And one more thing

Since today seems to be the day when I'm writing about what other writers are writing rather than writing anything in particular myself, let me just add that one more new piece of prose not composed by me has been posted to the Mothers with Attitude site. It's a very moving challenge from the mother of a child with special needs to those who presume they could walk in his shoes. You'll want to print it out and wave it in front of every person in your child's life whose consciousness needs to be raised. Thanks to Dee O'Neill for venting so effectively for us all.

New on Mothers with Attitude

I'm happy to announce that my project of finally adding new titles to the MWA Bookstore is underway, with a passel of volumes placed on the virtual shelves of the adoption section. Most of the books that turn up in our bookstore are either my personal favorites or books that have been recommended by other parents on e-mail support lists, so shop with confidence. With any luck, the other sections of the bookstore -- on autism, fetal alcohol, other special needs and parenting special needs -- will be seeing new additions within the next few weeks. ... Another recent addition to the site is a new humor piece by Julie Donner Andersen, author of PAST: Perfect! PRESENT: Tense!: Insights From One Woman's Journey as the Wife Of A Widower. If you enjoyed her views on why Fear Factor Is For Wimps, check out her take on clothes shopping. It made me feel a lot better about my new favorite outfit, which is an oversize L.L. Bean corduroy dress that a co-worker found at the Salvation Army; a pair of baggy tights purchased from a Banana Republic store over a decade ago, back when it was a funky little jungle catalog and not a Too Limited For You; and L.L. Bean sport slides so easy on the feet that I'm glad we don't have a full-length mirror in the house so I can't see how dorky they look. The ensemble brings to mind the words "broad side of a barn," but the older I get, the more I think there's a lot to be said for comfort. Julie's new column, "Therapeutic Laughing," will appear on MWA twice a month.

The neighborhood grocer

A new supermarket has opened up in our neighborhood. Right on our very street. In fact, it's right in our very home -- in my son's closet, as a matter of fact. After months of wading through the plastic bags and empty food containers he regularly uses in his shopping games, I went ahead and emptied his small closet of clothes, set up some shelves and assorted the boxes and bottles thereon. It's the world's mini-est minimart, but it gets a surprising amount of business. Just last night, the contents were completely bought out two or three times, only to be returned to the shelves for the next (same) customer. If the cash register wasn't processing plastic coins, this would be one high-profit establishment. As it is, I'm hoping the profit will come in reduced room-cleanup time, as my guy focuses more and more on putting imitation foodstuffs in his shopping bags and less and less on filling them with every uprooted toy in his room. As long as he's happy shopping at an imitation supermarket instead of an imitation Toys 'R Us, we'll be fine.

Sprinkle on a little spinach

Now here's a cool company: One that helps parents by providing a product that actually tricks kids into eating their veggies, and then helps parents again by donating a portion of the proceeds to providing therapy for kids who need it. The company is Healthy Sprinkles, the product is freeze-dried vegetables and fruits ground to a powder so fine even a healthy-food-ophobe won't know it's there, and the charity is the Side by Side fund, through which money will "be given to some family with a special needs child who can't afford speech therapy, occupational therapy, doctor's care (that pesky insurance companies won't cover) and general necessities. We're also pretty keen on helping out single parents that have a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down Syndrome, Mental Retardation." Eating healthy foods isn't a big battleground issue in our house, but I almost feel like buying some of this stuff just to support what sounds like an entirely neat operation. Now if they could only come up with some sneaky way to make big smelly 12-year-old girls use deodorant, I'd take out stock.

Clotheshorses wanted

Do you have what it takes to be in a Gap ad? The clothing retailer is conducting a contest in which your photo and your definition of your own personal style may be enough to get you jetted off to a photo shoot. They're looking for babies, kids and grown-ups (do babies have a personal style? I suppose a witty-writing adult could make it so), and invite folks to enter at Gap stores or on-line (adults only). No pay, other than a free trip; but 15 minutes of fame, for sure. Wouldn't it be neat if one of these "general public" ads featured a child or adult with special needs? Given the idiosyncracy of a lot of the Gap photo ads, they seem like an outfit that might go for it. Ah, we can dream.

Show seeks stories

Yesterday I posted some stats on corporal punishment, and today it looks like the folks behind the syndicated John Walsh Show are looking to talk to some of those 72% of Americans who are against rod-wielding in school. Among the topics for which the show's producers are seeking stories is, "Has your son or daughter's teacher crossed the line (i.e. physically striking or threatening them) or abused them in some other non-sexual way?" If you've got a horror story to tell, you could get a trip to NYC and a seat on the show. Also on the search list for future episodes: Fathers who can't deal with their sweet little daughters turning into teen-agers; the daughters and wives thereof; folks with extreme fears and phobias; and "a mom who has gone above and beyond and done something extraordinary for a child or family." Well, goodness. Don't we all?

Ginger ale all around

It was just a quick few lines on The West Wing last night, but it was heartening for those who care about the prevention of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in that group who caught my breath and leaned forward during last night's episode when newly re-elected Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt, who is expecting twins, appeared to be drinking champagne at her victory party. Would they let that go uncommented upon? I wondered in horror. But no. Her ex-husband (and father of the twins, but it's a long story) ran across the room yelling for her not to drink alcohol because she was pregnant, and she told him it was only ginger ale. For a show that has featured a lot of casual alcohol use, in and outside of the workplace, it was nice to see a message, however fleeting, that no matter how big a landslide you win by, you don't drink when you're drinking for two (or, in this case, three).

What I'm reading

It's hard for me to believe, considering the direction my literary habits have drifted in recent years, that I am just about to finish reading my third book in a row that has absolutely nothing to do with parenting, special needs, special education, or anything remotely kid-related. Surely there's got to be some vital child development tome that I am missing to engage in this frivolous perusal of personally gratifying nonfiction. The three that have recently engaged me, and which I would recommend for anyone wishing to choose a little something from somewhere other than the amazon.com parenting section, are: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, a fascinating look at the evolutionary implications of apples, potatos, cannabis and tulips; The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, a surprisingly engaging philosophical journey through the latter decades of the 19th century; and Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks, a portrait of the neurologist as a young chemist. Wait a minute, now... that's two books on science and one on history, curiously school-like subjects for non-child-involved reading. I should know by now -- nothing about my life is non-child-involved. Next on my reading stack is the enormous biography of John Adams my friend loaned me. Wonder if my daughter's studying the revolution this year?

Spanking still a hit with parents

Do you spank your kids? If you do, you've got a lot of company. An ABC News poll found that half of Americans with minor children don't believe in sparing the rod, and 65% percent said they approved of spanking, even if they didn't do it themselves. But what's okay for Mom and Dad isn't necessarily okay for teachers and principals; 72% of respondents disapproved of corporal punishment in schools. Southerners were found most likely to spank their kids, at 62%; parents with college degrees were least likely to spank, at 38%. The greatest support for school-sponsored spankings was in the South, at 35%; the least was in the East, at 13%.

Frankly, I was stunned by these statistics -- but then, I'm an East Coast dwelling, college-degree-holding child spoiler, so what do you expect? Still, given the proliferation of books on psychologically correct methods of child-rearing, and our overriding societal sensitivity to even the appearance of child abuse, I thought spanking had generally fallen out of favor, and had certainly been driven out of schools for fear of lawsuits. Bring up the subject of spanking on many e-mail lists for parents, and you'll be flamed to a golden brown. So who knew it was still so popular? I don't think I'll take it up to get in with the majority, but this research does give me a new weapon when my kids step out of line: I can remind them of how lucky they are that they didn't get adopted by Southerners.

Music to my ears

I'm getting a kick out of the fact that my daughter's latest hot musical faves are mostly old enough to be her grandparents, or even worse, hot musical faves of her mother when she was teenish herself. (Yes. I was. Honestly, there was a time when I was not an old woman. No matter what my girl tells you.) When Little Miss Preteen shares how much she loves that new song by that guy James Taylor, or Rod Stewart, or Phil Collins, or Cher (okay, I had to straighten her out on that one), it's kind of fun to point out that they're all about three times older than another one of her recent idols, Avril Lavigne. To be honest, I don't think my daughter believes me. But it still makes me feel, oh, at least a little bit hip.

Now, my mom always made an effort to keep up with the music I liked when I was a pop-loving preteen. But she had to work at it. She had to learn the names and listen to the music and find a way to mesh it with her own much different musical tastes. These days, it's easy. Everything new is old. The artists I grew up on are still hanging around. My daughter and I listen to the same radio station, and she's impressed when I know the names of all the songs, many of which were recorded well before her birth. One day, perhaps, she'll decide that she likes rap or some other so-called music that will challenge me to stretch my musical boundaries. For now, though, we're carrying the same tune.

Weighing in on adoption

So Calista Flockhart, weighing about 57 pounds, can adopt with ease, but things are different when you're on the other end of the weight spectrum. That's what a Scottish woman is claiming, anyway, in a complaint to the Glasgow City Council. The 46-year-old, 308-pound nurse asserts that a social worker twice told her she was "too fat" to adopt. She and her partner, who are "desperate to have children," had answered a city-wide call for adoptive parents, attended a training course, and undergone medical exams, only to be told that her weight disqualified them. And you know, in solidarity with other adoptive parents, and in the understanding that there are children in Glasgow in as desperate need of homes as these prospective parents are of children, I guess I should be outraged right along with her. But fence-sitter that I am, I have to wonder: Don't you have to draw the line somewhere? Should a 500-pound person adopt? Does everybody have an inalienable right to parent? Does desperation to parent entitle you in some way to a child? Are social workers always wrong? Alright, I know we're all tempted to say yes to that last one, but maybe the social worker's biggest mistake here was not in turning this couple down, but in saying why quite so blatantly.

We love a parade

Normally, I never take my kids to things like parades. I try not to take my son places where, if he gets overstimulated, I can't make a quick getaway, and my daughter is sometimes spooked by crowds and noise. Plus, I'm lazy. So our city's Veteran's Day parade would never have gotten me out of the house yesterday if it wasn't for one thing: It was lining up in our backyard.

Well, actually, it was lining up in the parking lot of the high school right on the other side of our backyard fence, but we could still see the gathering, gathering, gathering marchers up close and personal from our rear window. One of my daughter's friends was marching with one of the bands, and he came over twice to use our bathroom (perhaps the authors of "Refrigerator Rights," below, should think about a sequel called "Potty Privileges"). After watching the bands warm up and the fire trucks pull up and the army vehicles line up and the big flag get unfurled, it was kind of irresistible to walk around the corner when they were finally ready to march and take in the show.

And of course, my kids loved it, making me feel guilty for not exposing them to things like this when they're not mere footsteps away. There was plenty room for my son to jump and dance to the band music and spin around in fevered excitement, and if anybody minded that he kept shouting "Ahoy! Ahoy!" whenever representatives of the Navy passed, they didn't say so. There were enough kids we recognized among the marchers to make it a little social exercise for my daughter, and I even recognized one of my co-workers playing drums. It was a real community-inspiring affair, and I was pleased that we got to try it without it being trying. Now if I could just get them to start the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from that same parking lot, then we'd really have something.

Help yourself

A new book entitled Refrigerator Rights posits that there is a level of intimacy at which friends and family members feel comfortable helping themselves to the contents of your refrigerator, and that too many of us have too few people at that degree of closeness in our lives. And furthermore, that this is a bad thing. Clearly, the authors' iceboxes must be in nicer shape than mine. I do have some friends who aren't afraid to raid my fridge, but they know to sniff the cottage cheese and inspect the strawberries. Mostly, they stick to soda.

But if having friends with refrigerator rights is a sign of social success, then my daughter is doing much better in that area than I thought, because her buddies think nothing of rooting through our refrigerator, our pantry, our drawers in their insatiable search for snacks. One young amigo forayed far enough back in our fridge to find an ancient Lunchable I had forgotten was even there. She argued with me when I insisted that, at this point in its lifespan, it was neither lunchable nor edible, and then huffed off to clean us out of Pop Tarts. At the time, I just thought she was being rude, but now I understand that I was violating her refrigerator rights. And rights must be respected, mold or no.

Hey, doctors know best, right?

I guess we're all feeling pretty relieved now that Danish researchers have declared, unequivocally and once and for all, that vaccines and autism have nothing to do with one another. Phew! What a load off our minds that is. Bring on the needles! Far be it for us to worry needlessly over our children's well-being when medical science gives us the final word. Because health researchers are never, ever wrong. Just ask anybody who's ever been on hormone replacement therapy...

You know, the thing is, I'm not really even all that sure myself that there's a connection between autism and vaccines. And I'm not all that sure that not vaccinating your child against potentially devastating diseases is a responsible course of action for parents to take when that connection is so uncertain. But I've heard enough anecdotal evidence to convince me that there's some smoke here, and somebody should be looking for the fire. And the medical profession's utter indifference to that just ticks me off. This latest research and the confident headlines that accompanied it reminded me of an "ER" episode a few seasons back in which a child died of measles because his mother had deliberately not had him vaccinated due to fears of autism. Dr. Carter was about as black-and-white convinced that she was wrong as the Danish researchers seem to be. And if answers in the real world were as easy to come by as they are on TV, we'd have no worries at all.

News flash: Parenting emotionally challenged kids is hard!

A research report from Ohio State University finds that it's really hard to raise children with emotional disorders, and that it doesn't get any easier with time. That's not news to a lot of parents, but it's nice to have it recognized by somebody who's not actually doing it. The researchers note, as I often have, that the emotional state of the parent can have a huge effect on the emotional state of the child. But as time goes one, they also note, the emotional state of the child starts to have a more and more debilitating effect on the emotional state of the parent, so that living in a dysfunctional family is damaging to every family member, not just the young ones. The recommendation, thankfully, is for more services for families in this situation. Sure hope somebody listens.

A note about studies like this, though -- the findings in this one sound right, but having recently done an over-the-phone survey on raising a child with Fetal Alcohol Effects, I wonder if just asking questions about how a caregiver feels tends to make that caregiver feel worse. The OSU report states that "To measure the well-being of caregivers, the researchers asked them to rate the level of stress, pleasure and responsibility they were feeling with regard to different aspects of their lives including work, home, relationships and physical health." That's somewhat similar to the questions I was asked, and I have to admit, if you force me to sit down and quantify it, I am stressed, I am exhausted, I do sometimes just sit down and cry, I do feel overwhelmed. But is that my experience at every moment of every day, do I constantly move under the shroud of those feelings, is that the way I perceive myself? No. Some people do, no doubt. But I wonder if you can ever really get a sense of a family's daily reality through questionnaires like this.

Get your hands off my cupcakes!

Big to-do at one of our local elementary schools on Election Day this week. It wasn't in the interest of any candidate or ideology, and it didn't involve hanging chads or electoral improprieties of that nature. It involved parents, but didn't have anything to do with outrage over kids getting a half-day off school (I might have marched in that parade). At the most basic level, it was a dispute between two deeply cherished American rights: the right to vote, and the right to hold bake sales.

The Home and School Association at this particular palace of learning had chosen, as Home and School Associations will, to hold an Election Day fund-raiser. And, as is not uncommon in our town, they chose to hold it in the form of a bake sale in the school gym, right by the voting booths. Within 100 yards of the voting booths, apparently, because an election official decided their bake sale was in violation of voting laws and they had to vamoose. To which the Home and School president said something along the lines of, "You'll move these cookies only when you pry them from my cold, dead hands."

Things kind of mushroomed from there. Senior citizens, outraged by having their right to home-baked goods trampled upon, started paying $5 for 50-cent cupcakes in a show of support. (Why they can't be that generous when it comes time to vote for the school budget, who knows.) More election officials arrived, and so did some city councilmen, and finally those brave local politicians solved the problem, as local politicans will, by throwing money at it: They bought out the bake sale so that everybody could go home happy. Next time, the bake sale may be off; but this time the parents made about twice as much for their donuts and pastries as they've made in elections past.

And what do we learn from all this? I'm hoping we've learned that you can make a lot more money from fund-raisers if you let people pay you to stop having them. Heck, I'd pay top dollar to get out of hawking gift wrap and chocolates next year. Really, Home and School organizations, get with it. There's money to be made.

Another emergency

My mother-in-law, who lives in the downstairs portion of our house, got an ambulance ride to the emergency room this morning for the second time in as many months. Again, there wasn't anything so scarily wrong with her that the experience was traumatic for the kids; and again, I was struck by how incredibly nice emergency personnel are, when they could so well be excused for having no time and no patience. One of the paramedics had been to our house the last time and remembered my son by name, assigning him once again to guard the ambulance, which both made the boy feel important and got him out of the way. After the ambulance and police car left, my guy had a long conversation with the man and woman assigned to the Mobile Intensive Care Unit vehicle; they happily let him inspect their keys, and showed him all the nooks and crannies of their truck. "Nobody ever asks about this stuff!" said the man happily, while the woman rifled through the drawers in the back to find freebies they could give their young inquisitor. He wound up with an oxygen mask, some electrodes, a roll of tape and some gauze, and a pen. Not bad for a morning's work.

Field trip frenzy

I don't know if our school district is trying to make up for all the field trips cancelled last year in the wake of September 11 or what, but they seem to be field trip crazy this year. For my son's class, anyway -- all I can remember from past years is one lousy field trip somewhere in May or June, but now it's just November and they've already got their second outing scheduled. And I don't mean to seem ungrateful for the enrichment and all, but -- sheesh, can't the kids just stay in their classrooms and learn stuff? Please?

Maybe for "regular kids" (whatever that means), multiple expeditions are a magical source of hands-on education, or at least a break from boring predictability. But for a kid like my son -- with fetal alcohol effects, sensory integration problems and a general overreliance on order and routine -- well, with a kid like him, you're just asking for trouble. The first field trip was to an outdoor historical park, and though I worried like crazy, he came through okay. (My mother would say it's because I worried like crazy that he came through okay, but that's a different subject.) The second one, coming up in a few weeks, is to a play. A play. I hear all you moms of kids with sensory integration disorder laughing, or maybe gasping, at that one. I would never take him to a play, because the likelihood of him staying still and quiet for an hour is pretty slim, and the likelihood of him screaming and jumping and disrupting the theatrical experience for everybody is pretty high. But his teacher thinks he'll be fine. I told her to make sure he's sitting on an aisle.

Helping parents help kids

Here's an interesting sounding book idea from the latest issue of the Half the Planet Foundation newsletter: a collection of essays in which adults with disabilities or special health needs share the things they wish their parents had read or heard about when they were growing up. I've read plenty of books about what doctors and other "experts" think I should know, but not much from those who have actually struggled with my children's problems; Temple Grandin's books on autism are about it, I think. So this seems like just an exceptionally good idea. Any adults who would like to participate by submitting a 1,500 word essay and 150 word bio can contact stan@disabilitiesbooks.com for more information, or see the online version of Half the Planet's November newsletter.

Celestial nurturing

I was just reading the back of the Cheerios box while breakfasting with my son, and found a little parent-minded section on the back called "The Nurturing Corner." This helpful featurette contained "Five Great Ways to Show Your Kids You Care." Included among them were just the normal, child-mortifying tips like "Put a kind note in your child's lunchbox" and "Go for bike rides together." One suggested putting together a large puzzle, which in my house would take about a month to do and then about a month to clean up; and another involved setting up as many dominos as possible and letting them tumble, which in my house, well, ditto. But the one that really made me wonder just what sorts of households Cheerios copywriters live in was this one: "Buy a telescope and look at the stars together." Buy a telescope? This is what we have to do now to show our kids we care -- buy a telescope? And here I thought all we had to do was feed them Cheerios.

From the "What can their parents be thinking?" file

I happened to fall asleep in front of the TV a little later than usual and caught some of the commercials that play during "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. Two were for video games so horrifically violent I had to close my eyes. Do people really let their kids play with stuff like that? There's no way these could be taken for good healthy fun. Terrorist training is more like it. The videos were both rated "M" for mature, but I think that should be changed to "P" for "will turn your kid into a psycho killer." And then removed from sale. But then, I'm a wimp. ... Apparently it's not enough that kids are being given psychiatric drugs that have only been tested on adults -- now doctors are offering surgery to teenagers that is only questionably safe for grown-ups. According to recent news reports, obese kids as young as 13 have undergone gastric bypass surgery, in which the the upper part of the stomach is stitched closed and the intestine is re-routed so as to limit absorption of nutrients. It leaves you unable to eat more than a few cups of food a day, but maybe you'll look a little more like Britney Spears, so the trade-off's like totally worth it. It's hard to believe there's not a better solution for these kids. Or that parents would think this an acceptable one. Harumph.

A cold or flu near you

If there's one thing you gotta love about the Web, it's the way it allows advertisers to reach out to consumers in a way that blends faux concern and blatant marketing in one snazzy package. Take the ever-so-helpful Cold and Flu Watch site from the folks at Vicks. Just enter your zip code, and you can find out the prevalence of colds and flu in your particular neck of the woods. In my town, happily, the risk of colds and flu is low; the most common symptoms in my area are cough, nasal congestion and chest congestion, which sure sounds like a cold to me, but what do I know. At least I'm lucky enough not to live in Manchester, Oklahoma City, Riverside, Nashville and Philadelphia, which the site lists as having the highest cold and flu risk. If you do live there, well, gezundheit.

This would seem to mean that my daughter, who has been coughing more or less constantly for the past week, has very little claim to the flu, or even much of one to a cold. But of course, I already knew that, because I have administered the time-honored Mom test: If you haven't got a fever, you're not sick. It's off to school for you, missy. If you don't have enough ingenuity to hold up the thermometer to a lightbulb, you need all the schooling you can get. Yes, ma'am. Because I say so, that's why. And so does Vicks.

November 4-6, 2002

NOVEMBER 4, 2002

Despite her pre-teen protestations about hating school and living for the weekend, I can always tell how much my daughter likes going to class when she's sick, and I suggest that she can't go. "No, really, I'm fine!" she's croaking this morning, the cough and the huge wad of Kleenex bunched in her hand notwithstanding. She's got a cold, alright. Maybe it's because she was jumping on an outdoor trampoline in 40-degree weather on Saturday with a good friend and an inadequate jacket. Maybe it's because I let her go out trick-or-treating on Thursday jacket-free. Maybe it's because her instructional aide at school had a cold last week, and this germ transfer is proof that she's still leaning over my girl too much. Or maybe it just is.

When I was growing up, I never wanted to stay home from school either; of course, I was an obnoxious Type A over-achiever and could not bear the thought that someone might learn something ahead of me. That's sure not the case with my daughter, but I know she enjoys the social aspects of school and the routine of it and the recess and the gym (the latter two were about the only reasons I'd WANT to stay home from school, but again, I was a way different kid), and staying home is boring. (Mama makes sure of that.) We still go by the "if you don't have a fever, you get your butt to school" rule here, which means that I send sniffling, sneezing, coughing, wheezing kids to school on a regular basis during the winter, which I'm sure endears me to the teachers. Hey, if they'd make the sick aides stay home, maybe we wouldn't have a problem.

+ + +

NOVEMBER 5, 2002

Peer pressure reared its ugly head and bit my daughter this month, and our local phone company tattled to Mama. Fortunately, it's not phone calls to China or to astronomically priced toll services that her friends urged her to make, just three-way phone calls to include an extra friend in conversations. I didn't even know you could make three-way calls from our phone until I got last month's phone bill, with its 75-cent charge for each one. I let my sweet little preteen know at that time that there'd better be no more such calls dialed from our phone. What her friends dial is their mothers' business, but if I saw more 75 cent charges on our phone bill, there would be trouble. She promised she wouldn't do it.

And so comes this month's bill. And five 75-cent charges.

Under mild cross-examination she admitted that, yes, a few times she had let her buddy talk her into dialing. Her friend just would not quit, and finally, to shut her up, she had done the thing that Mama had said not to. And she didn't really see what the big deal was until I took the $3.75 out of her compact-disc savings fund.

I explained that it wasn't so much the extra phone charges that worried me, but the fact that she would let her friend talk her into doing something that she knew she shouldn't do. She has to learn to speak up for herself, and here's a $3.75 lesson why. I lectured her, I lectured her friend, I made it very clear to everybody that my girl is not to make those calls, and now I sit back and hope and wait for next month's phone bill to tell me if I got through. This is a very small experiment in peer pressure resistance, and the consequences of failure are relatively cheap. As she heads into her teenage years, the tolls of giving in to your friends are liable to be much, much higher. I sure hope she gets the message while we're still just talking about phone bills.

+ + +

NOVEMBER 6, 2002

Well, election day has finally passed, and however you feel about the results, I think we all have to admit that our nation is significantly better this morning in one important way: NO MORE CAMPAIGN ADS. Yee-ha! At last, we can watch TV or listen to the radio without the risk of getting caught in a mudfight.

I don’t know if it was true across the nation, but this round of campaigning here in the northeast seemed to be especially unseemly. Every time I thought ads couldn’t stoop any lower, they did. Every time an ugly ad made me sympathize with one candidate, that candidate volleyed back with one even uglier. I’m long past the age of feeling idealistic about politicians, and I’ve almost made my peace with the notion of lessers among evils, but do they have to rub our face in it all quite so blatantly?

I mean, goodness. Wasn’t there ever a time when people running for office talked about themselves, and not about the other guy? Wasn’t there ever a time when candidates tried to sell voters on their own beliefs and intentions, rather than getting the electorate to believe the worst about the intentions of their opponent? Maybe not. Maybe it’s always been like this, and the technology’s just better now. But when the normal run of product-pushing commercials seem like a peaceful relief after endless election ads, I think someone may want to rethink a little strategy. Please?

October 28-November 1, 2002

OCTOBER 28, 2002

My kids don't know what they want to be for Halloween, which is scary since it means we'll have to do everything last-minute ... but on the other hand, gives me an opportunity to sneak in with costumes that don't require me to go to the overcrowded party store and pick through the gross costumes looking for something that fits them and doesn't give me fits. Since I'm no sewer, my home-made ideas this year are falling into the found-object category: My son can wear parts of his dad's work uniform and be Supermarket Produce Guy! My daughter can wear an old bowling shirt of mine, carry a bowling bag for her treats, and be Bowling Girl! I'm thisclose to convincing them that these ideas are actually good.

If that doesn't work, then we'll have to get desperate. My daughter's skeleton costume from last year is still hanging on the back of her grandma's door downstairs, and will probably fit if we cut off the feet. There's an ancient Oreo cookie costume in the attic that might fit my son, or else he can go as his favorite found object, a plastic shopping bag; there are certainly enough of them in his room to fashion a costume. Then of course, there's my favorite possibility: We just close the curtains, turn on the TV, ignore the doorbell, and pretend there is no such thing as Halloween. My chances of convincing the kids of the goodness of that idea are pretty slim, though. .

+ + +

OCTOBER 29, 2002

The other day a nice lady called from the Heart Association asking me to donate -- not my money, but my time to send letters to all my neighbors asking them to donate money. I trotted out my usual, somewhat cynical but nonetheless accurate excuse: Ma'am, I have two children with special needs, and I just can't spare the time to do anything but involve myself with their many pressing challenges. Hey, it's true! And it usually gets chastened telemarketers off the phone pronto.

But not this time. This time, the lady chirpily told me that she has two children with special needs in her family, the sons of her sister, one with Down Syndrome (but "high-functioning!" and "doing so well!"), the other with brain damage so severe that he "will never be normal." We traded nice words about how they all have their gifts and how rewarding it can be having special kids, yada yada yada, and then she finally did hang up.

And I guess I should have had a warm feeling about what a small world it is, and how you can find people touched by special children everywhere you look. But after our conversation, I realized that I had no idea what she meant by "will never be normal," and that that choice of words really got under my skin. What were we talking about here -- a kid who will never walk or talk, or a kid who will never go to Harvard? Why was a child who was "high-functioning" a source of such pride, and a child who "will never be normal" a source of such sorrow? Given the narrowness of the definition of "normal" in our society these days -- where a kid earning less than an A is presumed to have learning disabilities and a child acting like a child is presumed to need medication -- is that a state to which the parents of special needs children even want their offspring to aspire to?

Maybe so. Of course so. I guess I've just become so at home in Holland that it ticks me off when people keep prattling on about Italy. Some days I feel like the lead booster on the Holland Chamber of Commerce, for goodness sake. And on days like that, I want to call that Heart Association lady back and demand that she explain herself. Good thing even charitable telemarketers block their numbers.

+ + +

OCTOBER 30, 2002

Just got back from my daughter's IEP meeting, and I should be on Cloud 9. My requests to encourage independence for this no-longer-quite-so-helpless child were generally well-received; reports indicated great work and progress from my girl; and a major theme of the meeting seemed to be what a wonderful mother I am. Tra la, tra la.

Having heard so many horrific stories from others about IEP meetings in which "wonderful" was not the adjective anybody chose for the parents, and having been in an argumentative meeting or two myself, I am duly grateful for the surpassing pleasantness of this particular get-together. However, having many well-earned suspicious bones in my body, I can't help but worry that I'm just being yes-ed to death here. What folks say in a meeting or put down on a piece of paper is not, after all, the issue, although we often make it so; what matters is what goes on in the classroom. And that can be pretty hard to get a handle on, especially when you have a kid for whom communication is the major challenge.

So far this year, I have no reason to believe that anybody working with my child means any harm. I packed as much specific language about her aide's sphere of appropriate influence in the IEP as I could get, so there's a mechanism in place to make sure she gets the right help and nothing but the right help. There's a good team in place, and I'm inclined to trust. But I sure wish I could verify.

+ + +

OCTOBER 31, 2002

A supermarket chain near us is starting what I think may be a dangerous precedent: trick or treating in its aisles. I know this is an offshoot of the long developing trend in these parts to have kids do their candy collecting at shopping malls for maximum protection, going from store to store instead of door to door. But supermarkets are different. Supermarkets are a place you go every week. And yell at your kids to stop grabbing candy off the shelves. How ya going to do that now when, for one night anyway, they're handing it out for free?

I suppose this could be a problem with the mall, too, with kids tearing around the stores on non-Halloween days trying desperately to find that guy with the candy, but that doesn't worry me much because I never go to the mall. One fluorescent-light, jostling crowds, escalator dance, sensory overload meltdown from my son and you'd know why. The supermarket, though, is harder to avoid and easier to get through with my kiddos ... as long as it never occurs to them to trick or treat there. I imagine us arriving home and finding two produce bags full of cheese samples and kielbasa slices and loose candy from the candy bin and all the coupons the children could grab from those annoying little shelf-side dispensers. Hey, at the supermarket, every day is Halloween!

Door to door is looking better and better.

+ + +

NOVEMBER 1, 2002

October is over. October is my favorite month, not because of Halloween or the crisp fall air or the nearness to or distance from Christmas, but because of the fact that -- at least this year, at least in our school district -- it is the only month in which there are no days off from school. Five solid weeks of full-day school attendance for the little ones, twenty-five days interrupted only by weekends. No half days, no long weekends. Parental bliss.

But now it's gone, and November starts with a bang next week with a half-day off for Election Day and then Thursday and Friday off entirely due to a teacher's convention. And then from there, in short order, there's Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and winter break, and President's Day, and spring break, and snow days, and days off all over the darn place. Not another solid month of school attendance for the remainder of the academic year. And so, I mourn October. It's gone. But it was nice while it lasted.

October 21-25, 2002

OCTOBER 21, 2002

The other day I was helping with a fund-raiser at my kids' school (somebody has to pass out all that wrapping paper) when I noticed class after class filing onto the playground and boarding big yellow school buses. I hoped maybe they were practicing bus etiquette or the mechanics of really big engines, but of course, no: They were practicing for an evacuation, in case of bomb threat or other source of potential hysteria. I don't know if the whole exercise caused consternation among any of the students, but it sure freaked out this mom.

I can huff and puff a little and say my distress over evacuation drills is only because of the disruptiveness they visit upon my son, whose fetal-alcohol-affected brain does not deal with changes in routine well, much less changes in routine that involve being stuffed on a bus with bunches of other students. Fire drills are bad enough, lockdowns are a nightmare, and now this, too? Is the school trying to make him misbehave on purpose? Are his teachers taking the toll all this takes into account when they evaluate his comportment?

But really, you know, the whole idea of evacuations and lockdowns is probably far more traumatic to me than to him. And it's not even so much a sad sign of our times as it is a Mom thing. I remember atomic bomb drills in elementary school, and having my entire high school evacuate to the football field just to be sure we could do it, and there were probably disaster preparations I'm not even remembering -- because they just weren't that big a deal, except as a way to get out of a little work for a while. I'll bet my mom was freaking out, though.

+ + +

OCTOBER 22, 2002

I've been enjoying those new soups-in-a-microwavable-cup-you-can-sip-from-while-driving, and also enjoying the ads that show how deliberately they're being aimed at constantly on-the-go moms like myself. It's hard to always feel like you're rushing somewhere, but nice to know you're also a market share. I'm particularly amused by that moment in the commercial in which the soccer mom loads the kids back into the minivan after their game while sipping a little soup. You gotta wonder: Where did she heat that thing up? Does she have a microwave in the minivan? Did she drive home, nuke the soup, and drive back? And if she left her children's game for that, doesn't she lose points? This is why I personally have encouraged my daughter to pursue bowling, a sport civilized enough to be played indoors in a building with a snack bar. Who needs microwave soup when there are deep-fried mozzarella sticks?

As much as I find these soups not-bad, though, and as likely as I am to buy them again, I wish they'd stop pitching them as being for people who are "too busy to eat." I mean, how decadent is that -- "too busy to eat"? I imagine impoverished people around the globe bopping their heads V-8 style and saying, "Oh, silly me. I'm not starving. I'm just TOO BUSY TO EAT." Myself, I may be in a hurry, but I'm rarely too busy to eat. Too busy to eat something that has vegetables in it, maybe, but there's always time for candy or chips or non-microwave-requiring snacks of all sorts. And guess what: They really ARE ready to eat anytime, anywhere. If I were really too busy to eat, I'd be too busy to locate a microwave, too.

+ + +

OCTOBER 23, 2002

Cheerleading is getting out of hand.

If that wasn't true when I was in high school, when the cheerleaders merely got to be cuter and cooler and crueler than everybody else, it's sure true now, when girls as young as five start competing on cheerleading teams that involve hours of practice, miles of travel, and stunts that grow in height, complexity and danger with every year. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently reported that "Cheerleading causes more than half of the catastrophic injuries (those involving paralysis or death) suffered by all girls competing in sports in the United States."

It's hard to know what's more shocking about that statement -- that cheerleading is such hazardous activity, or that it's now considered a sport.

The AAP recommends better monitoring of cheerleading, better screening to make sure that cheerleaders are in appropriate physical condition for what they're trying to do, proper equipment and footwear -- in other words, if cheerleading's going to get so much more athletic, cheerleaders ought to start behaving like athletes. Could this ever lead to a time when the cheerleading crowns will go not to the most beautiful, tan, and pneumatic female students but to the most fit, talented, able-bodied ones? That would be great, I guess; surely a little bit of payback, anyway, for all of us who always envied those big-breasted bubbleheads. But you know where this is all leading, don't you? Ladies and gentlemen, look for it: Olympic Cheerleading. You know it's coming.

+ + +

OCTOBER 24, 2002

Well, I just could not have been prouder of my son yesterday. It was his first after-school chorus practice, and he did just fine. I honestly would not have thought it possible.

After all, there were so many reasons why he would fail: After-school is his meltdown time where he lets out everything he's been holding in all day; music overstimulates him, as do roomfuls of noisy children; the kids sit on the floor, which usually means he's lying down and rolling around the floor; the choir director, who's also his music teacher, was the only teacher to give him an "unsatisfactory" check on his progress report; his aide leaves before school's even over, so is unavailable for after-school activities; and the very day of the rehearsal, his class had a substitute teacher, which his classrom aide admitted made his behavior pretty rocky.

Oh, the deck seemed stacked against him. And in the days before the rehearsal, I did that thing I do -- identify situations in which my son is doomed to failure, and try to keep him away from them. But the choir director and the classroom aide both said, "Let him try it. Don't say no until you know there's a problem." And although I knew there would be, I followed their advice.

And surprise -- there wasn't one. The choir director had my son sit next to him on the piano bench, and reported that the boy did fine, and could read music pretty well. So score one for everybody but Mom. I'm certainly happy to be wrong, although somewhere deep inside that voice won't stop: It's just one time. It was a fluke. He'll flame out next time. He'll have trouble when the rehearsals move from once a month to once a week. How will he ever make it through a performance?

The voice may be right. But I'm going to stop listening to it for a while. I'm listening to my son's sweet singing voice instead.

+ + +

OCTOBER 25, 2002

Reader Stephanie M. wrote in to say that my dispatch of September 30 really struck a cord, and to share what she's figured out about being the emotional center for her own family:

"I really let all the therapists continually make me the responsible party for my child's behaviors at home. Not the greatest family therapy technique--right? Slowly, over the years, I learned to let go of the guilt and anger at myself because of the severely emotionally disturbed behaviors in our home. The best goal, I found, is the 'maypole attitude.' You become as stable as possible emotionally (consistently calm and cool) and let the children with disabilities attach to you and dance around you wildly. Keeping them sound, as they grow in the family security, as long as they hold that maypole ribbon. This becomes much more difficult when you are sick or exhausted from the 24-7 requirements of your role in their little lives. Containing your exasperation uses more energy than responding loudly to bad behaviors. But the payback is tremendous when they carry their maypole ribbon with them through the adult years... and it leads them home again and again."

A really useful way to look at it, I think. If only the maypole got to dance a little now and again...

October 14-18, 2002

OCTOBER 14, 2002

My son tells me I'm stupid. An idiot. A jackass. And he wants me to shut up. I'm guessing most parents would treat that kind of disrespect seriously, but in my guy's case, I can never be sure if the hurtful things he says are genuine or generally uncontrollable neurological blips. Probably a little of both. But there's enough benefit of the doubt to be had that I usually just ignore him. It's still not so nice to hear, though.

It's comforting to know, anyway, that "stupid" is a top-10 word for boys in his age group; his friend's mother told me her son has been declaring just about everything in sight stupid for months. And I sure know where my son got the word "jackass" -- his dad uses it every time another driver on the road exhibits less than stellar car-handling skills. All the more reason to watch what you say, every minute, with kids. It may feel good when you say it, but when you hear it back at you, not so much.

+ + +

OCTOBER 15, 2002

Eat a turkey sandwich, go to the ER.

That's been the risk in recent days as it's been revealed that some deli turkey meat has been contaminated with listeria, a nasty little bacteria that can cause fevers, headaches, neck stiffness, nauseau, and even death. The company responsible for the motley meat has issued a nationwide recall, but for a while a lot of folks aren't going to be able to look at anybody's thin-sliced white meat with much comfort. Here you're trying for a nice, low-fat, low-cholesterol sandwich, and instead you wind up with death on rye. It's enough to make a girl go back to hamburgers with everything.

Fortunately, we live in a country where our mealtime selections are ridiculously many and various, and so doing without one variety of luncheon meat is hardly a sacrifice. But with so much bad news walloping us these days -- with snipers picking off random pedestrians and the economy slipping fast and rumors of war rampant and obnoxious campaign commericals filling every vacant second of television time -- is it so much to ask to be able to enjoy a simple sandwich? Guess the listeria must have thought so, too.

+ + +

OCTOBER 16, 2002

When I saw that news article we highlighted yesterday, Duct Tape Can Get Rid of Warts, I had to laugh -- mostly because I've scanned the ever-burgeoning shelves of Band-Aid products lately, and noticed that among the 500,000 shapes, styles, colors and medication combinations of stick-ons manufactured by that company were new bandages especially designed to combat warts. You gotta imagine there's some poor research and development sap deep in the bowels of the Band-Aid building who's finally come up with the perfect way to get his company into the wart business -- it's a Band-Aid, and you put it over the wart and leave it there, and the wart goes away! -- only to find out that plain old do-it-all duct tape does the job just as well. Ladies and gentlemen, score one for home remedies.

And yet, of course, the score won't stay there for long. Because you know that the humble duct-tape therapy isn't going to put the fancy-bandage folks out of the wart business. It's going to put them in the duct-tape business. Pretty soon, those 500,000 other varieties will be moving over for a rack of Band-Aid brand duct tape, with cartoon characters and neon colors and floral prints and a price just about twice that of the stuff you get at Home Depot. It will be so cool that your kids will demand that you buy that instead of the plain tape. Heck, it will be so cool that your kids will demand you get them some warts so they can put it on. Never doubt the ability of corporate America to take something simple and cheap and make it expensive and proprietary. There are no small victories. Only big opportunities.

+ + +

OCTOBER 17, 2002

Lately, my son's been declaring that he wants his beloved summer camp counselor to be his mom instead of me. I point out, diplomatically, that she's already a mom to two boys and probably doesn't need one more. He then points out, more diplomatically, that we could just switch, me being mom to her sons, her being mom to him. I don't know if this switch also includes Papas, or if we're spouse-swapping, too, but I do know that it would never work, however we tried it. I'm his Mama, for life. You're stuck with me, boy.

As much as I know that this is a normal kid thing, they all do it, it's nothing to feel bad about ... well, it's hard not to feel bad about, isn't it? With all kids, sure, but maybe especially with our children with special needs, who we imagine feel especially bonded to us through our efforts to help them make their way in the world. And I know my son is depending on me; the rest is just play. But I also know that he's been really needy lately, and I've been really exhausted, and maybe I've been too eager to encourage him to watch TV or play alone instead of getting in good mom-and-son time. So perhaps I'll take this suggestion that there's a pretender to my title to get back into the game and give him lots of good Mom time. Gotta exert my claim, you know?

+ + +

OCTOBER 18, 2002

It's fall in the Northeast, which means we've entered into one of the most dangerous and worry-inducing times of year: Weatherman Hysteria Season. Whenever there's the merest hint of a storm coming our way, we get round-the-clock protestations of severe meteorological doom. This week there was a killer "Northeaster" heading for us, with wind so severe it would make patio furniture look like tinker toys. Predictions of storm-waylaid morning commutes, downed trees and power lines, utility outages and major flooding filled the airwaves. And it's true, we did eventually get some nice steady rain, but the 45-mile-an-hour winds never materialized. I'd think that weathermen would feel embarrassed when storms peter out that way, but given how goofy they often act during their broadcasts, I suppose they have a high embarrassment threshhold.

It's bad enough when Weatherman Hysteria just causes a little unnecessary worry. But come winter, it has the power to close schools. More than once, in our town anyway, panicky newscasts about big ol' snowstorms about to be dumped upon us have caused schools to close in advance; and more than once, said dumping snowstorm turned out to be no more than a few pretty flakes. Schools closed without reason are hard on parents; harder still on the class parents who must make the phone calls declaring that, really, truly, although there is no appreciable snow falling outside your window this six a.m, the schools are going to be closed anyway, believe me, it wasn't my decision, go yell at the school superintendant; and maybe hardest of all on me, because I volunteered to make phone calls for my kids' two classes plus an extra special-ed class that had no parents foolish enough to do so. So I'll be making about 22 six a.m. calls, and so help me, it better be snowing when I make them.

Come to think of it, that likely won't be a problem. If I've got lots of calls to make, we're doomed to have the whitest winter on record.

October 8-10, 2002

OCTOBER 8, 2002

We've been having a little problem with my daughter and soap. She still, at age 12, doesn't quite understand why a shower has to be a wash and not just a rinse. We tell her and tell her and tell her that she must use soap, soap, soap, yet it's pretty predictable that when we ask her if she did, she'll say she forgot. "I don't smell myself," says she, in reference to her body odor. Too bad for everybody else.

My latest attempt to interest her in hygeine brought us to the body-wash section of the supermarket, which is actually rather terrifyingly large at this point in history. Body wash is big. I thought maybe that if my girl could pick a scent more pleasing to her than Lever 2000, and less slippery than a bar of soap, she might be more interested in lathering up of a morning. (Picking her style and scent didn't work with deodorant, but I'm an optimist.) She sniffed and smelled and finally settled on a green cucumber-and-melon-scented gel -- interesting, because she wouldn't go near an actual cucumber and isn't all that sure about melons, either, but somehow their combined scent captivated her nostrils in a way the vanilla and the raspberry and the mango did not.

She's actually used the stuff for the past two mornings, and now I see the real advantage of super-scented shower products: Such a cloud of cucumber-and-melon-scented steam emerges from the bathroom when she's used the stuff that I'll never again have to ask if she remembered the soap. (I may have to ask if, after all of that, she's rinsed, but that's another story.) I'll probably regret, one day -- when she's a teenager and so obsessed with the way she smells that we can't get her out of the bathroom with a crowbar -- starting her down this particular scented-product road, but for the moment, anyway, life is sweet. Sweet as a melon.

+ + +

OCTOBER 9, 2002

Some kids collect baseball cards. Some kids collect rocks. Some kids collect dinosaur stuff, or Star Wars stuff, or Pokémon stuff. My son collects plastic shopping bags. And receipts. And shopping lists. Also wrappers, shoeboxes, tissue paper, pieces of aluminum foil. If you might throw it out, he might want to collect it. He's either going to grow up to be some sort of conceptual artist, or a bag person. He already has his own little shopping cart.

I'll admit, his packrat habits make cleaning up his room a challenge; we bought a laundry cart a while back to act as a "dumpster" for all the bags and paper bits that tend to spread out over his floor. But a kid's obsession with things that cost no money can come in handy, too. I've been having some success recently paying him off for quick homework completion with a plastic bag from the supermarket for every minute he beats the deadline. If he practices his piano, too, he can get a paper shopping bag in the bargain. When he wants a plastic sandwich bag or paper lunch bag instead, we barter: the going rate is three bigger bags for one smaller bag, and it keeps the clutter in his room nicely under control.

It looks like the folks at school are finding uses for his unusual reward ideas, too. He's brought home shopping bags from his teachers from time to time, and yesterday he showed me, with great pride and glee, a paper-towel envelope holding lots of little scraps of foam-paper left over after his class had cut out Halloween pumpkins, ghosts and witches. You could not have bought him a treat that would have made him more pleased than that. Unless, of course, you gave him the bag and the receipt, too.

+ + +

OCTOBER 10, 2002

I thought we were done with school chorus this year, and that made me a little sad because singing was a big part of my school life and I'd have liked that for my kids. But my daughter, after one year on the chorus line, said no way she'd go back. And my son --well, even though the demands of grade-school chorus are slight, one or two half-hour after-school practices a month and one concert at the end of the year, I'd never have purposely inflicted him on the chorus director. Behavior isn't his strong suit, after-school behavior especially, and the particular music teacher who leads the chorus has had behavioral trouble with him in past music classes. So I neither sought nor desired chorus membership for the lad. I leave well enough alone.

And yet, here, yesterday, comes home a form announcing that my boy has been accepted into chorus, on the basis of his "interest in music, his ability to participate in this special program and the results of his individual voice evaluation." Apparently, they just come to the third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms, ask who wants to sing, evaluate them and sign 'em up. Surely the chorus director must have been in on this, so he's either a) confident he can handle my boy; b) feeling noble about including special-ed kids; or c) forced by district rules to accept special-ed kids, even the really really scoodgy ones.

I still can't quite believe this is going to work, but since they asked for it and I didn't, we'll give it a try. He does sing beautifully, when he's of a mind to. It's the standing on the risers, watching the conductor, and only singing when he's supposed to that will be a challenge.

September 30-October 4, 2002

SEPTEMBER 30, 2002

I always make a big effort to understand the stresses underlying my children’s behavior, and to deal with it accordingly. For my son especially, behavior is communication, and I try to always get the message. Many, many times I hand out “get out of bad behavior free” cards when it’s clear that factors outside the child’s control are making it impossible to get and keep a grip. So why can’t I ever get one of those cards myself?

Last week, I had terrible hayfever problems. If I didn’t take medication, I was constantly sneezing. If I did, I fell asleep where I stood. The inability to take a breath without serial sneezes took a toll on my temper, and I’ll admit, I was impatient with all around me. Now, if this was my son, wracked with sneezes, I would forgive him any amount of misbehavior. But does he return the favor? No! The more impatient I get, the more in need of patience is he; the shorter-tempered I become, the more temper-trying he gets. Then, of course, I have his meltdowns on my head.

I know, really, I do know and understand and accept that my son needs emotional equilibrium from me in order to keep his own. And most of the time, I am up to that task. Most of the time, it makes me feel good to be the one who sets the tone for our family life. But when I don’t feel good, it’s a heck of a burden. Certainly, nothing to sneeze at.

+ + +

OCTOBER 1, 2002

A fairly amazing thing happened last night when my daughter and I finished her nightly homework assignment of free reading: She liked it. She liked the first chapter of a new book so much she thought she might like the whole book, and she was interested to find out what was going to happen next. Not so much that she wanted to read the next chapter right then, but it's a start.

Her teacher this year in 5th grade is making these reading assignments in the hope of doing just that -- finding the book that will make a kid say, "Okay, maybe this reading thing isn't so bad after all." At least so far, this has been at the expense of a big comprehension push on the stories in the reading textbook, which is fine by me. My daughter is on her third novel since the start of the school year, and that's a bigger achievement than getting a good grade on an essay test.

Of course, by "novel," I'm not talking "Harry Potter" here. Her teacher steered her toward a couple of short books with short chapters and plenty of pictures, and seems to have hit it just right. I'm trying not to hope for too much, but it sure would be nice to see my girl get excited about reading -- or at least not face reading with unmitigated dread. We'll take it one chapter at a time.

+ + +

OCTOBER 2, 2002

My son is in love with one of his summer-camp counselors, which would be cute if she wasn't a married woman with children of her own, and if he wasn't so entirely obsessed. He has her picture by his bed and talks to it regularly, he has an invisible version of her who lives in his room, he insists on hanging around outside of school until he sees her arrive to drop off her son, he wants to know if she'll still be alive when he's a grown-up, and if he can marry her then. If he had a car, he'd be a stalker. ("And knowing him, it would be a very nice car!" said his love interest when I mentioned that to her; so at least he's got a girl with a sense of humor.)

It's a little creepy, but really, I guess I should be glad that my kids are targeting older, unavailable members of the opposite sex for their crushes instead of either harassing or hooking up with classmates. Obsessive attractions with classmates could be hazardous, however they play out; while the likelihood of my son getting into any trouble with that nice mom in the red Jeep, or my daughter with Regis Philbin (her particular crush object), is pretty slight. Still, I'll be glad when my guy stops bellowing the name of his beloved across the schoolyard every morning. Last thing I need is her son challenging him to a duel.

+ + +

OCTOBER 4, 2002

I went to a class parents’ meeting at my kids’ school this morning. It’s embarrassing to admit how much I live for stuff like this. Even though class parenting mostly just involves calling people at 6 a.m. to ruin their day with the news that the schools are closed, I love having any kind of role in my children’s school experience. I would hang around the school all day if they let me. I would even clean the classrooms (but don’t tell the custodians that, okay?) As it is, I count the days to the next meeting or the next library session or the next teacher conference. It’s true, I’m obsessed.

So it’s hard for me to understand why some parents might not be. You only have to take a look around half-empty classes at Back to School Night to know that some folks are, to put it nicely, disengaged from their children’s school experience. I mean, Back to School Night, people! They let you in the school! You get to sit at your child’s desk! You get to find out if their teacher speaks clearly, looks nice, smells bad. How can you resist? I suppose there are people who have conflicts -- work, child care, transportation -- that keep them from being able to show up. But, you know, if they asked me nice, I’d go to their kids’ classroom, too. I love this stuff!

September 23-27, 2002

SEPTEMBER 23, 2002

We had some excitement here on Saturday in the form of an ambulance, a police car, two paramedics and a policeman. The occasion of their visit was not, thankfully, a problem with my kids but with their grandmother, who lives with us. She was sick enough that her doctor had ordered me to call 911, but not so sick as to be in serious danger. So the whole spectacle of emergency vehicles coming to our home was more thrilling than chilling.

The men who came to our house were friendly, professional and efficient, but what impressed me most was how kind and understanding they were to my son, who was jumping around so excitedly he could easily have just annoyed them. Instead, one of the paramedics asked me for my son's name, and then called to him and asked him to go wait for the police car and show the policeman where to come. When the officer did arrive, he cheerfully answered my boy’s questions about the police car and allowed his keys to be examined. When they left, the ambulance driver gave the siren a blast at the kids’ request, and then they were gone, leaving my son with an exciting story to tell anyone who would listen: "Two Fords came to our house, an ambulance and a police car!"

Odd for a visit from emergency personnel to be, in the end, a good experience. (Not so good for Grandma, of course, but she is doing better now.)

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 24, 2002

I was sorry to hear the news that one of the few magazines I take the time to read regularly, "Rosie," is soon to be no more. Its namesake has apparently tired of fighting with editorial types to see her vision realized -- and having worked for a women's magazine and been an editorial type myself, I don't blame her one bit -- and is bowing out of her publication as she did her TV show. Some will take this as yet another example of the foolishness of depending on celebrities, and they may be right. I think it's yet another example of the impossibility of making real, radical changes in an established magazine format, and I may be right, too.

At any rate, I'm sad to see it go. Although unable to break out of the fashion-makeup-recipes-decorating women's magazine mold, I thought "Rosie" did some interesting new things with those old standbys. The appearance of stars of varying wattages in its pages was similarly unavoidable, but again, the celebs were employed creatively, and if that didn't always work (as it turns out, I don't really want to take parenting advice from actresses), I appreciated the effort. I thought the writing was generally good and refreshingly opinionated, a departure from the even-handedness most women's magazines apply so heavily that no conclusions can ever be drawn.

Most of all, though, I liked "Rosie" because it felt like a parenting magazine for *me* -- for a middle-aged mom with kids adopted well past infancy, who couldn't care less about diapers and breast-feeding and playgroup politics but is very interested in articles about adoption and kids with special needs and social issues affecting children. If the publishers of "Rosie" are going to turn it into yet another magazine (it was originally "McCall's"), I hope they'll keep that slant. Probably about as much chance of that, though, as of the magazine being rechristined "Caroline Rhea."

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 25, 2002

The recent story of a mom who was caught on a parking lot security camera beating her daughter has given me chills, but not for the reasons it should. Of course, on some level, I'm appalled that a mother would treat her child that way, and glad for the child to be brought to safety and the parent to justice. But at the same time -- man, would *you* like your worst parenting moments to be caught on tape and broadcast on the TV news? Without for a moment condoning child-beating in any venue whatsoever, I think I can say that the notion of security people scanning video screens looking not just for car thieves and muggers but for parents behaving badly makes me want very much to never leave the house. Anyone else getting the heebie-jeebies?

I guess it's true these days that security cameras are always with us, in the bank, in the convenience store, in the parking lot, in the dressing room. They're there when we drop embarrassing personal items into our shopping basket, they're there when we try on hideously poor-fitting clothing, they're there when we pause by a shiny piece of reflective metal to check our hair, they're there when we give the car next to us a door ding and then try to pretend we didn't, they're there when we lose our temper with a cashier or a spouse or a child. Most of the time we allow ourselves to forget that we're being watched; but stories like the one about the parking-lot mom make me remember, all too clearly. And personally, I'm not so ready for my close-up.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 27, 2002

Last night was "Back to School" night at my kids' school, and I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. The new superintendant of our district, who happens to have kids at our school, made a speech in which he correctly identified the problems the district is facing, including my pet peeves of poor communication and lack of thoughtful long-range planning. Of course, as many a politician has discovered, there's a large and scary space between identifying problems and actually doing something about them. But identifying is good.

I was happy to see that my son's classroom was arranged appropriately for his particular special needs, and that the teacher was doing things like starting the morning with exercises and giving rewards throughout the day. His textbooks were at the right level and all the adults in the room seem pleased with him (and there are a *lot* of adults in the room -- a teacher, a classroom aide and two one-on-one aides vs. six kids). So far, so good, I guess.

I'd already been to my daughter's classroom and met her teacher, but it was nice to see where her desk was and notice the folder with two A tests on top of it. The year's starting out well. But we'll see. "Cautious" is about as high as my optimism meter goes these days.

September 16-20, 2002

SEPTEMBER 16, 2002

My son is fascinated with the idea that the MRI he had on Thursday took pictures of his brain. He's sure that when we see the doctor today, she's going to give him some snapshots that he can take to school and show around. He's been promising people that they'll be able to take a look at his brain soon.

He'll probably be disappointed when he actually sees what the camera took, if the doctor even has the results there to show. Clearly, he's expecting something along the lines of a nice little brain sitting on a tabletop, posing for Polaroids. His first words to me upon waking up were, "Where's my brain?" Although I tried to explain how the camera takes its pictures of the brain through skin and bone, I think he's still pretty sure we removed it for its screen test.

As for me, I know the MRI results don't look like anything a 9-year-old would consider to be a brain photo op, but my expectations are probably pretty unrealistic, too. In my dreams, those scans will unlock some secrets of my boy's lobes, illuminate his strengths and weaknesses, suggest ways to help or hinder. And of course, I'm hoping that those indications will match the ones I've cooked up in my own personal brain cells. Whether they'll answer any questions at all, much less the way I want, is for us to find out this morning at 10 a.m. I hope useful information isn't as unlikely as 8x10 glossies.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 17, 2002

Well, the bad news is that my son really did have a seizure last week. The abnormal spikes on the EEG backed up with the inability to move his left arm and leg that I reported were enough to convince the doctor that he'd had one, and what I saw was the aftermath. Since this is only the second seizure in the eight years he's been with us, the doctor's advice was not to panic, but just to keep a closer eye on him. Hard to imagine we could watch him any closer than we already do, but I don't mind trying.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that I got a little validation for my observations. I was pretty sure that the EEG would show nothing, and I would be left with no relief for the vague feelings of guilt over making a big fuss over something that might have been nothing. Now I know that it was something after all. It's nice, once in a while, to know you were right.

That small feeling of triumph wasn't quite drowned out by the way my son behaved at the doctor's office, although he sure tried. What is it about doctors that make kids bring out their most extreme behavior? My son is never more wild than when he's being examined, and my daughter is never more shy and inarticulate. It makes me want to place secret cameras all around our home and school and compile videotapes of my kids being their funny, ineractive, wonderful selves. Then maybe I could leave the kids at home for the exams entirely.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 18, 2002

So a new TV season is beginning yet again, and again I'll probably miss most of it. It's hard to watch TV before my daughter and son go to bed, because they've got our two sets locked onto the Disney Channel and the Food Network, respectively; and it's hard to watch it after they go to bed, because I tend to fall asleep the moment I sit down. I have a couple of old favorite shows I make time for, but they're getting fewer and fewer as my stamina decreases and cancellations increase (okay, so I'm still not entirely over the fact that "Once and Again" got the hook). There's not much this year that looks so wondrous as to remake my schedule of kids and sleep.

The one show I did set my clock for was Bonnie Hunt's new sit-com, called "Bonnie" or "Bonnie Hunt" or "The Bonnie Hunt Show" or something original like that. I'm a big enough fan of the actress that I'm putting my self-imposed ABC boycott (see "Once and Again," above) on hold for half an hour on Tuesdays to see if she can survive on the "Now You See It, Now You Don't" network. I was even able to convince my daughter to turn off Disney's other channel long enough to watch it with me, since she's seen "Return to Me" with me a dozen times and was up for watching "that blond lady" in something else.

Turns out a large slice of the cast of "Return to Me" is in the sit-com with her, and it was fun for my daughter to see all those actors in new roles (and confusing, since she hasn't completely grasped the fact that the characters in a show and the actors who play them are two separate entities, and I know she was secretly wondering why Charlie the Veterinarian and the waitress and the "water lady" were all doing different jobs and wearing different hairstyles). She liked it all enough to watch it again next week, and so did I. Any family show that can make my family seem calm and organized by comparison is going to keep me coming back.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 19, 2002

Lovely news this morning from European researchers, who report that the germs in dust actually protect kids from developing hay fever and asthma. Don't you love it? All of us slovenly housekeepers have been magically transformed into health-minded moms, just like that. Put down the feather duster, girls, and have another cup of coffee.

I'd be feeling really good about this news except that, alas, my mother did keep a dust-free house, and now I am beset by horrible hay fever. Clearly, Mom did not pass the Need to Clean down to me, and so I may be able to keep the Need to Sneeze 10 Times in a Row from my own kids. The Need to be Lazy, though ... ah, it may be too late for that.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002

My son put himself to bed last night. That's a remarkable occurrence, because we're talking about a boy who usually has to be lassoed, wrestled, and forceably restrained to get him under the covers. But last night, Mama and Papa both fell asleep themselves well before kiddie bedtime -- me, because of an allergy medication that was not kidding when it said it would make you drowsy, and my husband, because, well, because falling asleep in front of the television is what he does -- and the little ones were left to fend for themselves. Our daughter used that freedom to watch a Disney Channel movie all the way to the end, then sit in her room listening to music and combing her hair and waiting for someone to stir. But our son, we found in his bed, all tucked in and sound asleep.

Now, of course, the system's not perfect. He was tucked in with the blanket under his chin on a warm night, and so was covered with sweat. And he hadn't gone to the bathroom pre-tuck-in, so we had to wake him up and go through the whole bedtime routine anyway. And of course, it wouldn't have hurt either of these young people to just GO AHEAD AND WAKE US UP when bedtime came and went. But if we can refine things a little, get the little guy to remember his pre-bed bathroom trip and the big girl to stop combing her hair and go to sleep, maybe we could just go ahead and stop pretending and set the adult bedtime in our house a half-hour or so earlier than the children's bedtime. Goodness knows we're the ones who are really tired at the end of the day.

September 9-13, 2002

SEPTEMBER 9, 2002

It's beginning to look as though I have enough personalized address labels to last me well into the next century. I didn't buy them, of course; they come daily, unbidden, free but with a catch. I suspect that everybody who has ever donated to so much as one charity is in the same boat, and that that boat is about to sink under the weight of tiny slips of sticky paper. Donate to one charity and you'll hear from ten more, and all will want you to enjoy their lovely gift of return address.

I don't know when address labels became the charity come-on to end all charity come-ons. My parents certainly had to buy their address labels, and there are still catalogs that offer them as though they were something to spend money on. But the idea to give them away for free-ish is sure a good one, for they put the potential donor in a potentially beneficial bind. It seems wasteful -- and maybe dangerous, in this day and information age -- to throw out something useful with your name written all over it; and while it seems coercive to pay for something you didn't ask for, it also seems dishonest to use something provided by a charity without providing something in return.

And so, good-hearted sucker that I am, I usually do send a donation. But it's starting to get out of hand. I have more of these things than I can possibly use, and still they come and come and come. It's about to the point where I'll challenge any charity to send me a come-on without address labels, and I'll double my donation. Wouldn't surprise me if threats of that nature -- "Donate immediately, or we'll send you 500 address labels!" -- start cropping up in dunning letters any day now.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 10, 2002

In honor of the new health guideliness issued by the National Academies' Institute of Medicine (see today's Hot Health Headline), I started yesterday morning with a little bit o' fitness in the form of following an early-morning exercise show. I was pretty proud of myself for getting up early, and pretty glad that the workout wasn't hard, until I realized that perhaps this was a workout show in name only; the exercises were few, and the shots of the bikini-clad female instructors shaking their anatomy at the camera were many. I'm thinking that lumpy middle-aged women trying to trim down are not the demographic for this show; I'm thinking it's guys who've been up all night drinking or studying and want to look at jiggly babes before falling into a coma.

Of course, even if the half-hour workout had been vigorous, it wouldn't have been enough to get me off the hook with the National Academies' Institute of Medicine. The new recommendations propose an hour or more a day of moderately intense physical exercise, and ... an hour? a day? are they NUTS? They're saying it will give me good cardiovascular health, but I'm pretty sure it would cause full cardiac arrest. Besides, who has an extra hour lying around, or the energy to fill it with exercise? And what counts as "moderately intense"? Probably not a walk with my son, which involves momentary bursts of speed broken by long minutes of staring at leaves or interacting meaningfully with bits of trash by the side of the road.

So forget those guidelines; if I make it out of bed for thirty minutes of televised calisthenics, I'm going to call that a darn fine fitness commitment. And tomorrow, I'm going to try the TV show that comes on half an hour later. I don't know if the workout's any more intense, but at least there's a muscular guy among the instructors.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 12, 2002

As a mom to kids with special needs, I sometimes feel as though I'm always doing the wrong thing: If I react to everything and try to micromanage their care or their education, I feel like I'm doing too much; but if I sit back and assume that things will be okay and everybody will do their jobs, I feel neglectful and foolishly trusting. I've been having those feelings about the start of the school year -- wondering if things weren't getting done because people resented my overinvolvement, and then noticing that they still didn't get done if I stayed out of it -- and now, in a different way, I'm feeling it about a health issue.

Yesterday morning, when I went to wake my son up, I found him on the floor. I asked if he fell out of bed and he said yes, and shook off my attempts to help him up. But it soon became apparent that he couldn't get up by himself. Every effort found him flopping back down on his left side. He didn't seem to be able to move his left arm and leg, which were if possible looser than their normal loose muscle tone. At first I thought he might have injured them in the fall, but he denied any pain (although, since he doesn't feel pain very well, I couldn't be too sure). With great effort I got him up on the bed, and after about 20 minutes he was able to move the limbs again, and after about an hour any residual weakness was gone, leaving only an extra helping of silliness in his behavior and some extra slurriness in his speech.

I probably could have sent him to school, since he was ambulatory by school time. I probably could have just added this to the list of things to mention to his neurologist when he sees her next Monday. I could have taken a calm, wait-and-see view. But instead, I kept him home and took him to the doctor, who on the basis of my account scheduled an MRI and EEG for today. And there, I think, is the root of the problem: On the basis of my account. Everything I do for my son has to be based only on my observation and articulation. He can't say what's going on, and I can't trust his report if he does, because it's liable to be either fanciful or an echo of what I've said to him. I can't even entirely trust that he couldn't move his limbs because he says he didn't. He seemed scared, and I put weight on that; but the rest is guesswork. And because of my guesswork, my guy has to be sedated and put through tests. What if I'm just making too much out of nothing, turning every little thing into a crisis to manage?

That same problem -- excessive reliance on my own observation and guesswork in the face of communication disabilities -- seems to face me everywhere I turn with my kids. Doctors grill me on my observations but share precious few of their own, and what they do share seems so heavily based on their interpretations of my interpretations that it's hard to put much credit in them. School teachers and officials seem to distribute honest information on a need-to-know basis, and even when you can prove your need to know, there's always spin, even from the very best, most concerned teachers. So I'm left to create scenarios in my head, and act accordingly, without knowing if I'm solving problems or making them. It's enough to make me want to crawl under the blankets and hide ... if I thought anybody would do anything in my absence.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 13, 2002

Three things I learned from my son's visit to the hospital for an MRI and EEG yesterday:

• Never accept an afternoon appointment for a test that requires a child not to eat or drink anything. Because my guy was being sedated, he was on strict orders not to eat anything for six hours before the test. Last time he had an EEG, it was first thing in the morning, and no eat/drink was no problem. This time, the test was at 1 p.m., which meant no eating and drinking through a very long morning of "Mooom, I'm staaaaarving." Never mind that there are many mornings in which I have to force my son to eat breakfast and drink something with it. You always want what you can't have.

• Never accept an appointment that falls around lunchtime. Did I say the test was at 1 p.m.? That might have been true had the entire staff of the hospital not apparently taken their lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30. The woman in admitting didn't really want to find out why nobody could find record of our appointment or the referral our pediatrician's office had faxed; she just wanted us to go away so she could go to the cafeteria with her girlfriends. And once we did get to the MRI front desk, we gave our names to the just-about-to-go-to-lunch receptionist and then saw nobody else for an hour. The anesthesiologist showed up about the same time the receptionist came back. Folks, if you have an appointment with McDonald's at 1 p.m., make your appointments with patients for 2.

• Never forget that one or two competent people can make the difference. I was in a panic by the time the doctor arrived, because if this hospital couldn't even register people competently, how were they going to sedate and test my boy? But in fact, while the little things in our visit were frustrating to the extreme, the big things went fine. The actual medical professionals in charge of his care were confident and competent and ran us through the two procedures smoothly and expertly. Once they showed up, I had no complaints about the process whatsoever. Too bad we had to slog through two hours of bureaucracy to get to them.

September 3-6, 2002

SEPTEMBER 3, 2002

Today is the last sweet day of summer vacation for my kiddos, who start school tomorrow morning promptly at 8:45 a.m. My daughter has been calling friends to find out who's in her assigned class, my son's been completing the immense packet of worksheets his teacher asked him to bring back in the fall for a prize, and I've been quietly obsessing over whether the proper preparations will have been put into place for my two to have an appropriate academic experience. After two months of almost daily phone calls to the special education office, I finally have something of a satisfactory answer as to whether my daughter's instructional aide will really be qualified to instruct, and whether my son's teacher will be experienced enough to handle him. But I've been misled before, and I won't relax until I've seen, met, and consulted with said personnel. A pursuit which also begins tomorrow.

When my daughter groans about how hard fifth grade is going to be and my son sighs about losing the freedom of summer, I tell them that they should think good thoughts, and expect their experience to be wonderful. I suppose, then, that I should take my own advice. But being a good special-ed advocate can be emotionally wearing; so rarely is the outcome actually anything approaching wonderful, and it's hard to get those hopes back up another time. Whenever I try to micromanage my kids' educational set-up, I regret it; but whenever I take a hands-off approach, I regret it, too. Finding the middle ground between those two is a perilous thing, fraught with offended teachers and appeasing administrators and poor choices hastily made. I'll do it again -- I have to do it, because it's pretty sure that nobody else will -- but I'm looking forward to it about as much as my daughter is fifth-grade swimming.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 4, 2002

Today, after my kids get home from the first day of school, begins the paper chase. Or rather, the notebook chase, the ruler chase, the pencil chase, the folder chase. For today's the day we finally get the list of the school supplies their teachers expect. And, like seemingly every other family in town, we descend upon Staples.

No dancing down the aisles like that man in the ad for me; I'm elbowing down the aisles, pushing aside small children to get to that last glue stick. Why the school doesn't give us these lists at the end of the previous school year -- or at least with the class assignments that come a couple of weeks before the start of the new one -- I'll never know. It seems downright sadistic. I suppose I could get an early start by picking up some basic supplies, but even the basics are often subject to the specifics of teacher preference in ways I could never guess. Not any spiral notebook, but one with a specific number of pages. Not any pen, but ones in specific colors. Not any ruler, but one made of a specific substance. If I tried to shop ahead of time, not only would I still have to shop on the first day of school, I'd have to make exchanges.

So I'm waiting, credit card at the ready. Why is it that all the homework that comes home on the first day is really for the parents?

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 5, 2002

Well. It's never easy, is it?

I spent the summer calling the special education department on a near-daily basis, trying to wrest from them three pieces of information: Would my daughter get a proper instructional aide this time; which class would my son be in; and would my son have the same one-on-one aide he has had for three years now, the aide who knows him and handles him so well and whom he adores. For two months, I was told to call back, call back, call back on the first two -- but on the last one, I was assured that they'd never switch. That was always the thing I could count on.

So you can guess what happened.

It happened fast, and out of my sight. When I called the school on Tuesday to make sure everything was in place, his usual aide was there and waiting for him. When I dropped him at school Wednesday morning, ditto. But some time between 8:45 a.m. and about 2 p.m., when the child study team leader (God bless her) called to warn me that a change had been made, our long-known and trusted aide was spirited away and replaced by somebody else.

I called the special ed department again -- again! -- to complain, but it turned out the change had been made by the school principal, who had been left in the lurch when a classroom aide quit and had poached my son's aide to fill the hole. And I can't blame him. She's wonderful. She'd make a fine classroom aide, and I hope they give her the job for good. She knows the kids in the classroom she's filling in for, which makes her a natural choice. The principal has to put the good of many kids above the good of one, and I understand that. But none of it means I don't want her back, bad.

It's always like this, one way or the other, with special education. Every time I feel like I have my ducks in a row, somebody knocks them over. Sometimes I wonder why I even try. And sometimes I wonder whether somebody's staying up late trying to think of ways to screw things up.

+ + +

SEPTEMBER 6, 2002

I'm ending our first half-week of school here with an extreme case of "Mommy remorse," wondering -- anguishing really -- over whether I did the right thing in allowing my son to be skipped up a level to a self-contained class with kids he doesn't know as well and a new teacher who doesn't know him. There were good reasons to go along with the idea -- last year's teacher was pushing it, the kids in his former group were rowdy and rambunctious, he could use a little extra academic stimulation, the teacher he would have had if he hadn't skipped seemed a little stern to me -- and good reasons not to -- those rowdy and rambunctious kids were his buddies, his emotional development is so behind that it makes more sense to hold him back than push him forward, he'd be mainstreamed for art, music and gym with older kids who might give him a hard time -- but in the end I let the special ed department decide, and they did what the teacher suggested.

So now, of course, not only are all of his buddies in the class behind, but so is his longtime aide, having been moved to the position of the classroom aide for that group (see yesterday's dispatch). There's nobody in his new class who knows him at all now. The teacher sent home a rules sheet yesterday and included among the consequences removal of recess time, which I thought everybody knew by now is a really bad choice for hyperactive kids. The rules include things like "listen carefully" and "be polite and respectful" which are infinitely open to teacher interpretation and infinitely difficult for a child with FAE to get a handle on. So right off the bat, I'm worried. And I see his friends from last year running around together and wonder why I ever thought it was an acceptable idea to pull him out of that and put him in a more challenging situation.

I could probably get him put back with his old group. But then, of course, I'd kill myself worrying that *that* decision was wrong. I'll meet with his new teacher next week and see what she has to say for herself. Maybe she can convince me that she understands how to handle my guy -- not just handle him but nurture him, bring him along academically and behaviorally in a way that will make me end the year bursting with "Mommy pride." I'll believe it when I hear it.