JULY 29, 2002
My daughter was disco dancing in the supermarket yesterday. It was fascinating and terrifying. The way her hips moved! The arm motions! The confidence! The attitude! All it takes is some old '70s tune like "Car Wash" to hit the PA system and my little girl turns into Britney Spears. I think she may have been a little confused when I told her that was wonderful and she should never, ever do it again.
Later that night she watched "Gotta Kick It Up," the new Disney Channel movie (debuted: Friday; watched so far: 3 times) about a high school dance team that goes from inept to inspired in a little under two hours, and sure enough, as she was getting ready for bed, there she was with the moves again, shimmying around her room, shaking those hips, cocking that head, throwing back those shoulders, thrusting out that chest, smiling that smile, all in a way that makes me want to put a padlock on the door and homeschool her until she's 20. How do 12-year-olds learn to move like that? How do you make them stop?
+ + +
JULY 30, 2002
Rarely do I have cause to thank or praise any facet of the fashion industry, but I have to say that the newest trend in athletic shoes is an absolute boon and blessing to parents of kids with special needs, and makes me inclined to forgive all manner of platform sandals and stiletto pumps. The trend I'm talking about is the laceless sneaker; be it velcro-ed, zippered or slip-on, it represents freedom from shoe-tying and a chance at self-reliance for my fine-motor-challenged son. With the current variety and hipness of this fasten-friendly footwear, kids who can't tie aren't stigmatized by having to wear lace-up alternatives -- they're positively happening.
Now, theoretically, my son does know how to tie his shoes. His teacher assures me it's so, and sent home the classroom commendation to prove it. But I've never seen it, and frankly, with the clock ticking and time to leave in the mornings fast approaching, I'm not about to take the patient time needed to walk him through it. If the laceless trend holds, I may never have to. Tying your shoes is, like, so five minutes ago. Lace-free is the future.
+ + +
JULY 31, 2002
Parents of kids with sensory integration problems -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one -- are always searching for that magical tool that will help us connect with our kiddos and bring great therapeutic advantages. Whether it's a surgical scrub brush, a trampoline, a chewy tube, a massager, a pencil grip, a squeeze toy, a seat cushion, a weighted vest ... we know there's something out there that will make all the difference, and we're going to find it, alright. And when we do, it's a complete triumph of parenting perseverence, and all our investigative hours are justified.
But then... has anybody else had the experience of being TOO successful in this area? Finding something the child likes or needs so much that it begins to take over everything? I'm guessing brushing may fall into this category for some; if it helps your child, you can't not do it, but every two hours? Forever? Yeesh. In our case, the Tool of Magical Effect has been a body sock, a purple Lycra bag about the size of my son with a Velcro-sealed slit down the front so that he can crawl in, close up, and have some nice sensory deprivation, some nice pushing his joints against a resistive surface, some nice games with Mama.
Games with Mama... he's great at coming up with purple bag games for Mama to play. Mama is a pirate who sneaks up on him with the purple bag, captures him and threatens to throw him in the brig; Mama is a mama bird leaning some weight on her little egg until it hatches (though Lycra bags, unlike eggshells, allow the little bird to come out and go back in again repeated times, to mama bird's chagrin); Mama is a mama bear using a boy-stuffed purple bag as a pillow; Mama has to find the boy who is completely invisible once he's in his purple bag. And it's wonderful -- wonderful that he's found an interactive activity, wonderful that he understands that the purple bag helps him get his janglies out, wonderful that he is using words to say what he needs, and wonderful that what he needs is me. A little less wonderful that he seems to want and need these things all the livelong day.
You see, the terrible, shameful truth is, I DON'T WANT TO PLAY PURPLE BAG EVERY GOSH-DARN WAKING MINUTE! There it is: I'm the kind of mom who would rather, I don't know, sit and take a breath than help my son with vital therapeutic activities. But sometimes, you know, enough is just enough, therapy or no therapy. Maybe what I really need is my own purple bag to hid in when he comes asking.
+ + +
AUGUST 2, 2002
You know, I try really hard to be patient with the Special Education administrators in my district. I would not want their jobs for any amount of money. Any decision they make is bound to make somebody unhappy. Often the right -- or, to use appropriate lingo, the most appropriate -- thing to do is blocked by budget constraints, or personnel constraints, or political constraints. I have never felt that decisions with which I disagreed were made out of malice, or hidden agendas, or power-tripping (which, I guess, makes our district a particularly good one); I think they have been made out of disorganization, lack of vision, and a desperate attempt to please whoever is complaining the loudest at the moment.
Which means that, if I’m the one complaining the loudest, I generally get what I want. But man, can complaining become a full-time job. I’ve been calling the Special Ed director on almost a daily basis for most of the last six months, trying to get simple questions answered, and mostly what I get is, “Not available, call back tomorrow.” And often, when I call back tomorrow, it’s to find he’s gone on vacation. After a while, even the most patient person starts to lose it.
The particular questions I’m trying to get answered are not my right to know by law, so I’m limited in my ability to go ballistic from here. There’s no reason they shouldn’t tell me, but no reason they have to, either. So maybe they’re just stonewalling in the hope I’ll go away. Maybe, too, they just don’t have the answers yet, and figure if I want to call every day until they do, that’s my time to waste. But it all seems of a piece with the way the department is run in so many respects: Don’t deal with problems head on. Say anything to get people off your back, whether it’s true in the long run or not. Run around like crazy plugging leaks instead of designing a whole new dam. Tell parents you value their input, but make them call 43 times before they get a chance to give some.
On the few occasions I have actually spoken to the new Special Ed director, he seemed to indicate that he saw the same problems I did and was going to do something about them. Perhaps a new person with vision can snap what is in many ways a pretty good department into shape. I’ll be waiting. By the phone.
Monday, July 29, 2002
Monday, July 22, 2002
July 22-26, 2002
JULY 22, 2002
My daughter is becoming a bowling fanatic. She’s been playing fitfully for a few years, in a youth league here, a father-daughter one there, but this summer it’s about all she wants to do with her lazy summer days. Her skills are improving slowly but steadily, and although her dad can always find some glitch in her technique to nag about, I’m pretty impressed by her ability. Then again, I personally have such trouble staying out of the gutter that I’m impressed by anybody who can hit pins on a regular basis.
I’ve always felt that this child could get some important validation from sports, but actually implementing that has been problematic. Specific skills she can pick up fine -- hitting a baseball, putting a basketball in a basket -- but integrating them into a strategy of play that incorporates teamwork and the anticipating of your opponents’ moves? Those are things that have been and may always be beyond her. Severe language delays not only impact every conceivable area of schoolwork, they can also make team sports entirely incomprehensible.
Since she refuses, on the basis of these insecurities, to go out for community softball or basketball teams, I’ve been trying to aim her toward more individual sports. There don’t seem to be a lot of track-and-field opportunities for elementary schoolers, but I did manage to get her set up for tennis lessons, which she enjoys, and swimming lessons, which she doesn’t. And then there’s bowling, which she has self-selected as her current activity of choice. She went to the alleys four times last week for a total of 13 games, in four of which she went over 100. Today, I’m taking her on my lunch break.
If she keeps up this way, she should be getting pretty good by the end of the summer. And that’s great with me -- I’m just happy for her to be excited about something. If it’s something that’s played in air-conditioned rooms, so much the better.
+ + +
JULY 23, 2002
I'll admit I haven't been checking over the fiction shelves a lot lately, but in a little perusal of amazon.com's offerings this weekend I'm finding that international adoption seems to be the mystery/thriller plot-line du jour. And why not? Our visit to Russia seven-and-a-half years ago was filled with mystery and suspense -- what were they talking about? where was our translator? why is this taking so long? when will we ever get out of here? who knew that all bad American TV shows came to Russia to be dubbed? how long until "Santa Barbara" comes on again? -- but while it was thrilling and scary for us personally, I have it on good authority from people who have heard our tale time and again that, really, it's not so thrilling for the populace at large. So I suppose these authors should be forgiven for pumping up the volume on the experience, but I'm not sure I can. Read these amazon descriptions, and see if you're able to. [Comments in brackets are mine.]
China Run: A Novel by David W. Ball
"When the Chinese government, citing 'clerical error,' demands that six American families waiting for the adoption papers they need to take their promised babies back to America surrender their precious charges, Allison Turk refuses. With her young stepson, three other adults and three infants, she defies the powerful forces arrayed against them--including her own husband--to flee halfway across China and make a run for the American consulate in Shanghai. This courageous but foolhardy attempt seems doomed to fail; escape seems impossible, especially in a country whose language, law, and customs they can't begin to comprehend. One by one, all the fugitives except Allison and her little family are picked off, captured, or killed, including their unlikely allies--a tour guide, a fisherman, a gangster, a country doctor--all of whom are as vividly rendered as China itself. Driving this riveting, compelling adventure story to its heart-stopping conclusion, Ball turns in one of the most exciting thrillers of the season!" [This is allegedly based on a true story, but I hope in real life it was less intriguing. Do Americans have a right to break laws and risk death to defend their "precious charges" if those precious charges aren't legally theirs? If this story really happened as told, it's hard to believe China would still be allowing adoptions.]
White Male Infant by Barbara d'Amato
"What began as an uncomplicated adoption of a Russian infant by wealthy American parents, New York surgeon Dooley McSweeney and his lawyer wife, Claudia, turns out to be anything but simple. After a bone marrow biopsy on four-year-old Teddy and some additional medical tests, Dooley realizes that his beautiful red-haired, green-eyed son is not the Russian baby they thought they'd legally adopted three years earlier, but an unknown child, kidnapped from God-knows-where. A man of great integrity, Dooley decides the real parents must be found. He refrains from telling Claudia of his fears, as he's sure she would run away with Teddy, leaving him sans child and wife. Meanwhile, an American journalist, Gabrielle Coulter, and her videographer, Justin Craig, are in Moscow working on a documentary on orphans around the world. The two plots coalesce when Justin is brutally murdered at the Hotel Metropol and 'Go Home!' is spray-painted on a nearby wall. Hooligans wreck all their video equipment, except three tapes that Gabrielle has secreted in her handbag. Keep Kleenex ready as you near novel's end, for Dooley and Gabrielle's search for Teddy's true identity inevitably leads to heartbreak." [I've heard of parents doing bone scans to see if their child is really the age they were told, but gleaning a false identity from a bone marrow biopsy? Parents, just say no.]
Crimson Angels by Susan Turner
"Crimson Angels is a touching story of a small town couple going through the adoption process. However, somewhere along the line something went terribly wrong. Crimson Angels is a must-read for anyone interested in international adoption. The story will take the reader along the process. However, the ending may surprise you. Sometimes, things don't always happen the way they should." [A must-read for anyone interested in international adoption? Would you say a book about a pregnancy that went terribly wrong was a must-read for those who wish to give birth? Doesn't matter, though; anybody who's getting their pre-adoptive information from thrillers should probably think twice about adopting anyway.]
+ + +
JULY 24, 2002
For a brief moment last night, it appeared that my daughter might be a mermaid. Fortunately, she was only a slob.
She had just finished watching the adoption-related tale "The Thirteenth Year" on the Disney channel for about the 47th time. The movie relates the story of an adopted boy who discovers that his birthmother was a mermaid when he hits puberty and starts sprouting scales. When it was over, my daughter went to change into her pajamas, and then screamed for me to come into her room. I did, and she pointed in horror at a green patch on her leg. "What's that?" she asked me, terrified. I examined the spot and had to conclude that it was not mermaid scales, but in fact a drop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, which she had been eating in front of the TV.
She was immensely relieved, since she had assumed that since she was adopted like the boy in the movie, she might turn into a fish like he did. I assured her that her birthmother was a normal land-dwelling woman, and that the story on the TV was just pretend anyway. I was delighted that she understood enough of the plot of the movie to apply it to herself, apprehensive that she had taken the fantasy aspects at such face value. And a little wistful, too ... because if she was really a mer-girl, that would make her swimming lessons so much easier.
+ + +
JULY 25, 2002
Boy, nothing makes you feel older than going to a museum and seeing your childhood playthings preserved under plexiglass.
That's what happened to me yesterday at the Liberty Science Center, a big discovery-minded place within view of the Statue of Liberty that had among its exhibits one on toys from the past fifty years. "Great Toys from Our Childhood," it was called, and were they indeed. Not only did I recognize the toys and remember playing with them, but the packaging and style were the ones I remembered. Yes, I could tell the awe-struck kiddies in my presence, I could recall back in the olden days when you played Mr. Potato Head with an actual potato! Actually, the kiddies weren't awe-struck at all; they were too busy playing with flat magnetic Mr. Potato Head pieces to be very interested in my nostalgic ramblings. But still.
I will say that my childhood playthings have stood the test of time. Most of the items on display were still on the market, though many have lost their gee-whiz charm. My son certainly plays with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars not significantly different than the ones on display; products as diverse as Twister and crayons and Nerf balls are still as close as your local Toys R Us. You can still even buy an Easy Bake Oven (at least at the science center gift shop), although I would have thought that the microwave precluded the need for that toy.
Other pasttimes seem to have passed away. I haven't seen Magic Rocks or Mexican Jumping Beans turning up at birthday parties lately. And I don't know if they still make the Magic 8 Ball, but I did have to show several confused children of the '00s what you do with it. But these modern kids, they catch on quick: After I explained to one little girl that you ask a question, turn the ball over and read the answer, she said "Is my sister a brat?," turned the ball over and, with barely a look at the murky window, declared the answer "Yes!"
+ + +
JULY 26, 2002
Our summer vacation is almost half over (the kiddos go back to school Sept. 4), and so far I'd have to say it's going well. My son made it through two weeks of church CCD camp wtih flying colors, and now seems to be doing just fine at the neighborhood mainstream day camp we picked this year as an alternative to the super-duper special needs camp he'd gone to previously. The camp director mentioned to me that he was doing so well, next year we may not even have to pay for an aide to shadow him. Personally, I'd rather the aide was there and not needed than the opposite, but it was a nice vote of confidence. My daughter is attending "Camp Grandma," staying home and keeping her grandmother company during the day. Still, we've managed to find things for her to do; her dad and I have been taking her bowling on lunch hours and days off, and she has a higher average and a sore arm to show for it. Afternoon tutoring and lessons are going well, although she still hates swimming; my son is being amazingly cooperative at his in-home piano lessons, although not so much during the week when we want him to practice. And those worksheet-a-day books I bought to bridge the summer? Unlike past years, both kids are actually, remarkably, doing a worksheet a day. Bully for us.
On the downside, of course, those books I bought to teach my son cursive over the summer are looking pretty dusty. My hopes that the kids would learn keyboarding have been dashed by the fact that, after an early summer flurry of interest, neither one of them wants to go near the computers right now. I'd hoped to keep my daughter busy with playdates with her schoolfriends, but they're all busy (of course, last summer, when my daughter was in camp, they were all free). And while I'd hoped to have my mind pretty much settled about the upcoming school arrangements for both kids by this time of the summer, I still can't get the special ed director on the phone. But hey -- there's still one more month. The summer's only half over. Miracles can still happen!
My daughter is becoming a bowling fanatic. She’s been playing fitfully for a few years, in a youth league here, a father-daughter one there, but this summer it’s about all she wants to do with her lazy summer days. Her skills are improving slowly but steadily, and although her dad can always find some glitch in her technique to nag about, I’m pretty impressed by her ability. Then again, I personally have such trouble staying out of the gutter that I’m impressed by anybody who can hit pins on a regular basis.
I’ve always felt that this child could get some important validation from sports, but actually implementing that has been problematic. Specific skills she can pick up fine -- hitting a baseball, putting a basketball in a basket -- but integrating them into a strategy of play that incorporates teamwork and the anticipating of your opponents’ moves? Those are things that have been and may always be beyond her. Severe language delays not only impact every conceivable area of schoolwork, they can also make team sports entirely incomprehensible.
Since she refuses, on the basis of these insecurities, to go out for community softball or basketball teams, I’ve been trying to aim her toward more individual sports. There don’t seem to be a lot of track-and-field opportunities for elementary schoolers, but I did manage to get her set up for tennis lessons, which she enjoys, and swimming lessons, which she doesn’t. And then there’s bowling, which she has self-selected as her current activity of choice. She went to the alleys four times last week for a total of 13 games, in four of which she went over 100. Today, I’m taking her on my lunch break.
If she keeps up this way, she should be getting pretty good by the end of the summer. And that’s great with me -- I’m just happy for her to be excited about something. If it’s something that’s played in air-conditioned rooms, so much the better.
+ + +
JULY 23, 2002
I'll admit I haven't been checking over the fiction shelves a lot lately, but in a little perusal of amazon.com's offerings this weekend I'm finding that international adoption seems to be the mystery/thriller plot-line du jour. And why not? Our visit to Russia seven-and-a-half years ago was filled with mystery and suspense -- what were they talking about? where was our translator? why is this taking so long? when will we ever get out of here? who knew that all bad American TV shows came to Russia to be dubbed? how long until "Santa Barbara" comes on again? -- but while it was thrilling and scary for us personally, I have it on good authority from people who have heard our tale time and again that, really, it's not so thrilling for the populace at large. So I suppose these authors should be forgiven for pumping up the volume on the experience, but I'm not sure I can. Read these amazon descriptions, and see if you're able to. [Comments in brackets are mine.]
China Run: A Novel by David W. Ball
"When the Chinese government, citing 'clerical error,' demands that six American families waiting for the adoption papers they need to take their promised babies back to America surrender their precious charges, Allison Turk refuses. With her young stepson, three other adults and three infants, she defies the powerful forces arrayed against them--including her own husband--to flee halfway across China and make a run for the American consulate in Shanghai. This courageous but foolhardy attempt seems doomed to fail; escape seems impossible, especially in a country whose language, law, and customs they can't begin to comprehend. One by one, all the fugitives except Allison and her little family are picked off, captured, or killed, including their unlikely allies--a tour guide, a fisherman, a gangster, a country doctor--all of whom are as vividly rendered as China itself. Driving this riveting, compelling adventure story to its heart-stopping conclusion, Ball turns in one of the most exciting thrillers of the season!" [This is allegedly based on a true story, but I hope in real life it was less intriguing. Do Americans have a right to break laws and risk death to defend their "precious charges" if those precious charges aren't legally theirs? If this story really happened as told, it's hard to believe China would still be allowing adoptions.]
White Male Infant by Barbara d'Amato
"What began as an uncomplicated adoption of a Russian infant by wealthy American parents, New York surgeon Dooley McSweeney and his lawyer wife, Claudia, turns out to be anything but simple. After a bone marrow biopsy on four-year-old Teddy and some additional medical tests, Dooley realizes that his beautiful red-haired, green-eyed son is not the Russian baby they thought they'd legally adopted three years earlier, but an unknown child, kidnapped from God-knows-where. A man of great integrity, Dooley decides the real parents must be found. He refrains from telling Claudia of his fears, as he's sure she would run away with Teddy, leaving him sans child and wife. Meanwhile, an American journalist, Gabrielle Coulter, and her videographer, Justin Craig, are in Moscow working on a documentary on orphans around the world. The two plots coalesce when Justin is brutally murdered at the Hotel Metropol and 'Go Home!' is spray-painted on a nearby wall. Hooligans wreck all their video equipment, except three tapes that Gabrielle has secreted in her handbag. Keep Kleenex ready as you near novel's end, for Dooley and Gabrielle's search for Teddy's true identity inevitably leads to heartbreak." [I've heard of parents doing bone scans to see if their child is really the age they were told, but gleaning a false identity from a bone marrow biopsy? Parents, just say no.]
Crimson Angels by Susan Turner
"Crimson Angels is a touching story of a small town couple going through the adoption process. However, somewhere along the line something went terribly wrong. Crimson Angels is a must-read for anyone interested in international adoption. The story will take the reader along the process. However, the ending may surprise you. Sometimes, things don't always happen the way they should." [A must-read for anyone interested in international adoption? Would you say a book about a pregnancy that went terribly wrong was a must-read for those who wish to give birth? Doesn't matter, though; anybody who's getting their pre-adoptive information from thrillers should probably think twice about adopting anyway.]
+ + +
JULY 24, 2002
For a brief moment last night, it appeared that my daughter might be a mermaid. Fortunately, she was only a slob.
She had just finished watching the adoption-related tale "The Thirteenth Year" on the Disney channel for about the 47th time. The movie relates the story of an adopted boy who discovers that his birthmother was a mermaid when he hits puberty and starts sprouting scales. When it was over, my daughter went to change into her pajamas, and then screamed for me to come into her room. I did, and she pointed in horror at a green patch on her leg. "What's that?" she asked me, terrified. I examined the spot and had to conclude that it was not mermaid scales, but in fact a drop of mint chocolate chip ice cream, which she had been eating in front of the TV.
She was immensely relieved, since she had assumed that since she was adopted like the boy in the movie, she might turn into a fish like he did. I assured her that her birthmother was a normal land-dwelling woman, and that the story on the TV was just pretend anyway. I was delighted that she understood enough of the plot of the movie to apply it to herself, apprehensive that she had taken the fantasy aspects at such face value. And a little wistful, too ... because if she was really a mer-girl, that would make her swimming lessons so much easier.
+ + +
JULY 25, 2002
Boy, nothing makes you feel older than going to a museum and seeing your childhood playthings preserved under plexiglass.
That's what happened to me yesterday at the Liberty Science Center, a big discovery-minded place within view of the Statue of Liberty that had among its exhibits one on toys from the past fifty years. "Great Toys from Our Childhood," it was called, and were they indeed. Not only did I recognize the toys and remember playing with them, but the packaging and style were the ones I remembered. Yes, I could tell the awe-struck kiddies in my presence, I could recall back in the olden days when you played Mr. Potato Head with an actual potato! Actually, the kiddies weren't awe-struck at all; they were too busy playing with flat magnetic Mr. Potato Head pieces to be very interested in my nostalgic ramblings. But still.
I will say that my childhood playthings have stood the test of time. Most of the items on display were still on the market, though many have lost their gee-whiz charm. My son certainly plays with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars not significantly different than the ones on display; products as diverse as Twister and crayons and Nerf balls are still as close as your local Toys R Us. You can still even buy an Easy Bake Oven (at least at the science center gift shop), although I would have thought that the microwave precluded the need for that toy.
Other pasttimes seem to have passed away. I haven't seen Magic Rocks or Mexican Jumping Beans turning up at birthday parties lately. And I don't know if they still make the Magic 8 Ball, but I did have to show several confused children of the '00s what you do with it. But these modern kids, they catch on quick: After I explained to one little girl that you ask a question, turn the ball over and read the answer, she said "Is my sister a brat?," turned the ball over and, with barely a look at the murky window, declared the answer "Yes!"
+ + +
JULY 26, 2002
Our summer vacation is almost half over (the kiddos go back to school Sept. 4), and so far I'd have to say it's going well. My son made it through two weeks of church CCD camp wtih flying colors, and now seems to be doing just fine at the neighborhood mainstream day camp we picked this year as an alternative to the super-duper special needs camp he'd gone to previously. The camp director mentioned to me that he was doing so well, next year we may not even have to pay for an aide to shadow him. Personally, I'd rather the aide was there and not needed than the opposite, but it was a nice vote of confidence. My daughter is attending "Camp Grandma," staying home and keeping her grandmother company during the day. Still, we've managed to find things for her to do; her dad and I have been taking her bowling on lunch hours and days off, and she has a higher average and a sore arm to show for it. Afternoon tutoring and lessons are going well, although she still hates swimming; my son is being amazingly cooperative at his in-home piano lessons, although not so much during the week when we want him to practice. And those worksheet-a-day books I bought to bridge the summer? Unlike past years, both kids are actually, remarkably, doing a worksheet a day. Bully for us.
On the downside, of course, those books I bought to teach my son cursive over the summer are looking pretty dusty. My hopes that the kids would learn keyboarding have been dashed by the fact that, after an early summer flurry of interest, neither one of them wants to go near the computers right now. I'd hoped to keep my daughter busy with playdates with her schoolfriends, but they're all busy (of course, last summer, when my daughter was in camp, they were all free). And while I'd hoped to have my mind pretty much settled about the upcoming school arrangements for both kids by this time of the summer, I still can't get the special ed director on the phone. But hey -- there's still one more month. The summer's only half over. Miracles can still happen!
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
July 16-20, 2002
JULY 16, 2002
My husband and son were taking a walk round a nearby park last week when they came upon two or three boys and their dads. Without hesitation, the kids and one of the men said hello to my son, calling him by name. My boy looked puzzled and said, "Do I know you?" And, cheerfully, they all said no. But they sure enough knew him. So did the woman at the playground, who hadn't seen us in years but remembered my son by name from seeing him in the cry room of the church we used to attend.
Everyone knows my guy, it seems. Kids shout hello, adults reach for their keys as they see him coming, knowing he'll want to examine them and ask about their cars. He's a memorable fellow, well-known in his community, and warmly regarded by most. Different, certainly, but in a friendly, talkative, engaging way.
I don't know if this will last, if he'll be as enchanting when he's not such a little elf, but for now I'm going to enjoy it. Certainly I feel enough mortification when he misbehaves in public and I feel like every condemning eye is on us. It's nice to know that the memories folks are forming of him are generally good ones after all. Apparently, it's me they're not sure about.
+ + +
JULY 17, 2002
My daughter has always been clear with her fears. In this she differs from her brother, who is so wrapped up in his own complex world view that you have to guess from his reactions what he might be feeling; jumpiness, perseveration, silliness, refusal to cooperate, absorption in a different activity, rocking, misbehavior guaranteed to result in time out -- all can be his way of telling us he's afraid of something in the environment or in our demands. You have to be a regular detective to figure out what's at the bottom of his behavior. But my daughter will tell you: I Don't Like That. I'm Afraid. I Don't Want to Do That. Don't Make Me. Please.
And it's hard not to feel all protective. One of the most difficult things to do as a parent is to make your kids face their fears. Sometimes, I suppose, it's not so important. My daughter is terrified of thunder to the point of cowering behind me last week when we were caught outside in an approaching storm, and although I wish she'd outgrow her fear and trembling, it's kind of nice to be needed and able to comfort. She likes me around when it's thundering outside, while at other times she's just as glad for me to leave her alone.
But in other situations, the fear has to be conquered. And the one we're dealing with right now is swimming. I've never thought of her as afraid of the water; she's cavorted in the kiddie pool plenty of times on vacations, and used to go in our above-ground pool as a little girl without much hesitation. But she was young then, and supported by a wide variety of flotation devicess and loving grown-ups. Now, as a very large 12-year-old, she has to learn to go it alone. And she's terrified. She started one-on-one lessons at a local pool a couple of weeks ago, and after one lesson announced that she knew how to swim and didn't need to go anymore. She regularly panics in the pool, even though she can stand with head and shoulders well out of the water in the shallow end, and flat-out refuses to jump in, even holding the teacher's hand. She doesn't like it. She's afraid. She doesn't want to do that. Don't make her. Please.
But learning how to swim is a safety issue, at her age more than ever, and also a social issue, since her class will be getting swimming lessons next year in fifth grade and she doesn't want everyone to see her trembling at the thought of going into the water. So I have to force the issue. She has to learn. It's hard to explain to her without saying things like "You could drown if you don't learn how to swim," which, of course, only makes matters worse. She's afraid to learn to swim, but I'm afraid of what will happen if she doesn't. And I'm not easily turned from my own fears either.
+ + +
JULY 19, 2002
It's sort of ironic, in a stomach-churning way, that during the same week that sees the debut of "Refrigerator Mothers" -- a PBS documentary detailing the effects and the deep wrongness of the long-repudiated theory that autism was caused by cold, unloving mothers -- comes news on a study blaming moms for their children's learning problems. Somehow or other, it's always about mom, isn't it?
The study found that three-year-olds whose mothers went back to work before they were nine months old were less likely to be found school-ready than three-year-olds who had mom hanging around for anything over that. To quote the Intelihealth report: "Children whose mothers worked by the time the babies were 9 months old, and had insensitive mothers and poor-quality child care, had scores in the 37th percentile. The 3-year-olds who did best on the test, scoring at the 56th percentile, were those who had sensitive mothers who were not employed by the ninth month, and good-quality child care."
And there it is: insensitive mothers vs. sensitive mothers. What, one wonders, qualifies someone as an insensitive mother in this case? Does going back to work and dumping your kid in bad day care alone qualify as insensitivity? Did they follow these women around and gauge their sensitivity to their offspring, or calculate it out from a questionnaire? And, come to think of it, exactly how "school ready" does a three-year-old have to be? Maybe it's those kids with oversensitive mothers who've left their high-powered big business careers to stay home and stuff them full of Baby Mozart CDs are the ones who will have the harder time in the long run.
It's hard not to feel sarcastic and defensive about reports like this. Both my kids were in the ultimate day care -- a Russian orphanage -- from birth until well past their ninth month, and I can't deny that group care did nothing for their school readiness skills. Having good, loving, one-on-one parent involvement throughout one's growing up period is obviously the best option for child development in all areas. But unless our society is willing to make changes to deliver that option to all children -- longer maternity leaves, more telecommuting and split shifts, quality child care available to everybody, subsidies for stay-at-home moms -- all studies like this are good for is making moms feel guilty. Well, sensitive moms, anyway.
Monday, July 08, 2002
July 8-12, 2002
JULY 8, 2002
It's high dudgeon time for a lot of adoptive parents these days, with several perceived offenses to the honor of adoption turning up in the media. Specifically causing mouths to foam at the moment are a Disney commercial in which a father asks a mother if their bratty son might actually be adopted; a commercial for the upcoming Disney film "The Country Bears" in which a bear boy looks around at his human family and asks, "Mom, am I adopted?" (Mom replies, "No, of course not!"); and the movie "Lilo and Stitch," which apparently touts the advantages of living in a neglectful home with a birthfamily member over having a (shudder) social worker find you a loving adoptive family. Many are also still rattled by an episode of the sitcom "My Adventures in Television" that depicted the adoptive mother of a Chinese baby as shallow and shady.
Of all these offensive depictions, I've only seen the "Country Bears" ad, and while it certainly pricked up my ears, I didn't find it particularly offensive. Honestly, I felt more bristly about an "It's a Miracle" episode I watched with my daughter that depicted a woman's search for her birthparents while barely mentioning her adoptive ones. I hissed under my breath every time host Richard Thomas referred to the birthfather as "her dad." When my daughter asked questions about who exactly they were talking about at any given time, I carefully supplied the proper terminology. Even so, I can't say I was actively offended. The show was certainly positive about adoption, with emphasis put on the birthparents making a plan for their daughter and everyone being pleased with how things had worked out.
Maybe I just spend so much time being worked up about school issues with my kids that it sucks up all my potential for offendedness, but I really can't see too much reason to seethe in all these allegedly incorrect adoption references. I suppose I'm of the "There's no such thing as bad publicity" school, but my dream is that one day adoption will become so commonplace and unspectacular that we will be allowed to laugh about it. Apparently we're not there yet. But at the very least, depictions that we perceive as unperceptive can open doors to talking with our children and presenting our own more enlightened views, and giving them language to use when they're challenged by uncharitable attitudes off the TV and movie screen. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?
+ + +
JULY 9, 2002
I’ve written here before about what a conversational stopper childbirth stories are for me, and how I wish women with graphic tales of such would stop to consider, when launching, whether infertile or childless women in their company will be entirely happy to listen to how darn hard it is to birth a baby. I’ve learned to tune those out pretty well now, but at a party recently I found another topic I am now unable to gracefully accept: and that is, “Aren’t parents today just awful!”
You’d think that people would hesitate to bring this topic up in front of people who are, as a matter of fact, parents today. You’d be wrong. There’s a “present company accepted” understanding that we’re not talking about parents today who are of our acquaintance, but that big pool of parents today that we do not personally know, but know with certainty are driving the country to hell in a handbasket. Not teaching their kids manners. Not supporting their schools. Standing up for cheaters. Blaming the teacher for misbehavior. Can you believe how misguided some people are?
Well. Ahem. On that misbehaving thing. I’ve, um, sorta done that. I’ve sorta done that a lot. And, you know, standing up for cheaters? I have to wonder, in situations like that, whether the parents might know something we don’t. Most parents I know support their schools, but schools don’t do a heck of a good job supporting parents; one school my kids attended pretty much shoved them out the door if they tried to set foot beyond the threshhold. And about manners, and the general way “kids today” don’t measure up to the glorious specimens of youthful decorum we once were? Check back with me, folks, when you have school-age kids of your own.
I floated some of these opinions during party conversation, and I’m afraid I was a bit of a blowhard about it. But you know, most of the folks with whom I was conversing have no children or very young ones; it will be interesting to check into these same topics eight or nine years down the road, when I’m not the only one with school-system-fighting, behavior-managing, older-child-nagging experience under my belt. It’s interesting how efficiently life changes your perspective.
+ + +
JULY 10, 2002
I'm rushing off to a meeting this morning with the new director of special education in our district. I don't expect anything much to come of it, but it will be a pleasant change to be stonewalled in person instead of over the phone. I'm still waiting for an answer to the question I started asking about my son's aide in March, so answers on any new business would be very unexpected indeed. But my campaign to be a constant, politely nagging presence continues.
I've spoken to this new director on the phone a couple of times, and he's expressed the opinion that the parents are the consumers of special education and so if they're not happy, he's not happy. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that were true -- if special ed was a product and we were the consumers and somebody actually cared very much about what we wanted? Focus groups would beg our opinions and manufacturers would jump to get as many different flavors out there as possible. And, of course, we could always switch to another brand if we didn't like what we had.
Not so easy in the special-ed universe, I'm afraid. Not so easy for us, and not so easy for those in charge, who have to listen not only to the "consumers," but to teachers and principals and local politicians and all manner of discontented opinion-holders. So really, I'll be happy just to get an answer to my five-month-old question. But I'm not counting on it.
+ + +
JULY 11, 2002
Nobody told me that when I became a parent, I'd have to be an impressionist. But that seems to be the case these days, as my ever-imaginative son presses me constantly into roles of cartoon characters and imaginary adversaries as a requisite of play participation and even as a tool of behavior management. I'm not half bad at it, I think, but sometimes I wonder what eavesdroppers must think.
I've been having to be Scooby Doo (Rooby Roo!) for quite some time, both to provide voice for his stuffed-animal versions and to hold conversations as "invisible Scooby." I do a pirate that sounds very much like the crab from "SpongeBob SquarePants," and lately, I have been called upon to be DeeDee to his Stu in "Rugrats" recreations. Best of all has been his demand that I come on like Big Bob Pataki from "Hey Arnold"; ever since we saw the "Hey Arnold" movie a week or so ago, the bossy voice of Big Bob has been able to order him around in the way the voice of mama often can't. I need help getting the small boy to do as he's told, I call in Big Bob. Works like a charm.
That's actually one of the really interesting and fun things about parenting this particular fetal-alcohol-effected boy, and that is: humor almost always works to distract him and change his behavior. Humor as a disciplinary tool! You gotta love it. When I find something funny or imaginative or surprising to grab his attention away from unproductive behavior, I get such a look of admiration from the little guy that it makes all the silly voices and cartoon reenactments worthwhile. But I'll admit: I'm getting tired of having to think up answers when he asks Scooby where the gang's at tonight. He never lets me go with a simple, "Ri ron't row!"
+ + +
JULY 12, 2002
Rushing off again this morning, this time to help set up for and attend the final ceremony for my kids' religious-ed camp, finishing up today after two weeks of half-days. My son made it through just fine -- hiring a grown-up aide for him rather than relying on the program's teen-age volunteers seems to be the ticket for getting him to sit acceptably through hours of lessons. His aide reports that he knows the answers to questions when asked, that his behavior has been fine, and that there are in fact two other boys in the class who have been acting far scoodgier than he.
Of course, they don't have aides gently nudging them into focus; if my son was aide-free, he would be the Scoodge King. But as it is, the only time he displayed his full repertoire of wild, tic-y, out-of-control activities was when his class had a Mass and I made the mistake of sitting next to him. He saves all the good stuff for me, the dear. Today, for that closing ceremony, I'll be hiding out in the hall.
It's high dudgeon time for a lot of adoptive parents these days, with several perceived offenses to the honor of adoption turning up in the media. Specifically causing mouths to foam at the moment are a Disney commercial in which a father asks a mother if their bratty son might actually be adopted; a commercial for the upcoming Disney film "The Country Bears" in which a bear boy looks around at his human family and asks, "Mom, am I adopted?" (Mom replies, "No, of course not!"); and the movie "Lilo and Stitch," which apparently touts the advantages of living in a neglectful home with a birthfamily member over having a (shudder) social worker find you a loving adoptive family. Many are also still rattled by an episode of the sitcom "My Adventures in Television" that depicted the adoptive mother of a Chinese baby as shallow and shady.
Of all these offensive depictions, I've only seen the "Country Bears" ad, and while it certainly pricked up my ears, I didn't find it particularly offensive. Honestly, I felt more bristly about an "It's a Miracle" episode I watched with my daughter that depicted a woman's search for her birthparents while barely mentioning her adoptive ones. I hissed under my breath every time host Richard Thomas referred to the birthfather as "her dad." When my daughter asked questions about who exactly they were talking about at any given time, I carefully supplied the proper terminology. Even so, I can't say I was actively offended. The show was certainly positive about adoption, with emphasis put on the birthparents making a plan for their daughter and everyone being pleased with how things had worked out.
Maybe I just spend so much time being worked up about school issues with my kids that it sucks up all my potential for offendedness, but I really can't see too much reason to seethe in all these allegedly incorrect adoption references. I suppose I'm of the "There's no such thing as bad publicity" school, but my dream is that one day adoption will become so commonplace and unspectacular that we will be allowed to laugh about it. Apparently we're not there yet. But at the very least, depictions that we perceive as unperceptive can open doors to talking with our children and presenting our own more enlightened views, and giving them language to use when they're challenged by uncharitable attitudes off the TV and movie screen. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?
+ + +
JULY 9, 2002
I’ve written here before about what a conversational stopper childbirth stories are for me, and how I wish women with graphic tales of such would stop to consider, when launching, whether infertile or childless women in their company will be entirely happy to listen to how darn hard it is to birth a baby. I’ve learned to tune those out pretty well now, but at a party recently I found another topic I am now unable to gracefully accept: and that is, “Aren’t parents today just awful!”
You’d think that people would hesitate to bring this topic up in front of people who are, as a matter of fact, parents today. You’d be wrong. There’s a “present company accepted” understanding that we’re not talking about parents today who are of our acquaintance, but that big pool of parents today that we do not personally know, but know with certainty are driving the country to hell in a handbasket. Not teaching their kids manners. Not supporting their schools. Standing up for cheaters. Blaming the teacher for misbehavior. Can you believe how misguided some people are?
Well. Ahem. On that misbehaving thing. I’ve, um, sorta done that. I’ve sorta done that a lot. And, you know, standing up for cheaters? I have to wonder, in situations like that, whether the parents might know something we don’t. Most parents I know support their schools, but schools don’t do a heck of a good job supporting parents; one school my kids attended pretty much shoved them out the door if they tried to set foot beyond the threshhold. And about manners, and the general way “kids today” don’t measure up to the glorious specimens of youthful decorum we once were? Check back with me, folks, when you have school-age kids of your own.
I floated some of these opinions during party conversation, and I’m afraid I was a bit of a blowhard about it. But you know, most of the folks with whom I was conversing have no children or very young ones; it will be interesting to check into these same topics eight or nine years down the road, when I’m not the only one with school-system-fighting, behavior-managing, older-child-nagging experience under my belt. It’s interesting how efficiently life changes your perspective.
+ + +
JULY 10, 2002
I'm rushing off to a meeting this morning with the new director of special education in our district. I don't expect anything much to come of it, but it will be a pleasant change to be stonewalled in person instead of over the phone. I'm still waiting for an answer to the question I started asking about my son's aide in March, so answers on any new business would be very unexpected indeed. But my campaign to be a constant, politely nagging presence continues.
I've spoken to this new director on the phone a couple of times, and he's expressed the opinion that the parents are the consumers of special education and so if they're not happy, he's not happy. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that were true -- if special ed was a product and we were the consumers and somebody actually cared very much about what we wanted? Focus groups would beg our opinions and manufacturers would jump to get as many different flavors out there as possible. And, of course, we could always switch to another brand if we didn't like what we had.
Not so easy in the special-ed universe, I'm afraid. Not so easy for us, and not so easy for those in charge, who have to listen not only to the "consumers," but to teachers and principals and local politicians and all manner of discontented opinion-holders. So really, I'll be happy just to get an answer to my five-month-old question. But I'm not counting on it.
+ + +
JULY 11, 2002
Nobody told me that when I became a parent, I'd have to be an impressionist. But that seems to be the case these days, as my ever-imaginative son presses me constantly into roles of cartoon characters and imaginary adversaries as a requisite of play participation and even as a tool of behavior management. I'm not half bad at it, I think, but sometimes I wonder what eavesdroppers must think.
I've been having to be Scooby Doo (Rooby Roo!) for quite some time, both to provide voice for his stuffed-animal versions and to hold conversations as "invisible Scooby." I do a pirate that sounds very much like the crab from "SpongeBob SquarePants," and lately, I have been called upon to be DeeDee to his Stu in "Rugrats" recreations. Best of all has been his demand that I come on like Big Bob Pataki from "Hey Arnold"; ever since we saw the "Hey Arnold" movie a week or so ago, the bossy voice of Big Bob has been able to order him around in the way the voice of mama often can't. I need help getting the small boy to do as he's told, I call in Big Bob. Works like a charm.
That's actually one of the really interesting and fun things about parenting this particular fetal-alcohol-effected boy, and that is: humor almost always works to distract him and change his behavior. Humor as a disciplinary tool! You gotta love it. When I find something funny or imaginative or surprising to grab his attention away from unproductive behavior, I get such a look of admiration from the little guy that it makes all the silly voices and cartoon reenactments worthwhile. But I'll admit: I'm getting tired of having to think up answers when he asks Scooby where the gang's at tonight. He never lets me go with a simple, "Ri ron't row!"
+ + +
JULY 12, 2002
Rushing off again this morning, this time to help set up for and attend the final ceremony for my kids' religious-ed camp, finishing up today after two weeks of half-days. My son made it through just fine -- hiring a grown-up aide for him rather than relying on the program's teen-age volunteers seems to be the ticket for getting him to sit acceptably through hours of lessons. His aide reports that he knows the answers to questions when asked, that his behavior has been fine, and that there are in fact two other boys in the class who have been acting far scoodgier than he.
Of course, they don't have aides gently nudging them into focus; if my son was aide-free, he would be the Scoodge King. But as it is, the only time he displayed his full repertoire of wild, tic-y, out-of-control activities was when his class had a Mass and I made the mistake of sitting next to him. He saves all the good stuff for me, the dear. Today, for that closing ceremony, I'll be hiding out in the hall.
Monday, July 01, 2002
July 1-5, 2002
JULY 1, 2002
I don’t know how many times, while struggling with my son at Mass or at a restaurant, I’ve thought about how hard and endless these things can be with him there, and how peaceful and stress-free they would be if his dad and I were doing them alone. Not for a minute that I’d wish him away -- he’s a charming boy with many wonderful qualities, but calm, patient and controlled behavior during outings isn’t one of them.
So it was appropriately instructional to see, when my husband and I attended a wedding yesterday, how completely bored we were without the constant distraction of the jumpy small boy. Mass dragged now that we didn’t have to be using our wits every moment to keep the kid quiet; every time I stood up -- actually stood up! which I rarely get to do when we attend church as a family, because I’m busy holding my son down -- I reached back as if to quiet the boy who wasn’t there. And I missed him.
And at the reception -- well, I guess I always knew that all those walks we have to take with the little guy to keep him from melting down out of boredom relieved our boredom, too, but again, it’s good to be reminded. Oh, what we wouldn’t have given for some reason to stop just sitting there. My boy never just sits there. I alternated between missing his action and worrying about whether he was giving his babysitter too much of it.
Family outings are looking better and better.
+ + +
JULY 2, 2002
The other night at dinner -- the one time when my language-challenged daughter can be counted on to be chatty, because it keeps her from having to eat her vegetables -- she asked, apropos of nothing, whether her birthmother drank alcohol the way her brother's did, and if that's why she has so much trouble understanding things sometimes. It completely floored me, because it showed that, signs of disinterest at the time notwithstanding, she had absorbed all the adoption language I'd been giving her, and all the information about her brother's fetal alcohol effects. Comprehension of abstractions is her weakest suit, but somehow, over time, she'd come up with this thought. If there's a developmental milestone for "processing serious talks from parents," maybe she's finally made it.
It's pretty gratifying to me, anyway, because most of my "serious talks" are met with probing follow-up questions like "What's for dinner" (from my daughter) and stray snippets of dialog from Sponge-Bob or Scooby-Doo (from my son). I talk because talking's what you're supposed to do, and I want things like adoption and learning challenges and neurological differences of all sorts to be pretty normal and easily explored topics 'round here. And maybe it's paying off now, just a little. Maybe after years of absorbing, they'll finally start having things to say about the major facts of their lives, and maybe they'll be comfortable enough to say them. At least when there's spinach on the menu.
+ + +
JULY 3, 2002
A wonderful thing is happening at our house in these early days of summer vacation: We're seeing a temporary cease-fire in the ongoing Sibling Rivalry Wars. Against all odds, my daughter and son are acting downright friendly, playing on the computers together, playing with cars in my daughter's room, agreeing on which cartoons to watch, asking to sleep over in each other's rooms. The last two mornings, my daughter has woken her brother up, made sure he got dressed, made his breakfast, and generally genially run the morning for me. And lest I fear there's been coercion or bossing involved, I've heard him ask her to do it again tomorrow. It's altogether too good to be true.
And it is, I know it is. The peace will pass, as it has in the past. They'll be back to pushing and making faces and calling names and feuding in no time. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the truces whenever they come along. It's a nice way to start the summer, anyway.
+ + +
JULY 4, 2002
Can't write much today, because we're having a party at noon, and it's going to be about 100 degress outside so everybody will have to stay in, and I have to figure out what to do with seven kids, at least one of whom enjoys finding things to mess up around the house and messing them up. (No, see, I mess up things around the house all the time, but it's not deliberate.) Do you suppose setting them all up in the laundry room with papers and markers and glue and then locking the door would be a bad thing? They'd probably find a way to get glitter into every nook and cranny of the washing machine.
It will be an appropriately international gathering for Independence Day, anyway. Out of seven kids, we have two from Russia, one from China, one just arrived from Guatemala, and three homegrowns. I never appreciated my country so much as when I came back from adopting abroad, and having all these little adopted Americans around is a good reminder of how very lucky we are to live in our one nation, under God. Happy Fourth of July to all!
+ + +
JULY 5, 2002
This is the time of year when most people are piling up fluffy novels for beach readings, but parents of children with special needs -- please, tell me I'm not the only one -- tend to be bogged down with weightier fare. Here's what's on my list of hot summer reading:
* A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine. I'm about halfway through this relatively easy reader now, and the man makes sense. I'll admit, though, that I'm always a little leery about case studies in which every learning-challenged child is Really Brilliant, once you compensate for his or her weaknesses. Isn't anybody just average anymore?
* Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph Ledoux. After months and months of dipping into this one I'm only about a third of the way through. What a slog! I started reading it to gain an understanding of brain chemistry, since everybody's always going on about that, but the material activates whatever chemical in my brain is responsible for putting me to sleep. It's engagingly written for hard science, but perhaps Dr. Levine would say that, with all kinds of minds, mine isn't the kind that can easily take in stuff like this.
* Should I Medicate My Child? by Lawrence Diller, author of Running on Ritalin. I haven't started this one yet, but have skimmed a bit. His discipline suggestions (and this seems to be the new tack on ADHD: It's all the parents' fault) aren't really appropriate for my fetal alcohol effected guy, but the listing of psychiatric drugs and their intended and unintended effects should be helpful whenever doctors start telling me that giving these meds to my son is no more dangerous than popping a Tylenol myself.
* Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis. I started this one only to find that it's remarkably similar to another book I recently enjoyed, Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman. It comes well-recommended, so I'll wait a bit until the earlier book is significantly faded in my memory and come to it fresh. I'm reading it for my daughter, but maybe I could use a little extra comprehension work too.
Monday, June 24, 2002
June 24-26, 2002
JUNE 24, 2002
Regular visitors to this site have read more than once about my son's struggles to be good in church, be quiet, be still, be respectful, be anything but the demon-possessed imp he seems to turn into when he enters that hallowed hall. I may have mentioned the way he starts singing the hymns full-voice immediately after everybody stops singing; lays down on the pews and then pushes off with his sneakers to slide down, down, down as far as he can until Mama grabs his ankles; pokes and pinches his sister whenever he's in range; talks and wiggles at will. I do believe he tries to be calm; but for a boy who needs to move to stay alert, and for whom impulsivity is a given, an hour of enforced stillness and quietness may still be beyond his capacity.
And so I was all the more amused when he represented himself yesterday at Mass as a model of rectitude for other children to emulate.
We were sitting in our church's "Cry Room," a glassed in area at the back of the sanctuary where families with small noisy children can see but not be heard. We've been hanging out back their lately because it takes a lot of the pressure off for perfect behavior, and lessening of pressure often makes his behavior better. The downside, though, is that if there are enough kids back there, it can be a horribly noisy place, and horribly noisy places often make his behavior worse.
Yesterday was one of those horribly noisy days. There were two very little boys playing together, chasing, shouting, stacking hymnals. Every now and then their moms would yell at them to be quiet, and they would just keep going. My guy was laying stretched out on a small pew, trying to take a nap or quietly read one of his car magazines, two of the ways we've developed for him to keep it together, and finally he got up, walked over to one of the moms, pointed to the noisy boys and said: "I listen to my mother. They don't."
The mom smiled, thank goodness, and said that the boys were younger, and it was good that he listened to his mom, and (as I rushed over to grab him) didn't that make me feel good to hear him say that. And it sure did, though I know how far that will take me. This week, he's the soul of churchly decorum. Next week, he'll be back to not listening. But I'm happy to thank God for small favors just the same.
+ + +
JUNE 25, 2002
One of the nicer side effects of having a child with special needs is that it teaches you to see the bright side of anything. We become conditioned to be so encouraged by such small things that, while we can certainly worry and obsess like champs, we also tend to try to interpret things for the good whenever possible.
That's my explanation, anyway, for my utter lack of concern over my son's recent behavioral downswings. There have been some complaints from school (although those mercifully will end when school does tomorrow), an extra wildness to his demeanor, more yelling of inappropriate words, more tic-like behaviors, more instances of out-of-control silliness. And maybe I should be worrying that this is the beginning of bad times, that our ability to manage his behavior may be slipping, that drastic measures need to be taken pronto. But I'm not. I'm thinking: You know, he always falls apart like this before he makes a big developmental leap. I think he's growing, too. We're going to have a hard few months, but he's going to come out of it really great. I'm so excited to see what my little butterfly will look like when he comes out of that bad-behavior coccoon.
Maybe I'm dreaming, I don't know. But I'll tell you: Worrying about how the special education department is going to screw up my kids' programs for next year takes up so much of my mental energy that I have no time left over for this. For this, I'm willing to be an optimist. And I've been right before.
+ + +
JUNE 26, 2002
My husband had one of those nightmare experiences yesterday, where you're late to pick up your child and they're nowhere to be found. This time, he got to the kids' school well after pick-up time, and while our son -- who waits at the door with an aide until we come to get him -- was hanging out by the office with his teacher, our daughter -- who walks out with all the other children onto the street in front of the school and then has to fend for herself -- was not. Not in the office. Not in the classroom. Not on the lawn or sidewalk in front of the school. No one in the school had seen her since her teacher led the line out of the building.
Where was she? Had she tried to walk home? Gone to a friend's house? Wandered far away, upset and confused? Been picked up by a dangerous kidnaper? We were always there waiting for her when she came out of the school, and she's a girl who doesn't do well with unexpected situations. Where would she go?
As it turns out, she had walked to the sidestreet where we usually parked our car, stood on the corner waiting and worrying with a couple of kids from her class, spoken to a few concerned moms driving by, and finally agreed to get in the air-conditioned car of one of them, the mother of a classmate and one of her "class moms." That's where her dad finally found her; he was running panicked up the street, dragging our son behind, and saw some strange woman waving frantically at him. All was, in the end, well. And we've now drilled our daughter on what she should do in the unlikely event that we're ever late again: Go to the office. Wait there.
And I know we shoud also be drilling her on the fact that she should never, ever get in the car of somebody who is not an immediate family member or close family friend. We're supposed to be teaching our kids that anybody you don't know really well is essentially a stranger, and strangers are dangerous. She admitted she felt unsure about getting into her classmate's mom's car, so the message they're presented with relentlessly at school is getting through.
But although I know it's for the best, I hate it. Surely the percentage of strangers who are truly dangerous is tiny compared to the percentage of strangers who are good-willed and want to help. I like the idea of moms looking out for each other's kids -- I would certainly have done the same as that mom if I had seen her daughter standing, hot and confused, on a street corner -- and I hate to make my child afraid of that. The world may be too dangerous these days to allow our children any shades of gray, but there's certainly something lost when we feel wrong if we don't rebuff the kindness of strangers.
Regular visitors to this site have read more than once about my son's struggles to be good in church, be quiet, be still, be respectful, be anything but the demon-possessed imp he seems to turn into when he enters that hallowed hall. I may have mentioned the way he starts singing the hymns full-voice immediately after everybody stops singing; lays down on the pews and then pushes off with his sneakers to slide down, down, down as far as he can until Mama grabs his ankles; pokes and pinches his sister whenever he's in range; talks and wiggles at will. I do believe he tries to be calm; but for a boy who needs to move to stay alert, and for whom impulsivity is a given, an hour of enforced stillness and quietness may still be beyond his capacity.
And so I was all the more amused when he represented himself yesterday at Mass as a model of rectitude for other children to emulate.
We were sitting in our church's "Cry Room," a glassed in area at the back of the sanctuary where families with small noisy children can see but not be heard. We've been hanging out back their lately because it takes a lot of the pressure off for perfect behavior, and lessening of pressure often makes his behavior better. The downside, though, is that if there are enough kids back there, it can be a horribly noisy place, and horribly noisy places often make his behavior worse.
Yesterday was one of those horribly noisy days. There were two very little boys playing together, chasing, shouting, stacking hymnals. Every now and then their moms would yell at them to be quiet, and they would just keep going. My guy was laying stretched out on a small pew, trying to take a nap or quietly read one of his car magazines, two of the ways we've developed for him to keep it together, and finally he got up, walked over to one of the moms, pointed to the noisy boys and said: "I listen to my mother. They don't."
The mom smiled, thank goodness, and said that the boys were younger, and it was good that he listened to his mom, and (as I rushed over to grab him) didn't that make me feel good to hear him say that. And it sure did, though I know how far that will take me. This week, he's the soul of churchly decorum. Next week, he'll be back to not listening. But I'm happy to thank God for small favors just the same.
+ + +
JUNE 25, 2002
One of the nicer side effects of having a child with special needs is that it teaches you to see the bright side of anything. We become conditioned to be so encouraged by such small things that, while we can certainly worry and obsess like champs, we also tend to try to interpret things for the good whenever possible.
That's my explanation, anyway, for my utter lack of concern over my son's recent behavioral downswings. There have been some complaints from school (although those mercifully will end when school does tomorrow), an extra wildness to his demeanor, more yelling of inappropriate words, more tic-like behaviors, more instances of out-of-control silliness. And maybe I should be worrying that this is the beginning of bad times, that our ability to manage his behavior may be slipping, that drastic measures need to be taken pronto. But I'm not. I'm thinking: You know, he always falls apart like this before he makes a big developmental leap. I think he's growing, too. We're going to have a hard few months, but he's going to come out of it really great. I'm so excited to see what my little butterfly will look like when he comes out of that bad-behavior coccoon.
Maybe I'm dreaming, I don't know. But I'll tell you: Worrying about how the special education department is going to screw up my kids' programs for next year takes up so much of my mental energy that I have no time left over for this. For this, I'm willing to be an optimist. And I've been right before.
+ + +
JUNE 26, 2002
My husband had one of those nightmare experiences yesterday, where you're late to pick up your child and they're nowhere to be found. This time, he got to the kids' school well after pick-up time, and while our son -- who waits at the door with an aide until we come to get him -- was hanging out by the office with his teacher, our daughter -- who walks out with all the other children onto the street in front of the school and then has to fend for herself -- was not. Not in the office. Not in the classroom. Not on the lawn or sidewalk in front of the school. No one in the school had seen her since her teacher led the line out of the building.
Where was she? Had she tried to walk home? Gone to a friend's house? Wandered far away, upset and confused? Been picked up by a dangerous kidnaper? We were always there waiting for her when she came out of the school, and she's a girl who doesn't do well with unexpected situations. Where would she go?
As it turns out, she had walked to the sidestreet where we usually parked our car, stood on the corner waiting and worrying with a couple of kids from her class, spoken to a few concerned moms driving by, and finally agreed to get in the air-conditioned car of one of them, the mother of a classmate and one of her "class moms." That's where her dad finally found her; he was running panicked up the street, dragging our son behind, and saw some strange woman waving frantically at him. All was, in the end, well. And we've now drilled our daughter on what she should do in the unlikely event that we're ever late again: Go to the office. Wait there.
And I know we shoud also be drilling her on the fact that she should never, ever get in the car of somebody who is not an immediate family member or close family friend. We're supposed to be teaching our kids that anybody you don't know really well is essentially a stranger, and strangers are dangerous. She admitted she felt unsure about getting into her classmate's mom's car, so the message they're presented with relentlessly at school is getting through.
But although I know it's for the best, I hate it. Surely the percentage of strangers who are truly dangerous is tiny compared to the percentage of strangers who are good-willed and want to help. I like the idea of moms looking out for each other's kids -- I would certainly have done the same as that mom if I had seen her daughter standing, hot and confused, on a street corner -- and I hate to make my child afraid of that. The world may be too dangerous these days to allow our children any shades of gray, but there's certainly something lost when we feel wrong if we don't rebuff the kindness of strangers.
Monday, June 17, 2002
June 17-21, 2002
JUNE 17, 2002
I've been excited about my son's growth spurt -- how he finally made it onto the bottom of the height charts this year, and lately how additional inches may explain his recent scoodgy behavior. Yesterday, though, we saw the down side of that additional height: At our church's carnival, he can no longer ride all the kiddie rides he loves. He's inches above the limit now for the little car ride that goes around and around, and the man wouldn't let him on. Ditto the little boat ride and the junior roller coaster. About the only rides his height allows him now are rides I'm too chicken to put him on. And so we did a lot of walking around, and some eating, and some game-playing, but not much riding.
I guess that's the way child development goes -- with every step forward, there's something left behind. He's way too old chronologically to still want to go on the little cars, and I guess it's a blessing that his lag in linear growth has bought him some extra time with those smaller-child pursuits. He's got no choice though, now, but to look down on those activities. Maybe by next year his mother's nerves will have caught up to his new big-kid-ride status.
+ + +
JUNE 18, 2002
From the "Did they really need to do a survey to find this out?" department comes the results of a study by the Center for a New American Dream that finds -- shockingly! -- that kids like to nag their parents for stuff. Researchers questioned 750 young people ages 12 to 17 and found that 60 percent keep nagging after the parent said "no," that 10 percent will ask more than 150 times, and that 55 percent eventually turn that "no" to a "yes." The researchers draw the conclusion that the youth of today is obsessed with getting the latest licensed thing, and parents are to blame for eventually giving it to them.
Clearly, these researchers have no children of their own.
If they did, they'd understand what it means to hear a child ask for the same toy 150 times. They would understand that it doesn't have to be a toy a child wants or will play with at all; nagging just gives some children something to do. They would understand that if you ask a pre-teen or teen if they bother their parents a lot and if their parents are to blame for that, they will invariably say yes. And they would understand that, if you asked parents how many times they have to nag their children to do simple household tasks, the number 150 would likely come up again.
+ + +
JUNE 19, 2002
We're going through crazy weather shifts here in the Northeast, the kind that guarantee that whatever clothing your mother suggests you wear in the morning will be way uncomfortable by the afternoon. I endured a long morning and afternoon on Saturday of being glared at by a 12-year-old in sweatpants who knew she was going to be SO HOT because her horrible, mean mama wouldn't let her wear shorts. And in the morning, darn it, it was too cool to wear shorts. But then, somewhere along the line, and depending on where you were standing and whether there was a breeze, it did indeed become too warm to wear sweatpants. And did I ever get the "I told you so's." I had to keep stopping and shaking her and saying "DON'T BE A TEEN-AGER YET."
She's already got the idea down that since I'm old, I'm always cold, and have no connection to her own youthful sense of temperature. And she's probably right. It's something every kid has noticed, certainly, at one time or another, that her mother's sense of temperature is out of whack. Mom makes you wear sweaters when you don't need them, jackets when it's positively temperate, wool caps when you'd rather let your hair swing free in the snow. Moms are such a bother. Kids must suspect that sometimes, we do it just because we can. They might be right there, too.
+ + +
JUNE 21, 2002
I've been occupying myself with filling my daughter's summer with things she doesn't want to do. Ever since we decided against camp and for hanging out in front of the TV with grandma, I've been in a little frenzy of coming up with worthwhile activities to save her from total spud-dom. One of those things she likes -- tennis lessons, twice a week. Most of those things she doesn't -- swimming and trombone lessons once a week, tutor twice, filling in at my office whenever the office manager has envelopes to stuff. It makes me tired just thinking about keeping all that straight. It mostly just makes her annoyed. But ah, moms, don't we just live for annoying our kids?
Her school, as it turns out, is helping with this endeavor by sending home a packet of math worksheets that must be completed and turned in at the beginning of the year, at which time the students will be graded and tested on the material. And she thought homework over the weekends was bad. A colleague reports that her fifth-grade daughter, in addition to the math package, has received a reading package that involves reading a book and writing about it in a journal; those notes will then be the basis of her first middle-school paper in the fall. Homework that goes from one school to the next! It's just too horrifying. Looks like schools just live for annoying our kids, too.
Monday, June 10, 2002
June 10-14, 2002
JUNE 10, 2002
Do you ever just think your head is going to explode sometimes from all the questions and worries and quandaries circling within? It seems lately that I can't make a decision without it either having to be re-decided soon after, or opening up a whole range of secondary decisions to be chewed over. My head is full to overflowing with decisions, decisions, decisions. Yesterday, just the added stress of having to decide what to order for my kids at Burger King made me burst into tears, so I may be reaching Critical Mass.
Sometimes I think reading e-mail support group lists makes it worse, because then you have to debate everybody else's decisions in your head as well. Maybe it helps you see that other people have it worse; but more often, for me anyway, it sets up debates in my poor overstuffed head over how I would do something differently than the original poster or her respondents. I suppose I could post my own problems to get other people's help in decision-making, but I'm afraid that new perspectives might only prolong my indecision -- or that everybody would disagree with what I'd almost decided. I do a good enough job of disagreeing with myself, thank you very much.
+ + +
JUNE 11, 2002
We've been talking a lot at school about the developmental level of my son -- or rather, developmental levels, because while he's up to nine-year-old speed in expressive language and close to it in academics, the path from there through motor skills and down to his emotional level of about four is a slippery slope. I don't know what level the rest of his class is at emotionally and behaviorally, but on their class field trip yesterday I got a clue: They're at whatever stage it is that involves constantly reporting even the minor indiscretions of your playmates to the nearest adult and seeking immediate redress.
"He pushed me!" "He scratched me!" "He touched my head!" "He made a bad noise!" All day I heard it, usually complaining about my son because I was his mother, but sometimes directed at other classmates or bus companions as well. I know we're in an era when we're supposed to validate children's concerns and encourage them to come to us with anything -- after all, maybe this time when that whiny kid comes out of the bathroom he'll be saying that a bad man tried to touch him and not that his classmate got a little water on his arm at the sink, like the last five or six times. We should always be ready to listen with sympathy and open ears. But honestly, after three or four hours of this, what I mostly wanted to say was, "Oh, mind your own business and shut up." I don't know if I was comforted or disturbed that the teachers and aides took pretty much the same attitude. After all, they deal with this all day, every day. I just have to deal with it on field trips ... and, of course, every night at home here in sibling-rivalry-ville.
Will my daughter finally get the kind of classroom she was supposed to get three years ago? Will accommodations agreed upon in June actually materialize in September? What precisely does "instructional aide" mean? Will our district ever really get how to do inclusion? Stay tuned for another episode of ... "The IEP Zone."
+ + +
JUNE 12, 2002
When last we left my daughter's IEP, it included provisions for an instructional aide for all subjects, which Mom interpreted as meaning a person with special education training in the classroom to do reteaching and provide support, and the school district interpreted as meaning an untrained person to act as a one-on-one aide unable to do reteaching or educational support but really good at hand-holding.
This continues a trend that started three years ago when she was first mainstreamed. That year, "instructional aide" was first interpreted as a special education teacher to be in the classroom for several children who needed support; however, when that teacher interpreted her role as co-teaching and the regular-ed teacher interpreted that as a pain in her butt, the special-ed teacher disappeared and was replaced by an aide who interpreted her role as making copies for the teacher and keeping the special-ed kids out of her hair.
The following year, an instructional aide was promised but never appeared. We made a deal with the principal to have the Basic Skills teacher help my daughter out, and that seemed to work out alright. But at IEP time last year, I was assured that an instructional aide was essential, and that my daughter would be put in a class with other students who needed an aide and that a person with special education training would be in place to help them.
Come this year -- no other special-ed kids in her class, no person with special education training to help. After a month, the very nice but untrained one-on-one aide turned up, and has been helping my girl ever since. What this help consists of, I'm not sure; I've been told she can't make graphic organizers for her, can't coach in test-taking skills, can't do any of the things in the "Inclusion" book I sent in, can't actually talk to me without the teacher present. She does make nice flashcards for vocabulary words, though.
So now, again with the IEP, and again with the "we'll put another child who needs an aide in the same class and give them a trained person to help." It would be really interesting to see if the actual right sort of support would make a difference for my daughter; she's learned about the same whether she's been in a self-contained class or on her own in the mainstream, so I'm skeptical at this point that anything much is going to help or hurt. And skeptical doesn't even begin to describe my feelings about the right sort of support ever actually being provided. Still, it's a nice dream.
+ + +
JUNE 14, 2002
One week and three half-days of school left, and then we're cut loose for summer. My daughter has gone from hating fourth grade to being nostalgic for it; she wishes it were September and she was just starting the year again, instead of facing fifth grade just two months down the road. Next year at this time, she'll be graduating fifth grade and facing middle school, and the both of us will be dreading it. Fifth grade, I can handle.
Summer, too, although it's always a disruptive time, with its good points (can you say "no homework," ladies and gentlemen?) and its bad points (new routines, new drop-off and pick-up times, kids with too much time on their hands). This year should be a little more leisurely than last, since my son isn't going to the Super Expensive Special Needs Camp an hour round-trip away but a smaller regular-ed program just five minutes from home. Of course, now I have to worry about whether he'll fit in there or whether he'll get kicked out. But at least I'll be out of the car while I'm worrying.
Do you ever just think your head is going to explode sometimes from all the questions and worries and quandaries circling within? It seems lately that I can't make a decision without it either having to be re-decided soon after, or opening up a whole range of secondary decisions to be chewed over. My head is full to overflowing with decisions, decisions, decisions. Yesterday, just the added stress of having to decide what to order for my kids at Burger King made me burst into tears, so I may be reaching Critical Mass.
Sometimes I think reading e-mail support group lists makes it worse, because then you have to debate everybody else's decisions in your head as well. Maybe it helps you see that other people have it worse; but more often, for me anyway, it sets up debates in my poor overstuffed head over how I would do something differently than the original poster or her respondents. I suppose I could post my own problems to get other people's help in decision-making, but I'm afraid that new perspectives might only prolong my indecision -- or that everybody would disagree with what I'd almost decided. I do a good enough job of disagreeing with myself, thank you very much.
+ + +
JUNE 11, 2002
We've been talking a lot at school about the developmental level of my son -- or rather, developmental levels, because while he's up to nine-year-old speed in expressive language and close to it in academics, the path from there through motor skills and down to his emotional level of about four is a slippery slope. I don't know what level the rest of his class is at emotionally and behaviorally, but on their class field trip yesterday I got a clue: They're at whatever stage it is that involves constantly reporting even the minor indiscretions of your playmates to the nearest adult and seeking immediate redress.
"He pushed me!" "He scratched me!" "He touched my head!" "He made a bad noise!" All day I heard it, usually complaining about my son because I was his mother, but sometimes directed at other classmates or bus companions as well. I know we're in an era when we're supposed to validate children's concerns and encourage them to come to us with anything -- after all, maybe this time when that whiny kid comes out of the bathroom he'll be saying that a bad man tried to touch him and not that his classmate got a little water on his arm at the sink, like the last five or six times. We should always be ready to listen with sympathy and open ears. But honestly, after three or four hours of this, what I mostly wanted to say was, "Oh, mind your own business and shut up." I don't know if I was comforted or disturbed that the teachers and aides took pretty much the same attitude. After all, they deal with this all day, every day. I just have to deal with it on field trips ... and, of course, every night at home here in sibling-rivalry-ville.
Will my daughter finally get the kind of classroom she was supposed to get three years ago? Will accommodations agreed upon in June actually materialize in September? What precisely does "instructional aide" mean? Will our district ever really get how to do inclusion? Stay tuned for another episode of ... "The IEP Zone."
+ + +
JUNE 12, 2002
When last we left my daughter's IEP, it included provisions for an instructional aide for all subjects, which Mom interpreted as meaning a person with special education training in the classroom to do reteaching and provide support, and the school district interpreted as meaning an untrained person to act as a one-on-one aide unable to do reteaching or educational support but really good at hand-holding.
This continues a trend that started three years ago when she was first mainstreamed. That year, "instructional aide" was first interpreted as a special education teacher to be in the classroom for several children who needed support; however, when that teacher interpreted her role as co-teaching and the regular-ed teacher interpreted that as a pain in her butt, the special-ed teacher disappeared and was replaced by an aide who interpreted her role as making copies for the teacher and keeping the special-ed kids out of her hair.
The following year, an instructional aide was promised but never appeared. We made a deal with the principal to have the Basic Skills teacher help my daughter out, and that seemed to work out alright. But at IEP time last year, I was assured that an instructional aide was essential, and that my daughter would be put in a class with other students who needed an aide and that a person with special education training would be in place to help them.
Come this year -- no other special-ed kids in her class, no person with special education training to help. After a month, the very nice but untrained one-on-one aide turned up, and has been helping my girl ever since. What this help consists of, I'm not sure; I've been told she can't make graphic organizers for her, can't coach in test-taking skills, can't do any of the things in the "Inclusion" book I sent in, can't actually talk to me without the teacher present. She does make nice flashcards for vocabulary words, though.
So now, again with the IEP, and again with the "we'll put another child who needs an aide in the same class and give them a trained person to help." It would be really interesting to see if the actual right sort of support would make a difference for my daughter; she's learned about the same whether she's been in a self-contained class or on her own in the mainstream, so I'm skeptical at this point that anything much is going to help or hurt. And skeptical doesn't even begin to describe my feelings about the right sort of support ever actually being provided. Still, it's a nice dream.
+ + +
JUNE 14, 2002
One week and three half-days of school left, and then we're cut loose for summer. My daughter has gone from hating fourth grade to being nostalgic for it; she wishes it were September and she was just starting the year again, instead of facing fifth grade just two months down the road. Next year at this time, she'll be graduating fifth grade and facing middle school, and the both of us will be dreading it. Fifth grade, I can handle.
Summer, too, although it's always a disruptive time, with its good points (can you say "no homework," ladies and gentlemen?) and its bad points (new routines, new drop-off and pick-up times, kids with too much time on their hands). This year should be a little more leisurely than last, since my son isn't going to the Super Expensive Special Needs Camp an hour round-trip away but a smaller regular-ed program just five minutes from home. Of course, now I have to worry about whether he'll fit in there or whether he'll get kicked out. But at least I'll be out of the car while I'm worrying.
Monday, June 03, 2002
June 3-7, 2002
JUNE 3, 2002
Yesterday, I took my daughter to a record store to buy a "Kidz Bop" CD -- children singing sanitized versions of contemporary pop songs -- and as we sorted through the kiddie discs, the Barney CDs and the Nick Jr. soundtracks and lullabies, our ears were assaulted by music that I can only call ugly. Ugly in the sound of it, ugly in the words, ugly in the attitude. Yet unavoidably attention-grabbing, in the same fashion as a jackhammer outside your window. The genre was rap, the CD displayed all over the store was by Eminem, and a quick question to the salesgirl confirmed that it was indeed that much debated-over "artist" we were listening to. It sure the heck wasn't the "Kidz Bop" version.
I try to keep a pretty open mind about music. My own mother always tried to respect and embrace the music I enjoyed, and I appreciated that a great deal. I'd like to do the same for my own daughter, and so far it hasn't been hard; the worst of it is listening to things like "Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's Greatest Hits," and as long as she's shopping in the "Kidz Bop" aisle, I don't have to worry too much about parent advisory stickers. On this particular record-store outing, I was happy to see that she was wincing at Eminem's aural assault as much as I was. As we walked out, she agreed with me that it was awful ... until I referred to it as rap. Then she snapped to: "That was rap? I like rap! I liked that." So apparently, the youthful imperative to enjoy things your parents hate has made it through to her psyche, if not yet her pocketbook.
If I ever have reason to believe that she really does like that stuff, so help me, I'll have to find a way to like it with her. Maybe I can grow my hair a little longer so she won't notice the earplugs.
+ + +
JUNE 4, 2002
This is what comes of my plotting to find the perfect class for my kids. I've been in a tizzy since my son's IEP meeting due to his teacher's suggestion that he skip the next class on his current self-contained track and go to the one above. I've been wrestling with various aspects of this decision, and particularly with the idea of whether Teacher B (the one he'd skip a class for) would be a better match for him than Teacher A (the next one down the road). I was a little more familiar with Teacher B than A, had seen her interact favorably with my guy, and had just about decided that she would be the smartest choice for him.
And so, of course, today comes the word that she's resigned.
So now, instead of Teacher B to reckon with, I have Teacher X. Maybe somebody brand new to teaching, maybe somebody brand new to this particular school and its politics, maybe somebody new to handling boys who are real handfuls. My son's class has taken apart a couple of substitutes this year, and although he would be with an older and presumably more sedate crowd in the skipped-up class, I do think that he benefits from teachers with a lot of experience and a full bag of tricks. So now the scale tips back to Teacher A, who at least is a known quantity.
This is why I should never try to make or manipulate these sorts of placement decisions. It always backfires. At least this time, I know in June. The last time something like this happened, the teacher changed only days before school started. Really, I'm much better off letting the bureaucrats in the special-ed office make the final decision on which classroom my boy will be in. That way, I at least have the right to whine and complain.
+ + +
JUNE 5, 2002
My kids' school holds a field day every year in early June, ostensibly to give the students a nice healthy day outside where they can be active and loud without annoying their teachers, but also to give parents a chance to volunteer and participate and feel like part of the school community. And that's just what I did yesterday at this year's event. I manned the water table, I helped with the Hippity Hop game, I picknicked with my son's class, I watched my daughter from afar (where she's most comfortable having me be when she's at school, thank you very much), and I even learned a few things myself. Such as:
* If I look a big ol' fifth grade boy in the eye and tell him to get off the Hippity Hop ball right now and get in line, he'll actually do it! Wasn't sure about that when I started.
* When you replace the bottle atop a water cooler, you need to actually poke a hole through the plastic at the top of the new bottle, or no water will come out, leaving you with 25 thirsty kindergartners and a lot of empty cups.
* Most of the kids on my son's special-ed track take everything a grown-up says at face value, making gentle silly teasing pretty difficult. His teacher laughed, though.
* My son's best friend likes to hug, often way past the point at which the hug-ee would like some oxygen please.
* Athletic games that I would have hated participating in as a kid are a lot more fun now that I'm an adult on the sidelines watching other poor children have to do them. C'mon kids, you can do it, it's fun!
+ + +
JUNE 6, 2002
I’d like to write something right about now concerning the Hallmark adoption series that started last weekend -- about how it did or didn’t take an appropriate tone toward adoption, whether its language was correct, whether it hit that line between sensational and boring, how it did or didn’t foster discussion between my children and myself about the special way we’ve formed our family. I’d like to, but as it turns out, we don’t get the Hallmark channel. I settled everybody down in front of the channel it was supposed to be on Saturday night, but instead of heartwarming stories of parents and children coming together, we got a priest talking about art. I’m sure he was very interesting, but we didn’t stick around to find out.
The next night, on what should have been the first regular night of the series, we got static on that channel. So apparently I have to make some special deal with my cable operator to get all Hallmark, all the time. And here I thought I already had more channels than I knew what to do with.
In the meantime, the kids and I made do watching our tapes of “Sarah, Plain and Tall” and “The Parent Trap,” movies that, while not specifically about adoption, certainly involve families coming together in nontraditional ways. And hey, “Sarah” is a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. Maybe one day they’ll sell us tapes of their adoption series, too.
+ + +
JUNE 7, 2002
Is it just me, or is the Internet obsessed with weight? More and more lately, it seems the annoying ads that pop up as I work my way around, say, Yahoo's world o' pages are weight-loss oriented. Weight Watchers is everywhere; another company offers to let me input my weight (fat chance of that) and let them tailor a program for me; even Avon is hawking some sort of weight loss powder. If I was the least bit paranoid, I'd suspect that these ads were being individualized for me, and someone had a secret camera primed to record my every added pound. But it probably just means that Yahoo customers spend so much time at the computer that they're bound to be on the hefty side.
Maybe I'll have to spend time in other domains to improve my self-esteem. There's one that always serves gambling ads, so I can be fat and poor, too, and another that's pushing an extremely creepy hidden camera (maybe the one they're using to record my weight gain). I seem to see a lot of debt-consolidation ads, maybe for the people who've lost it all gambling and been sued for secret-camera peeping. Come to think of it, maybe I'm better off with the weight loss ads. Just the sight of them reduces my appetite.
Monday, May 27, 2002
May 27-31, 2002
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.
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 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.