Why I don't go to reunions anymore

My high school Class of 1977 just had its 30th reunion, without me. But through the magic of the Internet, I'm able to check out photos of the event on our class' Yahoo group site, and ... and ... well.

On looking at the photos, my first thought was, "What were so many of my parents' friends doing at our reunion?"

There's nothing to make you feel so old as seeing how old people your age look, is there? Dear me.

What team?

How overrun are we in High School Musical 2 mania at my house right now? Here's how much: This weekend, I got an e-mail with a subject line that read "Calling all Wildcats!" and I immediately assumed it was some Disney hype related to the movie. Opened it up and ... um, oh yeah, my son's special-needs Little League team is called the Wildcats. Hmmm.

Don't look a gift diploma in the mouth

The blog Spanglish Gringo linked to an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about parents who are mad that school districts have given their mainstreamed special education students a diploma, when the parents believe that they have not actually received an education. And you know, I've often wondered how exactly my daughter is passing her classes, when test scores show her to be horribly behind in pretty much any useful skill, and she has to take exams multiple times.

But unlike these parents, I know my girl's trying hard, and if she manages to earn a diploma, I will kiss that document and frame it and never let anybody wrest it out of our hands. My fear is that because of some administrative curse, probably brought along by parents like the one in the article, she will not be able to get a regular diploma.

I can't help feeling that these parents are expecting and demanding something that cannot be done under the current educational system. But maybe I'm just easy.

Funky Winkerbean finally gets to the birthmother reunion

I've written before about the comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" taking on a storyline of an adopted child searching for his birthmother, and after a number of false starts over the years, the reunion finally came this week. If you don't get the strip in your paper (or never check the funnies), you can see them on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site. The background of Lisa's pregnancy is available in an archive on the Funky Winkerbean site.

I'm glad this finally got resolved, and that the arc included young Wally talking to his adoptive parents about his search (albeit after the fact) and reassuring them of their place in his life. I'll be reading along hoping for more. If this storyline has been meaningful to you, or may be meaningful one day for your kids, check bookstores in October -- strip creator Tom Batiuk mentions in his blog that a book compiling all Lisa's storylines is due then.

Medical crisis du jour

My daughter had a colossal nosebleed today. A real gusher. It continued long enough to make me call her pediatrician's office, and a nurse told me to wait five or 10 minutes more and then take her to an urgent care center. By 10 minutes it was slowing down, and it finally stopped, with the help of an icepack to the nose.

Then, five hours or so later, just before bedtime, it started again. More gushing. So this time we did hop in the car and head to the Immedicenter, where a doctor cauterized a scraped-up area on her septum. No more nose-picking for you, young lady! If my admonishments to that effect couldn't stop her, perhaps that burning stick up her nose will.

Will my pretty new site crash your browser?

I finally completed a redesign of the Mothers with Attitude site that I've been working on in stolen moments for about a year. It looks pretty nifty on the browsers on my newer Mac, but I took a look at it in Internet Explorer on our older laptop today and it was kind of a mess, finally freezing IE up.

If you have a moment, and nothing in your browser you couldn't afford to force-quit away, stop by MWA and take a look, then come back and comment on how it looks on your system. Maybe mention what operation system and browser you're using, if possible. I can't bear the thought of finding the time to re-do it, but I don't want to be crashing folks on a regular basis, either.

My summer TV obsession

I find myself lately being completely obsessed by the HBO show John from Cincinnati. Anybody out there watching it? Nobody I know is, which means I have to haunt message boards and see strangers talk about it. It gives me that same "I have no idea what I just watched, but I've sure never seen anything like that on television" thrill I got years ago from Twin Peaks, and although that show's implosion left me swearing I'd never get taken again, I seem to have jumped aboard the surfboard for this one.

There's even a special-needs parenting connection, a little bit: I wrote on my About site about the use of echolalia by the title character, first in a mindlessly echoing way, then in a way that imbues the echoes with some meaning, and then weaving them into a mind-blowing sermon. I hope the show creators really are going somewhere with this, and know where that somewhere is, and don't wipe-out along the way.

Still, it's not like there are tons of shows to go ga-ga over in the summer. With Brothers & Sisters repeating the same episodes again and again, it's nice to have something to look forward to on Sundays. And then Mondays, and Wednesdays, and whatever other days they're showing repeats. Have I mentioned I'm obsessed?

The risks of silly walks

My son has a weird way of walking sometimes where he leans forward, puts his arms out, and kind of bobs as he goes. This has bothered his teachers since he first started in school. This has bothered me ... well, never, actually. Because I'm a weak, enabling mom, no doubt. I've just never been of the opinion that standing up straight needs to be one of his major goals, and the fact that he gets a good, comforting proprioceptive kick from that bobbing makes it something to not take so lightly.

Lately, the rationale used to stamp this out is that it makes him look weird to his peers. This, too, is fine by me -- standing up straight is not going to suddenly make him a typical 14-year-old, and his peers might as well see him coming. My suspicion is that it's just something that bugs grown-ups, and that they think is an easy and obvious thing to fix. Yet they've been working on this since he was five, and fixed? Not so much.

There is one downside to walking his walk, though, that we discovered on a stroll around the neighborhood last week: If you're leaning forward and your collar is open, a bug can fly in and bite you on the chest.

It freaked me out, I'll admit, seeing those two little marks on my boy's chest. They swelled up pretty fast, and I was all over the Internet trying to find out what dire possibilities we were facing. The description kept bringing up spider bites, but unless we have flying spiders or he walked through a spider web, that seemed unlikely. He said he heard a little buzz, but there was no stinger left behind.

The bite was painful enough to make my feeling-no-pain kid say "Ow!" and the initial swelling was followed up by hives at a nearby spot, which had me hyperventilating. And then ... nothing. He was fine. I was a wreck, but he was A-OK.

I don't think this is going to make me change my position on his walking position. He can still bob and weave for all I care. But you know what? I'm going to button up his darn shirt when he does it.

My honor-roll girl

Sign me up for one of those bumper stickers -- my kid made the honor roll!

I've known that for a couple of weeks, because the school sent my daughter a letter of congratulations. What the school didn't send until yesterday was the actual report card. So odd to get the announcement without the actual scores in hand.

I was interested to see the actual grades that resulted in that happy honor-roll placement, because I had been fairly worried that she would get Ds in a couple of classes. I guess talking to her teachers helped, because she bopped to B level in both of them. Mercy grades? Maybe, but we'll take 'em.

Interestingly, although she did honor-roll level work that fourth quarter, she actually failed a couple of her final exams. Her final grades for the year survived on the weight of the classroom work she's been doing, which confirms my faith that if you just do the dang homework, you can pass classes, at least at her level. So many kids blow off the homework, but you get points for it, and you get the goodwill of teachers, too. That and the faithful retaking of failed tests as per her IEP seems to be carrying her along.

Wonder if we could get her retakes on the final?

The real blogger in the family

My son is totally shaming me as a blogger. I set him the task of blogging once a day this summer -- five sentences about anything -- and darned if he's not doing it. Of course, he's motivated: I told him that if he did his daily writing through the start of school, I'd buy him a song on iTunes that I've been saying "no" to. I thought I was pretty safe. But he's writing, and that makes me happy, too.

If you're looking for a summer writing project for your kiddo, a Blogger blog's not a bad idea. Free, easy to do, and it looks like something when they're done. I'm probably more impressed with my son's blogging than he is, but that's because I can barely drag my pixels over here to blog once a week or so. Show-off.

Special-needs sports stars

A newspaper photographer was following my son's Challenger League baseball team for much of the season this year, and the results hit our local paper this weekend with some really wonderful pictures. My first thought on looking at them was, she must have been using a massive telephoto lens, because she could never have gotten these candid shots if an easily distracted kid like my son saw her with a camera.

You can see the photos in slide shows here on the newspaper's site, with audio interviews with coaches and parents. Just click on the link next to "multimedia." My son is in some of the photographs (if you play the first, longest slideshow, he's the skinny kid on the left in the fourth photo to come up), but didn't get interviewed. My husband was there when the reporter approached him, and apparently my son waved her away saying "No interviews! No interviews, please!" What, does he think he was adopted by Angelina Jolie?

Stealth teacher

So I've been trying to get one of my daughter's high school teachers on the phone, and this teacher has acknowledged to my daughter that she knows I want to talk to her, and yet after two attempts at contact in two different portions of the school year I have received zero phone calls (or e-mails, though I gave my e-mail address in case she'd rather not speak).

I was trying to figure out whether I really wanted to get the guidance counselor involved, as is the parent contact protocol; try again to reach the teacher informally; or just give up and hope for the best. But then a funny thing happened.

Someone called asking to speak with my daughter. Since my daughter's been having some problems with kids teasing her at school, and a recent suspicious phone call along those lines, I asked who was calling. The caller hesitated and said, "I am calling from the high school." Well, goodie for you. It sounded like a kid telling me they were calling from a location physically at the high school, so I asked again who was calling. And then the voice, faltering again, announced itself to be the teacher I've been trying to reach (and not by name, either, just by job description).

Well, hello!, I said, and launched into a conversation that the teacher had clearly been trying to avoid. We actually had a nice chat before she asked again to talk to my daughter, regarding scheduling for a test make-up. But it struck me as so odd -- why was she avoiding me in the first place? and why, when she was speaking to me directly, was she so reluctant to say who she was? Maybe I didn't sound like a grown-up to her, either. But professionally, when a teacher calls a student's household, would they not announce themselves with name and title?

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if there's a file somewhere with my name on it and a big red stamp saying "TROUBLE! Do not engage this mom in conversation." Although there are teachers who have dared to do so, and in most cases emerged with their heads still attached. I can be nice! Really!

Singing the parental advisory hits

My son has been taking voice lessons for a little while, more as just a fun activity than in any attempt to make him a singing sensation. In the time he's been singing his voice has dropped, and he's trapped in that teen purgatory of no-longer-a-tenor, not-quite-a-baritone. His teacher has been having quite a time trying to find appropriate material for him to work on. There were some nice Broadway songbooks for his kiddie voice, but the Broadway songbooks for lower voices? A little more contemporary, and a little more troublesome, theme-wise, especially for perseverative kids like my boy. I have to agree with the teacher that "I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today" from "Avenue Q" is probably not the right material here.

I was thinking about the trickiness of the new Broadway songbook on Tony night when "Spring Awakening" won trophy after trophy. I listened to the whole soundtrack online the next day, and the songs are terrific, but it's hard to ignore that big Parental Advisory label on the CD cover and "Explicit" tag on all the numbers. These are the things I look at when downloading music for my kids, and there's hardly a song here I'd feel comfortable putting on their iPods. And I think the voice teacher's unlikely to want to work with him on songs with titles like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally F***ed." Yeah, we'll have him perform that one at a recital.

If Mom likes it, it must be square

This song, "Hey There, Delilah" by the Plain White Ts, has been running around in my head since it plucked its way out from all the rap and noise on my kids' favorite radio station. I'm not sure how something this sweet and quiet is getting airplay these days, but it's lovely, isn't it? It's giving me serious Simon & Garfunkel flashbacks. You can listen to it in the video below, and then it will rattle around your head, too. Unless, like my kids, you think it's just too slow.

Nicely played

Yesterday was a red-letter day for us. For the first time, last night, my son ... sat through ... an entire school concert. Yes!

If that doesn't sound like such an accomplishment for a 14-year-old, then you don't have a scoodgy boy like mine.

It was his sister's high-school band concert, and I'd lured him there with the promise that he could leave after a couple of songs -- I just wanted to include him, a little bit. But he sat through a couple of songs, and a couple more, and pretty soon an hour and a concert and a nice little milestone were passed. Sure, he squeaked in his seat some, and he flung his arm around my neck a few times in a way that I thought might alter my spine, and at the end he screamed out his sisters name and opined that she "Rocked The House!"

All in all, though, it was a good experience. The band played nicely. And the boy listened nicely, too.

Meddling mom

I've been doing the "how much do I interfere?" dance with my daughter all year.

It's her first year in high school, and she's handled things really well. And so, I've let go a bit, not hanging over her homework or constantly touching base with her teachers. High school makes it harder to do those things anyway, so I was happy to fade back. That's what you do with supports, right? Fade them back when they're not needed?

I've had a few teacher conversations, and one situation where I orchestrated a class change. I've also had one bad contact, when I questioned something a teacher was doing and got a cold shoulder for it. Beyond that, though, I've held my peace.

Now, the end of the year is at hand, and her latest progress report indicated continuing struggles in two subjects. I'm pretty sure she won't fail. I'm pretty sure she can do better. And I'm pretty sure that I need to know what's up before next year's schedule is set in stone.

So today, I sent notes to the teachers with my kinda uncomfortable daughter, just asking them to call and chat. In the big time here, in high school, you're supposed to go through the counselor to contact teachers ... but this isn't a big-time problem, and it's so late in the year. A few teachers have OK'd informal conversations, I hope these two will too.

Or maybe they'll just do the "overinvolved parent!" eyeroll and try stonewalling me for the next four weeks. Or maybe my girl will accidentally forget to give them the notes until it's too late anyway.

Sometimes, don't you just envy those parents who are blissfully uninvolved? I tried, man ... can't do it.

TV takes on special-needs parenting ... maybe

I've been watching and blogging about the ABC show Brothers & Sisters for most of the season, and it's made a nice transition from being an intrigue-filled look at a family and a family business in the wake of the patriarch/founder's death to a gentler, sillier examination of the ties that bind families together, whether you really feel like being bound to that person or not. The repartee and rapport between the siblings is golden, well-written and well-acted by the likes of Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffith and Ron Rifkin. I started the season watching it because I need something to space out to at the end of the weekend (it's on Sundays at 10 p.m.), and ended the season with it as my most anticipated show of the week.

One couple who has gotten less plot than usual in the family saga is Tommy, one of the brothers of the title, and his wife, Julia. There was a little plot flurry early on over Tommy's infertility (his brothers donated sperm), and a little flurry about Julia being pregnant with twins, and then a big episode in which the twins were born premature and one of them died. The other was still hospitalized as of Sunday's season finale, and her parents were dealing with that in different ways -- mom depressed and taking sedatives, dad spending time away from home and acting like nothing was wrong.

The writers of this show have a lot of pots on the stove, so to speak, and I don't know whether Tommy and Julia and their baby, Elizabeth, will ever get put on the front burner. But I'm hoping for it, because there's real potential for dealing with issues of special-needs parenting. While Elizabeth survived her birth in better health than her brother, she could well have significant problems related to her prematurity. Watching parents and extended family deal with that could be therapeutic to those of us who've experienced that in real life. The different dynamics of moms and dads in special-needs families could also make for good TV -- I recommend Married With Special-Needs Children to the producers as a textbook.

The show's already dipped its toe into the subject with one sister's daughter having diabetes; let's hope that next season, they dive on in. If you haven't seen the show and are interested in it, you can view all the past episodes online at ABC.com, and read recaps on my B&S blog.

Airsickness problem solved

We just got back from vacation, which involved two plane flights and much trauma for my daughter. She gets airsick and often throws up on landing, leading her to be understandably unenthusiastic about air travel.

This time around, we tried Dramamine for the tummy troubles, and it made her nicely sleepy for the flight and not nauseated at touchdown time. Unfortunately, it did nothing for the ear discomfort she feels, and without the distraction of vomiting, the ear pain had her crying and moaning. No amount of yawning, chewing, ear tugging, ear massaging, or jaw-working seemed to help. So on the way home, we gave her some Advil along with the Dramamine, and that took care of all nasty landing difficulties. Hooray! She was a little loopy for most of the evening, but otherwise unaffected.

Just thought I'd share this solution for those with noise-sensitive, pressure-sensitive, movement-sensitive, pain-sensitive teens, who need their young people to be unafraid of flying, and also don't like to be thrown up upon all that much.

Comic strip returns to adoption theme

Just a quick note to mention that the comic strip Funky Winkerbean is returning to a periodic adoption story-line, and it looks like this time they're finally going to go through with having a child placed for adoption by one character, Lisa, look up his birthparents.

Funky Winkerbean originally followed Lisa and her classmates through their high school adventures, then took a generational leap and showed those kids as adults with a new group in high school. Lisa's son was adopted by a teacher who is now the high school principal, while Lisa later married a classmate, Les, who teaches at the high school.

The strip has periodically teased the possibility of the boy, Darin, looking up his birthparents, but now, with a push from his girlfriend, he seems poised to do it. If your paper doesn't carry the strip, you can access it online from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site, among others. The strip has a pretty decent track record in handling dramatic storylines in a restrained way, so it will be interesting to see how this plot thread is woven in.

The livest wire in the room

My son's 14th birthday went off just fine on Sunday, and I did indeed stick to the limited guest list. That made for a smaller-scale bash, and a much quieter one, too, as his classmates this year are notably more subdued than the kids he's been with before. Maybe I should be concerned because these kids seem to be, in some ways, "lower functioning," at least in terms of ability to speak spontaneously and at an audible level. But I think it's the perfect class for him, for two reasons: With no other live wires to spark off, he's much more able to control his behavior; and with no one else rambunctious in the room, his teachers are happy to have one kid with spirit and humor. A room full of them, you don't necessarily want. One, though, keeps things lively in a good way.