Educational software du jour

One of the goals I set for my kids this summer is to learn how to type (or what are we calling it in these typewriter-free days -- keyboarding?) I've tried to get them interested in this before with a "Lion King" typing game and "Mavis Beacon" software, but it never took -- possibly because the former was not structured enough and the structure of the latter was too daunting for language impaired kiddos. We're having much better luck with Read, Write and Type, a program designed for kids five and up that works in distinct short lessons and puts a strong emphasis on phonics, which my two can certainly always use reinforcement on. There's a little bit of story running through it, but nothing so daunting that my kids can't keep up with it, as often seems to happen with hip-and-clever educational software. I'm impressed to report that they've willingly done a lesson every day for the past 12 days, and are actually tapping out sentences now. I'd recommend the program to anyone who's looking for a low-stress way to teach learning or language disabled kids to type. Or, for that matter, read and write.

Department of second thoughts

Ah, well. My blogging record's not so great this week, is it? First I wrote about the conjoined twins who -- bravely? foolishly? -- determined that they'd rather die than remain connected. And in fact, after some 50 hours of surgery, they did indeed die, making me regret, at the very least, my somewhat flip title for that post. No matter how daunting the odds, one always imagines, going into such procedures or writing about them, that the results, in our age of medical miracles, will be positive. In this case, the medical was not quite miraculous enough. The New York Times has an interesting follow-up piece on the sad ending to this hopeful tale, including an interview with the twins' adoptive father, who had decided against the surgery as too risky when the girls were younger and remained opposed to it now. The girls didn't listen, of course, and pursued the surgery doggedly until they found someone who would give it to them. Certainly, there's not a parent who can't relate to that; in most cases, our children find less expensive and medically complex ways to risk their lives, but it's often in the pursuit of that same contradictory mix of the desire to be an individual and the desire to fit in that drove these doomed twins.

I also wrote recently about how positive I'm feeling about video games, just in time for a news story out of New Jersey that blames them for the actions of three teens who apparently plotted a Columbine-style massacre. The kids were caught with swords, guns and tons of ammo, and only a botched carjacking is thought to have thwarted their plan to kill a few classmates and then drive through town on a random killing spree. The boys are said to have been fans of the video game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," and some of their paraphernalia and MO are apparently similar to situations in that game. So maybe I'm wrong, and video games really are the root of all evil, and will turn your sweet untroubled child into a merciless killing machine. And maybe I'm enjoying a false feeling of security, since my daughter's into games like "Monkeyball" and "The Simpsons Road Rage" that don't put a big emphasis on murder and bloodshed. But who am I kidding? Those little monkeys in "Monkeyball" plunge off the side of the track and into pits of fire if you make a mistake, and the Simpsons regularly mow down pedestrians in their pursuit of points. It's just a baby-step from there to bring a machete to your high school prom.

Come to think of it, maybe I better just stop commenting on news stories for a while.

Special delivery

Got my son's IEP in the mail today, which is something of a miracle. Usually they're processed on about the same timetable you'd expect if the Special Ed Office set up a bunch of monkeys with typewriters and eventually, inevitably, once of them happened to strike out an educational plan. The department's reputation is so bad that I have from time to time volunteered to stop by the office and type the darn thing myself, but no. Don't want to put the monkeys out of work. Maybe there's a union involved. So from my son's IEP meeting in March, we're usually lucky to get the thing to look at in August, sometimes by the first or second week of school. July is unheard of.

And I'm grateful, of course, because this stuff is my life ... but you know, it's been such a peaceful, sort of successful summer. As important as checking the plan and approving the plan and obsessing over the plan is, I just kind of hate getting sucked back in to all the drama and dispute and disagreement. Just like every year, it's bound to be mostly okay but planted with a couple of land mines that will raise my blood pressure and cause me to rant and rave at personnel who are on vacation for another month or so, long enough for me to become exhausted and resigned before I can actually have a chance to vent at them in person. At least the behavior plan I wrote is indeed included in the document, along with a couple of old outdated plans from the files. A few good plans are better than none, I suppose. Maybe I can just bury this one on my desk for a little while, and keep my teeth unclenched until August?

Let the games begin

Comforting news for parents of video-gaming youngsters: All that virtual virtuosity will not necessarily turn your child into some sort of anti-social misfit. A new study suggests that for the latest generation to grow up with their thumbs on a control pad, playing video games is a social activity that they are able to juggle competently with other important life activities, like studying and, you know, seeing daylight. For some, working video games into a workable routine has been a lesson in efficient multi-tasking.

And at least so far, by the evidence in my home, there seems to be something to that. My oft-warring sibling pair have never socialized so peacefully or for such prolonged periods as they have since we bought my daughter a Game Cube for her birthday. They often play "head to head" in a spirit of cooperation, and my son also oftentimes sits peacefully just watching his sister play. Anything that gets that guy to sit peacefully is tops in my book, as is anything that interrupts the flow of "Mooooom, he's bugging me!" So i've been inclined to feel pretty enthusiastic about video games, but it's nice to have some hard evidence in their favor. Especially after a weekend party at which another mom turned up her nose at the very mention of allowing kids to play such things. "We don't do that," she sniffed. Guess she wants to raise anti-social misfits.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

Parents of children with special needs have to make so many decisions for their kids without really knowing what their children would want if their children were in a position to say so. Would my son request medication if he could pull his head out of his own private little world long enough to understand all the implications? Would my daughter have rather stayed in self-contained special-ed if she were sufficiently language empowered to know her wishes, appreciate the alternatives, and express a thought-out opinion? As heavily as the decisions to forego meds for the one and force mainstreaming for the other have weighed on me, I know they're nothing compared to the decisions made by parents in life-or-death medical situations.

That's why, in a weird way, I've been relieved to read the news stories about the latest set of conjoined twins to be separated. The surgery is every bit as risky, life-threatening and medically complex as in other recently reported cases. The sisters are connected at the head, and there's as good a chance that one or both will die or become seriously disabled as a result of the separation. It seems there's been a lot of stories lately in which parents and doctors and religious advisors are called together to decide whether a procedure that so gravely risks the lives of otherwise healthy but interconnected babies can be medically, emotionally and morally justified -- or, on the other hand, if NOT performing it can be so justified. I can't imagine the crushing responsibility of having to make a decision like that for another person or persons.

And that's what's so different about this latest story: The twins in question aren't babies, and the parents aren't the ones making the choice. The sisters are doing it for themselves. At age 29, they've decided that they'd rather die separately than live together. While all the same debates apply -- made more complicated by the fact that 29-year-old brains aren't as flexible as months-old ones -- at least the people who will have to live or die by the choice are the ones making it. I hope my kids will one day be mature enough and strong enough to make their own life-shaping decisions, and I pray they'll never have any this serious to consider.

A good day

My son had a good day yesterday, after two weeks of pretty good days. It was the end of the nine-day, start-of-summer religious education program at our church -- a merciful substitute for weekly CCD classes -- and he went up on stage with his class and sang songs and did not call undue attention to himself. His aide has been giving me good reports after each of the four-hour sessions, noting that he seems more mature this year. Even the religious education director -- who years ago, when my guy started this program, insisted he leave early each day because the teacher couldn't take a full session of him -- called me aside to tell me that many people had told her how well my son was doing this year, how much progress he's made, and that I'm doing a good job. That's the kind of thing we live for, isn't it? It can be so hard to see change from up close; and hard, too, when you think you're seeing change, but not sure if anybody else is. I've felt since we started the Nurtured Heart Approach that it's made an enormous difference in my son's level of calmness and control at home. Maybe it really is branching out to other areas of his life now. On Monday, he starts again at the same day camp he attended last year. If they see a change, too, I'll be putting a gold star on my personal chart.

Never too early for Christmas shopping

Looking for a present for that hard-to-please child? What could be more delightful or expressive of your esteem than a gift of toothpaste? That appears to be the concept behind the Children's Gift Set from Tom's of Maine's online store. I'm a fan of Tom's of Maine and have been using their toothpaste for years, but I have to admit, it never occurred to me to wrap up a couple of tubes as a kiddie gift. The gift set includes a book on the making of toothpaste, a tube each of strawberry- and orange-mango-flavored paste, and a bottle of shampoo. Boy, won't you just be popular if you present this to a tot in place of the latest Toys 'R Us rage. While you're at it, why not gift the grown-ups on your list with a Toothpaste Sampler, with five small tubes of various flavors, or Tom's Gift Tote, a canvas bag filled with toothpastes and tonics. People may berate you for your peculiar taste in presents, but at least their breath will be fresh when they do.

Oh, my

Happened to glance today at the site statistics summary for Mothers with Attitude, and noted with some dismay that the search words most often used to reach the site are "hot mothers." Now, I have a pretty good guess that anybody who sets out to do a Google search for "hot mothers" and then thinks that "Mothers with Attitude" is a good choice is not looking to read humorous essays on parenthood and browse through Website links for adoption and special needs. Certainly nothing I live or write about would classify me as a "hot mother." A bothered mother, more likely. I don't quite have the nerve to do my own Google seach of "hot mothers" to see what kind of company I'm keeping, and how many pages of search results "hot mother" seekers had to wade through to find my somewhat lukewarm site. But if any of those searchers actually wandered far enough into the site to get to this page ... well, sorry. No hot mothers here. But your mother would probably get pretty hot under the collar if she knew what you were up to.

Reel good ideas

Well now, here's an idea we can get behind: Movie theaters where noisy kids are welcomed -- specifically invited, even. Sadly for those of us with noisy kids beyond infant stage, the invitation in question is for babies and their moms: "Reel Mom" showings at certain Loew's theaters are designed for the nursing set, with stroller check-ins, lights dimmed but not dark, sound turned down low enough so it won't wake the babies but still loud enough to be heard over babies who are making their wakefulness known. The idea seems to be that no one will care if your kid's making a racket because all their kids will be making rackets, too, although I'll bet if the mom next to you gets her wee one asleep she won't be too wild about yours screaming away. Nonetheless, the thought of getting away to watch a hit film -- the latest "Charlie's Angels" is now showing, though I'm not sure a movie with that much TNT and T&A is appropriate for children of any age, mom-friendly auditorium or no -- amongst folks who will understand what you're dealing with is an awfully appealing concept. Just two suggestions I'd like to offer: 1) Do the same thing on weekends for a "Reel Dad" showing, with mom getting to slip off next door to a chick flick all by her blissful self; and 2) Expand the concept for "Reel Handful" showings at which parents are permitted to bring their hyperactive, impulsive, easily distracted older children. Better still, just lock the kids in the theater and have cots in the hallway so the parents can have a nap.

Getting over my hang-ups

I was feeling pretty excited about the new service offered by the federal government that forbids telemarketers to wake you up in the morning, interrupt your dinner, hang up before you answer, and otherwise act as the human form of spam. Like several hundred thousand other ticked-off Americans, I hurried over to the registration Web site, www.donotcall.gov, and entered my home number, my cell-phone number, and the number of my mother-in-law, who is convinced all those telemarketer hang-ups are really crooks casing the joint to see when no one's home. In the process, I found a few things that dampened my enthusiasm, like the fact that the blocking doesn't apply to banks, surveys, charities or politicians, which right there account for about three-quarters of the calls I'd hoped would be blocked. It also doesn't start until October 1, which means that telemarketers are probably going to be blitzing us during the summer months in a last-ditch attempt to annoy the heck out of the American public. Then, too, the site (undoubtedly due to the unanticipated torrent of visitors) was slow and glitchy, and the verification e-mail that was supposed to arrive in minutes took hours, and then arrived in duplicate. But I went ahead and completed the registration anyway. If it prevents one call that hangs up before I answer it or one sales pitcher who won't hang up when I do, it will be worth it.

What's news

A little newspaper reading for your Thursday morning: The New York Times has a story about Pete Wright of Wrightslaw and his work on behalf of learning disabled students. ... The Bergen Record has a feature on an autistic pianist who recently performed at Carnegie Hall. ... Yahoo News reports on a new "National ADHD Education Campaign." ... And if you're looking for something a little longer to read, here's the San Francisco Chronicle's review of what may be the only novel I go near this summer (so devoted to nonfiction have I become): The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a mystery narrated by a 15-year-old autistic detective. Slate has a round-up of the book's generally good reviews, if you're looking for more opinions.

Catfish and catfights

The other night my husband fell asleep in front of some sci-fi/adventure flick on the TV, and when I went to wake him up, a movie I found at least as scary was playing instead. It was Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, a film about a Vietnamese brother and sister adopted by an African-American couple who, as adults, find their birthmother and go through a painful period of floundering around their cultural and familial identities. I of course identified most with the adoptive parents, who coped with declining amounts of grace with the way their children at least temporarily abandoned them in favor of their long-lost Ma. I could have done without the hair-pulling catfight between the two mothers, but a lot of the other dynamics felt right, including the realization by the daughter who had most sought the reunion that finding one's birthparent doesn't make everything magically right. I was glad that the movie ended with at least a truce between all the extended family members, and that, after a period of disruption, the kids took up their lives more or less as they had been. And I wondered how my husband's outspoken Italian family will react if we ever expand to accommodate a Russian birthparent or two. "Spaghetti in Sour Cream"? Coming soon to a cable movie channel near you.

Inspiration, hold the gloss

I finished reading A Smile as Big as the Moon last week in a few big servings; it's a real page-turner for anybody who's ever been frustrated by the lack of specialness in special education. I can't quite imagine my son ever making it to Space Camp and succeeding in the way these teens do, but if he were going to, it would be the way author and teacher Mike Kersjes goes about it: tons and tons of preparation, and then some more preparation on top of that. I like the fact that it was the very things they needed because of their special needs that ultimately proved to be their greatest strength in competition. The other Space Camp cadets may have been brilliant and talented and self-confident, but nobody had studied harder. This is the sort of thing I'll be reminding myself of when I go over flashcards with my daughter next year, and read the textbook chapter to Her Cluelessness for the umpteenth time.

If the story of a classroom of troubled teens turned, sometimes in spite of themselves, into a winning team doesn't sound like a great beach read to you, hold on. The book is due to be turned into a Disney movie, and it doesn't need much meddling with to become a pretty fine triumph over adversity flick. Let's just hope they don't go for the cute-little-special-kids gloss that the illustrator of the paperback edition did. Those youngsters gazing at the moon sure do look sweet, but they're way too young, trim and well-groomed to be the bunch depicted in the book. Disney, don't smooth out those sharp corners too much; that's what makes these kids stars.

Potter passes us by again

Alright, tell me the truth: Is mine positively the only family that is not bound and determined to plow our way through a certain 800+-page door-stop-sized novel this summer? Are we the only ones not wild about Harry? Is ours the only household over which the wand of Potter-mania has not passed? Honestly, even if my kids were interested in the boy wizard, I'm not sure I would let them go all gaga the way so many families seem to be -- keeping the kids up late to go to midnight book sales, jamming the aisles of Barnes and Noble to be the first to get their mitts on the massive thing, having slumber parties during which young guests read chapters instead of whisper secrets. I mean, really -- I'm happy that kids are excited about a book. But is it wise to teach children to hop so enthusiastically on so hype-driven a bandwagon?

Oh, who am I kidding. If my kids were capable of being into a big bold large-word-packed story like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I would be out camping in front of bookstore doors like the most kid-lit-minded mom on the block. But the books are so far over the heads of my language- and reading-delayed kiddos that I've got to salvage a little superiority somewhere. My daugher was so traumatized by a fourth-grade assignment of the first Harry Potter tome that she doesn't want to see the book or see the movie or even hear that magical name. We're a regular broomstick no-fly zone. And ... um ... we meant to be that way.

Crawling out from under my rock

Pfffew! The last week of school is finally over, and it's taken me all weekend to recover. The last week was a whirl -- making 86 photo-frame mattes for the 5th-grade graduation photos, helping out in the school library to get the shelves straightened up for next year, making cupcakes for my son's class' next-to-last-day-of-school party, buying and wrapping teachers' gifts, serving the sodas at the 5th-grade last-day-of-school dance, trying not to notice that my daughter was drifting friendless between the cliques at said dance -- and man, I'm still exhausted. I used to be able to stay up to all hours for nights and nights in a row and still be able to run at top speed on a little coffee and sugar, but now ... somewhere before age 44, that steam runs out.

So now, as we shift into summer mode, here's where we stand on the end-of-year obsessions I've been ranting about of late: Although the very nice guidance counselor I spoke to at the middle school my daughter will be attending is out ill at least until September, the very harried guidance counselor who has had to take on his and another absent counselor's work still managed to get me the textbooks I was promised for the summer, and also look up her class schedule and assure me that she is in fact in the inclusion class as hoped for. A pretty impressive show of effectualness, really, especially compared to the ineffectualness I've been seeing from Child Study Teams over the past few years. On that front, the much promised behavior specialist for my son did indeed eventually show up, but too late to get a plan put together and a meeting scheduled before the end of the year. So the Child Study Team leader proposed that we table the behavior plan until September, and she'd just go ahead and put the IEP in without it. I expressed my extreme disappointment at the way this whole thing had been handled, and asked that the behavior plan I'd written myself months ago be put in the IEP as a "parent's contribution," so at least there'd be something on record for the new teacher. She agreed, although we'll see when I actually get this document sometime in August whether she actually followed through. Maybe I should ask that overworked middle school counselor if he wants to come over to the elementary school for a few hours and fix things for me there, too.

Happily, the teacher my son will have next year is giving me every indication that she will handle him well, behavior plan or no. She's already told me she'd like to meet with me during the first week of school; that I should send in a list on the first day of the things that motivate him; and that we'll be in constant communication through the year. Music to my ears, it is. But I'm glad I'll have a couple of months to rest up first.

Good reads

New on Mothers with Attitude is Julie Donner Andersen's latest entry in her Therapeutic Laughing column, this one on the use of non-anatomically correct terminology to describe the differences between boys and girls, and other things a boy can learn from living in a house full of females. ... Meanwhile, I just started a book that appears to feature my wildest dream of a special ed teacher. Called A Smile as Big as the Moon, it follows the bureaucratic odyssey undertaken by a teacher who determines that his learning disabled and neurologically impaired students should darn well get to go to Space Camp just like all those gifted and talented kids do. The school principal, special education director, and various NASA suits think he's nuts, but he gets them there alright. I've been generally pleased with my son's teachers thus far, but I have to admit that they have been dedicated to giving their students the best they can wrangle from within the system; thinking in terms of really challenging the kids to go beyond what anybody's tried or dreamed or planned for -- thinking of what's best and making it happen, rather than making the best of what's happened already -- does not seem to be standard special-ed operating procedure. (Not to mention the fact that some of the children in special education, my own small son not excluded, can be as stubbornly unwilling to get with the program as any foot-dragging bureaucrat.) I'm thinking this book is about as much of a fantasy as the latest "Harry Potter," but maybe it will put me in the right spirit to joust with Child Study Team muggles next fall.

Is it dangerous to look forward to next year?

I had a short meeting yesterday with the teacher my son is scheduled to have next year -- the one that everybody tells me is so wonderful, wonderful, wonderful -- and she did indeed seem to be pretty darn neat. When I mentioned that he has a hard time sitting still at a desk, she even said the thing I often grumble when people complain about his activity level: "That's why he's in this kind of a classroom." She had a lot of good things to suggest about learning activities we could pursue with him over the summer, and gave every impression that she will make good use of his particular strengths in helping him to really learn next year.

So now, of course, I'm worried about what's going to happen to her over the summer. Because every time I think I have the perfect situation set up for my kids, something happens. The great teacher gets transferred or gets married and quits, the great aide gets reassigned. No one's ever died on me, but the great counselor I talked to at the middle school my daughter will be going to next year -- the one that everybody told me was so wonderful, wonderful, wonderful and who met with me and agreed with me on everything -- is now out of school with a brain tumor. They say he'll be back in the fall. I'm saying rosaries. Maybe I better include my son's teacher-to-be in those prayers. And tell her to make sure there are no buses coming before she crosses the street.

Bad news, good news

Feel-bad adoption story: Foreign adoptions fraught with unforeseen problems warns USA Today in a story about adoptions thwarted by the likes of SARS and governments who decide they don't want to export their kids after all. Heart-tugging quote: '''Foreign adoption is a much more complex issue than I knew when we went into it,' [says a father whose adoption from India is on hold]. 'Most families and social workers start off thinking about it in very simple terms: There's a child who needs a home out there and parents who have homes. Then you see there are financial considerations, religious considerations, political considerations. And you have these children trapped in the middle.'"

Feel-good adoption story: A girl adopted from Siberia at the age of two won a contest to name two Mars exploration rovers, according to a NASA press release. Heart-tugging quote: "Sofi read her essay: 'I used to live in an orphanage. It was dark and cold and lonely. At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true.'" Good thing diseases and bureaucrats didn't stand in her way.

New on Mothers with Attitude

There are a few new entries in our "Parent's Portfolio" -- some accommodations for a high-schooler with learning disabilities, a retort to one of those "bring in a baby picture" assignments for an adopted child, and a teacher-sized summary of "The Nurtured Heart Approach," a terrific behavior management method described in the book "Transforming the Difficult Child" by Howard Glasser and Jennifer Easley. This approach is still working pretty well for us at home with my son, and if I could just get the school to follow it, too, I think a lot of his behavior problems would go away. The long-promised behavioral specialist finally saw him today, and she e-mailed (before the visit) to say she thought my proposed behavior plan was on the right track, so at least for the moment I highly value her opinion. Wouldn't it be amazing if my son actually got the behavioral support he needs and my daughter got the kind of inclusion support she's been promised for four years, and I could go through a whole school year without being hysterical over something or other? Ah, the stuff of dreams.

Fun with computers

If you're looking for educational Web sites to force your children onto over the summer in a dastardly attempt to keep their brains from turning to mush, here's a cute one to try: Dositey.com. It offers math and language arts games for kids grades K-12, including printable worksheets and areas where kids can submit book reviews and answers to monthly questions. I nagged and whined at my son until he gave me responses to type in to this month's exercise, which was: List 10 things you'd show an alien to tell him about life on earth. In case none of his answers make it to the site's composite list, here for the record were his picks:

1. my school
2. the grocery store
3. the mall
4. the museum
5. where my friends live
6. the Statue of Liberty
7. a car place
8. a picture of me
9. my teacher, my pets and my dogs
10. my cars and how I play with them and I'll invite him to my room and to sleep over at my house in my bunk bed.

He kind of got going at the end there, just when there was no more space, which may be the problem with fill-in-the-blank sites like this. One of these days I'm just going to print out a long list of fun writing prompts and set the boy up with his own blog. It's on my list of things to do with the kids this summer. What I need is someone to whine and nag at me to make sure all that good stuff gets done.

Welcome, Wichita

According to the traffic statistics for Mothers with Attitude, we've been having a nice little influx of folks from the Wichita, Kansas, area since someone named Lauragail put our link under her favorites on the KSN News site. After poking around KSN.com a bit I still haven't pinned down exactly who Lauragail is, but she obviously has great taste in Web sites. I've personally never been to Wichita, but I did live in Kansas City, Missouri, for a short time many years ago, back when I was young and thought I knew everything. I was working for Hallmark and would from time to time travel to Kansas City, Kansas, to visit friends; and may have driven across a corner of Kansas to get to the Nebraska State Fair; but never made it as far west as Wichita. At any rate, greetings to any Wichitans who made it far enough into the site to find this blog, and say thanks to Lauragail for us.

And again we ask: Why does all of this need to be so hard?

Three or four months ago -- when it became apparent to me that my son’s teacher, although caring and generally good with him, was not doing any sort of behavior analysis to figure out why he acted up at times; when it became apparent that many of those working with him thought his aide was more of a problem than he was; when it became apparent that different personnel were dealing with his behavior in different ways with no particular comparison or coordination attempted; and when it became apparent that stress and disruption and negative discipline was causing him to engage in behaviors that might harm his classmates -- I suggested to my son’s child study team leader that what we needed was a behavior management plan, and that I would expect there to be one in his next IEP.

She agreed -- particularly feeling that the aide could use some guidance -- and said she’d ask for the district’s new behavior specialist to come and observe him. Fine and dandy, said I. And waited. And waited. And waited. Turned out the new behavior specialist is also a teacher, and couldn’t schedule observations without disrupting her own class, and finding a substitute, and yada, yada, yada. With the date for his IEP meeting fast approaching, I went ahead and submitted my own behavior management plan, but of course -- since I’m only a parent, after all, and paperwork had been submitted for this expert to come -- that was politely put aside in favor of the specialist’s eventual opinion. The IEP meeting came and went, with the promise of a second meeting just to discuss behavior. I signed nothing. And waited. And waited. And waited.

So yesterday, the child study team leader gave me the good news: The specialist is coming! The specialist is coming! Next Tuesday. Which is about a week-and-a-half before the end of school. Ever so helpful to give the aide tips at this point in the year. I mentioned that we would be having a meeting after the specialist had seen him, and the child study team leader said she wasn’t so sure about that, since the specialist probably can’t take another day away from her class. I expressed in the strongest possible terms that I and other members of the team would certainly want to have input on any behavior management plan for this boy, and she darn well better find a way to make that happen. She allowed as how maybe we could get together after school sometime. You better believe it.

And maybe there will be happy ending to this, if the specialist agrees with me and her opinion makes it enforceable. And maybe there will be a battle ahead, if she doesn’t agree with me and suggests techniques I’m sure won’t work. And maybe -- as is the time-honored strategy of our district -- things will just kinda drift along, and I will again be relying on the considerable kindness of individual teachers. But as I seem to ask again, and again, and again as my kids make their way through the system -- why does all of this need to be so hard? Behavior analysis is not a radical thing. Positive discipline is not a radical thing. There’s information out there about what works for kids with fetal alcohol exposure. Surely we can agree that treating a kid's behavior consistently across a school day is a good idea. I’m not asking them to do anything that all-fired controversial here. Why do I have to plow through layers and layers of bureaucracy to get it done?

Gotta protect the system from those pesky parents, I guess.

Camp counseling

Yahoo's health news features a KidsHealth item today on Finding a Camp for Your Child With Special Needs, and while it would have been useful if they'd actually included a listing, it's still nice to see the needs of special campers going so far as to be a health headline. My kids went to a very nice, very expensive special-needs day camp for a number of years, but we've switched to mainstream resources in our community with generally acceptable results. The special-needs camp turned out to be more restrictive than my daughter needed, and not sufficiently restrictive for my son. When I saw that they'd put my extremely sensory seeking boy in the same group as an extremely sensory defensive lad, I knew our Julys and Augusts there were numbered. It's no fun when special needs collide.

I'd always wondered whether putting him in a local summer program and paying for a staff member to be hired to monitor him one-on-one wouldn't be cheaper and just as successful. So last year we tried it, and it went okay. This year we're trying it again. The kids seem to like or at least tolerate him, and since the activities are pretty non-demanding he doesn't act out to the degree that he would in a mainstream class at school (which I don't think will ever be a good idea, no matter how many people they want to pay to monitor him). Next year he may be too old for this particular program, and we'll have to go searching again. But it's nice while it lasts.

Last year we put my daughter in "Camp Grandma" -- feeling she was old enough to make it through the day without a structured program, and Grannie could use some company. Toward the end of their time together, I found out that the entertainment at "Camp Grandma" included watching Maury Povich and soap operas, and so this year I've got her all camped up. There's a city-run day program at a local school, from which she'll be taking breaks to go to hour-a-day music camp at the middle school she'll be attending in the fall and a 90-minute-a-day math program. This on top of tutoring twice a week, speech therapy once a week, and what ever other things I can find to enrich her with. She'd say torture her with, since it interferes with her plan to play video games until her eyeballs come unglued. But eh, too bad, kid. Wait 'til September.

Everybody out of the pool

With summer just around the corner, here's another thing to add to your list of worries, along with sunburn, heat exhaustion and drowning: Belgian researchers suspect that the chlorine in swimming pools may cause asthma. A gas called trichloramine that's released when chlorinated water meets human byproducts like sweat and urine (reason enough right there to stay out of the pool) has been fingered as an irritant that triggers proteins that damage the lungs; according to the AFP report, "the children who swam most frequently had protein levels of the kind found in regular smokers."

Which only confirms to me the wisdom of my personal summer plan for my kids, which is to keep them in the air-conditioned house watching TV until I can safely deliver them to school again in September. Apparently we'll all be breathing easier.

A good look at learning difficulties

The SchwabLearning.org site just keeps getting prettier and more content-packed. Every time I check back here, they seem to have rearranged and redesigned and reconceptualized their info to such an extent that I can no longer find the really good thing I found there before and have to surf endlessly through all the new good things to find it. Sure is a slick and appealing piece of work, though. A little corporate, maybe; it lacks the homespun, er, personality of a site actually put together by one hard-working and oft-procrastinating individual, but more than makes up for it with features up the wazoo. Articles, quizzes, surveys, message boards, audio excerpts, newsletters, downloadable booklets and flyers, an events calendar, advocacy advice, photos of smiling children whose learning problems disappeared when mom finally found SchwabLearning.org, even "panic pages" for when you need a little help to focus. Personally, when I need to focus, the last thing that works is to go to a site as rich in features to poke around in as this one. If you don't already have an attention disorder, this site will probably give it to you. And also tell you what to do about it. In detail. With a quiz after.

New on "Mothers with Attitude"

Yesterday marked the debut of a new columnist on Mothers with Attitude -- this one a Father with Attitude, Ken Swarner, whose "Family Man" column will appear every week or two on the site. This week's entry involves his wife's need to save every last memento of their children's academic careers, and his tolerance thereof. He's more tolerant than my husband, anyway. I have to grab things and hide them in a box under the bed to keep him from throwing out all those precious papers and projects. Of course, our bed's about an inch from the ceiling now, so maybe he's getting suspicious.

Chorus lines

Well, the big spring concert is over. That's one good thing you can say about it.

A school year's worth of wondering if my boy would manage to stay in chorus all the way to the big spring concert is over, too. Another good thing.

My daughter played the trombone during the band portion of the concert in a way that sounded pretty good when you could hear the brass section over the shreiky flutes and squeaky reeds.

My daughter's friend didn't throw up during the chorus performance the way he did at the dress rehearsal, and I'm sure there's a long line of people who think that's a pretty darn good thing.

My son's own performance at the dress rehearsal was by several accounts a thing of wonder, with him singing all the words clear and true and impressing the three aides who mentioned it.

And the concert, you ask? How did he do at the concert?

Well.

I guess you could say he did better than I feared and worse than I'd hoped. He spent about half the time singing (and we could hear his piping voice, right on pitch) and half the time standing in a daze sucking on his shirt cuff. In between those two phases were periodic little bouts of movement -- raising his hands over his head, turning around, leaning over, causing the girls on either side of him to inch further and further away. It wasn't terrible. Probably I was the only one who was watching his behavior with such eagle eyes. If he'd been in the back, nobody would have likely noticed him at all. Unfortunately, he was right front and center, and all I could think of was all the chorus parents making videos of the big night and how he was going to be twitching around in the front of ever frame.

But that's wrong thinking. I need to think about what a triumph this was for him to make it through the year and through the evening. He told me he was glad he took chorus and that he had fun, and I need to be happy about that. I need to smile when people tell me how cute he was up there and take it as acceptance, not condescencion. I need to be glad he's a part of the community, participating in ways I would never have imagined he could. And I need to be every bit as proud of him as the parents of the shrill flautists and bleating clarinetists are of their little musicians -- more proud of the effort than of the result.

I'm tryin'. Really, I'm tryin'. And I'll get there. Sometime before next year's concert, anyway.

A little night music

Say a prayer tonight, those of you who are so inclined, for my son, who will against all odds be performing in his school's chorus concert. That is, if he makes it through the rehearsal today without ticking off the music teacher sufficiently to earn an ouster from the group. I've been expecting that to happen since the idea arose for my guy to join the chorus in the first place. After all, this is a teacher who has consistently given him bad report-card marks for behavior in music class. When the note came home saying my boy had been accepted in chorus -- not that they asked me first whether I though it would be a good idea to even mention it to him -- I approached the teacher and asked: Are you sure about this? Do we really think asking a kid who can't make it through music class without a meltdown to stay after school, at which point he's usually used up all his resources for control, and behave himself in a large group of mainstream kids with no aide is a good idea? But the teacher suggested we give it a try and reassess on a weekly basis, and the child was enthusiastic about participating, and so the mom gave a wary okay. And who knew? Here we are in May, with a concert to attend.

Honestly, I still can't believe it. If he really gets up on that stage tonight and sings and stands there nicely without drawing attention to himself, I will watch in shock and awe. Heck, I'll be shocked and awed if he just stands there nicely. It seems to be such a bad idea through and through, such an unlikely situation, such high odds for him to find success, that part of me is still sure I'll find a note in his bookbag today saying, "Please keep this little hellion as far away from the auditorium tonight as you possibly can." If he makes it and does okay, does this mean I really don't know anything? Naaah, can't be. If he gets on that stage, folks, he'll need prayers. Lots and lots of prayers. And maybe a few for the mom having a nervous attack in the audience, too.

Smile and say "Ritalin!"

No longer content to merely "share moments, share life," the folks at Kodak are now apparently intent on sharing our neurological infirmities as well. While conducting experiments as to whether photographic images could relieve stress and depression, Kodak researchers noticed that certain subjects had an unexpected reaction to stress — an atypical oscillation of temperatures as measured by monitors attached to their pinkies — and that these subjects turned out with notable frequency to have been previously diagnosed with ADHD. Could this be the cut-and-dried, scientific, unbiased test for ADHD that parents have long been longing for? Maybe, say researchers. Maybe not. But I sure hope Polaroid's already working on a version that lets you do it all at home and skip the doctor entirely.

Getting into the Memorial Day spirit

I'm worried that there may be some sort of military exercises going on at my kids' school today. I saw a little boy walking into the building today wearing a complete camouflage ensemble -- not just pants, but shirt, cap, boots, even a camouflage backpack. He was ready for anything, that kid. Now, maybe his family believes in supporting the troops, and encourages their son to make sartorial choices that conform to their strong pro-military leanings. Or maybe they're rolling their eyes when he self-assembles the G.I. Joe look; maybe he's going through a phase. But really -- a camouflage backpack? Maybe school's more of a jungle than I thought.

Dr. Mom and Mr. Infectious

I was feeling pretty good about my child-health-care ability this morning. I kept my son home from school yesterday, having guessed just on the basis of a slight fever and exposure to a sick cousin that he had strep throat. His climbing temperature throughout the day and careful swallowing strengthened my belief, and the doctor this morning confirmed it: positive for strep. I have to do so much through observation and instinct with this kid, since he doesn't feel pain much and makes no big deal when something hurts, that it's a major self-esteem boost when I get such a positive sign that I was right. I've learned to believe him when he says he's sick and doesn't feel like going to school; to believe his body language as much as verbal complaints when he's ailing; and to not feel silly about calling the doctor when it might all turn out to be nothing. And this time, anyway, it paid off.

So as I say, I was feeling pretty good about myself, pretty secure in my mom-ness, and then I went and made a bush-league mistake. I forgot the rule about never saying "Don't do it" to my son, because the "don't" falls off somewhere between his ear and his brain and all that gets to his trigger-happy impulse center is "Do it!" So, for example, when we were walking out through the doctor's crowded waiting room, and I said, lightly, "Okay, let's get out of here. Don't breathe on anybody," my boy immediately turned to a nearby child and exhaled strep germs right in his face. The mother looked appalled, and for a moment dire consequences flashed before me: Is there such a thing as "assault with intent to infect"? Is it written up in the Homeland Security Act somewhere in the "biological warfare" section? They're executing people in China for spreading SARS; what do we do here for deliberate strep spreaders? Can we be sued for loss of school days? What if this kid was visiting the doctor because he's medically fragile or immune deficient? Can germs be considered a deadly weapon?

But the other mom, God bless her, finally shrugged and asked, wearily, what my son had. When I mentioned strep, she said her son would probably be getting antibiotics anyway, because she thought he had an ear infection. Sure hope her guess was as good as mine.

Teachers can't prescribe

Schools won't be able to force medication on their students anymore -- or even recommend it -- if a bill recently passed by the House has anything to say about it. Representatives passed H.R. 1170, the Child Medication Safety Act, despite complaints from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology that the legislation is both unnecessary, since no one knows the extent to which schools are actually pushing psychotropic meds in the first place, and a bad idea, since it would cause teachers to hesitate in expressing concern to a parent about a child's mental health. The weight of anecdotal evidence fell in favor of getting schools out of the business of prescribing medication, and the bill passed 425-1.

Now, the extent to which dealing with schools and child study teams can affect parents' mental health, and force them to consider medication for themselves -- this, the legislators let go unregulated. Go figure.

Shameless pleas for traffic

I've been suffering from chronic procrastination lately, and part of it is due to some new toys I'm playing around with on the Web. One of them is Alexa, which purports to offer information about Web sites such as overall rank, sites linked to and from, reviews, ownership, and related book suggestions. It's hard to resist checking Mothers with Attitude's ranking 50 or 60 times a day (repeat after me: "We're number 2,081,768! We're number 2,081,768!"). The information doesn't seem to be entirely accurate -- for example, it lists only one site as linking to MWA, and there's lots more than that -- but they have a customer service department that actually writes you back when you ask for something to be fixed, and that makes them my new best Web friends.

If you'd like to join the effort to move Mothers with Attitude into the high 2,070,000s, there are a couple of ways you can help. One is to download our customized version of the Alexa toolbar -- a nifty little doohickey for Windows browsers that helps you get site information as you surf -- and visit Mothers with Attitude a whole lot, giving us the illusion of actual traffic. Another is to go to the site's page on Alexa and write a nice review. Make us number 2,081,768 with a bullet!

Speaking of book suggestions, I've also been playing around with a fancy-schmancy bookshop set-up offered to Amazon.com affiliates, making like a kid in a candy store and setting up lots of pages of best-selling search results for all your adoption and special-needs needs. It's still a work in progress, but open for shopping nonetheless. Check it out.

The bowling dynasty begins

Woo-hoo, my daughter's a local celebrity. As the fifth-grade girls winner in our town's Youth Week bowling tournament (with a score of 165 no less, her highest yet), she was honored at tonight's City Council meeting. Well, that is, if you consider "honored" to mean getting to shake hands with a bunch of local politicians and get your face on public access TV. She doesn't think too much of any of that, I know; she was nervous and bored and unsure, since she'd already gotten her award ribbon and certificate, what the point of this whole exercise was, anyway. But she went, and she walked up to the front when her name was called, and she pressed the flesh, and she even almost smiled when all the winners were lined up for final applause. When it was all over, she admitted that she'd been scared but was glad she'd done it. A mom can't ask for more than that.

To operate or not to operate?

I've been following the case of the Michigan parents whose treatment of their daughter's brain tumor was challenged by the state with a great deal of dread. The parents had chosen homeopathic remedies for the child's condition, but doctors argued she would die without surgery; of course, there was a pretty good chance she would die from the surgery, or be severely impaired. The parents were charged with neglect for not subjecting their child to the surgery, and for a while it looked as though the girl would be seized and operated upon against their will. But according to recent reports, the brain tumor is now considered to be inoperable, and so the prosecutor is backing off and just insisting on conventional medical care and keeping the child comfortable.

Now, I have to confess, I have my doubts about homeopathic treatments. And I'm not sure I wouldn't go to any medical lengths to save my child's life if it came to that. But in this case, the parents appeared to have gathered medical opinions and decided that surgery was too risky, and to have turned to something that might not save their daughter's life, but wouldn't put a prompt end to it, either. And the thought of disagreeing with professionals, or making decisions based on their opinion that may be seen as less than traditional, bringing on a charge of negligent parenting is sure something that strikes a little fear in me. I second-guess my decisions all the time, but wouldn't want prosecutors and child-welfare workers doing it for me. Especially if it involved something as serious as potentially fatal surgery.

So I'm glad that, for now, this case has been resolved. But you can sure 'nough look for it to be argued again on "ER" and "Law and Order" for seasons to come.

New on "Mothers with Attitude"

April Cain shares a sweet little springtime story of letting go of your gardening plans and just enjoying the flowers in the latest installment of her "Thinking It Over" column. Like April's boys, my son likes to pick flowers and present them to me, although in his case it's usually dandelions plucked from our overgrown lawn that wilt almost immediately upon presentation. Doesn't matter, though, 'cause he insists that I wear the poor things and carry them around and put them in water and cherish them until they completely biodegrade. As we all know, it's the wonderful loving childish thought that counts, and as long as there's enough of that there will always be plenty of dandelions. This is why I never plant a garden.

News flash: Autism on the rise

A new report indicates that the rate of autism among kids in California has doubled in recent years. If you missed the headlines about this a day or two ago, check out the Google News listing for 40-some different places to read all about it. Or, download the report directly from the state's Department of Developmental Services. For once, the powers that be seem to be acknowledging that there's really something going on with this increase, not just an improvement in diagnosis and public awareness. That's a step in the right direction, anyway, if only a teeny-tiny baby one.

Revelation, eight months too late

It occurs to me now, at the end of the school year, when it's too late to do anything about it, that the "instructional aide" in my daughter's class -- the one whom I have been assured over and over again works with other students as well as my girl, the one I was assured had the ability to modify assignments, the one I was promised would not be a one-on-one aide -- is ...well, a one-on-one aide. I've been feeling annoyed with her all year for expending so much attention and smothering care on my daughter when she supposedly had other kids to work with; and now it's finally clicked: Her behavior (up to and including asking my daughter if she's going to move up to the middle school with her) makes sense if she's a one-on-one who occasionally helps other kids, as opposed to a classroom aide who helps a bunch. This is so thoroughly exactly what I have been asking and pleading and begging NOT to have that the realization has kind of knocked the wind out of me.

I don't know if people have been willfully lying to me or conveniently misunderstanding me or doing what they think is right in spite of me or just doing what they can with the personnel available, but MAN, I just want to scream. It's not the end of the world, I know -- that would be needing an aide desperately and not being able to get one -- but it's just beyond frustrating to keep feeling like I have all my kids' ducks in a row and then finding that it's the wrong row, and they're really geese.

And here I was feeling all good because I'd had a great meeting with the counselor at the middle school who agreed with everything I said and talked a perfect program for my daughter. You know, I used to think I was in the "say yes to whatever this mom wants, she knows what she's talking about" file; but now I realize it's probably the "say yes to whatever this mom wants, then do whatever you were going to do anyway" one. If I homeschooled my kids, would I have to weasel myself this way?

The adoptee did it

Kind of a mixed bag on the "Murder, She Wrote" movie last night for those interested in adoption and special needs. On the one hand, I was thrilled when a point was made of a pregnant woman specifically not drinking alcohol. Jessica Fletcher and I both picked up on the clue when the woman's friend expressed surprise that she was choosing orange juice over whiskey, and a scene or two later, sure enough, Jessica got her to confess she was expecting. Nice that abstaining under those circumstances is thought to be so telling as to serve as a clue.

Not so thrilling, on the other hand, was the fact that the murderer turned out to be a bitter adoptee. His sad story, told in the form of clues along the way and a final angry confession, included: a birthfather forced by his family to abandon his pregnant girlfriend; a birthmother who hanged herself after putting her baby up for adoption; an abusive adoptive father; a cold and unloving adoptive mother; and a plot of revenge against the birthfamily. Sheesh! Lucky thing the boyfriend of that whiskey-denying expectant mom has no family to whisk him away from her. Wouldn't want to be passing any of this horrifying scary adoption stuff into the next generation.

New on Mothers with Attitude

7,300 diapers. 42,150 baby wipes. 1,825 bedtime stories. 32 IEP meetings. Chrystal Ziliotto counted up all the little and big things that have happened to her family in the five years since bringing her daughter home from Russia, and quantifies it all in a cute contributor piece called What Happens in Five Years. My kids are going on nine years home now and I've long lost count of all our personal tabulatables, but it was fun to go over Chrystal's list and think about earlier years and lower numbers. Give it a look.

Gifts for all new additions

Anybody who's ever flailed around looking for a good baby gift for an adoptive or special needs family -- rejecting items that are too infant-centric, or too white-baby-centric, or too healthy-baby-centric -- will enjoy clicking through the site for Seedling & Pip, a baby-gift enterprise from actress Susan Saint James and her sister, Mercedes Dewey, who has a child adopted from Korea. Among the offerings are pretty gift baskets filled with books on adoption or special-needs themes and various appropriate accessories. When I think of the bookstore time I put in trying to gather a gaggle of storybooks for a new Chinese adoptee some years ago, it makes these nicely assembled gifties look pretty good -- thought I have a feeling the tab from Borders was a lot cheaper than these bundles of joy will run you. Fun surfing, anyway.

In the news

The New York Times has a story about how SARS is affecting families who are planning to adopt children from China. In some cases, American agencies are postponing adoptions, in others China is saying "Don't come." In no cases mentioned in the story are parents wanting to stay away. But a few of those coming home in recent weeks are showing SARS-like symptoms. ... The Bergen Record has a story about how children in special education in New Jersey are failing the state's new pre-high-school-graduation test at an alarming rate. As a parent of two children in special-ed in NJ, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can't see my kids ever doing well on a test like this, and I'd hate to think that's going to cost them any hope of a high school diploma. On the other hand, I have to laugh at all the hand-wringing and wondering why kids with special needs aren't measuring up, because it reminds me of Child Study Team meetings when my daughter was still in self-contained in which nobody could tell me what grade level she was working at, or even imagine why I would want to know. You can't drift along with no particular urgency or connection to the normal curriculum and then be surprised when the kids don't know as much as their peers. Things have improved in our district in recent years -- the special-ed kids are at least using the same textbooks as the rest of the school -- but there's sure room for improvement ... And finally, when I feel all whiny about something for the next little while, I'm going to think about this guy, and stop.

Aw, never mind

Alright, so I'm feeling kind of guilty about yesterday's diatribe about my son's gym participation, since I had a nice meeting with the gym teacher in the p.m. and got the scoop on the previous day's activities. Issues were discussed amicably, requests for better communication were accepted, and I found out that my son can balance a peacock feather stem-down on his opened hand. That was the gym activity on Wednesday -- "circus skills," the teacher called it, and I'm just hoping that word of this never gets out around school-budget-voting time -- and I can totally see why my guy'd want to give it a try. It apparently got him all good and focused, and that focus spilled over into the rest of the day, and who can really argue with that. Me, I'm going to let this one go and concentrate all my anxiety on the meeting I have next Wednesday with the counselor at the middle school my daughter will be attending next year. Maybe if I go in with a peacock feather balanced on my nose, he'll just decide I'm crazy and do whatever I say.

Do I have to write a MEMO?

Work on Mothers with Attitude's new "Parent's Porfolio," as introduced last Thursday, are moving along, with more of my dusty file archives posted and an index growing. There are also plans for a message board on which parents can share shorter, occasion-specific notes to teacher and commiserate about all those silly little school bloopers that cause steam to come out of our ears.

Like this one: My son is not supposed to participate in gym. It's in his IEP. The Child Study Team agrees it's inappropriate for him at this time. At the beginning of the year, it was arranged for him to have his physical therapy during gym time, but then the PT changed her schedule and he wound up sitting on the bleachers for one of the weekly gym periods, being entertained by his one-on-one aide and the classroom aide but not participating in the activities. I had every reason to believe that everybody was on board with this plan. Except that yesterday morning, when I asked my son what he was going to be doing during his gym period that day, he said he was going to do gym with the other kids. He and the gym teacher had talked about it, and he was going to try something they were doing today. He said he wanted to, and was it okay, and far be it from me to discourage him when he wants to be included in an activity. But why the *&1%# should I be put in the position of doing that? Why should I be hearing about this from him, on the morning of? Why did nobody think this was something to mention? Or did they not mention it on purpose because this child's evil mother is trying to keep him from good healthy physical activity?

I let my blood boil off for a little bit and then calmly called the gym teacher, who not surprisingly never called me back. I thought about calling the Child Study Team leader, who had assured me often that he wouldn't do gym, wouldn't do gym, wouldn't do gym. I thought about calling the school nurse, who's agreed with me on the anti-gym edict in the past. I thought about calling the classroom teacher and yelling at her for a little bit. But instead, I did nothing, on the theory that a) I might have misinterpreted my son, since he was actually talking as his imaginary dog when he spilled the phys-ed plan beans; and b) if he did indeed participate and if it was the disaster I suspected it would be, I'd be able to use this transgression to knock heads and get sworm promises to never let it happen again.

So of course, he did participate, and everything went fine. When I picked him up and asked the classroom aide about his gym participation, she merrily told me how well he had done. And when I mentioned that, well, he's not supposed to participate in gym, she seemed genuinely surprised. While admitting that he usually doesn't participate (and why the heck would that be, does she suppose?), she was happy that he wanted to and did okay, and had no problems for the rest of the afternoon, and the whole thing was no big deal.

And so, fine, I'm happy that my guy felt like he wanted to do something, tried it, and was successful. But how is it possible for people who work directly with him not to know it's against his IEP? How is it possible for nobody to think, "We should run this by someone." How hard would it be to send me a note about it? I've made every attempt, at great personal stress, not to be a mad fire-breathing mama. Why do I have to hear about this from the bleepin' imaginary dog? Do I have to put out a weekly memo for these people spelling out everything that's supposed to happen and not supposed to happen? At least now, if I do, I'll know where to post it afterward.

Play it safe -- don't play

Spring is here and summer's coming, and with it all manner of dangers from which we're called to protect our young ones. What are the top-five greatest perils for children in the warm-weather months? Sunburn? Heat stroke? Dehydration? Mosquitos? Ticks? Nope. According to a report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, it's bicycling, basketball, football, baseball/softball and soccer. These sports account for the most injuries that bring children ages 5-14 into emergency rooms. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons recommends things like abiding by the rules, wearing the right equipment, and warming up as ways to play and stay out of the ER, but personally, I know the best way to keep my family safe: Keep them inside the air-conditioned house, watching TV and staying out of harm's way. That'll give me a happy lazy summer, anyway.

Perfect kids for $14.95

I've always been a sucker for new and innovative parenting techniques, as my drawers full of magnetic behavior chart bits and bookshelves piled with parenting primers will tell you. Right at the moment, we're having good luck with the Nurtured Heart approach, so I'm temporarily out of the market. But if I weren't, I'd be buying one of these babies: the Wheel of Dreaded Consequences. It's creators swear that this gadget, which allows transgressing young ones to spin for their punishment, will eliminate all disciplinary problems, make your children perfect ladies and gentlemen, and cause you to become the envy of all the parents in the neighborhood. I'm suspicious of anything that promises all that for under $20 -- but come to think of it, that's never stopped me before. I'm bookmarking this site for when my daughter grows into the entire breadth and depth of her teen attitude. For her, of course, a dreaded consequence would be having to read a book, or accept a kiss or hug from mom. With any luck, I'll have enough time to make a real good list.

The doctor's Web site will see you now

Ever wonder what the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry would have to say about your child problem du jour -- "Children Who Won't Go to School," maybe, or "Children and Lying," or "Fighting and Biting"? Happily, you can now look those answers up without making an appointment or paying through the nose. The academy's "Facts for Families" pages offer information on everything from "adoption" to "violence on television," "music videos" to "talking about sex" (alright, maybe those last two aren't that far apart). You can look them up by keyword or run down a numerical list, and the information is provided in English, Spanish, German, French, Polish and even Icelandic. EVERYTHING you'd ever want to know about childhood psychiatric problems, and you don't even have to set foot in a waiting room. Gotta love the Web.

Putting together a parent's portfolio

Here's an idea I've been playing with. You know all those notes we write to teachers, full of wisdom about what works for our kids and what doesn't, background on their special needs, advice on handling them most effectively, pleas for helping them reach their greatest potential? You know how we compose them so carefully, send them off to school in all their magnificent wordiness, and then wonder if anybody ever bothers to read them? Well, how about this: How about we share them with each other? Maybe as parents we can learn things from one another, or at least get good ideas and templates for writing our own school-bound tomes. I've posted a few preliminary entries in a prospective "parent's portfolio" -- a behavior plan, an introduction, some observations on a particular child's learning tendencies -- on the Mothers with Attitude site, and invite other parents to submit similar items that may be of help, or that you'd just be happy to see live somewhere other than a Child Study Team file cabinet, for posting on the site. E-mail your masterpieces to motherswithattitude@yahoo.com, and be sure to include your name and some information about the child for whom it was written. I promise to read and respond -- which is probably more than you can say for the folks you wrote this stuff for in the first place.

Baby teeth for science

Looks like the tooth fairy may have competition for all those baby teeth she collects. Researchers at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research have found that stem cells can be extracted from the pulp inside the little choppers. The discovery was made when a researcher's six-year-old lost a tooth, and Dad noticed there was still some living pulp inside it. Subsequent lost teeth went straight to the lab, and the discovery of the stem cells within may lead to advances in the repair of damaged teeth, regeneration of bone and the curing of neurological diseases. And of course, while applauding this great scientific breakthrough, as a mom I have to wonder: Did this scientist-father convince his daughter and various little friends to give up their teeth for the good of the public health, or did he sneak in their bedrooms at night and snatch them from under their pillows? Did he give better than tooth-fairy rates, since the teeth were being put to work and not, say, into a drawer? And, most importantly, is there a place that other parents can go to cash in their own offspring's tiny teeth? My daughter's got a complete set of the adult version, but my son's still got a bunch to lose. We'll see if the tooth fairy wants to negotiate.

Why the new IDEA's a bad idea

If you've been wondering what you should be doing about the reauthorization of IDEA, Wrightslaw has your marching orders. The special-ed advocacy site details plans for deluging our legislators with complaints over the proposed changes -- including optional 3-year IEPs and elimination of short-term objectives and discipline protections -- on April 29, and tells you just how to call or write for maximum effectiveness. There's also an in-depth analysis of the proposed changes to get you sufficiently hot and bothered. Personally, considering what a dither I get into over IEP meetings, going a few years between doesn't sound like such a bad idea; but some of the other changes do sound pretty scary. If you've been putting off panicking about the reauthorization, now's probably the time to start.

AOL, COD

In these troubled times, when there seem to be so many things to protest and so many folks exhorting you to write your legislator for one thing or another, it's good to see someone using the postal service for some really important social work: the banning and total de-proliferation of AOL CDs. At No More AOL CDs.com, you can find out where to mail your unwanted AOL CDs -- you know, the ones that fill your mailbox and your magazines, whether you want them to or, most likely, not -- to contribute to the noble effort of collecting a million of the darn things and dumping them on AOL's doorstep. At the site, which I see has been visited by hundreds of thousands more people than Mothers with Attitude has ever come close to attracting, you can also find fascinating bits of trivia (did you know that a million AOL CDs stacked would be higher than three Empire State Buildings? and don't you think you've received about that many in the past month?), AOL CD-inspired haikus, and clever photographic renditions of possible uses for the round plastic thingamabobs. It may not be as important as the IDEA re-authorization, or cloning, or vaccinations, or the plight of the poor, or the future of Iraq, but at least getting involved with this particular movement will help you get rid of some clutter. And that's a good cause, right?

Speaking of clutter, Julie Donner Andersen addresses the endlessness of housework and of her family's efforts to make it so in her latest "Therapeutic Laughing" column. She doesn't specifically mention AOL CDs, but you just know Teen Girl has about 50 of them under her bed.

Happy birthday to her

Pray for me: Today, I am the parent of a teenager. My daughter's 13, and plans to remind me of that fact every darn morning for a year. So now that I'm the mother of a teen with attitude, I thought I'd take a bit of a surf around the Web to see what advice is out there for parenting past the tweens.

I started by calling up the Google directory listing for "parenting teenagers." Interestingly, the top category was "Treatment Options"; who knew that being a teenager was a treatable condition? I clicked on the link for the teen parenting pages of about.com, but one look at that site's menu -- the "Teen Health Hub" featured acne, braces, masturbation, puberty, STDs and teen sexuality, and the top ad was for "A Parent's Guide to Boarding Schools" -- made me feel not quite mature enough to deal with any of that stuff. I moved on to a site called Parenting Adolescents, but made the mistake of starting with a look at the site's advice column. My question would be something like, "How can I get my 13-year-old to wear a dress to her 5th-grade graduation"; but the first question here was "I am a mother of a 14 year old daughter. She had been having sex with her boyfriend....," and the number of the national suicide hotline was prominently displayed. Yikes to that. I liked the approach of the Teens Are Not a Disease site, but there was an advice column there, too, and frankly, I was afraid to go near it.

By that time, I was hoping that the reason all these teen parenting sites seemed to be so far over my head was that my daughter was just such a brand-spanking-new teen, with no time yet to have become immersed in big-time teen issues. So I did a Google search on "thirteen year olds." And instantly regretted it when I saw some of the site titles and information that came up: "Thirteen year olds are having sex." "Most thirteen year olds desperately want to be able to talk with their parents, but they do not know how to start the conversation." "Thirteen-year-olds accused of armed robbery." My daughter often doesn't know how to start a conversation, it's true, but it's more a matter of language delays than emotional reservations. As for the other two -- I've only been the parent of a teen for less than 24 hours. Don't make me go there.

You can almost always make me go to the bookstore, because my collection of parenting books requires constant additions to stay up-to-date. But books on parenting teenagers sure don't look like real fun reads. Lots of stuff about communicating with your kids, helping girls keep a good body image and survive bad peer behavior, and helping teens pass through "the turbulent passage to adulthood." Amongst the top choices are a book on teens and alcohol, a book on teens and sex, a book on teens and jobs, a book on teens and violence ... but no books on teens who are happy and well-adjusted and give their parents no trouble at all and require no special handling whatsoever. Where do I buy that book?

Ah, well. The years ahead are sure to hold challenges I can't even imagine now -- and with luck, they won't be the ones all these teen-minded doomsayers are imagining, either. My mother was a strong believer in the theory that if you worry about all the bad things that could possibly happen, they won't; and maybe it works, because my own teen years were relatively uneventful. Now that I'm a mom, though -- I'll tell you, I'm thinking a lot about the decision my husband and I made, when we adopted our girl at age 4.5, not to adjust her age backward to make it more in keeping with her delayed development. I thought at the time that, whatever benefits might be found in that sort of birthdate fiddling, it was dishonest and dangerous to essentially lie about a child's age. But now -- I don't know, today I'm kind of wondering if it's too late to reconsider. Do you think she'd mind being 11 again?

Party animal

My daughter is having her 13th birthday party on Saturday, and I'm afraid it's turning her into a social monster. She's never been one of those Alpha girls, able to make fellow students quiver at her every whim. Frankly, since she's two years older than her classmates and less than facile in the areas of language and popular culture, I've always been afraid that the Alpha girls would eat her for lunch. For whatever reason -- maybe because she's too easy a target, maybe because she doesn't understand subtleties of the spoken word enough to be hurt by cleverly concealed digs -- she's not been teased or tormented to any dramatic degree. And I've counted us all lucky not to have to deal with the ramifications of outright peer rejection.

But now comes this birthday party. Her fifth-grade teacher has forbidden the handing out of invitations in the classroom unless you're inviting everyone, which my daughter does not wish to do. So we had to scurry around getting addresses and mailing cards to the chosen invitees. Unfortunately, though, the teacher hasn't put a moratorium on birthday-party discussion, and so every day for a week or so my daughter was coming home and announcing that so-and-so had asked to come to her birthday party. And since the guest list at that point was expandable, I told her that of course we could send out extra invitations. It's nice to be in demand, even for a moment. Maybe these party wanna-comes don't really like my girl and are just taking advantage of her for free bowling and cake; maybe they're stringing her along and won't really come; maybe they'll bring really bad presents; but I can handle all of that. What I'm having trouble handling is the fact that she so ruthlessly told some people NO.

A girl who my daughter claims has teased her and been mean, for example, asked to come to the party and got a public no. Now, surely, I would never insist that the birthday girl invite somebody who's been cruel to her. But isn't it a little mean, too, to say "Alright, you can come, and you, and you, and you, but not YOU"? Another time, my daughter mentioned telling an aspiring partygoer who was teasing her a little that she would uninvite her if it didn't stop. And the girl stopped. There's some sort of Disney Channel-like "revenge of the less popular" scenario going on here, and part of me wants to applaud it, but at the same time -- when the party's over, and my daughter has no more leverage, is some of this going to come back to haunt her? I'm thinking maybe she was safer when she was beneath notice.

To each his clutter

Spring cleaning has hit our house, but amazingly (all right, all right -- not so amazingly) it's not me who's doing the tidying up. The bringer of order to chaos is, of all people, my son, who out of the blue has decided to bag up the enormous pile of freebie car magazines that's taken over a corner of his room and move them out for recycling. He's been collecting these magazines for years -- from the supermarket racks, from the place we get bagels on Sunday, from the outdoor plastic receptacles by the fast-food joint we go to sometimes, from kind-hearted grown-ups who know he loves the things -- and any suggestion on my part that he move some old ones out before moving some new ones in has met with general hysteria. They're his treasures! He knows and loves each and every one! Even the ones at the very bottom of the pile that he hasn't looked at in months! He couldn't bear to part with them!

Except today, he did. Out of the blue, he started emerging from his room with bags of mags, instructing his dad to take them to the recycling pile at once. When I gushed with pride over this hard thing he was doing, he told me he'd decided that he should clear them out once a year. Are you spring cleaning? I asked. Yes! he replied, and let's hope that such a worthwhile activity will now extend to the bunches of bunches of shopping bags he's collected, and the bags and bags of receipts, and all those millions of tiny items that make it impossible to walk across his room in the dark. Just as long as he doesn't get any ideas about going after my personal clutter. Those catalogs teetering in a stack by the window, the three-hundred or so read or half-read parenting books piled precariously atop my bookcase, the shoes that never quite make it to the closet, the crates of children's school papers crammed under the bed -- hey, they're my treasures! I couldn't bear to part with them!

Desperate times...

...call for desperate measures, so in order to pull myself out of the attention-deficit-like tailspin I've been in over the past week, I've finally joined the FlyLady mailing list to take advantage of the endless supply of organizational, housekeeping and de-cluttering advice offered thereon. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get with the program of cleaning the sink every night until it shines, or wearing shoes every day even when I'm just loafing around the house, but I do like the idea of attacking clutter in short ruthless increments, and focusing on one part of the house each month. So I'll give the FlyLady's methods a try, and see if she can get me soaring out of the rut I seem to be in. I'm due for an emotional crash landing in a couple of weeks when we finally have the behavioral portion of my son's IEP meeting, but at least my sink will look good.

Creative whining

So I'm still floundering around through this limbo-like week during which I muddle around feeling overwhelmingly busy but have nothing to show for it except a mild case of GameBoy wrist, and I get an e-mail from a longtime reader sharing that she and three friends with small children have gotten together and, oh, you know, in their spare time, written a play, which they are now performing around San Francisco. I can't even squeeze out a couple of hundred measly words a day for this blog, and here other mothers are blithely running around creating works of art. Now, maybe they don't have daughters who can have a word spelled out loud for them twenty times in a row and still repeat it back wrong; and maybe they don't have sons who run merrily through the church after taking Communion yelling "I love you! I love you!" at prayerfully taken aback Mass attendees; and so maybe they have vast stores of mental and creative energy that I have long depleted. But still; sheesh, now I have to add writing a play to the long list of the things I'd do if I were a really good creative energetic organized Mama, along with getting my kids decent IEPs and teaching my son to tie his shoes. Man, I've got a lot of catching up to do.

What, me procrastinate?

Boy, have I been a bad little blogger this week. No entries since Tuesday! Surely I must have some sort of excuse, beyond simple procrastination, and a tendency to fall asleep immediately after my children's heads hit the pillow. Hmmm. Well, there was the fact that my son's IEP meeting was yesterday, and all week I felt the need to put together checklists and recommendations and all manner of paperwork with which to deluge the Child Study Team. Not that I ever actually DID put them together, mind you; it's just that it didn't seem right to work on anything else until that was done.

Let's see, what else? I did waste some time on my day off Wednesday doing things like buying birthday presents and gathering what I needed to get my taxes done, leaving little time for idle typing. Then, too, the fact that I begged my son's teacher to assign him chapter books we could read together and do extra-credit book reports on means that I have to sit down and wrestle him through a reading selection every evening -- that on top of reading my daughter's free-reading book with her, and reading her much-too-hard classroom assigned book TO her (it's "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry; anybody want to try explaining the Holocaust to an extremely learning and language-delayed 12-year-old fifth-grader?).

But I think, rather than relying on these excuses, I'll place all the blame for my lack of journal entries on my friend who gave me her old color GameBoy last weekend; my daughter quickly appropriated it, but gave me HER old color GameBoy, and the charms of slightly technicolor "Dr. Mario" have been tough to resist. Let's see, strategize IEP goals, or play Dr. Mario? Sort through tax records, or play Dr. Mario? Come up with something thoughtful and entertaining to write, or play Dr. Mario? Pretty soon, my eyes will rebel at staring at that tiny screen, and I'll be back to the somewhat bigger computer one at a more faithful pace. Of course, my daughter's getting a GameCube for her birthday next week, and if they make Dr. Mario for the big screen, you may never hear from me again.

Music to our ears

It was a proud moment tonight when my daughter performed as a fifth-grade trombone player in her first All-City Band Concert. Unfortunately, it was a proud moment out of a concert made up of several million moments. Band after band after band after band after band took the stage after my daughter's group was done, with fifth-grade parents trapped in the room by the promise that their players would be out later for a finale. I've now seen the future for my girl in instrumental music -- the sixth-grade band, the seventh-and-eighth-grade band, the high school band, and various jazz bands and orchestral combinations in between. Having stayed to the very end and listened to every note, I can report that the playing does improve as the kids get older, though maybe not as much as the conducters who chose the music thought; that the district's recently added string program still has a long way to go; and that the high school marching band rocks.

The good thing about all this is that our district has managed, in a time of tight budgets and property tax wrangling, to maintain a thriving music program. The possibly less good thing is that, if my daughter keeps working hard and practicing, we will be sitting through many, many endless concerts like this one in the years to come. Perhaps music fosters discipline and perseverance in parents as well as students. But I saw an awful lot of high school parents sneaking in late.

It's a miracle

I've written on Mothers with Attitude a time or two about my son and the impossibility of him sitting still and quietly during Mass on Sundays. And so I'm happy to report here that we seem to at last have found something that works, and that something is the Nurtured Heart approach to behavior management. Not only has it made him easier to deal with all through the week, but the grace it's granted his wild nature has even extended to Sunday mornings. Recently he's been sitting calmly through the service, and has even gone up for Communion without saying "Get out of my way!" to the others in line or "Thank you" instead of "Amen" upon receiving the Host. Last Sunday was quite possibly his best Mass outing ever. This morning was not so successful, since he lost control as we headed from the Cry Room to the sanctuary for Communion and started shouting "Co-moooooo-nion! Co-moooooo-nion!" and had to be taken to the car, but he was so quiet and peaceful during most of the Mass that I can't hold that against him much. Dare I hope that we are headed toward a time when he might actually kneel and pray and participate in the Mass, rather than just lie still and focus all his meager powers of concentration on staying in control? Maybe in another 10 years.

If there are any other Catholic moms out there reading this, I'd like to share a couple of resources I've been enjoying this Lent: a Web site called CatholicMom.com that offers everything from faith-based parenting advice to Gospel-themed coloring sheets for kids; and "Magnificat," a magazine that's like a cross between a missalette and a prayer book and allows you to have little prayer services and even a Mass of your own every day of the week. Tuck it and a kid's word search from CatholicMom.com in your purse when you head off to Mass, and if your children don't make it all the way through and you have to camp out with them in the car, you'll be all set to make it a spiritual experience.

Adoption on film

I finally caught up with the movie Lovely & Amazing the other day on cable. I'd been curious about it because one of its several subplots involved adoption, and of course the question then always becomes: Is it good for adoption, or bad for adoption? As I posted on Adoption Watch back when the movie first appeared on my radar screen, the characters include an African American 8-year-old who has been adopted by a white woman with two grown daughters. And since the relationship between the mother and daughter is portrayed as warm and loving; and the relationship between the older biological sisters and their adoptive little sis generally tolerant and caring, at least as much as it would be between any self-absorbed women and a much younger sibling; and the child not oversentimentalized, overly wise or tough, I'd have to say it was good for adoption. For the image of females as something other than neurotics obsessed with appearances, not so much.

One thing that particularly caught my attention about the adoption storyline was how the girl -- while certainly shown to have her own mind and her own take on things, including the quirks of her elders -- starts to take on some of those quirks herself, in her own style. This is something I watch for in my own kids, with some trepidation; are my own personal fears and neuroses, many of which I inherited from my own mom, a matter of nature or nurture? and will I find a way, in spite of myself, to inflict them on a generation not genetically linked? or will they be different -- "in a good way," as one big sister says to the youngster -- due to their different biological makeup? At the end of the film, when the girl prepares to welcome her adoptive mom home from the hospital by fussing over the elaborate arrangement of pillows the older woman had somewhat obsessively arranged on her bed, it's hard to know whether to feel heartwarmed that the child is so intent on doing something to make her mother happy, or chilled that she's taken on the family trait of preoccupation with silly little things like pillows. I was secretly rooting for her to just throw the darn things on the floor.

In other adoption-related movie news, Daughter from Danang, an Academy Award-nominated documentary about a Vietnamese adoptee reuniting with her birth family, will be shown on PBS Monday at 9 p.m. Is it good for adoption or bad for adoption? Watch and report.

Government appreciation

My husband and I have kept the war pretty much out of our conversation with the kids at home -- details only when they ask, which is hardly ever, and least of all the politics of war support and dissent. But I guess not everyone's taking that tack. This afternoon, when our 7-year-old niece came to stay with us after school, almost the first words out of her mouth were a very cheerful, "I hate George Bush!" When I asked her where she got that, she said, "My mommy! I hate George Bush because he got us into a war!" She then started to rattle off what she'd heard about the war lately, but I cut her off. War analysis is pretty much inescapable for grown-ups these days; I don't need to get it from second-graders.

Free speech is a glorious thing, but although I may have had my reservations about this war and this president, it bugged me to have a child so blithely dissing our leader. (And shouldn't she at least be hating Saddam Hussein, too?) If you'd like to build up your own personal child's respect for at least some aspect of the federal government, the Federal Government Kids' Page lists youngsters' pages for many government agencies, from usual suspects like NASA and the Forest Service to such unlikely entries as the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the CIA (check out the decoder game!). And of course, there's always www.whitehousekids.gov. If they can't stand the commander in chief, they can take the tour hosted by his dog instead.

30th percentile, here he comes!

My son had his 10-year-old check-up with the pediatrician yesterday, and the big exciting news was that he's in the 25th percentile on the growth chart for weight, and the 10th percentile for height. This is a big deal because for years and years and years he was way off the bottom of the chart, with no apparent ambition to hop onto it, and only last year skimmed the lowest regions thereon, at 7 percent for weight and 5 percent for height. And now he's hit the one-quarter mark for weight! Not bad for a scrawny kid with FAE who's always eaten like a pig but for so long resembled one of those children you can feed with a contribution of 20 cents a day. He's a growing boy, he is.

If you're wondering how your own personal kiddo measures up, this Google Search will link you up with oodles of height and weight charts, including this one for children with Down Syndrome and this one for children from China.