain attention. These are good suggestions, they work on my son, they've kept things calm and uncomplicated.

That is, of course, until we actually got a dog.

What's become clear to me, after a month or so with Princess, our new family pooch, is that talking to your kid like you talk to your dog makes the dog pretty confused. She jumps up when I yell at him. When I tell him to stop, she stops. When I clap to get his attention, I get hers. And maybe as the result of my overlapping behavioral techniques, I think she thinks he's just a weird looking puppy.

Worst of all, it looks like I"m getting confused, too. More than once on recent walks, I've sharply called out a name when the dog had her nose buried in a bush, say, or was pulling to go after a rabbit, or was stuck sniffling the same spot for minutes on end. I've sharply called out a name and wondered why the dog didn't respond, until I realized ... the name I was calling was my son's. Egad! Am I so used to calling out his name in the face of stubborn behavior that I do it automatically? It's bad enough to be calling the dog by the boy's name, but now I'm worried that some day, in a public place, I'm going to call my son "Princess." Maybe it's time to rethink my disciplinary strategies.

Oh, and in other news, a bunch of people lived

I've really been in awe, since I first saw the news last night, of the story about the plane that crashed in Toronto, slid down a ravine, split apart, burst into flames ... and delivered all its passengers safely. What a miracle. Some minor injuries, a heck of a lot of lost luggage, no doubt some lawsuits in the offing about pain and suffering, but no fatalities. I was eager to read about it this morning in the paper, and shocked to find it relegated to the lower right corner of the front page, below a big feature on the upcoming shuttle spacewalk. Now, I'll give the editors the benefit of the doubt and say that the news came in late and they had to wedge it in. But I'm pretty sure that if everyone aboard that plane had died, the story would be above the fold. Why is good news such a ho-hum proposition? In terms of the actual "newsiness" of an event, a plane crash not killing everybody sure seems more unusual than one with the typical tragedy and violence.

OnStar earns its keep

The minivan we bought a couple of months ago came with OnStar included, and although I was excited to have it at first, it's seemed to me in recent weeks like some fancy gewgaw we'll never use. But this morning, I began to see what an absolutely nifty device it can be. Whether it's worth the money we'll have to pay to keep it going after the first year remains to be seen. But I sure was glad to have it today.

And why was that, you ask? Did I run out of gas? Drive into a ditch? Have serious engine trouble? Get hopelessly lost? See my car stolen and recovered thanks to the tracking system? Use the included phone service in an emergency? No, no, no. Nothing like that. Nothing dramatic or important or exciting. It's just ... it's just ... there was this ding. It started when we got in the car after a brief errand on the way to take my daughter to day camp, and it continued ringing as we dropped her off, and continued as we drove home, and continued and continued and continued. Not loud enough to be the car alarm, not soft enough to be ignored, it hounded us as we made our way across town. This car has one of those fancy dashboards with computerized messages that tell you when something's open or unlocked or mislatched, not to mention the outside temperature and the amount of gas and your compass heading and pretty much everything short of your biorhythms and horoscope. But about the ding, it was mum. What could it be? And how would I ever find out?

The owner's manual was unhelpful. But then I remembered that OnStar was supposed to be able to diagnose car problems. I hit the button, and suddenly a guy with a friendly twangy voice was listening to the ding too and asking me questions about it. He finally said the ding wasn't the sort of thing he could diagnose, but he did remember hearing something like it once before and it turned out to be a bad door-closing. I hit the buttons that automatically open and shut the side doors, and -- blessed silence! The ding departed.

Maybe I would have figured it out myself, whether by design or by chance when we got out of the car. But how nice, how really nice, to have somebody right there, at the touch of a button, to listen in and give advice. And to refrain from saying, "You dingbat! Why didn't you check the doors in the first place!"

Mid-summer progress report

What the heck happened to July? I can't believe how fast this month has gone. Halfway through the summer here, and have I done all those great enrichment activities I was going to do with my kids? Well, kinda. I arranged to stay home to have "Camp Mom" with my son, and was worried that my natural laziness and desire to spend too much time in front of the computer might result in him really attending "Camp TV Cartoons." But we've kept up a little routine. We've gone to the middle school almost every weekday morning so he can, with the principal's permission, play on the computer and get used to being in the building he'll be attending in the fall. He's made an entry in his weblog almost every day, which is certainly more than I can say. We read together almost every day. He's had almost one playdate a week with friends who will be at middle school with him. And, mostly thanks to the fact that his tutor works with him for two hours every morning, he's finished his summer reading project for school, done lots of worksheets and science experiments, and made some progress on gross motor skills. Not too bad.

But of course, I always feel I should be doing more. I still spend too much time on the computer, doing not enough work. I don't always feel like playing. I should be strategizing ways to deal with his latest crop of behavioral oddities and trying them out during our nice uninterrupted time together, but I'm not. I'm inspiration-challenged, and too often short-tempered about it. I want to be one of those moms who's 100 percent available to her kids, always ready with a great play idea or able to endlessly follow her child's inspirations. Do those moms even exist? Maybe just in the guilty heart of every mom who falls short.

How's your summer going? Are your best-laid plans still laying there? Take this poll and spill the beans.

Dog days

We're settling in pretty well with our new pooch, if you can ignore the thick coating of dog hair that now covers our entire house and the three bags of dry food in the closet she refuses to eat and the stomach problems she seems to be having now that we have caved in to her command for only canned food and the general sense that I can walk her successfully only because she never pulls as hard as she really could on the leash, if she were the kind of dog who would do that. She's still uncomfortable with the amount of affection my son wants to give her, but she's mostly polite in turning him down. Do you have a family pet? Go to this poll and list your menagerie. You might also be interested in April Cain's latest essay, "Seeing the Beauty Beneath the Skin," on how her family got their dog; and in this listing of service animals. Who knew there were guide horses?

Youthful indiscretions for sale

I can't say I'm entirely uninterested in celebrity gossip -- I do read every issue of Entertainment Weekly cover to cover, and I've been known to have some fun on my Web sites with some celeb story or other. But this is just pathetic: Some guy Jennifer Aniston dated when she was 15 is putting the love letters she wrote to him on eBay. Fifteen! My goodness, would any of us want something we wrote to a guy when we were that age to ever resurface, much less go up for auction? I wouldn't even do that to a celebrity who was 15 years old now. How sad does this guy's life have to be that he's grabbing for a few bucks and a few minutes of fame for having once gone out with a Friend? Perhaps the fact that she fell out of contact with him once she got famous fuels his desire to humiliate her, even in such a low-rent way. And maybe the fact that one of the items is a "birthday card scrawled on a piece of toilet paper" indicates just how much value young Jen placed on that particular suitor. The whole thing makes me want to run up to the attic, find the diary I kept in Junior High to record my daily rankings of which boys I thought were cute, and burn it. I'll probably never be a big star and nobody will ever care, but why take chances?

Too much

I guess this means we eat too much fast food: My son and I went to our local McDonald's Tuesday after a couple of months of patronizing the new Dunkin' Donuts down the street, and the Golden Arches staff treated us like long-lost relatives. "We haven't seen you in a while! How are you?" asked the manager. The man taking the order asked where my daughter was, knew our order before we said it, and hurried to get me coffee. Those donut purveyors have a lot to live up to now.

And I guess this means I watch too much TV: As the recent Supreme Court drama has played out, with one seat opening and another if the Chief Justice retires, all I could think of was the "West Wing" episode in which the exact same scenario occurred, and the president wound up putting one extreme liberal and one extreme conservative on the court as a compromise with Congress. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Couldn't somebody maybe float that scenario in the real-life White House?

Harry who?

Just got back from a quick trip to Barnes & Noble, where I bought a graduation gift and had myself a peaceful cup of coffee all by my kid-free self, and I can report that Harry Potter mania is in full swing on this eve of HP6. Someone was distributing green wristbands and Harry glasses, presumably to mark folks' place in line, and the store was all set to stay open well past its usual 11 p.m. closing for the midnight sales start. You know, I'm as big a supporter of children's literature and literacy as the next overinvolved parent, but this Potter phenomenon I just do not get. I'm sure the books are wonderful, if you like that sort of thing, but all this folderol every single time a new volume comes out? People, it's just a book. Your bookstore is going to have hundreds and hundreds in stock. Why are you lining up at midnight? Why is Harry the top story everywhere, in every newspaper, on every Web site, in every blog ... oops.

I guess one of the reasons I'm so puzzled by Pottermania is that my own personal children could not be less interested. For them, and kids like them, I put a "Not Wild About Harry?" list of Potter alternatives on my About.com site. Regardless of how your kids feel about the boy wizard, you can still vote in my survey, "What are your plans for the new Harry Potter?" ("Ignore it" is an option). And, although you probably have to be an Entertainment Weekly subscriber to use it, you can try this really amusing "Harry Potter Story Generator." Reading about Voldemort disguised as Tom Cruise may not have quite the magic of that doorstop-sized novel, but it'll do me.

See, psychiatrists really are dangerous!

My husband and I actually went out to dinner and a movie last night for a few-days-after-the-anniversary celebration (15 years on July 7). We saw "Batman Begins," and the parts that I actually watched without hiding my eyes in my hands or his shoulder were pretty good. Amazingly effective "oof!"s on the soundtrack during fight scenes, let me tell you. But one thing did strike me: With all the gallons of ink that have been spilled in the coverage of the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes romance, and the gallons more poured out over his attacks on psychiatry, has anyone noted that, in the future Mrs. Cruise's big summer movie, one of the major villains is in fact a psychiatrist? And that Holmes' character is the one who sends him running at the end? Maybe that's why Tom fell for her. Those psychiatrists, you know, they drug your children with Ritalin, they dope up your new mothers with antidepressants, and every now and then, if you don't keep a close eye on them, they dump hallucinogenic chemicals in your water supply and vaporize it in an attempt to induce mass psychosis. Good to have a girl by your side who knows how to use a stun gun.

A blogger debuts

If you're looking for some light and imaginative reading, or something that's a little more consistent than this blog's been lately, I'd like to announce that my son now has his very own weblog, called Andy and Princess Stories. As the title suggests, it is about his adventures (or made-up adventures) with our new dog, the very beautiful and patient Princess. I'm trying this as a way to get him to write every day and get a little more interested in computers, although right now I am serving as typist and interrogator. The ideas are his, though: I'd never have thought of making Princess's nose a strawberry.

Come take a look at http://boyanddog.blogspot.com, and if you could make a nice comment or two, I'm sure he'd be happy to read it. Maybe one day you can say that you read the earliest works of a great author.

Thinking of London, remembering New York

It's hard to know what to say about today's tragic events in London other than, my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in the U.K. who has been affected by these horrific acts of terrorism. It put me in mind of the essay I wrote back on September 12, 2001, when the images on the TV screen weren't across the Atlantic but across the Hudson. It's still sitting on the Mothers with Attitude site, and anyone in a reflective mood can read it here. It's good, sometimes, to get a little perspective, but it would be nice if it didn't require such heartbreak and bloodshed.

Answer me this

I'm going crazy with the questions over at my About.com site, throwing out a poll a day all through July. Stop by to opine on what July 4 means to you, whether kids need more vaccines, if schools should be air-conditioned, and how you feel about Tom Cruise's anti-med crusade.

Seeking stories

Anyone out there have an interesting mother-son story? I'm passing this on for a PBS producer; if you're interested, her e-mail is below.

Looking for mothers and sons for PBS documentary:

A new documentary to air on PBS stations on the powerful bonds between mothers and sons is underway. The program will examine this important connection and how it shapes how a man relates to his family and friends, and contributes to the community and the workplace. We are looking for dynamic mother/son relationships from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Here are some possible mother/son scenarios:

1) Mother and son whose bond is close, despite any past or ongoing challenges in their relationship. This could be the struggle to communicate during adolescence.

2) Adult male who had a close relationship with his mother that shaped his strong commitment to supporting women personally and professionally. He is married and may also have children of his own.

3) A professionally accomplished man who considers his mother his role model. He credits their close relationship with helping him become successful. Perhaps she once had a thriving career and he followed in her example.

4) Mother who went through some hardship in order that her son might thrive.

5) Brothers who were raised by a dynamic mother. They have different perspectives on their relationship to her, but their mother/son bonds are strong.

We’d also like to hear from anyone else who has a powerful mother/son story. If you are interested in talking with us, please respond with a detailed description of your relationship and provide contact information and email address. Mother and son must both be willing to appear on camera and share their stories honestly, from the heart.

Please email Renee at: momsandsons@gmail.com

Customer disservice

I called my health insurance company a little while ago, and at the end of a successful customer service transaction, the representative cheerfully said, "I have one more question for you today: Did I just provide you with world-class customer service?" I said sure, not wanting to hurt her feelings, but thought: Well, that's a bit of an overreach, isn't it? World class customer service? Is there some sort of an international standard here? Are there customer service Olympics that I haven't heard about? Then again, compared to the couple of phone calls I made after that, maybe "world class" wasn't too much of a stretch after all. One company took me through a 15-minute chain of electronic menus to complete my transaction, and the other has kept me on hold for ... well, going on 5 minutes now. Perhaps a live human being, a short wait, and a brisk and competent transaction is what passes for the gold standard in customer service these days. Too bad the reason I had to call them in the first place was because they accidentally sent out a whole batch of cancellation letters to folks who weren't actually cancelled.

An addition to the family, finally?

So it looks like we may finally, after many false starts, be getting a dog. There's a very sweet, gentle, calm, 9-year-old female German Shepherd at our nearby animal shelter who seems to be calling our name (that's her in the photo; isn't she a sweetie?). We've walked her a couple of times, and she seems unperturbed by my skittish daughter and hyper son and skeptical husband. And she gave me some very nice kisses on the face. She was mostly mellow as we walked her around, and the one time she took off after a squirrel I was able to restrain her. We've had a few dogs snatched up before we could properly express our interest before, but the shelter folk think this girl isn't going anywhere, nine apparently being over-the-hill in the shelter dog business. So it looks like we may be getting a dog. Check back here in a week or two to see if I'm celebrating or going "What on earth was I thinking?" Like we don't have enough on our hands already.

So that's all it takes

My daughter was talking to me last night about her middle school classmates and who's cute and who's cool and finally, in a great burst of teenage despair and desire, she turned to me and wailed, "Mom, can I have a cell phone so I can be popular?"

Who knew being popular was that easy?

I mean, seriously, Verizon or Cingular or Sprint should get to work right now on their "Popular with Peers" plan. Your minutes come with coolness, cuteness, lots of friends and a date for the prom, guaranteed. My usual answer to the "Mom, can I have a cell phone?" question is, "Ha, ha, ha, ha! No." But hey, if the service provider could throw in social acceptance and immunity from teasing, I might be more interested.

A match made in ... where, exactly?

So are you buying the whole Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes "We're in luuuuuuuuuuuuuv" thing? Do you think he's too old for her? She's too unfamous for him? The whole thing's a really poorly thought-out promotional stunt? Or do you feel we're all just too darn jaded these days to recognize genuine, goofy, makes-you-act-like-an-idiot, head-over-heels love when we see it? I don't know. If it's true, I'm happy for them. If it's not true, I feel sorry for them and their respective publicists. And I think it's really sort of sad that we don't believe celebrities are having a relationship unless they vehemently deny it. But on the other hand, I have to admit that this site is pretty funny. Don't we all have more serious things we should be thinking about, here at the brink of summer break? No? Okay, then.

Excuses, excuses

AAAACK! End-of-school madness. Moving-up ceremony nonsense. Summer plans to be made. Closets to be switched. Activities to be chaperoned. Teachers to confer with. Anxiety all around. No time to blog! Be back soon ...

Proud moments

Yesterday was a proud day for our family, in a few different ways. Our school district held a "junior olympics" for special education students in its elementary schools, and my son was among those who participated. Parents got to sit in the stands while teachers and other volunteers wrangled our kiddos, and I was proud to see my guy out there running around with his friends. I was also proud of his sister, who was one of those volunteers. She started the morning pretty whiny about having to go to something her brother was doing, and when a teacher we know drafted her to help out, I expected she'd last a short while and coming whining back. But she really got into helping the little kids, stayed at it the whole day, and had a great time. She's often mentioned a desire to work with young children, and in fact has a volunteer job this summer helping at a day camp, so I was proud to see that it was something she could really follow through on.

And one more proud moment: I'm a seat-of-my-pants sort of Web site programmer, learning what I need as I go along and panicking at the complicated stuff, so I'm really feeling quite impressed with my little self that I managed -- after plenty of tries, screw-ups and confusion -- to successfully plant a quiz on my About.com site. Check it out: It's an Alphabet Soup Quiz to test your acronym acument.

Mommy, what's that?

Another reason to stop your kid from watching TV: As of this month, condom ads have broken the, ahem, barrier of TV advertising and will now be appearing during primetime programs. Trojan swears that they're going to be responsible and focus on STDs and HIV and not make sex look like fun or anything, but that's not going to make it any easier for parents to explain to Junior exactly what that product is for. Some articles on this new advertising development have mentioned a survey that shows only one in four Americans objects to having this kind of content during family viewing hours. I wonder whether they called any household that actually had parents in it. They sure didn't ask me.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

My son got a buzz cut last week. This is something I've been lobbying for, because when you have a kid with major sensory-integration issues who hates to have his hair combed, you look for ways to avoid conflict. He and his dad had major battles over post-hairwash combing, with much yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth (and that was just my husband). I, on the other hand, usually avoided the issue, even if it meant letting him go to school in the mornings with cowlicks like you wouldn't believe. With short-short hair in vogue now for boys, that seemed like the most logical solution: a no-comb style for a no-comb kid. He requested it himself when he popped into the barber's chair, and his dad begrudgingly went along. I'm happy to have this struggle out of the way, at least for the time being, and he looks cute enough, I suppose. But I do miss my little shaggy-headed boy. Even the cowlicks, just a little.

Big Brother is watching you, and wants your dessert

Do you know what your child eats for lunch at school? Do you care? Big Brother may soon give you the opportunity to stay right on top of that topic with a program that lets you electronically prepay your kids' lunch bill, and then see what he or she gets for it. Even items bought with hoarded change will show up, so there's no hiding that jumbo cookie or extra Snapple from Mom and Dad. I've been moderating a lunch-hour book club at my daughter's school for the past couple of years, so I've seen what sort of a la carte combos kid come up with; one boy routinely bought a lunch consisting of two or three pieces of cake. And I'll admit, it would be interesting to see just how many times a week my daughter eats pizza. But I can also see a few flaws in the system. For one thing, unless it tells you how much of what your child paid for he or she actually ate, you're still not getting a good idea of how much balanced nutrition is going on. And I've got to believe that it won't take long for the kids whose parents either don't participate in the plan or don't care what they buy to set up a pretty brisk business in ordering goodies for their friends. Where there's a will to eat a jumbo cookie, there's a way.

What did he say?

Boy, there's nothing that makes you feel older than reading the words of your children's favorite songs. I've gotten into the habit of doing Google searches on the lyrics of ditties my daughter wants to download from iTunes, unless I recognize the artist and am pretty darn sure the song's not nasty. But some of the ones I've looked into have made me drop my dentures. It's hard to believe some of this stuff is getting by the FCC, because I know she's hearing them on the radio, and they don't all have "clean" versions. I guess if you avoid four-letter words and load on the metaphors, you can sing or rap about just about anything. That's the only explanation I can thing of for the fact that 50 Cent's "Candyshop" is on the radio. I finally read through all the lyrics to that and, oh my goodness, there's no way you could clean up those lyrics without just starting over and writing a different song. I don't know what's scarier, the fact that the song's basically pornography with a beat, or that about half of my son's fifth-grade class listed it in the yearbook as their favorite piece of music. I know they don't understand the words and just like the rhythm, but ... sheesh. Do you think my parents felt this scandalized by, like, the Bee Gees?

New on Mothers with Attitude

Ken Swarner's latest "Family Man" column deals with his family's tendency to have medical emergencies in the middle of the night, necessitating emergency room visits at a time of day when dad's not exactly at his best. I'm guessing that most parents of children with special needs can relate to that, with the added degree of difficulty of having to remember your child's arm-length list of diagnoses and medical background when all your head wants to do is hit a pillow.

Mom as MVP

My son is playing in a special-needs baseball league this year, and it could not be more low-key. They play three innings, tops; everyone gets to bat each inning, everyone gets pitched to until they make contact with the ball, everyone gets on base and stays on base, and at the end of the inning, everyone who's on base runs home. There are a few kids who can actually catch and throw the ball, but there are also quite a few like my guy, who are more interested in playing with the dirt in the infield. It's nice, though, for him to put on a uniform and go outside and play with other kids, or at least in the vicinity of other kids, and it's nice for my husband and I to go out and be sports parents, even if it's in a league where everybody cheers for both sides. I'm hardly a "sports mom," though, not close to the pro level of the mom of sports writer Mark Dewar, who pays tribute to his MVP in his Contributor's Corner essay, "Athletes Choke, But Moms Don't."

Dropping like flies

Boy, you know, I just can't get a break. I've been working feverishly to try to prepare my son's way into middle school next year, and it seems that every time I think I've got things lined up, they fall apart. I had a good relationship with the speech therapist from her work with my daughter, but when I went to talk with her about my son she told me she was quitting. I didn't even get a chance to talk to the guidance counselor before hearing that he was retiring, and a new person would be there in the fall. And now I find that my daughter's child study team leader, who had been extremely helpful in advising me on my son's IEP and whom I had made sure would be his CST leader too, is leaving at the end of this year. It's getting so I'm afraid to talk to anybody. I've actually had a couple of nice conversations with the principal, so I figure he's doomed for sure.

I've always had a policy of thinking only six months ahead because so much can change in a school or a district, but this is getting ridiculous.

Book lover

My son loves the Shiloh trilogy of books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Just loves them. Loves them beyond all logic. For a kid who has about a 30-second attention span for all but a handful of obsessions, he can converse on Shiloh at length, apply life lessons from the book to other situations, and sit still, rapt with attention, for chapters upon chapters. As a big reader myself, I'm thrilled to see a book take such a strong hold on a youngster, even if, well, maybe, from time to time, we could, like, read a different book? No? Okay.

He's been on a particular Shiloh kick lately, dropping observations about evil Judd Travers and noble young Marty and the sweet beagle that one of them abused and the other saved. This is fine when he's talking to me, because I know what he's talking about, and the things he says make sense. But it can take other folks by surprise. Like Sunday, when we were down at the animal shelter looking for a prospective pet of our own. As we took one little pooch on a get-to-know-you walk with a shelter volunteer, my guy started talking about how mean Judd Travers was to his dogs, and how he chained them up, and yelled at them, and kicked them, and starved them, and hunted out of season. The volunteer's eyes got wider and wider until she asked me, "Is this a real person he's talking about?" She was pretty much ready to call the police on this scumbag, and was relieved to hear that he was a fictional scumbag, and one who got plenty of comeuppance. Maybe now she'll seek out the Shiloh books, for herself or her children, and my son will have passed on his passion. Or else she'll make some secret "nut-job" notation on our application to ensure that the closest we get to a real dog is a well-thumbed paperback.

Becoming one of those moms

I feel like I've gone over to the dark side: After years and years of refusing to go to Home & School Association meetings (got two special-needs kids at home, don't you know, need to be there every second), years and years of finding my little nitches that allow me to work at my children's school without having to deal with personalities and politics, I've actually volunteered to be vice president of the HSA at my daughter's middle school. It will be my son's middle school next year, and that's the real reason I'm joining up; it's all part of my plan to raise my profile among the administrators there, so that when my guy inevitably misbehaves he won't be "that horrible little boy" but "that horrible little boy whose mom is on the HSA board." Will it make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. But at least they'll know where to find me.

Heavy duty

I ordered my son a weighted blanket for his bed from Dream Catcher Blankets a while back, and it finally came last week. He was thrilled with it -- Eileen Jackson, who makes the blankets, found a really cute Scooby Doo fabric for my Scooby-loving boy. He likes having weight on top of him, and so my hope is that this will help him sleep better, and also calm him down when he needs it. The jury is still out on whether it's going to work for him -- he's been going through a really silly phase, and I'm not sure even a two-ton truck could weigh him down -- but hey, I crawled under it one time and I felt calmer. That's got to count for something.

Your name is what now?

I helped chaperone my daughter's last seventh-grade dance last night. This time, much to the delight of my poor elderly ears, I was not in the over-amped gymnasium but standing by the front door of the school, checking the names of arriving children off a list of all students in good standing. Let me just give my fellow parents a piece of advice here: If you are dropping your young person off at an event which might require them to have their names checked off a list, please drill them a bit before they get out of the car as to what letter of the alphabet their name starts with. I can't tell you how many kids stood, dumbfounded, staring at the signs that said "A-L" and "M-Z" and using up every last brain cell trying to figure out what line they belonged in. And they still got it wrong more often than not. Since the room was noisy, what with all those cerebral wheels whirring, I often had to ask kids to just tell me the first letter of their last name, at which point most of them told me their first name. I'll tell you, it all made me feel a lot better about my daughter and her learning disabilities. She, at least, got in the right line.

Sick days

My son was calm and well-behaved this weekend. He listened well. He paid more attention than ever at his special-needs baseball game (not much, but more). He was quiet all through church. He played by himself happily and didn't bug me for attention every two minutes. So I should have known he was sick long before the thermometer read 102.8 and the doctor confirmed my diagnosis of strep throat.

Do your kids get good when they're sick? I'd expect the opposite -- feeling bad should make sensory sensitive kids go nuts -- but this is a regular pattern with my guy. Adding this to his experience with a splint on his arm after a bad fall, in which he was calm and focused even though he couldn't suck his fingers as he so constantly does, I'm wondering: Maybe we should stop thinking about finding medication that can "cure" our kids of their neurological problems. Maybe we should start thinking about medication that keeps them always in a state of low-grade illness or injury. What's up with that?

New on Mothers with Attitude

In "Miracles," the latest installment of her "Thinking It Over" column, April Cain considers the connection between the late Pope John Paul II and her son's addition to the family. ... In "Three Little Words," special education director Amy Krause realizes how much she takes for granted ... and in his latest "Family Man" column, Ken Swarner wonders whether his wife even needs him to be there for some of their conversations.

Theme park fun

We just got back from a week in Orlando, and I once again got a lesson from my son on fun being in the eye of the beholder. With theme park upon theme park of rides and attractions to choose from, his absolute favorite spot was the display of GM cars that you pass when exiting from the Test Trak roller coaster at Epcot. It's just supposed to be a stroll by, maybe check out a car and watch a commercial, and then be on your way to the next meticulously designed and scripted Disney amusement, but for my car-obsessed guy it was the be-all and end-all. We got a Park Hopper pass so that no matter where we started the day, we could end it with those six or seven cars. He crawled in and out and all around them for hours and hours. Sometimes we'd feel guilty for not forcing him to experience more, and sometimes we'd get him to try a ride or two, but really, he was as joy-filled amongst these down-to-earth vehicles as a hall full of Small World marionettes. The happiest place on earth? Behind the wheel of a showroom Hummer, my friend.

In great shape for the shape you're in

This just in: It's okay to be fat! Or, if not okay, at least less "not okay" than it had appeared to be. Estimates of the number of deaths supposed to be caused by obesity have recently been revised down, making it seem as though all the hysteria over the overweight was misplaced and maybe more about selling health services and diet plans than actual medical fact. But not so fast: Others are interpreting the statistics to say that it's only okay to be fat if you're fit, "lack of fitness" being the real danger sign rather than a high scale reading. Fit and fat! Fat and fit! It just sounds like a marketing slogan, doesn't it?

How unsuperficial of them!

When you hear a Hollywood couple is breaking up, it's natural to assume that the cause is something seedy or career-related or otherwise removed from the realm of mere mortal relationships. Certainly, when Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards announced their breakup, the stories popped up pretty quick that he'd returned to his prostitute-friendly ways. But recently, while researching the topic of vaccines and autism for my About.com site, I turned up a fairly bizarre bunch of articles from British gossip sites and a few other sources indicating that the reason for the breakup is far more mundane: They fought over whether their toddler should have the MMR vaccine. Apparently, the difference of parenting opinion between Richards, who wanted to vaccinate the youngster, and Sheen, who feared it might cause autism, grew so heated that she decided to pack the marriage in, despite the fact that she was pregnant with the couple's second (and clearly soon-to-be-vaccinated) child. I've done enough research to know that the topic of whether vaccines cause autism is heated and divisive, but do couples really break up over it? Hollywood couples?

Opting for exclusion

My daughter just finished her first week in resource room for reading and math. That's something I've been fighting against for a long time, pretty much since she was in fourth grade, but in the end I'm the one who suggested the switch. She was doing great in seventh-grade inclusion, getting decent grades, liked by her teachers, keeping up to the best of her ability. It seemed like my theory of putting her in the most challenging environment possible was working. But of course, I wasn't the one having to live through the most challenging environment possible all day, every day. I've had jobs that were the most challenging environment, and I've quit them. My daughter can't quit; she's a good girl, she does what I say, and she tries to believe me when I tell her she can do it. But her feelings of anxiety and overwhelm-ment kept popping out in headaches and stomachaches and crying jags and teeth grinding and a raging case of negative self-talk. I could tell her she was doing fine until I was blue in the face, but if she couldn't own that feeling herself, pushing her was some kind of torture.

So I asked at her IEP meeting, "Do you think she'd be better off in resource?" I sort of hoped everyone would say, "No! Why would you think that! She's doing so well!" Instead, the response was something along the lines of, "Well, duh!" The decision was made to switch her for the last quarter of this year for some immediate stress relief and to ease her anxiety about next year's classes. She's never been one to enjoy changes in routine, but she jumped at this chance to switch and has been beaming about it most days this week. For the first time in a long time -- maybe ever -- she's noticing that she understands things a little better than some of her classmates. I'll always fear that this means she's in a class that's too easy and without a challenge she'll get lazy and fall back; but I also can't deny that leading the pack instead of struggling along behind it is an empowering feeling she could darn well use. We'll see how it goes.

Innovations in eyewear

I remember when I was a teenager, way longer ago than I care to admit, one of my great battles with my dad was over getting contact lenses. I wanted them, and he thought they were awful. Of course, he didn't wear glasses himself, so he had no idea what it was like to have your nose and ears pinched, how uncomfortable it was to have spectacles sliding down your nose in sweaty weather -- not to mention how much they messed up your makeup or clashed with your outfit. I eventually got what I wanted, as I usually did, mostly in this case because my mom (a glasses wearer herself) wanted me to have contacts even more than I did. My eyes never did adjust to them very well, though, and after years of tears and redness and crawling around on the floor looking for popped-out lenses, I went back to glasses and never looked back.

Contacts have come a long way since my teen years, and I'll bet there aren't many parents anymore who object to their kids getting them. No, kids who are looking to establish their independence by demanding things their parents are discomfited by have to be a little more creative nowadays than popping pieces of plastic on their eyeballs. They have to do things like this: sticking a rod through the bridge of their pierced nose and perching little eyeglass lenses on top. That's just the sort of extreme idea that makes parents shudder and talk about their dead bodies. But maybe because I've been wearing glasses most of my life, and feeling the weight on my poor little ears, I have to ask: Just how painful is piercing the bridge of your nose, anyway? Worse than facing the sunlight with scratchy contacts?

Who needs an Evil Genius when you've got a mom?

I went to see the movie "Ice Princess" with my daughter the other night. It was pretty standard Disney Channel fare, blown up for the big screen, with that timeless theme of Following Your Dream and having the courage to stand up and tell grown-ups they Just Don't Get It. I was able to enjoy the plot enough to suspend my motherly disbelief at the time, but the more I think about the film, the more it ticks me off. Let's just say it's not something you want your kids to take you to for Mother's Day, no matter how much you may love ice skating.

While the film is certainly formulaic, it does away with two of those staples of teen and Disney flicks: the nasty Alpha Girl who makes the less cool but nonetheless scrappy heroine's life a misery, and the Evil Villain whose diabolical plot the heroine somehow stands in the way of. It's hard to imagine a teen movie without an Alpha Girl, or a Disney movie without an Evil Villain. And yet, in "Ice Princess," the Alpha Girl becomes an ally pretty early on, and there is no Evil Villain bent on world domination or puppycide. Instead, as the perpetrators of cutting comments, confidence busters, dirty tricks and dire consequences, we have ... moms. And not even evil stepmoms. Just plain old striving smothering over-loving single moms who commit that unforgiveable teen movie offense of wanting things for their daughters. The nerve!

Joan Cusack, who either allowed herself to be filmed entirely without makeup or was wearing some sort of harried middle-aged mom spackle that made her look exactly like I do most days, plays the mom of a bright honor student, the kind who spouts complicated scientific formulas when she's flustered and does math sums in her head to such a degree that it makes other kids uncomfortable. The girl seems to be on a fast track to Harvard, and happy about it, until a summer science project turns into a fascination with figure skating. Because it's a Disney movie, she has such enormous natural talent that she's suddenly besting skaters who've been working at it since before they could lace up their own boots. It's not long before she's letting her grades slip, ditching college interviews, and squeezing into little sequined outfits. And a mom's not supposed to have her reservations about that? If it were drugs or drinking or bad boyfriends that were luring this good girl from the straight and narrow, we'd be slapping that mom silly for letting her out of the house. But figure skating? That's Following Her Dream, Mom! Back off and get your own!

Of course, the mom who wants her daughter to be a figure skater -- played by Kim Cattrall, who must have had it in her contract that under no circumstances would she be wearing the harried middle-aged mom spackle -- is also an evil dream-squishing killjoy. Because her beautiful blond child, who has devoted most of her young life to leaps and lutzes, just wants to do better in math! Please, Mom, don't make me cut class, she pleads. All this ice princess wants is to go to the homecoming dance and maybe get into college and marry her stupid football-playing boyfriend and drop out and have babies and a miserable life in a trailer somewhere and ... whoops, I'm letting my essential mom-ness get in the way of a girl and her dream again. Skating Mom was herself a skater who never fulfilled her promise, and so it must therefore be true that she's living through her child; the fact that she's the one who does the dirty tricks against a rival pretty much seals her deal as a Bad Mom Who Has Lost Perspective. And again, I say: If this was a movie about a promising athlete who was distracted by drugs or drink or bad boyfriends, we would be cheering as the mom fought those bad influences with a baseball bat and the fire of motherly love. But going to class? Doing homework? Being a normal kid? Well, why would you want to get in the way of that? Because we all know that being happy in high school is what really sets you up for success in life.

Yeah, I know, I'm touchy. I'm reading too much into a little piece of you-go-girl fluff. We moms, you know, we Take Everything So Seriously! The movie hits me at a time when I've just deviated from one dream for my daughter in order to maybe make her a little happier, and so watching the geek girl land her triple leaps and the Alpha girl hug her math tutor should fill me with reassurance that the path we set is not always the right one for our children to follow. But it doesn't. I still wonder. It's still such guesswork. You can tack a weepy, feel-good ending on it, but I'm not convinced that a few years down the road, those daughters and those moms aren't going to be second-guessing their decisions. Sometimes pushing our children is a bad idea, but sometimes it's the only way to get them where they're going. That's something you just can't skate around.

Busy girl

I've been a bad little blogger this week, but have pity: I had my son home from school on Monday with an Easter-onset illness, IEP meeting for my daughter on Wednesday during which I reversed my own policy so quickly I got whiplash, son home again on Thursday and also Friday morning with an eye infection, an annual pediatrician visit Thursday night, and a birthday party tomorrow involving taking a dozen kids to a science museum. Plus, have I mentioned I work for a Catholic newspaper, and there's this little story you may have heard about that's going to be making our deadline schedule very tight for the next few days? I'm keeping up with my article-a-day duties on my About.com site, but here, not so much. I'll have more on all this stuff next week. But maybe not until the paper goes out on Tuesday.