MAY 27, 2002
Today's a holiday, no school, no work, no worries ... except that I've got so very much to do. I've already slept too late, lingered too long over my coffee, postponed posting to my Web site. And now there are all these THINGS that I was going to do with the long weekend still waiting to be done. Housecleaning. Moving things back from where they were dislocated by painting. Picking out some new furniture that will withstand vicious and messy use by children. Housecleaning. Writing notes to teachers. Helping children write thank you notes for birthdays that are now months past. Reading piled-up newspapers and magazines. Housecleaning. Previewing schoolwork for next week. Helping my son take a computerized test for an on-line enrichment course. Making notes for his IEP. Reading "Sarah, Plain and Tall" with my daughter so that when she reads "Skylark" next week in class she will know who those people are. Putting sticky poster tape back up on freshly painted walls. And did I mention housecleaning?
Ah, the weekend seemed so long two days ago. There was so much time. Where did it all go, exactly?
+ + +
MAY 28, 2002
My son's IEP meeting last week went pretty well. We talked about his activity level and his tendency to be out-of-focus, we talked about the progress he'd made in all areas in spite of that, we talked about his academic abilities and the fact that he now, at the ripe old age of nine, knows how to skip and do jumping jacks. The teacher surprised me by suggesting he skip the next level on his self-contained special-ed track and go to the one ahead of that. But by far the most thrilling moment of the meeting was when the social worker finished her report and said that she thought they could all agree that this boy's mother really knows him well. And they all did.
Imagine that -- a child study team agreeing that a mother knows her child! How incredible! How unprecedented! How immensely gratifying! And what a big improvement from earlier in the year, when our former child study team leader (now retired) told me that I should listen to my daughter's teacher, who knows her; this being a teacher who had "known" her for all of two months. Who knows, though -- perhaps they still think I don't know my daughter, only my son. I won't know about that until her IEP meeting, which this time around falls in the fall. I'm thinking maybe I'll ask.
+ + +
MAY 29, 2002
For the past three months, I have been playing phone tag with the Director of Special Education for our school district.
Well, that's not quite true. For one thing, playing tag implies that occasionally I get tagged back, and that hasn't happened. I do the calling, and no one does the calling back. It's hard to play tag when the other person won't chase. And for another thing, this particular Director of Special Education has not been on the job for three months; he's new, and therefore oh-so-busy, don't you know. So for some of that three-month span, my messages were being ignored by other, transitionary personnel. The Director of Special Education himself has only, in fact, been ignoring me for a couple of weeks.
Last Monday I escalated from phone calling to faxing, a technique that with the previous director got me a response right quick. But this time, nada. And the same for the three follow-up phone calls I made yesterday. I'm reluctant to escalate to the next level -- registered letter -- because the request I'm making is really more in the nature of a favor than the pursuit of a government-given IDEA right. I could be gotten rid of so easily; I just want a little information, or even to be told that I can't get that information right now. Just a little respectful explanation would probably make me go away for a while. And I can't even get that.
Sometimes, I think what our special-ed department really needs is a Director of Public Relations. Or, at the very least, a Director of Calling People Back.
+ + +
MAY 30, 2002
The back windows of our house look onto the front lawn of our local high school. We get concerts when the marching band practices in the parking lot, we get an early look at next year’s baton twirlers and cheerleader wannabes, and in late spring, when everybody goes to the prom, we get a good view of the smashed-up car that serves as a warning sign to teen-agers: Don’t Drink and Drive. Don’t Speed While Driving. Don’t Drive Unsafely. And Don’t Do Anything Else That Would Make Your Car Look Like This.
At the point the car gets towed to the grass outside our window, it’s pretty dented up. Then it gets smashed up -- with baseball bats, maybe, I’ve never seen them do it -- until the windows are broken and the tires are flat and the poor thing looks like David Letterman dropped it off a 10-story building. Then it gets grafitti’d with sayings like “No!” and “Think!” and “Don’t!” and “Live!” This all happens over the course of weeks, and is an endless source of fascination to my car-obsessed son. He can tell you what make and model the car was for each year since we’ve been living in our house and witnessing the car-nage. He goes to visit the car every day, talks to it, gives it a pet name (this year’s victim, a mini-minivan, has been dubbed “Mini”), leaves it flowers, yells goodnight from our window every night. He panicked one day when he saw that teen-agers had tipped the car on its side overnight, and will be sad when it finally gets towed away.
The smashed-up car has made an impression on him, but does it make an impression on the students it’s meant to scare? Maybe not. The paper yesterday had a story of a senior from the school dying in a car crash in which several other students were injured, and while the police were not releasing information about whether there was alcohol or recklessness involved, I couldn’t help but think of “Mini,” and whether it had been smashed in vain.
+ + +
MAY 31, 2002
Starting tomorrow, Hallmark joins Wendy's in the adoption promotion business with its glossy-looking new series "Adoption." The Hallmark Channel program, sponsored by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and Dave Thomas's favorite restaurant, starts with an episode involving adoption from Romania, Ethiopia and Texas, followed the next night by another Romanian adoption and the story of a birthmother trying to find the right open adoptive family. Episodes then follow one a week, with storylines including adoption from China, Guatemala, Vietnam; open adoption, special-needs adoption, fraudulent adoption, disrupted adoption; searches for birth parents and birth siblings. It sounds like a pretty fair sampling of the adoption experience, and all the stories, as they say, are true.
It will be nice to see adoption treated in an upbeat fashion (hey, it's Hallmark) on a weekly basis, even if it's just on an extended cable channel that many people don't get. It will be a good test to see if people will watch a non-sensationalistic treatment of the subject. The channel's Web site for the show offers, along with episode descriptions through August, many adoption-related links, a FAQ and a download of the Dave Thomas Foundation's "Beginner's Guide to Adoption." And, for the post-adoptive among us, an opportunity to share our stories -- not on TV, you understand, but on the Web site. Condense your adoption experience into a graceful 250 words, and your essay may be selected by Hallmark's editors for posting on the site, providing inspiration to the pre-adoptive. You'd think they'd at least throw in a lifetime supply of cards or something.
Monday, May 27, 2002
Monday, May 20, 2002
May 20-24, 2002
MAY 20, 2002
Have you noticed that it's not possible to buy a simple box of bandaids anymore? I'm thinking about those hinged metal boxes of my youth that had one or two of just about every size of bandaid you could possibly want, from stubbed pinkie toe to bicycle-accident gash, just plain and simple brownish plastic bandages you could rely on. Now, of course, there's no end to the variety. Standing before my store's first-aid aisle I'm confronted with all manner of cartoon character bandaids, see-through bandaids, fabric bandaids, no-stick bandaids, medicated bandaids, bandaids specially configured to wrap around fingers, bandaids treated for curing warts, large wound bandaids, wound moisturizing bandaids ... it's all a little overwhelming. I'm never sure if I'm buying the right thing, and so we have all different boxes with all different bandaids cluttering our closet, to be sorted through frantically when blood is flowing. Ah, things were so much simpler in those primitive days of my youth.
+ + +
MAY 21, 2002
I'm feeling like a bad mother these days. It started last week when the moms on one e-mail support group started going on about how horrible TV is, how tremendously damaging it was, and how any decent mom would not let her tots take in so much as a stray second of Sesame Street. I was reading these messages as my daughter started at her third straight hour of the Disney Channel and my son spazzed out to SpongeBob SquarePants. And what's worse is that sometimes they want to stop watching, and I make them keep at it, so I can, you know, keep reading e-mail and stuff. Bad mom.
Now this week the "Barbie Is Evil!" thread has made its semiregular appearance on another e-mail group (it circulates on a rotating schedule with flame-throwing discussions of circumcision and working vs. stay-at-home moms). It always starts with Barbies and then expands into a discussion of other terrible toys and overpriced fashions and all manner of materialistic excess. And I'm glad that my fellow group members can't peer through their computer screens and see the enormous piles of toys and junk I've purchased for my kids, or allowed to be purchased for them. Bad, bad mom.
Now, it's true that my daughter never, ever plays with her Barbies or shows the least bit of interest in them; and it's true that my son would rather play with a shopping bag than just about any toy in the house. But it's also true that I would buy them just about anything if I thought it would buy me a little peace, and that I'd be happy for my daughter to be label- and fashion-conscious if it meant she would stop wearing the same pair of grubby sweatpants day after day after day. Bad mom, maybe so. But goodness, you know, I can't be perfect all the time.
+ + +
MAY 22, 2002
We're having the inside of our house painted this week, which has me in a total harried panicked frenzy. Emptying out one set of rooms, then filling them up again with the stuff from other rooms, nothing in its place, clutter everywhere, dust thick in the air, and paint smell, paint smell, paint smell. It's disruptive to my small sensory-integration challenged boy, who cherishes his high-piled mishmash of STUFF and now has to live without it until we can get everything finished and put back together; it's disruptive for my language-challenged daughter, who likes everything predictable and just so and now finds them just so not. But mostly, it's disruptive to me, and that makes it doubly disruptive to everybody else, because I'm not doing stress particularly well.
Perhaps the most sobering thing about all this moving about of junk is realizing just how very much of it we have, hiding beneath tables and under sofas and in corners and on top of desks. It doesn't help that my husband is not a packrat and would just as soon shovel the stuff up and throw it all out, and so I have to supervise every movement of debris from one spot to the next. It's gotten so bad that I yelled at the poor man not to even think about throwing out the sack of ripped up plastic bags and pieces of paper my son had been hoarding in his room. Clearly, the clutter gene has been passed to the next generation, and since he's adopted, that's quite a feat. I know we'll both feel better, though, when all our cherished useless items are back in their proper place, free to gather dust once again.
+ + +
MAY 23, 2002
Last night, my daughter performed in the band and chorus concert at her school. It was probably more exciting for me than for her; she was a little nervous, and a little self-conscious, afraid everybody would be looking at her. I tried to assure her that the only ones looking at her would be her loving family, but she’s not even all that thrilled about US looking at her. She’s like the sun; we must always look at her obliquely. But she got up on stage, and she played her trombone, and she sang, and to this mom’s ears it all sounded sweet. There were times during the year when she hated that trombone, and times when she begged to quit the chorus, but she kept at it and made it through. And that’s the highest note of all.
I have to say, though, that I was also pretty proud of her brother last night. He’s in neither band nor chorus; too young for both, at this point, and too rambunctious for both for always. But we did bring him to the concert, although it was against my better don’t-put-him-in-positions-where-he-can’t-be-successful judgment, and darned if he didn’t sit pretty quietly through the whole hour-long thing. Of course, he did kick his shoes off and lie down across the laps of his aunt and uncle, demanding to have his feet gently tickled, and one time he did ask to go to the bathroom, but other than that he was the soul of decorum. The second most thrilling part of the evening, after watching and hearing my girl make music, was being able to look around at other, much noisier younger siblings and tsk.
+ + +
MAY 24, 2002
I think this is about the first year in school that my son has really had buddies. He likes most of the kids in his self-contained class, and they like him. They play together, and sometimes they get in trouble together. The energy level coming off the lot of them at a birthday party or play date is intense, and I can imagine they often ramp each other up in the classroom, too. But that's boy stuff, and it's nice to see my son, finally, being one of the boys.
And so, of course, it's now being proposed that he leave that old gang of his and move to a different classroom.
This is just another one of those cases in which children with special needs, who need MORE consistency and predictability in their lives than non-impaired children, actually get less of it. At a birthday party last weekend, a few moms were talking about how their regular-ed kids had started pre-K together and now here they were all the way in the fourth grade. And I had to reflect on how my daughter, now in fourth grade at age 12, had attended three schools and been in four completely different groups of children during the same period -- all in the same school district, but bopped around special-ed style. My son, at age 9, has also been in three different schools and four completely different groups of children. Now, maybe 5. Whereas the optimal situation for him, at least, would have been one teacher and one perfectly suited group of kids staying together for years, learning and growing with and from each other. Ah, well. Pie in the sky.
I'm sad to think of my son losing his buddies, and moving to yet another group. But I'll probably say yes anyway. There are good things about the change. For one, it's at the same school, and so he'll still be able to play with his pals at recess. For another, the proposal is to skip him ahead one class, and since academics are his strong suit, anything that keeps him sharp and high-functioning on that score will be a plus. And I have to admit that the teacher is probably right when she suggests that getting him away from his similarly high-tuned buddies and into an older, calmer group will only improve his behavior. Whether it will improve his social development, which is way delayed, will remain to be seen. He's certainly gotten social this year, if talking to your friends when you're supposed to be studying counts. Maybe not.
Have you noticed that it's not possible to buy a simple box of bandaids anymore? I'm thinking about those hinged metal boxes of my youth that had one or two of just about every size of bandaid you could possibly want, from stubbed pinkie toe to bicycle-accident gash, just plain and simple brownish plastic bandages you could rely on. Now, of course, there's no end to the variety. Standing before my store's first-aid aisle I'm confronted with all manner of cartoon character bandaids, see-through bandaids, fabric bandaids, no-stick bandaids, medicated bandaids, bandaids specially configured to wrap around fingers, bandaids treated for curing warts, large wound bandaids, wound moisturizing bandaids ... it's all a little overwhelming. I'm never sure if I'm buying the right thing, and so we have all different boxes with all different bandaids cluttering our closet, to be sorted through frantically when blood is flowing. Ah, things were so much simpler in those primitive days of my youth.
+ + +
MAY 21, 2002
I'm feeling like a bad mother these days. It started last week when the moms on one e-mail support group started going on about how horrible TV is, how tremendously damaging it was, and how any decent mom would not let her tots take in so much as a stray second of Sesame Street. I was reading these messages as my daughter started at her third straight hour of the Disney Channel and my son spazzed out to SpongeBob SquarePants. And what's worse is that sometimes they want to stop watching, and I make them keep at it, so I can, you know, keep reading e-mail and stuff. Bad mom.
Now this week the "Barbie Is Evil!" thread has made its semiregular appearance on another e-mail group (it circulates on a rotating schedule with flame-throwing discussions of circumcision and working vs. stay-at-home moms). It always starts with Barbies and then expands into a discussion of other terrible toys and overpriced fashions and all manner of materialistic excess. And I'm glad that my fellow group members can't peer through their computer screens and see the enormous piles of toys and junk I've purchased for my kids, or allowed to be purchased for them. Bad, bad mom.
Now, it's true that my daughter never, ever plays with her Barbies or shows the least bit of interest in them; and it's true that my son would rather play with a shopping bag than just about any toy in the house. But it's also true that I would buy them just about anything if I thought it would buy me a little peace, and that I'd be happy for my daughter to be label- and fashion-conscious if it meant she would stop wearing the same pair of grubby sweatpants day after day after day. Bad mom, maybe so. But goodness, you know, I can't be perfect all the time.
+ + +
MAY 22, 2002
We're having the inside of our house painted this week, which has me in a total harried panicked frenzy. Emptying out one set of rooms, then filling them up again with the stuff from other rooms, nothing in its place, clutter everywhere, dust thick in the air, and paint smell, paint smell, paint smell. It's disruptive to my small sensory-integration challenged boy, who cherishes his high-piled mishmash of STUFF and now has to live without it until we can get everything finished and put back together; it's disruptive for my language-challenged daughter, who likes everything predictable and just so and now finds them just so not. But mostly, it's disruptive to me, and that makes it doubly disruptive to everybody else, because I'm not doing stress particularly well.
Perhaps the most sobering thing about all this moving about of junk is realizing just how very much of it we have, hiding beneath tables and under sofas and in corners and on top of desks. It doesn't help that my husband is not a packrat and would just as soon shovel the stuff up and throw it all out, and so I have to supervise every movement of debris from one spot to the next. It's gotten so bad that I yelled at the poor man not to even think about throwing out the sack of ripped up plastic bags and pieces of paper my son had been hoarding in his room. Clearly, the clutter gene has been passed to the next generation, and since he's adopted, that's quite a feat. I know we'll both feel better, though, when all our cherished useless items are back in their proper place, free to gather dust once again.
+ + +
MAY 23, 2002
Last night, my daughter performed in the band and chorus concert at her school. It was probably more exciting for me than for her; she was a little nervous, and a little self-conscious, afraid everybody would be looking at her. I tried to assure her that the only ones looking at her would be her loving family, but she’s not even all that thrilled about US looking at her. She’s like the sun; we must always look at her obliquely. But she got up on stage, and she played her trombone, and she sang, and to this mom’s ears it all sounded sweet. There were times during the year when she hated that trombone, and times when she begged to quit the chorus, but she kept at it and made it through. And that’s the highest note of all.
I have to say, though, that I was also pretty proud of her brother last night. He’s in neither band nor chorus; too young for both, at this point, and too rambunctious for both for always. But we did bring him to the concert, although it was against my better don’t-put-him-in-positions-where-he-can’t-be-successful judgment, and darned if he didn’t sit pretty quietly through the whole hour-long thing. Of course, he did kick his shoes off and lie down across the laps of his aunt and uncle, demanding to have his feet gently tickled, and one time he did ask to go to the bathroom, but other than that he was the soul of decorum. The second most thrilling part of the evening, after watching and hearing my girl make music, was being able to look around at other, much noisier younger siblings and tsk.
+ + +
MAY 24, 2002
I think this is about the first year in school that my son has really had buddies. He likes most of the kids in his self-contained class, and they like him. They play together, and sometimes they get in trouble together. The energy level coming off the lot of them at a birthday party or play date is intense, and I can imagine they often ramp each other up in the classroom, too. But that's boy stuff, and it's nice to see my son, finally, being one of the boys.
And so, of course, it's now being proposed that he leave that old gang of his and move to a different classroom.
This is just another one of those cases in which children with special needs, who need MORE consistency and predictability in their lives than non-impaired children, actually get less of it. At a birthday party last weekend, a few moms were talking about how their regular-ed kids had started pre-K together and now here they were all the way in the fourth grade. And I had to reflect on how my daughter, now in fourth grade at age 12, had attended three schools and been in four completely different groups of children during the same period -- all in the same school district, but bopped around special-ed style. My son, at age 9, has also been in three different schools and four completely different groups of children. Now, maybe 5. Whereas the optimal situation for him, at least, would have been one teacher and one perfectly suited group of kids staying together for years, learning and growing with and from each other. Ah, well. Pie in the sky.
I'm sad to think of my son losing his buddies, and moving to yet another group. But I'll probably say yes anyway. There are good things about the change. For one, it's at the same school, and so he'll still be able to play with his pals at recess. For another, the proposal is to skip him ahead one class, and since academics are his strong suit, anything that keeps him sharp and high-functioning on that score will be a plus. And I have to admit that the teacher is probably right when she suggests that getting him away from his similarly high-tuned buddies and into an older, calmer group will only improve his behavior. Whether it will improve his social development, which is way delayed, will remain to be seen. He's certainly gotten social this year, if talking to your friends when you're supposed to be studying counts. Maybe not.
Monday, May 13, 2002
May 13-17, 2002
MAY 13, 2002
Well, here's a study that's sure to inspire sympathy among us all ... NOT. Telemarketers, those scourges who call us during dinner and insist that we listen to sales pitches for things we neither need nor want nor really even asked to hear about, are losing their voices. Vocal distress -- ranging from dry throat to hoarseness to utter voicelessness -- is a regular occupational hazard, scientists at the University of Nebraska discovered, and may in fact be causing the poor dears to talk softly and call less. And although I do always try to think of those determined souls yapping away on the other end of the line as hardworking individuals trying to support their families and not as pushy pests trying to ruin my day, may I just take a moment to say ... hooray! There's justice after all.
The one word of warning in this study, however, is that the thing that most likely causes the vocal damage is not merely the frequency of speaking -- or even some sort of cosmic payback -- but the way that telemarketers tend to lower the pitch of their voices to sound more authoritative, and also to speak at a higher volume than absolutely necessary. Which may give those of us who frequently scold our children in a loud, booming voice cause for concern. Come to think of it, I believe I'm feeling a bit hoarse myself.
+ + +
MAY 14, 2002
They say that people with fetal alcohol impairments will always need an "external brain" to help with reasoning and organizational matters their "internal brains" want no part of. That seems true of my boy now, and in the future will likely mean that he'll never be truly independent -- he'll need his dad and I to keep charge of him, or a good group home, or in maybe the best-case scenario a really bossy wife.
I got a glance at what that last option might look like this past Saturday, when I acted as his aide in his end-of-second-grade religious education class.
I didn't recognize the girl, and I was touched when she came over to my son and asked if he wanted to be her partner as they walked to the music room. I was amused to hear her barking at him in about the same tone of voice I use to keep him from wandering off, and relieved to see that he listened to her no better than he listened to me. She was a little fed up by the time they got to their destination, and I made him come sit with me and walk back with me after the music session was finished. I figured she'd about had it with him, and I didn't blame her.
But I was wrong. When we got back to the classroom, she asked my boy if he wouldn't like her to move to the empty desk next to him. She asked if they could work together on a coloring project. She spoke to him in that high patient voice adults use on babies and toddlers -- urging him to color exactly the way she was and not, say, use the black crayon to color in the Virgin Mary's face, as he was determined to do -- and I didn't know if I wanted to hug her for being so nice or smack her for being so dang condescending. But he didn't seem to mind; as he does with his bossy mom, he listened to her when he felt like it and ignored her when he didn't (although even he squawked when she reached over with her crayon and inserted a comma into some words he'd written.)
I don't honestly know whether she was really intrigued by him or just thought she was doing her good help-the-handicapped deed for the day, but it was nice to see another child in a mainstream setting show that much interest in him. And a little unsettling, too -- because although a bossy wife may be a good thing for his future, I'm sure not ready yet to give up my status as bossiest woman in his life. Keep your distance, girlie.
+ + +
MAY 15, 2002
My son's been showing a lot of interest in taking walks lately, and I've been pleased because walking is something I could really use to do. Finding time to exercise -- and finding exercise I can stand -- is becoming more of an issue as my cholesterol goes up and my waistline expands and swimsuit season draws inexorably near. How nice to find a way to get some movement in my life and also spend time with my boy. You gotta love multitasking.
Problem is, my idea of walking is a nice brisk stroll that gets the heart pumping, burns calories and, you know, is over in a reasonable period of time. And my son's idea of walking is ambling along, taking in the scenery, interacting with the environment, and staying outdoors as long as possible. While I'm trying to keep the cardiovascular pace, he's stopping to pick dandelions. Read car license plates. Talk to statues in our Civic Center sculpture garden. Sit on the sidewalk and rest. Pet dogs. Pick up rocks. Pull leaves off trees. Hug trees. Even, from time to time, kiss trees. Dilly-dallying galore. And though walking with my guy isn't exactly a heart-healthy experience, it sure does my heart good to see his imagination, inspiration and energy at work. Besides, rounding him up again and again has to burn a few calories, right?
+ + +
MAY 16, 2002
We have begun to look for dogs, albeit in a laid-back sort of way. It mostly involves my son and I stopping by the local animal shelter on our ambling walks and seeing if there's anybody new who's meant for us. He and I both have our favorites among the dogs who very clearly are not right for our family: There's a golden labrador retreiver that I could easily give my heart to, but already there in the cage I see that he can jump higher than our fence would hold. And there's a black lab that is as delighted to see my son as he is to see her, jumping and barking and carrying on (both the dog and my son, as it happens), but I can tell that that dog is the canine equivalent of my boy, and we've already got one of him. A clear case of doggie ADHD there. I had to laugh reading the shelter's description of her on its Web site, which reads in part: "I'm a very friendly young lady with lots of energy. I really need a home with someone who has lots of energy too. I need some obedience training but we can work on that together." With a change of gender, the same could be said of my son.
So far, we haven't found our canine match, but there is endless time. I'll admit to snooping around www.petfinder.org from time to time, searching for the perfect smallish dog, just as I used to poke around the on-line databases of adoptable children back when I was thinking about adding an extra child instead of a four-legged creature. There's an unsettling similarity between the two types of Web sites that someone who easily gets up in arms about unsuitable uses of the word "adopt" could probably, well, get up in arms about. I'm not, and I don't. I mean, just wook at all the wittle puppies! Maybe browsing is the next best thing to having one. And when my husband the non-dog-lover realizes that I'm talking about getting a pooch at the same time I'm talking about getting new living room furniture, that may be as close as I'll come.
+ + +
MAY 17, 2002
I guess it's a sign of the times: Accompanying the children on my daughter's fourth-grade field trip yesterday -- in addition to teachers, aides, and me and the other class moms -- was a nurse whose job it was to administer the midday meds. It makes sense, I guess; a need for medication does not go away when the school building does, and if the teachers aren't allowed to administer at school they shouldn't have to do it in the field. But it seemed odd all the same to have a traveling pharmacy aboard the bus. The woman was not the normal school nurse (who presumably had to stay behind to do med duty for the non-field-trip-going masses), and so she went around introducing herself to each class so the kids who needed to find her at noontime would know who to look for.
The trip was to a historical park, where we toured houses from the 1870s and learned from costumed presenters what life was like way back when. One of the stops was an apothecary's shop, and while the woman behind the counter talked to kids about more primitive meds, I took a look at the barber shop display on the other side of the room. I enjoyed the sign that gave the prices for haircuts: men, 10 cents; boys, 8 cents; and wiggly boys, 9 cents. Never did find out how much the apothecary charged wiggly boys. Or whether she went on field trips, too.
Well, here's a study that's sure to inspire sympathy among us all ... NOT. Telemarketers, those scourges who call us during dinner and insist that we listen to sales pitches for things we neither need nor want nor really even asked to hear about, are losing their voices. Vocal distress -- ranging from dry throat to hoarseness to utter voicelessness -- is a regular occupational hazard, scientists at the University of Nebraska discovered, and may in fact be causing the poor dears to talk softly and call less. And although I do always try to think of those determined souls yapping away on the other end of the line as hardworking individuals trying to support their families and not as pushy pests trying to ruin my day, may I just take a moment to say ... hooray! There's justice after all.
The one word of warning in this study, however, is that the thing that most likely causes the vocal damage is not merely the frequency of speaking -- or even some sort of cosmic payback -- but the way that telemarketers tend to lower the pitch of their voices to sound more authoritative, and also to speak at a higher volume than absolutely necessary. Which may give those of us who frequently scold our children in a loud, booming voice cause for concern. Come to think of it, I believe I'm feeling a bit hoarse myself.
+ + +
MAY 14, 2002
They say that people with fetal alcohol impairments will always need an "external brain" to help with reasoning and organizational matters their "internal brains" want no part of. That seems true of my boy now, and in the future will likely mean that he'll never be truly independent -- he'll need his dad and I to keep charge of him, or a good group home, or in maybe the best-case scenario a really bossy wife.
I got a glance at what that last option might look like this past Saturday, when I acted as his aide in his end-of-second-grade religious education class.
I didn't recognize the girl, and I was touched when she came over to my son and asked if he wanted to be her partner as they walked to the music room. I was amused to hear her barking at him in about the same tone of voice I use to keep him from wandering off, and relieved to see that he listened to her no better than he listened to me. She was a little fed up by the time they got to their destination, and I made him come sit with me and walk back with me after the music session was finished. I figured she'd about had it with him, and I didn't blame her.
But I was wrong. When we got back to the classroom, she asked my boy if he wouldn't like her to move to the empty desk next to him. She asked if they could work together on a coloring project. She spoke to him in that high patient voice adults use on babies and toddlers -- urging him to color exactly the way she was and not, say, use the black crayon to color in the Virgin Mary's face, as he was determined to do -- and I didn't know if I wanted to hug her for being so nice or smack her for being so dang condescending. But he didn't seem to mind; as he does with his bossy mom, he listened to her when he felt like it and ignored her when he didn't (although even he squawked when she reached over with her crayon and inserted a comma into some words he'd written.)
I don't honestly know whether she was really intrigued by him or just thought she was doing her good help-the-handicapped deed for the day, but it was nice to see another child in a mainstream setting show that much interest in him. And a little unsettling, too -- because although a bossy wife may be a good thing for his future, I'm sure not ready yet to give up my status as bossiest woman in his life. Keep your distance, girlie.
+ + +
MAY 15, 2002
My son's been showing a lot of interest in taking walks lately, and I've been pleased because walking is something I could really use to do. Finding time to exercise -- and finding exercise I can stand -- is becoming more of an issue as my cholesterol goes up and my waistline expands and swimsuit season draws inexorably near. How nice to find a way to get some movement in my life and also spend time with my boy. You gotta love multitasking.
Problem is, my idea of walking is a nice brisk stroll that gets the heart pumping, burns calories and, you know, is over in a reasonable period of time. And my son's idea of walking is ambling along, taking in the scenery, interacting with the environment, and staying outdoors as long as possible. While I'm trying to keep the cardiovascular pace, he's stopping to pick dandelions. Read car license plates. Talk to statues in our Civic Center sculpture garden. Sit on the sidewalk and rest. Pet dogs. Pick up rocks. Pull leaves off trees. Hug trees. Even, from time to time, kiss trees. Dilly-dallying galore. And though walking with my guy isn't exactly a heart-healthy experience, it sure does my heart good to see his imagination, inspiration and energy at work. Besides, rounding him up again and again has to burn a few calories, right?
+ + +
MAY 16, 2002
We have begun to look for dogs, albeit in a laid-back sort of way. It mostly involves my son and I stopping by the local animal shelter on our ambling walks and seeing if there's anybody new who's meant for us. He and I both have our favorites among the dogs who very clearly are not right for our family: There's a golden labrador retreiver that I could easily give my heart to, but already there in the cage I see that he can jump higher than our fence would hold. And there's a black lab that is as delighted to see my son as he is to see her, jumping and barking and carrying on (both the dog and my son, as it happens), but I can tell that that dog is the canine equivalent of my boy, and we've already got one of him. A clear case of doggie ADHD there. I had to laugh reading the shelter's description of her on its Web site, which reads in part: "I'm a very friendly young lady with lots of energy. I really need a home with someone who has lots of energy too. I need some obedience training but we can work on that together." With a change of gender, the same could be said of my son.
So far, we haven't found our canine match, but there is endless time. I'll admit to snooping around www.petfinder.org from time to time, searching for the perfect smallish dog, just as I used to poke around the on-line databases of adoptable children back when I was thinking about adding an extra child instead of a four-legged creature. There's an unsettling similarity between the two types of Web sites that someone who easily gets up in arms about unsuitable uses of the word "adopt" could probably, well, get up in arms about. I'm not, and I don't. I mean, just wook at all the wittle puppies! Maybe browsing is the next best thing to having one. And when my husband the non-dog-lover realizes that I'm talking about getting a pooch at the same time I'm talking about getting new living room furniture, that may be as close as I'll come.
+ + +
MAY 17, 2002
I guess it's a sign of the times: Accompanying the children on my daughter's fourth-grade field trip yesterday -- in addition to teachers, aides, and me and the other class moms -- was a nurse whose job it was to administer the midday meds. It makes sense, I guess; a need for medication does not go away when the school building does, and if the teachers aren't allowed to administer at school they shouldn't have to do it in the field. But it seemed odd all the same to have a traveling pharmacy aboard the bus. The woman was not the normal school nurse (who presumably had to stay behind to do med duty for the non-field-trip-going masses), and so she went around introducing herself to each class so the kids who needed to find her at noontime would know who to look for.
The trip was to a historical park, where we toured houses from the 1870s and learned from costumed presenters what life was like way back when. One of the stops was an apothecary's shop, and while the woman behind the counter talked to kids about more primitive meds, I took a look at the barber shop display on the other side of the room. I enjoyed the sign that gave the prices for haircuts: men, 10 cents; boys, 8 cents; and wiggly boys, 9 cents. Never did find out how much the apothecary charged wiggly boys. Or whether she went on field trips, too.
Monday, May 06, 2002
May 6-10, 2002
MAY 6, 2002
My son went to a bowling birthday party on Saturday with a bunch of his school buddies, and watching them interact with each other with maximum rowdiness reminded me once again what an absolute saint their teacher is. To not only put up with their turbo-driven rambunctiousness, but to teach them something too! It's a miracle is what it is.
The highlight of the afternoon -- for the boys, to be sure -- came during the brief pause between lunch and cake, when they all decided that making a rude noise against your arm was just about the funniest thing any person could do. The raspberry chorus was pretty much unstoppable; you'd get one of them to quit, and then another would do it, and they'd all jump in again. It's just boy stuff, of course, tuned to a high degree by the fact that they all have neurological impairments that make them especially impulsive and hard to transition from one track of behavior to another. Their teacher puts up with this every day, and then comes back for more. Give that woman a raise.
+ + +
MAY 7, 2002
Field trip season is hard upon us at my children's school. Earlier in the year, after Sept. 11, I'd heard that all field trips were cancelled; but now, the district's rules have softened to allow field trips to anywhere but New York City. So, no Bronx Zoo for the second graders, but they can go back to the same Crayola Factory in Pennsylvania that they went to last year. Yippee, another day of chasing my son around while other kids obediently look at demonstrations involving dye and hot wax. Another long, long bus ride. And, on the plus side, another half hour or so in a really nifty gift shop.
My daughter's class is going to an historical park, which should be interesting to all those kids who are heavily into social studies, of whom my girl is decidedly not one. She's also not so into having her mom tag along on field trips, but sadly for her, I'm a class mom this year, and I'm sure enough coming. Sure hope she doesn't try to ditch me for some other class mom. But worst comes to worst, I can always drown my sorrows in souvenirs. The kids are allowed to bring $10 each, and I'm betting that means they have a pretty fine gift shop there, too.
+ + +
MAY 8, 2002
Is my son a math whiz? I guess it depends on when you're looking.
He's the kind of kid who will fuss and complain and whine that his math homework is too hard, and then after fifteen minutes of fighting sit down and do the problems in minutes, quickly and correctly. Last night, at a family math workshop at his school, he sat and struggled and counted on his fingers and came up with wrong answers when I asked him to do math equations, but when a friend across the table struggled with his sums, my boy shouted out the right answers without a second thought. His child study team leader reports that when she tested him in math, he sometimes made mistakes when the problems involved carrying into the hundreds and thousands column; which sounds bad, until you realize that before that test, he'd never done addition with hundreds and thousands columns. And that his writing is so messy, he could have had the correct answers and she would never have known.
Is my son a math whiz? Maybe. It would be nice to think so. And even nicer if he wanted to act like one.
+ + +
MAY 9, 2002
For a few minutes there, yesterday, I thought my son's classroom had the youngest discipline officer in history.
I was working in the library when his class visited, and one of his little classmates, a relative newcomer I hadn't gotten to know yet -- but who clearly remembered whose mom I was -- came up to me and very officially informed me that my boy was misbehaving. He had, in fact, been misbehaving all week, I was told, and I should be punishing him. I raised my eyebrows and thanked him for the suggestion. Later, he said the same thing in front of my son's one-on-one aide, and when she clearly didn't know what he was talking about, I felt a little better.
Later, the teacher came by my library desk and commented that I'd met the "class kvetch," and that this kid had self-esteem issues they really needed to work on. I guess I can see how pumping oneself up by knocking someone else down is a self-esteem issue; but if so, there are an astonishing number of adults in workplaces around the country who struggle with low self-esteem as well. And here, I always thought they were just weasels.
+ + +
MAY 10, 2002
Yesterday I thought I'd give myself a treat and read a book that had absolutely nothing to do with learning disabilities, behavior management or FAS/E, my usual favorite subjects. I'd been saving up "Comfort Me With Apples," the second memoir by food writer Ruth Reichl, for just such an occasion. Her first reminiscence, "Tender at the Bone," which covered her unpredictable childhood with a manic-depressive mother, her beginnings as a chef and a writer, and her marriage to her first husband, had been tasty fun. And now, with IEPs looming over my head, I figured I could use a second helping.
And for most of the way, it was just what I needed. I followed Reichl through jobs with New West magazine and the Los Angeles Times, through affairs and a second marriage, and through many meals so elaborate and strange that I would never want to eat them myself, but certainly enjoyed reading about them. Still, once you become obsessed with certain themes, you tend to find them everywhere -- and I started losing my appetite when, toward the end, the book came to the part of her trying, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant. A little close to home there. And then she and her husband are given an opportunity to adopt a baby, to whom they instantly become attached. And then the birth mother comes back to claim her, and they must give her up. I almost stopped reading; we'd morphed from food memoir to horror story.
The only way for the book, now quite close to the finish, to end happily, I thought, is if she does manage to get pregnant, unexpectedly. I launched into the final chapter with that thought in mind, and then was horrified all over again, as she left her husband after a romantic interlude and went off for 10 days of heavy drinking in Barcelona with some of California's greatest chefs. With each bottle of wine, each cocktail, I thought: If she's not pregnant at the end, I'll be sad for her; but if she is pregnant, and she's drinking like this, I'll be scared for that baby. The book did indeed end with a positive pregnancy test, and mention of her son, 11 years old at the time the book was written. No mention of how well he came through that Barcelona trip; I'll have to wait for the next memoir to find out if it's an FAS/E book after all.
My son went to a bowling birthday party on Saturday with a bunch of his school buddies, and watching them interact with each other with maximum rowdiness reminded me once again what an absolute saint their teacher is. To not only put up with their turbo-driven rambunctiousness, but to teach them something too! It's a miracle is what it is.
The highlight of the afternoon -- for the boys, to be sure -- came during the brief pause between lunch and cake, when they all decided that making a rude noise against your arm was just about the funniest thing any person could do. The raspberry chorus was pretty much unstoppable; you'd get one of them to quit, and then another would do it, and they'd all jump in again. It's just boy stuff, of course, tuned to a high degree by the fact that they all have neurological impairments that make them especially impulsive and hard to transition from one track of behavior to another. Their teacher puts up with this every day, and then comes back for more. Give that woman a raise.
+ + +
MAY 7, 2002
Field trip season is hard upon us at my children's school. Earlier in the year, after Sept. 11, I'd heard that all field trips were cancelled; but now, the district's rules have softened to allow field trips to anywhere but New York City. So, no Bronx Zoo for the second graders, but they can go back to the same Crayola Factory in Pennsylvania that they went to last year. Yippee, another day of chasing my son around while other kids obediently look at demonstrations involving dye and hot wax. Another long, long bus ride. And, on the plus side, another half hour or so in a really nifty gift shop.
My daughter's class is going to an historical park, which should be interesting to all those kids who are heavily into social studies, of whom my girl is decidedly not one. She's also not so into having her mom tag along on field trips, but sadly for her, I'm a class mom this year, and I'm sure enough coming. Sure hope she doesn't try to ditch me for some other class mom. But worst comes to worst, I can always drown my sorrows in souvenirs. The kids are allowed to bring $10 each, and I'm betting that means they have a pretty fine gift shop there, too.
+ + +
MAY 8, 2002
Is my son a math whiz? I guess it depends on when you're looking.
He's the kind of kid who will fuss and complain and whine that his math homework is too hard, and then after fifteen minutes of fighting sit down and do the problems in minutes, quickly and correctly. Last night, at a family math workshop at his school, he sat and struggled and counted on his fingers and came up with wrong answers when I asked him to do math equations, but when a friend across the table struggled with his sums, my boy shouted out the right answers without a second thought. His child study team leader reports that when she tested him in math, he sometimes made mistakes when the problems involved carrying into the hundreds and thousands column; which sounds bad, until you realize that before that test, he'd never done addition with hundreds and thousands columns. And that his writing is so messy, he could have had the correct answers and she would never have known.
Is my son a math whiz? Maybe. It would be nice to think so. And even nicer if he wanted to act like one.
+ + +
MAY 9, 2002
For a few minutes there, yesterday, I thought my son's classroom had the youngest discipline officer in history.
I was working in the library when his class visited, and one of his little classmates, a relative newcomer I hadn't gotten to know yet -- but who clearly remembered whose mom I was -- came up to me and very officially informed me that my boy was misbehaving. He had, in fact, been misbehaving all week, I was told, and I should be punishing him. I raised my eyebrows and thanked him for the suggestion. Later, he said the same thing in front of my son's one-on-one aide, and when she clearly didn't know what he was talking about, I felt a little better.
Later, the teacher came by my library desk and commented that I'd met the "class kvetch," and that this kid had self-esteem issues they really needed to work on. I guess I can see how pumping oneself up by knocking someone else down is a self-esteem issue; but if so, there are an astonishing number of adults in workplaces around the country who struggle with low self-esteem as well. And here, I always thought they were just weasels.
+ + +
MAY 10, 2002
Yesterday I thought I'd give myself a treat and read a book that had absolutely nothing to do with learning disabilities, behavior management or FAS/E, my usual favorite subjects. I'd been saving up "Comfort Me With Apples," the second memoir by food writer Ruth Reichl, for just such an occasion. Her first reminiscence, "Tender at the Bone," which covered her unpredictable childhood with a manic-depressive mother, her beginnings as a chef and a writer, and her marriage to her first husband, had been tasty fun. And now, with IEPs looming over my head, I figured I could use a second helping.
And for most of the way, it was just what I needed. I followed Reichl through jobs with New West magazine and the Los Angeles Times, through affairs and a second marriage, and through many meals so elaborate and strange that I would never want to eat them myself, but certainly enjoyed reading about them. Still, once you become obsessed with certain themes, you tend to find them everywhere -- and I started losing my appetite when, toward the end, the book came to the part of her trying, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant. A little close to home there. And then she and her husband are given an opportunity to adopt a baby, to whom they instantly become attached. And then the birth mother comes back to claim her, and they must give her up. I almost stopped reading; we'd morphed from food memoir to horror story.
The only way for the book, now quite close to the finish, to end happily, I thought, is if she does manage to get pregnant, unexpectedly. I launched into the final chapter with that thought in mind, and then was horrified all over again, as she left her husband after a romantic interlude and went off for 10 days of heavy drinking in Barcelona with some of California's greatest chefs. With each bottle of wine, each cocktail, I thought: If she's not pregnant at the end, I'll be sad for her; but if she is pregnant, and she's drinking like this, I'll be scared for that baby. The book did indeed end with a positive pregnancy test, and mention of her son, 11 years old at the time the book was written. No mention of how well he came through that Barcelona trip; I'll have to wait for the next memoir to find out if it's an FAS/E book after all.
Monday, April 29, 2002
April 29-May 3, 2002
APRIL 29, 2002
When my kids were younger, it was easier to get blood from a stone than to get blood from them. How well I remember the team of nurses that had to be rushed into the examining room when my daughter needed to be stuck. I’d hold down her legs, somebody else would hold down her arms, somebody else would hold down her head, an extra person would be needed to keep her body from wriggling, and the doctor or nurse in charge of the needle would have to dart in and try to find some subdued flesh with a vein in it. I was pretty sure they called in extra personnel to work whenever we were on the schedule. My son, they didn’t even bother with -- he had to go to the lab, and be tied to a papoose board. This was not fun for him, or for me. I felt like both my son and the technicians must consider me the worst mother in the world, although for entirely different reasons.
This past week we went for blood again, and I have to say, it was better. Which does not, of course, necessarily mean that it was good.
Our pediatrician’s office no longer does blood-letting, and although I was pretty sure it was my daughter who had spoiled them for it, the doctor assures it’s just a matter of cutting back and specializing and everybody’s doing it. So we all went to the lab, and we all waited 45 minutes, and then the kids were called to the back. And honestly, I’m amazed, but my daughter did great. I turned her head toward me and we talked about how badly she was going to kick her papa’s butt in one-on-one basketball that afternoon, and before we both knew it, it was over. Easy as pie. No restraints, human or otherwise, required.
But my son ... He had been full of bravery going in, but that’s before he realized that giving blood involved having a needle plunged into your arm, and that realization caused him extremely loud consternation. He started screaming he didn’t want to do it while the nurse was still swabbing his skin, awkwardly pinning down his arm with hers (I coulda told her THAT wasn’t going to hold). I started counting, because counting often calms him, but he kept screaming as the needle went in, yanking his arm and nearly flinging said needle across the room. But the needle stayed in, and since he was crying for his Scooby Doo doll, unwisely left at home, I started counting in a Scooby voice. That got his attention; he looked at me with teary eyes, amazed either that I had come up with such a comforting idea, or that I was willing to make that much of a fool of myself. I don’t know what must have disturbed the people in the waiting room more: The sound of a screaming child, or the sound of a grown woman shouting “Rirty-run! Rirty-roo! Rirty-ree! Rirty-roar!”
But the lab got its blood, and we got out of there. My son has announced that he is never doing that again, so they better have got enough. In truth, I’m not so very eager to ever do that again myself.
+ + +
APRIL 30, 2002
My kids are in the throes of the annual standardized testing at our school, and notes have come home recommending lots of sleep and hearty breakfasts. Yeah, thanks, we usually keep them up all night and send them to school on a cup of strong coffee. I take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt; it would take a lot more than a good night's sleep and a good breakfast to get my daughter successfully through one of these things, and my son's performance is more likely to be disrupted by the hoopla and messed-up routine surrounding the test than by a late bedtime.
So when my son brought his homework notebook home yesterday and one of the assignments read, "Go to bed at 8 p.m.," I had to laugh. And that's all I had to do. In our house, it's unusual if we even get dinner on the table by 8 p.m., much less homework done and baths taken and teeth brushed and sheets tucked in. At our house, going to bed at 8 p.m. would be the equivalent of being sent to bed without supper. I guess I could have heated up a can of Beefaroni for the kid at 7:30 and made sure he kept his curfew, but the fact is, I'm not ready to give him up at 8 p.m. The school gets him for six-and-a-half hours during the day; I want him for at least that many. Usually, we wrestle him into bed around 9:30, and that's about the time he got there last night. Didn't get that one piece of homework done, but had a nice evening nonetheless.
+ + +
MAY 1, 2002
My son broke a picture last night. He was goofing off, throwing a plastic inner tube around with great gusto, and wound up knocking a picture to the floor, where the glass shattered. I should have been mad, but here's the great thing: He was mad at himself. Genuinely remorseful. Able to see the connection between his fun and the unintended consequence of the broken picture. Concerned with the feelings of the person who gave us the picture, and whether she would be mad at him. He told his Scooby doll that maybe he would say it was all the doll's fault, but then decided to own up to his transgression. For a 9-year-old with FAE, this is pretty big stuff, and if I have to lose a picture to find out that he can make these connections and take this responsibility, it's a small price to pay.
Now if I can only get him to recognize his fault, feel remorse and sincerely apologize every time he calls his sister "stupid," I'll really be getting somewhere.
+ + +
MAY 2, 2002
I was scanning the special-needs parenting section at my local monster-mega-bookstore, as it is my hobby to do, and noticed that ADHD is still far and away the topic of choice for special-parenting self-help writers. For every book on, say, autism or hearing impairment or learning disabilities, there were easily three on attention deficit/hyperactivity. They ranged from pro-medication pep rallies to moderate behavior-’n’-meds solutions to virulent anti-medication screeds. One of the latter posited that the whole problem with ADHD-diagnosed kids was not their brain chemistry or their self control or bad schools or doctors overeager to medicate but thoroughly, solely and without debate their PARENTS, whose selfish lifestyles, neglect and demand for a quick fix are damaging their younguns. And I had to wonder: Who exactly is going to buy this book? Are there parents so self-loathing that they’ll pay $15 to have somebody flagellate them so severely? I scanned it for a few good behavior management tips and then left in on the shelf. Hah!
But if there are differences of opinion in parenting books as to whether Ritalin is a savior or a scourge, there seems to be no such doubt among children’s books. Well-meaning children’s book authors seem to be taking it upon themselves to explain to young people what it feels like to have ADHD, and what a good thing it is that medication can make it stop. One book I found stuck between the parenting tomes featured a turtle that looked very much like Franklin of Nick Jr. fame. This particular young turtle, the story explained, was not slow like other turtles but too, too fast. The story ended with the Mama turtle giving the little hyper turtle a little pill, and everybody lived happily ever after.
I figured that book might just be a one-of-a-kind item, but a few days later I noticed a novel in my kids’ Scholastic Book Club flyer about a boy who is happy to be taking medication for his ADHD -- but then he goes to visit his father and the dad, a medication non-believer and big hyper guy himself, flushes his Ritalin patches down the toilet. The book club blurb explains that the kid has to decide what’s more important -- spending time with his dad, or the nice in-control feeling he gets from the drug. And however we feel about Ritalin, is that really a message we want to give our pre-teens -- kids, if it’s a choice between a parent or feeling good, go with the drugs? I wonder what the parenting books in the Keep-Your-Kids-Off-Drugs section have to say about that.
+ + +
MAY 3, 2002
Still feeling in a bookish mood, I surfed over to Amazon.com this morning to see if I might be able to find special-needs books on something other than ADHD at a bookseller with an even greater selection than the monster-mega bookstore down the highway. I clicked my way to the parenting special needs section, and then considered the categories offered: “Hyperactivity” was, of course, full of ADHD books; “Disabilities” was ... full of ADHD books (not to deny that it’s a disability or anything, but if it has its own category, shouldn’t it be out of this one?); and, finally, “General,” which turns out to be the place to find books on special needs that are not ADHD (although a smattering of them crept in here, too).
I’m happy to report that, at least at the moment I checked in this morning, the top best-seller among general special-needs parenting books was The Out-of-Sync Child, supporting my hunch that within the next few years, sensory integration disorder will be the new ADHD. Of course, there’s only one SI book making much of an impact on bookshelves, as opposed to about 7,000 ADHD books, but surely that will change in time. Other books in the top 10 included two on Asperger syndrome, two on autism, one on explosive kids, one on defiant kids, two (natch) on ADHD, and one called The Child Whisperer, which claims to offer “a gentle approach to improving self-esteem and confidence.” If they make it into a movie with Robert Redford, then maybe I’ll give it a look.
When my kids were younger, it was easier to get blood from a stone than to get blood from them. How well I remember the team of nurses that had to be rushed into the examining room when my daughter needed to be stuck. I’d hold down her legs, somebody else would hold down her arms, somebody else would hold down her head, an extra person would be needed to keep her body from wriggling, and the doctor or nurse in charge of the needle would have to dart in and try to find some subdued flesh with a vein in it. I was pretty sure they called in extra personnel to work whenever we were on the schedule. My son, they didn’t even bother with -- he had to go to the lab, and be tied to a papoose board. This was not fun for him, or for me. I felt like both my son and the technicians must consider me the worst mother in the world, although for entirely different reasons.
This past week we went for blood again, and I have to say, it was better. Which does not, of course, necessarily mean that it was good.
Our pediatrician’s office no longer does blood-letting, and although I was pretty sure it was my daughter who had spoiled them for it, the doctor assures it’s just a matter of cutting back and specializing and everybody’s doing it. So we all went to the lab, and we all waited 45 minutes, and then the kids were called to the back. And honestly, I’m amazed, but my daughter did great. I turned her head toward me and we talked about how badly she was going to kick her papa’s butt in one-on-one basketball that afternoon, and before we both knew it, it was over. Easy as pie. No restraints, human or otherwise, required.
But my son ... He had been full of bravery going in, but that’s before he realized that giving blood involved having a needle plunged into your arm, and that realization caused him extremely loud consternation. He started screaming he didn’t want to do it while the nurse was still swabbing his skin, awkwardly pinning down his arm with hers (I coulda told her THAT wasn’t going to hold). I started counting, because counting often calms him, but he kept screaming as the needle went in, yanking his arm and nearly flinging said needle across the room. But the needle stayed in, and since he was crying for his Scooby Doo doll, unwisely left at home, I started counting in a Scooby voice. That got his attention; he looked at me with teary eyes, amazed either that I had come up with such a comforting idea, or that I was willing to make that much of a fool of myself. I don’t know what must have disturbed the people in the waiting room more: The sound of a screaming child, or the sound of a grown woman shouting “Rirty-run! Rirty-roo! Rirty-ree! Rirty-roar!”
But the lab got its blood, and we got out of there. My son has announced that he is never doing that again, so they better have got enough. In truth, I’m not so very eager to ever do that again myself.
+ + +
APRIL 30, 2002
My kids are in the throes of the annual standardized testing at our school, and notes have come home recommending lots of sleep and hearty breakfasts. Yeah, thanks, we usually keep them up all night and send them to school on a cup of strong coffee. I take a lot of this stuff with a grain of salt; it would take a lot more than a good night's sleep and a good breakfast to get my daughter successfully through one of these things, and my son's performance is more likely to be disrupted by the hoopla and messed-up routine surrounding the test than by a late bedtime.
So when my son brought his homework notebook home yesterday and one of the assignments read, "Go to bed at 8 p.m.," I had to laugh. And that's all I had to do. In our house, it's unusual if we even get dinner on the table by 8 p.m., much less homework done and baths taken and teeth brushed and sheets tucked in. At our house, going to bed at 8 p.m. would be the equivalent of being sent to bed without supper. I guess I could have heated up a can of Beefaroni for the kid at 7:30 and made sure he kept his curfew, but the fact is, I'm not ready to give him up at 8 p.m. The school gets him for six-and-a-half hours during the day; I want him for at least that many. Usually, we wrestle him into bed around 9:30, and that's about the time he got there last night. Didn't get that one piece of homework done, but had a nice evening nonetheless.
+ + +
MAY 1, 2002
My son broke a picture last night. He was goofing off, throwing a plastic inner tube around with great gusto, and wound up knocking a picture to the floor, where the glass shattered. I should have been mad, but here's the great thing: He was mad at himself. Genuinely remorseful. Able to see the connection between his fun and the unintended consequence of the broken picture. Concerned with the feelings of the person who gave us the picture, and whether she would be mad at him. He told his Scooby doll that maybe he would say it was all the doll's fault, but then decided to own up to his transgression. For a 9-year-old with FAE, this is pretty big stuff, and if I have to lose a picture to find out that he can make these connections and take this responsibility, it's a small price to pay.
Now if I can only get him to recognize his fault, feel remorse and sincerely apologize every time he calls his sister "stupid," I'll really be getting somewhere.
+ + +
MAY 2, 2002
I was scanning the special-needs parenting section at my local monster-mega-bookstore, as it is my hobby to do, and noticed that ADHD is still far and away the topic of choice for special-parenting self-help writers. For every book on, say, autism or hearing impairment or learning disabilities, there were easily three on attention deficit/hyperactivity. They ranged from pro-medication pep rallies to moderate behavior-’n’-meds solutions to virulent anti-medication screeds. One of the latter posited that the whole problem with ADHD-diagnosed kids was not their brain chemistry or their self control or bad schools or doctors overeager to medicate but thoroughly, solely and without debate their PARENTS, whose selfish lifestyles, neglect and demand for a quick fix are damaging their younguns. And I had to wonder: Who exactly is going to buy this book? Are there parents so self-loathing that they’ll pay $15 to have somebody flagellate them so severely? I scanned it for a few good behavior management tips and then left in on the shelf. Hah!
But if there are differences of opinion in parenting books as to whether Ritalin is a savior or a scourge, there seems to be no such doubt among children’s books. Well-meaning children’s book authors seem to be taking it upon themselves to explain to young people what it feels like to have ADHD, and what a good thing it is that medication can make it stop. One book I found stuck between the parenting tomes featured a turtle that looked very much like Franklin of Nick Jr. fame. This particular young turtle, the story explained, was not slow like other turtles but too, too fast. The story ended with the Mama turtle giving the little hyper turtle a little pill, and everybody lived happily ever after.
I figured that book might just be a one-of-a-kind item, but a few days later I noticed a novel in my kids’ Scholastic Book Club flyer about a boy who is happy to be taking medication for his ADHD -- but then he goes to visit his father and the dad, a medication non-believer and big hyper guy himself, flushes his Ritalin patches down the toilet. The book club blurb explains that the kid has to decide what’s more important -- spending time with his dad, or the nice in-control feeling he gets from the drug. And however we feel about Ritalin, is that really a message we want to give our pre-teens -- kids, if it’s a choice between a parent or feeling good, go with the drugs? I wonder what the parenting books in the Keep-Your-Kids-Off-Drugs section have to say about that.
+ + +
MAY 3, 2002
Still feeling in a bookish mood, I surfed over to Amazon.com this morning to see if I might be able to find special-needs books on something other than ADHD at a bookseller with an even greater selection than the monster-mega bookstore down the highway. I clicked my way to the parenting special needs section, and then considered the categories offered: “Hyperactivity” was, of course, full of ADHD books; “Disabilities” was ... full of ADHD books (not to deny that it’s a disability or anything, but if it has its own category, shouldn’t it be out of this one?); and, finally, “General,” which turns out to be the place to find books on special needs that are not ADHD (although a smattering of them crept in here, too).
I’m happy to report that, at least at the moment I checked in this morning, the top best-seller among general special-needs parenting books was The Out-of-Sync Child, supporting my hunch that within the next few years, sensory integration disorder will be the new ADHD. Of course, there’s only one SI book making much of an impact on bookshelves, as opposed to about 7,000 ADHD books, but surely that will change in time. Other books in the top 10 included two on Asperger syndrome, two on autism, one on explosive kids, one on defiant kids, two (natch) on ADHD, and one called The Child Whisperer, which claims to offer “a gentle approach to improving self-esteem and confidence.” If they make it into a movie with Robert Redford, then maybe I’ll give it a look.
Monday, April 22, 2002
April 22-26, 2002
APRIL 22, 2002
Should I be concerned that my daughter -- just turned 12, in the fourth grade at school -- loves "Clifford"?
I was feeling pretty happy about it last week, when on a shopping expedition she chose a "Clifford" video and a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen CD over the far racier fare someone her age might have turned to. But now ... over the weekend, we went on a birthday-gift-certificate shopping spree, and she wound up with another "Clifford" video, a "Clifford" CD-ROM (intended for ages 3-6) and an enormous stuffed "Clifford." Should I have been forcing her to buy Britney Spears CDs and Star Wars figurines instead?
I know that her peers -- even the two-years-younger kids that she shares a classroom with -- would likely tease her if they knew she gave her birthday money to the Big Red Dog. It's better than Barney, who she was teased for liking two years ago, but surely it is still considered little-kid stuff. Should I protect her from their derision of her taste in toys by deriding it myself? Should I tell her that it's stupid to like what she likes, and she should get something she likes less? "Clifford" comes from a perfectly respectable line of children's books, and the TV show plays on good themes of how to be a friend and a responsible citizen. If Emily Elizabeth was wearing halter tops and hiphuggers instead of that darned sweater, dress and kneesocks all the time, preteens might like it fine.
But what is it they like instead? Harry Potter, I guess -- but my daughter hated Harry Potter. Gross-out Nickeldeon shows -- but none of the Nick CD-roms works on our Macintosh. She does like boy bands, and did request a Backstreet Boys CD; she likes basketball, and begged for (and got) a net to play on for her birthday; she likes Mary Kate and Ashley, though probably more because her seven-year-old cousin likes them than anything (and maybe that means they're meant for seven-year-olds). And, she likes "Clifford." So, for that matter, do I. I'm certainly not the only adult who likes to watch things that are beneath my particular level of intelligence (how else to explain "The Bachelor"?) Why shouldn't 12-year-olds?
+ + +
APRIL 23, 2002
My kids are on school vacation this week, and my husband has the week off. Which means I get to go to work and leave him with the task of amusing the little ones, tra la, tra la. I did at least take them to Toys 'R' Us and load them up with birthday toys over the weekend, so they've been playing nicely together. But today the sun is shining and the weather is clear and they're going to be clamoring to go outside and ride their bikes all the livelong day. And for a change, the one who has to either go outside and watch them or say no and be whined to death is not me. Hooray for work!
Tomorrow, I have a day off, and my son has a playdate. Also this week, we have to wedge in an occupational therapy appointment, blood tests for both kids, finishing some bathroom improvements and finally putting together the rest of the basketball net my daughter got for her birthday last week. What fun putting those things together is, huh? Whoever writes out the instructions and puts them in those big boxes must just laugh and laugh. Which is what I'm going to do, this morning, as I head for my place of business. Ha, ha! Have fun with the kids, dear.
+ + +
APRIL 24, 2002
Has anybody else noticed how out-of-control toy packaging is getting these days? Big toys, little toys, expensive toys, cheapies, it doesn't matter -- they're secured in their boxes as though they were made of gold. My son bought a little tub toy the other day that was moored to its packaging with cardboard tabs, scotch tape and those little plastic wire thingies that look like they should just slide open but in fact require big fat sharp scissors to hack through them. I mean, you wouldn't want a mere child to be able to get to a little plastic tugboat without close parental supervision.
The Barbie Volkswagen Beetle both my kids got recently was even more tightly fastened. It might as well have had its own remote-operated garage, car alarm and electronic combination locks, for all the trouble it took to get it out and play with it. I've seen real Volkswagens with less security. You know, you can buy things for adults that are hugely more breakable, and you're lucky if you even get a box or a lousy piece of tissue paper. But buy a kids' toy more elaborate than a Matchbox car, and you'll need a tool set to get it out. It all must be part of a conspiracy to make us actually participate in our kids' play. Can't just toss a bag of toys at the kids and run -- we have to actually open the dang boxes.
+ + +
APRIL 25, 2002
I've been reading about the upcoming series "Frontier House" on PBS, for which three modern-day families struck up homesteads in Montana and tried living the 1883 way for six months. And of course my first reaction to this is: Don't these people have enough challenges in their normal lives? They have to go looking for ways to make their lives harder? "Well, sure, dear, this tub of margarine we can buy from the supermarket is nice, but what I'd really like to do is churn my own butter." My goodness -- please, give these people hobbies.
I mean, it's not like there's any money in it for these families -- they're participating just for the fun of living history. And it's not like there's any fame -- it's on PBS, so the ratings aren't exactly going to be at "Suvivor" levels. There's mostly just bugs and mud and cold and work and dirt. If grown-ups want to try that out for themselves, that's one thing, but to drag your kids along? I'm thinking those parents deserve every ounce of spoiled-brat whining they're going to get throughout that long half-year.
Though I have to say ... If I could ever be persuaded to do such a fool thing -- and I could not -- it might be to see whether my kids could function better in a simpler time. My daughter doesn't do so great in school by today's standards, but out on the frontier she'd probably be great at doing chores and helping out with the other kids. A one-room schoolhouse, with all ages learning together, would suit her fine. And my son -- would he do better with days full of physical labor than he does with days full of sitting in chairs? There might be some value to living on the prairie for six months if we could find that out.
But then we'd have to go back, and what good would it all be? I think I'd rather just muddle through in our material world. Books like "Sarah, Plain and Tall" inspire many things in me, but a desire to go back and live in those times sure ain't one of them.
+ + +
APRIL 26, 2002
They have special courses to train kids to take the SAT, and teachers spend a lot of time this time of year priming kids to do well on those horrible grammar school achievement tests (we have the ESPAs coming up in NJ next week). But does anybody pay much attention to training kids to do well on those boring day to day tests, the multiple choices and the fill-in-the-blanks and the short essay questions, the exams that torment them on a daily and weekly basis rather than yearly? I guess those are supposed to be self-explanatory. But I have a daughter for whom nothing is self-explanatory. And she could use some advice.
I guess that's not a normal thing to ask for, because nobody quite knows what I'm talking about when I ask about teaching test-taking skills. Early in the year I wondered if her aide couldn't advise her to, say, do all the easy test questions first, or cross off the multiple choices that were obviously wrong -- as opposed to just straight-out giving her the answers. This request sent everybody into a tizzy, because the aide just wasn't trained for that. Nobody, it seems, is trained for that, least of all the kiddies. So I went out and got me a book called, well, "Teaching Test-Taking Skills." And if it seems to make sense, I'll give it to the tutor I have lined up for the summer. And then maybe we can give my daughter the know-how to show what she knows -- and guess better about the things she doesn't.
Should I be concerned that my daughter -- just turned 12, in the fourth grade at school -- loves "Clifford"?
I was feeling pretty happy about it last week, when on a shopping expedition she chose a "Clifford" video and a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen CD over the far racier fare someone her age might have turned to. But now ... over the weekend, we went on a birthday-gift-certificate shopping spree, and she wound up with another "Clifford" video, a "Clifford" CD-ROM (intended for ages 3-6) and an enormous stuffed "Clifford." Should I have been forcing her to buy Britney Spears CDs and Star Wars figurines instead?
I know that her peers -- even the two-years-younger kids that she shares a classroom with -- would likely tease her if they knew she gave her birthday money to the Big Red Dog. It's better than Barney, who she was teased for liking two years ago, but surely it is still considered little-kid stuff. Should I protect her from their derision of her taste in toys by deriding it myself? Should I tell her that it's stupid to like what she likes, and she should get something she likes less? "Clifford" comes from a perfectly respectable line of children's books, and the TV show plays on good themes of how to be a friend and a responsible citizen. If Emily Elizabeth was wearing halter tops and hiphuggers instead of that darned sweater, dress and kneesocks all the time, preteens might like it fine.
But what is it they like instead? Harry Potter, I guess -- but my daughter hated Harry Potter. Gross-out Nickeldeon shows -- but none of the Nick CD-roms works on our Macintosh. She does like boy bands, and did request a Backstreet Boys CD; she likes basketball, and begged for (and got) a net to play on for her birthday; she likes Mary Kate and Ashley, though probably more because her seven-year-old cousin likes them than anything (and maybe that means they're meant for seven-year-olds). And, she likes "Clifford." So, for that matter, do I. I'm certainly not the only adult who likes to watch things that are beneath my particular level of intelligence (how else to explain "The Bachelor"?) Why shouldn't 12-year-olds?
+ + +
APRIL 23, 2002
My kids are on school vacation this week, and my husband has the week off. Which means I get to go to work and leave him with the task of amusing the little ones, tra la, tra la. I did at least take them to Toys 'R' Us and load them up with birthday toys over the weekend, so they've been playing nicely together. But today the sun is shining and the weather is clear and they're going to be clamoring to go outside and ride their bikes all the livelong day. And for a change, the one who has to either go outside and watch them or say no and be whined to death is not me. Hooray for work!
Tomorrow, I have a day off, and my son has a playdate. Also this week, we have to wedge in an occupational therapy appointment, blood tests for both kids, finishing some bathroom improvements and finally putting together the rest of the basketball net my daughter got for her birthday last week. What fun putting those things together is, huh? Whoever writes out the instructions and puts them in those big boxes must just laugh and laugh. Which is what I'm going to do, this morning, as I head for my place of business. Ha, ha! Have fun with the kids, dear.
+ + +
APRIL 24, 2002
Has anybody else noticed how out-of-control toy packaging is getting these days? Big toys, little toys, expensive toys, cheapies, it doesn't matter -- they're secured in their boxes as though they were made of gold. My son bought a little tub toy the other day that was moored to its packaging with cardboard tabs, scotch tape and those little plastic wire thingies that look like they should just slide open but in fact require big fat sharp scissors to hack through them. I mean, you wouldn't want a mere child to be able to get to a little plastic tugboat without close parental supervision.
The Barbie Volkswagen Beetle both my kids got recently was even more tightly fastened. It might as well have had its own remote-operated garage, car alarm and electronic combination locks, for all the trouble it took to get it out and play with it. I've seen real Volkswagens with less security. You know, you can buy things for adults that are hugely more breakable, and you're lucky if you even get a box or a lousy piece of tissue paper. But buy a kids' toy more elaborate than a Matchbox car, and you'll need a tool set to get it out. It all must be part of a conspiracy to make us actually participate in our kids' play. Can't just toss a bag of toys at the kids and run -- we have to actually open the dang boxes.
+ + +
APRIL 25, 2002
I've been reading about the upcoming series "Frontier House" on PBS, for which three modern-day families struck up homesteads in Montana and tried living the 1883 way for six months. And of course my first reaction to this is: Don't these people have enough challenges in their normal lives? They have to go looking for ways to make their lives harder? "Well, sure, dear, this tub of margarine we can buy from the supermarket is nice, but what I'd really like to do is churn my own butter." My goodness -- please, give these people hobbies.
I mean, it's not like there's any money in it for these families -- they're participating just for the fun of living history. And it's not like there's any fame -- it's on PBS, so the ratings aren't exactly going to be at "Suvivor" levels. There's mostly just bugs and mud and cold and work and dirt. If grown-ups want to try that out for themselves, that's one thing, but to drag your kids along? I'm thinking those parents deserve every ounce of spoiled-brat whining they're going to get throughout that long half-year.
Though I have to say ... If I could ever be persuaded to do such a fool thing -- and I could not -- it might be to see whether my kids could function better in a simpler time. My daughter doesn't do so great in school by today's standards, but out on the frontier she'd probably be great at doing chores and helping out with the other kids. A one-room schoolhouse, with all ages learning together, would suit her fine. And my son -- would he do better with days full of physical labor than he does with days full of sitting in chairs? There might be some value to living on the prairie for six months if we could find that out.
But then we'd have to go back, and what good would it all be? I think I'd rather just muddle through in our material world. Books like "Sarah, Plain and Tall" inspire many things in me, but a desire to go back and live in those times sure ain't one of them.
+ + +
APRIL 26, 2002
They have special courses to train kids to take the SAT, and teachers spend a lot of time this time of year priming kids to do well on those horrible grammar school achievement tests (we have the ESPAs coming up in NJ next week). But does anybody pay much attention to training kids to do well on those boring day to day tests, the multiple choices and the fill-in-the-blanks and the short essay questions, the exams that torment them on a daily and weekly basis rather than yearly? I guess those are supposed to be self-explanatory. But I have a daughter for whom nothing is self-explanatory. And she could use some advice.
I guess that's not a normal thing to ask for, because nobody quite knows what I'm talking about when I ask about teaching test-taking skills. Early in the year I wondered if her aide couldn't advise her to, say, do all the easy test questions first, or cross off the multiple choices that were obviously wrong -- as opposed to just straight-out giving her the answers. This request sent everybody into a tizzy, because the aide just wasn't trained for that. Nobody, it seems, is trained for that, least of all the kiddies. So I went out and got me a book called, well, "Teaching Test-Taking Skills." And if it seems to make sense, I'll give it to the tutor I have lined up for the summer. And then maybe we can give my daughter the know-how to show what she knows -- and guess better about the things she doesn't.
Monday, April 15, 2002
April 15-19, 2002
APRIL 15, 2002
Thanks to all who thought of us on Sunday morning. My son's First Communion went -- okay. I had dreamed that he would magically find the self discipline to sit quietly through Mass and stand up at the altar with his peers, respectful and straight of spine, filled with spiritual peace and calmness. That didn't happen. But I had feared that he would appear possessed, jumping and shouting and twitching in his seat, such a bundle of disrespect and wilfull uncontrol that we'd have to drag him out of the sanctuary before his big moment came. And that didn't happen either (though there were a few minutes at the start of Mass that I'd like to try again). He was pretty much as he always is at church, unable to sit normally but able to make it through if he's lying down across a lap or two and allowing himself to be sleepy. That pretty much precluded the standing-at-the-altar part of the morning, but that was okay. He did his thing at communion time just fine, and that's what was important all along.
It's good, I guess, every now and then, to have these little check-ups as to where we're at. There was a time, certainly, where he would not even be able to do as well as he did. And there will be a time, I feel certain, when he will do better. As it was, the lady sitting in front of us told me afterward that she thought my son had done particularly well, and another mother mentioned that she'd had to correct her sixth-grader during the Mass more than I'd had to correct my guy. There may have been a few raised eyebrows amongst congregants who don't know him, wondering why we were letting that communion kid roll around in the pew in his nice suit. But people who knew him saw a difference, and were proud of him, and that's good, too. Maybe, really, better than admiration of behavioral perfection.
+ + +
APRIL 16, 2002
So I'm in a bit of a funk this morning because one of my favorite shows, "Once and Again," had its final episode last night, complete with crying and hugging cast members at the end. It's ridiculous to care about a TV show, I know, and hard to get too upset about this cancellation because television is a business first and foremost, and "O&A" is definitely not a show that appeals to everyone. I'd like to think that the little niche of fans to whom I belong could be valuable to a network; hey, I buy stuff. But apparently we're not as valuable as the people who watch "The Bachelor," or the communicating-with-the-dead show that's taking over the time slot. Those are niches that I'm really, really glad not to be part of, so I'll take my grief standing up.
Still ... it's been nice to have a little respite on Monday nights (or Friday nights, or Wednesday nights, or wherever ABC chose to bury the show that week). I think I'm getting late-onset ADD, because there are so few shows anymore that hold my attention. This one did, and now there's one fewer. Maybe this means I'll have more time to read the all those important books about learning disabilities and neurological problems that keep stacking up on me. Maybe it means I'll finally write those notes I've been meaning to, to teachers and child study team folks and special-ed dept. weasels. Maybe it means I'll get a jump on these columns, and not be writing them feverishly in the mornings while the kids eat their breakfasts. Or maybe it means I'll flop on the bed, flip through the channels, find nothing, and fall asleep in my clothes. Aw, you know, it's not the end of the world. Not even close. But I still feel sad.
+ + +
APRIL 17, 2002
Today is my daughter's birthday. She's 12. Which means this is the last birthday I can really celebrate, because after this she will be a teenager, and -- whoo boy. Not ready for that. Not with a girl who's already taller than me (in the 90th percentile for height at her check-up this week; I'm probably in about the 5th percentile for 42-year-olds). I need a few more years of pre-teen, and I'm not going to get it.
She's a sweet, healthy, happy girl, though, and maybe she'll be a sweet, healthy, happy teen. It could happen. There have been a few, right? At any rate, I'll enjoy these 12s, and take comfort in the fact that she'd still rather have a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen CD than a rap CD, a Clifford video than a PG-13 movie. And I'll try to forget that the pediatrician said I might want to have her start shaving her armpits. She may be big, well-developed and hairy, but she's still just a little girl. Just ignore those pimples, okay?
+ + +
APRIL 18, 2002
Capital One wants to give my son a platinum credit card.
He gets letters every week or two, urging him to call in immediately to claim his large and convenient line of credit. I'm sure the Capital One folks don't know they're offering that line to a developmentally delayed 9-year-old with fetal alcohol effect. I'd tell them, but the mailings offer no phone number or address to get off the list, only an automated call-in line to sign up. And so the come-ons keep on coming.
Now, I know how he got on this mailing list: We have a bank account in his name, and his grandmother set up a college fund for him, and computers don't know from 9-year-olds -- it's just another name in the bank's database. But here's the interesting thing: My daughter has, in her own name, all of those same accounts. Her name is right there next to his on all the same the databases. And yet -- she never receives credit offers. No junk mail for her. And while I'm not the sort that's quick to jump up with charges of sexism, I have to wonder -- why would that be? There is no list that he is on that she is not, and yet only the male name is worthy of a Capital One card. It's enough to make you go hmmm.
+ + +
APRIL 19, 2002
My kids' school called no snow days this year, but we did get a heat day this past Wednesday. It was my honor and privilege as a class mom to track people down at their places of business and let them know that, surprise! school was ending at 1 p.m. and they needed to prepare to receive their little hot and sweaty darlings home. While I can certainly sympathize with how difficult it is to learn in an un-air-conditioned classroom on a 90-degree day; and even more with how hard it is to teach; somehow calling school on account of heat seems like an awfully wimpy thing to do. Plus, it's hard to be a parent in an un-air-conditioned house or apartment on a 90-degree day, too, especially when you've had to ditch out of work to do it.
When I was a kid, of course, we went to school when it was 100 degrees and did science experiments involving frying eggs on the sidewalk and never thought a thing of it. Didn't even break a sweat while walking to and from school, uphill both ways. Why, we used to wear our warmest new fall clothes on the first day of school even if it was sweltering out, just because they were our new school clothes, darn it, and school was where we were going. These days, these kids, they wear their summer shorts from May to October. Their mothers drive them to the school entrance in air-conditioned vehicles. They tote water bottles to class and stay inside for recess if it's a little warm (or cold, or wet). Weaklings, the lot of them. And their school board, too.
Thanks to all who thought of us on Sunday morning. My son's First Communion went -- okay. I had dreamed that he would magically find the self discipline to sit quietly through Mass and stand up at the altar with his peers, respectful and straight of spine, filled with spiritual peace and calmness. That didn't happen. But I had feared that he would appear possessed, jumping and shouting and twitching in his seat, such a bundle of disrespect and wilfull uncontrol that we'd have to drag him out of the sanctuary before his big moment came. And that didn't happen either (though there were a few minutes at the start of Mass that I'd like to try again). He was pretty much as he always is at church, unable to sit normally but able to make it through if he's lying down across a lap or two and allowing himself to be sleepy. That pretty much precluded the standing-at-the-altar part of the morning, but that was okay. He did his thing at communion time just fine, and that's what was important all along.
It's good, I guess, every now and then, to have these little check-ups as to where we're at. There was a time, certainly, where he would not even be able to do as well as he did. And there will be a time, I feel certain, when he will do better. As it was, the lady sitting in front of us told me afterward that she thought my son had done particularly well, and another mother mentioned that she'd had to correct her sixth-grader during the Mass more than I'd had to correct my guy. There may have been a few raised eyebrows amongst congregants who don't know him, wondering why we were letting that communion kid roll around in the pew in his nice suit. But people who knew him saw a difference, and were proud of him, and that's good, too. Maybe, really, better than admiration of behavioral perfection.
+ + +
APRIL 16, 2002
So I'm in a bit of a funk this morning because one of my favorite shows, "Once and Again," had its final episode last night, complete with crying and hugging cast members at the end. It's ridiculous to care about a TV show, I know, and hard to get too upset about this cancellation because television is a business first and foremost, and "O&A" is definitely not a show that appeals to everyone. I'd like to think that the little niche of fans to whom I belong could be valuable to a network; hey, I buy stuff. But apparently we're not as valuable as the people who watch "The Bachelor," or the communicating-with-the-dead show that's taking over the time slot. Those are niches that I'm really, really glad not to be part of, so I'll take my grief standing up.
Still ... it's been nice to have a little respite on Monday nights (or Friday nights, or Wednesday nights, or wherever ABC chose to bury the show that week). I think I'm getting late-onset ADD, because there are so few shows anymore that hold my attention. This one did, and now there's one fewer. Maybe this means I'll have more time to read the all those important books about learning disabilities and neurological problems that keep stacking up on me. Maybe it means I'll finally write those notes I've been meaning to, to teachers and child study team folks and special-ed dept. weasels. Maybe it means I'll get a jump on these columns, and not be writing them feverishly in the mornings while the kids eat their breakfasts. Or maybe it means I'll flop on the bed, flip through the channels, find nothing, and fall asleep in my clothes. Aw, you know, it's not the end of the world. Not even close. But I still feel sad.
+ + +
APRIL 17, 2002
Today is my daughter's birthday. She's 12. Which means this is the last birthday I can really celebrate, because after this she will be a teenager, and -- whoo boy. Not ready for that. Not with a girl who's already taller than me (in the 90th percentile for height at her check-up this week; I'm probably in about the 5th percentile for 42-year-olds). I need a few more years of pre-teen, and I'm not going to get it.
She's a sweet, healthy, happy girl, though, and maybe she'll be a sweet, healthy, happy teen. It could happen. There have been a few, right? At any rate, I'll enjoy these 12s, and take comfort in the fact that she'd still rather have a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen CD than a rap CD, a Clifford video than a PG-13 movie. And I'll try to forget that the pediatrician said I might want to have her start shaving her armpits. She may be big, well-developed and hairy, but she's still just a little girl. Just ignore those pimples, okay?
+ + +
APRIL 18, 2002
Capital One wants to give my son a platinum credit card.
He gets letters every week or two, urging him to call in immediately to claim his large and convenient line of credit. I'm sure the Capital One folks don't know they're offering that line to a developmentally delayed 9-year-old with fetal alcohol effect. I'd tell them, but the mailings offer no phone number or address to get off the list, only an automated call-in line to sign up. And so the come-ons keep on coming.
Now, I know how he got on this mailing list: We have a bank account in his name, and his grandmother set up a college fund for him, and computers don't know from 9-year-olds -- it's just another name in the bank's database. But here's the interesting thing: My daughter has, in her own name, all of those same accounts. Her name is right there next to his on all the same the databases. And yet -- she never receives credit offers. No junk mail for her. And while I'm not the sort that's quick to jump up with charges of sexism, I have to wonder -- why would that be? There is no list that he is on that she is not, and yet only the male name is worthy of a Capital One card. It's enough to make you go hmmm.
+ + +
APRIL 19, 2002
My kids' school called no snow days this year, but we did get a heat day this past Wednesday. It was my honor and privilege as a class mom to track people down at their places of business and let them know that, surprise! school was ending at 1 p.m. and they needed to prepare to receive their little hot and sweaty darlings home. While I can certainly sympathize with how difficult it is to learn in an un-air-conditioned classroom on a 90-degree day; and even more with how hard it is to teach; somehow calling school on account of heat seems like an awfully wimpy thing to do. Plus, it's hard to be a parent in an un-air-conditioned house or apartment on a 90-degree day, too, especially when you've had to ditch out of work to do it.
When I was a kid, of course, we went to school when it was 100 degrees and did science experiments involving frying eggs on the sidewalk and never thought a thing of it. Didn't even break a sweat while walking to and from school, uphill both ways. Why, we used to wear our warmest new fall clothes on the first day of school even if it was sweltering out, just because they were our new school clothes, darn it, and school was where we were going. These days, these kids, they wear their summer shorts from May to October. Their mothers drive them to the school entrance in air-conditioned vehicles. They tote water bottles to class and stay inside for recess if it's a little warm (or cold, or wet). Weaklings, the lot of them. And their school board, too.
Monday, April 08, 2002
April 8-12, 2002
APRIL 8, 2002
Watched the Disney Channel's "Tru Confessions" with my daughter on Friday, in the hope that she would see some parallel with her sibling relationship in the story of a girl who struggles with but finally comes to value her bond with her developmentally disabled brother. The family dynamics sure looked familiar to me: mother constantly excusing and protecting her son while expecting more from her daughter; father afraid to acknowledge his son's limitations and yelling too much when things inevitably go wrong; daughter resentful that her brother gets away with everything and she with nothing; son pretty happy in his own world, largely oblivious to the stress he's causing. My husband happened to walk through the room during a scene in which the son again created havoc during dinner (this time by spilling a beverage, which used to be a common occurence at our table), and I know he saw himself in the way the father leapt up and shouted, "Can't we ever just get through a meal?" I know he saw himself, because he laughed and shot me a sheepish look. If we had a dollar for every time he's said those words, it would cover the cost of getting the Disney Channel, for sure. And maybe a DVD player, too. And TV dinners for a year.
Did my daughter see herself in the on-screen sister? Less likely, I guess. The character was hyper-verbal and hyper-aware, and goodness knows my daughter is neither of those. She's never shown much of an ability to apply fictional situations to real-life ones. But she enjoyed the movie, and maybe a little bit of its message of tolerance for, as she describes her own, "crazy brothers" will seep in. And at any rate, it has me feeling all validated -- the mother's practically the hero of the movie; she turns out to be right about everything, and everybody who's picked on her throughout the 83 minutes makes note of that in the end. Now could we just have a little bit of THAT in real life, please?
+ + +
APRIL 9, 2002
I'm running late this morning, overslept again, rushing around with no time to write something funny or even lame, but I just gotta say ... This morning, while I was dashing through my shower, anticipating having to yell at my son who would undoubtedly still be in his pajamas, in bed, when I got out -- while I was worrying about rushing him through dressing and eating -- while I was being so very unorganized and late myself, imagining my daughter lounging on the sofa waiting to be served -- my beautiful girl was calmly microwaving omelets for her sibling and herself, and my son was actually getting himself dressed. I tore out of my room only to find them sitting at the table, peacefully munching away, togged and shod and ready for school. Miracles! If I can get my daughter to do this every morning, I can oversleep a good ten minutes more.
Of course, she's got to start making breakfast for me, too. A pot of coffee, at least. We'll work on that.
+ + +
APRIL 10, 2002
I'm off to an interview with the social worker on my son's child study team in a few minutes, and am trying to get into the appropriate positive, friendly but firm mind-set that comes in so handy during confrontations ... wait, I mean consultations ... conferences? ... meetings like these. I know there's some parents who go into these things breathing fire, and I generally admire them and wish I could do that, too; but catching flies with honey is definitely more my style. It doesn't mean I don't feel like a nervous wreck going in, though, and don't feel the need to gird myself for the job. Hold on a sec while I slip this armor on, okay? (Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.)
Today's get-together is just to give a social history for my son as part of his three-year review. He's had a heck of a good three years, so there should only be positive vibes in that office today. Right? Right? I'm a little more defensive than usual, because the social worker was the one person on the child study team who didn't think we needed to bother with this whole three-year review stuff for my guy. She proposed skipping it, I proposed not, and everybody else -- thank goodness -- agreed with me. I don't know if she's holding a grudge about that. Guess I'll find out in a few minutes. Oh, don'tcha just love IEP season?
+ + +
APRIL 11, 2002
It’s always something. Yesterday I completed my nervously anticipated interview with the social worker on my son’s child study team with flying colors, leaving her the impression of a great kid and a happy family, and when we were done I walked down the hall to drop off some paperwork with the child study team leader. I was surprised but happy to see my daughter’s aide in the office there with her, because I rarely get a chance to speak with the woman and had a couple of things I wanted to mention. But alas, the aide was in that office because she was unhappy with what was going on in the classroom, concerned about the directions the teacher was giving her for working with my daughter and unsure about things she was being asked to do. Plus, now, panicked that it might be perceived that she was taking a secret meeting with me. You know, me, the parent, the one that must by all means NOT be allowed free and open communication with people who work directly with my child. The horror!
We talked for a while, the three of us, with frequent nervous glances at the open door, and I heard things that annoyed me -- requests I thought I had communicated clearly being completely misinterpreted; things that concerned me -- the kind of excess help for my daughter that I had again and again and AGAIN asked that she not receive; and things that made me think that all of this really had more to do with classroom politics, personalities and the mismanaging of inclusion in our district and state than it did with my actual child and self. I’m clinging to that last one, because it’s late in the year and I really don’t want to have to start ticking people off again now. Can’t we just get through fourth grade? Please? I can only handle one set of stressful Child Study Team interactions at a time, and this year it’s my son’s turn. But as we know, in the land of special ed, Nothing Is Ever Easy.
+ + +
APRIL 12, 2002
Send prayers or good thoughts our way Sunday morning, 8:45 a.m., as my son receives his First Communion. The First Communion part -- the actual receiving of the Host -- I'm not worried about. I'm worried about him making it through Mass with people watching. I'm worried about him standing up at the altar with the other children all during the long, long Eucharistic prayer, as we found out at today's rehearsal he's going to have to do. I'm worried about him wearing a suit without dissolving in a mass of tactile hypersensitivity. It's going to be a long morning.
To their credit, nobody at the church, neither the administrator of the First Communion program nor the parents whose children will be sharing the spotlight, has said anything about my son's behavior being inappropriate for a First Communicant. There seems to be a good understanding among the people and priests that my child has a neurological impairment, and that he requires more than the usual amounts of understanding and tolerance. After the horrible rehearsal, during which he was whooping and hollering and jumping and running and proclaiming loudly from the altar that he had to go to the bathroom, at about the time when I imagined all the other moms demanding that my son be pulled from the First Communion line-up so as not to disturb their children's big day, a woman who remembered my son from a long-ago gymnastics class she taught stopped us to say how happy she was that her daughter was having her First Communion during the same Mass as my son, and that it really made the day for her. I wanted to hug her.
It's true, I think, that my husband and I are more mortified by his behavior under these circumstances than other folks are -- even though, under general circumstances, we are extremely understanding and tolerant of his challenges. We know that the thing that works best for him is to keep him from situations where he is going to be unsuccessful, and when such situations are unavoidable -- like making your First Communion in front of God and everybody -- I think we panic a little. Okay, we panic a lot.
I'd like to think that praying on this will lead God to bring a little calmness to my boy's wild spirit and help him to behave. But you never know about God -- He may just feel that having a small boy running up and down the aisles or prattling merrily at the altar in a Scooby Doo voice is a fine way to wake people up. Perhaps what we need to pray for is a little calmness for ourselves. At any rate -- 8:45 a.m., people. Send us a little support.
Watched the Disney Channel's "Tru Confessions" with my daughter on Friday, in the hope that she would see some parallel with her sibling relationship in the story of a girl who struggles with but finally comes to value her bond with her developmentally disabled brother. The family dynamics sure looked familiar to me: mother constantly excusing and protecting her son while expecting more from her daughter; father afraid to acknowledge his son's limitations and yelling too much when things inevitably go wrong; daughter resentful that her brother gets away with everything and she with nothing; son pretty happy in his own world, largely oblivious to the stress he's causing. My husband happened to walk through the room during a scene in which the son again created havoc during dinner (this time by spilling a beverage, which used to be a common occurence at our table), and I know he saw himself in the way the father leapt up and shouted, "Can't we ever just get through a meal?" I know he saw himself, because he laughed and shot me a sheepish look. If we had a dollar for every time he's said those words, it would cover the cost of getting the Disney Channel, for sure. And maybe a DVD player, too. And TV dinners for a year.
Did my daughter see herself in the on-screen sister? Less likely, I guess. The character was hyper-verbal and hyper-aware, and goodness knows my daughter is neither of those. She's never shown much of an ability to apply fictional situations to real-life ones. But she enjoyed the movie, and maybe a little bit of its message of tolerance for, as she describes her own, "crazy brothers" will seep in. And at any rate, it has me feeling all validated -- the mother's practically the hero of the movie; she turns out to be right about everything, and everybody who's picked on her throughout the 83 minutes makes note of that in the end. Now could we just have a little bit of THAT in real life, please?
+ + +
APRIL 9, 2002
I'm running late this morning, overslept again, rushing around with no time to write something funny or even lame, but I just gotta say ... This morning, while I was dashing through my shower, anticipating having to yell at my son who would undoubtedly still be in his pajamas, in bed, when I got out -- while I was worrying about rushing him through dressing and eating -- while I was being so very unorganized and late myself, imagining my daughter lounging on the sofa waiting to be served -- my beautiful girl was calmly microwaving omelets for her sibling and herself, and my son was actually getting himself dressed. I tore out of my room only to find them sitting at the table, peacefully munching away, togged and shod and ready for school. Miracles! If I can get my daughter to do this every morning, I can oversleep a good ten minutes more.
Of course, she's got to start making breakfast for me, too. A pot of coffee, at least. We'll work on that.
+ + +
APRIL 10, 2002
I'm off to an interview with the social worker on my son's child study team in a few minutes, and am trying to get into the appropriate positive, friendly but firm mind-set that comes in so handy during confrontations ... wait, I mean consultations ... conferences? ... meetings like these. I know there's some parents who go into these things breathing fire, and I generally admire them and wish I could do that, too; but catching flies with honey is definitely more my style. It doesn't mean I don't feel like a nervous wreck going in, though, and don't feel the need to gird myself for the job. Hold on a sec while I slip this armor on, okay? (Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.)
Today's get-together is just to give a social history for my son as part of his three-year review. He's had a heck of a good three years, so there should only be positive vibes in that office today. Right? Right? I'm a little more defensive than usual, because the social worker was the one person on the child study team who didn't think we needed to bother with this whole three-year review stuff for my guy. She proposed skipping it, I proposed not, and everybody else -- thank goodness -- agreed with me. I don't know if she's holding a grudge about that. Guess I'll find out in a few minutes. Oh, don'tcha just love IEP season?
+ + +
APRIL 11, 2002
It’s always something. Yesterday I completed my nervously anticipated interview with the social worker on my son’s child study team with flying colors, leaving her the impression of a great kid and a happy family, and when we were done I walked down the hall to drop off some paperwork with the child study team leader. I was surprised but happy to see my daughter’s aide in the office there with her, because I rarely get a chance to speak with the woman and had a couple of things I wanted to mention. But alas, the aide was in that office because she was unhappy with what was going on in the classroom, concerned about the directions the teacher was giving her for working with my daughter and unsure about things she was being asked to do. Plus, now, panicked that it might be perceived that she was taking a secret meeting with me. You know, me, the parent, the one that must by all means NOT be allowed free and open communication with people who work directly with my child. The horror!
We talked for a while, the three of us, with frequent nervous glances at the open door, and I heard things that annoyed me -- requests I thought I had communicated clearly being completely misinterpreted; things that concerned me -- the kind of excess help for my daughter that I had again and again and AGAIN asked that she not receive; and things that made me think that all of this really had more to do with classroom politics, personalities and the mismanaging of inclusion in our district and state than it did with my actual child and self. I’m clinging to that last one, because it’s late in the year and I really don’t want to have to start ticking people off again now. Can’t we just get through fourth grade? Please? I can only handle one set of stressful Child Study Team interactions at a time, and this year it’s my son’s turn. But as we know, in the land of special ed, Nothing Is Ever Easy.
+ + +
APRIL 12, 2002
Send prayers or good thoughts our way Sunday morning, 8:45 a.m., as my son receives his First Communion. The First Communion part -- the actual receiving of the Host -- I'm not worried about. I'm worried about him making it through Mass with people watching. I'm worried about him standing up at the altar with the other children all during the long, long Eucharistic prayer, as we found out at today's rehearsal he's going to have to do. I'm worried about him wearing a suit without dissolving in a mass of tactile hypersensitivity. It's going to be a long morning.
To their credit, nobody at the church, neither the administrator of the First Communion program nor the parents whose children will be sharing the spotlight, has said anything about my son's behavior being inappropriate for a First Communicant. There seems to be a good understanding among the people and priests that my child has a neurological impairment, and that he requires more than the usual amounts of understanding and tolerance. After the horrible rehearsal, during which he was whooping and hollering and jumping and running and proclaiming loudly from the altar that he had to go to the bathroom, at about the time when I imagined all the other moms demanding that my son be pulled from the First Communion line-up so as not to disturb their children's big day, a woman who remembered my son from a long-ago gymnastics class she taught stopped us to say how happy she was that her daughter was having her First Communion during the same Mass as my son, and that it really made the day for her. I wanted to hug her.
It's true, I think, that my husband and I are more mortified by his behavior under these circumstances than other folks are -- even though, under general circumstances, we are extremely understanding and tolerant of his challenges. We know that the thing that works best for him is to keep him from situations where he is going to be unsuccessful, and when such situations are unavoidable -- like making your First Communion in front of God and everybody -- I think we panic a little. Okay, we panic a lot.
I'd like to think that praying on this will lead God to bring a little calmness to my boy's wild spirit and help him to behave. But you never know about God -- He may just feel that having a small boy running up and down the aisles or prattling merrily at the altar in a Scooby Doo voice is a fine way to wake people up. Perhaps what we need to pray for is a little calmness for ourselves. At any rate -- 8:45 a.m., people. Send us a little support.
Monday, April 01, 2002
April 1-5, 2002
APRIL 1, 2002
Good news, I guess: I won't be able to use this space to shill for ABC's "Once and Again" much longer, because the network has finally said, "No more." There are three episodes of this often intriguing, sometimes annoying, usually emotionally honest drama to go, including tonight's, and now no incentive whatsoever for new viewers to take a look at it. But allow me to whine at least one more time, and pretend that anyone even still cares.
Tonight's episode continues and, most likely, resolves a long-simmering storyline about teenage daughter Grace's desperate infatuation with her English teacher (played by Eric Stoltz, for anybody who may have been infatuated with him when they were teenagers). That he returns the infatuation has been suggested but not stated outright; it's still possible that he's merely fond of her and deeply sympathetic to the numerous ways she has humiliated herself on his behalf. Anyone who was capable, at that age, of really mortifying behavior in the pursuit of something that seemed to be the most important thing in the world -- romantic, social, academic or whatever -- will feel a pang as this basically good but often heedlessly passionate girl does things that she will remember later in life with a wince.
One of this show's strengths has always been its ruthless, clear-eyed showing of the ways in which people embarrass themselves -- there have been times that I have had to dive for the mute button to stop characters from saying that desperately ill-advised thing they were obviously just about to. Thought it was sometimes painful viewing, I'll miss it. Too bad that too few of us will.
+ + +
APRIL 2, 2002
Lately, my son seems to be developing good manners. Not the kind of good manners that involve, say, eating with your fork or refraining from burping aloud at will, but some very nice little verbal habits nonetheless. He's always been good with "please," "thank you," and "excuse me," but now his repertoire has expanded. For example, during Easter dinner at a restaurant, he demonstrated his ability to interact politely with the waitress, whether to clearly give his order in turn or to wave her down and request more juice. Quite the fine diner was he.
When he went to the pediatrician last week, he sat down at a table of toys where a little girl was playing and nicely introduced himself, saying his name and asking for hers. And another afternoon, waiting outside for his sister to come out of school, he approached a girl who was piling up sticks, excused himself, and asked if she might like some help. Of course, she ignored him; mainstream-type kids often don't respond to his polite overtures. Children with special needs get a lot of help with and stress on social skills. Maybe some mainstream kids could use that, too.
+ + +
APRIL 3, 2002
I'm feeling all inconsistent about inclusion these days. On the one hand, last week I had to head off yet another attempt to pull my daughter out of her mainstream class and stick her in resource room for a good portion of the day. I had to again explain that that sort of remediation does not work for her, and that being in a classroom with everybody else does. Her teacher was just being concerned; I don't think it was an official child-study-team-mandated request, just an attempt to gently talk me into it. She didn't. My girl needs to be in the regular classroom, and I'll do everything short of crazy glue to keep her there.
So there, I'm the queen of inclusion. And in that spirit, I've also pulled the plug on my son's expensive, exclusive special needs camp and have found an in-town mainstream program that will take him on. We'll pay for him to have a one-on-one aide, but beyond that, he'll be just another kid, albeit a jumpy, noisy, busy, key-obsessed one. I'm feeling good about having him be part of the community this year, with kids he might actually see around town. Mainstream children have generally been kind to him, and I hope that will continue. For summer, anyway, inclusion's the ticket.
But during the school year, I can't work up any enthusiasm for that boy being in a mainstream class. He has a hard enough time staying focused in a small, structured, self-contained special-ed class; put him in a regular classroom with too many kids and too much going on, and he'd be at his hyperkinetic worst. It's even occured to me to wonder, as we approach his latest three-year review, whether he wouldn't be better off in a special school instead of just a special class. That's about as far from inclusion as you can get, and it's going to make some child-study-team heads spin that the mom who won't even allow her daughter to be pulled into resource room wants to send her son out of the home school, out of the community, and way out of the mainstream. But that's okay. It's good to keep them on their toes.
+ + +
APRIL 4, 2002
My kids really really really really really want a dog.
My husband really really really really really doesn't.
Me, I'm in the middle. We always had a dog when I was growing up, and I miss that. I can see where it might be good for my kids to have that sort of companionship and that sort of responsibility. But on the other hand: Mess. Disruption. Dog hair. Dog poop. Do I need that sort of responsibility? There are days we just barely have it together with our current roster of personnel.
At any rate, we would have to find a pretty exceptional dog to be able to survive this household. One energetic enough to play with the small hyperactive boy, but controlled enough to not hurt him in the process. One calm enough for my daughter, who adores dogs in about the same proportion that she is scared to death of them. One who will provide good company for my mother-in-law, who has custody of the downstairs rooms of our house that lead to the backyard, but not move in any way that may interfere with her already unsteady steps. And of course, one who will charm my husband, who really really really doesn't much care for critters.
Maybe one day the perfect dog will just follow us home, and we won't have to think about it. And then maybe somebody will leave a baby on our doorstep, and we'll be able to adopt again without any hassle. It's nice to dream. That's what I tell my kids, anyway.
+ + +
APRIL 5, 2002
Well, since I griped about "ER" last week, I have to acknowledge that this week, they did at least make some mention of FAS, and of drinking while pregnant as being a Bad Thing. Now, they did it in the context of a doctor yelling at a parent, which seems to be the general mode of address of doctors to parents on this show these days -- but it's good to at least have FAS acknowledged as something that causes developmental delays, since so many real-life doctors seem so reluctant to deal with it very much at all.
And although I'm happy for any mention at all, wouldn't it be good to have an older child on some show, demonstrating what FASD looks like once the child gets past alcohol-exposed-preemie stage? Maybe a parent would actually get a chance to yell at a doctor, as I yell at doctors and teachers who insist on overlooking the brain damage my child has suffered and see only the bad behavior. Well, in my head I yell at them. I yell at them when I get home. I yell at them on this Web site. In person I mostly just stew. And I suppose, to be fair, that's not really all that telegenic.
Good news, I guess: I won't be able to use this space to shill for ABC's "Once and Again" much longer, because the network has finally said, "No more." There are three episodes of this often intriguing, sometimes annoying, usually emotionally honest drama to go, including tonight's, and now no incentive whatsoever for new viewers to take a look at it. But allow me to whine at least one more time, and pretend that anyone even still cares.
Tonight's episode continues and, most likely, resolves a long-simmering storyline about teenage daughter Grace's desperate infatuation with her English teacher (played by Eric Stoltz, for anybody who may have been infatuated with him when they were teenagers). That he returns the infatuation has been suggested but not stated outright; it's still possible that he's merely fond of her and deeply sympathetic to the numerous ways she has humiliated herself on his behalf. Anyone who was capable, at that age, of really mortifying behavior in the pursuit of something that seemed to be the most important thing in the world -- romantic, social, academic or whatever -- will feel a pang as this basically good but often heedlessly passionate girl does things that she will remember later in life with a wince.
One of this show's strengths has always been its ruthless, clear-eyed showing of the ways in which people embarrass themselves -- there have been times that I have had to dive for the mute button to stop characters from saying that desperately ill-advised thing they were obviously just about to. Thought it was sometimes painful viewing, I'll miss it. Too bad that too few of us will.
+ + +
APRIL 2, 2002
Lately, my son seems to be developing good manners. Not the kind of good manners that involve, say, eating with your fork or refraining from burping aloud at will, but some very nice little verbal habits nonetheless. He's always been good with "please," "thank you," and "excuse me," but now his repertoire has expanded. For example, during Easter dinner at a restaurant, he demonstrated his ability to interact politely with the waitress, whether to clearly give his order in turn or to wave her down and request more juice. Quite the fine diner was he.
When he went to the pediatrician last week, he sat down at a table of toys where a little girl was playing and nicely introduced himself, saying his name and asking for hers. And another afternoon, waiting outside for his sister to come out of school, he approached a girl who was piling up sticks, excused himself, and asked if she might like some help. Of course, she ignored him; mainstream-type kids often don't respond to his polite overtures. Children with special needs get a lot of help with and stress on social skills. Maybe some mainstream kids could use that, too.
+ + +
APRIL 3, 2002
I'm feeling all inconsistent about inclusion these days. On the one hand, last week I had to head off yet another attempt to pull my daughter out of her mainstream class and stick her in resource room for a good portion of the day. I had to again explain that that sort of remediation does not work for her, and that being in a classroom with everybody else does. Her teacher was just being concerned; I don't think it was an official child-study-team-mandated request, just an attempt to gently talk me into it. She didn't. My girl needs to be in the regular classroom, and I'll do everything short of crazy glue to keep her there.
So there, I'm the queen of inclusion. And in that spirit, I've also pulled the plug on my son's expensive, exclusive special needs camp and have found an in-town mainstream program that will take him on. We'll pay for him to have a one-on-one aide, but beyond that, he'll be just another kid, albeit a jumpy, noisy, busy, key-obsessed one. I'm feeling good about having him be part of the community this year, with kids he might actually see around town. Mainstream children have generally been kind to him, and I hope that will continue. For summer, anyway, inclusion's the ticket.
But during the school year, I can't work up any enthusiasm for that boy being in a mainstream class. He has a hard enough time staying focused in a small, structured, self-contained special-ed class; put him in a regular classroom with too many kids and too much going on, and he'd be at his hyperkinetic worst. It's even occured to me to wonder, as we approach his latest three-year review, whether he wouldn't be better off in a special school instead of just a special class. That's about as far from inclusion as you can get, and it's going to make some child-study-team heads spin that the mom who won't even allow her daughter to be pulled into resource room wants to send her son out of the home school, out of the community, and way out of the mainstream. But that's okay. It's good to keep them on their toes.
+ + +
APRIL 4, 2002
My kids really really really really really want a dog.
My husband really really really really really doesn't.
Me, I'm in the middle. We always had a dog when I was growing up, and I miss that. I can see where it might be good for my kids to have that sort of companionship and that sort of responsibility. But on the other hand: Mess. Disruption. Dog hair. Dog poop. Do I need that sort of responsibility? There are days we just barely have it together with our current roster of personnel.
At any rate, we would have to find a pretty exceptional dog to be able to survive this household. One energetic enough to play with the small hyperactive boy, but controlled enough to not hurt him in the process. One calm enough for my daughter, who adores dogs in about the same proportion that she is scared to death of them. One who will provide good company for my mother-in-law, who has custody of the downstairs rooms of our house that lead to the backyard, but not move in any way that may interfere with her already unsteady steps. And of course, one who will charm my husband, who really really really doesn't much care for critters.
Maybe one day the perfect dog will just follow us home, and we won't have to think about it. And then maybe somebody will leave a baby on our doorstep, and we'll be able to adopt again without any hassle. It's nice to dream. That's what I tell my kids, anyway.
+ + +
APRIL 5, 2002
Well, since I griped about "ER" last week, I have to acknowledge that this week, they did at least make some mention of FAS, and of drinking while pregnant as being a Bad Thing. Now, they did it in the context of a doctor yelling at a parent, which seems to be the general mode of address of doctors to parents on this show these days -- but it's good to at least have FAS acknowledged as something that causes developmental delays, since so many real-life doctors seem so reluctant to deal with it very much at all.
And although I'm happy for any mention at all, wouldn't it be good to have an older child on some show, demonstrating what FASD looks like once the child gets past alcohol-exposed-preemie stage? Maybe a parent would actually get a chance to yell at a doctor, as I yell at doctors and teachers who insist on overlooking the brain damage my child has suffered and see only the bad behavior. Well, in my head I yell at them. I yell at them when I get home. I yell at them on this Web site. In person I mostly just stew. And I suppose, to be fair, that's not really all that telegenic.
Monday, March 25, 2002
March 25-29, 2002
MARCH 25, 2002
Stayed up (yawn) until all hours (yawn) watching the Oscars last night, and feeling a little nostalgic for my younger days -- pre-kids, pre-move to the East Coast -- when Oscar evening was such a big deal for me. Back when I could have a big party because the show didn't last until, well, all hours. Back when I could clear a whole evening to do nothing but watch TV. Back when I still went to the movies. I used to get a bunch of friends together every year, and we'd dress up to dress down the stars and their wardrobes. Ah, those were the days.
This year, I watched the first hour or so of the ceremony with my daughter, doing flashcards with her during the commercials and hitting the "mute" button during boring speeches and reading segments from her literature book. After she went off to sleep, I struggled hard not to do the same. I'd at least seen one movie that was up for an award -- "Kate & Leopold," up for Sting's best song -- but other than that, watching the little scenes that played with each nomination is about as close as I'll get to any of these flicks. And that's okay; normally, my kids are plenty entertaining enough to make me forget that I'm not getting my full ration of theater seats and popcorn. But on nights like last night, I can't help feeling nostalgic anyway. Or falling asleep, either.
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MARCH 26, 2002
My son's teacher made a point of telling me today, when I picked him up, that he is now standing up straight, with his head high, when he walks down the school hallways. This is in contrast to his former hall-walking posture, which was bent over, with his head down. That posture didn't bother me so much because I knew he was getting some sensory integration benefits from it. But it bothered the folks at school. It's bothered them for years. And so they have made a big project out of it, and now they're successful. People have been commenting, she said, as he walks by their classroom, how much better he's walking. Recognition from the community for improving one's behavior is good, surely, even if the improvement is otherwise pretty meaningless.
But that's just me. I would have thought there were more important goals to tackle with such consistency and enthusiasm, but maybe not. When his speech therapist talked proudly about how she kept making him go back to the classroom and do it again until he walked straight and tall for her, all I could think of was, "You're spending your speech therapy time on this?" But I try to keep in mind that I'm not there at the school, and I don't entirely understand what goes on there, and I have to trust educators who I believe are good at what they do and sincere in their desire to help my son. So he's standing up straight now. That's great. It's good for him, to be showing some self-control. It's good for the school, to have him not thumping through the hallways not quite looking where he's going. And it's good for me, because now I can imagine everybody's attention finally turning toward something else.
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MARCH 27, 2002
Any parent who's had plans ruined by a child's illness has to be at least a little heartwarmed by the news reports coming out about Will Smith's mysterious disappearance from the Oscar ceremonies Sunday night. He and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, were there at the start of the ceremony, when Whoopi Goldberg made a joke about them sitting next to Maggie Smith. But by the time his big moment came -- the category for which he was nominated, Best Actor -- Mr. Smith was nowhere to be found.
What happened? Was he in the bathroom? At the bar? Brawling backstage? As it turns out, security had informed the couple that their 1.5-year-old daughter had been taken to the hospital with a high fever and ear infection, and they had rushed off to be with her. Now, I like the idea of celebs being sufficiently wrapped up in their kids that they'd flee the entertainment industry's biggest night to be with their baby. But what I like even more is the image of Jada Pinkett rushing into the ER in that ball gown she was wearing. Surely they didn't stop to change? I've been caught on emergency runs in ratty sweatclothes I didn't expect anybody to see me in, but never formalwear. Will Smith may have lost the Oscar to Denzel Washington, but he was a lock for Best Dressed Dad at the hospital.
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MARCH 28, 2002
Another milestone for my son (this seems to be the season for them) -- as of his pediatrician visit yesterday, and at the ripe old age of 9, he is now, finally, for the first time, officially on the height and weight charts. He's been off the bottom of them for so long, following the curve but not getting any closer to it. But now, big boy that he is, he's at about the fifth percentile for height and the seventh percentile for weight. Woo-hoo! For a little guy with FAE who we thought would always be below the bottom, this is a red-letter day.
I always said that if he ever hit the charts, I'd have a party. Next month, in another milestone event, he's making his first Holy Communion, so maybe we'll make the party for that a dual spiritual/physical growth celebration. Proud accomplishments, both. But what I really want to know about his newfound size is: If he's now taller than five percent of 9-year-olds, and heavier than seven, does this mean I'll now be able to buy pants that fit him? Talk about dreams coming true.
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MARCH 29, 2002
As soon as the couple with the son who had been nearly drowned in the bathtub and the doctor-who's-not-that-kind-of-doctor in tow made it to an examining room on "ER" last night, I knew what was going on. "They were doing some sort of rebirthing exercise with the kid," I told my husband. And then, "And he's going to turn out to have been adopted from eastern Europe." And I could have added, knowing the way parenting storylines have been going on this show lately, "And they're going to do a gloss on RAD that's going to make the parents look like irresponsible twits." I was right on all three counts.
I've complained before about how black and white this show has gotten about medical issues involving children; didn't they used to be more interested in shades of gray? I know George Clooney's Dr. Ross used to get on his high horse with parents quite a lot, but it seems he got knocked off a time or two, too. But no more. The doctor is always right, and the parents are always ridiculous and irresponsible. And since the show is done from the doctors' point of view, I guess that's the way it should be -- I know I'm not the only parent of a child with special needs who's pretty sure the doctors feel they're always right, and I'm ridiculous and irresponsible.
But still, with the audience they have and the interest in telling good stories, couldn't they at least put a responsible argument in the parents' mouths before condeming them? Last night, when Peter Scolari as the dad (and right there, you lose any chance of dramatic gravitas) started twitting about how they adopted Victor in Prague and it was just taking him so darn long to bond and it was affecting their marriage and this therapist had a lot of success, I wanted to scream. Post-institutionalized children have real problems that real families struggle with every day; kids with attatchment disorders show far more severe and frightening and complex behavior than just not bonding fast enough for a parent's taste. And the lack of respect, support and recognition these families receive from more traditional medical professionals has got to be a contributing factor as to why practitioners of extreme therapies -- legitimate or no -- come to weild such power. Physicians, examine yourselves.
Stayed up (yawn) until all hours (yawn) watching the Oscars last night, and feeling a little nostalgic for my younger days -- pre-kids, pre-move to the East Coast -- when Oscar evening was such a big deal for me. Back when I could have a big party because the show didn't last until, well, all hours. Back when I could clear a whole evening to do nothing but watch TV. Back when I still went to the movies. I used to get a bunch of friends together every year, and we'd dress up to dress down the stars and their wardrobes. Ah, those were the days.
This year, I watched the first hour or so of the ceremony with my daughter, doing flashcards with her during the commercials and hitting the "mute" button during boring speeches and reading segments from her literature book. After she went off to sleep, I struggled hard not to do the same. I'd at least seen one movie that was up for an award -- "Kate & Leopold," up for Sting's best song -- but other than that, watching the little scenes that played with each nomination is about as close as I'll get to any of these flicks. And that's okay; normally, my kids are plenty entertaining enough to make me forget that I'm not getting my full ration of theater seats and popcorn. But on nights like last night, I can't help feeling nostalgic anyway. Or falling asleep, either.
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MARCH 26, 2002
My son's teacher made a point of telling me today, when I picked him up, that he is now standing up straight, with his head high, when he walks down the school hallways. This is in contrast to his former hall-walking posture, which was bent over, with his head down. That posture didn't bother me so much because I knew he was getting some sensory integration benefits from it. But it bothered the folks at school. It's bothered them for years. And so they have made a big project out of it, and now they're successful. People have been commenting, she said, as he walks by their classroom, how much better he's walking. Recognition from the community for improving one's behavior is good, surely, even if the improvement is otherwise pretty meaningless.
But that's just me. I would have thought there were more important goals to tackle with such consistency and enthusiasm, but maybe not. When his speech therapist talked proudly about how she kept making him go back to the classroom and do it again until he walked straight and tall for her, all I could think of was, "You're spending your speech therapy time on this?" But I try to keep in mind that I'm not there at the school, and I don't entirely understand what goes on there, and I have to trust educators who I believe are good at what they do and sincere in their desire to help my son. So he's standing up straight now. That's great. It's good for him, to be showing some self-control. It's good for the school, to have him not thumping through the hallways not quite looking where he's going. And it's good for me, because now I can imagine everybody's attention finally turning toward something else.
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MARCH 27, 2002
Any parent who's had plans ruined by a child's illness has to be at least a little heartwarmed by the news reports coming out about Will Smith's mysterious disappearance from the Oscar ceremonies Sunday night. He and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, were there at the start of the ceremony, when Whoopi Goldberg made a joke about them sitting next to Maggie Smith. But by the time his big moment came -- the category for which he was nominated, Best Actor -- Mr. Smith was nowhere to be found.
What happened? Was he in the bathroom? At the bar? Brawling backstage? As it turns out, security had informed the couple that their 1.5-year-old daughter had been taken to the hospital with a high fever and ear infection, and they had rushed off to be with her. Now, I like the idea of celebs being sufficiently wrapped up in their kids that they'd flee the entertainment industry's biggest night to be with their baby. But what I like even more is the image of Jada Pinkett rushing into the ER in that ball gown she was wearing. Surely they didn't stop to change? I've been caught on emergency runs in ratty sweatclothes I didn't expect anybody to see me in, but never formalwear. Will Smith may have lost the Oscar to Denzel Washington, but he was a lock for Best Dressed Dad at the hospital.
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MARCH 28, 2002
Another milestone for my son (this seems to be the season for them) -- as of his pediatrician visit yesterday, and at the ripe old age of 9, he is now, finally, for the first time, officially on the height and weight charts. He's been off the bottom of them for so long, following the curve but not getting any closer to it. But now, big boy that he is, he's at about the fifth percentile for height and the seventh percentile for weight. Woo-hoo! For a little guy with FAE who we thought would always be below the bottom, this is a red-letter day.
I always said that if he ever hit the charts, I'd have a party. Next month, in another milestone event, he's making his first Holy Communion, so maybe we'll make the party for that a dual spiritual/physical growth celebration. Proud accomplishments, both. But what I really want to know about his newfound size is: If he's now taller than five percent of 9-year-olds, and heavier than seven, does this mean I'll now be able to buy pants that fit him? Talk about dreams coming true.
+ + +
MARCH 29, 2002
As soon as the couple with the son who had been nearly drowned in the bathtub and the doctor-who's-not-that-kind-of-doctor in tow made it to an examining room on "ER" last night, I knew what was going on. "They were doing some sort of rebirthing exercise with the kid," I told my husband. And then, "And he's going to turn out to have been adopted from eastern Europe." And I could have added, knowing the way parenting storylines have been going on this show lately, "And they're going to do a gloss on RAD that's going to make the parents look like irresponsible twits." I was right on all three counts.
I've complained before about how black and white this show has gotten about medical issues involving children; didn't they used to be more interested in shades of gray? I know George Clooney's Dr. Ross used to get on his high horse with parents quite a lot, but it seems he got knocked off a time or two, too. But no more. The doctor is always right, and the parents are always ridiculous and irresponsible. And since the show is done from the doctors' point of view, I guess that's the way it should be -- I know I'm not the only parent of a child with special needs who's pretty sure the doctors feel they're always right, and I'm ridiculous and irresponsible.
But still, with the audience they have and the interest in telling good stories, couldn't they at least put a responsible argument in the parents' mouths before condeming them? Last night, when Peter Scolari as the dad (and right there, you lose any chance of dramatic gravitas) started twitting about how they adopted Victor in Prague and it was just taking him so darn long to bond and it was affecting their marriage and this therapist had a lot of success, I wanted to scream. Post-institutionalized children have real problems that real families struggle with every day; kids with attatchment disorders show far more severe and frightening and complex behavior than just not bonding fast enough for a parent's taste. And the lack of respect, support and recognition these families receive from more traditional medical professionals has got to be a contributing factor as to why practitioners of extreme therapies -- legitimate or no -- come to weild such power. Physicians, examine yourselves.
Monday, March 18, 2002
March 18-22, 2002
MARCH 18, 2002
It's Monday again, and again I'm going to urge you to watch "Once and Again." The show airs tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC. Last week, it got a good ratings bump and some good publicity from a storyline that involved two teen-age girls kissing. The episode even got pulled by an affiliate in Virginia, and as we all know you can't buy that kind of press. Interesting that the great outrage seemed to center around the teen lesbian storyline and not the other major plot thread of the episode, which involved a teen-age girl's intense relationship with her English teacher, which almost but not quite ended with a kiss between the two. I guess as long as the teacher's a guy, that's okay.
Tonight, as is this show's often frustrating habit, those plots will be on the back burner, if they're mentioned at all, and completely different characters will be in the spotlight. This week, it's Judy, sister of Sela Ward's character; her off-again, on-again boyfriend, Sam; and Sam's son, who has some sort of non-specified neurological/psychological/behavioral impairment. On the only other episode he's been on, his father said only that they'd been to lots of doctors and tried lots of medications, and nothing works. Whether this means that the writers are lazy and haven't researched these problems, or the father is so self-absorbed he's taken in only enough information about his son's challenges to make him feel sorry for himself, remains to be seen. However, these writers have handled storylines on anorexia and schizophrenia with impressive accuracy and verisimilitude, and this character has never shown himself to be anything other than a self-centered lout, so I'm thinking it's the latter. Tune in tonight to see where they're going with this kid.
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MARCH 19, 2002
On Sunday, I did something I've been imagining myself doing for years: I chewed out somebody who shushed my son in church.
All those times people would give us the look -- the "why can't you control that child" look, the "what a bad boy you are" look -- I would dream of them coming over after services to reprimand us and me going into all the reasons my son can't be quiet and all the reasons they should be ashamed to call themselves Christians. Oh, I've run through those delicious conversations in my head again and again. But nobody ever actually said anything. And neither, of course, did I.
But this past Sunday... To start out, I was sick, dragging myself to Mass with about my last ounce of energy. For another, I was on my own; although we almost always attend church as a family, this weekend work schedules and illness schedules had made it most expedient for me to take my son to our church in the morning and my husband to take our daughter to another, less-kid-friendly church in the evening. I figured we'd sit in the back, in the "cry room," so my coughing and his acting up would disturb no one. When we arrived, there was no one in the room but one woman, sans children. We picked a pew, my son said something to me, and the woman turned around and gave him a stern "Shush!"
Blame it on the codein cough syrup, but I gave her what for.
I told her that this room is specifically for children who can't stay quiet. She walked over and said, sternly, "It's for crying babies, not for little boys who want to talk." And I started babbling. I don't remember what I said, but it included stating that we come back here specifically so he could make noise without bothering anybody, and what was she doing there, anyway? She said defiantly that she was sick. And I said that I was sick, too, and that this child (putting my hand on my son's head) had neurological impairments that made it hard for him to stay quiet and that's why we sit back there and just let me shush him and leave us alone and mind your own business and whatever all else. She went back to her seat, and my son, my sweet boy, started stroking my face and smiling because he knew I was upset.
And maybe that tipped this gal off, because she came back over to explain why she had taken it upon herself to shush in the first place and admonish me so: She thought I was a boy, too. She thought we were two boys. And so she was teaching us a lesson about being quiet in church. I admitted to being a mom, and not a boy; and she admitted to being kukoo, and that was that.
I don't know what I feel worse about, here: getting into a quarrel with a fellow churchgoer during Mass, or being mistaken -- a 42-year-old mother of two -- for a boy. At least now I know that, if I ever get those brochures printed up that explain all the reasons why my son behaves the way he does, I'll have to add at the end: "And by the way, the person giving this to you is his MOTHER."
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MARCH 20, 2002
And once again, we have famous adopters in the news. Newlyweds Liza Minelli and David Gest have proclaimed their desire to adopt four children, "of all races." And, well, golly, good for them. Raises the profile of adoption, you know. Nice for kids to get homes. Nice especially for kids "of all races." Good for celebs to share their bounty. Good, good, good.
And yet... ack! I'm trying to be a person of good will unto all prospective adoptive parents, but... geez, have you seen these two? They look like they just escaped from Madame Tussaud's. She's 56, on her fourth marriage; he's 48, and marrying for the first time. How easily do you suppose most regular folks with her particular history would be able to score a homestudy? And hey -- Michael Jackson was their best man. Suppose they'll ask him to write one of their letters of reference?
But really, really, you never know about these things, it will probably be perfectly okay, I'm sure they're upstanding and good-hearted people, and adoption is good, it's good for adoption to be in the news as something fabulous people do, it's good for kids to get homes, it's good, good, good. Good?
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MARCH 21, 2002
Today is my son’s ninth birthday. It’s hard to believe he’s 9 -- partially because he’s still such a little peanut, 45 pounds and 4 feet tall. If you saw him a store, and he asked you for your keys and proceeded to tell you what kind of car you have, you’d take him maybe for a precocious kindergartner. You’d be shocked to hear he’s 9. But 9 he is, and todays’ the day.
It’s also hard to believe he’s 9 because I’m a mom, and “Sunrise, Sunset” automatically plays in my head on my children’s birthdays, and I remember how we brought him home when he was 21 months old, not walking or talking, thinking the metal piece that went back and forth on top of a swing in his orphanage room was the most fascinating thing in the world. To say he’s come a long way is like saying cars have gotten a little fancier since the Model T.
Now, I work at the library at my kids’ school, and I see what 9-year-olds look and act like, and I know my boy’s not there. But when I think about how much he’s learned and grown and shown in the past seven years, and what a delightful fellow he is, I gotta tell you, I think he’s about the most wonderful 9-year-old there is.
Happy birthday to him.
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MARCH 22, 2002
My daughter, as I may have mentioned, is a Disney Channel fanatic. She'd watch it from morning to bedtime, and, come to think of it, has on a couple of vacation occasions. She begs to do her homework in front of "Even Stevens" and reruns of "Boy Meets World" (and speaking of the latter show, who knew there were so very many many many episodes to re-run? I've watched Corey and Topanga go from grade-schoolers to newlyweds back to grade-schoolers again the next day. It's sort of surreal to pass through the TV room and see what age they are on any given afternoon.)
She of course HAS to watch the Disney movies -- HAS to, because the desperate need has been programmed into her brain by the endless commercials the channel runs pumping its product. We've watched the movie where "Malcolm in the Middle" is a sick kid who only wants to race in a soapbox derby. We've watched the movies about the boy who finds out he's a leprechaun and the boy who finds out he's a mermaid and the girl who finds out her stepsister is an alien. We've watched the one about the twin basketball stars played by non-twins and the one that's like a junior-high "Private Benjamin." My desire to not even see these films once is thwarted by the fact that they are on pretty much every five minutes.
Next month, though, there's one I might actually want her to watch. Called "Tru Confessions," it's about the way a young girl comes to terms with having a developmentally disabled brother. Maybe it will give my girl some insight into her own brother and why he does the things he does. At the very least, it stars Mare Winningham as the mom, so there will be at least somebody on screen who I can watch without wincing. At any rate, since I haven't yet seen five million commercials for this one, here's a description from a Disney Channel press release for those who might be interested:
"Tru Confessions tells the story of Trudy "Tru" Walker (Clara Bryant of Disney Channel's "Under Wraps"), a precocious teenager who dreams of becoming an investigative reporter. When a local public access station has a "Win Your Own TV Show" contest, Tru jumps at the chance to show her stuff by putting together a video documentary about her twin brother, Eddie (Shia LaBeouf of Disney Channel's "Even Stevens"). After Eddie was deprived of oxygen in the womb, he was left developmentally disabled. Although she loves her brother dearly, Tru is constantly guilty that she is healthy and growing up normally while Eddie is not. However, she has no one with whom to discuss her feelings; her father has become a workaholic to keep from having to face his son's disabilities, and Tru doesn't feel as though she can open up to her mother (Mare Winningham). The documentary, then, becomes a perfect outlet for Tru to express herself. Through the process of making her film, Tru comes to appreciate Eddie for who he is and to understand that his situation is not her fault. Further, Tru's film helps her father come to terms with his son's disabilities and, ultimately, becomes the instrument that brings the family closer together."
Monday, March 11, 2002
March 11-15, 2002
MARCH 11, 2002
Big news for our family last week: My son, who will be nine next week, learned how to tie his shoes! At least, I think he did. His teacher said so. She came rushing into the library where I was working on Wednesday to tell me that he paid attention for a very long time and tied a bow a bunch of times and what an exciting thing that is. I was excited, too, but could I get him to show me his new skill at home? No way. Not even the promise of Scooby Doo lace-up sneakers could get him to give me a demonstration.
And that's okay. We've been here before. With many of his major milestones -- walking, talking, potty training -- he's refused to perform until he could do it perfectly. So I'll let him practice and practice with the teacher, get all those frustrations out, in the knowledge that eventually, he'll tie me some bows in person. Sometime, I hope, before he turns ten. Or his feet get too big for Scooby shoes.
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MARCH 12, 2002
I didn't set out to watch the "9/11" documentary on CBS Sunday night, but I was flipping through channels and stopped there for a moment and got hooked. There was something mesmerizing about the "you are there" style of the thing, waiting for the bad stuff you knew was going to happen to happen. It was a striking piece of filmmaking in many ways, but I'm a little ashamed to say that the thing that struck me the most -- more than the depictions of disaster, more than the heroic actions of firefighters -- was the uncensored use of the "F" word on prime-time network TV. The camera was running through scenes of real-life trauma and tragedy and reunion and firefighters talked the way firefighters undoubtedly talk, the way any of us might talk in such an unimaginable situation, and CBS showed it all, bleep-free.
As they should have, certainly. Certainly the death and destruction of that day were far more obscene than any language could be, and there was no bleeping that. It didn't seem exploitive or intentionally boundary-breaking, just entirely incidental to the scenes being filmed. And yet, there was something jarring about it. Intentionally or not, a boundary was broken. You gotta believe TV writers and producers all over Hollywood are going to be eying the phenomenal ratings the documentary garnered and using them as proof that if you're telling a sufficiently dramatic story, people don't mind about bad language. I'd be surprised if that "NYPD Blue" squad room doesn't start sounding like that "9/11" firehouse any old episode now.
What I want to know is, how long until Lizzie McGuire and SpongeBob SquarePants start spouting undeleted expletives? As long as the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon hold out, my kids' ears will be safe.
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MARCH 13, 2002
Well, add two more names to the list of celebrity adoptive parents. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton have made their twosome a threesome with the addition of seven-and-a-half-month-old Maddox, who hails from Cambodia. According to a report on Yahoo News, the couple met their future son while visiting a Cambodian orphanage in November, underwent all that nasty paperwork over the course of four months and officially took custody of him on Sunday in Africa, where the new mom is working on a movie. They plan to raise the child both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, where they are shopping for property.
Now part of me feels all snarky when I read news like this. Celeb couple swoops in, picks a baby, flies through paperwork and has the kid wrapped and delivered to the locale of their choice. And how do people with such carefully cultivated reputations for bizarre behavior pass a homestudy, anyway? But I'm trying to keep a positive outlook in the New Year, and not speak negatively of people, so instead I'll reflect that it's always nice to see a positive adoption story. It's always good when a child finds a home. Even if celeb adoptions raise eyebrows, they do give adoption a certain cachet, and that can't be bad. And you know, if there's ever been a Mother with Attitude, it's going to be Angelina Jolie.
So I'm taking deep breaths, and wishing the new family nothing but happiness in their new homes. But hey, mom and dad? Wait for a while before giving the kid a tattoo, okay?
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MARCH 14, 2002
I've always been a little concerned about my daughter's taste in TV. And no, I don't mean the Disney channel sit-coms she spaces out in front of in the evenings; those are at least age appropriate. I'm talking about the fact that, at age 11 and in 4th grade, she's perfectly happy watching "Barney" after school, or taking in the entire baby-friendly Nick Jr. line-up on a day off from class. Should she really be able to sit through "Bob the Builder" and "Oswald" at her advanced age? It doesn't seem right, somehow, and sometimes I've felt a little embarrassed for her.
And yet... I have to admit, there are times when I see some value to her regressive viewing habits. Last night, for example, she had to memorize the order of the planets in our solar system for a quiz this morning, and we both broke into the song from "Blue's Clues" in which Steve names them all. (Oh, come on, join in with me, you toddler moms: "The sun's a hot star, and Mercury's hot too, Venus is the brightest planet, Earth's home to me and you, Mars is the red one, and Jupiter's most wide, Saturn's got those icy rings, and Uranus spins on its side, Neptune's really windy, and Pluto's really small, Well, we wanted to name the planets, and now we've named them all. Again!") My sometimes-memory-impaired girl can rattle off those rocks without a hitch now, and it's all thanks to Steve and Blue. Who's to say she won't one day have an assignment that will hinge on some long-lost "Barney" episode? It's pretty scary to think of, but you never know.
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MARCH 15, 2002
Lately, I've just been the best little mom in the world, serving my kids a hot breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash-browns every morning before carting them off to school. Of course, they're the microwave variety, the kind you usually get served on airplanes, but the kids scarf them down and they're hot, all right. I'm usually dashing around like a crazy person trying to get these columns posted and get myself dressed and get backpacks filled and snacks made; the kids may eat alone, and I may eat a breakfast bar at my desk hours later, but I feel good knowing that they've had something that at least resembles real food.
And for lunch? Who knows what they eat. We pay for "hot lunch," but do they eat it? They say they do. They say they eat both the entree and the miscellaneous fruits and vegetables that go with. They say this, even though my daughter comes home so hungry she could eat a half a bag of cookies. My lunch responsibility is fulfilled by filling out the order form and writing out the check. Getting them to eat it should be someone else's responsibility. I don't know whose. But I've got breakfast covered.
Dinner is my husband's job, and it gets on the table eventually. Definitely before bedtime, sometimes just. My son is a pig at dinner, making up for any lack of appetite he's shown during the day. My daughter is exactly as picky as any other 11-year-old, contemptuous of peas and broccoli and anything not exactly like something she's eaten and enjoyed in the past. It often seems to take her hours to eat, and since I was young once, many centuries ago, I certainly recognize the "maybe if I eat my food one molecule at a time my parents will eventually get tired or bored and let me go away from here" strategy. It doesn't work, but I respect the effort. And I feel a secret satisfaction that however much she fights eating dinner, in the morning, she's always ready for eggs. I have a mean way with a microwave.
Big news for our family last week: My son, who will be nine next week, learned how to tie his shoes! At least, I think he did. His teacher said so. She came rushing into the library where I was working on Wednesday to tell me that he paid attention for a very long time and tied a bow a bunch of times and what an exciting thing that is. I was excited, too, but could I get him to show me his new skill at home? No way. Not even the promise of Scooby Doo lace-up sneakers could get him to give me a demonstration.
And that's okay. We've been here before. With many of his major milestones -- walking, talking, potty training -- he's refused to perform until he could do it perfectly. So I'll let him practice and practice with the teacher, get all those frustrations out, in the knowledge that eventually, he'll tie me some bows in person. Sometime, I hope, before he turns ten. Or his feet get too big for Scooby shoes.
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MARCH 12, 2002
I didn't set out to watch the "9/11" documentary on CBS Sunday night, but I was flipping through channels and stopped there for a moment and got hooked. There was something mesmerizing about the "you are there" style of the thing, waiting for the bad stuff you knew was going to happen to happen. It was a striking piece of filmmaking in many ways, but I'm a little ashamed to say that the thing that struck me the most -- more than the depictions of disaster, more than the heroic actions of firefighters -- was the uncensored use of the "F" word on prime-time network TV. The camera was running through scenes of real-life trauma and tragedy and reunion and firefighters talked the way firefighters undoubtedly talk, the way any of us might talk in such an unimaginable situation, and CBS showed it all, bleep-free.
As they should have, certainly. Certainly the death and destruction of that day were far more obscene than any language could be, and there was no bleeping that. It didn't seem exploitive or intentionally boundary-breaking, just entirely incidental to the scenes being filmed. And yet, there was something jarring about it. Intentionally or not, a boundary was broken. You gotta believe TV writers and producers all over Hollywood are going to be eying the phenomenal ratings the documentary garnered and using them as proof that if you're telling a sufficiently dramatic story, people don't mind about bad language. I'd be surprised if that "NYPD Blue" squad room doesn't start sounding like that "9/11" firehouse any old episode now.
What I want to know is, how long until Lizzie McGuire and SpongeBob SquarePants start spouting undeleted expletives? As long as the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon hold out, my kids' ears will be safe.
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MARCH 13, 2002
Well, add two more names to the list of celebrity adoptive parents. Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton have made their twosome a threesome with the addition of seven-and-a-half-month-old Maddox, who hails from Cambodia. According to a report on Yahoo News, the couple met their future son while visiting a Cambodian orphanage in November, underwent all that nasty paperwork over the course of four months and officially took custody of him on Sunday in Africa, where the new mom is working on a movie. They plan to raise the child both in the U.S. and in Cambodia, where they are shopping for property.
Now part of me feels all snarky when I read news like this. Celeb couple swoops in, picks a baby, flies through paperwork and has the kid wrapped and delivered to the locale of their choice. And how do people with such carefully cultivated reputations for bizarre behavior pass a homestudy, anyway? But I'm trying to keep a positive outlook in the New Year, and not speak negatively of people, so instead I'll reflect that it's always nice to see a positive adoption story. It's always good when a child finds a home. Even if celeb adoptions raise eyebrows, they do give adoption a certain cachet, and that can't be bad. And you know, if there's ever been a Mother with Attitude, it's going to be Angelina Jolie.
So I'm taking deep breaths, and wishing the new family nothing but happiness in their new homes. But hey, mom and dad? Wait for a while before giving the kid a tattoo, okay?
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MARCH 14, 2002
I've always been a little concerned about my daughter's taste in TV. And no, I don't mean the Disney channel sit-coms she spaces out in front of in the evenings; those are at least age appropriate. I'm talking about the fact that, at age 11 and in 4th grade, she's perfectly happy watching "Barney" after school, or taking in the entire baby-friendly Nick Jr. line-up on a day off from class. Should she really be able to sit through "Bob the Builder" and "Oswald" at her advanced age? It doesn't seem right, somehow, and sometimes I've felt a little embarrassed for her.
And yet... I have to admit, there are times when I see some value to her regressive viewing habits. Last night, for example, she had to memorize the order of the planets in our solar system for a quiz this morning, and we both broke into the song from "Blue's Clues" in which Steve names them all. (Oh, come on, join in with me, you toddler moms: "The sun's a hot star, and Mercury's hot too, Venus is the brightest planet, Earth's home to me and you, Mars is the red one, and Jupiter's most wide, Saturn's got those icy rings, and Uranus spins on its side, Neptune's really windy, and Pluto's really small, Well, we wanted to name the planets, and now we've named them all. Again!") My sometimes-memory-impaired girl can rattle off those rocks without a hitch now, and it's all thanks to Steve and Blue. Who's to say she won't one day have an assignment that will hinge on some long-lost "Barney" episode? It's pretty scary to think of, but you never know.
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MARCH 15, 2002
Lately, I've just been the best little mom in the world, serving my kids a hot breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash-browns every morning before carting them off to school. Of course, they're the microwave variety, the kind you usually get served on airplanes, but the kids scarf them down and they're hot, all right. I'm usually dashing around like a crazy person trying to get these columns posted and get myself dressed and get backpacks filled and snacks made; the kids may eat alone, and I may eat a breakfast bar at my desk hours later, but I feel good knowing that they've had something that at least resembles real food.
And for lunch? Who knows what they eat. We pay for "hot lunch," but do they eat it? They say they do. They say they eat both the entree and the miscellaneous fruits and vegetables that go with. They say this, even though my daughter comes home so hungry she could eat a half a bag of cookies. My lunch responsibility is fulfilled by filling out the order form and writing out the check. Getting them to eat it should be someone else's responsibility. I don't know whose. But I've got breakfast covered.
Dinner is my husband's job, and it gets on the table eventually. Definitely before bedtime, sometimes just. My son is a pig at dinner, making up for any lack of appetite he's shown during the day. My daughter is exactly as picky as any other 11-year-old, contemptuous of peas and broccoli and anything not exactly like something she's eaten and enjoyed in the past. It often seems to take her hours to eat, and since I was young once, many centuries ago, I certainly recognize the "maybe if I eat my food one molecule at a time my parents will eventually get tired or bored and let me go away from here" strategy. It doesn't work, but I respect the effort. And I feel a secret satisfaction that however much she fights eating dinner, in the morning, she's always ready for eggs. I have a mean way with a microwave.