Barnmaven

They grow on you

Maybe it's because I'm tired. I've been involved in a project at work that has been, to say the least, consuming. We are undergoing a major systems upgrade and I'm one of the team leads. The conversion starts tonight, and I think as the upgrade part of the project wraps up and the actual launch of the new system has become imminent, I find myself feeling a lot of big emotions. Pride in my work and in the team I've been honored to work with; concern for the people I manage whose workdays will be tough for a while because such a big change makes accomplishing your daily workload pretty tough; anticipation of the period of time beyond those post-launch difficulties, when I'll have less on my plate and more time to be there for my team, more time to listen, more time to engage in my usual activities. 

Considering all of this, it shouldn't be a surprise to find myself overwhelmed by tears this morning as I was driving to work. I'd been idly thinking about the kids' upcoming fall birthdays. My daughter will turn sweet sixteen. My son will become a teenager. They are far past the halfway point in their evolution towards being independent young adults. Sooner than I am ready for, my daughter will learn to drive. The leap of growth that will naturally follow this new independence is going to be the start of her transition into being not my child, but my adult daughter. She will learn what it means to make big decisions, she will learn what it means to have more responsibility, what it means to take care of herself not as a child in her parents' households, but eventually as a young adult in her own living space. All of this big change, it occurred to me, is just a few short years away, far closer on the timeline of being her mother than the years where she still needed help tying her shoes. My thoughts went into overdrive, and I imagined her going off to college somewhere, or moving into her own apartment someday not very far off, and I burst into tears.

I know my job is to turn her into an independent adult. I have always known that someday she would leave my care and go out into the world. I understand that's the deal we make when we bring them into this world. It's just that there was never any point, until now, that I realized just how little time I have left with her. How could anyone ever be ready to see their baby take those first steps out into the world? Even so, I couldn't be prouder of who she is and who she is becoming.  I just have to figure out how to navigate that change without being overprotective while at the same time being just protective enough. You can't let go and cling at the same time; you have to let them know that you're OK with them growing up and that their job was never to take care of you. You have to trust them, trust yourself to let them enter a world that is going to be hard and beautiful and terrifying and exciting. You have to let them experience failure, and make sure they hear you cheering when they have success. I want, more than anything, adult children who need only a minimal amount of therapy to tell their friends, "I have a really good relationship with my mom."

I know all of this, and still, I get to feel my feelings and be sad that my babies are growing up. That's how it works.

 

Larger than Life

I've not written much about my dad here.  Our relationship has been, for as long as I can remember, complicated by our similar natures - emotional, prickly, invested.   Most of my memories of my dad from my late teens through my early twenties involve yelling and tears.  Neither of us seemed able to stop trying to be "right" louder than the other long enough to listen to what the other was saying.

Dad is larger than life in a million different ways.  People don't meet him without being impacted by his huge personality.  I like to think I take after him in that way, but for both of us this is often as detrimental as helpful.  He is deeply emotional, and most of his words and actions bear testimony to it. 

Dad grew up dirt poor.  The youngest of six, he was born to working class parents in Ononta, MI on the Upper Peninsula in 1927,  just before the onset of the Great Depression.  Dad recalls never having new clothes, only hand-me-downs, and when the weather was warm they went barefoot.  When dad was still very young, his family left Michigan on a train bound for Idaho.  Like many depression-era families, his parents hoped to find work, and a better life. 

After the family settled in Post Falls, Idaho, my grandfather did find work, on the CCC and WPA government projects.  He drowned while working on a WPA project on the river in Post Falls .  My father was only 12 years old.

Loss, poverty, hard work - these things shape a person.  Dad is one of the hardest working men I have ever known.  He dropped out of high school at 16 to start earning a living wage in order to help out his family.  He served one tour as an enlisted marine.  He worked on Foss tugs in Alaska, earning his captain's license.  When he met and married my mom he already had a decade behind him as a fireboat captain for the Seattle Fire Department.  In those days, firemen didn't make a terrific living, and so he worked weekends too, taking carpentry and painting jobs to supplement his income so my mother could stay home with my brother and I. 

 

Before he retired from the SPD he and mom bought some acreage on Marrowstone Island.  He built a house there, working on it on his days off.  Retirement didn't last long, however, and it was not long before he started a second career, working on the decks of the Washington ferry system. 

Whenever I recall my dad during the years of my childhood, I picture him working constantly. If he wasn't at his job, he was fixing a car, putting up fence, building a barn.

I will never in my life hear the phrase "Hard Working Man" without picturing my dad.

I spent most of my childhood thinking that my dad was angry.  It is only with the perspective of a working adult that I realize he was probably more tired than anything.  He was also a man of strong conviction about how people ought to treat other people, about doing the right thing, and those beliefs drove almost everything about him - and to others, often translated into orneriness.  He had no patience for cheaters or people who took the easy way out. 

There's another word that comes to mind when I think of my father:  Love. 

My dad has loved me unwaveringly for my whole life.  Even though I can think of only a handful of times he has said so in words, he has spent my lifetime showing me his love by giving of himself.  Anyone who knows my father knows that his family is the most precious thing to his heart.  He gave me endless hours of his time, teaching me to drive, teaching me to change my oil, driving me to horse shows and basketball camps, coming to my musicals and plays and games to cheer me on.  He valued education, particularly because he had to interrupt his own, and he and my mother put a priority on making sure my brother and I would have a college education available to us.  

Dad has always seemed larger than life to me, and in retrospect maybe I argued with him so much because if I could convince my Dad that I was right about something, nothing else would ever again seem difficult or impossible.  He was that stubborn.  Earning his approval has driven me for nearly all of my life.  It wasn't until I was in my forties that I realized I didn't need it.  Having his love was always more important, and his love was always unconditional.

Dad's in the early stages of dementia now, but he's still larger than life and his love for his family is undiminished.  He's difficult, to be sure, but then again, he always has been - another trait he so generously passed on to his daughter.  Living with his difficulty was the worthwhile price for being one of the people he loves.  

The relationship between a father and his daughter is the relationship by which she will judge all other men.  If our relationship was somewhat codependent, it was also resilient.  I could always, always trust that my father would love me and that he would be there for me, and that trust has been the rock solid foundation I could rest on.  No matter what goes wrong in my life, my Dad still loves me.  That is a priceless gift to give your child.

I owe him far more than I could ever repay.  Happy Father's Day, to the first and best man in my life.

 

Screaming at the walls

A much-loved friend is coping with the unimaginable horror of saying goodbye to her 23 year old son this week, which provides very necessary perspective to my own life.

I would lose all faith in God except that I never believed he was some Santa Claus in the sky waiting to give us things we ask for and who keeps us safe if we behave ourselves and keep to the script.  I suppose that's what people who do not believe imagine that those of faith think, which makes the scoffing entirely understandable.

How do you tell someone things will be all right when you have no grounds whatsoever for believing that to be true?  Nothing is ever entirely all right, not ever, not in this sea of humanity where fate is often cruel and people do both terrible and wonderful things to one another.  I only know that if there are answers, I do not have them and therefore I have to simply muddle along like everyone else, hoping to make sense out of the things I can see and touch.  The magic, I suppose, comes from the the inexplicable within me, whatever place that is that generates my thoughts and dreams. Soul or subconscious, it is the source of my best and worst moments and I suppose for all of us, it is what makes us each unique.  I choose to believe that is the creation of the Divine, and that it is both the place where the best things and the worst things we do spring from,which is what makes God such a mystery.

I want answers, but I know I'll not get them. and so I just stand in the shower and scream at the walls and hope a little bit of the grief and horror of witnessing my friends loss from afar swirl down the drain along with my tears and the last of the suds from the shampoo.

The cliche comes easily.  Far from trite, it bristles with truth:  Life is short.  

Too short.  

I watched Alyx grow up from afar, through pictures and stories his mom shared in a small  group of mothers I met when I was still pregnant with my son, over a decade ago.  We were - and are - a tight little band and we have always been there for one another.  We've shared things with each other that even our partners and our families don't know.  We've been there for one another through medical crises, marriages, breakups, job successes and job losses, births, lost pregnancies, family drama.  When my brother died some of the most comforting words came from these friends, along with a box stuffed full of love and concern.  But this - this is the worst imaginable thing ever to happen to one of our own.  We've all lost someone who we held a small part of in our hearts and we're struggling to know what best to do to give our friend some measure of comfort, how to be there for her in the days, weeks, months, years to come and how to say the right things (or not say the wrong things, there's always that).  

Hold your loved ones tight my friends.  They are not yours, they never were, and the profound love you feel for them is no barrier against what life may bring.  Every single day - EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. - you spend with those you love is a fucking GIFT.  Please don't waste it.  Resolve, if you haven't already, to create value in those moments with your children, your family, your partners, your friends.

Goodbye sweet Alyx.  You are one of the best that ever was and you are going to be deeply missed by many.  

 

 

Fear, Stasis, Transformation

My phobias:  Pooping in public bathrooms, spiders, drowning, tornados and confrontation.

Spiders, because of obvious reasons.  Drowning thanks to my brother and his tendency to hold my head under water whenever we were in a pool together.  Tornados?  I think that comes from the Wizard of Oz, because I've never actually been in a tornado.  They terrify me, though.

The pooping?  A delightful tale of two older girls bullying a first grader in the school bathroom when there were no adults or other students present.  Having two girls stand on the toilets on either side of your stall and mock you while you perform a perfectly normal human function apparently puts a mental lock on the sphincter.  For years.

Confrontation.  That might surprise some people.  In my comfort zone, not much of an issue.   Competition is part of my nature.  On the basketball court, any kind of game or contest,  no problem.  I'll go toe to toe with you.  With strangers, often not a problem.  With people I really care about or spend a great deal of time with, though, I've spent years choking on my fear whenever I've had to deal with others in a confrontational way.  I've gotten amazingly creative at hiding how absolutely horrifying it is for me to deliver bad news or confront someone's behavior.  

This is not in any way a poke at my parents, because like most parents, they had the tools they had and they did the best they could with them.  I can't fault them because I tend to use the same parenting toolbox.  The downside of this is that I had to learn as an adult how to find the language to explain my boundaries.  "You have to stop doing that because I said so" is really not the most useful way to confront a problem. 

Developing a lexicon to communicate about uncomfortable things is hard work, but I find it is also important work.  SG and I are a normal couple, which means we fight, we have bad days, we get cranky with one another.  Sometimes things get blown out of proportion.  Like everyone else, we either have to find ways to wind back down or we jeopardize the survival of our relationship.    In the same vein, learning this lexicon helps me to communicate better with my children and my family, my friends, people I work with.

Sometimes you have to find a way to express feelings, and I'm just as uncomfortable with that as anyone.  What I used to be really bad at was identifying the real what behind my emotions and learning to deal with the what instead of transferring or projecting.  I also have to remember in a conflict that the other person may also be engaging in transference or projection.  I might not know why, and instead of throwing gasoline on the fire by being angry, pointing fingers or placing blame, it may be more productive and compassionate to ask some questions, to seek understanding.  That doesn't mean I have to accept or condone certain behaviors, but I find it serves the relationship I have with another person for me to spend some time working on untangling that knot.

There are other times where you have to transcend feelings and cope with things on a more practical level, times when you need to let yourself and the other people involved be responsible for taking care of their own feelings and attending to the current issue with maturity and poise.  Its easy to say, harder in practice.  My children, who are not yet practiced in managing their emotional responses, are a perfect example of how feelings get in the way of progress.  The moment things go in a way they did not anticipate or expect, their emotions rise and so does their volume.  This of course is counterproductive toward achieving whatever end they had in mind, but they already lost sight of that the minute those emotions took hold.  They haven't yet developed the ability to delay reacting to an emotion in order to give themselves time to understand what is happening and how they might best react.

I meet plenty of adults who have the same problem, which I would guess is a result of never having had the honor of being around someone who was able to provide a better model of behavior, or perhaps they have not yet reached the point of being comfortable enough with self-examination to identify how and why this might be a problem.

What is interesting is the more I am able to witness other people modeling good confrontation skills the more I am able to find ways to practice those skills and have more positive outcomes.  As a result, though I still have old habits that it would serve me well to discard, I'm no longer afraid of confrontation.  I find I look forward to the opportunity to solve problems and seek resolution because I'm better at both listening and expressing myself.   No wonder -- just as it is often not much fun to have to do things you're not very good at, the opposite is true as well.

We all have different paths to walk; my path led me to the writings of David Richo, Wayne Dyer and other wise folks whose writings and lectures engaged my interest and had me wanting to learn more.  I've been privileged as well to encounter some very mature people who possess terrific conflict management skills.  Those individuals have provided me with many opportunities to learn in real-time by observing their ability to navigate situations that might have gone terribly wrong otherwise.  I've learned from my husband, who when he isn't being silly or stubborn or just a pain in my ass is remarkably compassionate and dedicated to trying to understand me and to nurturing the positive in our relationship.

If I could only apply the same principles to spiders and tornadoes.  

Not bloody likely.

 

 

 

 

But for Grace

I don't think its any kind of secret that I am one of those parents who sees my son's autism not as a problem to be fixed but as simply part and parcel of the person that he is.  Yes, we have struggles.  Yes, his autism has an impact on his daily life and as a result, often on ours.  There are things I wish were going to be easier for him and since they're not I see my job as doing all I can to make sure he has the tools and support he needs.  I don't let autism be an excuse for harmful behaviors, but at the same time I'm keenly aware that it is a reason for the ways he experiences his world.  Sometimes his behavior is the only way he can communicate effectively that something is not OK.  

This life of ours is not unlike most other peoples' lives in that even though it is peppered with moments of difficulty, challenge or disappointment, the vast majority of the time life is really pretty damn good.   I'm grateful for all that I have and do, grateful for amazing friends and family.  I'm even grateful for many of my challenges, grateful because they've almost always served to teach me something that helped me grow.

Many of the parents I have met through my son's autism are just like me.  They are optimistic - cheerfully or doggedly - and they are, like me, blessed to be able to experience the positive more than the negative.  They, like me, are grateful to see the autistic adults showing the world that autism is not the end of the world.  Like me, many of them take issue with any attempt to paint autism with the broad brush of "horrible," because for us, it isn't.

It isn't for them.  It isn't for me.

And I - we - are god damn lucky.

Nothing polarizes the autism community the way news of yet another senseless murder/suicide by the parent of their autistic child.  

It shouldn't be only at these times when I am reminded that there is another community within this community of special needs parents whose lives are far different from mine.  Unlike the parents in that other, hidden community, my life is not a daily reminder of, as my friend Flannery writes, "how big this spectrum is."  But it is easy in the process of living life as we know it to forget about the people for whom such a life is a dream long discarded.  

These are the families in danger of becoming headlines.  They're a Kelli Stapleton waiting to happen.  Or maybe they'll end up like Trudy Steuernagel.  

There is a vast pool of gray between the opposites of right and wrong.  There are things that are always going to be right, things that are always going to be wrong.  And then there are the things that happen when people's lives are so out of control that they've lost the ability to recognize the difference.  "People make choices," we say, and so they do.   Some things are not choices, some things are the results of other choices, some things are simply statistical anomalies in the vast pool of complexity that is life.   We don't know why some children are born autistic, we don't know why some children have autism that affects them more or less than others.  We just don't know.

What I find particularly unnerving is the pointedly vacant pool of services available to families in crisis, whether due to autism or to mental health or other issues.  Anyone who has been in physical, emotional or financial crisis (or is close to another person who has) knows that in times of great stress and fear it is nearly impossible to see the forest, let alone the trees.  When solutions are completely absent -- when available services are untenable or simply spread too thin amongst too great of a service population -- when there is no help -- what do families do?  There are no neat, cookie-cutter, self-help book, talk-show solutions for these parents.

One person's well-meant share of an autism success story has a far different impact on me than it does on families whose children will never have the cognitive ability to lead an independent, functional life.  When I read the quotes in Flannery's blog post, I realize that being able to live with my autistic child completely free of fear is a gift.  A fucking gift.  

My problems have solutions.  

As I said to my autism parent support group, "I don't even know where fixing this kind of problem starts."

One of my autism parenting heroes replied, "It starts with compassion."

So it does.

 

 

They are not ours

Having a friendly relationship with my ex makes it a lot easier for all of us.  The best part is that we have flexibility in our parenting time.  Because of projects at work, I've had to work on some of my weekend days and go in much earlier than normal.  Rather than send the kids to their grandparents I simply gave their dad a few extra days on his parenting rotation.  By midweek I was feeling lost without them and he had no problem letting me have them for after school and dinner.  

It helps soothe my heart to know that even though they're with their dad every other week, I can still see them whenever I need to.  They are growing so quickly that even just a week makes a difference.  

It nearly takes my breath away to watch them.  

My daughter is at that stage where the awkward angles of puberty and the gracefulness of a young woman co-exist in uneasy measure.  She is yet clear-eyed and innocent, despite intermittent episodes of what appears to require the exorcism of a  a snarling teenager demon.  I study her surreptitiously, trying to reconcile this tall young woman with the sturdy toddler I remember trying to keep up with.  

When I wake my son up in the mornings he automatically reaches his arms around my neck, even as he is trying to snuggle his face deeper into his pillow.  He wants me to pick him up and carry him out to the couch as I have always done, but this summer he gained 13 pounds and he is getting too heavy for me to lug around.  He's a skinny drink of water, my boy, all kneecaps and elbows.  He plays his games on the iPad or computer with remarkable intensity; it is a serious business, in his mind.  His wish lists include game manuals and mods.  

Walking in front of me are two human beings who are soon going to grow up and leave me behind.  That's how its supposed to work, we all know that.  But what happens if they make decisions I don't agree with?  What happens if the paths they choose are not safe for them?  We have babies because we want children to love; what probably never occurs to most of us is that they don't belong to us even a little bit.  

I have friends who were on their own the moment they turned 18 -- mom and dad expected that from then on they were no longer responsible for the well-being of their kids.  Others were on their own even before that, thanks to absent parents, neglect or abuse.  I find that heartbreaking, and I'm continually grateful for my own parents whose philosophy has always been that even though your children won't always need you to parent them, you are still their parents -- from "womb to tomb," as my mother says.  Sometimes this has meant helping out when finances were tight or nonexistent - buying groceries, making a payment for one of us, buying something as a "gift" for us that we really needed but could not afford.  My parents have been the people in my life I could always count on, even when they haven't been too happy with my choices.  They've stood up for me even when I haven't wanted to recognize or appreciate the things they've done to make my life better or easier.  They know who I am, the good things and the things that aren't quite so good, and they love me anyway.

That's not to say they have lived every moment of their lives waiting on their children to need them. Practically as soon as they dropped me off at my dorm freshman year of college they sold our old home and built a smaller house with a guest bedroom.  If I'd ever ended up homeless, of course they would have taken me in, but it was pretty clear that once the door closed behind the last child to leave home they did not believe it necessary to keep living in a larger house than they needed.  As soon as it was certain I was accepted at the UW and starting classes I think they breathed a huge sigh of relief and started booking trips to all the places they'd never been able to visit while honoring their responsibilities as parents.  

I learned some great lessons from my parents about being pragmatic rather than sentimental and about how it is possible to love and care for your children even when you don't care for the things they are doing or the company they keep.  They weren't perfect parents, of course (sorry Mom) but then again I haven't been a perfect daughter.  (Sorry again, Mom.)

I hope I will be handle my childrens' evolution into adulthood as well as my parents handled mine.  Its easy from this viewpoint to think that I will cope just fine; in reality I am sure SG will be called upon fairly frequently to dry my tears and there will be numerous discussions with my ex that begin with "CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOUR SON/DAUGHTER JUST DID?"  We'll survive.  We'll still have parenting to do; the things we will deak with will have a higher difficulty rating. 

 

 

Getting them unplugged

 

Saturday morning started out much like most every other Saturday morning when the kids are at my house.  By 6 am one or the other of them is at my bedroom door asking whose turn it is to get on the computer.  I randomly choose one of them and try to sleep for a few more minutes through the cacophony of disappointment and victory.  I drag myself out of bed, search for my eyeglasses and stub my toe walking down the hall to make coffee.

Fall has finally hit us here in the interior of Washington State, and this weekend had a forecast that called for staying home in ones' PJ's.  The arrival of fall also means that the available hours of daylight to get on my horse are dwindling.  So, despite the dire weather reports, I made plans to go to my friend's place.  She has a lovely covered arena and we decided that if it rained we could practice for the schooling show this weekend, and if it didn't rain, we could go out on the trails that lead from her place out along the Oregon side of the Columbia River.  SG and her partner get along quite well so we packed lunch items and some wine and decided to make a good half-day of it.

Getting horses fed and the trailer hooked up and loaded is always the easy part.  Getting my kids out of the house requires earplugs, a cattle prod and kevlar protective wear.

"I don't WANT to go!" my daughter cried, stamping her feet.  "I want to stay home and play Animal Jam!"  "NOOOOOOOO!" my son screams as I instruct him to end his Wii game. 

Their protests, though heartfelt, don't move me.  There are going to be plenty of inclement weather days this winter for them to turn into screen-watching slugs.  Bugs is already starting to grow his winter coat which leads me to believe we are in for a cold, icy November.  For now, I intend for my children to be outside as much as possible, even if I have to force them.

Once we got to Julie's, they forgot all about their games at home.  Ted had a burn pile going over by the pig pens and they couldn't get out of the truck fast enough.  They scrambled like puppies down to watch the flames, and for the next couple of hours I didn't hear one single whine, complaint or "I have nothing to DOOOOOOO".

They got to see the big 700 pound sow and her piglets and touch the noses of the weaner pigs.  They "helped" Ted do chores and played with the 6 year old son of the lovely young lady who trains horses at Julie's.  They got dirty and wet and generally had a wonderful time.  

SG got to hang out with Ted and make plans for butchering a pig next week (hel-LO Bacon!).  I not only got to ride my horse in the arena but on the trail as well when the rain gave us a nice intermission and we scurried out to the trailhead.  Just about the time we got back the wind started to pick up and big raindrops splattered my back. 

I guess we all got to unplug a little bit.  It was nice.

Two voices, one direction

Race Car Man didn't make it an hour at school today when we got the call he needed to be picked up.

I've gotten a lot better about not feeling completely and panicked when this happens, but even though I'm much more composed, I'm still disheartened and frustrated.  Three times since our meeting now he has had to be picked up from school, and other days the only reason he's managed to make a whole day at school was because his dad was in the classroom helping.  

This morning it was that he forgot to bring his MP3 player, which  he uses on the bus as a tool to help him not worry about other students and whatever they might be doing.  

I'm just not sure what the right placement is for my son.  His school seems completely  unequipped to deal with him, but the only other option within our district is a class for students with behavioral issues.  Yes, he has behavioral issues, but he also has autism and from talking to teachers and our therapist, who is aware of the classroom, we really believe it would be an even bigger detriment to him to place him there.  Which leaves us exactly where we've been since he started Kindergarten:  We have a smart student with a lot of issues who is unsuccessful in a classroom situation without a lot of individual support.  We have a school district who thus far isn't offering the kind of support we all (including his teacher and the administrators at his school) believe he needs in order to stay at that school and access learning in his current classroom.  

I have two inner voices.  One is all doom and gloom and whispers to me of terrible outcomes, of a child becoming an adult who is completely unprepared for the outside world. Who is still living in my basement and dependent on me and not living a fulfilling life with a job he loves and friends of his own and maybe even a wife and kids.  That he will never blossom or grow or get the chance to show the world how amazing he really is because I've failed thus far at figuring out how his puzzle pieces fit together. 

The other voice tells me that everything is going to be fine, we will solve this and we will get there.  I just don't know today, at this moment, how exactly that is going to happen.  And I have to be OK with that because there's nothing I can do at this moment to alter the situation.  I have made my call to the Director of Special Services.  I have spoken to (argued with) my husband.  I've spoken with my son's father.   We have a therapy appointment already lined up.  We are doing what we can and I have to put a brake on myself not to start getting ramped up and upset and making a thousand useless phone calls that won't do a damn thing to change the fact that probably there is no miracle solution to all of this.  That the long term change will happen if we just keep plugging away at it, working on the solution to the puzzle that is Race Car Man.  That answers will come to us that we haven't thought of yet. That ultimately, I can't even worry about the future because the only day that counts is today, and even if today didn't start off well I can still change it.

If I have to choose only one voice to hear, then by all means, let it be the one that points to a better place.

When I let myself live in the present I find that even though things might not be going well right now, my circumstances WILL change and I have the power to influence which way they go.

 

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This week has been a long one and I am hoping that by saying I am glad to see it be over that I am not also simultaneously cursing all of us and causing next week to be somehow worse.

The only place that seemed truly safe and sane was home, where it was just SG and me, the kids having been with their dad all week.

I don't really talk much about work here and that's not going to change.  Speaking in generalities, though, CRAZY WEEK.  So many metaphorical fires to put out!  

It was the second week back at school for the kids.  This is a big year for both of them; Amazon Girl started middle school.  For the first time in three years the kids are in separate schools.  I know this is simultaneously scary and tremendously freeing for both of them.  They love each other so much, even with all the fighting they do.  Race Car Man has always had his big sister there to depend on and now he's learning to be in the world on his own.  Amazon Girl has always felt the need to look out for her little brother.  This year she gets to worry about herself and I know that's a big weight off of her.

Both kids have had their challenges already, only two weeks into the school year.  

Race Car Man has had a combination of great/bad/OK/good/terrible days.  There's no pattern with that one.  It would be great if we could predict with any certainty what kind of challenges he is going to have; that way his teacher and classroom aides could at least have an idea of just how much wine they were going to need (or not) at the end of a given day! 

Last year at two of his IEP meetings I brought up the thought that he may need an aide who is primarily dedicated to helping him but who could assist his teachers when he was coping OK.  His teacher was for the idea but no one else seemed to want to pursue it.  

On the third day of school I ended up writing a letter to the district formally requesting an aide.  

I am very pleased that I received a phone call very quickly from the Director of Special Services and we have a meeting set up for Monday.  

Amazon Girl has had different challenges.  

To add some historical context:  In the third grade a boy in her class fixated on her for some reason.   His obsession expressed itself in constant teasing, poking, touching.  She finally complained to me about it and I brought it to the attention of her teacher and school administrators.  They observed, confirmed, and promised to keep an eye on things.  Eventually he escalated to pushing, yelling and finally hurting her.  The day he bent her hand back so hard we had to have her wrist x-rayed was the day I went a little ballistic with the school, and the other student was disciplined.  They put my daughter in a different classroom, which I was not happy with but they were separated.  Ultimately we ended up moving her to another school, not because of this boy but so that she and her brother would be at the same school after he was placed in his special ed classroom.

Fast forward to sixth grade.  The middle school she now attends has students from several elementary schools in the district, including her old school.  Guess who also happens to be at her new school?  He is not in her homeroom classes, but he ended up in the same rotation for the last class of the day -- Health/PE.  Apparently he started right back in with the verbal harassment, which I wasn't aware of.  But on Wednesday he crossed the line.  As she was walking out of her health class, he shoved her from behind, so hard that she slammed into the metal guardrail of the portable walkway.  Her stomach was still hurting the next morning.  She didn't tell any adults at school, but met her father in the parking lot and after telling him what happened, called me at work to let me know as well.

My ex and I went together to the school at 7 am the following morning and filed a complaint.  The complaint was taken seriously, the boy was interviewed.  Amazon Girl texted me later that she had met with the principal and told that the boy was being transferred to a different afternoon rotation so that she would not be in class with him.  

I am very hopeful that this is the end of the problem.  If he touches or harasses her further we will be contacting the police.  I suspect that there are things going on with this kid that I couldn't possibly know about, and I have sympathy for that, but he can't be allowed to hurt my child and cause her to be scared to go to school.  

I've told my daughter to find an adult right away if he comes near her or speaks to her.  But I've also told her that if she can't find any other help and can't get away from him that she should defend herself.  

Right now she's happy because she doesn't have to be in class with him; we can only hope that this is the end of it.  

It hasn't been a total wash, though.  My stepson Josh finished his Navy flight school testing and has been accepted to fly jets!  He's moving to Mississippi later this month.  Before he does that he gets to go to Texas to do this test where they put him on a centrifuge and spin him both with his pressure suit and without until he passes out.  I am told this is to measure his G-force tolerance.  Personally I just think the military gets its rocks off on making people incredibly dizzy.  After that he takes a short vacation in Hawaii and I am also told I am not allowed to hitch a ride in his suitcase.  On a very sincere note, his mom and dad and all of the rest of us are incredibly proud of his accomplishments.  Congratulations, Josh.  You are a terrific young man and I believe you really can do anything you set your intentions toward.

As for the rest of it, I would just like to know what it is that I could possibly say or do that for Pete's sake would convince the universe to let us have a whole lot of nothing happening the rest of the school year.  I'm open to suggestions.

 

I don't even know how to write this the right way

This is NOT humblebragging.  Not, not not.

It is a genuine outpouring of distress over the state of parenting in this world that anyone - ANYONE - would tell me, "Oh my gosh, you're such a hero!" because they found out I have a kid with autism.  Yet this weekend, while transacting some business with a local vendor, that's exactly what happened.  Its not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last, but its damn awkward.  I have found that constantly saying "Oh, not, that's not true," just results in more fervent assertions regarding my possible elevation to sainthood, so as a general rule now I just redirect the conversation.  "Say, did you hear about the kid in Kyrgyzstan that got bubonic plague?"

Here's a little newsflash for you, folks:  Parenting a kid with autism doesn't make me a hero to anyone except perhaps my kid -- but only in the way that every parent is a hero to their kids.  My ex is their hero.  My husband is their hero.  We are the adults they look up to and depend on.  But that's really as far as the hero title goes. 

In the grand scheme of Things We May Have to Deal With in Life, Race Car Man's fairly-high-functioning autism falls way down there with ingrown toenails, years when I have to send a check in with my 1040 instead of checking the IRS site daily for my refund status and the inconvenience of needing to pick up after three dogs everytime we want to play in the yard.  It isn't what I planned, but it isn't really all that bad.  

What was really under my skin about the incident that prompted this post is that the person who was dishing all the praise was doing so because we were talking about school and I described the program my son attends and mentioned communicating with his teacher daily via a notebook that comes home.  He thought it was just amazing that I was actually engaged with my son's teacher.  

Amazing?

Hardly.  Its what parents DO - or at least, its one of the commonly accepted responsibilities of parenting.

And this is really why I am upset, and where I become really judgemental.

There are parents who do not care how their child is doing in school.  There are parents who do not attend parent-teacher conferences or back-to-school nights.  There are parents of children with special needs that drop their kids off at school in the morning and feel that everything that happens beyond that point is the school's job & problem.  

When my daughter started kindergarten she had already been evaluated for an IEP and thus was placed in a special program in our district - an intervention classroom, for kids who have behavioral issues.  Open house night arrives and my ex and I arrive fifteen minutes early, with bells on, excited to see where our precious girl is going to be attending school for the first time, eager to meet her teacher and classroom assistants, eager to be a part of the education of our child.

We walked into the door of the portable to find the teacher and her aide staring at us with shocked expressions.  "PARENTS!  We have PARENTS!" the teacher exclaimed.  

"You mean...we're first?"

"No, you're the first parents I can remember having in a long time."

Pause a moment and let that sink in.

A classroom for children with special needs.  And no parent interested enough in the well-being of their son or daughter to bother meeting the teacher, seeing the classroom, hearing about curriculum and what methods will be used to address behavioral issues.  

Not one.

Our being there didn't make us good parents.  It made us ordinary parents, with ordinary care and concern about our baby girl.  The parents who were not there, they are NOT, I hope, ordinary.   I hope they are the smallest percentage of a minute fringe...and I fear they are not.

When people speak of "heroic" parenting, my thoughts go to parents who have it far more difficult than I.  Parents of children who will never be able to care for themselves.  Parents who have lived through devastating illnesses, terrible losses.  Parents who have dealt with extremes I cannot imagine.  And I suspect that most of those parents would very firmly deny any sense of their own lives as being heroic.  

The thought that I inhabit a world where the simple act of caring for my children and placing importance on their needs constitutes anything other than the expected acts of a loving parent is more than disturbing.  It is heartbreaking.