For Mothers Who Read

The Web site Salon.com used to have a section called "Mothers Who Think," and since it's been discontinued I've missed the thoughtful views on parenting that used to reside there. But recently, the Book Club feature on Slate.com has reminded me of it -- sort of a "Mothers Who Read." Last week, as noted here, the discussion centered on a book dealing with infertility; this week, an adoptive parent and adoptee discuss "Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption" by Barbara Melosh. Since the parent doing the discussing is a dad, I guess it's more like A Dad Who Reads Makes Mothers with Attitude Think. But it's good reading, for sure.

Some enchanted IEP meeting

I attended the nicest IEP meeting yesterday. Honestly, it was unnatural. Even when I'm on good terms with the child study team members, and no matter how many wonderful reports I've had about the child in question during the year, the IEP meeting is usually everybody's opportunity to bombard me with all the problems they've been kindly concealing, and, in my daughter's case, all the evidence that points to her needing way, way more help than I am wanting to give her.

But not this time. This time, everybody thinks she's doing just great. The teacher said she's been getting 90s and 100s on tests. The speech therapist said she's making wonderful progress. The child study team leader agreed to do some non-mandated testing to see if we can quantify the improvements we're seeing in her reading comprehension, and thought my modification requests were quite reasonable and appropriate. Nobody disagreed with my plan to keep her in a regular-ed classroom next year in middle school; previously in IEPs, I had been told she should really, really, really go to resource room, but not this time. This time, the team couldn't be more agreeable.

It almost made me want to stand up and say, "No! She's doing awful! She needs more help! Put her in resource room! Put her back in self-contained! If things are this great, we just must not be paying attention!" And maybe that was their evil plan. But I remained calm, and basked in the universal praise for my child and my hard-working parenting self. I asked the child study team leader for a favor involving my son, and again -- although it involved extra work for her without a clear necessity for it -- she agreed. As I walked out of the building, one of my son's old teachers offered me an opportunity to participate with the staff in the buying of lottery tickets, and I felt lucky enough to do it. When my daughter came home, she brought a present for me from her teacher: the url for a Web site full of graphic organizers, which the teacher knows I like because I keep nagging people to use them with my daughter. So pleasant and civilized it all was. And if at some point I stepped through the looking glass into alterna-special-ed-world, I didn't notice.

Something new to worry about

We already knew that sitting too long in front of a computer could give you a backache, neckache, headache, blurry vision, and seriously annoyed family members. But who knew it could give you a blood clot, too? The condition, nicknamed "economy class syndrome" as it was previously mostly seen in people who spent too much time in cramped airplane seats, is brought on by going for long hours without standing up; a blood clot forms in those idle legs and travels to the lungs. And if I read anymore about this, I shall become convinced that such a thing is happening to me right at this very moment. Time to take a walk!

Touching an angel

April Cain's latest column on Mothers with Attitude, The Healing Power of Touch, reminds me strongly of how my son behaved when we first brought him home (and for quite some time after that), and gave me a much-valued opportunity to think about how far he's come. Like April's son, mine had a sensory system that went into high alert when someone tried to touch or hold him. Nearly two years in a Russian orphanage gave him no neural experience of sustained loving touch, and it took time, patience, and sensory integration therapy to turn him into the cuddle-bug he is today. He's cuddly well past the age at which boys stop wanting to snuggle with their moms, but his body now craves that which it once rejected. Amazing things, our nervous systems.

Reading April's column brought me back to those early days when I was trying so hard to figure out what it was with him, before I realized how neatly the diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Effects put the pieces together, before I could reflexively pick out signs of sensory integration dysfunction in so many children in addition to my own, when I was operating on an instinct which I had no particular reason to trust. My brain's undergone some changes, too.

Remembering recess

"Is Recess a Necessity or a Hindrance?" asks an article on the Bella Online site. When I was a kid, I'd have voted for hindrance, because I deeply hated anything that required physical coordination or exertion. Ladder bars were torture, games of catch invitations to display my klutziness before my disdainful peers, dodgeball resolutely un-dodgeable. I tried to just sit off to the side and read a book during recess, but teachers would push me back into the fray. Abolishment of recess? A dream come true for me, it would have been.

Maybe I lived too soon, because according to some reports, things like recess and physical education in primary grades are in danger of disappearing. They're still hanging in at our local elementary school, though, and my kids would undoubtedly vote recess a necessity. My daughter's coordinated in ways I could never dream of being, and she enjoys playing outside at any opportunity (reading books, not so much). And my son, hyper fellow that he is, needs a little time to let off steam in the middle of the day. The cruel irony of life in a northern climate is that, come winter, you may lose recess even if you still have it; sub-freezing weather, rain and snow all mean indoor confinement whether you find recess necessary or hindering or whatever. I'm hearing reports of movies and board games and moderate chaos for those 20-or-so midday minutes, which are mildly annoying for my girl and mildly disorganizing for my boy. They'll be glad when recess returns with the spring. And I'll be glad it's them, not me.

Valentine goodies

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the Mothers with Attitude Mall now features a Forever Family Store, with heart-bedecked items declaring "You Are Mine Forever" and "Love Makes a Family." A cute little teddy bear, too.

New on Mothers with Attitude

Kathy Winters has graciously agreed to allow her poem "The Misunderstood Child," which made the rounds of some special-needs mailing lists yesterday, to be posted on Mothers with Attitude. It's an insightful look at the challenges of children with hidden disabilities. Read it and forward it to your own personal support groups.

My own personal misunderstood child is having a good week, even though yesterday saw him home sick from school with a fever and a cough. His behavior has been good since his very bad patch last week, and I'd like to believe it has something to do with the techniques I've been using from the book "Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach" (see Saturday's entry for more information). I'd like to believe it, and I'm almost scared to believe it, because transformation is not a bad word to use to describe the improvement in his attitude and willingness to cooperate, not every second and not without challenges, but in general and in surprising ways. Could it be this easy? Maybe not; he's been known to behave well when sick, so maybe it's some combination of fatigue and cough syrup that's making him more easygoing. It's a nice break, anyway.

Around the Web

There's an interesting book discussion on Slate.com on "Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America" by anthropologist Linda L. Layne. Two editors who are currently pregnant but previously miscarried talk about the book and their personal experiences, and while I've never suffered a miscarriage (never even got as far as the conception part), I can certainly relate to envying pregnant women and feeling less interesting to OB-GYNs when the OB part of the picture drops out of focus. I don't know if any of this discussion makes me more likely to read the book -- less likely, maybe -- but the conversation's interesting reading all by itself. ... Adoptive parents with children from Russia or Ukraine may want to stop by this site to take a survey on the accuracy or in- of the preadoptive health information they received on their little ones. We were lucky to receive very accurate information -- maybe because we were specifically looking for special needs -- and so the language of this survey seems slanted to me in favor of blaming agencies. But since the blameworthy experience many parents have had with dishonest agencies is probably the impetus for surveys like this, that's probably unavoidable. ... The Sensory Integration Network Web site has had a facelift; stop by and check out the new design. I haven't browsed through it enough to see if all the good old information is there, but it sure looks organized.

Tiptoeing through the developmental levels

If you're a little obsessed with charting your child's rate of development -- and it's hard not to be, in a society that is so very fond of benchmarks -- here's a site that will feed your need to wonder and worry. Part of the Washington State Department of Health and Human Services' Web site for foster parents, the Child Development Guide allows parents to navigate through "normal characteristics" in yearly increments for the areas of physical, intellectual, social, emotional and moral development. You can start at your child's chronological age in any area and then work backward (or forward, I suppose, but not in my household) to pinpoint your young one's exact developmental level. The accompanying parenting strategies can then be used with confidence.

I've been saying for a while that my fetal-alcohol-affected nine-year-old is really more of a 4-year-old emotionally, without really knowing what that means. So I took a look at the emotional characteristics of four-to-five-year-olds and -- sure enough! -- there were the behaviors we've been so bothered by recently:

Exhibits a great deal of name calling; can be demanding and/or threatening. Often is bossy, belligerent; goes to extremes, bossy then shy; frequently whines, cries, and complains. Often tests people to see who can be controlled. Is boastful, especially about self and family. Is beginning to develop some feeling of insecurity.

So then I clicked forward to see what we might be expecting next, and ... well, the five-to-six-year-old description could pretty well have applied to him, too. And the six-to-seven. And really most of the levels I looked at. So it's not exactly a precision instrument. But you know you're going to go spend a few hours there anyway.

The lonely little discussion board

Got a nice e-mail yesterday from someone thanking me for starting the Adoption Watch discussion board (noting, rightly at least in my research, that there was no similar forum for the examination of the way adoption is depicted in all manner of media). I was happy and somewhat surprised to get this appreciation, since the lack of interest in the board when I started it back in July was so resounding that I'd kind of abandoned the idea. Still, the board's there, and maybe it's time for me to mention it again and invite folks to stop by, post reviews, and argue. Surely there's something out there in media-land that somebody's up in arms about.

Accentuate the positive

After a lengthy foray into more general non-fiction, I'm back to reading parenting books. I'm galloping through "Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach" by Howard Glasser and Jennifer Easley, because my difficult child could certainly use some transforming right now. I don't know that I buy all of the authors' assumptions, but the basic approach is right on, at least for my fetal-alcohol-affected boy: Give all your energy and big reactions to your child when he's doing something right, not something wrong. The book suggests following the pattern of a video game, in which all the rewards and successful experiences come with following the rules, and breaking the rules leads to a quick, unemotional, unarguable ending to the fun. The recommended method ends with a fairly involved system of credits and privileges, but starts with the simple act of noticing and commenting on the things kids do when they're not misbehaving. It's not so much a matter of catching them being good, but creating spontaneous opportunities for them to be good when none would have existed, and recognizing their acheivement. Or even just describing, in a neutral way, what you see them doing, so they know they're seen and appreciated. It sounds so simple it just might not work, but I have to admit, in the couple of days I've been trying this, my son does seem more relaxed and cooperative, and I certainly enjoy him a whole lot more. Maybe there's a little mind control to it on both sides.

I also picked up a copy of "The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Integration Dysfunction" by Carol Stock Kranowitz last time I was in the bookstore, mostly because I was so thrilled to see it prominently displayed. It looks to be a skimming book as opposed to a reading-cover-to-cover book, but I'll be checking it regularly for play and therapy ideas for my son. I was particularly interested to see that many of the ideas utilized plastic grocery store bags, of which my son has approximately 100 in his room at any one time (alright, it's a weird thing to collect, but hey, they're free), so we won't have to be buying any equipment.

New on Mothers with Attitude

Just posted is Julie Donner Andersen's latest column, You Think YOU Had a Hard Day, in which she opines that moms will always win any bad day contest, hands down. In our house, the most recent Big Bad Day was had by my son, who (as noted below) came home with not one but two "bad behavior" notes on Tuesday from his self-contained special-ed class. His teachers may have felt he wasn't listening and spurning their attempts at discipline, but in fact he was seriously rattled by all the yelling and disciplinary actions, to the point that he was determined not to go to school the next day. "I need a day off," he said, from the moment he got up until the moment we got into the school building.

Now I know I'm supposed to be tough about stuff like this -- I know, because the school principal told me so in no uncertain terms Thursday morning -- but the fact is, I told the school secretary he wasn't feeling well, and I took him home. There is a small kernel of truth to my sick-day plea: The last two times he has begged to stay home and I have made him go to school, he's thrown up during the course of the morning, and wound up coming home anyway. So it was, in some ways, a preemptive action.

But there was more to my decision than a concern for his digestive health, and that is: Sometimes we all just need a mental health day. My boss has been known to give me a day off after a particularly traumatic day at work; why shouldn't a child who's had a day when he spiraled further and further out of control get 24 hours to regain it? He had a relaxing day; we watched some TV, read a book, did some mental math problems and a science experiment. And the next day, he went back to class. I didn't get any notes, so he must have done okay. Or maybe they're just not going to send me notes anymore. Either way, my day's better.

Never too early to watch what you eat

As if the threat of zits, bad body image and hip-huggers weren't enough to encourage a girl to watch her diet, here's a report indicating that a low-fat diet for pre-teens may offer some protection against breast cancer in later years. The research is pretty speculative, based on the assumption that it would be good to lower blood levels in puberty of hormones that have been linked to breast cancer in adults. And as incentives go, telling your daughter that "if you eat that potato chip now, in twenty or thirty years you might be very, very sick" is pretty weak. But maybe it'll give us moms more rationale to push healthier diets. And eat all the snack food and chocolate before they can get to it.

FAS in the news

Well, how about that? Fetal Alcohol Syndrome made the Yahoo! Health News KidsHealth listings today, right there between "Heart Murmurs and Your Child" and "Common Childhood Orthopedic Conditions." The article's not a bad overview, and it's nice to see it get front-page play, if only for a day. Another interesting fetal-alcohol-related page to check out is this quiz to give you a feel for what it's like to have FASD. Sure rings true today, when my son came home with not one but two notes complaining about his behavior -- behavior pretty much exactly like that described in the aforementioned quiz. Aren't special educators supposed to know how to deal with this stuff?

Celebrity non-endorsement

Well, I guess the whole issue of medicating kids who have trouble in school is settled now: Tom Cruise has spoken. According to an AP report on a press conference in New Zealand, where he's preparing to shoot his next movie, Cruise "advised parents on Saturday to work hard to help children having problems at school and not immediately put them on medication." Well, thanks, Tom. We'll try.

The star went on to relate his own childhood academic struggles, which were remediated finally not with pharmaceuticals but with Scientology. You can hardly argue the fact that Cruise has grown up to be a successful adult despite his early difficulties. And as it happens, I'm in agreement with him on the wrongness of medication as a first resort. Still, I can't help but bristle when celebrities make proclamations about how ordinary folks ought to live their lives and raise their children. Look to your own house, y'all.

Support and fiery humor

If you're afraid your child's educators see you as the Mother from Hell -- or, more likely, if you're proud of that designation -- you should know that there's an organization just for you. Mothers from Hell 2 is, as their Web site proclaims, "a national group of parents, relatives, friends, and anyone who just plain 'gets it' fighting chipped tooth and broken press-on nail for the appropriate education, community acceptance, desperately needed services, rights of and entitlements for individuals with disabilities. ... MFH2 offers more support than a 44DD underwire and more empowerment than a tanker full of caffeine, chocolate & Viagra!" A $10 annual membership gets you a subscription to the quarterly Brimstone Bulletin, access to a members-only list serve, and 10% off MFH2 merchandise. Wear one of their T-shirts to your next IEP meeting and child study teams will cower at your feet. (Hey, bring one of our tote bags, too.)

Lyrics to share and lyrics to squash

I have no clear idea why it's on a government Web page, much less under the umbrella of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, but there's a very nifty listing of song lyrics here nonetheless -- kiddie songs, songs from movies and musicals, patriotic ditties and popular favorites ranging from "Yes, We Have No Bananas" to the theme from "Friends." The NIEHS does present some lame attempt at connection by claiming that music is part of our environment; and the fact that it's part of the site's Kids' Pages (where you can also find games like "Toxic Waste Bug Bash") allows it a certain irrelevance; but I'll bet that there's really just some obsessed techie in the NIEHS Web site department with this endless list of song lyrics, and he or she just wanted a chance to show it off. Well, nice show, whoever! A useful service indeed.

Speaking of song lyrics, in the "this is what I've come to" category I must report that today I allowed my daughter to buy a CD that had been edited to remove offensive content. I carefully picked through the bin and looked for one without the Parental Advisory Sticker so I'd know it had been sanitized. I remember how apalled I was by the blatant censorship of those stickers back when I was young, childless and idealistic, and Tipper Gore, Frank Zappa and Dee Snider were battling it out; and I remember tsking when I heard that, since big chains like WalMart wouldn't carry advisory-stickered music, whitewashed versions of offensive CDs were being produced. But now, you know -- I just don't think my 12-year-old really needs to be exposed to the entire breadth and depth of Uncle Kracker's vocabulary, especially since she really just wants to hear "Follow Me." So I've become that thing which I used to hold in such contempt, a squasher of artistic expression. And really not all that ashamed of it, as it turns out.

Sarcasm has its limits

A recent study confirms what I have long suspected to be true about my daughter, and that is: Kids don't get sarcasm. The Canadian researchers found that until age 10 or so, children find no humor in sarcastic comments; the young ones take the comments at face value, the older ones recognize the insincerity of the remark but just think it's mean. Which fits with my observations of my girl, who although 12 chronologically is 10 or under linguistically. My husband, for whom sarcasm is often the conversational mode of choice when dealing with uncooperative kids, has always been annoyed when our daughter disregards the clearly intoned intent of his comments, and more annoyed when I point out that she might not realize he wasn't saying what he meant. Now -- joy! -- I have Canadian researchers to back me up. Yep, that'll sure settle the argument.

Middle school fears and hopes

My daughter is continuing in a minor panic about the impending doom of middle school, just eight months away. The current #1 fret is that she'll never be able to change her clothes fast enough for gym class. And granted, she does take her time with clothing transitions at home, sometimes disappearing into her room for tens of minutes just to put on her PJs. When I explained, though, that the locker room won't have music to listen to and hair accessories to play with and a mirror to pose in front of (and that she wouldn't want to pose anyway, with classmates looking on), she started to see how changing might be able to be accomplished at a faster-than-grass-growing pace. But she still doesn't get why she can't just wear her school clothes for gym. I've explained about body odor and having appropriate workout clothes and keeping school clothes clean, but I think she suspects what we all secretly know is true: It's just another example of school-induced torture. Let's wait until kids get to the most physically insecure period of their lives, and then make them change in front of one another! Heartless, is what it is.

But while the fifth-grader is facing the change of schools with dread, I have to say that I'm feeling kinda cautiously optimistic about the whole thing. In the past month I've spoken to two people who will be working with her next year -- learning consultant and guidance counselor -- and was impressed that they seemed open-minded and willing to help. Heck, I was impressed that they were even willing to take my phone calls. My daughter's transitional IEP meeting is at the end of this month, and I'm going into it with a suggestion from the learning consultant that we keep her in an inclusion class for the time being -- as opposed to adding resource room, which everyone on the Child Study Team but me has been pushing for. Could it be that, in middle school, I'll actually have an ally for keeping this girl in a regular classroom? Probably as likely as my daughter being able to change in under five minutes, but miracles could happen.

Free books!

Well, e-Books. As if there weren't already enough paper-based books on ADHD, now you can read or download an ADHD/ADD e-BOOK from PediatricNeurology.com. The material seems to pull together some good basic information about attention disorders, and has the advantage of being free. The site also offers a Childhood Seizure e-BOOK -- of interest to me at the moment because there seems to be a very good chance that my son is now having absence seizures (it's always something, isn't it?) -- as well as articles on just about every other sort of pediatric neurology issue you can think of, from tics to tumors. I don't know about you, but I can never have too many things to worry about.

Bubble babies and dress codes for parents

Saw a couple of interesting parenting-related articles in the local paper recently. This one questions whether parents today are unreasonably overprotective of their children, to the point of raising a generation of "bubble babies." In our rush to guard them from every negative experience and even the slightest possibility of peril, various experts opine, we may be encouraging passivity, obesity and anxiety. And on the subject of too much protection being a bad thing, check out this article about a parent in St. Louis who volunteered to chaperone a school field trip but caused a stir when it turned out that what all the kids took to be just another mom was really a cross-dressing dad. Some parents were outraged when they heard of this -- allegedly protective of their little ones' knowledge that there's such a thing as a transgender adult -- but what you gotta love about this story is that THE KIDS DIDN'T NOTICE until their parents got all up in arms about it. If no one had made a fuss, it would have been a non-issue, and parents and children both would have been spared uncomfortable explanations. But where the ticked-off parents really lose me is in their proposed remedy for the situation:

"The parents have asked the district to let them know whenever the father in question visits Castlio Elementary School, so they can withdraw their children from class. And they are pleading for a dress code that would require all adults who interact with students to 'dress in what a 9- or 10-year-old perceives as normal clothes for a man or a woman.'

Oh, dear me. A dress code for parents? Legislated by 9- or 10-year-olds? What if they all get together and say that they perceive clown suits as normal clothes for a man or a woman? Or, worse, that they think all women should wear pumps and pearls? If men and women both wear jeans and t-shirts, is that going to be a problem? I guess there's a certain justice to the idea, since kids have to abide by dress codes that require them to wear what adults perceive as normal clothes for 9- or 10-year-olds. But still, I really don't think we want to go there.

Heavy backpack? Lift, don't fall.

What's the most common cause of backpack-related injuries among youngsters? You're probably thinking in terms of hideous spinal malformations caused by the weight of heavy books on developing shoulders, but guess what: according to a recent study, kids were more likely to get hurt falling over a backpack left carelessly on the floor than actually putting the thing on their backs. Now this news makes my day, because it both pokes a hole in my daughter's attempts to get out from under her allegedly back-breaking pack and into a wheeled model, and reassures me that other people's houses are every bit as messy as mine is. All I need is a study proving that wheeled backpacks cause dislocated shoulders from all that heavy pulling and bumping around, and I'll be a happy mom.

Last year's hottest health stories

InteliHealth lists the Top 10 Health/Medical Stories of 2002, at least as so judged by the Harvard Medical School faculty. The one that's most interesting to parents in particular is "6. Increasing Rate Of Type 2 Diabetes In Children." The one that was the biggest deal to me, personally, in 2002 was "1. The Limits Of Hormone-Replacement Therapy." And the one that I'm looking at as my big story for 2003 is "2. Walter Willett's Healthy Eating Pyramid," which mixes up the order of the standard USDA food pyramid to put red meat, butter, refined grains, starches and sweets at the tiny tip-top and whole grains and vegetable oils at the eat-a-lot bottom. It reflects a lot of what I've been thinking would be an improvement in my eating habits, and a lot of what I've heard would be best for the kiddos. It will probably go the way of most New Year's resolutions, but dietary backsliding is a Top 10 health story of mine now and forever.

Kids get Prozac, I get depressed

Here's happy news for those who are convinced that all childhood problems can be medicated away: The FDA has given its official OK for Prozac to be prescribed to depressed children. Not that it's never been prescribed for kids before -- doctors have been giving the adult-approved med to children for years -- but now everybody can just feel a little bit better about doing it. The drug was found to have about the same side effects in the young as in the older, with the added effect of slowed physical growth. That's seen as a small price to pay to help the up to 25 percent of U.S. children who suffer from depression.

Twenty-five percent! Can that be true? A quarter of kids today are diagnosed as depressed? And we think that's due to a massive coincidental chemical imbalance in their brains, and not a massively out-of-whack society that either makes kids depressed or makes their parents seek that diagnosis for them? I'm sure that the drug will be a life-saver for some families, and I feel like a Grinch being grouchy about it; but the fact is, I'm not one of those who are convinced that all childhood problems can, or even should, be medicated away, and this whole thing just makes my heart sink. Eli Lilly, Prozac's maker, says it has no intention of marketing its drug for children; but ah, come on, with a quarter of the pediatric population as potential clients, you just know it won't be long before Prozac ads are popping up in "Highlights," Chuckie Finster's endorsing the stuff on Nickelodeon, and the Prozac Web site features a whole special section for kiddies. The junior self-diagnosis quiz should be a whole lotta of fun.

Family trees in fiction

I was reading a beat-up paperback library book with my daughter over the Christmas break -- an entry in the "Babysitter's Little Sister" series -- and was surprised to find a really nice treatment of different families in general and adoption specifically. The book is "Karen's Twin," and although Amazon.com lists the paperback version as out-of-print, it's probably lurking in more school libraries than just ours.

The main character is proud to be a "two-two," with two of everything in the two households she lives in -- one she and her brother share with their mother and stepfather, and the other with their father, stepmother, stepsiblings, and a little sister just adopted from Vietnam. Part of the plot centers on paperwork problems surrounding the adoption, and I liked the fact that, while Karen sometimes thinks of the new family member as a pest, when she fears that the adoption may not go through, she springs to the tot's defense. Not to worry: the book ends with a "Happy Adoption Day" party.

A good deal of the story centers around an in-class "family tree" assignment -- the bugaboo of so many adoptive parents -- that is handled creatively by all the children; Karen, for example, makes a tree for each of her "families." When the class gets to invite members of their family for a special day, Karen invites her father and adopted sister, another brings the grandparents who are raising her, and another brings his foster parents.

The main plot -- in which one of Karen's classmates wants desperately to be her twin sister, and essentially stalks her for much of the book -- is interesting only in that the twin wannabe picks Karen because she's got the most interesting family in the class. As part of the "Babysitter's Club" sub-genre of grade-school fiction, "Karen's Twin" ain't exactly art, but it's amiable enough, and I much enjoyed the very matter-of-fact way in which family differences were treated. That's the way I try to treat them with my kids, too. If you're looking for ways to validate that point of view with your own personal pre-teen, this is a book worth checking garage sales for.

All juice or no juice

More to-do about juice on the InteliHealth site, this time reporting findings from the American Dietetic Association that "children and adolescents are drinking higher amounts of less nutritious fruit-flavored beverages and carbonated soft drinks than 100 percent juice." All-fruit fruit juice can provide kids with vitamins and make up their food-pyramid fruit servings for the day, but "juice drinks" and soda mostly just give them big ol' mouthfuls of sugar. The association's recommendation, naturally, is for parents to limit kids to juice and nothing but the juice. And I try, oh American Dietetic Association, I try. But the juice-ish beverages all have flashy labels and clever names and cool-looking bottles or foil pouches. The battles I have with my son at the supermarket, putting my foot down over Kool-Aid or Hi-C or Bombastic Berry Blast or some such. A nice bottle of pure apple juice just can't compete. But, you know, I'm sure that if I sit him down and explain the nutritional ins and outs of the situation, he'll eschew that sweet stuff in a second. Yeah, that'll happen.

New on Mothers with Attitude

Just posted Julie Donner Andersen's latest installment of her "Therapeutic Laughter" column. Titled PTO Hell, it tells of her travails in dealing with the Stepford Mom-filled Parent Teacher Organization at her children's school. I'm sure most of us have felt the wrath of the perfect at some time or other, although I have to report that the folks in charge of the Home School Association (as they call it here) at my kids' schools have been pretty charitable toward me and mine, maybe because my kids are in special ed and they don't expect (or often get) much from the moms of the so-classified, maybe because I've managed to do my share of volunteering, and maybe because I never go to meetings and hear what they really have to say about me. I'm taking Julie's experiences as a warning.

Also new to the site: a couple of additions to our long-dormant games page. Stop by to waste some time and you'll now find a daily trivia quiz and a mood indicator game, for your frittering pleasure. What, you got better things to do? Don't be a Stepford Mom.

Tops in 2002

What better day than New Year's Eve to take a little look back at what America's been searching for in 2002, courtesy of Google's 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist. In what might be called the Surfing People's Choice Awards, Google's year-end run-down lists the most popular search-engine queries in a variety of categories. It makes me feel very out-of-touch with the "zeitgeist" to see that, while I use Google frequently, I never made any of these "popular" searches -- not "Spiderman," not "Jennifer Lopez," not "Eminem" -- and that, in turn, the searches that were most frequently made by me -- "fetal alcohol," "sensory integration," "behavior management," say -- are nowhere to be found among the most common. People were apparently too busy searching for information on Ferraris and mp3s to put sites on adoption or special needs in the Top 10s. Ah, well. We all knew we were out of step, didn't we?

My site certainly wasn't the most searched-for by anybody, but I do note with amusement that, of the folks who found the "Mothers with Attitude" home page through a search engine, 71% got there by typing the word "attitude." A search with that term today found "Mothers with Attitude" on page 4 out of 91 pages of results. Not bad! Out of all the uses of "attitude" on the Web, I was in the top 40. With a site as tiny as mine, you take validation where you can get it.

Square peg finds success

Caught a nice bit of reassurance for those of us raising kids with learning and behavioral differences this morning in Slate's Today's Papers:

The financial section of the NYT honors a dozen people who had wildly successful years in 2002. At the top of the list is David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue. ... Neeleman doubled his company's profits in the nine months ending on Sept. 30—some of the worst months in airline history. He's a father of nine, he never finished college, and he suffers from attention-deficit disorder.

A google search on Neeleman turned up this USA Today article from October in which the CEO talks about his ADD and shares details from his life that will sound familiar to anyone with a child whose train of thought often seems to be running on a track in a different dimension. I was particularly interested to note that Neeleman, who diagnosed himself with ADD, refuses to take medication for it out of fear of losing all the magical things that seem to be working for him. I've often thought exactly the same thing about my own flighty son; but however you feel about medication, in a time when there's so much pressure to "fix" what's "wrong" with our kids, when we hear that they'll be failures if we don't get them under control or make them succeed in school or sand down their bad habits, it's helpful to hear stories of those whose high-flying success may have been a result of those very rough edges. Nice news for a Sunday morning, anyway.

Just limping back from my little Christmas 'net break. Our holidays were pretty peaceful; the only ones to melt down were adults, which means that my easily overstimulated boy is starting to learn to give his own self time outs when he needs them. Merry Christmas to that!

Santa was plenty generous to me. I got lots of good books to read, so I can pretend that I'm actually the kind of person who has time to sit down and do that. The tomes under the tree for me -- I'll list them for folks who like to compare reading lists, of whom I am one -- were The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform and the Future of the Church by George Weigel; Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes; American Studies by Louis Menand; Longitudes & Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 by Thomas L. Friedman; and finally, shamefacedly, NOT because I asked for it but because my sister-in-law remembered I once said I had a crush on him as a preteen, Danny Bonaduce's autobiography, Random Acts of Badness: My Story.

Aside from that last one, it's exactly what I wanted. But all those good words weren't the best gift I got this Christmas. My kids gave me something infinitely more wonderful: They got along. They played together nice. They camped out in my daughter's room and played with the matching Barbie minivans their grandmother gave them and were just as friendly as you can imagine. My daughter even told me she'd told her brother she loves him, which is so far from her ordinary attitude as to be miraculous. And I know, it won't last. Four days post Christmas, the peace and unity is already slipping. But oh, it was nice while it lasted, going about my business on Thursday with the two of them happily occupied together, seeing enthusiasm and camaraderie in their relationship rather than hostility and spite. Probably hostility and spite is really a more natural big sister-little bro dynamic than peaceful playing, but Christmas is a time for dreams.

You go, girls

Nice girl-power-y site here for preteen types whiling away the endless days before school starts up again in January (or for moms who want said preteens to get up off the couch and DO something already). It was clearly created with Hispanic teen-ish girls in mind, but the site is bilingual and offers plenty for muchachas from any cultural background to enjoy (though adoptive parents may want to be sensitive to the section called "Family History," which emphasizes how important one's family heritage is; I don't think it's entirely inappropriate to adopted children, but you might want to provide some guidance and talking points). On the games page, along with tic-tac-toe and word searches, are quizzes on drinking and driving, inhalants and poisons, values and self-esteem. It's all really rah-rah and upbeat and well-intentioned, which means it will probably be poison to kids, but that doesn't mean we can't plop those little preteen butts in front of the computer and insist they play. Along with "Know Yourself" and "Know Your Body," there should be a section called "Know When Your Mom Needs a Break."

No baby pictures? No problem.

Well, here's one way to tackle the dreaded "baby picture project." If you're tired of having to educate educators as to why asking for baby pictures from everyone might not be fair to adopted children (and any child who reasonably might not have such a snapshot, including children whose mothers are chronically disorganized and those who always forget the camera), tired of creating or executing alternate assignments, tired of torpedo-ing time-honored school traditions that everybody clings to but you -- if you've got a great kid but no baby pictures thereof, consider investing in the fine art of photo regression. Here's one artist with an Internet site who'll consider conceptualizing what your child looked like as a baby and, for a few hundred bucks, provide you with 8x10 glossies. Maybe this will give your child an awareness of having been a baby that he or she may be lacking. Maybe this will give him or her a privacy-preserving way of handling schoolmates' questions. Maybe it will just give you an easy out from discomfiting assignments.

And maybe it's all just a little bit creepy. Some people claim that their kids have real concerns and regrets about the lack of documentation of their younger years, and that may be. I can't really argue with anything that increases a child's sense of selfhood. But I wonder if it's emotionally sound to fake these things -- to use technology to pretend that missing pieces are really there. It may be a pretty picture, and it may be fun to imagine, but it's still a lie. And the fewer of those we tell our children -- and the fewer we tell as adoptive families -- the better we'll be in the long run, I think.

Get your hip 'n' happening interventions here

Looking for the "newest and hottest interventions"? The Youth Change Web site is offering them up, along with live on-line help for solving behavior problems; workshops, books and tapes; and newsletters on "ADD, Apathy & More." And of course, the first thing that comes to your mind when looking at a cheerful site like this, bedecked with cartoons of smiling children, is, "Folks, if my child's behavior problems could be solved NOW with a visit to one Web site, I would save so much money on therapy bills and medications that I could buy me the Brooklyn Bridge."

But I'm certainly not above casting about for interventions, and while I've never found a Web site that's Solved All My Problems, I've certainly visited many that have pointed me in the right direction. What tickles me here, and troubles me a little, too, is the fact that these interventions aren't just tried and true, or teacher recommended, or parent approved, but the "newest" and "hottest." Are we really to the point of marketing interventions the way we market cars, clothes and records? Maybe so. There do certainly seem to be trends in interventions, and waves of enthusiasm. ABA seems to be hot for autism intervention; sensory integration therapy could probably be characterized as new and hot, if you take a broad view of what "new" means in terms of recognized therapies; nutritional interventions are pretty hot at the moment, with advocates every bit as zealous as any pop star's fans. I'd say medication was a pretty hot intervention if I hadn't just visited the bookstore yesterday, and noticed that the "Ritalin is wrong" books now far outnumber the "medication is our friend" advisories. So maybe Ritalin is so five minutes ago, and blaming parents for having jobs or disagreements or divorces, as most of the new wave of ADHD books seem to do, is so very today.

Personally, I try to stay way ahead of the curve.

What makes a successful family

Lots of interesting food for thought on this site about raising adopted children with special needs. I particularly liked the part about the qualities of successful and satisfied adoptive and special needs families, such as this: "The most satisfied parents are those who are process oriented rather than outcome driven. They enjoy the challenge of adapting to each new developmental stage and the changes that brings in the child. They thrive on finding creative ways to deal with their child's behaviors and problems. They thrive on the process of being an advocate for the child's needs, and integrating him into their family, school and society." This and a long list of similar observations are gratifying because they reflect the things that I have always felt we were doing right as a family; and also, because they validate my need to buy more and more parenting books. See, I'm not a spendthrift and a slave to each new theory -- I'm enjoying the challenge of adapting to each new develepmental stage and thriving on finding creative ways to deal with my child's behaviors and problems. Yeah, that's it.

New on Mothers with Attitude

I'm feeling pretty calm this holiday season. The last UPS shipment from all my on-line gift-shopping arrived yesterday; most of our Christmas cards are mailed (save for the ones to people I've forgotten, to be mailed when I receive one from them); the dreaded holiday program at my kids' school is over and with it a world of stress for my son; presents are wrapped and waiting for our tree to go up this weekend; child-watching arrangements have been made for the week of no school; the menu is mostly planned for Christmas dinner; and I even managed to make it to my church's penance service on Tuesday, so I'm going into the holiday properly confessed (or improperly, depending on your feelings about communal penance, but I digress). The only major hurtle ahead is making it through Mass on Christmas eve, historically a near impossibility for my son. But other than that, I'm ready to say: Bring Christmas on! (Never mind that my kids have been saying that for a month and a half.)

If at this point in the season you're in need of a little spiritual uplift, read April Cain's latest installment in her "Thinking It Over" column, The Real Meaning of Christmas. It's so touching, it will have you casting the made-for-Hallmark TV movie in your head. Also new on the site this week are additional selections in the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome section of our bookstore, including some family stories that are pretty touching themselves. The rest of the bookstore will be updated with new offerings soon; it should be done by now, but hey! I've been getting ready for Christmas.

Looking for a little brain research?

Here's a cool site at which to while away some time: the listing of hot topics on the brains.org site. Billed as a way to "stay informed with the latest research in neuropsychology and education," the page offers alphabetically sorted items on everything from Attention Deficit Disorder to Violence. A few that caught my eye (in quotes, with my comments after):

"A new study out on medicating ADHD, shows that the best results were obtained when using Ritalin (MPH) mixed with caffeine. The study showed that impulsivity and agression as well as planning skills were most effected by the combination of these two drugs. (When used separately, Ritalin is more effective than caffeine and amphetimines work about as well as Ritalin.) Leon, M. 2000. Journal of Attention Disorders, vol 4(1), 27-47." ... Does Starbucks know about this? Look for ADHD Blend, coming soon.

"Using fMRI techniques, Yale University has found an interesting brain abnormality in persons with autism and autism spectrum disorder. In most brains (yours and mine) we use one area to discriminate or identify objects and a different area to identify faces. In the brains of persons with autism, they use only the first region (inferior Temporal gyri) to identify both objects and faces. Schultz, et.al. (2000). Archives of General Psychiatry, vol 57(4), 331-340." ... Makes me think about Temple Grandin's book Thinking in Pictures and the entirely different way people with autism seem to experience the world and language.

"Homework or no homework? That's a difficult question. According to research, student achievement has little relationship to whether or not the class has assigned homework. In elementary grades, teacher assigned homework actually correlated to students' poor attitude toward school. Achievement DOES relate positively to how much time the parents spend assisting with homework - which should come as no surprise to anyone. Cooper, et.al. 2001. Journal of Experimental Education. vol 69(2) 181-199 and Journal of Educational Psychology (1998), vol 90(1),70-83." ... Now, I actually like homework, because it helps me keep track of what my kids are doing, and gives me a firsthand chance to evaluate what they can or cannot do. Where I have trouble, though, is that fine line between "assisting with homework" and "doing their homework for them." I seem to cross it often (though not as often as they'd like).

"According to a study out of New York's Columbia University, praise students more for their effort than for their intelligence. The study showed that in 5th graders, praising intelligence actually caused them to work less, experience less enjoyment and less persistance in tasks. Praising effort had just the opposite effect. Mueller & Dweck (1998). Journal of Personality & Social Psychology. Vol 75(1) 33-52."

"Indiana University completed a study of students with Learning Disabilities(LD) Half the LD students were included in the regular classroom for reading and math. Half the LD students received reading and math instruction in a resource classroom. The LD students in the regular classroom made significantly more progress in reading and comparable progress in math when compared to the students in resource classes." ... This item and the one above are EXACTLY along the lines of what I've been trying to convince my daughter's child study team of for years. Maybe I'm just ahead of my time? Gotta order up some of these studies in time for next year's IEP meeting. And you can bet I'll be trolling this site for more validation.

Defending the apostrophe

Having just finished signing and stuffing Christmas cards with my husband, who, when addressing envelopes, insisted on using an apostrophe to pluralize the last names of our friends and relatives even though I gave him my every assurance as a professional copy editor that it was grammatically incorrect and also annoying, I was tickled to stumble upon the site of the Apostrophe Protection Society -- dedicated, as am I, to the proper use of this essential piece of punctuation. You can stop by for a quick English lesson, see examples of egregious incorrectness on signs and storefronts, and share your personally outrageous finds on a message board. I haven't seen anything like it since I belonged to an e-mail list for copy editors that routinely engaged in flame wars over proper comma placement.

None of this has anything to do with parenting, I guess -- except that, next time your sloppy writing kid tells you nobody cares about grammar no more, no how, you can call up this site and prove that there are indeed folks whose obsession with punctuation far, far exceeds your own. See? Somebody does care.

Christmas concerts and other holiday hassles

The Christmas program at my children's school is this Wednesday, which is a relief because it means the end of the routine-destroying rehearsals that drive my son so batty during the month of December. As I've written before, I have my doubts as to whether the good things about these annual extravaganzas (musical enrichment, the discipline of working as a group and being onstage, the opportunity for parents to get together and go "Awwwww...") is worth the bad things (study time lost, kids without musical ability forced to spend lots of time proving it, kids without standing-still ability tested beyond the very limits of endurance). I know, at any rate, that they're not good for my boy. Judging by the comments I'm getting about his rehearsal demeanor, his teachers know it too, although whether they're placing the proper blame on the disruptiveness of pageant preparation, I don't know. After Wednesday, at any rate, it will all be over. I'm hoping he doesn't display a little disruptiveness of his own onstage.

Christmas rehearsals are my son's greatest source of holiday stress. If your personal stress producer is a child with RAD, check out the Christmas message from Nancy Thomas for tips on making it through to the 25th. If dealing with child study teams has got you down, the folks at Wrightslaw want you to remember to follow their survival tips at this time and throughout the year. The About.com Special Children site has a nice list of links to articles on dealing with everything from depression to family reunions (oh, wait -- aren't those the same thing?), and on Mothers with Attitude you can still find the article from a mom of 18 on establishing Christmas traditions for adopted children. And if all that doesn't help, just remember that all of this holiday frazzle and frenzy does eventually come to an end. Holiday stress will pass. Then we can move on to general winter stress, followed by spring stress, summer stress, and fall stress. Merry whatever, y'all.

A vaccine kids can't get

I've been worrying off and on about whether I'll have my kids vaccinated for smallpox when the opportunity's offered, and here it turns out I've been worrying for nothing: according to an Associated Press report, there are currently no plans to provide the vaccine for children at all, unless there's an actual outbreak and all safety bets are off. Although testing a drug on children before prescribing it for them has hardly been considered a necessity in most other areas of medicine, it is apparently giving pause here -- and since a vaccine that has major health risks of its own can't ethically be tested on children, the tots will just have to go un-immune for now. Would that such caution extended to other vaccines as well.

If your unvaccinated little ones are nonetheless curious about the potential scourge of smallpox, there's a child-friendly FAQ on the KidsHealth site. Mom and Dad can get more details from a FAQ from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Adding to mom's balancing act

From the "Too Much of a Good Thing Is a Bad Thing" file comes research from the U.S. agriculture department and Cornell University that the antioxidants in dark grape juice, while good for your heart, are bad for your ability to absorb iron. That might not be a big deal for adults who are obsessed with cholesterol and looking for something other than red wine to lower it, but it's a big deal for kids, in whom iron deficiency can lead to anemia and, from there, to "mental, physical and behavioral impairment, particularly in infants and toddlers," according to the experts. Dark fruit juices in general appear to be iron-uptake-reducing, while lighter-colored juices have an opposite effect. The researchers stopped short of suggesting the witholding of dark grape juice for tots, but did recommend a balanced palette of beverage hues for maximum nutritional correctness. So there you go, moms: Now in addition to making sure your kids have a balanced diet that hits all the proper points on the food pyramid, and that their fruit juices don't contain corn syrup or aspertame or dyes or preservatives, you need to make sure that the colors of those juices assort themselves through the day in all shades from white grape juice to dark. So what if this means you have six or seven bottles open at all times -- you want to be drinking to their health, right?

Calendar girl

'Tis the season to ... buy calendars, among other things. Such a fresh start a new calendar gives you! This year, I'll be heading into 2003 with Mom's Family Calendar, a great wall planner for getting every family member where they're supposed to be when; the Jeopardy! page-a-day calendar I get my husband every year so we can start our mornings sparring over trivia; and a new planning system from Franklin Covey, purveyors of motivational organizational products. This new system replaces the Palm Pilot I purchased last year, which replaced a nice spiral blank book I was going to personalize to be my perfect planner, which replaced a pricey leather-bound system from Levenger, which replaced... well, I forget now. About ten or twenty other system-to-end-all-systems. I require a new life-planning system every eleven months or so to maintain the illusion that I really could be an organized person if I just had the right tools -- my house would be neat, my work would be done during daytime hours and not at 2 a.m., my children would get to school on time and appropriately clothed (the school nurse gave my daughter a pair of gloves last week because I'd sent her to school with socks on her hands to keep them warm, so I'm heading into the new year with a lot to prove on this score). Deep down, I know that what really needs to be changed are my personal habits, and not my paperwork ... but the paperwork's easier.

If you're still calendar shopping, you might want to surf by the About adoption site, which has some recommendations of 2003 Wall & Desk Calendars with an adoption theme.

180 channels and everything's on

It's official: My family now has more television channels than it knows what to do with. Our cable provider's been peddling digital packages that offer in excess of 180 channels, not to mention movies on demand that you can order and watch over the course of 24 hours, pausing, fast-forwarding, rewinding and stopping like they were tapes from the video store. We've got two Disney channels, three or four Nickelodeon channels, multiple HBOs, Encores and Starz-es, video magazines, and about 45 channels that just play music. Oh, it's a veritable wealth of programming, and as soon as we figure out how to use the remote, we'll be in television heaven. Now, I know there are moms out there who think TV is evil, a terrible influence on children, a major cause of youthful violence and immorality and hyperactivity and bad posture. Well, I ain't them. TV is my respite, and 180 channels means that my babysitter just agreed to work overtime. Tune in, turn on and leave me the heck alone -- that's my motto. Just hope the kids will let me watch something I want to watch every now and again.

A close family is a happy family

Despite what you may be feeling these upcoming holiday days, when the kids are home from school and underfoot and your relatives are over for dinner and bickering and your spouse is snappish from the stress of putting together toys with 3,467 pieces -- despite the feeling that your family is making you crazy, a close-knit family actually makes you much more happy. Really! They've done studies! Close families were found to "inoculate" children against despair, so when your kids whine that you're making their lives miserable, just chuckle and say, "That's not what they're saying at the University of North Carolina!" And a sociologist at the University of Chicago says that being married makes you happy, too, even if you think your marriage isn't the greatest. You're still as happy or happier than you would be alone. Really. Even without the inlaws. Sociologists wouldn't lie.

An adoption story, nice and not-so-

In my real, off-Web life I work for a Catholic newspaper. We wanted to do a nice story on adoption for National Adoption Month in November -- as, indeed, does every newspaper in the country, taking a brief break from all the scary adoption stories they run for the rest of the year -- and so the agency that handles adoption for our diocese set a reporter up with a family for a nice puffy piece about how great it is to adopt. I read the story eagerly when I finally got it to lay out and copy edit, and it seemed like pretty good news, a profile of a happy family who already had one adopted child and was now in the process of adopting another baby. The article hit all the right notes, about adoption being a wonderful way to form a family, about how there's no shame or secrecy to it anymore, and children should be informed and proud of how they came to be loved by their parents. Information on how to adopt was offered to anyone who wanted to follow in the successful footsteps of the family in the article. It was all set to run the last week of November ...

...except that the family got cold feet. The baby's adoption was not quite final, and they worried that his birthmother would see their names and pictures in the paper and cause trouble. They hadn't realized the article would feature them so prominently. They weren't comfortable with the exposure. Could we change their names, and not reveal where they live? Or maybe hold the article for awhile, until all the papers were safely signed? As the office adoption expert, I nixed the name-change scenario. Better no adoption feature for National Adoption Month than one that paints adoption as a situation where names need to be changed to protect the profiled. Yes, adoption's wonderful, we're proud of our family! -- just as long as you only use our initials, and on second thought, give us back that picture. We wound up holding onto the story in the hope that they'd okay it after the adoption was final, but their feet, once icy, never warmed back up. So much for promoting adoption.

I suppose I can't blame these parents too much. Domestic adoption is apparently fraught with peril for adoptive parents who can be cast aside at a birthparent's whim -- whether that's good or bad depends on your perspective in the process, I suppose -- and I don't know that I wouldn't keep a low profile to protect my family in similar circumstances. But at the same time, this whole thing points out a dichotomy that I see so often on e-mail lists for adoptive parents. Adoption is wonderful and the media should do more good stories ... but my child's adoption story is private to him or her and not appropriate for me to tell. Schools should be up on all the latest adoption language and should use sensitivity in dealing with family issues ... but there's no reason they need to know my child is adopted, or get any information from me. If people knew how many happy adoptive families there were, they wouldn't judge adoption so harshly ... but because they judge adoption so harshly, I'm not going to tell them about my happy adoptive family.

Is it any wonder, then, that the bad stories seem to be the only stories that get told? People with nothing to lose will always be more forthcoming than people with something to protect. Must the media forcibly "out" happy families -- as our paper could have done, and maybe would have if the editor didn't feel sorry for the priest in the middle -- in order to offer counterpoint? If adoptive parents are going to go to such lengths to hide their light beneath a bushel, they shouldn't be too surprised if all anybody sees is darkness.

Snow therapy

It snowed here in the Northeast last week, enough to put a substantive amount of snow on the ground, and I've been noticing how intensely my son enjoys playing in it. Not that it's unusual for a 9-year-old boy to like to play in the snow, but there seems to be an added sensory integration-related component to it for my guy -- something about the texture of the powder, soft and yet firm, and the sharp coldness intense enough to get through to even the hyposensitive. He's less interested in throwing snowballs than in throwing himself down into the stuff, or using his hands to dig through it or scrape at it. The kid is a full-body snow-man, and getting him to school or to church when we have to pass large pristine fields of white on our walking way has been near impossible. Nothing's more important than getting him some of that snow.

I admit that I'm enjoying the snow, too, particularly now that I have a vehicle with four-wheel drive. How great it felt tooling around in the thick of the storm, braving back roads to get to my kids' school when the front ones were parking lots, pulling up just in time! I grew up in California, and snow was never part of my childhood, so I still get kind of a kiddish thrill to see it, all crisp and sparkling and fluffy. But sadly for my son, the last thing I want to do at my advanced age is go out and play in the cold and damp. The sight of snowflakes makes me want to bundle up inside with a big bowl of popcorn and a mug of hot chocolate and watch "Casablanca," or maybe "Return to Me." My son thinks that's a waste of perfectly good snow-playing time, but hey -- we all have our own sensory needs, and mine is to not be wet and freezing.

The shortest pediatrician visit in the world

If your child feels anxious about going to the doctor, the InteliHealth site has a nice coloring book to download and print out so that kids can scribble their way to an understanding of the things that go on in a pediatrician's office. It's a nice little five page book, with a picture to color for having height and weight checked; saying "aah"; getting checked with a stethoscope; having eyes examined; and getting stickers at the end. This is a nice little icebreaker for kids. It's also, as most moms know, a complete joke. Have you ever gotten through a pediatrician's visit in five pages? Not a chance. To be truly accurate, there'd need to be twenty or so pages on sitting in the waiting room, another twenty on waiting in the examining room in your underwear; we'd need a page on Mom filling out forms, Mom coughing up the co-pay, Mom digging through her purse for toys and her memory for games to keep everybody happy during the forty pages of waiting. And don't forget the one of the nurse coming in with a trayful of needles, and in my children's case the three or four extra staff members coming in to hold the patient down. Come to think of it, maybe it's better to let the kids think it's a cute little five page visit. Otherwise, we'd never get 'em in the door.

Making the holidays more meaningful, maybe

I'm proud to say that I have almost all my Christmas shopping done, perhaps the earliest I've ever been able to say that. Of course, I've done almost everything by mail order, which means I don't actually have the gifts in hand yet, and if things come late or fall out of stock I may have to be running to the mall with the throngs of last-minute shoppers on December 24 -- but hey, the intention is there, I did the on-line shopping, and I'm proud of myself. Cards, of course, are another story. They're already starting to come in from overachieving friends vying to put the first holiday greeting in my mailbox. I haven't even started thinking about getting my address list together, much less the holiday letter that must go with most of the missives. I do, however, have at least some of the cards I'll need. I've decided, in what will probably be perceived as a really tacky move, to use the Christmas cards that charities have been sending me as a come-on to contribute. I mean, really, why shouldn't I give my Christmas-card-buying dollars to, say, the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, or Save the Children, or Alzheimer's Disease Research, instead of Hallmark? The cards are mostly presentable, and doesn't the thought count for more if it does some good, too? That's my story and I'm sticking to it, even if others suspect that I'm really just too lazy to go card shopping.

If you're interested in something a little different for your holiday cards this year, check out the food allergy holiday cards from the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network site; each card has a food allergy fact on the back. Elsewhere on the site you can sign up for free special allergy alerts on foods recalled because of surprise ingredients and get recipes suited to specific allergy needs. This month's offerings for careful cooks include Candy Cane Cookies that are milk, egg, peanut, soy and nut free. If Santa turns out to be lactose intolerant, you gotta know you'll be getting better presents for providing treats that are sensitive to his dietary needs.

Time out, time in

Interesting article in an area newspaper about a social skills workshop for parents of children with special needs. (The social skills in question were those of the children, not the parents, although I've certainly met some parents who could use some help in that area, too. Maybe even me.) I'd read about this workshop and even thought about going, then realized when I saw the follow-up in the paper today that I'd missed the chance. Nonetheless, the article did mention some good ideas from the event, including one that I think I might try: making a laminated "Time Out Pass" that everybody in the family could grab when they needed to cool off. My husband and I certainly give ourselves time outs from time to time, and my son sometimes sequesters himself in his room when he feels overwhelmed. Maybe formalizing that process with a pass would help the kids understand that it's okay to feel angry or sad or stressed, but not okay to act out those feelings on others. Take some time, calm down, then, if you need to, talk the problem out with a clearer head. See, if you read the newspaper and visit enough sites like this one and join enough e-mail parenting groups, you can get good ideas for your kids without ever actually having to leave the house at all.

New on Mothers with Attitude

It's been a while since I had to deal with potty training -- my son held out in diapers until he was five, but that was four years ago now -- yet the trauma is deep-seated enough that I can entirely relate to Julie Donner Andersen's latest entry in her "Therapeutic Laughter" column, The Christmas Potty. Her wee-wee-worded yuletide carols will give you a giggle even if your diaper days are long past. And for those dealing with toilet trauma now, I have three words: Wait Until Summer. Then you can utilize the method that finally worked on my guy, the much respected, much feared No Pants Method. It took about a day of t-shirts-only to help my son get with the program. But if you tried something like that now, with the kind of temperatures we're having in the Northeast, anyway, you'd have to thaw out their little butts with a blow dryer before sitting them down on the potty. Probably better to wait 'til it's warm...

Flu shots all around!

Have you gotten your flu shot? Has every member of your family? Everyone's due now, according to government recommendations, even babies as young as six months. The guidelines suggest that little ones get not one but two shots, four weeks apart, to make sure the immunity really took. And this should of course be repeated on a yearly basis, since there's a different bug to battle each year. This is all just a suggestion, mind you. Nobody's calling these essential vaccinations yet. And why is that? Is it because there's some doubt that they may be necessary? safe? effective? Nope -- it's just that there's really not quite enough for everybody. So those responsible enough to show up for their shot at their doctor's suggestion will be gloriously flu-free, and the rest of us hardheads who harbor hesitations about vaccines of any sort can fend for ourselves, for now. But if at some point this winter we find ourselves or our children confined to bed with all manner of major discomforts, well, they told us so.

Personally, I'll take my chances. The thought of my kids stricken with the flu fills me with dread (for their physical health, of course, and also for my mental health if they're confined at home for weeks). But the thought of bringing them to the doctor for more shots does the same (for the possible negative implications of vaccinations, of course, and also for the whining and screaming that accompanies any contact my kids need to have with needles). And I'll admit, I'm feeling less and less obliged to take the word of medical professionals that something is absolutely necessary -- a good so undeniable that it's silly even to have doubts about it. That's the way my gynecologist described hormone replacement therapy five years ago. And where are we now, hmmm? There's a pretty long list of things that doctors have found to be universally good right up until the time that they weren't after all, go figure, and when you think of some of the side effects that have prompted those revelations, the flu starts to look pretty good.

Aw, you know, it's all just a crapshoot anyway. It's a crapshoot for the doctors -- how to do the most good for the most patients with the knowledge available now -- and it's a crapshoot for the rest of us -- am I more likely to be caught in a terrorist smallpox attack or be the one in a million who dies from the vaccine? is my child more likely to have neurological complications from vaccines or die of the measles? As with most other things in life, and most other things in parenting, you assess your odds and take your best guess. It's nice that, for the moment, we're being allowed to choose our own chances with flu and smallpox vaccinations. It would be nicer still if at least a little wiggle room was allowed in other "we know what's good for you" medical proclamations, too.

I resolve to make no resolutions

Do your children make New Year's resolutions? If you'd like them to, and you'd like them to say something other than, "I will lie around the house and be lazy. Every day, I will make my mom crazy," the American Academy of Pediatrics is offering 20 Healthy New Year's Resolutions for Kids that should last your little ones at least as long as the healthy New Year's resolutions you make for yourself. Some of them are actually pretty likely to last longer than that -- certainly "I will wear my seat belt every time I get in a car" will be pretty hard to slip up on since it's the law in many states, though most parents would probably prefer to add "without whining, complaining, or stalling" to the end of it. But I'm guessing items like "I will keep myself, and the places where I live and play, clean," on the list of resolutions for toddlers; "I will spend a couple of minutes every morning and afternoon applying sunscreen before I go outdoors" on the school-age kids list; and "I will eat at least one fruit and one vegetable every day, and I will limit the amount of soda I drink" for teens are mostly parent and pediatrician pipe dreams. And there's one school-age resolution that I find downright worrisome: "I will always ASK if there's a gun in the homes where I play." Do we really want our kids to be asking if there's a gun around? Wouldn't this encourage their playmate to go and get it? Personally, given the violence of the world today, I'd like my children to resolve never to go anywhere, do anything, or talk to anyone. That wouldn't exactly be a healthy resolution for any of us, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about seatbelts and sunscreen.

Wanna new drug?

So there's a new gun in the arsenal of weaponry aimed at wiping out ADHD: Strattera, recently approved by the FDA and already complete with its own website. The main marketing advantage of Strattera seems to be that it's not a stimulant, and therefore not a controlled substance, making niceties like phone-in prescription refills and free samples available to the hyperactive and their families for the first time. The drug apparently works by preventing the "reuptake" of norepinephrine, making more of that impulse-controlling neurotransmitter available to jittery little brains (and big ones, too; Strattera is the first drug tested for adult ADHD). However, even Strattera maker Eli Lilly admits in its FAQ on the drug that "the precise mechanism by which Strattera works on ADHD is not known." If that doesn't fill you with confidence, rest assured that six -- count 'em, six! -- studies have been done to prove Strattera safe, with a relatively long period of effectiveness and relatively mild side effects like nausea and tiredness. So the question becomes, do you want your kid to be the first on your block or in your school to try a brand spanking new drug? I have to admit that, although I've always been against medication for my own personal jumpy little guy, the thought of trying something before it has a whole bunch of scary anecdotes and glassy-eyed prescriptees attached to it has a certain appeal. It's on my mind, for sure. But how 'bout you have your kid try it first?

Internet rage

If you've been noticing that people are quicker to anger lately, you're not alone. New to the Mothers with Attitude site this week is a Thinking It Over column called "Life Rage," writer April Cain's observation of people's increasing tendency to fly off the handle even when they're not on the road. Personally, I've been noticing plenty of unpleasant outbursts on the highway, but not the kind you drive on; the Information Superhighway seems particularly littered with scorched bodies these days as e-mail group members hit "send" while they're feelings are still incendiary. It's frightening how furious people can get at faceless strangers, how merciless they can be in expressing their displeasure, and how little regard they show for the size of their audience and the public nature of their forum. Now, see, I get upset by some e-mails too, but I never display that kind of in-your-face fury. Instead, I just rage at the computer screen, stomp around the house in a funk, yell at my kids, huff at my spouse, toss and turn all night in righteous indignation, and spend so many hours and days formulating the perfect fire-breathing response that by the time I finally sit down to post, the offending message has sunk so low in my e-mail queue that it no longer really seems worth all the trouble. If only other people were as healthy and well-adjusted as I!

(And speaking of being ticked off, I've been pretty annoyed with my internet service provider for cutting me off late this week and leaving me with no way to get on here and update my Weblog. If anybody's actually missed me these last few days, let me say that I sure woulda been here if I could. Hope you're not too mad about it... )

A fresh face on the culinary scene

We're trying out a new chef at our house tomorrow morning. He's young and inexperienced, but we have high hopes for his culinary flair. I happen to know that he's trained extensively with Emeril Lagasse and Martha Stewart. Of course, it's true that this training has been exclusively in the form of faithfully watching their Food Network shows. It's also true that this is his first time ever preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. And I can't deny the fact that he's only nine years old. But every great chef's gotta start somewhere, right?

Still, people seem shocked when I tell them I'm letting my son cook our family feast. Shortsighted ones! Putting the little guy in charge, with me as kitchen assistant, has three great advantages: It gives me an opportunity to lead him through good life-based lessons in math, science and nutrition; it encourages him to pursue an area in which he's recently shown enthusiasm; and it means that if any of the food turns out awful, I have someone to blame. Who can complain if the stuffing is dry or the sweet potatoes burnt if they're beeing served by a cherub-faced cook bursting with pride at doing it himself? As far as I'm concerned, having someone else take the heat in the kitchen -- even if I have to do most of the chopping and stovetop stirring dirty work -- is something to be truly thankful for.

The Consumer Parents Sanity Commission

With holiday shopping panic and desperation season starting in just two short days, it seems a fitting time to check out the Consumer Product Safety Commission's Holiday Toy Recall Checklist of gifts unfit for giving. CPSC Chairman Hal Stratton is quoted as saying "Preventing needless tragedies and providing a safe environment are the best holiday gifts parents can provide their children," which is a big relief because I thought I was going to have to actually purchase some toys. Now I can just keep the tree and the gift wrap packed away and give my children the priceless gift of safety. Never mind that not getting the toys they've demanded and dreamed of will strike them as a needless tragedy indeed.

Included on the commission's list of naughty toys are pedal cars decked in lead paint, cotton candy machines that can heat up to the point of catching fire, toy planes that can burst apart in midair, and baby walkers that can fall down stairs. A lump of coal to those manufacturers, for sure. But why don't they ever recall any toys just for being so obnoxious that they can cause parents to burst apart, catch fire and fall down stairs? What's a little lead paint compared to obnoxious electronic noises or games with 500,000 tiny pieces or dolls that require more accessories than their human owners? I remember one year somebody gave my son an ice cream truck with an electronic jingle and repetitive "Ice cream! Ice cream!" voice so incessantly annoying that I had to "accidentally" break the battery compartment door so it could never be heard from again. Why doesn't anybody ever recall that?

Perhaps nobody's ever had the initiative. Until now. I hereby introduce the Consumer Parents Sanity Commission, dedicated to cataloging the nation's most dangerously nerve-grating toys and giving other parents fair warning. If your child's acquired a particularly perplexing plaything, send us the name of the item, the manufacturer's name, and your complaint, and we'll start making our own list of would-be recalls. Tell your kids the toy they're crying for's so unsafe, it's been written up by the CPSC. The real meaning of those initials can be our little secret.

Talk about your seasickness

Does the thought of being trapped on a cruise ship with your family and a bunch of perky Disney characters make you want to throw up? Then you know how it felt to be on a recent Disney Cruise when a stomach ailment sickened some 200 of the passengers during a weeklong sail to the Caribbean. That's just the respite from hell, isn't it? You book this cruise because they have activities that will keep your kids busy and let you relax, and instead you're all cooped up in a stateroom together enjoying severe gastrointestinal distress. The Associated Press story quotes a New Jersey man as saying the illness was no big deal, lasted only about 12 hours out of seven days, and didn't ruin his trip. I'm guessing he didn't have to clean up after the kids.

A little low-tech assistance

My kids have been having some luck lately with some very primitive forms of "assistive technology" -- maybe assistive low-tech instead. For my daughter, the newly willing-to-reader, it's been a bookmark with strip of see-through yellow celophane along one edge to use as a reading guide. Her teacher gave her this gadget, called an EZC Reader and available from an aptly named site called Really Good Stuff, and whether the yellow color atop the type really does make the words more available to her eyes or the novelty of the thing just makes reading a little more fun, it seems to be an element in her recent non-hatred of reading. I take what encouragement I can get. Meanwhile, my son, who's hated writing (the fine motor part) about as much as his sister has hated reading, is showing a lot more willingness to write his spelling words and try his hand at cursive when using a gel pen instead of a pencil. The smooth-flowing utensils are messier and less correctable than their leaden counterparts, but if it gets us through homework without tantrums and meltdowns, I give it two thumbs up. Sometimes little things can mean a lot.

Hamburgers can be hazardous to your health

Worried about your kids' weight? Blame it on McDonald's. A class-action lawsuit has been filed in New York on behalf of children whose diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity has allegedly been caused by too much Mickey D's. According to an AP story on the InteliHealth: Health News site, "a lawyer alleged that the fast-food chain has created a national epidemic of obese children. Samuel Hirsch argued that the high fat, sugar and cholesterol content of McDonald's food is 'a very insipid, toxic kind of thing' when ingested regularly by young kids.'" Well. Then don't let your kids eat it?

As for my kids, the fattening qualities of Big Macs have been one of their major attractions. My son was a little scrawny thing when we adopted him at age 21 months, and had trouble gaining weight for years. But a few years ago he started scarfing down Big Macs, and now he's a good solid weight for his still-short frame. All those fat and calories in such a tasty package have done him a great service. Perhaps I should see if MacDonald's wants us to come testify in their behalf. Can you say, "Big Macs for life?"

Books for reluctant readers

Yesterday morning my daughter said something to me I never thought I'd hear: "I like to read." What wonderful news! This is a girl who, over the summer, when asked to define what reading meant to her, responded "staring at black marks on paper." Far from liking to read, she's usually expressed nothing but hatred for the activity. But now, at age 12, three months into 5th grade, she's starting to warm up to books. Who'd have thought it?

At our first meeting in September, her teacher told me that she gets kids reading novels in her class in the hope that reluctant readers will find the one book that will make them decide reading's not so bad after all. She may have a success story here. The assignment of a chapter a night in a reading-for-pleasure book has made books a habit for my girl, and the personalized selections the teacher's made have kept that assignment from being a chore. For others with book balkers out there, here are some of the titles my daughter's made it through so far this year, without fear and loathing: Two books by P.J. Petersen, I Hate Company and I Hate Camping; two from the Marvin Redpost series by Louis Sachar, Why Pick On Me? and Alone In His Teacher's House; The Candy Corn Contest by Patricia Reilly Giff; and a Bailey School Kids book by Debbie Dadey, Frankenstein Doesn't Plant Petunias.

To be honest, none of these would be my idea of literature to inspire a love of reading; I long to read "Sarah Plain and Tall" with her, and have her not hate Harry Potter so intensely. But these books are where she's at right now, and she's willing to be there. So I'll be beside her, reading along.

Around the Web

If your child has special health care needs, check out the emergency preparedness forms offered by the American Academy of Pediatrics. You can download a PDF version and make copies to keep at home, in the car, with your child and in other places so that health care workers will have all the information they need to take the right kind of care in an emergency. ... Just in time for the holidays comes a booklet of non-alcoholic drink and party recipes from Mo'Angels, a teen singing group dedicated to spreading the word about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. You can download a preview for free, then order them in batches of 25 for the perfect Christmas card insert. ... There's an interesting site on music therapy here which, among other things, sells books of songs designed to teach academic material and social concepts to children with special needs. I'm tempted to buy one, except that my son tends to scream when he hears me singing. Some sort of complicated sensory thing, I'm sure.

Picture this

Yesterday I did a dumb-sounding thing for my son, but it turned out okay. The kid is super-obsessed with cars -- not how they work, but what they look like, what brand they are, where they were purchased -- and when he found out that we had a workman coming over to look at a hole in our bathroom wall, he demanded that I take a picture of the man's truck. Usually he just asks me to make a note of the make and model and report back, but maybe my failures in this respect have made him move on to seeking photographic confirmation. Our whole walk to school, he was browbeating me: Promise to take the picture! With the guy standing next to the car! And a shot each for all four sides of the car! Do it!

He needed agreement or he'd go into school all disgruntled, so I said that if the guy was nice, I'd see if it was okay. And when it turned out that the workman was indeed nice, and talked about his kids, and seemed friendly, I kept my promise. And in truth, the man was happy to comply. "Nobody ever asks to take pictures of my truck!" he said with a smile, reminding me of the Mobile Intensive Care Unit paramedics who were similarly pleased when my son peppered them with questions about their vehicle. It turns out that taking an interest in what people do and what they drive isn't offensive after all.

The first thing my son asked me after school is whether I had taken the pictures, and I was so happy to be able to tell him that I had. They're taped up on the wall by his bed now, above the pictures of the minivan we had for our vacation this summer and next to the ones of the smashed-up car that was parked in front of the high school to remind kids not to drive drunk. He's full of questions about the tile-man's truck, and I think I'm going to have him write them down and mail them to the very helpful fellow who allowed himself to be photographed. I'll bet he gets some very nice answers back. Who knows, maybe one day he'll be a writer for "Car and Driver," and all of this will be good prep. He'll probably have a better photographer then, though.

Making the grades

My kids got their first report cards of the year on Monday, and we seem to have survived pretty well. My daughter got a C in reading, which is probably generous on the teacher's part, and Bs in all other subjects except spelling and penmanship, in which she got As. She's continuing on in her longstanding tradition of excellent work with anything that requires memorization (vocabulary words, the aforementioned spelling, math facts) and not-so-great work in things that require you to actually process and utilize memorized information (just about everything else). For this marking period, anyway, things seemed to have averaged out in her favor. And she now knows all the state capitals east of the Mississippi.

My son's grades were in the B range, too, with As in spelling (we're a dynasty, I tell you) and science. I was happy to see a "S" for satisfactory in physical education (where he's been unsatisfactory in past years) and music (where he had a warning check at progress report time). I was unhappy but not surprised to see check mark upon check mark in the "behavior needs work" section. Well, sure, he has trouble with "Follows Directions," "Shows Self Control," and "Demonstrates Appropriate Behavior Inside and Outside of Classroom." That's why he's in a special-ed self-contained classroom. He has Fetal Alcohol Effect; these are his issues. Seems kinda low to also mark it against him on his report card. But the comments are good, and the grades are acceptable, and the boy is happy, and the teacher and aides are cooperative, so I'll ignore a few checks. For another marking period, anyway.

Mother-daughter TV night

Tonight's my big TV night with my 12-year-old daughter. Most evenings she's busy watching her Disney Channel shows in the living room and I'm busy working on the computer or watching the Food Network in another room with my son; but on Tuesday nights this season, we come together to watch "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" (starring John Ritter, or, as he's known in my house, the voice of Clifford the big red dog) at 8 p.m. and, at 9 p.m., "Life with Bonnie" (starring most of the cast of "Return to Me," one of our favorite movies, of which we had another mother-daughter DVD viewing this weekend). The show in between, "According to Jim" (starring Jim Belushi, another "Return to Me" alum), we watch if there's no homework or trombone practicing or other last minute hurry to worry about. "8 Simple Rules" makes me smile because the way the two teenage girls torture their father reminds me of the way my daughter is starting to tweak her pop as she slips slowly and inexorably into teen-dom. But Bonnie's show is my fave -- not as much for the much-praised improvised scenes of Bonnie at work but for the scripted but awfully true-to-my-life scenes of at-home chaos and affection. I like the way the parents are comfortably in charge of the family, with neither playing the buffoon but both making mistakes and compromises. The kids are cute, but they're not comedians; the humor comes more from the circumstances and the relationships than from rim-shot-minded schtick. Which means that this is not exactly a laugh-a-minute show, and that takes some getting used to. Tune in tonight, and get started.