A viral takeover

We're in our second week of battling an endless stomach virus that has swarmed over everyone in the family except for the as-usual-impervious Mr. DMFP. This situation makes me more than happy that I work from home, as not working at home would have meant a grand total of six days of sick leave taken so far to stay home for various children or myself.

So...what with the work and the...um...issues, etc., there's not been much blogging. In my downtime lying next to moaning children or moaning next to a toilet myself, I've written a few in my head, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I leave you with this:

TH, thinking he needs to hurl (something he hasn't done in several years*), makes tracks for the toilet. He stands there, mouth open, for a minute or so, and then says, frustrated, "I don't know how to do this. What do I do?"

Do problems with executive function extend even to involuntary regurgitation?

*Ten minutes later, he was still there in front of the toilet, parked on a stepstool, happily vocalizing away with his "Peter Frampton's guitar" noises. He never did actually hurl, bless the child.

Accommodation

Over at autism.change.org, they're having a series of posts about accommodations for school, primarily having to do with college. I've done this myself many times over the years, arranging for anonymous notetakers for students, allowing recording of my class and laptops in class, and setting up specific arrangements for taking tests that included extended testing time, a quiet place to take the exam, and other accommodations. I've never thought of this as a burden of any kind and have always thought that it was great to be able to what I could for my students to show what they can. I now also realize looking back on some of them that they probably were on the spectrum. Not all, but some.

One thing I hadn't spent a ton of time on until the last few weeks, however, was thinking about testing and classroom accommodations for my own son, who has Aspergers. TH has, of course, had an aide since kindergarten, but he's never really been in much of a testing environment through kindergarten and first and second grades. The only tests he's had this year have been spelling tests, which have been low-key events that involve a pretest first and a "real" test four days later, and no big deal on either.

But the terrain has started to change. Timed tests are coming up, tough tests are coming up, tests that involve real grades and real consequences. And then there's the TAKS, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. TH will encounter the creepy necessity that is TAKS next year, in third grade. They'll be taking the math part of the test, which involves 30 math questions and unlimited time in which to complete them. Not too bad, right? Still, he'll be having some accommodations, including not being confronted with any "trial" questions, being allowed motor breaks, and being allowed to take the test in a quiet place by himself.

This latter, we've learned today, is key. His amazing stupendous incredible excellent teacher* from this year sent us an email reporting the results of a bit of an experiment she conducted today. The class was taking a timed math test called AIMS. TH insisted on trying to take it with the rest of the class. His teacher reports that he got "hung up" on one question that was "easy" for him but that he first answered incorrectly and then spent a great deal of time erasing and fixing. He insisted to her that "no math problem will be left behind." His score on this timed test landed him in the 50th percentile, which is fine, but...

Today, she cajoled--actually, joked (he'll do anything for a good laugh)--him into taking the test by himself with his aide nearby. So he did. And he nailed it, scoring above the 90th percentile on math that he doesn't even like, that he thinks is "boring" because it's not complicated enough.

If anyone was wondering, THAT's at least one difference accommodations can make. A difference of 40 percentile points. For some students, that can mean a difference that determines a lifetime. If you're a parent, know what you can request for your child in terms of accommodations at school. If you're a teacher and you get a 504 letter from your students, remember the big effects these little accommodations can have.

*I have to add that she wrote at the end of her email to me how much she enjoyed having TH in her classroom this year, ending with, "He is an AWESOME little boy." Sniff.

On prayer

TH, as noted here before, can throw a bit of a Doubting Thomas shadow on proceedings at Sunday School. This last Sunday, when the children came into the service after the sermon (in the wisdom of our Episcopalian elders, children do Sunday School while grownups do Sermon, which, in my opinion, should be the way to Peace in every church), he handed me a box that said, "First-Aid Kit" on the top. I figured it was some kind of "church" or spiritual first-aid kit, rather than the kind I have in the back of the van with all of the decent Band-Aids long gone, and it was.

I opened the spiritual first-aid kit, and it was completely empty except for two pieces of paper stuck inside. One, adhered to the inside lid, had been pre-printed with the question, "Whom do you call in an emergency?" and TH had put "911." (I think they probably meant for him to put "Jesus" or "God" or something less...electronic).

And on the second piece of paper, also stuck on the inside lid, the printed type read, "What is your prayer for healing?" TH summed his up in two (badly spelled) words:

"Youse bandades."

Practical child, isn't he?

What it means to be a mother

It's like a grade-school essay title, like "What I Did This Summer" sort of thing, isn't it? Well, hold onto your hats, 'cause this ain't grade school.

What it means to me to be a mother has evolved from the onset of my motherhood, which I date from May 4, 2001, when TH emerged, watermelon headed and pissed off, close to midnight. Within about 48 hours, "Being a Mother" realizations crashed down on my head like so many cinderblocks in an earthquake. I realized that babies don't like to sleep alone and that mine absolutely wouldn't. I realized that babies don't know from night and day. I realized that breastfeeding wasn't a natural, beautiful, intuitive thing but a painful, frustrating, Gentian-violet-colored experience that some days had me crying in pain until "we" adjusted. And I realized that having another human being inspired powerful, painful, terrifying feelings in me that were never, ever going to go away. I wanted to levant to Mexico, disappear in the Yucatan jungle, call in about 20 years when he'd survived to adulthood and see if everything was OK. But I stuck around, for better or for worse, for good.

What it means to me to be a mother has undergone some evolution in the ensuing 8 years and two more children. I'm still scared shitless about it, but I've gotten better at subduing that fear under a seemingly level-headed, laissez-faire outward facade in which I can casually say, "Oh, if he falls off of that, he'll only get a mild contusion. He'll learn from that." Meanwhile, of course, Mommy Brain, the part of my brain that has a greater intuitive understanding of mechanics than my Conscious Brain will ever hope to have, busily calculates the infinite permutations and physical outcomes of the scenario, eventually concluding that the P of actually sustaining a critical injury is about 0.00000000000001. This Mommy Brain calculus works even when I am asleep.

In spite of my incessant, nagging, clawing anxiety that I struggle to drown in busyness, laughter, jokes, hugs, kisses, nighttime readings, movie nights, board games, teachable moments, good dinners, a cupcake every once in awhile, and careful driving, I really have evolved as a mother and as a person. Like many women, I do see my individual self and my mommy self as two different selves. One is allowed to swear freely, have sex, watch R-rated movies, understand PhD-level biology, and stay up past midnight. The other nurtures and has patience, gives baths, hugs a lot, is up at midnight after having gone to sleep at 10 pm, and pays close attention to the minutiae of Pikachu's character arc and that latest Star Wars/Indiana Jones Legos amalgam that Dubya has built. As my children age, these two selves will likely merge more and more into one unit.

One thing I've noticed is that the already beginning merge of Mommy and Me has definitely made some changes. My high-level crankiness, impatience, dismissiveness of weaknesses, urgent sense of living and movement have all ebbed, declined, yielded to the great deal of practice I've now had in being Mommy. I find that I carry my patience with my children into other situations. I find that as I let go of my control freak tendencies with my children, I forget to pack them up again for other scenarios. As I've learned to understand and sympathize with my children as little independent people with needs and desires and strengths and weaknesses that are just as important as a grown-up's, I've translated that into many other relationships. Yes, it's true. Motherhood has wrought changes in Me. Motherhood has calmed Me down. Sometimes.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. Tomorrow, I'll still be scared shitless. But tomorrow, I'll still be a Mother, and I'll still be Me. As I get older, what I define as Me may change, little by little or a lot by a lot. But since May 4, 2001, there's one thing I've been and that I will always be, for the rest of my life: A mother. Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. Try to keep that maternal anxiety tamped down and enjoy your day!

Curiouser and curiouser

I gave my last final exam today. Most grades are averaged, most of my students did fine. As we parted, several expressed how much they'd enjoyed the class, smiled at me cheerfully, and wished me a happy summer. They wrote notes on the final surveys we administer in the class about how much they liked it, how they like science now, how much fun they had.

And I'd say that to each of them, the feeling is mutual.

As I walked to my car, thinking about the thousands of people whom I've taught since taking up the chalk in 1994, I pondered what the best of my students had in common. It's really no secret, and it's something I've known almost as long as I've been teaching. I've taught all ages, from five to 55, and guess what the one common thread is connecting my best students, the ones that bring the greatest pleasure to teaching and learning? It's not smarts. It's not brilliance. It's not ability.

It's simply intellectual curiosity.

If there is one thing I, as a parent, want my children to have, it's that kind of curiosity. And if there is one thing that I've appreciated over the last 15 years in my role as educator, it's students with that quality. Students who can find the "interesting" in almost anything. The ones who pay attention and wonder and think and ask questions out loud even if they're kind of harebrained ideas, who grab onto information with their minds and turn it around and over, divining everything new from it that they can. They truly are a teacher's greatest pleasure. Or, at least, they're mine. Were mine.

And they're the ones I'll miss as I leave academia for the life of the WAHM*. Luckily for me, on the home front, I've got a treasure trove of harebrained ideas to encounter every day from my own intellectually curious trio. In the past few days alone, I've had to discourage flushing ice down the toilet, mixing up pepper and soap with some mouthwash, and bringing a collection hapless, captive (alive) grasshoppers into the home in an open container. I'm pretty sure my little live-in students are going to keep this newly formed 100% WAHM on her toes for the foreseeable future.

*Work-at-home-mom, for those of you who are uninitiated into the Internet shibboleths. The real questions is, do you pronounce it the way someone from Boston says "warm," or do you pronounce it so that it rhymes with "bam." I'm running with the Bostonians on this one.

Lemons and lemonade

Today, I was trying to make a pie. It's a great apple pie that requires lemon juice to give it that perfect, tart zing that a decent apple pie oughta have. But...I had no lemons. I had three children and rush hour traffic, both of which I would have to manage just to get to the store to purchase a single freaking lemon. So, since life didn't give me any lemons, I used some lemonade I had in the fridge. It worked out just fine. It wasn't what I thought I needed...in fact, it was something like it but more complex and nuanced...and I still have a great apple pie to show for it.

When I was pregnant with TH, I was dumb enough to have some hopes, make a few plans. The control freak in me monitored every fetal movement, worried about every developmental stage, insisted on a level II ultrasound at 18 weeks, not to find out the sex but to really see if the anatomy was OK. Everything looked great, so I assumed we'd be getting a fine baby boy, a child who would no doubt be bright, fascinating, perfect. Don't we all at least secretly hope for things like that? Or maybe it was just me. It's OK. I'm way over things like that now.

I used to worry that I'd never be equipped to manage anything "special" in a child, that I wouldn't have the patience, wherewithal, or energy, that I wouldn't be able to survive the premature demise of whatever inchoate expectations of glory I had for any of our children. And if I were going to have a child with "needs," I wanted to know about it as long before the child showed up as possible. Hence the level II ultrasounds.

As anyone who reads here knows, the child we might have expected in some foolish, arrogant moment of prenatal planning, of anticipation, is not exactly your typical child. We didn't know before he showed up. We started slowly figuring it out as he gained in days and weeks and months. And now we know, for sure. He's unique. He's bright, in spirit, personality, and mind. He's fascinating, at least to us, not a straightforward study but complex and unexpected. And, yes, it's true, he's also the most perfect TH we could ever hope to have in our lives.

I thought that for the perfect recipe of our family, we needed and ought to have a specific kind of child, one that reflected only the best and the brightest of what we could give, one that would reflect the perfection of our mature, well-read parenting, our own intellects and understanding. Life has handed me a few tart lessons, many dealing with my manifold imperfections and my utter inability to control or foresee fate. It wasn't what I was expecting when I was expecting, but life also has kindly and unexpectedly served me up some lemonade, for which I am daily thankful.

So, we say it's his birthday

And it is. Today, TH turns eight. At 11:56 p.m., to be precise. Eight years ago today, I had decided at that point that we were NOT going to push (ahem) this thing over into yet another dawn. And here he is.

Sick.

Not the flu. Not strep throat. Our 1.5 hours at the doctor's office this morning yielded a diagnosis of just a garden-variety stuffy nose with borderline ear infection. He's sitting next to me in our home office as I type this, howling away like a Def Leppard reject from 1982. Complete with Axel-Rose-type falsetto and a few "uhhs" and "ooo-whoas." Pretty entertaining.

We're in the midst of final exams this week, so I had to take Mr. Hairband Ear-infected Birthday Boy with me to today's final. He sat quietly on the floor, hiding out of sight behind a fortress constructed of the instructor's media console and some chairs, playing his new Pokemon DS game. Eventually, he complained that his butt hurt, so I suggested that he actually sit in one of the chairs, but he turned beet red at the very thought of sitting in a chair where all of those people could see him, and declined.

After the exam ended, I began gathering up materials, and TH finally emerged from his lair. He stood, surveying the classroom of about 50 empty chairs, densely packed into chaotic rows. After about 5 seconds, he remarked, "You know what? There are only three of that kind of chair right there."

I looked. The chair in question had a burgundy seat color. There were actually seven chairs that color. I noted it. And he said, impatient with me, "No, look at the desk part." And sure enough, only three of those seven chairs, in three different parts of the room, also had a desk with a short extension for resting the elbow. The others did not.

In that brief 5 seconds, TH and his remarkable visual discrimination had isolated the two distinctive features of 3 out of 50 scattered, empty desks and classified them accordingly. I'm pretty sure that this ability--which is likely part and parcel of his Asperger's--is going to be of use to him someday. It likely is already.

The world would be a boring place if all chairs were exactly the same, wouldn't it? And our world would be unbearably dull and empty if we didn't have our TH, our unique (even if he changes his grip), happy, funny, special, one in almost seven billion baby boy. Happy birthday, TH. You'll always be our little guy who stands out in a crowd.

So beautiful

Our Little Da is 2.75 years old, give or take. A beautiful child, one whose looks draw comments wherever we go, he's even more beautiful on the inside, with a sweet, sassy, hilariously comical nature that has swept us all off of our feet. And then, he's startled us all lately with his maturity. This morning, he came to me, blankie and paci in hand and said, "Excuse me. Can I get the broom out? I want to sweep the ground."

Yes, he really did start that question with "Excuse me." And he does enjoy sweeping the ground.

His impulse control is almost alarming, especially when juxtaposed with that of his older brother, Dubya, who has none. Little Da will approach, for example, a low wall and feel a sudden urge to climb on it. He's two. Most two-year-olds would just get on the wall. Little does not. Instead, he turns and says, "Is it OK if I climb on that wall?" It's a sort of preternatural self control that almost makes me nervous. If it were Dubya, Dub would have been on the wall, fallen off the wall, and sustained a hairline fracture of a long bone before I could have intervened.

Then there's Little's language. We were listening to a new Bob Dylan release (oh, bleeding heart libbie commie bastards that we are) in the car the other day, and he remarked, "This sure is a long song." He sees and understands emotions in himself and others, noting when people are mad or sad. Today in the car, I playfully pushed Mr. DMFP on the arm, and Little schooled me with, "Mama, you are not supposed to push on Dada like that."

I myself was schooling TH yesterday (in the car, of course) on how best to interact with Little during one of Little's two-year-old angry fits (he is still two). "TH," I said, "your best bet is to not touch him." TH hears that a lot. "Instead, you should try to do something that will make him laugh." At this, Little started laughing. "Apparently," I observed, "all you have to do is talk about making him laugh, and that will work." And Little, obviously in on his own joke, laughed again for comic effect.

He tells us he loves us, spontaneously. He hugs. He kisses. He demands, in that bossy, two-year-old way. "Come to my room and read this book to me. Sit on the bed." Two nights ago, he searched the house for three pacis, acquired three blankies from his armoire, and then led Mr. DMFP and me into the livingroom to "sit on the couch with him," where he distributed a fuzzy and a paci to each of us. I assume it was some sort of summit meeting at which blankies and pacis were de rigeur. If that's not executive functioning, I don't know what is.

We've never had a child who could do these things at this age. In fact, we have older children who still don't do some of these things. Little Da seems like a kind of miracle to us. I keep telling Mr. DMFP that this beautiful little guy is going to save our lives some day. I can just tell.

And then, there's the little thing he did yesterday. We were sitting in my chair, playing, talking, and laughing, which we do most of the time we're together. He put a little toddler hand on each side of my face, framing it with his baby fingers. He put his own face close to mine, smiling big, as usual, when he paused in his laughter and started looking at me intently. And then, to my surprise, my pleasure, my amazement, he said, with a sort of thoughtful, wondering look on his face, "Mama, you are beautiful."

Only later did I stop to think of it as a compliment, one you don't get to hear too much when you're 41. At the moment, I was simply dumbstruck, wondering to myself, "Where in the world did he learn to say that word?"

Handwriting with tears

In TH's last ARD meeting, we discussed the fact that he still holds his writing implements in a 100% fisted grasp, just as one might have held an ice pick back in the days when ice required picking. This grasp interferes with a few things, not the least of which is letter formation. His writing is quite unreadable unless you're an expert in TH script, and his numbers in particular are difficult to distinguish from one another.

We, the school, several therapists, and TH worked on this grasp for about three years. It was part of his IEP for two years until halfway through second grade, when we finally all gave in and took it out. He'd been fighting changing his grip that entire time, special grips, shorty pencils and crayons, and positive encouragement and reinforcement notwithstanding. He resisted it all. Stubbornly. He likes holding his pencil that way, dammit, and it "feels right" to him.

The grasp comes down to fine motor skills, and now it's entrenched. When he was younger, about 3 or 4, we were told not to make a big deal out of it. Then, in kindergarten, it kind of became a big deal because it interfered with classwork progress--when you basically have to sketch every letter you make backwards, writing becomes a tremendous chore. Go ahead--try it. Grab a pencil like an ice pick and then write with it. That's what it's like.

Add to that the fact that all writing programs are predicated on the good old tripod grasp, and what we ended up with was some serious struggle with writing. Things have improved somewhat now that TH is learning cursive through the Handwriting without Tears program. For those of us who had to learn to make capital Qs that looked like curly 2s, this program will knock your socks off. It's basically upright print letters linked together. It's been great for TH because the linking of the letters has helped him actually follow a horizontal line for the first time in his life while writing. Normally, his words go over hill and down dale in a way that can make ya dizzy trying to follow them.

We found out in the ARD meeting that when the school psychologist tested TH, she--unaware that we'd laid down our arms in this battle--had gotten him to hold his pencil with a tripod grasp. The last day, she discovered that he'd gotten a pass on that, but she observed during the ARD that he can do the tripod grasp. And we all--the OT, speech, special ed teacher, parents, teacher--all observed how utterly resistant he is to making that change. In the interests of furthering his ability to write, eat (uses a fisted grip for that, too), and use a steak knife some day, I suggested that I'd work with him on the tripod grasp while doing homework every night.

Yes, sure I will.

Last night, I sprang this on TH for the first time. "Hold your pencil this way," I requested. He looked horrified. "What!?!?" he exclaimed. "Baby," I said, "you're going to have to really start working on holding your pencil this way so that you can get used to it. It will help you write and eat better." "WHAT?!?" he almost hollered. "I'm going to have to hold my pencil like that for the rest of my LIFE?!" I nodded.

And his face crumpled. He sobbed. Really really sobbed. Tears, real ones, made their way over his freckles and dimples. His mouth did that crumply thing that used to warn us that a Big Event was coming on. And every time he tried to regain his composure, he'd lose it all over again. We hugged. I patted him. We hugged some more. I held him. He was devastated. It was even worse than the Great Lint Loss of Earlier This Month.

Poor baby. "TH," I said, in my most maternal voice, "sweetie, why does that bother you so much?"

"Because," he wailed, "everyone holds their pencil that way. If I start doing it, I won't be unique any more!"

Sometimes, as a parent, I find it very hard not to laugh out loud at inappropriate moments. That was one of those moments.