They are vaccinated

Yesterday, I willfully, wantonly, and with parental and civic responsibility aforethought took my three children to receive the H1N1 vaccine. No one appears yet to have developed autism as a...oh, nevermind. I am pleased to report that Little Da, who at our previous appointment spent 20 minutes wallowing around on the floor at the doctor's office in a silent tantrum, stepped right up to the scale this time and snorted his vaccine like a pro. Yes, like a pro! The fun part was that it was absolutely free. I had a fleeting moment of feeling like I was part of the French healthcare system.

Strange to think that vaccinating my children could be a controversial decision on my part, but it is. Some people offensively assert that parents who do what I just did are abusing their children, purposely placing them in harm's way, carelessly exposing them to chemicals with names that the accusers, at least, don't recognize. Some people take it so far that they will send death threats to journalists who don't vilify vaccines and resort to sexist name calling, including prostitute and whore.

Sadly, everything they think, everything that worries them, is almost as dangerous a plague of viral verbiage as the real viruses that threaten those most at risk from the real and deadly diseases against which we vaccinate. The misinformation, the outright nonsense out there is legion. The rumor mill grinds out all of the facts and leaves only buzzwords that scare people to death, while leaving them and their children exposed to the possibility of dying from a preventable disease. Or worse, unintentionally infecting a member of a vulnerable population and killing them.

The passionately misinformed with their accusations of abuse and prostitution use hard words. But I'd take it all and more to do the right thing by my children and the society of which they are a part. I encourage any parents who vaccinate to make clear that they do the same.

The falseness of prophets

I was reading The Onion last night. I often read The Onion. Where else will I learn that I will win the lottery that day unless I read this horoscope? Where else will I be able to check weekly for them to top (no pun intended) the all-time best Onion headline ever: "Trophy Wife Mounted"? In addition to reading the fake horoscopes (which I realize is redundant), I also read the real stuff: movie reviews, interviews, and so on in The A.V. Club section.

What I didn't expect to learn from this fine publication was the following. Ever drawn to all things Wild Things, I homed in on an interview with Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze. Midway through the published piece, I came across their discussion of how Where the Wild Things Are was received at its initial publication. Apparently, there was an outcry, largely because there was no "lesson" in the book: Max gets no comeuppance--he gets his dinner. His mother calls him a name, yet it's OK. Oh, how very quaint to expect a children's book to have a message that only adults would appreciate.

The two interviewees relate that one of the most outspoken critics of the book was a "famous" child psychologist who, as it turns out, had never actually read the book. Not bothered to read the 10 lines of text in a children's book before publicly bashing its content.*

Who was that brazen, false child psychologist, you may ask?

Why, Dr. Refrigerator Mothers himself, Bruno Bettelheim.

Surprised? Strangely, I was not. There's no surprise to me that a man who would willfully and carelessly destroy the family dynamic, parental self esteem, and childhood potential of hundreds of autism families would, with no basis in experience, bash one of the best children's books of all time.

*I have not independently confirmed this statement. But...I have read Where the Wild Things Are. Thousands of times. I think that at least independently helps to confirm that I am not a refrigerator mother.

The Dubya Warrior

I've found a potential therapist for Dubya. The first couple of people I called, both psychiatrists (i.e., Minor Dieties), apparently are really just glorified, board-sanctioned drug dealers who appeared to have no interest whatsoever in my son as a person or in behavioral approaches to his problems. In fact, the secretary of one of the MDs informed me that Dr. Dopedealer "doesn't 'do' behavioral therapies. Her main focus is med management." If someone on a street corner on the East Side had this as their main focus, they'd call it possession with intent to distribute. But if an MD does it for a child she has no intention whatsoever of actually getting to know, it's called "med management."

Sorry to scathe and let me just say here that I have more doctors on my sh!t list than on my all-praise-them-list I have many friends who are doctors. Really, I do. But they're the good doctors, of course.

I gave up on the MD world for my son, however, and moved back to the therapist world, as in PhD, MSW, etc. We've got a cold tie for success with this group of practitioners. Our children's caregiver in San Francisco was an MSW who basically worked with them eight hours a day, five days a week. She was like magic with them. But we also tried a psychologist for TH when he was ideating suicide a lot at age 4, and we didn't find that so successful. And I forgot until this moment about the utterly worthless guy who "helped" us with "suggestions" over six $150 sessions about how to apply behavioral approaches with Dubya's ADHD diagnosis. That was the biggest waste of $900 I've ever known.

The therapist we've chosen is an MSW. I meet with her this week, and based on recent events, it's not a moment too soon. Dubya's "confessionals" have been coming non-stop. He gets in the car after school and starts in, sometimes confessing about intrusive thoughts of recent vintage, sometimes resurrecting old "transgressions" that can reach as far back as age three or four. He confesses all through homework, dinner, bath, leisure time...any time one of his parents is around to lend a priestly ear. It's a fine line, dealing with these. On the one hand, you don't want to dismiss his concern and anxiety, which is quite real for him. On the other, you don't want to validate these worries about ephemera by giving them too much weight. Accompanying the hyperconfessional tone around our house is a snort-tic that would wake Rip van Winkle, one Dubya fires off at a fairly consistent per-second rate.

What goes on in that obsessive, tic-ing, worried mind of his? We're not entirely sure, but we do know a bit about what comes out. Over on our family art blog, I've posted a recent picture Dubya made, depicting a battle scene. Was he in WWII in a past life? Where does he see these things? How does he know what it all looks like?

It's going to take time, it seems, to wander the labyrinth and discover the secrets that are the mind of Dubya. We're hoping that this therapist will prove an able navigator. At the very least, she's no knee-jerk, deity-from-a-distance "med manager."

The Dragon Warrior

He didn't inherit it from me. My tongue is tied, so short that I can only extend it from my mouth about half an inch. It's ridiculous, really, and I can't roll my R's, a fact that I blame for my inability to master Spanish.

But TH has a tongue that has a life of its own. How to really get this across...hmmm...have you seen Kung Fu Panda? That part where the praying mantis hits a nerve and paralyzed the panda, leaving Panda with a cockeyed, paralyzed expression, the tongue lolling to the side (see image)? That's TH. Except in motion, the tongue moving from side to side, the face shifting like a rolling wave of distortion.

He's not entirely unaware of these faces. In the mornings, when he's supposed to be brushing his teeth, the dead silence from the bathroom tells me he's looking at himself in the mirror while he makes a series of terrible gargoyle expressions at himself. But he often does it completely unaware of its effects.

Like he did yesterday in church. In the front pew. Repeatedly. To the distraction of all of the adults who were desperately trying to listen to a sermon about Job and leviathan. TH expressed a wish to sit with us during the sermon, rather than being in Sunday school with his peer group, and we granted it. He had a dinosaur book with him. Periodically, he'd come across a particularly violent depiction of the depredations of a carnivorous dino, and there'd be that face...just like Kung Fu Panda. And now that I think about it, it's not just the acupuncture face he makes; many of his expressions look just like that panda. Is he the Dragon Warrior?

Anyway, with his tongue lolling around like he had tardive dyskinesia, I felt uncharacteristically a wee bit self conscious there in the front pew, TH behind the scholarly minister, rolling his tongue around and distorting his face in shock at the image of the wreckage of a T. rex dinner, the unwitting minister continuing her interesting discourse on Job. And I noted that many parishioners had, at least momentarily, left Job by the wayside to watch TH express his shock at what T. rex could do to another dinosaur (or what a human artist thought a T. rex could do). They didn't know that's what they were watching, they were just watching.

I reminded him repeatedly, poked him, hissed in his ear a couple of times. Yet he kept forgetting. There'd be that tongue, the Kung Fu Panda succession of facial distortions, the distracted parishioners. Little do they know that this unlikely little fella is going to grow up to be the Dragon Warrior someday.

Cells alive!

The title of this post actually comes from one of my favorite sites on the Web, both for teaching and just for geeking out. While we're geeking, I also love this site. I suggest clicking on the cholera and Listeria videos if you really want to freak yourself out. Watch the cholera toxin cause cells to pump themselves dry! Watch that Listeria divide before your very eyes and overwhelm the cell!

Microbes, at a distance, are cool. Close up? Well, thank God for vaccines.

And, with the exception of viruses, microbes are cells, and that takes me to the real point of this post. How's that for a segue?

You may recall from a previous installment that we resolved the TH/homeschool dilemma thanks to the greatness of his school: He gets to spend some time each week pursuing an interest of his choosing, immersing himself in it, collecting the numerical facts about it that he loves so much, looking at pictures and videos, and reading about it.

We've been discussing his initial choice of subject. And for once, it's not acorns or sharks, his usual monomanias (or is that bimania?). At first, it was "science." I mentioned that this topic might be rather broad and suggested that perhaps he narrow it down. We expected that he might pick something marine or foresty or large. But instead, he decided yesterday that he'd study cells.

He's gone down this road before. His favorite kind of cell is a macrophage, still. The choice he made yesterday got him so excited that he dug out his science fair poster from first grade and set it up in the garage. Showed it off to both of his slightly bemused younger brothers and chattered happily about it to me. Looking back, I'd say the child did a really good job on that poster, considering he (a) couldn't read at the time, (b) has continued difficulty with project management, and (c) had no real idea of what we were actually doing. But it's all his own work. Yes, autistic people can enter science fairs, too.

So, we enter the world of cells. I love 'em myself, so I'm looking forward to this. And as someone whose eyes simply glaze over when someone starts talking botany (I love plants! I just don't...love botany), I'm immensely relieved he didn't select acorns. Although sharks would've been pretty cool.

Throw that away?

We've been having some memory-related problems around here the last couple of days, and in the interests of full disclosure and oversharing, I'm going to describe two here.

Last night, as I was making my children their almost completely unprocessed dinner (grapes! scrambled eggs! carrots! toast with local honey!), I got out some carrots. In the midst of this, I was also busy telling Mr. DMFP about my long day at a conference workshop in a room full of science writers of all shapes and sizes, mentally, Web 2.0-ly, and otherwise, learning all about the Web 2.0 world.

I seem to have gotten so caught up in my fascinating tales of the minutiae of tweeting, podcasting, blogging, and otherwise Web 2.0ing that I misplaced the carrots. We looked all over the kitchen. All over the dining room. We blamed the preschooler. We blamed each other. Then, finally retracing how my mind actually works, I looked in the trash can. There they sat, perfectly good carrots, bright orange against the black trash bag.

Reader, I washed those carrots and used them anyway. How's that for frugal? Please, don't tell the children. Pinkie swear, that trash can was otherwise totally empty, the bag brand new.

Today, I'm home with TH. He's almost never sick--which seems to be a trait for some autistic kids and not a trait for others--so when he says he feels bad (oh, and when he has a somewhat scary, productive cough)--I keep him home, even without fever. He had to go with me to take the others to school, so he was completely dressed. We returned home, where he happily if congestedly engaged with his Wii, where he stands, Wiimote in hand, playing Mario-something-or-other while repeatedly saying "Roger, roger" in high-pitched "robot" tones. That's a favorite for him. I think it's his "Clone Trooper" voice, one of a broad repertoire. We're not entirely sure what TH's actual voice sounds like.

As I went about my business in the kitchen (seems like these days, I'm either in the kitchen or in the car), I opened the trash can to toss in something and saw...a pair of perfectly good socks in there. Once again, the trash bag was almost empty except for these socks. I carefully extracted them and interrupted Mr. Roger-roger: "TH, are these your...socks?"

He looked at me blankly, and nodded. "Baby, they were in the trash. Why did you throw your socks in the trash?"

Clearly confused, he thought for a moment, then got that grin of dawning realization on his face. "Oh," he said, looking pretty sheepish. "I thought that was the laundry basket."

Have we finally solved the mystery of what happens to all of the socks around here? I guess we need to stop blaming the preschooler.

The Wild Thing

Little Da is our Wild Thing. There is something a bit feral about him, even in the midst of his uncommon courtesy and self control. While he is, indeed, the child who only two days ago at a birthday party espied a couple of stray marshmallows and asked, carefully, "Can I eat these?", he's also got this full set of sharp-looking teeth that he bares while laughing a slightly untamed laugh. His canines are no laughing matter--Dubya's got their imprint in his back as we speak, having suffered the payback of some transgression involving a golf club/light-saber/sword that Little "had first." Yes, we're working on using our words instead of our teeth.

Given his edge of ferality (is "ferality" a word? No matter), it may come as no surprise that of all of our children, this one loves Where the Wild Things Are the most. They've all liked it, but he's a boy obsessed. We read it--and have been reading it for at least a year--on a nightly basis, many many times in a row. And his favorite parts are when Max's mom calls him "Wild thing!" and when Max calls for the "wild rumpus" to start.

Do you remember the first time you encountered this most insightful of children's books? For some reason, I do. I was three. It was in my grandmother's kindergarten. Ruling from a wheelchair, she ran a private kindergarten from the "carriage house" behind her home, and the place was packed with books, one of which was this Maurice Sendak classic. I found it in a pile in the corner. I opened it. The Wild Things looked like friends to me, but edgy, unpredictable friends who might, at any minute, perhaps bite you "just to see." And I completely identified with it, the getting in trouble, the satisfying fear, the edgy Wild Thing companionship, the safe retreat to one's own room.

It wasn't until I started reading the book to my own children, however, that I realized the depth of those 10 lines of words. Max steps into a self-created adult world in the place where the Wild Things are. He becomes that adult bossing him around. He practices adult behaviors, punishing his own perceived malfeasance in others, exorcising childhood shame, taking control where he's had none. Then, he wearies of being a grownup and wants, simply, to be a child again. A foray into a scary world followed up by the safety of his own room and a hot supper waiting for him. The hopes and fears of childhood all packaged neatly and wildly into those ten lines.

Now, there's a movie. I'd heard the trailer was a tad scary. So, I watched it. And Little came to watch with me. Again. And again. And again. Every night now, as many times as I can tolerate, we watch that trailer. And there are two moments in it when my semi-feral little Wild Thing shows those terrible teeth of his and cuts loose with that edge-of-safety laugh: When Max calls out, "Let the wild rumpus start!" and when a Wild Thing says to Max, "I'll eat you up, I love you so." It reaches right to Little's core, and his whole body reacts with the thrill of it. Every. Single. Time.

I've seen reviews of this film, all of them adult written, of course. And I've not seen the movie myself--I'll be taking the two older kids next week. But based on this trailer and my own Wild Thing's reaction to it, I'd say that some adults may not remember that edgy, fearsome world of childhood pretending and sharp-toothed adult behaviors that, if we were lucky, we only acted out as imaginary play before returning to the safety of our own rooms, a hot supper waiting for us. And then, some of us do remember, quite clearly. Sendak--and apparently Spike Jonze--seem to recall with native, persistent intuition that for children, in their heads and outside their heads, Here There Be Monsters. That they always live in their minds where the Wild Things are.

Words

Every dawn is an open door.

Every evening is a victory.

Back to our regularly scheduled worrying

Or, as we note in trends around here, OCD.

I have to look for psychiatrists for Dubya. His doctor told us to check out which ones our insurance covers, then give her the list. She'll select one who does more than act as a highly degreed drug dealer for children, i.e., one who spends time on behavioral therapies without (or with, as necessary) pharmaceutical intervention. He's a tricky case because his tics preclude many pharmaceuticals for ADHD, and the OCD just complicates things even more.

And apparently, we're not a moment too soon. The OCD behaviors have jacked up big time around here lately. Luckily, he came by it honestly--through his mother, i.e., Me. As an experienced obsessive myself (compulsions? only really really healthy ones these days), I can at least help him out with managing the intrusive thoughts that he's complaining about, having developed some good management techniques over the years. My obsessiveness doesn't interfere with my life; it just makes me a pretty good editor.

Intrusive thoughts like what, you may ask? Well, let me tell ya. Before I got into writing this post, I googled "pediatric OCD" and came up with a list of standard behavioral features. In fact, these are so prevalent among this population that if the behaviors differ from this list, it's likely something else, not OCD.

Common obsessions and compulsions in the pediatric population include

• --Things having to be arranged in a certain way
• --Contamination-related behaviors, like handwashing
• --What they call "aggressive obsessions," which can include intrusive thoughts related to violence or catastrophic events
• --Obsessions about harm to oneself or others
• --Need to confess

There are a few others, but the ones I listed above are Dubya's set. He exhibited the handwashing behaviors starting a couple of years ago. He's so obsessed with it that if he touches his nose, he thinks he has to wash his hands. He's requested that we put the hand soap he likes in the upstairs bathroom, too, so he can wash when he's up there, as well. In other words, he's seven, and he's got a soap preference. We've informed his teacher and asked her to limit the number of times he can go handwash. With the limitations we set on it, he's not gotten to the scab stage again, although he did when he was about five. He's very concerned about contamination, and it's not helping much right now that everyone's talking talking talking about handwashing because of the flu. Nevermind the fact that it probably transmits most often by air.

He's notorious for his arrangements of things and for flying off the handle when they get disarranged. But it's the "aggressive obsessions" that are most prominent. These come through by way of his confessional impulse, so several times a day, he will "confess" something. Usually, it's related to some accident he was involved in as the causative agent, sometimes years earlier. He'll worry that rather than its having been an accident, he did it on purpose, which is classic OCD. He'll "confess" to replaying terrifying scenes in his head from movies that he hasn't even seen--he's just heard about it from friends. His complaint is that he just can't stop playing it over and over, freaking himself out. If he gets a consequence for the most minor infraction, he'll worry it for days, saying many days or even weeks later, "I'm still worried that I did that." And then, there's the typical family SIFO catastrophic thinking that abounds.

I'd say he probably spends most of his waking hours replaying these things in his head and worrying about them. And lately, in the last few weeks, he "confesses" several times a day. Sometimes, it's intended as a real confession, some very minor transgression of a year or two vintage that he's got to get off his chest. Repeatedly. Other times, it's a "confession" of the replaying videos of violence or aggression in his head. Never, I add, any violent behavior on his part. And then, other times it's some accidental harm he's caused a friend or family member that's eating away at him, even if it happened literally years ago.

I have watched that child from infancy develop into this anxious and obsessive little person. As an obsessive person myself, I've recognized some of the clear signs along the way and have done my own version of cognitive behavioral therapy to show him that his compulsions aren't required for life to go on. But given his youth--only just turned seven--and these escalating manifestations, those signs have become flashing alarms. Must. Head. Off. OCD.

Starting with this list of psychiatrists. Not my favorite MD population, so I confess that it likely will become just another thing that I obsess about.

Hope and peace

I had my evoked potentials testing yesterday in Houston (or, as we down folk here in Texas like to say, "H-town"). I likely won't know the results for at least a week, and either way--negative = no information/positive = diagnosis--I probably won't post about them because I'll need to process that for awhile.

The neurophys tech and I spent about 3 hours together. You can really get to know a person in three hours, especially when they're sticking electrodes all over you and applying repeat shocks to one of your major nerves. I do this wherever I go--hairdressers, parties, doctors, techs--I come away with people's life stories, freely told. Only recently, I read that this approach to human interaction might be a failsafe mechanism for people who can't socialize well. Whatever. I think it's just fascinating.

My tech's story ran along some familiar grooves, in that surprises popped up at every turn. No matter how much our minds want to box in someone at first sight, once you dig into their story, you find these surprises that don't fit the box. Three kids, an oldest daughter who wants to be a pediatric anesthesiologist, a middle daughter who wants to be a paleontologist ("And I can't even spell that!" the tech laughed when she told me), and a youngest daughter, age 4, who was her "menopause baby." She's only two years older than I am, the tech, and this of course led us into a lengthy discussion of how in the world she's been-there/done-that already with menopause.

And then, it turns out that she knows what Asperger's is. Her neighbor's daughter, age 11, has it. In the course of our conversation, I expressed how much we love our own son with Asperger's, what a great kid we think he is. She nodded, continuing her relentless and painful stimulation of my right posterior tibial nerve. That is a big freaking nerve.

There was a calendar on her wall. A family, the dad emerging from an airplane, the two daughters running to him, the mother following up behind. All extraordinarily tall people, and I realize it was the Obamas. I commented that Malia was probably already taller than I and not even a teenager yet. And my tech cut loose with one of her surprises: She had gone to the inauguration, taken her daughters, a niece, slept on a nephew's dining room table in DC, landed in Baltimore in 17 degree weather, met "real Eskimos, the only people there actually dressed for the weather." She had a tearful moment with Anderson Cooper, whom she worships for his good deeds, and she made him cry, too. She spoke with pride that her daughters witnessed this turning point, sadness that her mother and grandmother weren't there to see how so much had changed since they themselves were children in America.

And we bonded, big time, over reliving the excitement of that day. I completely forgot why I was there. She forgot why she was there. We talked for a long time about what it meant to us as parents, period. Not African-American parents or European-mutt-American parents, but just as parents. How, the decade we were born, 13 days before I was born, in fact, MLK was killed in a world riven with unrest, no peace. In one way, we were amazed that it had taken so long to come this far. In another way, we agreed, we were amazed at just how far we had come.

It was time for me to go, and she suddenly turned and indicated a poem hanging on her wall. I can't remember the poem--I can't remember much of anything anymore--but it was about acceptance, about seeing the love, accepting the life, grasping the positive with two hands and not letting go. "I get it," I told her after reading it, nodding. And she said to me, "I love it when I meet people like you. I can tell how much you love your son, how positive you are about him. It's people like that who keep the world moving forward, staying positive."

Thinking about it later, I pondered whether or not I really am a positive person, me, DMFP the cynic, the skeptic, the sarcastic-keep-you-at-arm's length cranky woman. And then I realized, it doesn't matter. As long as I am moving forward, staying positive, actually being positive, that's Me, being a positive person. Even if inside, I often feel like Frederick, the misanthropic older boyfriend in Hannah and Her Sisters.

We practically hugged goodbye, enjoying our mutual reminiscences about our president and that turning point in our country's history. This morning, I heard that he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Already, in that room, our connection over him, about the way he marked a change for our nation, had left me feeling more at peace and more positive than I'd felt in a long time, reawakening the thrill of that cold day--and memories of Aretha Franklin's amazing hat. And the greatest surprise of all for me? My tech's name. I came to that room feeling trepidatious, tense, and self-involved. But when I walked in, it was there that I became acquainted with something I'd left behind lately: Hope. And thanks to Hope, I've got a renewed sense of peace, of moving forward, of grasping the positive with two hands, not ever letting go.

Da-isms

Our three-year-old, Little Da, grows apace. Still wobbly on the potty training but excited as any man would be about peeing while standing up. Something about taking that aim, I guess. He also is an opinionated little fellow with many pithy observations to make about the world. Below, a few.

We're going to church. I have some new, fairly unoffensive black flats in ballet shoe style that I put on. I come downstairs and encounter Little, who stares at my feet for a good 10 seconds before pointing at my shoes. "What are those?" he asks in evident disbelief. "My shoes," I answer, stating the obvious. "Take them off," he orders. "I don't like them." It appears that I live with Jimmy Choo.

He's tautological, as many a three-year-old can be. Me: "Why did you get up from the table if you weren't finished eating?" Him: "Because I did." Me: "Why did you whack your brother with the sword?" Him: "Because I did hit him with it." Me: "Why did you turn the TV on when we said, 'no'?" Him: "Because I did turn it on." Sigh. I also live with George Mallory, the guy who climbed Mt. Everest "because it is there."

As with most youngest siblings and any self-respecting three-year-old, our Da takes offense easily. "He did hit me!" "Why did he hit you?" "Because he did!" "Did you hit him?" "Yes. With a sword!" And then there's, "(Dubya) did say that he is mad at me!" "Why is he mad at you?" "Because he did say he is!" And the assumed ability to admonish a parent who has told him "no," responding in low firm tones: "Don't say that to me, Mama!" We have intense discussions about the appropriateness of this last. I also appear to live with a blossoming, autocratic Prince of Wales.

Every morning at school, he dramatizes his arrival and my departure by throwing himself on the floor in a heap. It's all show now, little in the way of real tears or unhappiness. By all accounts and my own observation through the window, he's up in about 1.5 seconds, joining his "best buddies" at the home center. But sometimes, I'll pick him up from school, and this is when I encounter something I've never encountered before in my other children, boys who seem to lack the ability to be manipulative. Not Little Da. We get in the car, I buckle him in. "I did cwy today when you left me at school," he informs me. "I did cwy for a long time." I'd be heartbroken and concerned if I hadn't watched him through that window pick himself up off the floor and toddle over to his friends to play faster than it took me to type this. If his teachers didn't report that he has a great time the entire day. "You were sad?" I nevertheless say, sympathetically. "Yes," he responds, executing a perfect Little Rascals pout. "I was sad because I was sad and I did cwying." My very own little Russell Crowe, passionate outbursts and all.

The child would not, however, be a true member of the DMFPs if he didn't engage in catastrophic thinking related to That Which Can Eat You. Which is why, this morning, on the way to school, he informed me, apropos of nothing, "If a shark bites you, you have to go to the doctor." Now that's a true member of the DMFP clan.

No homeschooling here

And honestly, I'm deeply relieved. As much as the idea--just the idea--appealed to me in one sense, in all other senses, I felt distractingly ambivalent. The idea of tucking into thematic units with TH, of reaching him and sparking his curiosity, having those great intense conversations with him that we enjoy so much--it was strongly attractive. Less attractive was my understanding of what it would otherwise entail: blocks of time that would push my own work into other blocks of time, collapse my work hours to the minimum, kick up my stress levels, possibly make me cranky and irritable. Less attractive also was the idea of removing him from the kids who now like him, where his greatest friend is, from his great school. Possibly least attractive was the possibility of having to explain to his two brothers why they couldn't homeschool, too.

Now, we don't have all this equivocation on our plate. Our district has a family liaison person who is available for families like us as a sounding board and all-around Delphic oracle. The Oracle suggested that we contact the school, ask for an ARD meeting, and see what sorts of ideas his teachers might have about ways to motivate him, reinforce his learning, and strengthen his interest.

Completely unfamiliar with just about everything related to this, I asked for the meeting, expecting not much out of it. What could a traditional public school do for a child who needs some one-on-one instruction, thematic and empirical learning experiences, whose best method of approach is through his limiting interest in all things nature and science? I fully expected that we'd come out of that meeting having experienced interaction with well-meaning, interested, engaged people but with no real options for addressing TH's fundamental problems.

And, as I learned this morning at the ungodly hour of 7:30 a.m., I was wrong. Yay!

This school--this remarkable, remarkable school where the staff have to get up way too early--has top-secret things we've never heard of. For example, for students like TH, we can arrange a program in which he spends time with a teacher who basically unschools him, letting him choose his area of interest, talk about it endlessly (she may not be aware of TH's version of "endless"), read about it as much as he likes, pursue it to its ends. There really is a program like that, and TH's language arts/math teacher is going to initiate it for him.

And then...there are all these areas in math and language arts where he sits in class as they review processes and then comes home completely clueless about said processes. It's a big problem for him, with his deficits in executive function. He just can't incorporate the social things going on around him, the answers flying from all over, the academic processes they're teaching, and completing his own work and then keep it all in his head. A huge concern for us.

The fix? A daily, midday "re-teach" session for a half hour in which he and his long-time special ed teacher review his language arts and math work, quietly solidify the processes of the day, and really lock in what he's supposed to be incorporating. It sounds like a perfect solution to me.

We went in with two issues of concern: motivation and process recall. We came out with both addressed. TH's oversized head is going to explode when he gets into that freewheeling, go-where-your-interests-take-you program. It's just his thing. And I'm hoping that the re-teaching reinforces his learning so that he's more comfortable and less frustrated about all the "noise" that may distract him in the traditional classroom.

I haven't felt this anxiety free about TH in weeks. In spite of what appears to be yet another impending viral infection (apparently, I live with the human equivalent of viral mixing vats, and no, handwashing/abundant use of hand sanitizer doesn't seem to help), my whole attitude is one of "WOOHOO!!!"

Now I've got to go make a donation to our district's education fund. We do it every year because of the supports TH receives. In Texas, those bastard socialists "robin hood" out half of our tax dollars to other, less-privileged districts, and we make up some of this deficit through donations to this fund, which supports staff salaries. Looks like we'll be digging into our pockets in gratitude once more. And we're glad to do it. I'm still just trying to wrap my tired little mind around the fact that they've resolved our problems for us yet again. And they sure do get up early to do it.

I'll leave this to speak for itself

I was checking editing/writing ads, as usual (always looking out for gigs regular and sporadic), and came across this posting (which may be gone by the time you click; no worries--I've helpfully reproduced it in full below).

I'll let it speak for itself. As a long-time writer and editor, I've never before seen dictates like this for a piece. At least it's clear, in its woefully passively constructed way: There will be no effort at balance whatsoever. I'd assume based on previous experience that this post originated with Austin Woman Magazine, but it's a posting on San Francisco Craig's. Anyway...enjoy. And a question: Do ya think that this piece, once written, is gonna (snort) settle everything (snort) once and for all (sniggle)? Or is it the battle wail of failure?

The argument has been raging for way too long. People call each other names. Facts are obscured in lots of words, or mired in statistics. Every detail is argued about.

In spite of all that, mercury and other substances in vaccines can cause autism. Time to quietly sweep away all the questions. The research is available, you would not have to do research, except for possible fact-checking and not much of that (italics mine).

For those who are convinced that there is "no credible evidence" and that vaccines causing autism is "not possible" -- just don't reply to this ad. You can read the article when it comes out.

What's needed for this purpose is a writer who is convinced, or at least highly suspicious, that the answer is "yes." Must have patience, persistence and good team-player abilities. And have freelance time available, even if flexibility is necessary with regard to hours/days worked.

These are the days

Carolyn Hax writes an advice column, and she's damned good at what she does. She doesn't dispense pop psych garbage, she doesn't offer to sell pamphlets, and she's not mired in some 1960s version of advice that has nothing to do with The Way We Live Now. She's intuitive, she's incisive, she's insightful. So, I read her any time she appears in my daily paper. A few days ago, she wrote this in response to a tragic letter from a recently widowed pregnant woman: "At any given time, any one of us is a day away from not recognizing life as we knew it just 24 hours before."

It's something I think about a lot, not because of morbid obsession (promise!) or even because of anxiety (pinkie swear!), but because it's how I remind myself of how much I have around me to appreciate right here, right now. I don't want some day to come when I regret not having known what I had.

And I was lying in TH's bed the other dimming evening, TH snuggled on one side of me, Little Da curled in my arms, Dubya quietly building yet another gargantuan Lego production with his dad on the floor by us, and I realized: I don't think I'll ever have another time in my life when I experience such abundant, uncomplicated love. Probably the most intense, open, and easily expressed love I will ever know.

Lucky, lucky me. Right? And if that weren't enough to make you seethe with jealousy, my three-year-old now puts himself down for naps.