Torn between two buddies

It stinks when your friends don't get along, doesn't it? That's the challenge my daughter faces every time she gets all her buddies together. It's not like she has a huge number of close pals, and although she can sometimes arrange separate get-togethers, for things like her birthday party, really, everybody just needs to come and get along. That's hard enough for adults, I guess, and pretty near impossible for teen guys.

My daughter has two good guy friends who just Do Not Like Each Other, whether due to temperamental differences or territorialism or the law of new friends vs. old. One guy she sees all the time, the other has moved away but visits when invited, and they can barely be in the same room with each other. Each has a "second" who sides with him, so there's a nice factional feel to the proceedings. One group always splits off, leaving my daughter to either neglect some of her guests or figure out how to split herself in two.

I've tried to talk some sense into the boys, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it just is. Makes me feel bad, though -- my girl has enough problem learning the rules of social game-playing with kids who aren't her friends. With her friends, shouldn't it be easier?

Only a phone call away

I'm not a big fan of cell phones for young teens, but I have to admit they came in fairly handy at my daughter's birthday party the other day. She and her friends wanted to walk around our neighborhood unescorted, and while I know that's a fairly reasonable request for a bunch of 8th-graders, it's hard for me to flip out of constant vigilance mode. To help, three of the party guests took out their cell phones, gave me their numbers, and assured me they'd all be within easy reach. I did tail them their first time out, pretending to walk the dog. But after that, as they went out again and again, I comforted myself with those phone numbers. I guess a little roaming doesn't hurt.

Home again

Just got back from a week's vacation, and must again report on the very special secret to traveling with scoodgy special-needs kids, whether you're going cross town, out of town, out of state, or out of the country: Bring Extra Adults. You can't beat tag-team parenting for making sure that everyone gets at least a little leisure out of their leisure time. Big thanks to our friends Carolyn and Brett for their co-child-wrangling efforts, which enabled me to spend almost the whole week off with my nose buried in a parenting book. Hmm, there's something wrong with that equation, but I'm so well-rested I'm not going to sweat it now.

The advocacy reflex

I think if you've been a special-needs parent for a long time, at some point you develop an advocacy reflex that goes off at the merest sight of injustice -- maybe the way a breastfeeding mother will automatically leak if she hears a baby, any baby, crying. Tell me I'm not the only one who goes around my child's school IDing kids who probably have fetal alcohol effects, or sensory integration problems, or learning disabilities, and wanting to tell off the teachers who seem to be dealing with them in such ineffective ways. There've even been a couple of incidents when that's gone against my need to advocate for my own kids; my daughter's had trouble with a couple of bullies over the years who seem to be to be so clearly driven by their own special needs that I can't even get properly outraged at them.

Recently, my advocacy reflex has been tripped by a boy I've been asked to tutor at the school. His learning disabilities are less profound than my daughter's, but she has it all over him in terms of organization and conscientiousness in completing assignments. My daughter lives in fear of failing one class; this kid has failed all his classes for seven consecutive quarters, and is about ready to fail sixth grade for the second time. There are supports and accommodations that seem obvious here, and I've been peppering the poor guidance counselor with questions about why teachers aren't doing this, and why teachers aren't doing that. With any luck, maybe I'll be able to make a difference for this boy -- but more likely, I'll just widen the circle of educators who think I'm all about making excuses for unacceptable behavior. Yep, that's my job, and I'm good at it, too.

I'm frustrated, no lie

My son got lunchtime detention today for lying. It's at least the second time this has happened. He told an aide he had a reading book with him and he didn't. And you know, he didn't seem to be too upset about the detention. It meant he sat at a table with just him and the teacher, and frankly, that's a much less trouble-prone place for him to be than his normal lunchtime seating. I should be glad to have him there. But man -- disciplining a child with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder for lying? What part of brain damage don't you understand? Punishing a fetal alcohol kid for lying is like punishing a blind kid for not being able to see. My personal philosophy with my son, and the philosophy of lots of experts on FASD, is that it's not lying if it does not involve deliberate intent to deceive. If a kid is telling an untruth because it's the first thing that pops out of his mouth or because he has no earthly idea what the truth is or why it's important, punishment is never going to be the best strategy. It doesn't prevent future fibs -- it makes them more likely, by stressing the child out.

This isn't rocket science, and it isn't news, and it isn't the first time I've said it. It's right there in his IEP behavior plan, which everybody assures me they've read. So why, in April, are they punishing him for lying? Why, why, oh why? Punishing a child for lying is as much a knee-jerk reaction for some adults as lying is for some kids, I guess. Perhaps I should do a functional behavioral assessment and institute some appropriate strategies like rewarding educators when they don't punish my child inappropriately. Do you think they'd like a sticker?

High School Musical: The Musical

As if there was any doubt that High School Musical, the oft-replayed Disney Channel movie turned chart-topping CD, was a juggernaut, be warned: It's coming next year to a school near you. I've already heard of kids performing dance numbers from the movie at talent shows, and now Disney's announced that the complete musical is ready to be licensed to schools for performance as early as next fall. My kids' middle school put on "Aladdin Jr." as their school play this year, so I knew that Disney was in the business of licensing its brands as junior theatricals, but this one's got to be setting some kind of record. I guess it's possible to lament the nature of, well, high school musicals to think they're going from time-honored classics to yesterday's Disney fodder. On the other hand, I'd be more comfortable watching 12-year-olds portray Troy and Gabriella than the characters in the musical they did the first year my daughter was in middle school, "Guys and Dolls." Something to be said for age-appropriateness, anyway. And the kids will totally already know the words and the moves.

Shot through the art

When I was a kid, the subject I could never do well in, no matter how hard I tried, was physical education. Just didn't have what it takes. The teachers were all sure I was just lazy or unmotivated or not trying hard enough, but my body could not do those push-ups and pull-ups. It always seemed unfair to me that classes like this got graded at all, when inborn talent gave such an advantage and inborn ineptness made effort inconsequential.

My daughter's having the same experience now, but for her the subject from hell is art. She's almost 16 years old and still drawing stick figures, and the teacher is sure she's just lazy or unmotivated or not trying hard enough. But she can't draw any better than I could climb a rope. The other day I fished an art journal out of the trash; she just barely got a C on it, and told me later she threw it away because her drawing was so bad. I looked through this thing, and yeah, the kid can't draw. But she did the entire assignment, which involved identifying traits in herself and illustrating them. Some of the words she came up with were, I thought, amazingly insightful, and it was no small thing for her to assemble these ideas and conceptualize an illustration and a sentence for each. For her, I thought it was an impressive and kind of touching achievement. And it ticked me off that she'd received the impression that it was something deserving of a spot in the trash bin.

Which is unfair, I guess. From an art point of view, a C was generous. Her drawings are kindergarten stuff. But it seems to me that cycle classes, of all places, ought to be more about effort and less about ability. As we put special education kids in inclusion classes for subjects like these, should there not be an awareness of where a student is at and what it takes for them to do something that might look lazy in other contexts? I'm not sure that's happening here, and I'm not sure these teachers are being made to understand what a self-esteem hit they're delivering. But at least she does great in gym.

Never tick off the aides

Well, I seem to be in some trouble at my children's school. Not with the administration, like that year when the principal forbade teachers and aides to talk with me and had me escorted off the premises at least once. Not with the teacher; I don't think I've ever really been in trouble with a teacher. This time, I've ticked off an aide, for reasons having partly to do with my tendency to overreact loudly when I think something's not being done right and partly to my son's tendency to pick up phrases he hears at home and parrot them, out of context, at school. So I might, say, in a moment of anger at something that happened in school, rage that a particular aide ought to do her job. And my son will then go to school the next day and, over and over, tell the aide to "Do your job! Do your job!" And really, even though I'd like everyone who works with my guy to understand that you can't take what he says seriously, I suppose that would hurt my feelings, too, and make me feel defensive toward that child's mom.

So it's unfortunate enough to be in bad with one aide. But aides talk, and they stand up for each other, and I'm beginning to get the feeling that I'm in bad with all the aides in the school, and that's a problem, because while teachers change each year, aides rotate. This morning, the aide who's supposed to watch my son before school officially starts was not where I expected her to be (that is, watching him) and when I asked her about it she said, quite curtly, "I know how to do my job." We've been friendly before, but clearly aren't now, and I can't help but feel it's because I've got bad aide buzz right now. (Although ... um ... must not say this where boy can hear ... but ... she actually wasn't doing her job.) And now I just don't know what to do. Should I force the issue and try to clear the air? Should I go above their heads and insist that my son's safety and protection hinges on these people's vision of their jobs being the same as my vision? Or should I just lie very low, try to ride out the year, and hope that nothing bad happens? Maybe send flowers? Cookies? Donuts? A picture of myself for their dartboard?

Some kids have all the fun

My kids are majorly bummed today because they don't get to go to a funeral. I wonder at what age you stop thinking of funerals as something you "get to go" to? Maybe about the age you start thinking that one day people will be going to yours. Personally, I'd rather go to school. But here was my daughter last night, after attending the wake for her great-uncle, saying to me in all solemnity, "I think going to the funeral is more important than school." Which, roughly translated from kid-speak, means, "How come my cousins get to go and I don't?"

Why? Because unless immediate family is involved, kids don't need to go to funerals. Because, unless there's a truly major family event, kids need to go to school. Because the disruption of routine that a day out of school entails would reverberate with my particular kids for weeks. And because my son has already asked every person in our extended family if he can see their keys, at least once, and after chasing after him all last night I really don't want to do it again this morning. If my sister- and brother-in-law want to keep their kids home and bring them along so they can chase after them all day, well, good for them. But my kids? My kids get to go to school.

Questions you don't want to hear at bedtime

As I've written here before, I'm pretty strict about what music I let my kids buy or download onto their iPods. I check the lyrics online and if I don't like what I see, that's the end of it. But I do let them listen to the radio -- my main concern being them listening to things over and over, not randomly -- and sometimes that comes back to bite me.

Like last night. I'd finally wrestled my son into bed -- not the easiest task, since at the end of a long day he's often so loose and out of control he's like a drunk after last call -- and here he comes popping into my room, full of energy, big smile on his face, with a question so piquing to his curiosity that he can't possibly wait until morning to ask: "Mom, what's a condom?"

Seems they were talking about condoms on the radio while he was trying to fall asleep, and golly, what was that all about? Thanks so much, Z100 DJs. It's not that I don't want to have "the talk" with my son, or that I haven't casually in small ways. It's just that I don't want to explain condoms to him when he's in a super hyped-up mood, or think about him repeating everything I say to his class the next day, in his "what goes in one ear comes right out my mouth" kind of way. I promised to tell him all about it in the morning if he'd go right to sleep, and by this morning he'd forgotten about it, and just as well.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to program his radio so it only plays lite tunes for old people. Of course, then he'll come in asking me about Viagra.

Meeting anxiety

I have a meeting with my son's teacher this afternoon to discuss some behavior problems, and I've been in a tizzy about it since the appointment was made. When do I get to the point where I'm no longer thrown into stress overload by these things? I've been having meetings like this for 10 years, since he started special-ed preschool at age 3. I've stated my case plenty. I've stood up to some pretty opinionated educators. I've gotten my way more often than not, and have generally had good and respectful relationships with his teachers. I even write articles telling other parents how to have meetings. Yet any time I'm called in to discuss things, I feel like I've been called to the principal's office. Am I going to get detention? Am I going to be expelled? My stomach's in knots.

And the thing is, I do want to have these discussions. I want to be called in to confer when there's a problem. I don't want teachers to feel that they can't talk to me because I overreact so badly. I just want my entire neurological makeup to change so that I don't seize up like this. And hey, while we're at it, we can just change my son's entire neurological makeup so there will never be a problem. Ha!

Take back what you said in my imaginary conversation!

Do you ever do that thing where you argue with people in your head, and then turn all sorts of hostility on the actual person when you see them, all the pent-up anger from that argument, and of course they have no idea why you're so steamed since they were not, technically, there inside your head? Bad habit, that, and one I have a hard time breaking.

It's easy to have that sort of inner wrestling match with someone on an internet e-mail list, because if you blow off steam at them inappropriately you never have to see them again. But I'm doing it lately with a couple of real-world combatants, particularly one woman who works with my son and has been pushing my buttons lately, and I'm starting to lose track of whether the hostility I'm feeling is based on actual behavior or virtual behavior. I think it's kind of a vicious circle: She seems a little snippy to me, and so I fight with her in my head, and then when I see her, I'm a little hostile, which makes her a little snippier.

It's bad for my son all around, and I should probably find an appropriate way to iron things out with this person so I can stop being vaguely mad, but then I might find out for sure that she dislikes me as much as I imagine, and hmmm, maybe I can do without that.

Don't do me any favors

Is there such a thing as party favor etiquette?

My son had a perfectly nice birthday party yesterday, everybody seemed to have a good time, there were no behavior problems from either the birthday boy or his friends, and I should be feeling all successful about the whole thing. But something keeps rankling me: When we handed out the party favors -- a little plastic car filled with candy, because my son loves cars, tied to a "road" of a flat pack of gum -- one of the moms came back to me, said her daughter didn't play with cars or eat candy, and since my son likes cars I should just give it to him.

And ... well ... okay. I know I'm taking this too seriously, and why should I care. It's not like I went to huge effort and expense on these favors, or that the mom did what she did in a particularly rude way. It's just ... you don't do that, do you? Give back a party favor? Maybe you take it home and throw it in the trash, or maybe you "accidentally" leave it behind at the party site, but to go up to the party-giver and specifically reject it? Am I oversensitive (YES!), or is that bad form? Hmph.

New-style birthday

It's my son's birthday today! Happy birthday, guy! You're a teenager now! And your mom won't be sleeping well for the next ten years or so. But today, we celebrate. Then we celebrate again on Sunday, when he has his birthday party with friends -- a dozen kids from his special education class descending on a bowling alley. Fun times, for them. For me, it's making sure that boys do not go into the men's room together, because they'll certainly do what my son is constantly crowing about as "the new-style flush," which involves hitting the handle with your foot. This is, of course, ever so much more fun when you have an audience and can show off your extreme prowess at kicking plumbing. Are teenagers supposed to find such things so overwhelmingly hilarious? He's thirteen in years, but still a kid at heart.

If you have a lot of it, it must be a collection, right?

My son has been loving keys since he was a teeny tiny little guy and still loves them now when he's a big heavy almost-teenager (tomorrow, yikes). You could call it a collection or you could call it a mess on the floor of his room, and I've done both. But for the purposes of the About.com Collectibles site, which just ran a nice little article about my guy and his keys, we're calling it a collection. Does your child have a collection, or a mess of something that you could call that on a good day when you were trying to put the happiest possible face on things? Take this survey and let me know whether I'm the only one readying a pile of junk for the Smithsonian.

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me

I seem to be on a cookie kick with my kids these days. I got a nifty standing mixer for my birthday last June, and it's been sitting there on the counter looking all cute and underutilized, so all of a sudden I'm making cookies every weekend, and eating cookies every week, and wearing cookie-fat now and forever. It would be great if this was some sort of bonding exercise in which I helped my kids learn to bake, but I'm way too much of a control freak in the kitchen. What they mostly are learning is how to get things out of the closet for me. But the cookies are yummy. Mmmmmm, cookies.

This weekend, we're doing oatmeal raisin. Not the nut-free, egg-free, dairy-free, wheat-free recipe that was on my About.com site this week, but if your kids need any of those -trees, you might give it a try. We'll be making the one printed under the lid of the Quaker Oats box, with vegetable oil subbing for shortening since I'm transfat-free. Let me know how yours turn out.

What's scarier, the movie or who's watching it?

What's with young kids going to scary movies and playing scary video games? Lately I've had a few young classmates of my kids talk about their favorite R-rated movies like watching this stuff was the most normal thing in the world for a 12- or 13-year-old. When I say something unbearably fuddy-duddyish like, "Isn't that rated R? You shouldn't be watching that!" they seem genuinely bewildered. I can't quite decide if their parents don't know what they're watching or don't care, but man -- kids that young just do not need that stuff in their brains.

I was explaining this to a sixth-grader at my kids' school, a big fan of the movie "Training Day," who was appalled that I not only did not let my son play violent video games like "Grand Theft Auto," but that when a friend had brought it over, I made them stop playing and remove the offending game from the machine. "Wasn't your son embarrassed? Couldn't you have just waited until the kid went home?" No. And no. One viewing of that stuff is too much. And a boy like my son, who regularly sucks his fingers, jumps, and flaps, is probably beyond embarrassment. But it's true, too, that his friends know me, and know what Mama don't allow. Am I the last nay-saying mom around?

The miracle would be me staying awake

I tried to watch ABC's new reality show Miracle Workers last night, since it featured two stories that were right up my Parenting Special Needs alley: a child with scoliosis and a teen with Tourette syndrome. The show features two "host" teams, each with a doctor and a nurse, who find specialists to make miracles come true for people who need dramatic treatments. I made it about halfway through, to the point when the girl with Tourette's had had a hole drilled through her brain and some sort of probe inserted, and the boy had weathered an operating-room crisis that started with, "Oops! He's paralyzed for life!" and ended with, "No, wait, never mind." I really wanted to see what happened -- wanted to see footage of the boy walking straight and tall instead of leaning leftward, and the girl speaking freely without constantly hitting herself in the head. But I nodded off, as I tend to do whenever I sit still after 9 p.m. (Oddly, though, I was able to stay awake for the entire episode of "Grey's Anatomy" on Sunday night at 10 p.m. Maybe if "Miracle Workers" included some subplots about the complicated romantic lives of those doctors and nurses ... no, no, that would be wrong.)

Uneasy rider

I was reading a lot of discussion today on a parenting e-mail list about riding bikes, and the terribleness of your child not being able to manage a two-wheeler, and it made me wonder if I'm deeply scarring my kids in some way by really not caring much about bike-riding one way or the other. I didn't ride a two-wheeler until I was 16 years old, my husband never learned, and so it's hard for us to feel real tragic about our son's failure to launch. Our daughter learned to ride fairly easily, but since we don't encourage constant and energetic bike riding, she doesn't get much practice. And the little guy just can't manage without training wheels, and we can't manage to get out there with him and work on it.

Is this bad parenting? Some sort of oblique child neglect? I don't know. When I was a kid, bikes were a major form of transportation. Kids rode bikes to school (me, too, on those training wheels, well past the age at which it was social suicide to do so), but today my kids' schools forbid that. I needed my bike badly for college transport, but I don't think that'll be an issue for my two. My son's friend needs his bike to do really dangerous stunts involving stairs, but we're not going there for gosh-darn sure. Exercise is important, and I'm trying to get both kids to walk more, but bikes? Seem like an accident waiting to happen, to me. But then, I'm not a biker. And passing that down, apparently.

Sure it's dangerous work, but no IEP meetings

Pop quiz: What's tougher, leading the police force in a war-torn nation, or teaching special education in middle school? Beatrice Munah Sieh is in a position to say. She left a career in Liberian law enforcement when she fled the civil war in her native country and found work in the U.S. as a special-ed teacher in a Trenton, N.J. middle school. Liberia recently elected its first female leader, and she called on Sieh to come home and become the West African nation's first female police chief. Sieh's fellow teachers had no idea they were working with a trailblazer: "None of us knew she was involved with law enforcement in her country," one is quoted as saying. "We just thought we were all educators together."

This whole story just amazes me. Can you imagine your child's special education teacher all of a sudden, one day, announcing, "Sorry, can't finish out the year, I'm going to go back home to lead the police force." I mean, you have to be tough to deal with some of these kids, but that tough? 

Does somebody really READ all this stuff?

My daughter has state standardized testing next week, and boy, it makes me long for the old days when standardized testing involved filling in bubbles with a Number 2 pencil and not much else. These days, the kids have to write essays, and long ones, too, if the amount of pages listed in the sample book is any indication. I don't think I had to face four blank lined pages in a test exam booklet until I was in college, and even then it sent cold shivers. Even if I didn't have kids with learning disabilities, I'd think the folks behind all this testing have gone a little nuts. As it is ... well, I'd laugh, if so much importance wasn't placed in this stuff.

No gambling in my blood

I went to my first big-time Tricky Tray on Friday night, and boy, was that a trip. For those of you who've never been to a Tricky Tray -- and up until I moved to the Northeast, I'd never heard of them -- it's basically a super monster mega raffle for which you buy a lot of little tickets, drop them into containers in front of a variety of fabulous, semi-fabulous, and really-not-very-fabulous-at-all prizes, and then sit around for a few hours listening to people read numbers to see if you won anything. Some folks get heavily into this, spending hundreds of dollars to buy tickets to invest in winning what is mostly, essentially, junk. My husband and I just aren't in the spirit, though. We bought some tickets because it benefits the school, played them fairly half-heartedly, and lost everything. Not even the smallest basket of potpourri or paperbacks did we manage to bring home. I'm happy that the school made money, less happy that we spent one of our very rare evenings out together in such boring circumstances. As with so many fund-raisers, I'm left thinking: Can I just write you a check so that I don't have to participate?

Eye contact? Don't push it

Luke Jackson's "Freaks, Geeks and Asperger's Syndrome: A User's Guide to Adolescence" is one of my favorite first-person accounts of dealing with neurological impairments, told as it is by a kid dealing with the puzzlements and not a parent trying to solve them from the outside. There's a passage about eye contact that validates everything I've ever felt about not wanting to force my son to do it -- I'd rather he listen and not look than look but not listen -- and I'm excited to have gotten permission to post that excerpt on my About.com site. You can also read my review of this entirely nifty book, and my own advice on eye contact.

Me and my big mouth

Yesterday, while we were in the car driving to Ash Wednesday services, my son popped his fingers out of his mouth and said "Oh, no! I broke my contract with Mrs. B!" What contract is that, I asked? "I'm not supposed to suck my fingers." You have a contract about that? said I, blood pressure rising. And he confirmed that he had indeed signed a contract with the classroom aide, and that the teacher knew about it. And I probably should have remained calm and kept my snark to myself and not immediately complained to my husband that people at school cannot just set up behavioral goals at whim and institute contracts and this is something we need to discuss as a team and I had just talked at the last IEP meeting about why finger-sucking was not a good behavior to target, and ... and ... I've been through this kind of thing before, you know. I've had aides take this kind of thing in their own hands before. And I gear up quick.

By the time we got home, though, I had calmed down, and I wrote the lightest-possible e-mail to his teacher, leaving the largest-possible margin for this being a misunderstanding, and hoping that I could get some information without stepping on toes. She called me shortly after, and we had a nice long conversation about the fact that the "contract" was a joke that my boy took seriously, and there was in fact no stealth behavior modification program being employed. And I felt all good and happy and skillful to have dealt with the situation without having to throw weight around or burn bridges. Just the way it should be, no?

Except that this morning, my son marched into his classroom, went right up to the aide, and said, "My mom said I don't have to do what you say! I don't have to listen to you!"

The teacher called to let me know, because I've asked to be notified when he says inappropriate things, and I declared that I never said any such thing, because I didn't, exactly, though sort of, but not to him, but in his earshot, but not in those words, but ... oh, man, if I'm going to live with this little parrot boy, I'm just going to have to get myself a soundproof room, or learn to speak in code. If I can't even rant in the privacy of my own home, wherever shall I rant?

Inspiration and fun, in one

I'm like an old dog with a new trick: This weekend I put a Javascript game up on my About.com site, and it is so cool! I'm unreasonably excited about the fact that, even though I have no idea what all that gobbledygook code does, I was able to place it correctly and tweak it a bit and get it to work in only, oh, I don't now, three or four hours! It's a memory game in which you click on hearts to find matching pairs of messages underneath. The messages are very upbeat and inspirational, so if anybody catches you playing, you can say you needed some self-help confidence building. Yeah, that'll work. Anyway, stop by and try it. I'm so proud!

The media didn't medal

So the Olympics are over, and even after hours of viewing, I still haven't figured out Curling. It's a surprisingly mesmerizing sport to watch, though. Bravo should get going with some sort of Celebrity Curling show, seriously. Wouldn't you just love to see your favorite TV stars frantically brushing the ice and yelling ... whatever it is curlers yell? Bring it on!

I've read all the wrap-up stories about these games, and apparently I'm supposed to have been disappointed in them. No big moments, the pundits say, performance below expectations. Maybe I'm just easy to please, but I found plenty to be inspired by. Ski jumps, both simple and twisting. Snowboarding, and the laid-back kids who practice it. Joey Cheek, giving his medal money to charity; seriously, put that boy on a Wheaties box. That Chinese pairs skater who picked herself up, dusted herself off, and kept on skating through what must have been unbearable pain. I don't think there was a day I watched the games that I didn't see something I didn't know humans could do (or, frankly, would want to). Are we only allowed to be inspired by winning -- and for that matter, only by winning gold?

If I'm disappointed by anything, it's by the media coverage that built huge mountains of hype, yammered about how much pressure that hype put on the athletes, and then pounced on anyone who didn't measure up. In sports where there are so many variables, from the weather to other athletes to the very unpredictability of the human body, how dare we put out those expectations -- especially knowing how much those expectations can affect the outcome by messing with people's heads. I'm willing to cut the athletes more slack than the journalists and the corporations. How 'bout next time, we don't hype anyone until they actually do something, 'kay?

Between the physical crashes and the PR crashes, I come away from these Olympics with a profound sense of gratitude that my children will likely never become serious sports competitors, and save us all the agony of having their mistakes analyzed by know-it-alls on national television. Would you want your child to compete in the Winter Olympics? Take the poll on my About.com site and show your (lack of) spirit.

Inspirational Olympic moment

Oooh, I love this. This is my favorite Olympics quote of the day. I think it speaks beautifully to our wishes for kids to overcome their particular limitations and challenges, and find something they can really be passionate about. It's from a short news item about Helen Resor, a U.S. women's hockey team member, and her excitement about seeing Michelle Kwan in the athlete's village.

"I tried to say something to her, and I think it came out halfway coherent," said Resor, an aspiring figure skater herself before she grew to 5-feet-10 and discovered she loved hitting people.

Find your dream, kids, find your dream!

Olympic impressions

I've been watching a lot of the Olympics with my daughter, which is fun, because I used to watch a lot of the Olympics with my mother. My girl's favorite sport so far is luge, which makes sense; with her language problems, she has trouble with games that involve planning and strategy, and the luge just looks a lot like holding on while gravity pulls your idle body to the bottom of an icy hill at terrifying speeds. Yes, I know, there's more to it than that, there's steering in imperceptible small ways with a twitch of a shoulder or leg, and if you really just hold on and do nothing you will ride down the hill on your face. But for a kid who has trouble understanding rules and the sort of unspoken communication that goes on among teammates, a sport in which you just lie there must look pretty appealing.

I enjoyed the snowboarding a lot. One writer described it as the last sport that hasn't been Olympi-cized, so that the competitors are still really just going at it for the joy of doing a thing you love well, and not to jockey for endorsement deals or ego room. That's why I liked it, I think; they just looked like a bunch of kids in baggy pants having a cool time. I loved reading that, in between turns, a lot of the American snowboarders grabbed their boards, hopped a lift, and went snowboarding for fun. Can't quite imagine a figure skater saying, "Hey, I have a couple of hours before I'm on and I saw a frozen lake down the way -- let's just go skating."

Figure skating was the big viewing event for my mom and me years ago, but I've had a hard time watching it in recent years because the emphasis on bigger and badder jumps and throws has resulted in bigger and badder crashes, and at some point it just breaks your heart to see all that effort done in by a bad blade angle. I'm loving the new scoring, though, especially as it seems to allow skaters to crash spectacularly and still do okay. What I like most about it, though, is its inscrutability. Not even the commentators -- not even the athletes -- seem to know what those numbers mean, and that eliminates a lot of unhelpful second-guessing. I mean, you see a 5.8, and it's easy to go, "No way! That was totally a 5.9! Unfair! Lynch the judge!" But you see a 79.7, and just like a ski jump or snowboard stunt or other judged event, you kind of go ... "Oh, okay. It looked good to me, but, whatever. Good show!" All the layers of difficulty and different point allocations lend the whole thing an obscurity that makes the sport more enjoyable, I think. Works for me, anyway.

The crash of that Chinese pairs skater, as tragic and painful as it was for her, must just have the execs at NBC Sports doing quadruple salchows. They were in a human interest crisis with Michelle Kwan's departure, and now they can just rerun footage of Zhang Dan flying through the air, crashing to the ice, bashing into a wall, and rising to skate again, again and again. If some sort of dramatic injury like this hadn't happened, NBC would have had to send Dick Button down with a lead pipe to make it happen. Oh, the human drama! It was pretty impressive. I don't know if Chinese athletes do endorsement deals, but somebody needs to put that girl's face on a cereal box, or maybe a bottle of pain reliever.

The medal ceremony for that pairs competition was amazing -- I've never seen so many glum faces on the winner's platforms. People, you won! Look alive! Both Chinese couples had skated through significant injuries and pain, so I guess I can give them a pass for looking so desperately unhappy, but the gold-medal-winning Russians had no excuse. The woman looked so ticked off, and gave such an ungracious answer when asked about the Chinese skater who was injured, that you just wanted to ... where's that lead pipe, now? Talk about endorsement deals: Sign this one up for Emerald Nuts -- Eschewing Mercy, Elete Russian Athlete Lobs Disdainful, Negative Utterances at Tortured Skater. If you can learn how to do all those fancy jumps and twists and landings, you can learn how to smile and to win with grace.

Dance fever

My son went to his first middle-school dance on Friday and it was, um, I don't know, a moderate success? My husband and I went as chaperones and basically tailed him the whole time he was there, grabbing him away when he was bugging kids and probably making him look even weirder then he looks all by himself, though, hmmm, maybe not. Anyway, 45 minutes into the 90 minute dance he was pretty overstimulated by the music and the noise and the lack of structure and it looked like a good time to end things on a semi-successful note instead of a note of disaster, so his dad took him to the store to get a couple of Matchbox cars and he went happily home. Half a dance -- better than none? I'd feel a lot more sure saying that if the music wasn't so oppressive, and ill-chosen for middle-schoolers (did they really have to play Candyshop?) and the dancing by the girls so provocative. Maybe next time, we could just take him to the toy store and skip the dance. No? That would be wrong? Okay. We'll shoot for an hour this time.

Be careful what you wish for

At the beginning of this school year, when every one of my daughter's teachers expressed a goal of bringing this sweet, quiet, sometimes timid girl out of her shell and getting her to talk and interact more, I told them sure, fine, good luck with that. But quietly, to myself, I said: Be careful what you wish for. Because, while the goal of making a language-challenged kid more social and outgoing is laudable, doing it in 8th grade when peer behavior is at its worst is a big gamble. And sure enough: The experiment has been so successful that she's had two detentions in the last three weeks. The first was a detention for the entire class, but the second was due to going to the bathroom to talk instead of tinkle, and being late for class as a result.

I'm not making a big deal about these detentions -- they're the milder after-school variety, not the serious Saturday ones. But when I see her English teacher at her IEP meeting next week, I'm going to mention that, hello, if a quiet kid wants to be more talkative, she's going to gravitate to the kids who talk all the time and get in trouble for it. Some of the conversations she's reported having, and some of the shiny new words she's picked up, make me think that perhaps sociability isn't the best goal at this point in time. Now that we've brought her out of her shell, can we stuff her back in a little, please?

Love Notes for Special Parents

I haven't posted much lately due to a book deadline and IEP meetings (one partially down, one to go). But I did manage to complete a little project over on my About.com site that I'm pretty excited about. I took some inspirational sayings I wrote last February for Valentine's Day and did them up with nice lettering and posted them in a gallery. You can click on each design and get a larger version that's nice for printing and framing, giving, or tacking up on the refrigerator. There are 28 sayings in all. Check it out and give yourself a little early Valentine's present.

The secret to eternal friendship

My daughter was telling me this morning about a conversation she had with a friend she's known since her days in self-contained special-ed kindergarten, almost ten years ago. Apparently, the two were discussing what good friends they are, and enumerating the overwhelming number of things they have in common. Explained my daughter: "We both want BMWs when we grow up. We both like 'Suite Life.' We both like Raven. We both like 'High School Musical.' We're like sisters! We're twins!" (I refrained from pointing out that she had tried to watch "High School Musical" twice and had fallen asleep both times. If this is the worse that liking something because your friend does gets for her, I'll be happy.)

Starlet in distress

Just got back from taking my daughter and her friend to see "Cheaper by the Dozen 2" and I have to say, it was far less excruciating than I expected it to be. I'd even go so far as to say that I enjoyed it. But my goodness, what's happened to Hilary Duff? She looked like some leathery middle-aged socialite, with her hair updoed and her face too skinny and too tan. Whoever styled her for this movie -- ack! If it's true, as my daughter's friend merrily mentioned in the car, that she has an eating disorder "just like Lindsay," then whoever was responsible for her makeup seems to have been trying to do some sort of intervention, possibly to shock her by the horribleness of her skinny skinny face on the big big screen. She looked older than Bonnie Hunt, playing the mother. In fact, for my Mom money, Hunt looked better than any of them -- Duff, Piper Perabo as the other daughter, or Carmen Electra as the sexpot trophy wife of Eugene Levy's hyper-competitive character. She was just about the cutest thing on screen, and she's only two years younger than my ancient wrinkly self. Hilary, honey, look up whoever's doing that woman's makeup. Hurry!

Who cares about truth if you've got cash?

We've got a prime example of financial corruption of the political process going on in our city right now, and it doesn't even involve politicians. It involves a businessman throwing huge sums of money around to convince people to veto a plan to build a school near his business. This guy has already mired an early version of the plan in endless hearings to get permission to build in an industrial zone, paying experts and lawyers by the score to tangle the approval machinery. Now he's turned his focus on an election to expand that original project into a facility that will greatly relieve overcrowding in our high school and middle schools.

The result is one of those situations that, if this were two candidates running for office, the fairness of the financial imbalance would be called into question. On the one side, we have the school board, which has a few thousand dollars to spend and can't even legally urge people to vote one way or the other. And on the other side, we have Mr. Businessman, who is spending tens of thousands of dollars on glossy colorful mailers decrying the school plan; full-page ads in local papers; and commercials on networks like Lifetime and CNN to bring his message home.

It's a pretty crazy message, so he sure needs all the money he can get. He needs to convince people who live here that the street his business is on is so heavily trafficked, so beset by trucks traveling heedlessly upon it, that it presents a real and unacceptable danger to our fragile schoolchildren. This is, seriously, one of the quietest and least-busy streets our growing city has. We've got one school on a major highway, and many more on busy thoroughfares that serve as traffic arteries. By comparision, Mr. Businessman's setting is about as bucolic as it gets around here. But his brochures are sure authoritative looking, and dramatically copywritten, and his TV ads will probably be full of portent. Will city voters seek out the other side of the story by, like, driving to the street and noticing they're the only car on it? Most politicians would bet not. I'm hoping they're wrong.

There's a bug going around, right?

Today was the first day of the two-week honeymoon-break my son's teacher is taking, and guess what? Every other woman who works in that multiply disabled self-contained classroom decided to take the day off, too! The classroom aide and the two one-on-ones were out, leaving the (non-special-ed) substitute teacher to go it alone. Even the aide who sometimes helps in the class and knows the kids well was absent. Halfway through the day an aide was pulled from another classroom to help out, but she wasn't any more familiar with this group than the sub. What a mess. I guess it could be just a massive coincidence that everyone was sick on the same day, but man. The timing could not be worse. I sympathize with how difficult it's going to be for the aides these weeks while the teacher is off, but I sympathize with the kids more. If they actually were all out on the same day deliberately or knowingly ... no. Not going to go there. Not going to think that. Going to give them the benefit of the doubt. But they better be back tomorrow, or I'm going to homeschool for two weeks.

Routine? We don't need no stinkin' routine!

Rough couple of weeks ahead for my son, I think, and for our family by extension. January's already a tough month with the transition back into school after the Christmas holiday. And now his teacher is leaving to get married and will be gone for a couple of weeks. I couldn't be happier for her, really; she's a nice woman and a good teacher and I wish her all the best. But yeesh, two weeks of disrupted routine for a multiply disabled class is asking for trouble. Already I'm hearing little rumblings about my son's disruptive behavior, and am not sure the proper interpretation is being put on things. Maybe he'll settle down and sail through, or maybe the rest of the class will act up, too, and he'll fit right in. I'm sure looking forward to the end of this little period of unrest, though, and wondering just how much I should make myself available to instruct and strategize in the fine art of handling the boy. Maybe I'll just succeed in making everybody hate meddling me, so they'll cut my kid some slack out of pity.

Worries come, worries go

I'm less worried today about my daughter going to high school, after a really good meeting about her transition and all the services that will be available to her there. I'm more worried today about our dog, the beautiful Princess, who went to the vet today for a regular check-up and was discovered to have a swollen lymph node. I'm taking the doctor's word for this; she had me rooting around in Princess's neck trying to find it, and I finally just said, "Oh, yes, I feel it" to give the poor animal a break. So now they're talking about the "C" word and shaving fur and taking a little bit of material from the node and running tests, and did I need something new to worry about? I didn't think so. She seems pretty healthy otherwise and I'm pretty sure this will turn out to be nothing, but, yikes. Dog ownership isn't pretty.

New Year, new worries

Alright, I'm back. Didja miss me? I took a little time off from double-blogging to, you know, play with kids and wrap presents and entertain guests and make a book deadline. I am now ready for a long winter's nap, but the book deadline was only a partial one and I still have more chapters to write than I want to think about just now, thanks. I'll sleep in February. Then again, today I'm going over to the high school to talk with a transition person about just exactly what I should be worrying about when my daughter starts there in the fall. So maybe by February I'll be too anxious to sleep.

Two things that made me smile this week

The first started with a big frown, as an online retailer who shall remain nameless waited until the Monday before Christmas to tell me that, oops, that item I ordered for my son, that he's been asking about every day, is out of stock. The story of the Road Map Rug and the rescuer who made sure we got it on time is on my About.com site. Let's just say that parents of children with special needs have to stick together.

The second started with a tear in the eye, as the news of John Spencer's death (see Friday's entry) made me sadder than it should have, considering that I never met the man and have only admired his work on TV. But the outpouring of affection shown on the Television Without Pity forum over the weekend and into this week -- 46 pages worth and counting -- has inspired me with the power of the internet to bring people together. If you're a West Wing fan, stop by and add your condolences (and read a note from Aaron Sorkin expressing thanks on behalf of the producers and cast).

Late shopper

Well, I did a foolish thing. I ordered a whole bunch of Christmas presents online, like I swore I wasn't going to do this year. And I ordered them late, with just a tiny big of wiggle room to get them here for Christmas. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So here I am this week, sweating it out, making my list of expected deliveries and checking it twice, jumping up every time it sounds like a UPS truck might be in the vicinity. Maybe Santa will come through and deliver this stuff down my chimney late on Dec. 24. Or maybe, late on Dec. 24, I'll be on an endless line at Target picking up emergency gifts.

Goodbye to John Spencer, and Leo McGarry

It's silly to get all worked up about the death of an actor, but I'm feeling really sad tonight to hear that John Spencer, beloved as Leo McGarry on "The West Wing" and, before that, as Tommy Mullaney on "L.A. Law," has passed away from a heart attack at age 58. It seems I watch some episode of "The West Wing" or other most days thanks to reruns on Bravo and my DVD sets, and it's hard to imagine life without Leo. I could spend all day and night remembering and typing out some of that character's wonderful lines, but one monologue seems particularly appropriate to this blog for parents with special-needs kids, who have been down in holes before and helped each other out. Long-time fans of the show will recognize it instantly; for those who aren't, it's said by Leo, a recovering alcoholic, to his deputy Josh, who's suffering from PTSD after being injured in an assassination attempt, to let him know he has his boss' unwavering support:

This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, "Hey, you, can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole. Can you help me out?" The priest writes a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out." (Text from IMDb)

If you're also mourning the loss of John and Leo, and want to share those feelings with people who won't think you're an idiot for mourning someone you've never met and a TV character, there's a bit of a wake going on at the Television Without Pity forums. Bring a big block of cheese.

Bad friends

I've read that choosing the wrong friends is standard behavior for adolescents with FASD, and boy oh boy, are we seeing it this year with my 12-year-old son. Every day, constantly, I'm hearing Nick this, Nick that, Nick the other thing. When my son says something offensive, I get, "But Nick says it!" When I tell him he can't have 50 Cent CDs for, like, the 5,432nd time, I get, "But Nick has them!" Nick also, apparently, has a new video iPod, a cell phone, every possible objectionable movie and videogame, and parents who are way more lenient than I. He gets to stay up late, he gets to skip homework, he gets to do whatever he wants. Between him and Caillou's dad, I'm constantly falling on the "mean parent" side of the line.

Now, I've met Nick. He's been in my son's self-contained special-ed class for a couple of years now, and he doesn't seem to be a mean kid. He's got issues of his own, for sure, so I can't come down too hard on him. But I do think he gets a kick out of how fervently my son imitates him, and sometimes tells him to say bad or scandalous things just because he knows my boy will do it. And that, eventually, is going to be trouble, whether because the things he repeats are really bad or because Nick tells him to actually do things. This is classic FASD, logic-free, consequence-ignorant behavior, and I sure do wish I could make him see why doing what Nick does and saying what Nick says is such a bad idea.

I got a little glimpse of the future yesterday, when my son met me at the door of the school shouting, "The new-style flush!" Um, what? "Nick says it!" Apparently Nick had flushed the toilet in the boys' room with his foot and called it "the new-style flush," and now it's my son's catch phrase or something. As we walked to the car, my son yelled it out to every kid who went past. At one point, he started poking the girl walking in front of us and saying, "Hey, kid! The new-style flush! The new-style flush! Hey!" She gave him a look caught somewhere between disgust and terror, and I wrestled him away and tried talking to him, but "Nick says it" and that's that. I'll bet Nick doesn't say it constantly to every person who walks by, but he certainly gets the ball rolling as far as my son's concerned. What happens if he thinks it's funny to tell my son to say phrases with threats or obscenities? Maybe it's a good thing my guy's speech is still not real clear. Memo to speech therapist: Lay off articulation for a while, okay?

There are so many sweet and gentle and harmless kids in my son's class. Why can't he imitate that kid who never talks, hmmm? Why doesn't he fixate on him? Yeah, I know. "Choosing the wrong friends." It's going to be a long adolescence.

Yet another use for duct tape

Saw an article in the paper this morning about a second-grade teacher who was suspended for duct-taping a few of her young charges to their chairs. And I know I should be all righteously indignant about it, as the mom of a child who can be a behavior problem and who needs to be dealt with using positive behavior management techniques, not abuse. But then again, you know, there are days when nothing reasonable seems to work, and, hmmm, duct tape, you say? Not touching the skin, you know, but over the clothes and under the chair? Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong, yes, but, hmmm. According to the AP report,

"The woman, a five-year employee of Land O' Pines Elementary School, reportedly used tape to confine up to four students to their seats in one day, schools Superintendent Enid Golden said. It wasn't clear what provoked the teacher, Golden said."

I wish I could say I can't imagine what it was, but, well, hmmm.

Puppy profiling

I've never been a victim of profiling myself -- unless you count the assumption that anyone under 5 feet tall must be a child, or any parent in a Child Study Team meeting must be in denial or clueless -- and so it's been interesting watching something like it taking place with, of all creatures, our very sweet and gentle dog. Princess has been a part of our family since July, and has put up with enormous amounts of overly enthusiastic behavior from my son without so much as nipping his nose. I've seen her bark a bit at other dogs who didn't show appropriate respect (certainly, at age 9, she's entitled to that), but her approach to humans has always been reserved but friendly. At most, she just wants to sniff you over to add you to the comprehensive Encyclopedia of Smells that appears to be her life's work. But some people look at this harmless old girl and see one thing: German Shepherd. And add to it, Vicious German Shepherd. Bloodthirsty German Shepherd. You can see them go pale, and check for escape routes. Most recently it was a telephone installer who saw her standing at the top of the steps when he came to our door and said, tensely, "Would you please put the dog away," in a tone of voice that conveyed, "Chain up that ruthless animal or you'll get no phone service from me!" She was kind of ticked off not to get a chance to smell him, but ruthless? Would a ruthless dog lick the face of a small boy who grabbed her muzzle and yelled "KISS KISS!" I think not.

Play time

Here's a game to play with yourself when you're looking around the internet for something to waste time on. Go to Google Images, and search for your name (type it in quotes to get only matches with your full name). If you've posted pictures of yourself on the 'net, you may find them. If not, you'll see what other people with your name look like. And maybe there will be some stuff there that's just bizarre. When I searched for my name, two images came up: one of me, from my About.com site, and one of Napoleon Dynamite. I know why the latter is there -- it's from a Blogging Baby post in which my name is mentioned -- but still. It does give me kind of an odd impression of myself. Try it with your name, and comment on what you find.

I got your number

Students at my kids' school now have to wear ID badges around their necks at all times. This offers numerous advantages. Administrators can see at a glance when someone doesn't belong in the building. Teachers have an easier time remembering students' names, or yelling them out in the hallway, if they're written right there on the front of them. Plus, of course, now we can take advantage of that student ID discount at the movies. On the other hand, theft and loss of badges is going to be a problem; already, after a week, I heard of a kid who had his stolen from his gym locker. Kids who routinely forget their badges at home will be penalized, giving the behavior-challenged another hurtle to jump. Those signs around everyone's necks, teachers too, are a reminder that we no longer live in a world where you didn't have to lock school doors and account for everyone constantly. And though I'm thrilled to be able to scan ID badges under the bar-code reader in the library instead of making kids spell their names for me, it sort of makes me feel like I'm working at a supermarket, and the kids are packaged goods. Nothing but a number, baby! Wear it with pride.

Questionable goals

Had first marking period conferences with my kids' teachers this week, and all seems to be well. One common note struck by each of my daughter's teachers is that they've made themselves a little project of getting her to speak up more, stand up for herself, answer questions, talk without fear. It's nice that they all like her so much and want to help her be more confident, and, gee, good luck with that, but I've got to wonder whether teaching a nice quiet girl to be a loudmouth is the kind of thing that's going to turn out to be maybe not such a great idea. If she starts mouthing off more at home, I'm going to blame them.

Unsatisfactory report cards

I try not to make a big deal of grades with my kids, but their new report cards are just screwy. Their middle school hasn't used letter grades on report cards for as long as I've had kids there; they get numbers for each class, and up until this quarter, the explanation has been "70-100: Passing. Under 70: Failing." That's at least to the point. Kids still talk in terms of letter grades, but since I encourage my kids to work hard and just worry about passing, I'm cool with the simple pass/fail designation. But now the school has switched to a new computer program with new explanation: "85-100: Honor Roll. 70-84: Good. Under 70: Unsatisfactory." Classifying any grade above 85 as "honor roll" is kind of misleading, since at least in the past, you've had to get every grade over 85 to make it. And then, that 70-84 "good" -- in other words, if you blow the honor roll, you might as well get a D, it's all the same. I guess that's nice for kids who have to try hard to get a D, but it kind of stinks for those who try hard to get a nice solid B. And now kids don't fail anymore, they're just "unsatisfactory"? Gentle's nice, but only if they're not still going to make you repeat the year if you're unsatisfactory in a whole lotta subjects. I don't know. Generally, terminology that rewards effort and softens failure is good for learning challenged kids like mine. But this stuff just sounds like it was made up by a committee, based on whatever the way the educational wind is blowing.

Are you likely/unlikely to call again?

My daughter had her first experience with phone surveys last night, and although she claimed to have enjoyed it, I don't think she'll be quite as curious about who's on the phone when we hang up quickly from now on. The survey was on moviegoing habits, and although I usually refuse to participate in such things, the lady on the phone sounded nice and must have got me in a soft moment, because I volunteered to go along. Unfortunately, my demographic was filled (or more likely, she was just being nice, and they really don't care about what 46-year-olds think), so I offered up my 15-year-old daughter to answer some questions. This was partly to give her some telephone experience, and partly to get back at surveyors who call cold like this -- here, try asking your questions to a kid with language impairments! Ha! The questioning went on for 15 minutes, with the lady asking my girl if she'd heard of a movie, if based on description of it she'd be definitely likely/somewhat likely/might or might not/probably unlikely/or definitely unlikely to see it. She'd heard of a few of them, was completely stumped by a few others, and many of them had me, as I listened in secret, ready to say "We would never let her go see that!!!" I did finally speak up when they tried to enlist her into some sort of online movie reviewing group that might win her a trip to Hollywood and probably take personal information of unacceptable detail. All in all, I think it was interesting to her, and somewhat safe. And maybe after the experience of repeating things over and over for my sweet but not always comprehending daughter, these survey folk will spread the word not to call our house anymore.

Novel interlude

Thanks to a friend with a book club membership (thanks, Carolyn!), I just took a little break from my usual ceaseless parenting book reading and polished off an actual novel. Light from Heaven is the latest, and according to the book jacket, the last in the Mitford series of books by Jan Karon. These books are my reading equivalent of comfort food, something that goes down easy and is mildly meaningful without requiring a whole lot of work. I love being able to just sit down and lose myself in a tale of Father Tim now and then, the biggest problem being that I tend to read them cover to cover in a short time and then get sent back to the purgatory of parenting books yet again. Glad for the break, anyway, however brief.

Parental guidance in gift cards

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I really am an old fogey, despite my pathetic attempts to reassure myself that I'm still semi-hip. But I don't know. I went to Sam Goody with my daughter on Saturday to get a music gift-certificate for her friend's birthday party. A gift certificate. Seems harmless enough, right? The girl behind the counter started to pick up a gift card with a dog in a Santa hat, but then asked: "Is it for Christmas?" And I said, "No, a birthday." And she grabbed a different card, one that ... Well. The card was glued to a larger carboard piece that folds up to make a nice little gift card presentation. And on this larger piece was a black silhouette graphic of a young woman rocking out. She had her punky-haired head tilted to one side and her chest positively thrust out on the other, so that when you look at this item your eyes immediately go to that part of her anatomy. Making this more disconcerting is the fact that the fold in the cardboard piece hit right across this area, giving the ... chest a rather sharp tip that looked like a, well, let's just say she appeared to be either braless or clothesless.

By the time I had adequately taken this little piece of artwork in, the girl had already encoded the card with my purchase amount and handed it to me with a receipt. I examined it as we walked to the car, and I examined it again in the car, and I had my daughter examine it, and I asked if it would make her uncomfortable to give it to her (male) friend. She finally allowed that it did bother her, although maybe because I was bothering her so much, and so I walked back into the store and told the kids behind the counter that I had a teen-age girl giving this to a teen-age boy and the design was just too suggestive. They looked at me as if to ask if the caves were cold and the dinosaurs scary back when I was their age, but they exchanged it, and we got the dog in the Santa hat. It's bad enough that so much of the music being sold to kids these days has an X rating. Can't the gift cards at least be rated G?

I'm dreaming of a Christmas that is not here yet

I keep checking the calendar, and it keeps telling me that we're in mid-November. I'm pretty sure Thanksgiving is next week, not last week. It's still fall, isn't it? I'm just making sure, because the radio station my daughter listens to has already started playing all Christmas carols, all the time. A street I drove down last night already had its Christmas decorations hanging from its streetlights. A Hummer I saw at a stoplight had strings of green lights all over it. And I thought maybe I had been in a time warp of some sort and it was December 19, not November. What's that you say? No? They're all just jumping the gun? Well, alright. Now that you mention it, I do see that our neighbors, who usually put up enough Christmas lights to land planes by, have not yet started stringing. The holidays will be here before we know it. But they're not here yet. People, get a grip.

Getting in gear

I had a chat today with the child study team leader at my kids' middle school, and now have IEP meetings set on my calendar for next February and March. This is one of those rare years when I'm more worried about my daughter's meeting than my son's, because he has two more years at this same school, where they seem to be handling him pretty well, but my daughter's moving on to high school. I'm less worried about her actually doing okay in high school than I am about her initial transition; if it's as difficult as her into-middle-school transition was, it'll be a very tough time. I've got the phone number of the transition person at the high school and will try to touch base with her and find out what we can do to make things go as smoothly as possible. But hey, you know, it's adolescence. What are the odds of anything going smoothly at all?

Classic is in the eye of the beholder

If you've just been dying to watch old episodes of "Adventures of Brisco County Jr.," "Head of the Class" and "Kung Fu," good news: AOL will soon be offering these and other "classic" TV shows in streaming video for internet viewing. Some of the shows to be shown actually do have some cultural flashback value; I might be interested in watching "Alice" and "Eight Is Enough" again, and I'm sure there are people who'd feel the same about "The Fugitive," "Maverick," "Lois & Clark" and "Scarecrow and Mrs. King." But I have trouble believing there's really a big audience pining away for "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" repeats. It makes me think about "The Hat Squad," a blink-and-you-missed-it series that got replayed endlessly on one of the few channels we had available while we were in Russia adopting our kids 11 years ago this month. I remember watching it with Russian dubbed over the voices and thinking: So this is where bad American TV goes when it dies. But now, I guess that distribution path is changing. Apparently, as with so much else, it goes on the internet.

"Candyshop: A Literary Analysis"

Look for gunfire to be flaring up at a bookstore near you: Rapper 50 Cent, whose movie debut already has a fatality rate, is putting out a line of "G-Unit Books," novellas and graphic novels of "street fiction" using the same themes found in his raps. According to publisher Pocket/MTV Books, "These tales will tell the truth about The Life; the sex, guns and cash; the brutal highs and short lives of the players on the streets." Oh, middle school English teachers, you have my sympathies. You're going to be getting some way interesting book reports.

Shopping, or not

I almost got my Christmas shopping started this weekend, but no: the dinosaur book I got for my nephew was so perfect for him that his father had already gotten it. So now I step back from square two to square one, where I shall no doubt stay until well after Thanksgiving. Speaking of Thanksgiving, is it bad to really, truly, seriously want to have it catered by Boston Market? They'll even give you a whole turkey now, so you can, you know, take it out of the oven and pretend. Do you have to tell your family if you get it from a take-out place, or can you sneak things into dirty baking dishes and pieces of china and act like you slaved away all day. It's not like my son wouldn't out me in a minute, but it's a nice dream. Mmmmmmmm, pre-mashed potatoes!

Cleaning up after the packrat

Pfew! The room clean-up is done, or at least phase one. That phase was a two-day event of taking everything out of my son's room, every piece of torn paper, every ripped-up plastic bag, every destroyed toy car, every bit of the 5,000-piece grocery store set he got for Christmas a couple of years ago, every key, every old sock that he pretends is fish for his cooking games, every receipt in his receipt collection, every last thing. That was yesterday. Today was sorting through it and putting almost everything back, because even if it looks like trash to you and it looks like trash to me, it looks like a compulsively necessary treasure to the boy. I don't even fight. If it's put away and I don't have to look at it, it can stay. The room is reassembled now, in sightlier fashion, but that doesn't count the huge amount of junk on top of the unused bunkbed, and the piles of junk down by the garage where he enjoys packing up the car with clutter and unpacking it repeatedly. Those two spots are a job for another day. Or month. Or maybe, year. I'm beat.

Who made this big mess?

You may not be hearing from me for a while. Since my kids are home from school these two days, plus the weekend, I have set this time aside for cleaning my son's room. It may not be enough. I may wander too deep into the jungle of toys and car magazines and plastic shopping bags and never be heard from again. It's the kind of risk a mom has to take. I've tolerated my guy's space looking like the sort of thing a homeless person would set up under a highway overpass for quite some time now, but no more: Every so often, the place has to be completely cleared out and things put back in some semblance of order, and that time has come. So here I go. Once more into the breach. Talk among yourselves for a while, okay.

Dinner dread

It looks like Thanksgiving's going to be at our house this year, so I have to dig up my recipes and start planning. Last time we did the dinner I put my son, the Food Network fan, in charge, and helped him put it all together. Hopefully, he'll be up for it again this year. My wish for the day is that I can keep from being over-the-top stressed and obnoxious about it. Maybe we could just order from Boston Market ... Speaking of recipes, if you've got some great Thanksgiving recipes for kids with food allergies, diabetes, or other dietary restrictions, come share them on the About.com Parenting Special Needs forum. We can all use some new ideas now and then.

Why I hate November

November is the most ridiculous month for school in our district. The kids had a complete week of school last week, but this week they have a half-day off tomorrow for election day and then no school Thursday and Friday due to a teacher's conference. They have another complete week, then a half-day off for Thanksgiving eve and no school Thursday and Friday. Very nice job of keeping a routine going there, guys. At least in December, we get all five days off in a row.

Where are the parents?

More proof that I'm the most overprotective parent in the world: Friday night, my daughter played trombone at a football game with the high school band. It was "Eighth Grade Band Night," an annual event during which kids who will be in high school the following year get a little preview of what it's like to be marching on the field and playing rah-rah music in the stands. When it was over, my girl wanted to go somewhere for a snack, and we picked the nearby Burger King because it was, well, nearby. Big mistake. The parking lot of the fast food joint was filled with a giant mob of unchaperoned kids, who would have overflowed the inside of the restaurant, too, had an apoplectic manager not been stationed at the door to yell YOU HAVE TO BUY SOMETHING TO COME IN HERE. YOU CAN'T JUST HANG AROUND.

Now, I was a kid once, too, and I was in high school, and I hung out at a local eatery after football games and school programs with my friends, without parents, and I, you know, put salt shakers upside down and made messes and laughed at apoplectic managers and did the things kids do, or did back in the Stone Age. But that was high school, and that was a time when you did not open the paper every day to hear about kids being abducted or abused. My daughter saw plenty of her friends from middle school there, traveling in unaccompanied gangs, long after dark, looking young and vulnerable and in need of some parental supervision, okay? There's one boy we've known since he was in second grade, a kid I'd lay money on has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a kid who's pretty much had a "headed for trouble on the fast train" sign hung around his neck since he was in elementary school, and there he is running around Burger King, not a grown-up in sight. And you just know when these kids get in trouble, their parents are going to say, "We had no idea!" Well, folks, here's a good way to get an idea: Get your butt to Burger King. I could have used a little company over in the geriatric section.

Celebrate adoption

Apparently November is National Adoption Month, which is appropriate for my family since November was the month in 2004 that we spent in Russia adopting our kids. The entire month, although it was only supposed to be (cue "Gilligan's Island" theme) a two-week trip, a two-week trip. Whatever your reason for wanting to celebrate adoption this month, Carrie Craft at the About.com adoption site has a calendar of 30 daily pro-adoption activities to fill up your month. Believe me, it's better than watching bad American TV dubbed into Russian 24/7.

The look of longing

Like I don't have enough to do trying to decipher the secret messages in the behaviors of my children, I'm spending a lot of time lately wondering just what on earth it is my dog wants. She looks at me with such purpose, with such clear intent to communicate, and yet ... well, who knows. I always seem to guess wrong. She's not cross with me, never seems to lose her patience that I will, in fact, figure it out, rather like the way I use my super sweet gentle voice when my son is out of control and just keep telling him telling him telling him what he needs to do. Maybe I'm as incomprehensible to him sometimes as Princess is to me. Oh, well. She's always happy to have a walk, and even though she goes back to her silent imploring afterwards, leading me to believe that the walk was not actually the thing, it at least occupies her for a bit. Maybe I'll go give her one now.

November is novel month

Anyone out there participating in NaNoWriMo this year? National Novel Writing Month, for long, encourages prospective writers to put their fingers to the keyboard and write a 50,000+ word novel between November 1 and 30. I actually did sign up this year, although whether I'll really be able to follow through with all the other stuff I've got on my plate is questionable. Still, it's a nice, hopeful kind of thing to do. I have an idea for a young adult novel with a learning-disabled heroine that's working itself out in my mind. If you're noveling this month too and have anything online to show for it, comment or e-mail me and I'll link to you here.

Halloween horrors

Here's my idea of a scary Halloween: Drop your teen child off in the dark of night in the middle of a street in a strange neighborhood to go trick-or-treating with friends, only one of whom you know and you don't even trust him that much. That's the shivery way I spent my October 31, and although everything worked out okay, I'm not sure I would do it again. First she was to be dropped off at her friend's house, which was okay, because I know where that is and I know his parents. At the last minute, the drop-off point changed to the friend's friend's house, which was less okay but at least I sort of knew where it was, and could walk her in and get the gist of things. But then we couldn't find the house -- wouldn't do to have like, house numbers that you could see in the dark, would it? -- and happened to see her friend walking on the street. My girl just kind of jumped out and ran off, although not before I had the cell phone number of her friend and had passed my cell phone on.

As I drove away, I thought of every possible worst-case scenario: Would she get lost? Would the kids be nice? Would she get hit by a car? Did she know how to dial my cell phone? But as it turned out, she called about an hour-and-a-half later from her friend's house, saying she was tired of trick-or-treating and wanted to be picked up. Her friend had continued on without her, and she was worried that he thought she was a baby, or just no fun. She's a little too old to be excited about trick-or-treating, and a little too young to be comfortable walking around at night with no adults. We both assumed that put her off the track with her merry trick-or-treating parent-free friends, but maybe not. I saw her friend this morning at school, and he mentioned that, well, he's a little too old to be excited about trick-or-treating, and a little to young to be comfortable walking around at night with no adults. Next year, I'm thinking we'll need to throw a Halloween party. At our house. With a spotlight on the address.

Conference call

If you get a call from your child's teacher with some unsettling news, like classroom misbehavior or academic struggles, where do you imagine that teacher being as he or she has this conversation? Some private office, a conference room, a teacher lounge? I never think of my kids' teachers as speaking in a big group of people, with a voice loud enough to be heard, but I know of course that they usually are. At my kids' elementary school, I frequently heard teachers standing in the middle of the busy office arguing with some parent or other, and now, of course, I hear more than my fair share of confidences simply by virtue of standing near the phone when I volunteer at the library. That's the way it is, but it's not the way it should be, is it? Aren't there issues of privacy and confidentiality being violated? The other day, I was in the library when a teacher actually trooped a student to the phone, made him stand there as he called the parent, and then spoke loudly and theatrically about how bad the kid was doing. Bad enough I was an audience to this, but there was a group of students sitting at computers quite nearby who got an earful as well. I know the kid only slightly, and don't know how much he cares about being onstage or what the teacher has put up with to get him there, but still. I hate when teachers belittle a child in public, and even though that wasn't the intent of this call, given the setting it was certainly the effect. When you get a call from your child's teacher, do you assume it's private? And how bothered would you be if it's not?

I blame 50 Cent

Apparently, child's play isn't what it used to be. Today, between frames in the parent-child bowling league I'm in with my son, I was invited to play a little challenge match of rock-paper-scissors with teeny little guy from another team, maybe four years old. He made the universal pounding fist motion at me, and we played peacefully for a little while, scissors beating paper, paper beating rock, rock beating scissors. Then, one round, I did scissors and he did one pointing finger. I asked him what that was supposed to be, figuring it was a scissors gone awry in the heat of the moment, but no. "A GUN!" he answered proudly, reveling in his triumph. I guess a gun does beat all, but somehow it just ain't sportsmanlike.

Caillou's dad: Public Parenting Enemy #1

I've limited my son to watching only the mildest of TV kiddie fare because fun flashy Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network stuff makes him jumpier than SpongeBob on speed, but while the likes of "Arthur" and "Zoboomafoo" and "Little Bear" do keep him calm, there are always complications. Right now, for example, Caillou's dad has become the exemplar of all that parents should be and all that I am not. 'Cause see, Caillou's dad says yes to everything. No matter what Caillou wants to do, his dad finds a way to make it fun and safe and cool and cartooneriffic. Why, my son would like to know, can't I be more like Caillou's dad? Why can't I say yes all the time? I try to explain that we only see a tiny part of Caillou's day, and maybe his dad says no all the time in between; I try to explain that good parents have to say no sometimes; I try to explain that it's easy to say yes when you're a cartoon character; I try to explain that Caillou never asks his dad if he can listen to 50 Cent. But it's no use. Caillou's dad is cool, and I'm a killjoy. You've got to ask yourself, though: What did Caillou's dad say yes to that caused all his kid's hair to fall out?

Dance fever

The good thing about chaperoning middle school dances is that if something happens and your child wants to leave, you're right there on the spot and able to come to the rescue. And the bad thing about chaperoning middle school dances is that if something happens and your child wants to leave, you're right there on the spot and able to come to the rescue. When my daughter came out of the dance crying last night and insisting on going home, I could hardly march her back in there. She claimed there was something about the volume of the music that was making her sick, and surely the music was loud, and she's been sickened by heavy bass before. But she's also been to dances before with loud music and loved them. Was it really the music, or the fact that her friend wasn't there and she couldn't find anyone to hang with? Had someone said something that hurt her feelings? Was her musical discomfort overridden in the past by the fact that she was having a good time with her friend, and now it wasn't? She insisted it was just the music, and I took her home. But if I wasn't there, she'd have had to stick it out, and maybe she'd have found some way to have fun. Mom on hand for rescue: Good or bad? A little bit of both, I think.

Testing a hypothesis

We're going to have an interesting child behavior experiment with my son this holiday season. In the past, his school behavior has always taken a sharp downturn around the end of November or beginning of December, whenever they start practicing in earnest for the dreaded holiday program. It's been my theory that the rehearsals, with their disruptions of routine, extended exposure to mainstream classmates, and expectations to stand or sit quietly, are major stressors for him, and leave him with fewer resources for self-control and restraint through the rest of the day. One year, I even had him pulled from the program because it wasn't worth all the agony.

But this year, he's in middle school. No school-wide holiday programs there. If you're not in the band or in the chorus, you're off the hook. So now we'll see. Is it really the rehearsals that give him the crazies? I wonder if I can get some sort of research grant for this stuff.

Bad news Tuesday

I volunteer at the library at my kids' school, and do most of my work at a counter near the phone that teachers use to call parents for reasons that are seldom celebratory. I've heard my fair share of calls regarding missed homework, failed tests, needed conferences and other areas of concern. But yesterday was particularly sad, as I listened to one poor teacher call seven parents to let them know their kids were acting up, dropping out, and generally failing her class. For one kid, constantly being the class clown was the source of the trouble; for another, rampant disrespect; for another, no work being done at all. I don't think it was easy for the teacher to make those calls, and undoubtedly it wasn't easy for the parents to hear them. Kind of ironic that she ended each conversation with, "Have a nice day." Not much chance of that, anymore.

What struck me most while listening to these calls was the vast relief I felt at never getting one of them. I've never been more grateful for special education. If my son were forced to be in a mainstream class, he could easily fit many of the descriptions I heard the teacher making. But in the structure of a small self-contained class, he's able to function acceptably. Later that afternoon, I went for conferences with my daughter's teachers and heard how great she was doing, either despite of her learning problems or because of the help she's getting for them. At least they all know that if they ever have to talk to me, I'm already by the phone.

Depression fiction

Books for older children and young teens are just a minefield, aren't they? There's a stretch there when every book seems to just be about misery and despair. It's the kind of thing that gets satirized in the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books, and debated when the misery and despair are because of social issues that some parents don't want their kids reading about, but even in the little innocent paperbacks about run-of-the-mill school problems, the unhappiness runs so darn deep it's hard for me to read them. I remember reading some Marvin Redpost books with my daughter a few years ago and finding them semi-sadistic, with the amount of problems piled upon the young protagonist, chapter after chapter after chapter. False friends. Uncaring teachers. Inattentive parents. At every turn, no one to see things his way. At every turn, blame and shame. As a mom, it just made me want to scream, and knock some heads together. I'm getting those same feelings from the latest book I'm reading with my daughter, "Best Friends Forever?" We're maybe six chapters in, and if I didn't know better I'd think it might be a book about teen suicide, because man, the author is hard on her young narrator. And I know from reading the back cover that there's more unhappiness to come before -- oh, usually it's the last chapter or so -- everything works out happily. It's said that kids are so miserable in these years of their lives, so into the drama of their days, that they want to read about other kids having jackhammer-like problems so they can relate. Maybe. But man, couldn't we just lighten up a little bit? Some kids need their moms reading along, and this stuff's bringing me down.

Desperately worried about "Housewives"

I've started to get into "Lost" a little this season, but last year's other big passed-me-by hit, "Desperate Housewives," is still passing me by. But today there's been a little rumble about it on one of the special-needs lists I subscribe to, because apparently a character who's been chained up in a basement has been revealed to be mentally challenged and possibly violent. This is the sort of thing that special-needs moms suit up for. Misrepresentations of our children's disabilities. Implications that the developmentally disabled are dangerous and should be locked away. Suggestions that the lock-away spot could just as well be in your basement. Maybe the recent news story about special-needs kids being kept in cages by an adoptive family makes this subject a little sorer. And I know that some folks are going to think it's ridiculous to take a storyline on "DH" with any degree of seriousness, but hey, "It's just a TV show" has never stopped special interest groups from griping before. I'm just saying, from what I've been hearing about the direction the ratings have been going for this once hot number, the writers might not want to be making any enemies just now.

If you're concerned about this or are organizing a protest or merely want to go somewhere publicly and say, "Oh, lighten up," I've set up a topic on About.com's Parenting Special Needs Forum on this very subject. Stop by and sound off.

Making doll ownership more like adoption

Blogging Baby, a weblog I'm quickly becoming addicted to, has an item about baby dolls being sold in some sort of elaborate hospital adoption scenario, and the outrage expressed by adoption advocates over this insult to adoptive children and families. I'm not usually one to get riled about the casual use of the word "adoption" to describe the caretaking of animals or portions of highway, but I have to admit this ploy by Lee Middleton Orginal Dolls to increase the perceived value of high-priced playthings by pretending that going into a store with a hundred bucks in your pocket and picking out a dolly you fancy is anything like the process of adoption is offputting to say the least. Will it make people believe that adoption is buying babies? Will it make children think that if a child they know was adopted, that they were at one time in a display case at Saks? Maybe, maybe not.

Still, if the Middleton company feels strongly that pretending its dolls are adopted is a big selling point, then why not take it all the way? Give the children who will be "adopting" its dolls a true adoption experience. Send social workers to their home to make sure their toys are well cared-for and that they know what will be involved in having an additional doll in the household. Make them pay for a homestudy before they can even be considered for getting a doll. Make them get certified letters from their teacher and scout leader and best friend declaring their suitability for doll ownership. Make them take classes on doll care and repair. Make them wait months or years, and then call them in the middle of the night and tell them they've got to get to the store right now. To give some kids an international adoption experience, lock them in the store for a couple of weeks or months before they get to leave with their new doll. Definitely send some more social workers afterward to make sure everything's going okay, and the doll's not tucked in a toychest or missing limbs or sitting somewhere naked. And don't forget to advise the new doll owner's friends to ask her from time to time, "Is that your real doll?"