Distracting reading

Is Ritalin falling out of favor?

On the one hand, judging from some of the e-mail lists I'm on for adoptive and special-needs parents, medication for kids with attentional problems is as popular as ever. Detailed discussions take place on the amount and the timing and the transitions involved in various medications, and while admitting that the medication of children is not an exact science, many parents seem pretty committed to it.

Then, too, my kids both brought home memos from the school nurse announcing general guidelines regarding the distributing of medication at school, and I don't think she was talking about allergy pills and aspirin. There must be a sufficient number of Ritalin-taking kids to make a schoolwide announcement more practical than individual notification.

But then, on the other hand... Looking at the best-sellers in the category of Parenting Special-Needs: Hyperactivity on amazon.com, I can't help but notice that of the top 10 books, six are specifically anti-medication, and two more stress behavior modification. Signs of change? A turning of the tide? Or is it just in the nature of self-help books to offer something different from the norm, and in the nature of self-help-book buyers to seek that something? Take a look at these titles and judge for yourself (quotes are from publisher's descriptions unless otherwise noted):

1. Talking Back to Ritalin: What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants and ADHD by Peter Roger Breggin.
"Millions of children take Ritalin for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The drug's manufacturer, Novartis, claims that Ritalin is the "solution" to this widespread problem. But hidden behind the well-oiled public-relations machine is a potentially devastating reality: children are being given a drug that can cause the same bad effects as amphetamine and cocaine, including behavioral disorders, growth suppression, neurological tics, agitation, addiction, and psychosis. Talking Back to Ritalin uncovers these and other startling facts and translates the research findings for parents and doctors alike."

2. Without Ritalin by Samuel A. Berne.
"We spent 373 million on Ritalin and its generic counterparts in 1996; today, some 4 million children are taking the drug daily. Is it any wonder that parents are searching for safe, nontoxic, drug-free alternatives? In Without Ritalin, Dr. Samuel Berne explains the approach with which he has successfully treated more than 3,000 ADD/ADHD-diagnosed patients, including information on detoxification, nutrition, and developmental learning programs and activities."

3. Taking Charge of ADHD by Russell A. Barkley.
From Book News Inc.: "Empowers parents of children with ADHD by giving them a step-by-step plan for behavior management, hard data on diagnosis and treatment, strategies for helping children succeed at school and in social situations, and information on advances in genetic and neurological research that enhance understanding of the causes of ADHD. Includes an annotated list of books, organizations, and Internet resources."

4. Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach by Howard Glasser and Jennifer Eastley
"Children are fascinated by bigger reactions and children who are a bit more needy or sensitive or intense are particularly drawn to bigger reactions. Some children literally feel invisable unless they are doing the things they know will get their parent or teacher going. ... The secret is in strategically energizing successes instead of accidentally energizing failures. The good news is that this is extremely easy to turn around. Instead of trying to make the child's intensity go away through expensive treatments and the use of medications, the intensity becomes an asset. Children very quickly begin to use their intensity in beautiful ways. It's truly amazing. ADHD children are actually the easiest to 'transform' completely to a new and fully successful way of life."

5. Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents by Ronald M. Rapee (editor).
"All kids get scared, but some fears can escalate into paranoias with long-term ramifications. This step-by-step guide tackles the why, how, and what now of anxiety disorders. Written in everyday language, it describes in detail strategies and techniques parents can combine into a comprehensive self-help program for managing a child's worry while building confidence and self-control." (No, I don't know why this is on the hyperactivity list either.)

6. Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embracing Disorganization at Home and In the Workplace by Sari Solden.
From the author: "Many women experience great shame when they are unable to conform to our society's degrading 'job description for women.' With exercises, self-talk and stories I help women dismantle their self-images as "slobs" or "space cadets" and enjoy a new cycle of success on their own."

7. Ritalin Is Not the Answer: A Drug-Free, Practical Program for Childrena Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD by David B. Stein, Ph.D.
"How parents, teachers, friends and family can rescue their children from the widespread and extremely dangerous use of an amphetamine (speed) called Ritalin to control 'normal but inconvenient' behavior."
8. The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.
"Doreen explores the psyche of these special kids and offers alternative solutions to Ritalin based on her extensive research and interviews with child-care experts, teachers, parents, and the Indigo Children themselves. Read the accounts of these remarkable children as they explain why they act-out, are aggressive or withdrawn; and what they want from the adults in their lives."

9. The Difficult Child by Stanley Turecki, M.D.
"Temperamentally difficult children can confuse and upset even experienced parents and teachers. They often act defiant, stubborn, loud, aggressive, or hyperactive. They can also be clingy, shy, whiny, picky, and impossible at bedtime, mealtimes, and in public places. This landmark book has been completely revised to include the latest information on ADHD, medications, and a reassuring approach to all aspects of childhood behavioral disorders."

10. The ADD Nutrition Solution: A Drug-Free Thirty-Day Plan by Marcia Zimmerman.
"The A.D.D. Nutrition Solution provides groundbreaking information on the nutritional deficits, food allergies, and hereditary and environmental factors that can cause attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), a condition that afflicts more than 17 million people in this country today. Drawing from her 10 years of research, counseling, and lecturing on nutrition and AD/HD, certified nutritionist Marcia Zimmerman clearly explains why what we eat affects how we think and outlines an easy-to-follow 30-day dietary and supplement plan shown to decrease or end AD/HD symptoms completely."

Tattoos for tots

My son's got a thing about tattoos.

I don't know when it started, I don't know why, I don't know what about the things fascinates him so greatly, but it's entered the top 10 of his conversational repertoire, with a bullet.

It's bad enough when he asks me if he can get a tattoo. What I want to do, of course, is scream "over my dead body!" but we enlightened parents of the '00s don't want to prejudice our kidlets against the personal choices of others. So I just tell him no, kids can't get tattoos. I don't know if this is true. It had better be.

I try to deter him with the explanation that getting a tattoo involves being stuck with a needle, a lot, and if he doesn't like getting a shot he won't like getting a tattoo. He ain't buying it. He wants to know: Is it good to have a tattoo? Why do people have tattoos? When can he get a tattoo, too?

Never, never, never.

What's worse, though, is when he sees someone with a tattoo and feels compelled to point that out. Loudly. Like in church this weekend, in the quiet of prayer time, suddenly pipes a little voice saying: "Look, Mama, that man in front of us has a tattoo! Why does he have a tattoo? Is it good to have a tattoo?"

So far, the tattoo-bearers so pointed out have not turned to listen to my answers to those questions, and have taken no notice of the small boy asking them. Perhaps tattooing imparts some sort of hearing impairment, and for that I am grateful.

In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to look into some of those rub-on tattoos to distract the little guy from the real thing.

Do they do that heart with the word "Mom" on it design in the temporary variety?

Trauma deficient

Everywhere you turn these days, there are articles and supplements and TV shows to help you talk to your kids about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The impression one gets is of a nation of hurting children, frightened, drawing pictures, talking to school-provided counselors, imploring their parents for insight. It makes sense that the most vulnerable among us would feel most vulnerable after such a disaster.

So what does it mean that my own personal kids couldn't care less about it?

Is it because of their neurological impairments? I wonder. Certainly, they have enough work to do just to get through each school day without raising their eyes to take in disasters unrelated to their own personal universe. Abstractions are pretty impossible for my daughter to grasp, and unless I take her to ground zero, it's unlikely that planes crashing into buildings is going to be anything but. Most adults have trouble grasping the reality of it.

Maybe they would have more awareness of this terrible event if I had let them watch it on TV more. I specifically didn't, because the images were so upsetting. But that has rendered this mostly a word-of-mouth phenomenon for them, and language processing being the iffy thing it is in our house, that may have put it out into the never-never land of book plots and math story problems. Neither of them is exactly up to speed in the emotional development department, either; they have taken the death of extended family members with relative stoicism, so it may be unrealistic for them to have any response to the deaths of strangers, even thousands of them at once.

At any rate, I find myself in the awkward position of feeling that they should know more about this and feel more about this, but unsure how to make that happen without actually browbeating them. How many times can I sit down and explain it? When everybody is working to keep their kids from being upset, should I be working to upset them? Perhaps I should just shut up and count my blessings.

Tragic Tuesday

I remember a few days ago, looking at pictures of Catholic schoolchildren in Northern Ireland walking to school under protection of riot police and feeling embarrassed at all the fuss I make over little things at my kids’ schools, instructional aides not in place, IEPs not sent out, teachers not informed, forms not delivered. I make of these things a disaster, when in other parts of the world children are facing violence and terror.

Now, of course, I don’t even have to look to other parts of the world to put these things into perspective. I just have to look out the window.

We live close enough to New York City to see the cloud of smoke rising where the World Trade Center used to be, close enough that some of my children’s classmates will likely have lost loved ones in the tragedy. As of Tuesday afternoon, the attack was still a thing of rumors and mishearings. My daughter had heard from a girl in the lunchroom that there had been a plane accident; my son’s special-ed teacher had told his class only that there was a fire in New York. The teacher told me that she felt it was the parents’ job to explain the situation. Thanks. How do we do that exactly?

We said that bad people had driven planes into buildings. We said that many, many people had been killed. We said that the people who are trying to find out why think that the bad people hate our country, and wanted to hurt us. I don’t know if we said the right things, but we tried to say them calmly. We tried to keep the TV off. How many pictures of collapsing buildings, falling bodies and bloodied survivors do children need to see? Zero would be good, I think.

Today, life is going on. I have a meeting with my daughter’s teacher this afternoon to request the necessary accommodations, and with my son’s teacher tomorrow to gather information for his twice-yearly neurological appointment next week. The school principal still owes us a promised spare set of textbooks to keep at home. My son’s IEP is still MIA. The message I left at the special-ed office about the errant instructional aide has still not been answered. There’s homework to be done, tests to study for, after-school programs to look into, administrators to harrass. But it’s hard to muster my usual sense of outrage over these minor hassles. It’s not, as they say, the end of the world. The end of the world is across the Hudson.

Committed to memory

My daughter is the flash-card queen. If you can put it on a flash-card, she can learn it. Math facts, vocabulary words, the continents of the world or the planets in the solar system, rote memorization is the name of her game.

Spontaneous thinking and comprehension, not so much.

We’ve given her a fair amount of remediation for reading comprehension and abstract thinking, which she has taken amiably enough but not acheived any blazingly successful results at. She just plods on, getting what she can, not getting what she can’t.

I’m coming to feel that, rather than throwing more time and money and effort at her weaknesses, we should be helping her use her strengths to compensate for them. But how? There are tons of books and classes and resources for improving your reading comprehension, but nothing to tell you how to effectively pretend like you understand. Maybe an acting class?

Maybe, if she rote memorizes the whole book, word for word, she’d have something to say about it?

Maybe not. She can memorize addition facts but stand slack-jawed in the face of a story problem. If she memorized the book and was then asked a question about it, she’d be stuck spouting lines, and they’d likely be the wrong ones.

There should be a way, though, shouldn’t there? Many people go through life without a proven ability to think on their feet; shouldn’t you be able to go through elementary school?

Flash cards. What we need here are more flash cards.

Age ain't nothin' but a number

It's probably not a common practice, but it's certainly not unheard of for parents adopting children from Eastern Europe to legally change their child's age, generally to make them younger. There are all sorts of noble reasons for doing this, ranging from contradictory paperwork putting the original age in doubt; to bone age and other tests indicating that the original age is impossible; to a conviction that the child's small size or developmental delays would be less noticeable and traumatic if his or her age was in closer accord.

We did not choose this path for our kids, although our son's size and behavior are still substantially delayed, and our daughter is now in a class two years behind her age level, and different ages would certainly appear to fit them better in some ways. I always worried about this idea of age-shifting, though: What happens when the kid finds out? What happens if the kid has a growth spurt that makes the new age ludicrous (as indeed, my daughter did -- if we had adjusted her age down, she would now be freakishly tall; as it is, she's on the big side for an 11-year-old)? What happens if the developmental delays catch up more quickly than the parent had anticipated, and the child is trapped in a much lower age group and school class than his abilities warrant? What if, on the other hand, the delays get worse, and the child can't get help because, although she is severely delayed for her original age, she's not bad enough at her adjusted one? And of course, what happens if the child grows up to work in a field where the tabloid revelation of his or her older original age could be highly embarrassing?

Now, of course, I have another worry to add: What if the child's Little League team wins big, and Sports Illustrated starts digging through Russian birth records?

I don't mean to imply that the motives of adoptive parents and the motives of the father of Danny Almonte -- who pitched a perfect game in the Little League World Series and led his Bronx team to a third-place finish only to be revealed to be 14, not 12 as falsified documents had asserted, and too old to play -- are the same, but on some level all are trying to give their child the best possible chance. Unlike Almonte's father, adoptive parents aren't lying to give their child a specific advantage in a specific situation; they likely see it as giving their child an age that's closer to the truth. But folks, the truth is slippery. Tests are fallible, and sometimes contradictory. Children develop in ways and at rates we can't predict. And they often develop unevenly, with emotions at one level and cognitive functions at another and physical attributes at another. The original date may be wrong in some cases; but any attempt to adjust it is going to be the roughest guesswork.

It seems to me that what age-changing parents hope to do is eliminate all future problems their children may have with one simple bureaucratic act. The humiliation of being too short for your age, the embarrassment of acting immature, the pain of not fitting in -- gone! with a minor adjustment. But does anybody believe it's going to be that easy? A mom can hope, that's true. She can be a mama bear and do what she can, even if there's risk, even if snotty Web site writers disapprove. And she can call Little League headquarters and make sure that changing a child's age at the time of adoption for physician-approved reasons is not a violation of some developmental-difference-unfriendly rule or regulation.

Giving the rest of us hope that the Danny Almonte of tomorrow won't be named Sergei or Sasha.

Book 'em

I'm generally a sucker for parenting books. But the ones I'm drawn to are the ones for parenting kids with special needs, books with names like "The Challenging Child" or "The Explosive Child" or "The Out-of-Sync Child" or "Raising Your Spirited Child." With one child who is significantly learning and language delayed but very well-behaved, and one child who has FAS/E, I don't have much of a need for the general, run-of-the-mill books on raising your boring, normal child. I need the heavy artillery.

Every so often, though, I like to see how the other half lives, and so I check out the bestsellers of the week in Parenting & Family on Amazon.com . I was going to share the results of that search today, but frankly, the first four books on this week's tally were pregnancy books, and a majority of the rest are about obsessing over your perfect infant, and who needs that? So I decided to go back over to my half, and see what parents who read books about special needs are reading. A nice, familiar chart, that.

Here, then, for your browsing pleasure, are the Top 10 special-needs-parenting bestsellers on Amazon.com this week, with our comments and/or theirs. Note that, if pregnancy and infancy are the current obsessions among the non-special-needs set, ADHD remains the book-topic of choice for challenged parents, occupying half the spots. Read on:

1. The Out-Of-Sync Child : Recognizing and Coping With Sensory Integration Dysfunction by Carol Stock Kranowitz.
The perfect, reader-friendly introduction to sensory integration. I'd tell you to go buy it now, but you probably have it already.

2. Sign With Your Baby Complete Learning Kit (Book, Training Video & Quick Reference Guide combination) by Joseph Garcia.
"Shows how simple gestures can communicate ideas."

3. Maybe You Know My Teen : A Parent's Guide to Helping Your Adolescent With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder by Mary Fowler.
By the author of "Maybe You Know My Kid."

4. The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Ross W. Greene, Ph.D.
Excellent, excellent book! It's one of the ones I keep close at hand. Useful for any kids who have trouble dealing with frustration and change, whether they explode as a result or not.

5. When Love is Not Enough : A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD - Reactive Attachment Disorder by Nancy L. Thomas.
Required reading on RAD.

6. Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception by Thom Hartmann.
"ADDers aren't abnormal, they are uniquely gifted individuals in their own right."

7. Taking Charge of ADHD, Revised Edition by Russell A. Barkley.
I'd probably rather read this than "Taking Charge of Your Fertility," No. 2 on the general parenting best-seller chart. Perhaps ADHD will take orders better.

8. Without Ritalin by Samuel A. Berne.
"Safe and effective holistic treatments proven successful for more than 3,000 patients." (Is that a lot?)

9. Eating an Artichoke : A Mother's Perspective on Asperger Syndrome by Echo R. Fling.
"Author is president of ASPEN of America, Inc. (Asperger Syndrome Education Network.)"

10. Women With Attention Deficit Disorder : Embracing Disorganization at Home and in the Workplace by Sari Solden.
I don't know that I have ADD, but I'll embrace disorganization wherever I can find it.

Counting down

Six days and counting to the start of school. Can I get a "Whoo-hoo!"

My kids are not as excited about this as I am, which is a good sign, really: There was a time when my daughter would much rather be in school, which was so much like the orphanage she'd spent her first 4.5 years in and therefore so familiar, than have to be home with this unfamiliar thing called a family. I'm delighted that she now sees home as the place to be, and school as the scary, less-than-comfy spot. Delighted. But she still has to go.

She shared her back-to-school worries with me last night, and they are three: 1) she will have to write reports; 2) we will have to pick her up after chorus; and 3) when she gets to middle school, she will have to change her clothes in front of other people at gym, and in only five minutes.

If she were an 11-year-old among 11-year-olds, she would have reason to worry about the horrors of being naked among your middle-school peers; however, she's an 11-year-old among 9-year-olds and, as a fourth-grader, has two elementary years to go before she has to obsess about that. I told her to hold her worrying for a while. Worrying ineffectually about a future that can't be controlled is, of course, a mother's job.

I don't know if she believed me when I said that the chorus director would let us know what time to pick her up and that we would really, truly be there -- just like we're there at the end of school and just like we were there last year when she got out of her after-school remedial sessions -- but she at least appeared to be reassured. Now, if she'd worried about singing off-key or learning the music or performing in front of an audience or getting from her classroom to the rehearsal room, I'd have had a little more trouble jumping quickly to assurance. But pick-ups are a piece of cake.

Worry #1 is not. Reports are a way legitimate concern. I'm worried that she will have to write reports, too, because it means I will have to help her write reports and, hoo-boy, that is not a pleasant thought at all. Helping her write simple paragraphs has added gray hairs to my head and holes to my stomach. She is no more ready to write reports than she is ready to pole vault in the Olympics. But at least with the pole vault, she could probably get off the ground a little faster.

Still, I put a good face on it and explained that she will have a language-arts aide this year, helping her a few hours a day, and that person will certainly have as part of her job helping with reports. (She will, won't she? Won't she?) And the teacher will help. And if necessary, we'll hire a tutor to help. I'll help. Papa will help. Everybody will help! Now, if only my daughter would help, by not being completely and utterly clueless. I know, I know, that observation is not helpful. I couldn't help it.

My son has shared only one school-starting anxiety, and that is: "I hope the teacher doesn't give homework on the first day." He says this exactly the way Buster Baxter says it on his first day of third grade on the "Arthur" cartoons on PBS. So I don't think he's really worrying; I think he's just rehearsing his lines. Besides, the only homework that's likely to come home that first day is homework for me, all those forms and cards to fill out with the exact same addressses and phone numbers and emergency contacts I gave them last year. Couldn't they have this stuff computerized by now?

Six days. Six days and counting. Let the games begin.

Back to school with a vengeance

If a new report from the CDC is to be believed, some kids are slipping more into their back-to-school backpacks than notebooks, pens, folders and lunchboxes. Some are slipping guns, knives and weapons of small-scale destruction. The return from summer break is one of the heaviest times of year for both school-related stress and school-related killings. Maybe instead of shopping for cute school clothes for our returning kiddos, we should be shopping for cute bulletproof vests.

Although the report specifies that school violence is extremely rare, it's not so rare that it can't be quantified. On average, there's about one school-related killing in the U.S. for every seven school days, one suicide for every 31 school days. But that's just the average.

Looked at month by month, you can start to see where the trouble spots are. In February, the rate rises to one killing every four days -- is Valentine's Day really that traumatic? September comes in second, with one every six days. Holiday spirit kicks in to keep December relatively trouble-free, with one killing every 15 days. But watch out when those kids come back from winter break.

The CDC is helpfully releasing this information just in time for the start of school, to give parents something else to be paranoid about ... er, that is, to help parents be vigilant to the stresses of school life and to help schools use their anti-violence resources most effectively.

And that's all well and good. But what I'd be curious to know is: How many IEP-related homicides are there? How many parents go postal when they find that the plans that were so meticulously made have not been implemented, the personnel and programs required are not in place, and the new teacher has not even read the IEP? I would guess the fall is second in plotted mayhem only to the spring, when those plans are made, when those IEP meetings where everybody looks at you like perhaps you need some intensive language and learning therapy before you can dare to parry with the professionals take place. Surely there is one parent every seven days who has at least fantasized about bringing small arms to the meeting, along with their tape recorders and advocates and reports that will never be read.

Hopefully there are no statistics, because those thoughts stay just thoughts. But just to be safe, Child Study Teams ought to be vigilant and implement some anti-stress programs for special-needs parents. This would involve just going ahead and giving us everything we want; or, if that's impossible, at least everything you've promised. Come on--try it. It wouldn't kill you.

My concert report

Two tickets for lawn seats for Aaron Carter concert: $48.30

Bucket of KFC to eat in the parking lot: $9.99

Bottle of water at the concession stand: $3.50

Aaron Carter T-shirt: $30

Having your normally hug-averse 11-year-old so shook up by the extremely loud music and the crush of people and the endless succession of no-name opening acts that she actually insists on sitting on your lap and putting your arms around her: Priceless

Wrongful birth

"Hey, isn't that that boy who played softball with your daughter?"

When my friend pointed out the pictures on the front page of the paper, I was delighted to see this smiling child, who did indeed play on the special-needs softball team my girl was on one year. In fact, he had his Challenger League cap on in that Page One picture. Photos of him filled three pages of the paper, a smiling, happy kid doing the things kids do. The fact that he was doing them in a wheelchair didn't dim his smile one bit.

We've seen this boy and his parents on numerous occasions since that softball season. They go to our church, and they're there at Mass every Saturday night, their son wheeling his way to the back of the church to go to the children's liturgy. I remember seeing them at the church carnival, the parents picking their son up and putting him on the rides, and being impressed by the effort they made to keep him involved in everything. The boy has, at various times, had the same occupational therapist and the same therapeutic riding instructor as my son, and by all accounts he is a terrific kid with a devoted family. So when I saw the pictures spread out through the paper, I assumed this would be an inspirational piece on overcoming disabilities and familial dedication.

It wasn't.

It was a story about a wrongful birth suit.

The text that ran around the photos of that cheerful child had to do with the fact that his mother had brought suit against the OB/GYN who had failed to diagnose his spina bifida in the womb, so that she could have terminated the pregnancy. It discusses her hatred for this man who did her the unspeakable injury of allowing her son to be born, and her willingness to go to court and swear she would have had an abortion. It mentions that the case settled out of court, and that the parents don't plan to tell their son where the money came from; which makes it a bad idea, I'd think, to submit to a page-one newspaper story about it.

I've read stories of wrongful birth suits before, and always found them chilling for the notion that kids with disabilities would be better off dead. I understand that the costs associated with caring for a disabled child can be astronomical, and that parents would want to ensure their financial future; and I understand that the work involved with caring for a disabled child can be heartbreaking, and that parents would want to make somebody pay for that, too. But to go to court and swear under oath that you would not have allowed this child to be born--I don't know how you could do that and then go home and give that child the sort of all-consuming, all-defending, Mama Bear love you need to feel to be a good advocate and a good parent. If you felt so strongly that you had been wronged by the fact of this child's birth, I don't know how you could stop crying long enough to do all the very difficult things that needed to be done.

I've read the stories before, but to read it again, in the context of these people whom I had considered to be such a poster family for special needs, made me heartsick. Now, I certainly don't wish to imply that this family has a responsibility to be an inspiration to me. I don't really know anything about them or what they've been through. My children have significant challenges, but they are not physical, and so I don't at all know what that is like. I try not to judge the decisions that any parent makes, especially parents of children with special needs, who have so very many factors weighing on every difficult choice.

I try not to judge, but it's hard. Isn't it bad enough for society to devalue the disabled, without the people who love them doing the same? As science improves its ability to diagnose disabilities in the womb, do we really want to weed out any children with any chance of coming out imperfect? Is the image of special-needs families as poor souls saddled with a burden because a doctor didn't give them a chance to get out while they could an image we want to embrace? Isn't every child precious, no matter how his or her gifts are wrapped?

Those are eminently unfair questions, but they're the ones that sprung to my heart as I read the story of this family. When I was finished, I went to my own children, hugged them and told them I loved them just the way they are. I'm lucky--I adopted these kids knowing of their special needs. I had a choice. I'm glad their birthmothers didn't.

Specialist roulette

One of the side effects of reading too much about your children's neurological problems is that you start diagnosing everyone else's children as well.

It's hard to resist, filled as you are with knowledge and perception. I remember working at the school library a couple of years ago and picking out the kids with sensory integration disorder. They were usually the ones who were in trouble for not keeping their seats, or for jostling other kids. One little girl kept slipping out of her shoes, and that seemed to me such incontravertable evidence of tactile hypersensitivity that I bristled when the librarian yelled at her, which she did a lot. Nothing I could do about any of this, of course. As a library parent, I was supposed to notice nothing. But boy, I felt smart.

Of course, what I see in other kids are the things I know best. Other parents see other things entirely. I've notice this numerous times on e-mail lists for adoptive parents, when somebody will describe their child's behavior problems, and everybody will chip in with a theory. Invariably, the parents of RAD children will see RAD, the parents of kids with ADHD will see ADHD, and all the while I'll be clucking that it is so obviously FAS/E or SI. We see what we're trained to see.

Which is why I suppose I have to give doctors a pass when they do the same thing. I was a little irate recently when somebody shared the story of taking her child to a doctor who had diagnosed thousands of cases of a certain disorder and, what a surprise!, he diagnosed her child with it, too. And I thought, what I want to know is, not how many cases he's diagnosed, but how many patients he has not diagnosed that in. It seems the problem with specialists is by the time you get to them, you're pretty much guaranteed that they're going to find the thing they find. RAD specialists will find RAD. International adoption specialists will find problems related to international adoption. ADHD experts will see ADHD.

Part of that is probably statistical; you don’t go to those specialists unless there’s already a good suspicion that something in their area of expertise is wrong. And part of that is probably due to the extreme nebulousness of some of these disorders, in which so many symptoms and behaviors overlap. There will always be interpretation involved. And to interpret things in a way you understand is only human nature.

But none of that is much comfort to people seeking definitive answers, or to the people second-guessing them. Perhaps we should consider specialist doctors, and specialist parents, as a sort of diagnostic salad bar. Check each one out, try out a little of each, and put something together that looks right to you.

Then write me, and tell me what you figured out. And I’ll explain why it’s really sensory integration disorder or fetal alcohol effects. I see it all the time.

Get back!

There's a commercial for a restaurant chain that's been running constantly on the radio station I listen to lately, and it involves children squabbling to see who gets to sit in the front seat. And I have to tell those advertisers, this never makes me want to run to that restaurant. What it makes me do is think: Are they nuts? Who lets children sit in the front seat anymore?

Apparently, a lot of people. I was shocked to read of a recent study that found a third of kids in cars riding shotgun. I thought the advent of airbags had put an end to that sort of thing. I thought everybody stowed their rugrats in the backseat, further away from a front-end collision. I thought wrong.

Now, of course, I certainly did sit in the front seat when I was a kid. This was way, way, waaaaaaaaaay before airbags, and before cars that were built like soup cans. And even much more recently, when we first adopted our kids, I remember having my littlest one's carseat in front, because how would I get to him if he started crying and he was behind me? I'm not sure when we made the switch, but I certainly do remember him being behind me, and how I would hand french fries over my shoulder one by one to give him a snack on the way home from his Early Intervention sessions. Seemed like a pretty good way to have an accident right there, but at least my guy would be properly seated for it.

I guess I'm just a conformist, doing what the Powers that Be tell me, ignoring my children's pleas for front-seatage. I thought those labels on the visors of front seats, with the warnings to seat kids in back and the drawing of a car-seated baby being knocked about by an airbag, were convincing enough for anyone. I didn't believe my daughter when she swore that every other kid her age gets to sit in the front, and only mean moms make them ride with their little brothers. Who knew?

I'll keep my kids in the back anyway, of course, because then, if I roll down the windows and turn the stereo up real loud, I can't hear them fight. But when I really think about it, it does strike me that since my daughter, at age 11, is now a good three inches taller than me, she can probably sit in front of an airbag more safely than I can. Perhaps she should be sitting in front, and I should be sitting in back. She'd love that, alright.

But no matter how many studies she shows me, I'm not letting her drive.

Look back and say ouch

My kids have been in their respective camp situations for four weeks now, and the minor injuries are starting to show. My daughter has various new scratches and scrapes appearing on her legs on a daily basis, and dodgeball-related bruises as well. My son took a Frisbee to the face, giving him a nice big scab beside his right eye, and has at least one bruise on his leg from where boys allegedly pinched him. Childhood is a full-contact sport, and injury is inevitable.

Still, I suppose we're ahead of past summers in the injury-and-trauma department. There was the year my daughter dropped a bowling ball on her toe during a camp outing. The camp nurse swore there was no relation between the fact that my daughter's toe was bruised and swollen and the fact that she had dropped a bowling ball on it; mere coincidence, declared the nurse. Our pediatrician, on the other hand, looked at the toe and said it looked like someone had dropped a bowling ball on it.

Then there was the summer my son started with a seizure, after one overheated morning watching his sister cavort at soccer camp. That necessitated an emergency trip to the hospital, another visit for an EEG, much panic and anguish for Mom and Dad, and a delayed start to his own camp that year. When all was said and done, he was perfectly fine. Two years later, I'm still a little shaky.

My daughter's sprouting a fair amount of pimples on her sunburned little face this year, but nothing like the bizarre growth she had on her thumb one summer. It was big and puffy and green and filled with something that, if we were in a science fiction movie, would burst open and pour forth with little alien spawn. I think even the pediatrician was a little taken aback by it. Blecccch.

Thankfully, we've never had any broken bones. We have had head lice, a near drowning, various stitches, a small boy being kicked in the face by his swinging sister, and a scabbed knee picked at so relentlessly that there is now a scar to remember the injury by. We've been lucky, all in all.

Let's hope the luck holds for four more weeks until they're safely back in school.

Internet ready

What did we do before the Internet?

I don't mean for getting information, although certainly, it's unimaginable to me what I would have done to help my adopted special-needs children without this limitless resource on my desk. Everything I've learned about them and found to do for them has come in one way or another from an e-mail group or a Web site. I don't believe I'd have made it with just trips to the library or a single support group.

What I'm thinking of this morning, though, as I check my e-mail for the fourteenth time this hour and look up the latest headlines on Yahoo! and read new posts on the Mighty Big TV forums and scan the site traffic statistics for Mothers with Attitude and monitor my site's status on Sites for Parents and see what's new in Salon and check my e-mail again, is: What did we do to waste time?

I'm a procrastinator from way back, and it's hard to believe I once had to make time pass --with the illusion but not the fact of productivity -- without this interactive screen. Whatever did I do? I watched TV, maybe, or did crossword puzzles, or sang along to the stereo, or typed nonsense words on my typewriter. (Typewriters! Do you remember typewriters?) It was such work, not working. And all the more so at the office, where you had to look like you were doing something even when there was nothing you wanted to do. I remember jobs where my chief occupations some afternoons was watching my hair grow. Oh, for a computer screen and unlimited Web access!

Those didn't exist then, but they do now, and I am grateful. I've mastered the have-real-work-open-in-the-background-and-click-to-it-in-a-flash-when-boss-or-husband-appears maneuver, and I spend way more time aimlessly surfing than I have any right to. Isn't it wonderful? If not for the Internet, I'd have to clean my house, parent my children, do my work, stay in touch with my friends, pay attention to life as it passes. But who has time for that, when there's so much time to waste?

Sure hope they keep that "Code Red" worm at bay. I'd hate to be cut off for even a wasted minute.

Just say no to drugstores

My town is being overrun by drugstores.

They’re popping up everywhere, in every new mini-mall, on every street corner. And not just petite mom-and-pop pharmacies, but super-mega-drugstores, the kind where you can get your cold medicine and makeup and school supplies and toys and birthday presents and gardening gear and weekly groceries all in one handy spot.

One of these in close driving distance is nifty. Two of these in close driving distance is way convenient. Fifty-five of these in close driving distance is overkill. I figure our town is going on about eighty.

The latest is the jewel in the crown of our downtown redevelopment. It replaces a movie theater, because goodness knows we don’t want teenagers and other moviegoing riff-raff hanging around our downtown. It pre-empts a fast-food restaurant; town fathers have been firm in forbidding the likes of Wendy’s and Burger King from the site, because goodness knows we don’t want families with young children and other fast-food-loving riff-raff hanging around our downtown. What we want hanging around our downtown are senior citizens in big, slow cars who must have constant access to their 33 individual prescriptions. This is the face we want to present as a community: A Town On Medication.

Personally, I would like to know when the No Fast Food Ever referendum passed, because what I would have liked to see more than anything in that prime downtown space is a big old McDonald’s with a vast playspace, one where I could leave my kids to wander for hours while I guzzle Diet Coke (my personal drug of choice) and read magazines. A Chuck E. Cheese would have been fine, too. I suppose I could always bring my kids to the big shiny new drugstore and let them run up and down the aisles, but my son always seems to find the condom counter, and I haven’t figured out yet how to explain to him what they are.

So downtown won’t be drawing us. We’re so backward, we still drive to a drugstore way ‘cross town, passing others all along the way. It’s our little way of commenting on the fact that there should be far fewer pharmacies hereabouts. And, maybe, more gas stations.

Stay strong

My daughter will never be a waif. She'll never be one of those wide-eyed, slim-hipped, fine-boned creatures you see slithering through magazine layouts and rock videos and episodes of Ally McBeal. Her body type tends more toward the sturdy. The solid. The, dare I say it, big-boned. She's slender but strong, proud for now of her muscles and her ever-increasing height and weight. She enjoys eating, as long as it doesn't involve vegetables, and revels in how the food will make her bigger.

She doesn't worry about being fat. Yet.

She's brought it up a couple of times, and I've told her she's not, and that's been the end of it. She's asked me why I'm so fat, usually after she's heard me obsessing about it, and I tell her something depending on my mood that is generally the end of that. Weight, and the perceived undesirability thereof, is not among her concerns. But how long is that going to last?

Forever, I hope. But our culture doesn't suggest that. According to a recent Intelihealth report, experts are now seeing girls as young as 5 who are worried that they're too fat, and adjusting their diets accordingly. My girl is 11, and still showing no interest in decreasing her chocolate-chip cookie intake one whit. I worry, when I tell her to stop snacking already -- am I sending a message that she's getting fat? Or that she will get fat? Or that I'd care if she did?

In truth, it's probably less what I think and say and more what her peers do that will cause the problems. The fact that she's in a grade two years below her age level won't help. For most of her school career, she'll be classmates with girls whose bodies are less mature and whose clothing sizes are smaller than hers. It's hard to believe that won't become an issue at some point. As of right now, between third and fourth grade, she seems to have a healthy range of body types among her friends, from skinny to chubby, tall to short, more to less developed. And it doesn't sound as if any of them are dieting, either -- whenever my daughter points out something in the supermarket that all the kids are eating and she just has to have, it's invariably fried, fast, sugar-pumped and loaded with empty calories.

That's the ironic thing, of course -- as America craves and glorifies thinness, we're all eating worse and getting fatter. Adults are more overweight. Kids are more overweight. It's appropriate, to a degree, to guard against excess weight in ourselves and our children. But it seems that the pendulum can so easily swing from one sort of unhealthiness to another. So far, my daughter is solidly in the middle, slim but not skinny, eating but not overeating, aware of her body but not preoccupied by it, happy to wear jeans and T-shirts instead of hiphuggers and bikini tops.

I just hope she can hang onto that when she's a big, sturdy teen amidst a sea of skinny, sexed-up pop-star wannabes. At any rate, she'll be able to beat any one of those malnourished stick-figure girls at basketball.

Bug free

Today, my kids start their respective summer programs and I start figuring out how to get them to two different places 20 minutes apart at the same time. It's going to be a long six weeks.

I also get all sorts of new things to worry about, like: Will my son's camp counselors be able to handle him? Will he be safe in the pool? Will he come home with the same towel and bathing suit he left with? Will my daughter be safe in her drop-in-at-the-park program? Will her friends be there? Will they want to play with her? Will I forget to pick her up?

But one thing I'm not going to worry about this year are head lice. And why is that? Have I found some new miracle chemical shield? Have head lice been wiped out in my area? Are my kids' heads hermetically sealed? No. I'm not going to worry because Harvard entomologist Richard J. Pollack, Ph.D., says I shouldn't. He says all the folderol about excluding kids and treating kids and bagging up the entire house for bugs is ridiculous. Head lice are harmless. They don't spread that easily, and if they do, big whoop.

Harvard entomologist Richard J. Pollack, Ph.D., is my hero.

We've only had one lice infestation here, but it was a doozy. My daughter had live lice crawling around on her head (Richard J. Pollack says unless you see live lice, do nothing -- and be sure they're lice, not spiders or ants. These were lice, they were live, and they had an attitude.) Because I was a good citizen and had not yet read about Richard J. Pollack, I called her very expensive camp and told them she had lice, and was of course told not to bring her back until she was nit-free. I washed her twice with the insecticide shampoo, I combed, I combed, I combed, I covered her head with mayonnaise, I combed, I covered her head with olive oil, I combed, I sprayed the house, I combed, I bagged the bedding, I combed, I combed, I combed. The camp nurse found nits and commented that Mom wasn't trying hard enough. I combed, and I imagined the camp nurse crawling with lice. Ha!

It was so hard to get rid of those buggers and their every trace that I have been in a complete panic about lice ever since. I've had my family shampooing with tea tree oil long after any last bugs had breathed their last. I left the bedding in bags for over a year. I examine my kids' hair with every little scratch. And I dread the thought of them being sent home from school for as long as it takes me to do this again.

But now, no worries. Richard J. Pollack -- and indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics with him -- say heck no, the kids shouldn't go. They shouldn't be kicked out of school or camp, they shouldn't be stigmatized in front of their peers, and the peers parents should not be notified of an outbreak. Because, you know, it's no biggie. Some cultures even value head lice as a sign that you've got friends.

Now, if only we can sell that to the camp and school nurses of this nation, I'll really be able to breathe easy.

Minor miracles

I may be speaking too soon, but it looks like my behavior-challenged boy may have made it through his two weeks of religious education "camp" with everybody's nerves intact.

This is an improvement over last year, when they asked me to pick him up an hour-and-a-half early every day because that's all they could take. Well, that's not what they said. They said that's all he could take. But I knew what they meant.

This year, he's stayed the whole three-and-three-quarters hours every day without incident. Part of it is that he's more mature. Part of it is that he has a teacher who's not freaked out by him. But most of it is that, instead of having a stray teenager as an aide, he has a paid adult. Paid by us. And worth every penny.

Last year, I did ask his school one-on-one aide if she'd like a couple of weeks extra work. She said no, and I let it go at that. This year, I asked her to help me find someone who would. She hooked us up with another one-on-one from the school, who is doing a fine job (augmented excellently by a very loyal friend who took the first two days while the school aide was still at school). My son's teacher has remarked how having the aide keeps Andy focused, so that he gets something out of the class and all the other kids do, too.

Personally, just our secret, I'm happy if he's just there being nondisruptive. If he learns something, that's gravy. For him, just to be included without incident is enormous.

So today is the last day, and barring a major blow-up at the final ceremonies, we've pulled it off. He's pulled it off, my great little guy. And maybe this means he can pull off all the First Communion and First Reconciliation training, too. Maybe he'll eventually sit still in church, participate in the Mass, stay quiet during Sunday School.

Maybe I better check into hiring that aide full-time.

Health hazards

Put these formerly harmless things on your list of dangers to protect your kids from.

FIREWORKS July 4 is coming up, and with it the risk that your child will lose ... no, not a finger. His or her hearing. You may know that buying fireworks is illegal and handling them personally is unwise, but now even standing outside and listening to them has been found to be actively harmful. A study published in the journal Pediatrics reveals that more than 5 million youngsters have suffered some degree of hearing loss from the overloud sound of fireworks, lawnmowers, and rock concerts. The researchers suggested earplugs. We suggest watching fireworks on TV, with the sound off. And never mowing the lawn.

MERCURY THERMOMETERS For my money, nothing tells your temperature like an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, the kind your mother used to use. Those digital jobs -- how do you know they're not just making it up? And ear thermometers have never worked well for me, always coming up with bizarrely low numbers that are not to be trusted. No, give me that silver bar expanding upwards, slowly but surely. Yet now, that very same precision apparatus is on the verge of extinction, simply because it contains within its glass shell a toxic substance. People are being urged to dispose of their old mercury thermometers because ... well, because when they're disposed of, they're an environmental hazard. Doesn't that mean we should all hang on to them? If we don't, at any rate, we'll never see them again, because they're being taken off the market. Why do I feel I'll never know my true temperature again?

PETTING ZOOS You say they're a charming way for children to get in touch with peaceful barnyard animals. The government says they're an E. coli contamination waiting to happen. The CDC, citing numerous cases of children being sickened by the bacteria after petting petting-zoo denizens and then putting their hands in or near their mouths, advise parents to exercise extreme caution. Alright: Rubber gloves, face masks, family fun for everyone!

COOKING WITH GAS If your daughter's prone to allergies, you might want to switch to electric. In a test of more than 700 Italian preteens, it was found that being in the kitchen while a gas stove was in use reduced lung function in allergy-susceptible girls. Interestingly, no such correlation was found in allergy-susceptible boys, undoubtedly because they were never in the kitchen when cooking was being done.