Vacation anxiety

It's finally here: Come Monday, we leave for our vacation in Orlando, Florida. Going to visit Mickey. On the busiest theme-park week of the year. With a hyperactive boy and a whiney girl. On an airline so small I've never heard of it. With a stopover. Can you tell how much I'm looking forward to this carefree family getaway?

It'll be fine. The timeshare is nice. There's a lovely pool. Of course, I'll have to wear sweatpants while sitting by the pool so that my thighs don't scare the children, but I'm sure the temperature won't be higher than 90 or so. Maybe I can sweat off some of inches. Fun, fun, fun.

Last year, we didn't go on vacation at all. By the time I got around to making timeshare reservations for April, the place was booked. We moved in August, which pretty much cancelled our plans to go to California that month. So I haven't been on a plane in quite some time, which of course exponentially increases my anxiety. For a while, we thought about taking the train from New Jersey, and though it was less comfortable, less timely, and more expensive, I'm kind of regretting our decision against it.

But it'll be fine. Travelling with kids is never what you'd call relaxing, but we're bringing along our best friends to act as second-string parents, so maybe we'll get a break here and there. Certainly we couldn't have a more trying time than the first time we brought the kiddos to Orlando; our son started the week by hitting his face on the side of the bathtub and going to the hospital for stitches, and ended it by jumping in the deep end of the pool and almost drowning. Good times! If only the ER sold souvenir T-shirts.

We won't go there this time. It'll be fine. We'll navigate the endless lines. We'll withstand the Florida heat. We'll swim and sun and sightsee. Or maybe we'll just sit in the air-conditioned condo and watch "TV Land." Hey, relaxation's where you find it.

Family matters

There's a strong opinion these days among my kids that our family needs a new member. My daughter is desperate for a sister, but would settle for a puppy. My son would like a brother, or a cat, or maybe a cow. The necessity for a new addition is a given, but its species appears up for debate.

Their dad and I are so far resisting all suggestions. The care and feeding of pets is something neither child is really ready for. And the care and feeding of siblings is something we're probably not ready for, either. To say that our two little bundles of love and neurological impairments fill our days to the brim is an understatement. I'd like to think we have enough affection and energy left to fit a fivesome instead of a foursome, but you can't exactly return a child if it doesn't work out. You can't really even return a puppy, if it turns out not to fit my daughter's stringent criteria of "a dog that likes me."

I've always thought we would adopt again one day, and it's always on my mind, somewhere, in some small, nagging place. I see the billboards around New Jersey inviting people to adopt, and even though I know I've called the number and left my address and never heard from them again, the images tug at my heart. I see the posters at Wendy's during their annual adoption campaign, and even though I know the National Adoption Center's failure to match us up with kids is one of the reasons we eventually turned to Russia, I can't help but look at those little faces and wonder which one is meant for me. I read about efforts to place boarder babies with foster families, and even though I know I can't afford to quit my job right now, I think about how much I'd love to give one of those little fetal-alcohol-affected infants the loving start my son didn't have. I hear about programs that place Russian orphans with American families for the summer in the hopes of finding them permanent placements, and even though I know we could never take the time away from our existing kids to go to Russia and finalize another adoption, I know how much my two would love to have an in-house playmate for even a month or two.

Still, for every reason my heart gives for adding on, my head can think of two reasons not to, and my gut kicks in a third. If the thought of handling a puppy or a kitten fills me with exhaustion, how would we ever juggle a child? I've always thought that if God wanted us to have more kids, He'd show us a sign. But what qualifies as that, exactly? Does seeing a billboard count? Does picking up a newspaper that happens to have an article about boarder babies? Does tuning in just as Rosie O'Donnell is talking about adopting out of foster care? A baby in a basket on the doorstep would be so much easier to interpret.

For now, I guess, we'll stand pat.

Well, maybe a goldfish.

Happy birthday

Today, my daughter turns 10. We passed the landmark of with-us-as-long-as-she-was-in-the-orphanage last year at age 9, so this birthday is mostly significant for the double digits and the extreme nearness of puberty. The latter worries me especially because she is nearly as tall as I am already, and the thought of an insolent teenager towering over me is a tad terrifying.

So far, she's been nothing but a sweetie, and maybe that gentle disposition and useful eagerness to please will extend into her adolescence. She's two years behind in school--thanks to language delays, learning disorders, and several years frittered away in self-contained special-ed classrooms before making it into a mainstream group this year--so she may well hit her social transitions, if not her physical ones, with her now-2nd-grade classmates. Socially, emotionally, behaviorally, she's barely at an eight-year-old level.

And yet I feel the hot breath of approaching puberty on my neck. It's not just her size and her rapidly blossoming shape. It's not the fact that she already has her 12-year-old molars, a startling sign of physical advancement in a girl who's delayed in just about everything else. It's not even the Backstreet Boys and Brittany Spears CDs she's demanding, or the way she now prefers Nickelodeon to Nick Jr. and "Zoom" to "Barney."

It's more of an attitude thing. We're getting a little bit of sullen, a little bit of pouty, a hefty dose of "You talkin' to me?" She's more likely to argue with "no" and take our refusal to grant her every whim as a grave social injury. We are currently engaged in the battle of the "I must have a wheeled backpack because everybody has a wheeled backpack and if you don't give me a wheeled backpack you must be the meanest mom in the world." It's like a sneak preview of the world of inappropriate clothes and inappropriate activities and all those things teenagers have to do or suffer social death. I don't like it. Don't like the backpack, either.

Yesterday, though, I saw the first sure sign of hormone activity. Not body hair, not body odor (though goodness knows we've had that for a while), not body growth in significant spots. No, it was nothin' but the blues. My little girl had one of those weepy, blue days where you can't explain why you're crying but the tears keep coming anyway. Her father was annoyed that she kept tearing up for no good reason, and insisted that she was just holding back on the reason to tick him off. But I recognized the signs, all right. There is no reason. It just is. It's a girl thing. No--it's a woman thing.

Today, as she turns 10, we'll go to the pediatrician and get a more reliable ETA for the onset of adolescence. But I'm braced for it now. Time to start digging that moat, laying in those alligators, adding those bars to the windows and chains to the doors. She's going to be one big, beautiful teenager, and a mother's got to be prepared.

I hate homework

My daughter is a champ about homework. She knows just what she has to do, gets it all out of her folder and sets herself up on the kitchen table and polishes it off with minimal supervision. No nagging needed. She may have a learning disability, but she loves the trappings of learning. She's proud to be a homework self-starter.

And so I have always been a little smug about homework. I'd listen to other mothers complain about hours-long screaming matches, endless monitoring of assignments and enforcing of homework time. Those moms hated homework, and wished the teachers would do the teaching on their time so that the family could just be a family during family time, and not a sweat shop. But I was happy to have my girl bring work home, so I could see what she was doing and how she was doing with it. Yep, we just love homework here.

That is, we did until my son hit first grade.

No one doubts this boy's ability to learn things, but his ability to put what he's learned down on paper is severely compromised. He has some good reasons for this--low muscle tone makes it hard to hold a pencil, delays in fine motor skills make it hard to move the pencil around. I liken it to being asked to do paperwork while running on a treadmill. After a while, the physical exertion may not seem worth the trouble.

But he also has some bad reasons for refusing to do homework: On a basic level, he just wants to do what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is not worksheets. He's dogged in the pursuit of his own desires, be they for lining up cars in rows or counting keys or jumping up and down or staring out the window keeping tabs on the neighbors. Spelling words? Math problems? Gee, mom, I'd love to help, but I'm busy here. Getting him to sit and write involves varying degrees of yelling, screaming, threatening, and bribing. Then, of course, when he does a quick and lousy job just so he can get up again, you have to erase and start the yelling all over again. Not a fun way to spend an evening.

Then the spirit of "How dare you give him this homework" come upon me. Why should a kid with such fine motor problems have to write his spelling words three times each? Shouldn't he be able to do it on the computer? Shouldn't he be able to just say them to me? Isn't the purpose of the assignment spelling, not penmanship? Then why do his papers come back marked "Write Neater!" if I yell a little less and let him write the way he writes, without constant do-overs. Does the teacher want to come to my house and yell at him so that our family relationships are not marred by constant conflict? Or are these writing-intensive assignments her little bit of revenge for having to spend the whole day with this busy little guy?

The most frustrating thing is that, really, he can do it. He'll struggle with the writing, but he knows the spelling, and could polish it off in a short span of time and be back to playing or whatever odd pasttime he fancies. Instead, he spends all his time and energy fighting, fighting, fighting. It's exhausting, and makes me see the point of all those moms who complain. At least I know, as I browbeat my child to make him do that work already, that I'm in good company.

State of the states

A few weeks ago, we reported on the World Health Organization findings that, although American teenagers are trying valiantly to have world-class bad habits, they lag behind other nations in such categories as smoking, drinking, and eating french fries. Now comes a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that analyzes the bad habits of grown-ups, pitting the 50 states (plus Puerto Rico) against one another for best- and worst-behaved honors.

Because the survey was conducted to determine the success of prevention-promoting programs, and not just to please people with Web sites who like to make fun of surveys, the questions included everything from seat-belt use to health screenings. Did your home state make the finals? Take a look:
Wisconsin had the most drinkers per capita, and the most drinkers who admit to downing five or more drinks in one sitting. Maryland had the lowest number of five-at-a-timers, but Puerto Rico had the fewest total drinkers. Utah also, predictably enough, rated low for liquor, and perhaps as a result, the state's residents also called themselves the most physically active.

Least physically active? Those would be Georgia residents, more than half of whom described themselves as sedentary. That doesn't stop Georgian women from looking after their health in other ways, though--they were the most likely to have had a Pap test within the previous year. Women in Puerto Rico got tested the least. In other health-screening results, Maine residents were the most conscientious in getting colorectal cancer screenings; folks in Mississippi were the most avoidant.

Though one would hardly say that California has the safest roads, it did have the safest riders: more people buckle up there than anywhere. Health insurance may become an issue for Texas Governor George W. Bush--his state had the highest percentage of uninsured residents. Hawaii had the highest percentage of policy holders.

Then there's Colorado, where residents either have the best self-image, the highest self-esteem, or the most inclination to lie on surveys: Less than 12 percent said they would call themselves obese, giving their state the sveltest figure in all the land. How do they do it without being the most physically active? Must be that thin, thin air.

One lousy summer

It's that time of year when my thoughts turn obsessively to finding the Right Camp to keep my kids occupied over the summer. We're not to the point of sleepaway camp yet--frankly, though my kids might one day be ready, I don't know that I ever will be--but finding the right day camp is challenging in its own right. It has to be willing to accept my daughter's still sometimes sketchy language skills and my son's complete lack of interest in marching to anyone's drummer but his own. We've had our good camp experiences (the fabulous and fabulously expensive special-needs camp that crammed more different types of activities in a week than I do in a year) and our bad camp experiences (six weeks in which my daughter did little more than sit in a corner, ignored). This year, I'm looking for someplace close to home and close to our budget. And I'm looking for someplace that won't send me more little campers back with my kids at the end of the day.

That's right, last year my daughter hosted that curse of the camp, that scourge of the school, that day-care disaster--head lice. And not just any head lice. The Arnold Schwarzeneggar of head lice. Head lice with attitude. We washed her hair with the super-toxic shield-your-eyes chemical shampoo, and as we combed her out afterward, lice were crawling up the comb and onto our arms. I think I heard them taunting us. Ha, ha! We laugh at your shampoos! We move into your beds! We suck your children's blood! Ha, ha!

My daughter wanted nothing more than to go back to camp, which of course she couldn't do with an honest mother and a head full of bugs. She submitted to mayonnaise in the hair, vegetable oil in the hair, elaborately uncomfortable plastic-shower-cap head wraps, endless comb-outs, constant nitpicking. She has exactly the sort of longish, fine hair that lice must love, and exactly the sort that it is impossible to find lice eggs in. I tried as best an inexperienced nit-spotter could, but it was no use. The camp nurse searched through her hair and declared that her mother hadn't done a good enough job. Thank you so much for placing the blame for missed camp days squarely on me.

Of course, the camp never acknowledged that they were the louse enablers. She certainly couldn't have gotten them there! No other campers have had it! Which only served to convince me that other campers do not have honest mothers. And sometimes the camp nurse doesn't do such a hot job, either.

Eventually my daughter was de-loused, and made it back to the fun. But the whole thing left me a bit buggy. I am on constant rodent red-alert. The pillows I put in plastic nine months ago are still in plastic; I've gotten used to hearing the rustle beneath my pillowcase. The bedspreads that got bagged are still in bags in the basement, and we've made do through the long winter with a mish-mash of blankets. We've given up all our exotic-smelling hair-care products for Tea-Tree Oil Shampoo, which purports to be a real lice turn-off. It makes our hair smell like shoe polish, but if lice hate shoe polish, I prefer it to perfume.

My husband thinks I'm overzealous, but I've got zero tolerance for head lice. And as camp approaches, I'm mapping out some new strategies. Shaving my daughter's head--now that would thwart the little beasties. Sending Tea-Tree Oil Spray in her backpack and requiring the counselors to spritz her regularly. Keeping her head covered in mayo all day so no bugs can get through. Sending her in dirty, smelly clothes so no one wants to get close enough to spread the bugs in the first place.

Then again, there's a lot to be said for just staying home.

Bad sports

A recent survey by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education shows that kids just aren't getting enough of the latter. Only 44% of youngsters ages 12 to 17 reported going to PE every day. Schools are dropping the ball, so to speak, spending all their time on exercising children's minds and neglecting their responsibility to exercise their bodies.

And what I want to know is, how come they couldn't have done this when I was in school?

Athletics was my Achilles' heel all through my academic career, the blemish on my otherwise spotless record, the one thing I couldn't master or bluff my way through. How I hated phys. ed. Hated it in elementary school, when I'd hide on the opposite end of the soccer court from all those hard little patent-leather shoes furiously kicking at the ball and my shins. Hated it in junior high, when everybody seemed to get those President's Physical Fitness stripes on their shorts but poor pathetic slow-as-molasses me. Hated it in high school, where I once had to fashion an entire gymnastics routine out of the one measly thing I could do--a somersault. The teacher bumped me up a grade for that one just because my fellow students made so much fun of me. I thought if I did it fast enough, it would look like a flip. It didn't.

That was a low point, but the lowest was undoubtedly the time when my junior high school gym teacher called my mother in and told her I would get a D in PE if I wouldn't go across the bars--you know, the ones that look like a ladder placed sideways, the one that the tiniest child on the playground can swing across effortlessly. Not me, and the teacher was ready to torpedo my GPA out of spite. I have gone across those bars exactly once in my life--the once I had to do for that teacher to get my grade up. Never been able to do it since. I think it was the same sort of situation as a mother lifting a car off her child.

The only gym class I ever excelled in was folk-dancing, which was the mercy elective for the terminally unathletic at my high school. Almost made me look forward to gym. Except for the fact that there were never any boys within 1,000 feet of that class, and so the girls had to take turns partnering each other, it was a little slice of phys. ed. heaven. Unfortunately, you could only take it once a year, but what a fine part of the year that was. A chance to feel coordinated for ten weeks! If they'd have had a competitive intermural folk-dancing team, I'd have lettered.

So though I'm certainly concerned with the state of children's fitness and the need for kids to exercise and the importance of sports yada yada yada, I can't say I'm too upset when my two don't get their share of school-induced athletic activity. The survey found that 81% of parents wanted their children to have phys. ed. in school every day, but I wonder if they don't just secretly want their offspring to suffer like they did. My kids get it twice a week, which is plenty in my book. For the past three or four weeks, the gym teacher has been sick, and no sub has been in attendance, so--darn the luck, no PE. I should be calling the school to complain about this. I shant.

Now if they wanted to offer folk dancing on a daily basis--that would be another story entirely.

No visible means of support

A discussion today on an e-mail support group has got me thinking about, well, e-mail support groups, and why I so prefer them to the real thing. What does it say about me that I'd rather type notes to strangers from the comfort of my home than sit with flesh-and-blood women and bitch and moan in person? Does it mean I'm antisocial, hostile, unempathetic, too selfish to actually be there face to face for another person? Does it mean I don't take enough time for myself, don't get away from the kids enough, don't have the social skills to enjoy direct interaction? Personally, I suspect it means I'm too lazy to haul my butt into the car and drive somewhere, and so I use the excuse of not wanting to take time away from my kids. Fact is, I have no problem taking time away from them to stare at a computer screen. Hey, I'm at least physically present, and even when I'm sitting in my desk chair, my lap can be crawled into.

The only sit-in-a-room support group I've been involved with since we adopted our kids was the one that went with my son's early-intervention group. The kids would toddle off to their therapy and we moms were supposed to sit on couches and share our problems and lend one another support. Sometimes a social worker would be present to facilitate the process. Sometimes salespeople would come in and try to sell us Discovery Toys or Avon. And sometimes we'd just walk down the street to Dunkin' Donuts and try to facilitate some weight gain.

I sat through a lot of discussions with these ladies, but I can't say I ever felt particularly supported. We may have all had kids with special needs, but our own special needs were different. Most of them were still grappling with the fact that the children they had given birth to were not perfect, and would need serious help. One had a daughter who was disabled due to medical malpractice, and the regret and second-guessing that went along with that were particularly painful. I, on the other hand, had adopted children with known special needs just a few months before, and though I was just feeling my way into what sort and magnitude of help would be needed to move them along, I was feeling no shock or regret. The fact that I would actually seek out something that they were experiencing as a tragedy--the parenting of special-needs kids--made them see me as a saint or insane, neither of which I was.

Then there were the endless, endless, endless stories of their respective childbirths, in which of course I could not share. Why is it that when two or three fertile women are gathered in one place, the talk always turns to labor and epidurals and episiotomies and water breaking and all manner of greatly detailed pregnancy talk? Does no one ever think, "Gee, I wonder if the infertile woman in our midst feels uncomfortable with this?" I'll tell you what, when I think of all the things I put my heart, soul, and body through trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, I can't feel too terribly sorry for anybody who managed that feat, no matter how much you whine. I'll be polite, and let you talk, but geez, shouldn't about five minutes be enough?

One woman in the support group brought an audiotape of herself in labor, and everybody seemed greatly interested. It made me wish I had taped the four weeks my husband and I spent in small rooms in Russia waiting to go home, playing solitaire and reading books left behind by other people and watching bad American TV, badly dubbed. No one was as interested in my adoption story as they were in delivery minutiae.

And so it was up to me to find a group that was interested in adoption, interested in post-institutionalized issues, interested in how much juice my daughter drank or how many times my son hit his head against the wall. I found one--on the internet. I've joined several more since--some on parenting issues, some on more specific topics like fetal alcohol effect or sensory-integration disorder, some on job-related topics, some for ranting and raving. I like being able to participate where and when I feel like it--at 3 a.m. in my jammies, if that's what works best. I like knowing I will always be able to ask my questions without having to wait for a break in the conversation. I like being able to disappear or drop out without explanations or recriminations. And I like being able to quietly delete messages from people who annoy me or go on and on about subjects that don't interest me.

Now if only I could find a way to do that with family members.

Killer fashion

I've always found long fingernails to be somewhat disturbing. Not nicely manicured natural ones of a manageable length--no, you know the ones I mean, the ones that make it impossible to type or operate small machinery, the ones with jewels glued on them or maybe little charms, the ones that precede their owner into a room. As with so many things that others find fashionable--tattoos, spike heels, dresses that require glue to stay on--I just can't figure out how they could possibly be worth the trouble.

Maybe I'm just resentful because my own nails are such stubby little broken things. I've never been into nail polish because I've never had enough nail to polish. The only thing worse than stubby nails is stubby nails that are bright red. Now that I'm a mom, I can imagine that I need my nails trimmed super-short so I can keep up with my rough-and-tumble kids and perform all the different varieties of child and toy first-aid that are required of me. A co-worker gave me a gift certificate for a manicure for Christmas, and I just have never felt a desire to use it. A nail person I'm not.

But I think my problem with the ultra-long talons is more deep-seated than that. I think it goes back to a childhood friend who grew her nails so long they curled at the ends. She would gob on the nail polish to keep them strong, and if they broke, she would reattach them with Scotch tape and then gob some more nail polish over that. They were quite impressive, in a Tim Burton-ish way. One evening we were playing a game that required grabbing an object from the other person, and when I grabbed the object from her I grabbed a tape-encrusted nail off, too. I don't think we played much after that. And I don't think I've ever looked at long fingernails in quite the same way.

Now, though, I have a more solid reason to believe that the things can't be good: They're killing babies. To be more exact, bacteria residing on the extra-long or artificial fingernails of two neo-natal ICU nurses in Oklahoma City was found to have been a factor in the deaths of 16 extremely premature babies. Thirty more preemies were infected but survived. Now, the hospital spokespeople are quick to point out that the bacteria in question is commonly found in hospital nurseries, that the babies' immune systems were significantly compromised by their too-early births, that the nail bacteria was only one of many factors in their deaths, and that nails or no nails, the babies would probably have died anyway. Yet the rules for all nurses in the hospital have now been changed so that only short, natural nails are allowed.

I heartily applaud--with hands unimpeded by extensions--that decision, and wish that it could be extended into other fields where a few extra inches on a fingertip is a liability. That means fast-food workers--get those things off my burger. Cashiers? If it takes you three times as long to ring up my order because you have to maneuver your hands in awkward contortions to put some skin on the cash-register keys, you're gonna get clipped. Educators, if you've ever hesitated to help a child because you might break a nail, you need to break them all. And moms, moms, moms--how are you ever going to be able to utter such classic mom lines as "You're going to poke your eye out with that!" if you look like Edward Scissorhands? Time for a trim, everyone! Then, when your nails are all as short and stubby as mine, I'll feel a lot better, thank you.

Incensed about the Census

When filling out our Census (yes, that's right, I've filled mine out; have you?) I was a little surprised to see that my children's origins were an issue. Along with all the other relationship options--husband, wife, mother, mother-in-law--were "natural-born child" and "adopted child." Among the parents whose e-mails I read on an on-line support group for those who have adopted from Eastern Europe, those would be considered fighting words. First, to ask in the first place. Then, to ask in a way that implies our children are not natural.

Personally, I've always been very forthcoming about the fact that our children are adopted, and probably introduce that tidbit far too early in any conversation about them. I'm proud of how far they've come from that Russian orphanage, and I want people to understand why the journey has been, and continues to be, so hard for them. I've always felt that it's hard to advocate for adoption if you won't cop to it; people aren't going to ask you for information or be inspired by your example if they don't know you're setting one.

Other parents, though--protective of their children's adoption stories and their own privacy, wary of others' reactions in light of harsh stories about Russian adoptees on TV newsmagazines, resentful of having to be example-setters when all they want to be is parents--control that information tightly, zealously. Woe be unto the grandparent who refers to an adopted grandchild as an adopted grandchild; this is felt by many to indicate an inadequate level of affection and discretion, and to be grounds for banishment. The policy is don't ask, don't tell, and if someone does have the nerve to ask, they will be discussed in the most unflattering terms in a flurry of e-mail. Lists of possible icy comebacks circulate frequently.

For these folks, the requirement to check that "adopted" box on the Census form was a slap in the face. And then, to be asked with such adoption-incorrect terminology! Why "natural-born" as the alternative to adopted? Are adopted children unnatural? They were as natural-born as anyone, just to somebody else. Why is a child conceived in a test-tube natural-born, but a child conceived by a mother who couldn't care for him or her unnatural? The preferred term by the adoption PC police is "biological," but to my ear, that has the same problem--are our adopted children mechanical? Perhaps the bureau should simply phrase it "adopted" and "non-adopted."

In truth, the terminology doesn't particularly bother me. For the Census' purposes, having people understand what they're supposed to check is way more important than individual sensitivities (though tell that to the poor employee who's going to have to read all the complaining letters). "Natural-born" may be insensitive to some, but folks outside the adoption community know what it means; whereas "biological" would surely cause confusion. I once used the shorthand "bio child" to describe a non-adopted child to someone who does not obsessively follow adoption e-mail groups, and she looked at me like I had two heads. Then I had to explain that what I meant was that that child was not adopted, whereas my kids were, and then I sounded adoption-obsessed, and like I was drawing some kind of quality line between the two. Unless you're going to start putting footnotes on Census forms, you might as well go for clarity.

I do wonder, though, to what use the information will be put. My hope is that statistics will be released showing that adoption is commonplace these days, hardly worth getting into a linguistic snit over. Perhaps this could lead to more acceptance, not less, and to funding for services that adoptive families need. In which case, I could have used more adoption-related questions. International or domestic? Healthy or special-needs? Infant, toddler, or older child? Are you getting the proper services from the schools? Are you getting thorough services from physicians? Is your family using words that you have personally approved when referring to your children? As long as the government's asking, they might as well get us to tell all.

Don't give driving a second thought

Want to be a better driver? Don't think.

That's the conclusion of a recent study released by the American Psychological Association. People who think while they're driving tend to focus fixedly on one object, fail to check the rear-view mirrors sufficiently, and pay less attention to the road. I remember taking driver's training as a kid and being told to constantly check mirrors, one after the other, over and over, constantly, eyes here two seconds, there two seconds, back to here, back to there, and I always thought that would be more distracting than anything else I could do. Apparently I was thinking too much.

Thinking in this context does not simply refer to thinking about other things than driving. Even thinking about the route you're taking can be too distracting. Thinking about where the map might be. Thinking about whether that street you just passed because you were busy checking the rear-view mirror might be the street you needed to turn on. Thinking about where the next gas station might be. Thinking about the second mortgage you'll have to take out to buy gas. All these things can be as bad as talking on a cell phone while eating a donut. Seems its best to just go where the road takes you, with a good view of where you've been.

Music is okay; music seems to help drivers concentrate. Maybe it helps one fall into the proper mirror-checking rhythm. Don't want anything too peppy, don't want anything too sedate. A good waltz, perhaps. Books on tape would presumably be bad, unless its a good trashy romance that sort of knocks out the portion of your brain that's responsible for thinking. Presumably one of those in-minivan TVs tuned to, say, Jerry Springer would accomplish the same thing.

I don't have one of those. The music I listen to runs to Sesame Street when there are kids in the car, dinosaur rock when they're not. Perhaps these are not sufficiently soothing, because I can't help but think. Time behind the wheel always felt like a really good time to go over the events of the day, worry about them obsessively, argue in my head with whoever's got me ticked off today, formulate song lyrics, plan out my day, decide what to have for lunch, fantasize about the best possible outcomes of my kids' current trials, say prayers to prevent the worst possible outcomes. I guess in order to do that now, I'll have to take the bus.

It's something to think about, anyway.

Another one bites the dust

Many years ago, before I had kids, before I had a husband who hates award shows, and before I lived on the East Coast where everything's three hours later, I used to throw big Oscar Night parties. My friends and I would dress up in gowns, sip champagne, and dis the proceedings. We'd all seen all the films and so had actual opinions. The evening was a highlight of my year.

Fast-forward about 12 years. I never see any movies, much less award-nominated ones. I'm in New Jersey, where the ceremony starts at 8:30 p.m. and ends the next day. It's hard to have a party that ends in the wee hours of a work morning, so we've scaled down to having our two closest friends over. We sit around in our sweats, drink red wine out of a box, and dis the proceedings. This year, three out of four of us actually managed to stay awake, which may be a record.

Maybe it's just that everything seems funner when you're younger, but the ceremony seems similarly anticlimactic to me these days. There were some improvements this year--the presenter's banter, while not altogether eliminated, was at least reduced to one limp exchange. Liked the two music montages, dozed through the multiple movie montages, thought Billy Crystal's opening inserted-into-films montage was not as funny as previous ones, nor were his song parodies. Tell Bruce Vilanch to get working on some new schtick.

It's probably impossible to produce an Oscar show that everybody approves of. Last night's seems to be getting generally good morning-after reviews, but I found it somewhat airless. Possibly too well-produced. Even Robin Williams seemed reined-in, which is no mean feat considering he was singing a profanity-laced song from "South Park." There were no spectacularly awful dresses or makeup jobs (possibly because Helen Hunt did not appear to be in attendance), no spectacularly embarrassing acceptance speeches, no spectacularly nonsensical dance numbers, no spectacularly corny Begnini-esque behavior, no spectacle at all, come to think of it. The dry ice around Isaac Hayes was about as over-the-top as it got.

And if it had been a corny, spectacular, over-the-top kind of night, I probably would have complained about that, too. It's bad enough to see how old stars like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty (and Crystal and Williams, for that matter) are looking. It's worse to feel like an old coot myself because dang it, the Oscars used to be more fun back when I used to watch movies.

Going undercover

Friday is my spy day at my kids' school. It's not easy to work my way in there; the principal guards the gates heavily, and doesn't allow parents much access to classrooms. Parent participation in parties is frowned on, parent observation is all but forbidden, parents volunteering as helpers in the classroom is unheard of. It's a tight ship, and there's no room for tourists.

I know that other schools are not this way. I hear of parents working in their children's classrooms, helping with reading or other activities, having plenty of time to observe their child in the context of other children. Some schools apparently require such contributions. Some parents undoubtedly resent that, but how I envy them the opportunity. I've been allowed in my daughter's classroom during school hours exactly once, to read a story as part of her teacher's "Mystery Reader" program. Every parent gets to do it. Once. You read, and then you leave.

Our principal would undoubtedly be horrified to hear me suggesting that she doesn't want parents to volunteer. There are plenty of opportunities--working at the big all-school parties (as opposed to the little in-class parties), being class parent and sending goodies in for little in-class parties (but just leave them by the office, please), helping at Book Fair or other fundraising activities, putting out the newsletter, calling other parents on snow days. But none of these involve actually being in your child's classroom, or observing him or her with classmates except in the most coincidental way. Parents aren't asked to be lunchroom aides or playground aides, as they are in other schools. It's virtually impossible to spy on your kids in their natural habitat.

Except, that is, in the library.

Being a library aide is the one loophole left at our school, and I merrily sneak through it. Using this opportunity for nefarious purposes takes a little planning--you have to be aware enough to know when your child goes, and lucky enough to find that slot untaken--but if you play your cards right, you can have 35 minutes of uninterrupted observation of the way your child behaves in school and how his or her classmates interact. You can also get to know the kids by name, chat them up when they check out their books, and get known as your child's Mama. It's unbelievably open access, and I can't believe the principal hasn't found some way to close it.

Don't tell her about this, okay? Or she'll find a way to switch me to Wednesdays, and I'll have to spy on someone else's kids.

I'd like to commiserate with the Academy

On Friday, my office sent me a package via Fed-Ex to arrive on Saturday. It still hasn't. The "when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" folks report they've had some sort of silly delivery glitch, and I'll absolutely, positively get the package whenever they figure out where it is. Normally I'd be annoyed by this, but not now. Now, I feel just like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

You may have heard that the Oscar folks are having a little trouble on the delivery end, too. First, they mailed out the all-important Oscar ballots--the ones that, when filled out, are guarded so zealously by the Price Waterhouse accountants--and the ballots never arrived. Turns out they took a little detour to the bulk-mail bin in the back room of another post office. No harm done! Just extend the voting deadline. It's not like the U.S. Postal Service promises to absolutely, positively get anything anywhere anytime anyway.

But then there was the little incident with the trophies themselves. They disappeared from the warehouse of a Los Angeles-area delivery service (though not, I must report, Fed-Ex. So now that they've been found, I can't assume my package is with them.) It's suspected that one or more of the service's employees lifted the statuettes because--oh, who knows? They thought they'd make great gifts? The wisdom of stealing something so overwhelmingly recognizable is questionable, and the thieves must have questioned it too, because they ended up dumping the golden boys in a trash bin. The treasures were discovered by a salvage man, who stuffed them in his car to keep them safe, then asked his son to find out what the heck 55 Oscars were doing in the garbage.

Perhaps I should give him a call and ask him if he's seen any Fed-Ex envelopes. And perhaps the Academy should review the list of jilted potential nominees and figure out which one put a curse on this year's ceremony. What's next, now? Billy Crystal's limo driver takes a wrong turn and fails to deliver the host to the auditorium? Several female nominees' dresses are never delivered, and the stars are forced to wear something from their own meager closets? The Price Waterhouse accountants turn out to be imposters who deliver the completed ballots to the Wall Street Journal? An award presenter tears open the envelope, and it turns out to be my wayward Fed-Ex delivery?

Waiting for the next shoe to drop is almost as suspenseful as waiting to find out who wins.

America fifth

Bad news for those who like to see America come out on top of any contest: All fast-food evidence to the contrary, American children do not have the worst dietary habits in the world. Close, but no cigar (they don't smoke the most, either).

According to a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which clearly does not have enough to do, American schoolchildren rank a shocking fifth in most french fries eaten. Only 30 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds eat fries on a daily basis, earning the country a fat-fried fifth place behind Northern Ireland, Scotland, Israel, and England (though not, interestingly enough, France). Heck, they're probably still frying their chips in lard over there in the U.K., soundly kicking our nutritional butts. And who knew Israel was such a french-fry powerhouse?

Our young people are falling behind in other categories, too. Think we eat more sweets and drink more soda than anyone else? Wrong; we only make the top 3. Worried about teen smoking? A mere 12 percent of 15-year-olds 'fessed up to lighting up 24/7, rating us an ever-so-wispy 24th out of the 28 nations surveyed. Greenlanders blow the most smoke, with 56 percent of 15-year-old boys and 45 percent of 15-year-old girls puffing daily.

The study surveyed 120,000 kids in 28 countries, and found that the Austrians, Germans, and Slovak Republicans did the most exercising--80 percent of students worked out daily--and the Welsh, Greeks, and English did the most drinking--with 53, 52, and 47 percent, respectively, tipping one back at least weekly. Only two-thirds of American students exercise that much, while a measly 23 percent met the drink mark.

Now, this is all going to be a disappointment to those who like to feel that America always leads the way, even if it's to hell in a handbasket. But as a parent, I have to say, I'm relieved. Relieved because our kids aren't the world's worst. And relieved because this study--unlike all those that show American students to be lagging academically--offers parents goals that can realistically be attained. We may not be able to make our kids math whizzes or science savants, but we can sure take them to McDonalds' an extra time or two and knock those English out of the running.

The paper chase

When I was in my 20s, I wrote an article about magazines and the way they multiply in the dark so that eventually they have overrun your entire living room. (My mother probably still has a copy of it, which may explain some of what follows here.) When I was in my 30s, I speculated the same thing about mail-order catalogs. But now, on the north side of 40, I know that neither of these clutter-creatures can compare to the space-hogging master of the universe, children's school papers.

Every day they come, more numerous than junk mail, more pervasive than piled-up bills, more messy than 1,000 Matchbox cars. Test, worksheets, study sheets, art projects, storybooks, certificates, all adorable snapshots of my children's day at school, all irreplacable, all indisposable. They stack up on the floor by the bookbags. They stack up on the dining room table. They stack up on the coffee table. They stack up on my desk, in my file drawers, on my floor. They're everywhere, and if I could just take a shovel and gather them all up and throw them all out, my home would be about 77% neater.

But of course, I can't do that. They're my babies! This is their work! I must keep it, cherish it, gather it together in large haystacks of scholarship. I may need those papers someday to show their progress. I may need to look back on an earlier assignment later in the year. The kids might want to check back at something they did. I may want to remember how many essays my daughter devoted to the Backstreet Boys. Given his way, my husband would chuck these precious treasures the moment they came through the door, so I must swoop in and grab them out of the folders myself. And put them on the dining room table, where they will sit for several months, or until we actually need to dine, whichever comes first.

Every so often, I do winnow. When we moved last summer, I sorted through several years of preschool papers from both kids and kept only the cute artwork, which filled an entire large box. I've thrown out all but tests for about the first quarter of this school year, but it is so, so hard to see their work filling the wastebasket. I'll admit to being sentimental and a packrat, but I love this stuff.

Still, if you read about a New Jersey family suffocated by 5,000,000 individual math homework sheets, you'll know who they're talking about.

The slob who came to dinner

My 6-year-old eats like a pig. Which is to say, he eats a lot and he eats messy. There are all sorts of good reasons for this--sensory-integration difficulties that cause him not to know how full his mouth is, fine motor weakness that causes wielding a fork to be a major chore--but this does not make watching him any less unappetizing. It's gotten to the point where even the kids at school don't want to watch him eat.

His specialty is cramming his mouth so full of food that he can't chew, and has to sort of wait for everything to dissolve. While doing this, he tends to get up and walk around, shedding bits of rice and corn in his wake. He is a full body eater. He wipes his mouth on his shoulder, touches his hair and gets food in it, gets food tidbits all over the table and his shirt and his pants and his chair and the floor, and has a tendency to go into his hand-flapping habit right after eating with his hands, so that morsels are scattered to the four corners of the kitchen. He also enjoys pulling the fork or spoon (when he actually uses those utensils) out of his mouth with a grand flourish, which usually results in rice being flung in Papa's face. Mealtimes in our house are what you could call stressful.

Now, the only way I know to discipline a child into good table manners is to remove him from the table at the first infraction. Unfortunately, that's not an option with this little guy, simply because he is such a little guy. We're talking 37 pounds at age almost-seven. He's lost the "You can feed this starving child for 5 cents a day" look he had when we brought him home from a Russian orphanage five-and-a-half years ago, but he's still way wiry. His spring jacket is a size 2/3, and though the shortness of the sleeves indicate a new size is called for, there's no strain on the snaps down the front. Finding pants for him is an endless challenge--we need about a size 6 in length and a size 3 in the waist. So in the long run, having him pack in the food is significantly more important than packing it in prettily.

But in the short run--well, yuck. There are only so many times you can see a boy cram food into his mouth with both hands before you start to consider offering a liquid diet and a straw. With sensory-integration therapy, things have gotten slowly better--his days of stuffing an entire Taco Bell soft taco in his mouth at once are happily over. We're now trying doling out a few bites at a time, in a bowl with a rim for his left hand to hold on to, out of the action, while his right hand scoops the food up with a spoon. The theory is that he can push the food against the side of the bowl instead of the side of his hand, and maybe keep his mitts clean. The theory has flaws, but it's holding up. It's either this, or put a trough in the corner of the kitchen and let him just stick his face in and go at it. Honestly, there'd probably be less clean-up with that.

Get smart

A new study reports that children's brains continue gaining gray matter right up through the teen years. This is news because it had previously been believed that you pretty much had all the brain cells you were going to get by the age of five, and so lack of stimulation during those early years pretty much meant you'd lost your chance. The discovery that the brain keeps growing and changing and developing for so long after that is heartening indeed to those of us who've adopted children outside that magic early-development window. Where it once seemed impossible to ever make up that lost time, it now appears that the brain may still have a few tricks up its sleeve.

We adopted our daughter at age 4.5, and have been attempting to stuff her head full of knowledge ever since. She had some brain damage from birth, and the consensus has always been that even if the impairments could have been remediated in her first few years if she'd been in a stimulating family environment instead of an understimulating orphanage one, by the age of 5 her abilities were pretty much set. Yet she does seem to be making progress, slowly, but surprisingly to many people. Connections are being made that weren't made before. Information is being retained and interpreted in new ways every day. There's some major action going on in those little lobes. And it's nice to have scientific confirmation that anything's possible.

One of the first books I read after bringing our two neurologically challenged children home was Oliver Sacks' An Anthropologist on Mars, and I remember marveling at the many ways in which the brain could adapt itself to conditions that seemed on the surface to be so entirely unacceptable. It was an encouraging message to receive as I watched my two little organisms adapt to their new environment. This new study seems to be further proof that it's unwise ever to take that organ for granted, or to assume that it can't do anything more. The brain is always working, restructuring, reinventing itself, and I doubt that that really abruptly ends at any age.

Myself, for example, I know that my brain has recently entirely restructured itself in such a way that I can't remember a darn thing, and am in a constant state of panic and confusion. I can only hope that when this phase of construction is done, I will still be a little smarter than my rapidly brain-expanding kids.

You've got a friend in me

My son has no friends.

For a long time, this didn't bother him much. He was a self-contained little unit, perfectly happy to line up cars in his room for hours, all by himself. If kids were uncomfortable with him--because he stands to close, because he touches them or hugs them or kisses them according to his impulses, because his play is too inflexible--he didn't seem to notice. His large gallery of pretend friends liked him just fine.

But now, at almost 7, he's starting to notice. When his sister has friends over, he wonders where his friends are. I have to keep him from jumping all over her friends, but playing with Mom is not as fun when there are other kids in the house. He's in a special-ed class this year with older kids, and though at various times they find him funny, weird, or icky, he's mostly just a baby. Not much friend potential there.

I've tried finding an after-school activity for him, in the hope of finding a peer group, but his overactivity, heedlessness of adult wishes, and impulsivity make it hard for him to get with any programs. Already this year, we've been drummed out of a mother-and-child music class because he was trampling all the younger children in his wake. He's been asked to leave gym and swimming in the past because he just won't follow the leader. Many hyper kids seem to do well with karate, but I can conceive of no way that this boy will stand in a line and follow directions. He'd probably wander too close to someone else and get kicked in the head.

With conventional social activities out of the running, I've recently been trying to find him a group of kids with problems like his. His neurologist recommended a social-skills program, and goodness knows that social skills are something he could use. I talked to the child psychologist in charge, and it sounded like a good possibility: They work primarily with children on the autistic spectrum, and since my boy has autistic behaviors in his large grab-bag of problems, it seemed he might fit in.

But today, we went to the evaluation. It was at the house of a speech therapist who would be assessing him while the psychologist talked to me. The house had many lovely knickknacks. The house had a cat. The house had a lady waiting with her baby for her son to come out of speech therapy. The house had a psychologist who was willing to share his keys. My son was in his element, chatting up grown-ups, touching every breakable thing in sight, petting the baby, scaring the cat. He was talking, moving, bouncing, zooming, behaving as he always does in an unfamiliar place full of delightful stimulations. The speech therapist couldn't get him to do any of her little tests, and determined that his language skills were insufficient for admission to the program, and that he would run her ragged trying to constantly redirect him anyway.

Part of me is sad that even among special-needs kids, he doesn't fit. Part of me blames the therapist for not having sufficient tricks up her sleeve to get his attention; his wonderful school speech therapist can get him to pay attention for much longer than even I can. And part of me wonders at the wisdom of evaluating distractible children in such a distracting environment. It doesn't matter, though--another door slams.

My husband is unconcerned by all this. He's a loner, and thinks friends are somewhat overrated. Our son is not actively miserable, and with time and maturity he may become more appealing friend material to others. And there are signs of progress at school: Today his teacher told me that he has been asking another boy in class to play store with him, and they have been happily interacting. So maybe he'll find a way to make it without mom's help.

Until then, I'll just have to be his best friend myself.

Gym shoo

My husband is starting to make noises about me joining a gym. Not because of my weight--he values his body parts too highly to make a crack about my weight--but because lugging an iMac from one room to the next left me moaning and groaning and munching Advil for several days thereafter. Your muscles are out of shape, he says. You're losing strength, he says. You should join my gym, he says.

Now, this implies that my muscles were once in shape, I was once strong, and I might enjoy going to a gym. Patent falsehoods, all. I did go to his gym for a brief time while we were dating, but--oh, gee, you know, you do things when you're dating and trying to establish common ground with your beloved that you would never do in real life. He watched "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd," and I went to the gym. Now, going on 10 years of marriage, he can't say the name of that program without gagging. And I feel much the same about the gym.

I have many excellent reasons for not wanting to go there. I'm a busy woman. I work full-time, and even though I telecommute three days of the week, I'm supposed to be sitting at my desk watching soap operas...um...doing work, not galivanting around, lifting weights and riding bikes that go nowhere. After work hours, there are the kids--homework to do, activities to attend, stories to read, computers to haul. Should I neglect them to sweat with strangers when I can perfectly well neglect them at home by checking my e-mail every 35 seconds? Then, of course, there is this Web site, which I must spend hours and hours procrastinating over before finally hammering some bit of blather out at 2 in the morning. Go to the gym? My life is overflowing as it is!

Of course, if I really wanted to go, I'd find the time. I don't really want to go. I really want not to go. I hate going to the gym. I hate everything about it. I hate exercising. I hate lifting weights. I hate climbing stairs. I hate looking at my lumpy self in large mirrors. I hate aerobics. I hate seeing skinny people in spandex. I hate seeing fat people in spandex. I hate spending money to do something I hate.

And besides, it's not like I don't have options. I could walk. Walking is free! Walking is something I don't actively hate! I could take my discman and walk while listening to tunes and have some nice time to myself. I won't, but I could. I could also work out to one of those TV exercise shows, although last time I did that, doing step aerobics in my basement, I blew out my knees. I could invest in some quality home equipment, maybe that contraption Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley feel so strongly about. That way, I could exercise anytime, day or night. I'm sure my mother-in-law, who lives downstairs, wouldn't mind hearing weights clanking up and down in the middle of the night.

Or I could let my gym-toned husband lift the computer next time, while I lie on the couch conserving my energy, watching old "Molly Dodd" tapes, and polishing off the truckload of candy we accumulated around Valentine's Day. Some of those chocolates are heavy.