Win a Copy of My Sensory-Integration Book

My book The Everything Parenting Guide to Sensory Integration Disorder is one of the prizes being offered today on the blog Lucas's Journey With Sensory Processing Disorder. There are a bunch of free ways to enter, and different prizes for each day in Sensory Awareness Month. My other book, 50 Ways to Support Your Child's Special Education, will be up for grabs later in the month.

College Is Hard on Warrior Moms

The time has come for me to hand my daughter the keys.

Not to our family car, though she will in fact be driving that to college every day.

The keys to her educational advocacy -- something I've been cherishing and polishing and tuning up far more faithfully than that 2001 Jeep.

Join me over at Hopeful Parents for the rest of this post. I'll be writing there once a month.

Adoption on "Rizzoli & Isles"

Anybody watch Rizzoli and Isles? Not me -- I'm still making it through the backlog on my DVR, and haven't made room for this new series, though it sounds like the sort of thing I'd like. Kind of hate to hear, though, that it recently used adoption as a plot twist, rather as In Plain Sight did a while ago. According to a TV Squad post, medical examiner Maura Isles (who some have observed seems to have Asperger syndrome) gets some DNA info on a murder victim on her table and finds that the DNA matches her own, and the guy is her biological brother.

Unlike In Plain Sight, this isn't a storyline that's going to go away with the case of the week, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. TV Squad writer Jason Hughes suggests, "With the series already renewed for a second season, there's plenty of time to unravel the mystery of Isles genetic past, perhaps even tracking down her birth parents and finding out why she was given up for adoption," and ... boy, you know, let's not. If you watch the show, please share any details you have on the plot line and where you'd like to see it go.

School year is a go

Finally got my son's schedule for the school year (with less than a week to spare), and it's ... wow, it's perfect. This is seriously the first time since he's been in high school that there wasn't a duplicate class or a wrong placement that I had to call and complain about. Not only that, but all possible opportunities to have the same class as a friend came through, and he has a friend with him for lunch, too. Several of his teachers are ones my daughter had before him, so I feel like I have some relationships already established. This is a huge year for him, the first time without self-contained classes, just inclusion, resource, and regular-education. He does still have adaptive gym, his one remaining protected spot, but that one I'll cling to for the duration. For the rest, I'm ... really, really interested to see how he's going to do. Judging by his summer homework performance, I think he's up for it. Starting next Tuesday, we'll see.

So, um, about that summer homework

Guess I haven't been too good about reporting in on my kids' progress with their summer homework. Like my son who was supposed to blog every day under my late-summer regimen, I've been slacking. My daughter's homework routine is pretty much in ruins; she's been so stressed about the start of college that I've given her a break from the practice problems. I thought it would be something to take her mind off the wait, but I think it just made her more freaked out. So now, she can watch TV and browse Facebook uninterrupted all the way to the time that college classes begin. We all need a little slothfulness now and then.

My son, despite his non-blogging, has been doing pretty well with the summer homework. Well, we haven't really been reading too much either. Here's the problem I now discover with reading books together on the iPad -- he can always use "the battery's dead" as an excuse. I think he purposely runs the battery down so he'll be able to say that (not so easy, since iPad has a pretty long battery life). Next time, maybe we'll have to go for reading material without a screen.

The geometry and Spanish worksheets, however, he has been working on diligently and without complaint, and that fills me with hope for the school year ahead. I'm extremely pleased by how willingly he's worked -- that's such a large part of the battle, getting the kid to sit down to the homework and feel like the work's not over his head. My boy has always balked when he feels he can't do it, and that has not happened with any of the work this summer. Don't know how closely it will correspond to the actual geometry and Spanish that will be coming home, but it's a delightfully good sign.

Are your kids still homeworking? Are they in school already? We've got until next Tuesday. Less than a week. Counting down.

Not exactly special delivery

This is apropos of nothing topical to this blog, but I gotta vent. My daughter used some of her work money this summer to buy an Apple TV so she could watch her iTunes shows on a screen bigger than her laptop. FedEx truck pulled up with it today, delivery guy jumps off the truck with it, drops it in the street, boots it a little picking it up, then walks over to where I'm standing, watching, and hands it to me like nothing happened. I said, "That's fragile, what you just dropped." And he's all, "Hey, it's under warantee, if it's broken send it back to the company." I got his name and he made like he was reporting the incident on his little handheld, but who knows.

Aside from the fact that if the thing doesn't work, FedEx should pay due to the butterfingered behavior of its delivery guy, sending it back isn't exactly a no-stress option. Pack it back up, wait for FedEx to get it, then wait all over again for a new one? Plus, it's always possible that damage done will take some time to show, by which time returning it may not be so easy. As it is, I can't even see if it's damaged yet because the cables that hook it to the TV come separately and haven't arrived. It looks OK, isn't making any loose-part rattling noises.

Accidents happen, and certainly I have no idea what's happening to these packages when they're out of my sight. They should be packed sufficiently to receive shocks. But at the very least, it seems to me that if you're a delivery person for a company that has a reputation as a premium shipper, and you toss a package on the street right in front of the consumer, it might be a good idea to say you're sorry, and act like this is something that deserves a response from you. Sheesh. Am I being overly sensitive here?

Word problems for the new economy

Today, my daughter's summer homework worksheet contained word problems about fractions. Most were fairly typical, but when we came to this one:

BMW is lying off 8000 employees worldwide. Of the 8000 employees from BMW’s layoffs, 5/8 of the employees received applications for some form of unemployment benefits. However only 3/4 of the laid off employees receiving applications completed and returned their applications to the unemployment offices. How many of the 8000 laid off employees actually applied for unemployment benefits?

Is this what we're coming to now? Word problems about layoffs? Will we be figuring out foreclosure losses on the next one, or calculating food-stamp savings? As if math wasn't already depressing enough.

Summer homework, Day 6

Pretty good hissy fit over homework today. Unfortunately, the fit-giver was me. I accidentally handed my daughter the answer sheet along with her problems to do, and she copied from it in a way so obvious that it was easy to catch her and impossible to understand why she would have cheated and lied about it. It's comforting, I guess, that she's so bad at being bad, so easily seen right through. But all the more reason for me to impress on her that she must. not. cheat. Even on stupid summer homework with Mom. Especially on word problems that aren't really that hard. Harumph.

Things went better with my son, who did his geography and Spanish without much fuss. The thing he's digging in his heels about is writing in his blog, which is supposed to be a fun way to practice writing. He does a great job with it when he does it. Wish I didn't have to nag so much, though. Then again, given my track record over the past year on this blog, maybe I'm not one to talk.

But What If They Can?

Our kids can't do that.

I hear that phrase a lot lately, when the topic turns to standardized testing, or Common Core State Standards, or inclusion run rampant. Not just from educators and IEP team members, though there's certainly enough eye-rolling and shoulder-shrugging from that quarter over the possibility of students with special needs doing what everybody else is doing. I suppose that's where we learn.

Join me over at Hopeful Parents for the rest of this post. I'll be writing there once a month.

Summer studying, Day 3

Continuing on with my plan to rob my children of precious summer hours by making them do homework for me.

My daughter did another PEMDAS worksheet, getting closer and closer to at least a passing percentage of correct answers. (By the way, if you're ever working on order of operations with your kids, this calculator rocks -- you can enter the whole long thing and get the answer without having to work it through yourself. Purely for parent use, mind you.) Mostly, now, it's carelessness. You really do have to go boringly step by slow step, not rushing things by combining stuff in and out of paragraphs or doing the figuring too hastily in your head. Good that she's doing all this practicing now, though, so maybe she'll have it together by class time. We read another chapter of The Color of Water, which she has pronounced to be a weird book. That won't get her off the hook.

My son's geometry homework involved looking at pictures of the flags of various countries and matching them to descriptions that use the names of many different shapes, triangles and polygons and dodecagons and trapezoids and what-all. I helped probably a little too much, but seriously, the descriptions were awfully convoluted. In Spanish, we moved on from a chapter about family members to one about rooms of the house. Not sure how much of this he's going to retain, but he's game to try it. We read another chapter in Bridge to Terabithia, and yes, the glasses made a difference.

Summer studying, Day 2

Another what-we-did-yesterday report on the progress of our summer homework. Running a day late with reports feels about par for the course.

So, yesterday: My son's Spanish worksheet involved translating phrases, and I was really impressed with how conscientiously he finished it, flipping back and forth to different lists of words to find the information he needed to translate a group of sentences from English to Spanish. I did talk him through it a little, but in past years he would have lost interest and attention even for listening to my instructions long before he got to the end. This time, though he yawned frequently -- that's what happens when a kid who moves to stay alert tries to sit still and pay attention -- he finished it all without protest. Ditto his geometry, which was a fun exercise using the concepts of "parallel," "perpendicular," and "intersecting" to find different things on a map. I'm starting to feel really hopeful about his ability to take on the challenging class placements we've got going for him this fall. Remaining patient through a long task is a big and necessary leap.

He was a little more antsy with our reading of another chapter of Bridge to Terabithia. Part of the problem was his sinuses, which were making his voice come out all nasal and through his nose. Hard to understand him, hard to speak clearly. A couple of spritzes of salt water up the nose every day may help with that. The other thing I remembered later is that he hasn't been wearing his glasses while we're reading. Funny how quickly we've forgotten those things in our nonacademic summer routine. Gonna have to dig 'em out.

My daughter and I spent half the day at an orientation for her college, but I still made her do worksheets when we got home. Mean mom. Order of operations was still the order of the day, since she'd done badly on them the day before. We sort of belatedly realized that, though PEMDAS accurately explains the order, the MD (multiplication/division) part has to be done in the same step from left to right, and ditto the AS (addition/subtraction). Once she got that in her head, her accuracy on the problems improved. I tell you, I need to study up on this stuff before I give it to her, not after she's screwed up. After the math, we read another chapter of The Color of Water, which alternates between short chapters in the mother's voice and long chapters in the son's. Yesterday was a son chapter. Much eye-rolling over the length ensued. It's OK, I'm used to it.

How I made my kids miserable yesterday

Thought I'd keep some track here of how my kids are doing on that summer homework I mentioned last week, either as a record of success or lazy failure. Here's what we did yesterday, 8/9/10:

The Spanish workbook I'm using with my son tries to make things interesting by throwing in celebrity names -- as in yesterday's exercise, which required matching famous relatives with the Spanish terms that described their relationship (for example, "Goldie Hawn y Kate Hudson" with "La madre and la hija," "Luke y Owen Wilson" with "los hermanos," and "Darth Vader" with "El padre de Luke Skywalker." Cute idea ... except my son's awareness of popular culture pretty much ends at Nickelodeon and PBS Kids. So I had to explain who everyone was before he could have a good guess. Kind of wished we could skip over "Paris y Nicky Hilton" -- I try so hard to pay no attention to them at all.

Also on the table for my son was a geometry worksheet about identifying angles. This book also tries to make things fun, in this case presenting the angles to be identified as the legs of little cartoon gymnasts. Female gymnasts, with arrows pointing to their crotches so we knew just what angle was being asked for. I don't think it registered with my son, but ... maybe not the most tasteful way of presenting the information, ya know?

My daughter did a worksheet from the remedial math review sheets posted on her college's website, my bid to make her as prepared as possible for her upcoming remedial math class. This particular sheet was about order of operations, or PEMDAS as my kids have been taught to call it, and some of the problems were quite complicated, with exponents and square roots and parentheses and brackets. I had to Google for instructions a few times before I could help her out, and even then we came to the conclusion that one of the solutions on the answer sheet was just wrong. More often, though, it came down to her copying something incorrectly as she moved from step to step. Oops.

Because I am mean and want them to be unhappy, I'm also requiring them to read with me for the rest of their summer. Yesterday they each started books -- Bridge to Terabithia, iBooks for iPad version, for my son, and an old coffee-stained copy of The Color of Water for my daughter, who hates to read but will sometimes agree to nonfiction. She almost read The Color of Water her freshman year in high school, before the resource room teacher came back from maternity leave and supplanted the sub who thought that was a good idea. I saw it was on a list of books that might be used in her college remedial reading class, so we'll give it a try. I may have to do some pretty heavy bribing to keep her going.

What unpleasant academic chores are you forcing your kids to do? Share in the comments.

Keep your blog music to yourself

I'm afraid that this is going to come off sounding cruel, and I don't mean it that way, though it's something that often makes me mumble rude words under my breath. I know it's done with all good intentions, in an effort to create a particular atmosphere and share something precious and important. It's meant to be meaningful, not annoying, certainly, I understand that. But it's annoying nonetheless.

I'm talking about music on blogs.

If you've had a song written for your child, or a playlist of songs that your child enjoys, or an inspirational tune that always puts you in a peaceful frame of mind, it is entirely right and nifty that you should share it with the people who are reading your words. But would it be so bad to make it an opt-in experience? To have a big button up top that says, "Listen to my musical selections as you read?"? People would want to do that, I think, particularly if they're enthralled by the rest of your blog.

But when you make the music ring out every time someone hits your site, here's what happens, at least to me. I read blogs in my RSS reader. If it looks interesting, I hit the link to open the page in another tab. I keep reading, opening, reading, opening, and then suddenly I have unexpected music blending unpleasantly with the music I already have playing on iTunes. Then I either have to hit the mute button and lose the music I want to listen to, or scurry frantically through tabs searching, searching for the site making that noise, then scrolling furiously to find the off button, which is usually hidden in a sidebar somewhere, often with decoy idle music players for extra confusion.

So what was meant as a nice extra touch to website design becomes a reason for me to arrive at a site angry, cursing, and frustrated.

I started web writing in the early days of Geocities, in which adding as many gewgaws to your site as possible was the general idea. I was more Warrior Mom than Holly Hobbie, and the froufrou bothered me then. Maybe that's why the music bothers me now. Maybe I'm just always looking for something to be bugged by. Maybe I've written way more words about this than it deserves. What do you think? Does blog Muzak make you nuts too? Add your thoughts in the comments.

Summer homework blues

My son had the last day of his summer job yesterday, and my daughter's is today. School doesn't start until September 7 and 8, so we've got a loooooooooooooong stretch of boring weeks ahead. One thing that's definitely on the agenda is getting to some of the summer homework I meant to have my son do -- a little geometry and Spanish to prepare him for the more mainstream classes he's going to have on those subjects in the fall. I'm trying to persuade my daughter that it would be a good idea for her to do some of the basic math review on her college's website to prepare for the remedial math classes she's taking. When I mention it, she looks like I'm asking her to spend her last precious days of summer digging coal out of the backyard.

The thing that stinks about these kind of summer projects for kids is that I have to be involved in them, and to do so I have to remember geometry and Spanish and higher math concepts, which I do not. I've been out of school for a while. Those brain cells are gone. So before I can sit down to guide my guy through a geometry worksheet, I have to go online and Google, "Quick! Explain geometry to me!" Feels a little like digging coal from this end, too.

Why we don't yell at teachers in public

The ever-helpful special-needs blog The Wrightslaw Way had a post today entitled Going Ballistic in a Public Forum - NOT Good Form! and I say, Amen to that. It gave me an unpleasant flashback to a Back to School night when my son was in first grade. Other parents in that class had a good gripe in that, due to personnel and space considerations, their kids had been kept in the same classroom for years instead of moving up to another self-contained class; meanwhile, younger kids (most noticeably my very small, very fidgety, just-up-from-pre-K guy) kept being added to the mix. I don't begrudge those parents their extreme pissed-offness ... but it was best directed at the special-education supervisor, in a meeting or a thoughtfully phrased letter. Yelling at the young teacher on Back to School night until you made her cry was just bullying, and the mom who did it damaged that class and my son in ways I've never entirely forgiven.

Yelling, anger, sarcasm, making a scene ... those things feel good, I know they do, and they give parents a feeling of power that is hard to come by. But they're a bad idea. They're never the best way to change the system. They always do damage to our ability to function as our children's advocates, even if they appear effective in the short run. We teach our children not to get down on the level of bullies, and we should take that advice ourselves. Treat those school personnel the way we would want them to treat us -- as partners, as knowledgeable professionals, as grown-ups.

Then, you know, start up a blog where you can pour out that venom in a more appropriate and anonymous venue.

Just to be safe

So apparently there's some bickering going on over the Restraint and Seclusion bill that was supposed to protect students with special needs against abusive behavioral practices in schools. According to a Disability Scoop post, the American Association of School Administrators is against the bill, and wants to change it to allow the specification in an IEP that for this particular student, restraint and seclusion are A-OK. A spokesman for the organization is quoted as saying, "We see it as a discussion to be had in advance with the expectation that you never have to use it. We would hopefully only be using it in emergency situations, but instead of being reactive you would be proactive."

Well, okay. Proactive is good. And in that spirit, how about if we also amend the law to add a provision allowing parents to sue a school district and prosecute a school administrator if restraint and seclusion are done improperly, in a way that injures or traumatizes a child, by personnel without proper training and support, in a classroom that's become a dumping ground for behavior problems, in a placement that does not work for the child in question, and/or when less invasive behavioral interventions like a Functional Behavior Assessment and a Behavior Intervention Plan have never been ordered, provided, or implemented.

You know, with the expectation that we'd never have to use it.

Well, hello! Pay no attention to the five inches of dog hair on every available surface!

Wow, I just noticed that this blog was named as one of "ten blogs for special-needs parents" by SheKnows.com, along with some of my favorite parenting blogs. I'm honored to be in that company, and ... um, a little embarrassed by how infrequently I've been blogging here lately. It's like somebody invited everybody to your place for an open house, and you haven't cleaned in a really, really long time.

So if you've come here from that SheKnows list, hey, welcome! Remove that stack of newspapers from the sofa and have a seat! Pay no attention to the massive cobwebs in the corners! Just give me a few minutes to find my kitchen counter under all the old mail and dirty dishes, and I'll make you some coffee! The mold washes right out of the filter basket, no problem.

Seriously, I've been spending most of my writerly energy these days on my About.com site at http://specialchildren.about.com -- that's the writing that pays my bills, and keeps my kids in iTunes. Please stop by there and click around 20 or 30 times. I'll try to get some work going here again, too.

New Site, Same as the Old Site

Just moved Mothers With Attitude (the main site, not this blog) over to a much cheaper Web host, hooray! You should notice absolutely nothing different, same mishmash of styles from when I ran out of steam in a redesign. So far, looks like everything still works the way it should, or doesn't work same as always. Success!

Unless it's just toying with me, and everything is about to fall apart. Could happen. I know enough about technology to sort of make myself think I know what I'm doing, but not enough to actually know. Anyway, if anybody saw "under construction" signs today and worried, I'm back.

Adoption on "In Plain Sight"

Last week, USA's witness-protection procedural In Plain Sight had a plot about a witness with Asperger syndrome, and this week there was something else within my blogging realm: an adoption plotline. The witness-of-the-week [spoiler alert!] was a homeless man who stopped a bombing. Turned out he was a genius who fled his adoptive home when he was 15 because he didn't feel understood. In exchange for giving testimony, he asks the authorities to find his birthmother, who he's been searching for unsuccessfully for years. She's found, but she's dying, and he gets there too late to meet her. By unlikely chance, though, the man she was married to at the end of her life turns out to be the man she had a baby with decades before, so the witness finds his birthfather. He also finds out that his mama was a rolling stone, just like him. Biology is destiny, ya know.

Of course, all through this, I'm thinking about the guy's adoptive parents, and whether they've missed him over the fifteen-plus years he's been missing, and now will be even less likely to ever see him again as he takes on a new identity. He, of course, doesn't seem to have given them any thought at all. Chopped liver, they are. Not that I'm defensive or anything.

Why We Don't Just Go "Rescue" Random Kids

Geez, you know I'm all for adoption, and I'm sure many of us who've opened our hearts to children in disadvantaged situations have seen the news from Haiti and thought, "I'd like to scoop those babies up and bring them home with me." But we don't, you know, actually do it. Because there are laws, and precautions, and pesky things like paperwork.

The distinction between charitable impulse and really bad idea was apparently lost on a group of Americans who went to the earthquake-ravaged nation and scooped themselves up some kids, without being all that persnickety about whether they were truly orphans or not. For their troubles, they were arrested and have now been charged with kidnaping.

The ugly truth -- something that those of us who've adopted internationally have probably wrestled with in our hearts, and something that has the potential to stop international adoption in any country that has a little pride -- is that it's hard not to feel that, whether they have a birthfamily who wants them or not, children are better off in our comparitively rich and resource-filled American homes and communities. That's an impulse we have to struggle against, and there should be mountains of paperwork to make sure we don't get off too easily. It's hard enough to shake the image of Americans buying kids when we do have proof of need; the Idaho Baptists are finding out now what happens when you don't bother with it. You wind up in trouble, and probably make it harder for kids who are eligible for adoption to get out.

You Already Have a Family

I'm finally catching up with "Find My Family," which we taped when it debuted. My daughter is dying to watch it, but I wanted to watch it first, and it's been waiting for me to get up the nerve. Seeing it now ... wow, it's bad. Interesting that the people involved use terms like "birthmother" and "birthfamily," but the show host keeps driving home "MOTHER" and "FAMILY." Adoptive families are clearly chopped liver in this scenario. I don't know what to tell my daughter about this. I know this is an issue for her ... but she's so sensitive and impressionable, and the the show is such overwhelming Adoptee Wish Fulfillment Fantasy, that I think it could do more harm than good. We'll have a talk about it.

Side of the Road Rage

Why do the people who come to my little cul de sac to wait for their kids after school feel that it's appropriate to park at a stop sign and block my driveway and clog the entrance to my street? Who does that? Where are their manners? This is the kind of thing that makes neighborhoods pull up the welcome mat and get the police to keep people away. I don't mind people turning around in my driveway -- we removed the cement blocks the previous owners had to prevent that -- and I don't mind them sitting in front of my house. But if you're parked in front of my driveway when my daughter's trying to come home for work or my husband's trying to get out after lunch ... honesty, what is the matter with you?

School craze

I make a big deal in my book about getting your child off to school as calm as possible, plenty of time, no stress, no yelling, no rushing. And boy, did I blow that today, on the very first day of school. Everybody was up and ready in plenty of time, but I let my son have a little too much alone time, and then we were rushing, and then we were halfway to school before I realized he didn't have his schedule, and we had to run back home, and there was some yelling and panicking and melting down (mostly me, but still). I hope that's the most out-of-control part of his day, but given the fact that his aide didn't have the right schedule when we met her and has no idea of what classes he's in, I'd think not.

Listen to me ramble

I've done a couple of podcast interviews for my new book, 50 Ways to Support Your Child's Special Education, and they're available on the Web if you're interested in hearing me talk and talk and TALK. The one for Mommy Time Radio is about six minutes, and the one for NEED Project is sufficiently longer that I haven't gotten up the nerve to listen to it; I had the impression at the time that I was blathering on, and I'd hate to confirm it. If you give it a listen, let me know how I do. I so prefer writing, where you can go over things and clean them up before anybody sees.

I'm doing another interview on Tuesday for The Parent's Journal, and then on September 10 I'll be doing a live "meet and greet" at the Barnes and Noble in Clifton, NJ. If you're in the vicinity, stop by and keep me company. Details are here.

Schedules at last

So my kids' school schedules finally came on Saturday (clever to make them arrive on a day when we can't immediately call and complain.) My daughter's looks perfect, and my son's has just one glitch -- the same elective class in two different periods. That's pretty minor compared to problems on his friends' schedules, though. Two of his friends had schedules with periods completely missing, and his friend who's going to be a junior has senior English on his schedule. It will all work out, and it's good to know now exactly what the issues will be. Lunch, I can see, may be a problem, because none of his friends have it the same period. Either he'll make new friends, eat alone (as my daughter usually has to), or pull up a chair beside his paraprofessional.

Movie recommendation: Julie and Julia

I saw Julie and Julia the other night, and found it to be completely adorable. Unlike a lot of critics, I liked the parts with Julie as well as Julia, and thought the two stories benefited from each other as counterpoint. I'm not at all a foodie, and was not seized by an irresistible urge to eat the kind of food shown onscreen (except maybe that bruschetta Julie made early on). What the movie really made me want to do was go home and hug my husband. The movie offers a great depiction of two functional, affectionate marriages, something you don't see that much of in movies and TV these days. I though it was interesting that, although the plot involved the accomplishments of two women, you couldn't imagine either of them doing what they did without the love and support of their spouses.

For those of us who've dealt with infertility, there was a very sweet little scene, very understated, showing Julia's reaction to news that her sister is pregnant, that rang true and familiar. Been there, cried those tears, got that sweet comforting hug from my husband. A nice touch in a very nice, funny, sweet movie.

Something I didn't know about "Sully"

After the big media rush surrounding the plane that landed on the Hudson River in January, it seemed hard to believe that there was anything more to know about the plane's captain, Chesley Sullenberger. He seemed like a nice guy in danger of being so overexposed that the inevitable autobiography would be a big "so what." Reading a review in our local paper today, though, I saw something that I either missed in the coverage around the event or never got reported before: He's an adoptive dad. From the review: "He tells of training as a military pilot, his first kiss with the woman who would become his wife, their struggles to conceive and their joyful adoption of two girls." Gonna have to put that book on my reading list now.

< shameless promotion >

Hey, if any of you live in the vicinity of Clifton, New Jersey, come out and see me at the Barnes & Noble at Clifton Commons on September 10. I'll be doing a "meet and greet," which is what they do if you're a local author who's not likely to bring in the hordes like, say, Kate Gosselin (for whom my daughter and I waited in line for an hour and a half). I'll be available to chat and sign copies of my new book, and I hope folks will come out for me because otherwise, my son's going to accost random strangers and drag them over. You can get more info about the event here -- and if by chance you've already read the book and liked it, please consider reviewing it on Amazon and/or BN.com.

< /shameless promotion >

Worrying off-schedule

While I was on vacation last week, one of the blogs that has been sucking up the time usually reserved for this one -- my Brothers & Sisters blog -- was unceremoniously dumped by 451 Press. I'm hoping that the time I've been spending writing about the fictional Walkers in all their spectacular dysfunction can now be channeled back to keeping this blog current.

And speaking of dysfunction ... why, oh why, oh why can't our school district get schedules out on a timely basis? Come on, people! We usually go on vacation the second week in August, and the kids' schedules have always come reliably during that week when we're not here to obsess with them immediately. This year, though, we came home to nothin'. Nothing in the mail, nothing on the fancy new website the school has for posting schedules and grades. We've usually gotten a preliminary schedule without teachers and classrooms earlier in the summer, too, and that's also gone missing this year.

It seems like every year, things are a little less organized. And that means a little more time wasted at the start of the school year getting everybody in the right place. Maybe they're just trying to minimize the time that parents have to complain before school begins, but I'm afraid that they're just that disorganized. Meanwhile, I'm practically sitting on the mailbox waiting for these pieces of paper that mark the official start of my school worry season. I've got worrying to do, people! Get it together!

My new book is out July 18

Just got a big box of author's copies of my new book this week, and it's so exciting to see it all bound up and pretty. It's called 50 Ways to Support Your Child's Special Education, and offers really practical things you can do every day to help your child. I've talked to a lot of educators who are disheartened by a lack of parental involvement, and unlike so much of what ails special education, that's an easy thing to fix. Please consider keeping an eye out for the book, online and in your bookstore, and help me get the word out.

Last ER tonight

I'm feeling very nostalgic about the last episode of ER on tonight. The show debuted in 1994, just a couple of months before we went to Russia to adopt our kids. I enjoyed the early episodes, then missed a month's worth while we waited out the adoption in a country where our viewing choices were mostly re-runs of U.S. shows long cancelled. (The Hat Squad seemed to get a lot of airtime.)

When we got back, I started watching the show again. I remember talking my mom, who hated watching medical shows because she always thought she had the same symptoms, into watching the show with me one night while she was visiting. Alas, it turned out to be the night of Love's Labors Lost, one of the most harrowing hours of TV I can remember watching. Took her a while to forgive me for that one, and I don't think she ever watched the show again.

I was a regular viewer for a while, finally throwing in the towel when Abby was shaping up to be Mark Greene 2.0, a character for who nothing could ever go right. I watched the George Clooney episode a few weeks ago for old times' sake, and though I have a meeting to go to tonight, I'll be DVRing the whole three hour goodbye extravaganza tonight. Rumor has it that Clooney will be back for this one, too. Don't know about that, but I'll be.

Clooney alert

For those, like me, who plan to watch whatever final-season ER episode George Clooney pops up in, TV Squad says tonight is quite likely the night. Julianna Margulies will be there, anyway. We'll see. I may just DVR it and fast-forward to the good parts, such as they are.

"The trouble with snark"

Love this article by Roger Ebert about snark, particularly as it relates to reviews of the Oscars but as applies to our society in general, too. I've certainly snarked before, and it's fun and cool and easier than really understanding something, but I agree with Ebert that the damage it does is probably not worth it. And unlike him, I have seen snark aimed at regular people rather than celebrities -- you can see it in blog comments and online forums pretty easily -- and nothing ends a useful discussion like it. Food for thought, anyway.

Oh, for goodness sake

My kids just got back to high school after a week of vacation, and now next week they have three half-days due to testing. This on the heels of four half-days before the break for midterms. All this testing seems to result in kids spending less time in school. Which tests parents, for sure.

The new Miley Cyrus song makes me cry like a baby

Alright, so I'm a sucker for country ballads anyway. But the lyrics of "The Climb" (video below) just seem so appropriate to our children who bring such spirit to their struggles, and us parents who keep fighting those battles and climbing those mountains. Along the way, I think we do become aware that life isn't a race and the outcome is less important than the effort. I'm not exactly in Miley's target demographic, but I'll take inspiration where I can get it. Also, a good cry.



(I love how unstyled and age-appropriate she looks in those blue-lit studio shots. Wish she still looked like that on her show.)

Oscar reviews

So who watched the Oscars last night? I had to do so alone for the first time in a while, since my normal viewing companions were sidelined by sickness. My husband, who has absolutely no interest in the proceedings, tried valiantly to watch with me, but quickly nodded off. I wasn't close to dozing, though, even though I'd seen none of the performances and had no stake in the winners for the first time in a while. I thought the ceremony was really pretty enjoyable, the banter and musical numbers less cringe-worthy than usual, the montages fun, and the speeches trim and sometimes interesting. So I'm pretty surprised today to go online and find so many bad reviews for the show. Honestly, I think it's the old "it's easier to write a bad review than a good one" principle on display. You never look uncool for not liking something. I'm happy to see that Roger Ebert agreed with me, anyway. What did you think?

Honor roll worries

Both my kids made the honor roll again this marking period. We're in some sort of alternate grading universe, and I like it. Trying not to like it too much, because it's reasonable to expect that, even with continued effort, they will at some point slip somewhere in some class and not make that hallowed list, and then there will inevitably be disappointment. I've always talked a good game about being happy if my kids try hard and pass, and that will always be the case. But once you've gotten that pat on the back, twice now, it's going to feel like a smack if you don't. Though of all the school worries I could be having? This is certainly the one I'd pick.

Phone calls from politicians

It's bad enough when you get all those cheesy recorded calls from politicians and their supporters on the day or two before election day. But this week, I got a recorded call from a politician on the eve of his announcement that he was entering the race. I wouldn't even want to talk to the actual guy at this point, much less listen to his recorded message. If you want to rally my support this early, I don't know, send me chocolate with your name on it. Tape recordings aren't going to do it.

Share your camp recommendations

Have you found a great special-needs camp for your child? I'm starting a user-suggested listing page on my About.com site, and I'd like it to be a great parent-to-parent resource instead of a pathetic empty list. I contributed one recommendation to get started, of an extremely program-intensive camp my kids used to go to (before they priced themselves out of our budget). Please add any places you've found and appreciated.

On the ball

I've started using a therapy ball for my desk chair, and ... it's interesting. Not uncomfortable, but maybe not transformative, either. Kind of fun to bounce while I'm writing; can that possibly be good for my eyes? One thing it's shown me, though, is that I have an amazing talent for slouching, and am able to do that even when balanced atop a rubber sphere. Can't put my feet up and lounge back, though. Not if I don't want to go sliding across the living-room floor while the dog laughs at me.

Sweet!

I'm not sure that the story about high fructose corn syrup being full of mercury is going to withstand any scientific scrutiny -- there's kind of a funny smackdown of it on the blog Daddy Types already -- but if it gets those annoying Corn Syrup Is Great! commercials off the air, I'm all for it. I don't really get how bragging that your product is just as healthy as sugar (big scoopfuls of sugar, actually) makes sense anyway.

Snow blunder

Big boo boo in our school district this morning. The teachers got told there was a snow day, the elementary-school parents got told there was a snow day, the middle-school parents got told there was a snow day, but the school website and public-access TV channel that high-school parents have to rely on to tell them there's a snow day? Didn't get told. So anybody without a younger brother or sister or a teacher in the family was left looking out the window and saying ... sure looks like a snow day, but if the website says there's school, isn't there school?

Nope. We live next door to the high school, and it was pretty obvious, looking out my window at the unplowed parking lot and unshoveled sidewalks and dark building that there wasn't going to be school. My daughter was working Facebook, gathering intelligence from kids who'd heard one thing or another, sharing our observations of the empty campus and trying to figure out if there was official word anywhere. A couple of local news channels said our schools were closed, a couple didn't say. The message finally got up on the website and the public-access station about the time the high school would have been starting, and after my daughter's friend had already stood outside waiting for a bus that never came.

I expect many angry, angry letters in the local paper this week. The website's usually so reliable in the case of snow closings and delays, there's a reluctance to believe it's wrong when it bears no emergency message. Whatever mistake got made, they'll have to make sure it doesn't get made again. And maybe pay a couple of high-school students to post the official word on Facebook, too.

Battle at the Barnes & Noble

My friend and I went to Barnes & Noble last night, and almost got caught up in a fistfight in the cafe. It gets brutal in there, you know, with not enough tables for everybody who wants to enjoy an overpriced cup of coffee, and students treating the place like their own personal study space for hours and hours and hours.

We've heard customers get sarcastic when told they couldn't keep sitting without spending, and we've seen some spirited dashes for an open chair that ended with grumbles and stinkeyes, but nothing like this business yesterday. An elderly fellow, without any apparent purchased cafe item in hand, sat himself down in the spare chair at a couple's table. The couple, understandably, didn't want to sit at close quarters with a stranger, particularly a stranger who started yelling at them for lying that the spare chair was waiting for somebody and accusing them of just wanting an extra chair for the lady's coat.

It got to the point where the two men were standing up and yelling one another -- I believe there were accusations that the table-holder had insulted the table-encroacher's hat -- and some poor Barnes & Noble employee had to come over and break them up without actually ticking either one of them off. Not possible. He finally coaxed the old guy away from the table, and talked to him for long enough that the couple finished their beverages and moved on.

A pair of young women sat at the three-chaired table next, and you just knew what was going to happen. One woman went to place an order, and the other was just starting her sandwich when the troublemaker, having eluded the Barnes & Noble employee's grasp, came and asked if he could use the third chair. The girl said sure, thinking, surely, that he would take it somewhere. Instead, he sat in it, turned sideways so that he was staring directly at her as she ate, inches away from her sandwich. She had that look you might get if a wild animal was staring you down: Perhaps if I stay very still, and pretend like I don't notice, it won't attack me.

My friend and I scooted out of there shortly after, grateful that the Extra Chair of Doom wasn't at our table. I'll have to make sure to avoid extra seats in the future. My coat can fend for itself.

They pull me back in

I haven't watched ER in ages, but they've managed to do just about the only thing that might make me tune in for one of these Last! Season! Really! We Promise! episodes: talked George Clooney and Julianna Margulies into coming back. I wouldn't blame either of them for not agreeing to join the reunion 'n' resurrection tour that this season's become, but I'm awfully glad they did. Now to hope that the ER powers that be, whose oafishness is part of the reason I stopped watching in the first place, don't do anything to ruin the pretty nice send-off Doug and Carol got the first time around.

IEP report

Had a pretty successful IEP meeting for my son today. The reports from the teachers were very nice, and it sounds like he might make the honor roll again this marking period. More importantly, the teachers mentioned that he's curious and asks questions and is a leader among his peers. It's been really gratifying to see a new group of teachers at a new school (high school!) who don't know him see that he's a good kid with strong abilities. I know there have been some behavioral glitches in some of the classes, but the teachers seem to understand that it's more a case of him copying troublemakers rather than being a troublemaker himself.

Next year we're pushing him a little with some more inclusive placements, and I sure hope we're not going too far. He'll still have his one-on-one, so it's not like he's hanging out by himself, but I'm thinking now of how great it is for him to be a leader, and whether that's still going to be the case when he goes from being the highest-functioning kid in the class to the lowest. We'll have to keep a really close eye on things. But I'm cautiously optimistic about inclusion for him, which I've never been before. We'll see if the school can do its part to make it work.

Not exactly Mr. Current Events

My son came home from school yesterday talking about how they had watched the presidential inauguration in his gym class and lunch period. His verdict on this historical occasion? "Boring!" Now, if they start showing iCarly or SpongeBob SquarePants on the school TV, then he'd probably be impressed. Momentous political events? Not so much.

Technical difficulties

If you've been stopping by the Mothers With Attitude site over the long weekend and noticing some, shall we say, dysfunctionality, come on back, it should be fixed now. I had to make some changes, and they caused me to bump right up against the limits of my technical knowledge. I eventually got everything working, but only after many many site-jumbling tries.

Well, it's not all working. I think the humor essays are still a little wonky, and missing their menus. I'm going to take a little break to rest my head before I tackle that, though. I've got my son's IEP meeting on Thursday, and I need to feel competent.

Vote for a special-needs cause

I wrote something today on my About.com site about the vote going on at Change.org, to determine ten issues with which to present the incoming presidential administration for consideration. One of them has to do with full funding for Medicaid waivers, and since it needs a good "get out the vote" push to get it into the top 10, ahead of, say, hemp legalization or a Secretary of Peace, I thought I'd mention it here, too. Go to this link:

www.change.org/ideas/view/fully_fund_medicaid_waivers_for_the_developmentally_disabled

to register and vote.

Stupid driver tricks

Have you ever seen someone who drove the wrong way up a highway offramp, or maybe read about someone doing that in the paper, and thought, "What kind of idiot does that?" Well, I have your answer for you.

Me. I'm that type of idiot. That type of idiot is me.

It happened on Saturday, in the snow, when I was looking for a highway onramp I was pretty sure was somewhere around where my son and I were driving. I didn't see it until we passed, then made what looked like a perfectly A-OK right turn on next big street. The road promptly divided, and since I saw cars coming at me on the left, I went up the little ramp on the right ... and saw a truck coming at me there. It was, in fact, the offramp from a major highway. To say I panicked is to put it lightly.

If I ever had a doubt that my family is being watched by God, I now have proof. We're blessed that cars started coming at us toward the start of the ramp, where there was room for me to pull off to the side and not get creamed. We're blessed that they then stopped coming at us long enough for me to do a shaky three-point turn and get out of there. We're blessed that, during the part of the turn where my car was spread out all the way across the ramp, there was not another truck barreling off the highway. We're blessed that I didn't get us both killed, because that's the sort of thing that usually happens when you start entering highways the wrong way.

Think of me, next time you're set to curse some dummy who made an unthinkable driving mistake. And say a little prayer.

Preparing for emergencies

There was a "smoke event" at my kids' school on Friday, which turns out to have been someone throwing a flare down in a crowded hallway, and it getting kicked around where it could burn people and fill the area with smoke. A teacher and a student were injured, and the rest of the student body wound up outside in the freezing cold without jackets -- or, in the case of my son, in his shorts-and-T-shirt gym uniform.

A threat was received for another such attack today, but so far, from my window facing the school, I see no fire-alarm exodus. I can usually hear the chatter and know all 3,000-some students are out there even with my curtains closed. I hope this means they've thwarted the attempt, because although I remembered to send sweats for my son's gym uniform, I forgot to dress him in something sufficiently warm for the rest of the day. If they have to split out during class or lunch instead of gym, he's going to have another cooooooooold spell.

Testy about tests

Next week is midterms at my kids' school, and while part of me looks at my son's class and wonders who on earth thinks it's a good idea to give these students hour-and-a-half tests, part of me is glad that they're getting something approaching a regular-education experience even though they're in self-contained. Should be a heck of a rocky week behaviorally, though. Awful close to the routine-messing-up of Christmas break. Yeah, four half-days with long tests are just what we're lookin' for now.

Ice capades

Well, I guess this is my comeuppance for my post about cars slipping on ice in the school parking lot the other day. This morning, the roads seemed to be fine, but the sidewalks were a skating rink. It's that nasty ice that looks no different from the wet pavement around it, so you basically have to step small and pray.

Our first hint that the morning commute would be treacherous was when my daughter said goodbye, headed off down the front steps, and wound up in a heap at the bottom of them. Assuming she'd tripped, I went to run down the steps to her, and did one of those cartoon feet-out-from-under-you falls. Yowch.

I took my son out through the garage when it was his turn, and we managed to pick our way very carefully to the school, but there were near slips all along the way. Later, I went to put salt on the pavement and steps in front of the house and fell again. I'm tired of this. Is it spring yet?

Free calendar, and other useful stuff

A few goodies from my About.com site, in case you haven't been over there (and why not?)

• An inspirational calendar to print and put up.
  
  
• A 2008 in special-needs news gallery, with photos.
  
  
• Tutorials for setting up an iTunes account with a gift card, an allowance, and nothing at all.

I'm also starting a Tip of the Day feature, right up top on the home page. Check it out! (Daily! Please! I have to believe that somebody's looking at it.

Ice isn't nice at school drop-off time

Wow, what a mess the school commute is this morning.

I'm usually skeptical about things like snow days and delayed openings, but it's obvious that this morning the openings should have been delayed even longer than they were, until the school parking lots weren't completely covered in wheel-spinning, shoe-sliding ice.

It was an adventure walking my son to school -- from getting down our skating-rink driveway to making our way down icy sidewalks to crossing the extremely slippery and dangerous parking lot. Our walk was accompanied by the sounds of spinning wheels as car after car got stuck trying to drop students off. And by honking, because, you know, nothing helps the stuck car in front of you dislodge like laying on your horn. Hey, maybe sound vibrates the ice, who knows.

I suspect this same scene was played out in other parking lots all around town. What a mess. As cold and limb-risking as it was walking to school, I'd much rather have been doing that than driving. Even with my son hanging on my arm for dear life.

Can we swap "Wife Swap" for something less annoying?

My daughter has acquired a fascination with the show Wife Swap. And it is at times like this that I regret moving my desk out into the family area. No matter how high I crank the iTunes on my eMac, I can still hear those people whining at each other. Who signs up for something like that? Who would want to watch them? Other than teenage girls looking for an excuse not to do homework? I may have to flee the room.

Are you the kind of parent who would read her child's e-mail?

Would you go so far as to set up an account for your young person in such a way that all messages would be copied to you? Could you be that much of a privacy-invading, helicopter-parenting, trust-ungiving snoop?

Yeah, me too. I posted a step-by-step on my About.com site today describing how I set up a Gmail account for my daughter that forwards all messages to me. So I can see what she's buying on iTunes, and who she's friending on Facebook, and what her aunt is writing to tease her. Inquiring minds want to know.

She knows about it, by the way. For kids uncertain of their social skills, a benevolent spy's not such a bad thing to have looking over your shoulder. Hope she keeps trusting me more than I trust the people who write to her.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a hostile gesture?

Our school district's special-education department started a parent advisory group, as per state law. Meetings have been spottily scheduled all along, but recently they seem to have settled on 2:00-3:30 p.m. Which happens to neatly encompass all the school dismissal times for the district.

Now, I get that you sometimes have to schedule these meetings during the day, but why on earth would you ask parents to gather in a conference room at the very time when they need to be picking up children or waiting home for buses? Is it just me, or is this sending the message that they really would like it very much if nobody came?

It goes without saying, I suppose, that they send the notifications out so late that it's difficult to make alternative arrangements for your kids even if you could.

Yeah, puts me in a heck of a collaborative mood.

Why did the parent cross the road?

Do you drop your child off at school? Let me ask you something: When you're driving through the school parking lot, do you drive fast? If you see a kid trying to cross in front of you, do you slow down or speed up? Because seriously, the parents who drop off kids at the high school next door to us seem to be thinking about nothing but speeding their cherub to the front door, and if they have to mow down a few classmates to do it, that's just the way it goes.

I've always driven my kids to school before this, and I think I've been fairly respectful of young pedestrians (though not always of crossing guards, one of whom seemed to time his trips to eliminate any hope of a left turn at a busy intersection). Now that my kids are walking to school, though, I'm noticing what an unsafe situation it is, even in these days when everybody's talking big about Child Obesity and Global Warming and The Tragedy of Kids No Longer Walking to School.

For my kids, the problem is the main speedway passage through the high-school parking lot, which they have to cross to get from the side where our house is to the side where the buildings are. They don't have to cross a public street, just that parking-lot lane. There's a sidewalk that goes around our corner and ends at a natural spot for a crosswalk ... but no lines, no signs, no indication that kids will be making their way across the asphalt. And no slowing down from motorists, either.

I'm not expecting them to put out a crossing guard to hold the hands of teenagers as they make their way to school. But a crosswalk would both show kids one safe place to cross -- rather than darting randomly through traffic, as they do now -- and show parents, at least theoretically, that here's a spot where they need to slow down.

As it is, I have to walk my son to school, because no way could I trust him to not cross unsafely (or, for that matter, stop in the middle of the roadway to look at an interesting rock). On my way home today, I saw the high-school principal standing outside without armed guards or anything, and went up to make my case about a crosswalk. He listened for a few minutes, then gave me that "Parent, you have overstated your case" eye-glaze that professionals get, so who knows if it will do any good.

But if you drive your kid to school, next time you're driving through a school parking lot, slow the heck down, wouldja? Some of us are trying to cross here.

It's beginning to look too much like Christmas

I'm about half to two-thirds of the way through Christmas shopping, which is slightly ahead of schedule for me, but nowhere close to getting Christmas cards out, which is entirely according to my usual schedule. I'd like to think there's still tons of time, but I know these next two-plus weeks are going to zip by like a flying reindeer, and soon I'll be giving up on the card-sending and paying the emergency-delivery fees on gifts. Makes me miss the days when we were kids and Christmas took FOREVER to come.

Leaving an IEP meeting happy

My daughter's IEP meeting was today, and we set up such a good program for her senior year that it's going to be hard for me to wait through the rest of this year. It looks like she will be able to do an internship for a couple of periods out of the day, at the elementary school she and my son attended. She wants to go into childcare, so it will be good experience and training, in an environment where a lot of people will know and support her. Cool!

Cafeteria intrigue

I have cafeteria ladies spying on my son now. Does that make me an overprotective parent?

At issue is the fact that we've been giving him $1.25 to buy a Snapple with lunch, but that money has often been going to a classmate -- whether because he's a bully, an opportunist, or a willing recipient of my guy's generosity, I don't know. He's a child with special needs, too, and I don't want to get him in trouble, and I don't want my son to be a rat, I'd just like the $1.25 to go to the purchase of a Snapple consumed by the appropriate party, or be returned to me.

I've been conferring with the very helpful food-service coordinator, who suggested that the workers who run the Snapple-selling snack bar could tip me when he doesn't buy one. Apparently, my guy's well-known, and they're willing keep an eye on him. I hope this can be done without turning the whole thing into a federal case. I hope that just knowing I'll know will be enough to stop the illegal transfer of funds. But we'll see.

Friendless on Facebook

My daughter dipped a toe in the Facebook waters this weekend, then jumped in with both feet. Now she has 43 friends. How many friends do I have on Facebook? Three. Not that I'm competitive or anything, but if you're on Facebook and want to be my friend, look me up. I'm the Terri Mauro with the glasses and the messy hair and the blue dress and the smile that makes me look like I forgot my dentures. As opposed the Terri Mauro standing in front of a racecar. That Terri Mauro has 88 friends. I'm just saying.

Calling All Parent/Experts

More on those User Answer opportunities I've been plugging on my About.com site. Today I'm starting a big push to get folks to contribute their knowledge about their child's specific diagnosis, by giving advice to parents just receiving that diagnosis. You can read more about it in this blog post, or just go to the index of my "First Five Things to Do" lists, select the one for your child's diagnosis, read my five things, look for the words "Tell Your Tips" below -- it will either be a text box or a link; if it's a link, click it and the text box will open -- and then add your advice. Thanks for your help.

Fun with carols

My daughter's favorite radio station started playing all Christmas music the first week of November this year. The first week of November! I was all for it when the station started playing them after Thanksgiving, because there are some nice songs to hear and it's good to get more than a few days of 'em. But the first week of November? Is pushing it.

If you're not already being caroled to death, here are some that may be good for a laugh: The Special-Needs Christmas Carols on my About.com site, updated for this year with artwork and two new offerings -- "Carol of the Mall" and "Hark, the Relatives Complain." Hope they'll give you a boost this harried holiday weekend. (And for more timely humor, check out the Family Gathering Survival Kit.)

High School Musical 3: Now with more leg

I finally took my daughter to see High School Musical 3 on the big-screen yesterday, and enjoyed it very much, certainly more than the first sequel. The dancing was excellent and suitably supersized, and it's always good to have a reminder that even super-talented "typical" kids can dash their parents dreams and do impulsive stuff like driving 1,000 miles in a wrecked-out car to go see a girl.

One thing I noticed this time around, and now will have to watch DVDs of the first two to compare, was the extreme shortness of the girls' skirts, particularly Gabriella's. Was that a movie wardrobe choice, or have they always been wearing outfits that wouldn't pass any respectable school's dress code? During the sweet rooftop waltz scene between Troy and Gabriella, I kept being distracted by her barely butt-clearing baby-doll dress, which by all rights should have flown up around her waist with every twirl. They must have crazy-glued that thing to her thighs.

Making the grade

Thanks to those of you who answered my question a few posts back on what to do about a teacher my son has been worrying over. I thought yesterday's report-card arrival might provide some impetus for setting up a meeting, but look at that, the little son-of-a-gun made it on the honor roll, the first quarter of high school. The teacher in question gave him a "B" and a "Satisfactory" for behavior, so yeah, I shall continue with the "well enough alone" course of (non)action.

My daughter made the honor roll, too, for the second time in her high-school career. Look at me, I've got a couple of overachievers all of a sudden.

High-tech teen dreaming

My son has a new obsession: downloading photos of Miranda Cosgrove and her show, iCarly, for showing on his iPod. Problem is, he doesn't know how to do the photo downloading himself, and so that means downloading photos of Miranda Cosgrove is now my obsession, too. We did 104 last night before I could stand it no more, and he's got a bunch more these days. I love my computer, but at times like this, I long for the days when kids would just sit around tearing pictures out of teen magazines and taping them to the wall.

Two new employees

We're trying a new behavior strategy here that may prove excessively costly, but may be worth it in terms of enrichment opportunities and reduction of stress from nagging.

Both my kids have certain chores they're expected to do, and they get some iTunes dough every month for that. There are other things, though, that I badly want them to do but are, admittedly, hard for them. Like trombone practice. Reading with parents daily. Doing exercises in a standardized-test practice book. Writing a blog regularly. Don't want to make these chores, because I would be constantly constantly constantly nagging. (Been there. Done that. Got the pounding headache.)

So I'm trying a new incentive program. Both of them have things they want money for. Both of them had summer jobs. Now they have fall, winter, and spring jobs: Doing the extra, hard things I want them to do. Up to them how much they do, but they get paid by the hour. They each have a time book for jotting how much time they spend on my little projects, and payday is Sunday.

My daughter has taken to it very quickly, and is now, unbelievably, practicing trombone and doing reading exercises without prompting. I wouldn't mind if she didn't do them first thing in the morning, before I'm awake, and come waking me up to sign off on her timebook, but still -- she's doing things I would have had to hector long and hard to get her to do before. My son's a little slower to catch on, but he's starting to ask for things to do now, too. We've actually read together the last few nights, something he's been very reluctant to do of late.

Not sure whether they'll keep up this level of interest, but for now, they're motivated.

Teacher trauma

Alright, I'm supposed to be the big expert on how to deal with your kids' teachers, but I'm new to high school and need some suggestions. What would you do in this situation? My son likes all of his teachers but one. Every one of his classmates I talk to also expresses dislike for this teacher. This is also the only teacher I haven't met, because she didn't turn up for Back to School Night. My son's progress report for the class was satisfactory, and although he tells me she's given detention to a couple of rowdy boys in the class, he's gotten none. This leads me to believe that while she may not be his cup of tea, she bears him no ill will at this time. So, do I:

a. Ask the counselor to set up a meeting, just 'cause I haven't met her yet, and hope it doesn't flip her over to considering him a troublemaker with a troublemaking mother?

b. Try an e-mail or phone call first, just to touch base, and hope as above?

c. Leave well enough the heck alone.

I've been leaning toward c, since I've had proactiveness backfire a time or two. Really, since the teacher is reporting no problems, I don't have anything to hang a meeting on other than, "Geez, my kid hates you. What exactly are you doing in that class?" And no good can come of that.

What would you do? And if there are any teachers out there reading, how would you want a parent to approach this?

Another season survived

Our high-school football team lost its first play-off game on Friday, and that means marching-band season is essentially over. That's good news to my daughter, who likes everything about marching band except the, you know, marching. And the football games.

It's good news for me, too, because I'll have a little break from feeling guilty over making her do something that is overwhelmingly and obviously good for her but also hard hard hard. No more teary, "Mom, I want to quit band!" sessions until next summer's band camp. No more long-winded speeches from me about how you have to do things that are hard in order to grow, and look how far she's come, and how things that were hard freshman year are easy now, and blah blah blah. By this time in the season it sounds like crap to me, too.

Your advice needed again

Sorry to keep promoting my About.com site here, but I'm going great guns on these new "User Answer" modules, and I want to give everyone notice to contribute. Here are the latest additions:

How do you get your child through worship services?

What special-education placement works best for your child?

How do you use up leftover Halloween candy?

Thanks for any answers you can add.

Music to my ears

I've been playing around a lot the last few days with Pandora, a website that lets you create little radio stations by entering the name of an artist you like; it automatically selects tunes by that artists and ones it considers to be similar. Usually I listen to my iTunes library while I'm working, but this is a way to listen to some things I don't yet own for a change. (And since I seem to spend hours at the computer, variety is nice.)

I think if you click on this link, it will take you to the mix I've got playing now. If you listen to music on your computer frequently, Pandora seems like a free service worth having some fun with.

A disrupted-routine week

We have a weird school week this week, with schools closed yesterday for the election and tomorrow and Friday for a teacher's convention. My daughter's all ticked off, saying that if they're going to have three days off they should have five days off, and although I like my time alone during the day to work, I really have to agree with her. This one day here in the middle of days off is just kind of silly. Plus, my son has The Cold That Won't Die, and I wouldn't mind him having a little stretch of days off without me having to send his snotty self back to class in between. But I guess the district powers-that-be have to hoard those days off in case of snow days ... so they can give the unused ones to us in the spring and mess up more weeks. Sigh.

I voted, have you?

Well, this was a historic election for our family -- our daughter, turned 18 in April, voted for the first time. The fact that it's going to be a historic election for the country regardless of who wins makes it especially exciting for her first time out.

On the minus side, though, being a first-time voter in this particular election is no big deal, because there seemed to be a lot of first-time voters making their way to the polls, few of them just 18. I'm happy that people are feeling motivated to vote, yet when I see carloads of folks looking for polls they've obviously never been to before, I can't help but think, "Where were you when we were trying to pass a school budget? Where were you for the City Council and School Board elections? The bozos who got elected there because you couldn't be bothered are probably going to have a bigger impact on your actual life than what the guy in Washington does."

Do they give out stickers that say "I voted" where you live? In our town, we get nothing, no proof that we were at the polls. No big deal to me, but it would have been cool for my daughter to get something commemorating the day. Guess we'll just have to put aside her sample ballot for posterity.

Thankful for the thankfulness

Wow, I got a lot of good responses to the questions mentioned in my last post for a new user-submission feature on my About.com site. To my readers here who submitted, thanks! Great job! And whether you submitted or not, check out the responses that came in -- I'm particularly moved by the answers to the question, "What are you thankful for about your child with special needs?"

What do you have to say for yourself?

There's a new feature on my About.com site that invites users to add their ideas and stories to the end of my articles. I've added it to three so far, and if you have answers you want to contribute to these questions, please join in!

What's the worst thing a "loved one" has said about your child or your parenting?

How have you handled head lice?

What are you thankful for about your child with special needs?

I know many of you who read these blog posts have things to say about those topics. I hope you'll stop by and sound off!

Constant supervision gets constant-er

Well, my guy survived his day yesterday, and came home seemingly not the worse for having been forced into school and analyzed by grown-ups. His aide talked to her supervisor and the case manager, and they decided to have him change for gym in the clinic instead of the locker room, and to have the aide make sure the bathroom is empty before he goes in.

In a way, I'm sorry for him to have those extra restrictions, and I worry that he'll be embarrassed by them. But I am a big believer in constant supervision for kids with FASD, and controlling the last few places he couldn't easily be supervised seems like a good idea. I'm glad it was proposed by the school and not by me. The more adult eyes are on him, the less we'll have to trust in his ability to articulate what's going on. Hope so, anyway.

At any rate, he went to school today without complaint.

Oh, what a horrible morning!

My son did not, did not, did not want to go to school today. This is a new behavior since high school, and surprising because generally, he seems to be doing okay there. It's hard to tell whether his resistance is because he didn't feel good (though no cough, snot, or fever apparent), because he didn't get enough sleep (took a long nap yesterday, though), because he just wanted to lie in bed and look at Miranda Cosgrove pictures on his iPod (always a possibility), or because something is going on at school that he's afraid of.

I tend to leap to that last likelihood, only because he's never been one to want to stay home. But of course, once I try to ask him questions about what's bothering him, it's impossible not to ask leading questions, and then impossible to know whether the answers are for real, or just to get me to let him stay home, or maybe something he's fixated on from a TV show. Since he couldn't give me a good explanation (and couldn't give one to his invisible friend, either, as far as I could eavesdrop), I did make him go, but I felt like a parent in one of those young adult novels. You know, where the child is in danger of bullying or other terrible consequences, and begs to stay home, and the parent blithely sends him into danger, while the reader goes, "No, listen to your child! Don't make him go where he doesn't want to be!" Well, I yell that while I'm reading those books, anyway. But I still sent my kid to school.

I did chat with his aide a bit about the problem, and asked her to keep an extra eye out. I put in a call to the gym teacher regarding any locker-room problems (since that's one place the aide can't be). I got a call from his case manager, so apparently the word's gotten around that I'm worried. She's going to talk to him tomorrow, and I wish I could believe that will solve something, but past history with my daughter suggests that this level of adult involvement only tends to make things worse.

And in the back of my mind through all this is that gossip item about one of his old friends being in a gang. Would this friend involve him in gang business? Or hurt him as a gang thing? I'd like to believe not; the kid I know wouldn't. But he wouldn't be in a gang, either.

Distraction and fun for hospitalized kids

I made this my Site of the Day on About.com this morning, but thought I'd mention it here, too, because it's such a neat idea. The blog network 5 Minutes for Moms (I'm a fan of the special-needs blog there) is giving away 10 PSP bundles to kids whose serious illnesses require a lot of hospitalization. You have until November 18 to nominate a child or teen, and can find out all about what's involved here.

To meddle or not to meddle

Sometimes I feel like my son and his friends are in a bubble, kept safe from the normal stress of adolescence by their special needs and their self-contained classrooms. And then sometimes I hear about one of them having something stolen at school, or get a look at the way some of the girls are dressing way beyond what their emotional sophistication can protect them from, and I worry about the way the world pops that bubble.

The other day I heard from another mom about a boy who's been in our kids' classes since first grade. He's a sweet kid, polite and smart, a survivor of many medical procedures we haven't been given much information on. He's also a child who doesn't get a lot of the sort of helicopter parenting I favor with my own kids. I've seen him around the community with boys I don't like the looks of, and now this other mom has mentioned that, according to her daughter, he's in a gang.

And you know, it just makes my heart sink. I feel like I should do something for him, talk to him or a family member or a school administrator or someone who can protect him from himself. I think he's recently been mainstreamed, bright idea, so I'm not sure he even has supports from special-education personnel to be put in place. I don't want to make my son a target by getting involved in gang matters, but there's a degree to which I feel motherly and protective of all these kids who've gone through self-contained classes with my son. This boy in particular has been one of my favorites.

What would you do? Should I try to help? What's the best way to do that? I feel like I'm caught in an episode of 7th Heaven here.

Fundraiser blues

We're in the thick of fundraiser season now. My daughter currently has two band fundraisers and a Girl Scouts fundraiser, while my son recently finished a Special Olympics fundraiser. I've been trying to find him a club to join at school, but the knowledge that it may come with fundraiser obligations may be dampening my enthusiasm.

When I say my kids have these fundraisers, I am, of course, lying. I have these fundraisers. I sell stuff to a few kindly friends and family members and then buy stuff myself. Now, back when I was in high school, those were the Wild West days when kids actually went door to door selling stuff themselves. I remember long afternoons slogging around far-off neighborhoods trying to interest strangers in tickets to my choir concerts. These days, door-to-door is discouraged, and the biggest rounds your merchandise is going to make is around your parents' office.

Which puts our family at a disadvantage, because I work from home and my husband works in a supermarket. Can't really bring the form for that band citrus-fruit fundraiser into the produce department. I should probably set up some sort of e-commerce widget here to sell fundraising things to you, my readers, but I don't think I'd have too much luck shipping those fresh pies my daughter's selling.

Plus, then I'd be getting guilt e-mails from you to buy what your kid's selling.

Getting my Halloween Things in order

I'm so spoiled by online shopping, it always amazes me when something can't be obtained with a quick spin through Amazon.com, or maybe a little concentrated Googling. Last night I was looking for a "Thing 1" T-shirt to go with the "Thing 2" T-shirt my friend bought at the Dr. Seuss store in Universal Studios a couple of years ago. I wanted the two shirts as costumes for my son and his buddy for a Halloween party being given for their special-needs social groups. The T-shirts would be a funny coordinated costume without having to put anything too hard-to-wear on them. (We may be adding wigs, but that's in negotiations.)

I figured Universal surely had some studio store online where I could pick a T-shirt out and order it ... but, no. There's a Universal Studios store site that sells tickets, and lots of places that sell baby-sized "Thing" shirts and child-sized ones. But the adult version was nowhere to be found. Most of the Google listings were of message boards asking, "Where can I find Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts?"

It was on one of those boards that I found reference to a mail order e-mail address that is actually lurking down at the very bottom of that ticket-selling Universal Studios store, in unobtrusive type, like they're hoping no one will ask. I did ask, though, and got an e-mail back promptly saying that they could get me the shirt. I called and placed an order, and we should be in the Thing before Halloween. The woman on the phone said it would take a day to place the order, because they have to send someone in the park to buy the shirt and then mail it to me. Seems like a pretty low-tech shopping solution for a high-tech amusement park, but as long as my Thing gets to me, I guess I can't complain.

Teachers and tattoos

There was an article in the blog Parent Dish yesterday about a school district requiring teachers with tattoos to keep them covered. Apparently they're a distraction to the kids, or send a message about tattoos being acceptable that somebody doesn't like, or something. Personally, I'd say that if you want to discourage students from getting tattoos, seeing a bunch of teachers sporting them might make them somewhat less of an instrument of rebellion. With "body art" being more and more mainstream these days, I wonder whether future generations will begin to find it terribly uncool?

I've never noticed a tattoo on my kids' school teachers, and I don't know that it would bother me particularly. Not as much, anyway, as the speech therapist at my kids' elementary school whose thong used to show prominently above her pants when she sat on the bleachers at assemblies and leaned forward. Don't know if a tattoo was also visible; I was too embarrassed to look. I'll bet some fifth-grade boys weren't, though.

Lacking sense, and cents

Giving lunch money to my son has always been an adventure. He likes to buy Snapple to go with his meal, and asks for extra cash for that. Then we'll find, like, 50 quarters in a drawer and ask where he got them. Whether he's overcharging us for the Snapple, or not buying it, is hard to tell. I'd like to be able to ask his aide, but they're big on not micromanaging the kids at lunch. Which is why my son has mystery quarters, and why his friend let somebody look at his iPod and never saw it again. Folks, some kids need micromanaging all the time.

This year in high school, we were lucky at first because he liked the juice that came with the lunch -- no extra cash needed! Then he said the juice machine is broken. Then he said he didn't like that juice anyway. He took extra money for bottled water, but then said he bought Snapple, which is more expensive. Did he borrow from someone? We gave him more money, and got no change. Is he giving money to someone? There are quarters floating around the universe somewhere, not sure whether they're going to turn up in his drawer or his pockets or the pockets of some other kid. I'd ask if there was a prepaid card he could use, except it's good for him to learn how to pay for things. If only he would just pay for things, and not play.

Micromanaging, people. I want a helicopter aide.

Water, water anywhere

I've been reading a lot lately about the environmental terribleness of bottled water, how it's no better than tap water and costs a lot of money and leaves a lot of plastic behind. What I never see addressed in all these diatribes are the reasons I buy bottled water: To drink when I've no access to a tap, or when I need a disposable container.

When I'm home, I'm perfectly content to drink tap water from my Brita pitcher and be all small-footprinted. But when I'm picking up something, say, at a convenience store, do I really have to buy my kids some vat of soda in a biodegradable cup to avoid purchasing water? If my child is going on a field trip and is forbidden from carting containers around after lunch, are sugar-packed juice boxes the only acceptable option?

I'd like to think the water in those bottles are clean, and maybe I do imagine pristine mountain waterfalls when I twist one open instead of some sink in Newark. But at those times when water seems the best beverage option, and the only way to get it is to buy it, yeah, I'm going to spring for the fake spring water. And be glad it's at hand.

Usually I avoid politics

And I don't want to turn this into a political blog. But since it's a parenting special needs blog, I hope it's okay to say that this passage from Sarah Palin's speech got me pretty choked up:

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.

And children with special needs inspire a special love.

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.

Especially, I think, the way she looked right into the camera when she said it. Nice to be singled out in such a big speech.

CNN had someone in Alaska talking to Palin's sister all through the evening, and at one point they mentioned that she also had a child with special needs. Has anyone seen anything about that before? They didn't mention the diagnosis.

Psyched about the VP Nominee

When I saw the news this morning that Sarah Palin -- the governor of Alaska and the mother of a four-month-old with Down syndrome -- had been named as the Republican nominee for vice president, I let out a whoop that made my children look at me very strangely. I had been thinking she'd be a good dark-horse candidate for a ticket badly in need of excitement, but didn't expect it would really happen.

However things go with the campaign, I'm hoping this will raise the visibility of kids with special needs, and publicize the fact that having a child with a disability does not in fact mark the end of your life.

Schedule schmedule

It seems to be taking our school district longer and longer to send out class schedules. Back when my kids were in elementary school, their classroom placements used to come the second or third week of August, whichever one we wound up being on vacation during. It was hard enough to wait that long. This year, though, here we are, school starting a week from tomorrow, and nothin'. That means the first few weeks of school are going to be a total loss as everything shakes down. That's bad for any student, particularly bad for students with special needs who need structure and predictability from Day 1, and very bad indeed for students with special needs who are making the scary transition to high school this year. And, you know, their mothers.

Bug-on-Bug Violence

Here's a warning to anyone in New Jersey who's thinking of taking a young child to Liberty Science Center.

There's a 3D movie playing there that you may want to steer clear of. It's called "Bugs!" and, although the 3D effects are cool and the narration by Judi Dench is top-notch, your Disney-trained child may be a little traumatized by some of the scientifically accurate goings-on.

For example, bug sex. Mating butterflies. A preying mantis male perfecting his moves so as not to get his head devoured.

And speaking of devouring, the scene in which the preying mantis catches a fly, rips its head off, and eats its brains is not for the squeamish.

Worst of all, though, is the intertwined fate of the two bugs whose life cycle Dame Judi talks us through, with a cute name for each. At the film's end, unceremoniously, one of them eats the other. More specifically, the creepy one eats the pretty one.

If I'd seen that as a young child, in 3D no less, I'd have been so upset that no amount of gift-shop swag would have comforted me.

I'm a little shaky now, thinking of it.

Never mind the young children. Send your teenage boys in alone, and save yourself.

Enough of that high-minded stuff

I got an e-mail from my utility company today that cracked me up. It linked to this story with the amusingly realistic title "Go Green and Feel Smug." Enough of all that saving the world stuff; somebody's finally figured out that the way to make people want to be more environmentally responsible is to point out they can lord it over the neighbors.

Not sure "My carbon footprint is smaller than your carbon footprint" is going to catch on, but it's a nice try.

Tropic Thunder blunders

Have you heard about the controversy surrounding Tropic Thunder, the raunchy comedy debuting this week with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. in the leads? You may have heard that Downey's in blackface, and that the film's sort of intentionally offensive in the way of R-rated comedies these days. But what's been getting less publicity is a subplot involving the frequent use of the word "retard." Stiller can say all he wants that he's making fun of an actor playing a developmentally disabled character, and not people with developmental disabilities, but reports from early screenings indicate that he's not so sensitive to the difference as he thinks.

I've got a long blog post about this on my About.com site this morning, with links to the Disability News blog, which has much more extensive coverage. Sometime today, it's likely that The Arc, Special Olympics, and other disability-rights groups will be announcing protests and boycotts. At the very least, if you have young people with special needs who thought this would be a fun flick to go see, you may want to help them reconsider.

I'm not in the target audience for a movie like this, and I wouldn't have gone regardless. But I had good will toward it because I liked the actors involved. Now, I just want to hit them upside the head. What were they thinking? Or why weren't they?

Do you Twitter?

I'm not at all sure I've got the hang of it, or even figured out why one would care about what people are doing in 140-word increments, but I'm giving it a try. Old dogs, new tricks, all of that. There's a widget down on the right side of this blog you can use to find me; and if you're twittering, let me know and I'll add you to my list.

Is this where we have to look for decent kids' clothes?

On the one hand, it's kind of disturbing that the religious sect recently in the news for having all its children taken away due to its men's tendency to take many teenage brides has opened an online store to market its ultra-modest style of apparel.

On the other hand, having just chaperoned an eighth-grade dance at which many if not most of the girls dressed like they were auditioning for a job at Hooters, I gotta say ... those high-necked low-hemlined prairie dresses don't look so bad, ya know?

Memo to the counter girl at Dunkin' Donuts

It's very sweet of you to want to give me a dozen donuts for less money than the seven donuts I asked for.

However, truly, seven donuts is what I want. It's all I want. It's what my family can reasonably eat at this time.

Yes, that's right, I am willing to pay a premium to get the number of donuts that we can consume without becoming ill. Call us crazy health nuts.

When you continue to harangue me about the need to Buy a Dozen! They're Cheaper! I have to wonder -- does Dunkin' Donuts have some evil plan to addict the human race to fried pastries? Are you going to make us dependent on getting a dozen and then raise prices through the roof?

Because at least when McDonald's tried to supersize me, they charged a little more for it. You're paying me to get supersized. And I don't like it.

So cut it out with the hard sell. And while you're at it, you can keep your medium coffee for the same price as small, too. If I wanted more caffeine, I would have asked you for it.

Glad to get that off my chest,

Terri