Not Sure If I Should Be Hopeful or Not: Today's my once-a-month day to post on the blog Hopeful Parents, and for once I actually did it early in the day rather than at 11:59 p.m. This month's entry is about the unlikely prospect of my son going to his senior prom, and why I can't run screaming and laughing from that idea as I entirely should, as my husband totally can. Why does prom have such a stupid emotional pull on moms, so that we secretly plot our children's attendance and feel sad if they don't go? Are we just doomed to relive high school ourselves, over and over again?

Is the Principal of Your School Your Pal?: One of the challenges in getting schools to embrace inclusion is finding principals who really believe in it. I'll never forget the way the principal of the school in which my daughter had her first inclusion class did everything she could to sabotage inclusion, thus giving her teachers no particular incentive to try hard to make it work. I think she just genuinely believed it was a bad idea imposed by people without her hands-on experience in schools, but the ones who got punished were not those bureaucrats but vulnerable children who had the least amount of say about their own placement.

I thought about that former principal when talking today on The Inclusive Class radio show with Kathryn Yamamoto, a principal of an elementary school in British Columbia who actively promotes the inclusion of students with special needs in her school, and also the inclusion of parents in the IEP process and the day-to-day implementation of that document. It's great to hear stories like hers, but also sad because that level of involvement just doesn't happen in so many schools. Does your principal get it? Give the show a listen and add this to your wish list.

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Speaking of the Need for Overprotectiveness: Another post that reinforces the need to check and check and check again that your kid is being watched at school -- not to mention the value of befriending bus drivers -- is up on the blog Adventures in Extreme Parenthood. In related news, my post yesterday about the tragic result of a lack of bus oversight brought me the oddest Twitter mention today; it seems that a man who wrote an article for Time magazine about the importance of roughhousing in an era of parent over-involvement tweets something along the lines of "Nice, Terri. You might also enjoy [link to his article]" any time someone uses the phrase "helicopter parent" in a tweet. Similar wording appears over and over again on his timeline, and I have to assume he doesn't actually read the linked material before he responds with "Nice." I hope so, anyway, because responding to a post about child rape with an appeal for more roughhousing and less supervision? Is creepy.

Why We Helicopter Parent: If you've never thought much about what happens when your child's bus gets to school, and who meets it, and how supervised kids are as they make their way into school, a terrible story about a girl with autism and what happened when she got off the bus should prompt you to ask those questions. And feel better about watching your child walk all the way into the school building, if you do the drop-offs yourself. And justify any vigilance you may show in, say, monitoring e-mail or Facebook activity. The world's just scary.

Here's Why I Don't Clean My House: I recently took some time to polish our good-wood dining-room table. Looks great -- except I set the can of polish on the table at some point, and it was apparently wet on the bottom, because when I was done with the elbow grease, there were three new can-shaped rings marring the finish. So I grabbed a bottle of another wood-cleaning solution, and went at the rings with that ... but of course, I put the bottle on the table at some point, and it too was wet, having come from the same spot under the sink as the polish, and so the net effect was the addition of two rectangular marks that also will not come off. So fine a housekeeper am I.

I Voted, Really, I Did: I was at my polling place bright and early today, as a matter of fact, but I can't prove it because our town (or at least, the high school where we vote) does not give out stickers or stubs or any bit of swag with which to brag on one's status as an official voter. What gives? I see pictures of people on the Web proudly bearing their proof of good-citizenship, and I feel somehow second-class. I guess when it comes right down to it, I don't really want my sky-high property-tax dollars going to something as trivial as a "I Voted and You Didn't" sticker, but ... maybe a hand stamp of some sort?

Talking the Talk: It's well past Halloween, but here's a scary story for your Tuesday -- a post on the blog Bloom stressing that yes, you really really do need to talk to your child with special needs about sex. If you accept that premise but have no idea how to go about doing it, may I recommend The Rules of Sex: Social and Legal Guidelines for Those Who Have Never Been Told, a very straightforward take on the subject designed for use with children who have developmental disabilities. It's one of those books you'll want to pick and choose from as suits your child's particular needs and your particular comfort level, but it provides a good base from which to start, and some good reasons for doing so.

When Productive Work = Procrastination: Yesterday I had planned to finally finish the book I've been trying to read and review for a month, and so instead I started noodling around on the computer and designed the new Love Notes for Special Parents Calendar 2012. A worthwhile thing to be sure, and something that needed to be done, and yet ... that book is still sitting and staring at me. When did I start procrastinating reading? Reading is what I used to use to procrastinate. Maybe it's the fact that all I ever read anymore is special-needs books to review, and even when I'm really interested in the subject matter, the books tend not to be page-turners. Today's the day. Yep. I'm gonna finish that book today. Sure. It could happen. Hmmm.

The Underwear, at Least, Is Mine: Managed to switch over my closet to winter wear this weekend (so, people of the Northeast, expect a sudden heat wave). How odd is it, do you suppose, that the majority of the clothing I wear is either a hand-me-up from my daughter or something I retrieved from my mother's closet after she passed away? There's surprisingly little that actually originated with me. Some of it is that I'm short, so I can wear clothes my kid has outgrown; some of it is that I'm cheap. Does anybody else have a multigenerational wardrobe? I've even got a few things from my son's and husband's cast-offs for good measure.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth: It seems sort of Grinch-like to complain in any way about Toys 'R' Us's annual Toy Guide for Differently-Abled Kids. It's a nice idea, a useful gathering of things, a high-profile enterprise with an appropriate celebrity selected each year to draw warm-hearted attention (this year it's Eva Longoria, who has a sister with Down syndrome). But ... that phrase, "differently abled," just seems so bend-over-backwards to me. Do we really have work that hard to feel good about our kids? There's nothing "different" about my kids' abilities, or their disabilities for that matter -- they have strengths and weaknesses just like anybody else. "Variously abled" might be more apt. "Differently abled," though well-intentioned, is still about different. I agree that "disabled" and "special" and "special needs" and "exceptional" are all problematic in their own ways, but "differently abled" is both not-quite-it and linguistically awkward. What else you got?

Three Letters That Make Our Blood Run Cold: The topic of this morning's The Inclusive Class radio show was IEPs, and automatically when I hear that term I cringe -- from memories of bad meetings, from memories of having to decipher that thing, and from memories of advocates and authors insisting that if you're not obsessing about every word in that document you're letting your child down. But our guest, Jennifer Sommerness, had some interesting things to say about inclusive IEPs that are more action-oriented than your average hunk of legalese, and opening up the IEP process to both parents and regular-education teachers who don't really want to sort through all that terminology either. Unlike most considerations of IEPs, the conversation didn't make me hyperventilate or anything. Give it a listen.

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At What Age Can They Take Over Fighting With Insurance Companies?: The blog Thriving, from Children's Hospital Boston, has a post today about a subject that's much on my mind lately -- preparing your child to take over responsibility for his or her own health care. We're about at the end of the road with my kids' pediatrician, and that's made me wonder whether they should also, say, be making their own appointments, bringing in their own prescriptions, providing their own medical history. I don't think my son is ready for that yet, but I've been breaking my daughter in little bit by little bit, having her make and attend orthodontist appointments on her own or fill out the forms at specialist and lab visits. There's a lot of talk about self-advocacy in a school setting, not so much in a medical one, but it's an important part of becoming an adult. (One thing about the post that did make me feel good, though, was the depiction of a typical teen texting during a doctor's visit while Mom steps up with the answers. I do this, too, and always blamed it on my son's disability. But maybe, in this instance, he's just a teenager. Okay, so he's talking to his imaginary friends during doctor visits instead of to a cell phone, but still.)

Stopping the Blame Game: It was nice to see a post titled "The Best Reasons Why Parents Should Be Looked At As Allies & Not Targets Of Blame" on the blog Engaging Parents in School this morning. I get why teachers want to blame parents, and why parents want to blame teachers, and sometimes the blame is deserved. It's never particularly useful, though, and tends to distract from more important things. I've enjoyed being allies with most of my kids' teachers. And I've hated the way parent-bashing has become a regular campaign activity at school-board elections in my town. It's time for some serious re-thinking about how schools and teachers interact with parents, moving from a school-based PTA meeting and teacher conference model to freer interaction on the Web and via e-mail. It could happen.

If There Was a Skeleton There, You'd Never Find It: In a very kind plug on her blog today about the state-by-state special-education resources on my About.com site, Jolene Philo wrote, "Someday, I’d like to look at Terri Mauro’s closets to see if they’re as well-organized as her website!" And I about spit-taked my coffee when I saw it, because ... no. No, you don't want to look at my closets. I don't want to look at my closets, which is part of the problem. (I exclude here the coat closet at the top of the stairs, which was part of the great Living Room Purge of Summer 2011, and is so neat that we could even move the vacuum there from its previous spot in the middle of our bedroom floor. It is an aberration.) My bedroom closet is so messy I can't get at my clothes, which is why many of them are piled on my desk chair. Our linen closet is a jumble of towels and blankets and mismatched sheet sets. The closet outside the kids' bathroom contains not only toiletries but items that couldn't fit in the pantry, which is somewhat unsettling, flour next to toilet paper next to rice cakes next to shampoo next to coffee K-cups behind the Band-Aids. Let's just say that I put all my effort into the work I do for y'all here on the Web, and don't have time for petty things like keeping a neat closet. Yeah, that's it.

I Hate Fundraisers: Well, that's not saying much, is it? Most parents feel that way about school money-raising activities. What I'm particularly hating on at the moment is a fundraiser that came home with my son a couple of weeks back with absolutely no information on what it was for, when it was due, who to make checks out to, where to bring it, or really anything other than a glossy two pages on overpriced candles. It came home with another fundraiser that had a smidge more info, but they're apparently unrelated. I think they trust that your child was listening when the stuff was distributed, and ... aw, you know, this isn't even a special-needs thing. I can't imagine any teenage boy sufficiently absorbing candle fundraiser details to remember them when he got home. No one at school seems to be quite sure where and how this money is being raised; I'm trying to pin that down, only because a couple of folks were interested and I'll order for them if I can. I'm beginning to think perhaps I can't. It's an anti-fundraiser, apparently.

Jessica Lange Has a Lot of Company: The FX series American Horror Story is proving to be quite comment-worthy on my About.com site, with some folks objecting to the way a character with Down syndrome is depicted and treated, some folks saying it's just a TV show and we're supposed to object to the way the character's mother treats her, and some folks glad just to have someone with Down syndrome on TV at all. The "lighten up" contingent points out that the use of the word "mongoloid" is supposed to clue us in that Jessica Lange's character is decades out of date in her thinking ... but you know, it wasn't that long ago that I argued with a high-school English teacher about whether it was proper to put that word on a vocabulary list (I lost). Abortion rates of children with Down syndrome -- and horror stories like this one about the abuse of individuals with intellectual disabilities -- leads me to believe that we are not in the kind of accepting society that can brush off aberrant depictions as all in good fun. At any rate, FX just renewed the show for a second season, so those who have hoped to get rid of it will have to rail against it for another year (assuming the character of Addy stays around, in some form or another).

Trick or ... Aw, Never Mind: Maybe it's the snow or the warnings about live electrical wires in the street, but costumed kiddies have not been beating a path to our door this Halloween night. We've had one little group so far, and it's looking more and more like that bag of candy bars is ours. Living on a cul de sac with no young children for neighbors seems to be the key to avoiding trick-or-treaters. I really wouldn't mind a little more action. But this year, the parkas and snow boots do kind of ruin the costumes. Anyone stopping by your home tonight?

Our Tuition Dollars at Work: For an example of customer service done brilliantly via Facebook, I direct you to the page for Bergen Community College. Students post questions and concerns, and are promptly answered by a very polite man/woman/artificial intelligence who does not mind answering the same "Is the college closed tomorrow?" question over and over and over. I like the way he/she/it starts each answer with the particular student's first name, and the way, in response to a poster expressing sympathy over all the annoyingly repetitive questions, he/she/it replied, "It's cool. Keep on truckin'." We had a lot of good entertainment last night checking the page out for updates, for patient BCC-man replies, and for hyperbolic statements from students about the aftereffects of Ridiculous October Snowstorm 2011. To the kid who suggests it's like World War III out there, let me say: Honey, if the worst that World War III brings us is downed tree limbs and electrical wires, mankind will be unbelievably, undeservedly lucky.

Nature's Own Little Halloween Trick: So it's snowing here in the northeast, for no other reason than to mess with us, as far as I can tell. We had weeks and weeks of rain and flood and hurricane, then about five minutes of nice fall weather, and now it's snowing? Really? Whatever. For now, we have electricity and therefore computers and can amuse ourselves nicely. If the power goes out, I'll be playing UNO games with my son by candlelight until I can no longer hold a hand. Is it spring yet?

Let's All Move to Vermont: Just finished the latest episode of The Inclusive Class, on which Nicole Eredics and I were very honored to have inclusion guru Dr. Paula Kluth as a guest. It was a very interesting conversation, and I believe our very first show to go over time and be cut off in mid-sentence (at least for live listeners, of whom I can't believe there are very many first thing Friday morning). I just didn't want to interrupt while Paula was talking about all the things parents can do to promote inclusion. Often when I hear inclusive classrooms described, it just seems like a pipe dream, but her suggestions seemed fairly practical and possible, if you can drag the dinosaur that is your school district out of its cave.  For those who wonder, as I often do, where this "inclusion" people speak of is actually being done well, Paula revealed that Vermont is at the top with about 60 percent of students with special needs included, and Utah is at the botton with about 2 percent. But of course, for many states, things vary from district to district and school to school. How's inclusion going where you are?

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