Push

I don't want to.

I don't feel well.

I don't feel well because I don't want to.

Lately, I'm finding it harder and harder (and I mean HARDER) to get past the part of me that rebels against almost any new or unusual or untried event or experience. Sure, I wanted to see Em play a 12-minute exhibition soccer game, with her team, on a full-size field during the local community college game's halftime this evening. But what if it's crowded, I asked myself throughout the week? (At a community college Friday-night soccer game?) Where will I park? (Um, one of the 75 parking lots on or around campus, perhaps?) How will I find the stadium? (The blinding lights? Just follow 'em.) How will I find the team once I get there? (Yeah, you're right. Hard to pick out 12 girls in blue uniforms on bleachers in a crowd of under 75 spectators.)

By the time I left work today, I was in full pout mode. My head hurt, my body ached, I only wanted to go home and go to bed. I knew I couldn't bail--Baroy, as the team's assistant coach, would have to go out onto the field during the halftime game, and he couldn't take N with him. But that doesn't mean I couldn't bitch and moan to myself all the way home, all the way through changing clothes. It doesn't mean I didn't curse under my breath when Baroy didn't pick up his cell phone when I called to complain about how icky I felt, and to try to talk him into dropping N home on the way to the game, so I could stay put. It doesn't mean I didn't curse out loud all the way to the pizza parlor where the team was having its pre-game dinner. And it doesn't mean that I didn't give in to all the stress I was feeling about the whole thing while driving Em over to the stadium, following Baroy and N, and ranting loudly the entire time about the stupid way he chose to go. (It was--I will give myself this--a very stupid way to go. Extra distance AND the worst traffic in the area. Still...in front of Em? I should be kicked.)

And, of course, all that angst was for naught. Once there, I gobbled up every second of the experience, especially the part where my kid--a kid with MY GENES, which I would have sworn to you were such completely ANTI-ATHLETIC genes that they would have had the power to SQUASH any athletic genes Baroy might try to pass along--arced an incredible shot at the goal, which the other team's goalie juuuuuuust managed to get a couple of fingers on and deflect. Even if there were only a few dozen folks there, it was still awesome to hear them shout for my girl, calling out, "Great shot, number 12!" In fact, when Baroy was ready to go, after the exhibition and during the college game's second half, I talked him into staying longer, so that Em could continue to hang out on the sidelines of the field with her teammates and act as ball girl, gathering up the soccer balls that went sailing past the goal every few minutes.

But that's not unusual, either. I'm always reluctant to go somewhere, but once I'm there--once I know that there aren't crowds likely to swallow me up, that I'm not going to be stuck in some panic-inducing, car-immobilizing traffic jam, that I'm not going to get lost in an unfamiliar place--I'm fine.

(If any of the things I fear do happen, however, all bets are off. Just ask my friends about the first year we went up to Big Bear during the Christmas holidays and I lost my MIND on the packed streets of the Village and pretty much simply BOLTED. Now, every year, I fight incipient panic attacks as the date for that annual-though-no-longer-at-Christmastime trip gets closer. Add to that the fact that there's really only one road up or down the mountain--a fact that fills me with a sense of claustrophobia I can barely stand to even write about here--and, well, all I can say is that if it weren't for the fact that it would almost literally kill my husband and kids to miss the trip, I'd probably never start up that mountain again. And yet, once I get there...it is BY FAR my favorite weekend of the year. Go figure.)

All of which leads me to...Nope. I got nothin'. I have no idea how to end this. It leads me to despair, I guess, at how this sort of over-reactivity only seems to get worse with age, not better. Because as I get older, I start to add new tricks to my get-out-of-uncomfortable-situations arsenal, the most recent being the Why should I do things that make me miserable? Haven't I earned the right by now to stick only to my comfort zone, if that's what makes me comfortable? whine.

And, sure, to some degree I have earned that right. But if I let myself exercise it all the time, or even close to as frequently as I'd like to, I'd wind up awfully close to what pretty much any armchair psychiatrist would be able to label as agoraphobia. Which makes me think that, for as long as I'm capable of pushing myself in the other direction, I need to keep on pushing.

Otherwise, one of these days, I'm going to miss seeing the goal my kid scores under the bright lights of a nearly-empty soccer field on a warm fall evening. Or, as would have happened tonight, I'll miss seeing her come oh-so-close, make a tiny moue of disappontment, and then get right back into the game.

She has so much to teach me.

The Big Sigh

You know how, sometimes, you see someone's name in your email box, and before you click on the message, you sigh deeply? Not because you necessarily dislike the person or anything, but because you just know that interactions with him or her are never, ever simple? That you can never just ask about something, mention something, request something, and have it quickly, easily, simply DONE?

I am fairly certain that I am that sigh-worthy person for pretty much everyone at N's elementary school. In fact, I can HEAR the sighs all the way here in my office, 14 miles away.

Like I said, I don't think anyone there hates me. (OK, maybe the school psychologist does. And maybe the former PTA president who thought it would be a good idea to bring Santa Claus into the classroom. And possibly the chair of the committee that decided to make the concrete stairwell the only entrance into the school most mornings. But aside from them...)

It's just that I really am never easy to deal with. I try to be, whenever I can, so that when I need to be difficult, it will have more impact. And yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I put in the request for N's reassessment. Yesterday, I got a voice mail and email from the woman who will head up that assessment, the RSP teacher at the school, telling me that there was an permission form coming home in N's backpack for me to sign. "No need to respond unless you have any questions," she chirped hopefully into the phone.

And so when she saw my name in her email box last night or this morning, or whenever she read my note...I'm fairly certain she sighed. If I were her, I would have added, out loud, "Oh for crying out loud. It's a single-page form, and it has everything on it you could possibly DREAM of! JUST SIGN IT!"

But I had a question. It wasn't a life-shattering issue or anything. It was just that I noticed a box for "initial assessment" was checked off, and I knew that this was not an initial assessment, and I wanted to be sure that we didn't need to redo the form somehow, that maybe she'd forgotten testing N two years ago, and it was a simple mistake, but if I didn't catch it and question it, the whole testing would end up being invalidated or something, and any services would be denied, and...

(Gee, i wonder why people think I'm twitchy and not myself these days?)

She was kind about it, and she was prompt in her reply, telling me it was a "good question" and that it's considered an initial assessment because it's been more than a year since his last one. "We will only use data/observation from this assessment," she wrote. "Children change a lot, especially in two years, and we want to ensure we have the most recent and best information."

She was even kind enough to say she was looking forward to seeing me again. I think she lies, but I appreciate the effort.

And the fact that she didn't actually type her sigh into her response.

[For those who really care about such things...I was pleased to see that the only difference in this assessment from that done two years ago was the ADDITION of a "SCIA assessment." I had to look it up. SCIA apparently stands for "Special Circumstances Instructional Assistance." I can't find a lot of information about it (Ambre?), but it SOUNDS like the sort of thing that could, in a perfect world, lead to a one-on-one or shared classroom aide to help keep N on track because of the amount of assistance he normally requires to get his work done. That would be my dream outcome from all of this, by the way. I'm not going to say it's likely to happen, but I will say that I'm pleased they're going to at least look into whether it's something he needs.]

Not Myself...Whoever THAT Is

At the end of a temple event-planning event--after a full day of work and right before a religious school committee meeting--I said to my friend, "If I don't send you that email we were discussing within the next 24 hours, don't hesitate to remind me. I've been letting a lot of threads drop lately, and sometimes I just need a nudge."

She looked at me with genuine concern. "Dropping threads?" she said. "That's not like you."

It's not? Really? Because as far as I'm concerned, that pretty much DEFINES me.

But it made me think. Earlier in the day, I'd walked into my friend's office to show her some changes I'd made to a press release. Another of our friend-colleagues was already in there, chatting away. Both women looked at me when I walked in, the papers in my outstretched hands.

"What's up with you?" Friend One said, before I'd uttered a word.

"You don't seem like yourself," Friend Two agreed.

Not like myself? What is myself like? And in what way am I so very much Not Like That these days that my not-selflikeness can be recognized in under a second?

Yeah, there's been a lot of stress...but not more than that of, say, the last seven or eight years. Yeah, I'm not greeting every day with a smile and a song...but I never have. (Nor can I stand people who do. I trust no one who's able to be cheerful before noon.) So how is now different than almost every single day of then?

All I could think, by the end of the day today, is that whoever that "like myself" person was, that person I've obviously left behind of late...well, I want to meet her. Maybe she could give me some pointers on how to do a better job of being me. Because, clearly, I'm falling down on the job.

Resolution

I keep starting posts. Some of them are ambitious. Some of them are dramatic. Some of them really want to be funny at a time when I'm not feeling especially funny. Some of them require thinking about things I don't want to think about. Some of them require admitting things I don't want to admit.

None of them get finished.

And each day that goes by where they're not finished? Is a day where no post appears here. And then it feels as if the post I do eventually put up...well, it'd better be worth the wait, no?

It's never worth the wait. There's no way it could be worth the wait.

I've been trying to find my way to the 'next level,' whatever that is, with this blog. Instead, I'm putting too much weight onto what I do and don't say here. I'm making it impossible for me to meet my own standards. Worst of all, I'm pissing off my friends, who want to know what's going on in my life. And if there's anything worse than my friends, pissed off, I don't want to know what it is.

Thus, I have made a resolution: To hell with my standards. It's time to pump up the volume. I'm going to pelt you all with posts. I'm going to inundate you with minutiae. They may be Twitter-short, they may be all over the place, they may be flat-out boring. But they will BE.

I blog, therefore I am.

One Step Back, A Step and a Smidge Forward?

We had a Sukkot celebration at a friend's house on Sunday; there were four 7-to-8-year-olds, three 11-to-12-year-olds, and a 16-year-old. The hostess, D, recently got her Master's in Jewish Education, and clearly couldn't allow a learning opportunity to pass her by, So she gathered the kids together to help them each make an individual, miniature sukkah out of graham crackers, marshmallow fluff, pretzels and candy corn.

When all the sukkot were completed, the kids invited the parents in to see, and the 16-year-old announced that she had given each kid an award for their sukkah--some sweet, some funny, some silly. As she announced each award, we applauded. Somewhere in the middle, she announced N's award ("best postmodern design"). But, when the applause started, N crumpled to the table, put his arms over his head, and began to wail, "No! No!" and sob. Loudly.

Luckily, most of those in attendance are good friends--by which I mean, people who "get it"--and all Baroy and I had to do was nod to the 16-year-old to continue and keep saying to the rest of the folks, "The clapping and the attention. It's just too much for him sometimes," and everything went on.

Still, you know, it's not what you want to see. It's not a step forward. At all.

But what happened next? Sorta was.

After everyone had finished admiring the sukkot, they went back outside for pizza and beer. I went over to the table where N was still quietly sobbing into his arms.

"Hey, sweetie?" I whispered to him, bending down to get closer to him. "Do you want to come sit on my lap for a little while until you feel better?"

He finally raised his head. "No, I don't think so," he said. "I don't want anyone to think I'm like a baby."

See, that part? Right there? That's the huge part. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that, despite the fact that he's coming up hard and fast on 9 years of age, he's never said anything like that before, never seemed to consider how others would perceive his behavior, and certainly never in a way that implied he recognizes the ways in which his behavior lags behind that of others in age-appropriateness or maturity.

Thus, while his response made me sad (a cuddle is a great regulator for N; there's nothing like it for getting him back on a more even emotional keel), it made me proud, too, and even a little hopeful.

And so, despite the mini-meltdown, I'm calling it a win. By a smidge.

Over at I Try Things...

I have a new post up over at I Try Things. It's a review of some recipes I tried out recently, all using Ragu sauces. Which they sent to me. For free. And yes, let me say up front, I'm also being paid a couple of shekels for the review. (Those, I believe, are all the necessary disclaimers. I want to make sure I'm so transparent about these dealings that you can see right through me!)

It's also a review with, as before, a $100 Visa gift card giveaway attached to it. Plus, the extra-special, value-added addition of a photo of Em's hand, and one of the back of N's head. Score!

So head on over, leave a comment, blog about it, send out tweets. (Each of the last three, reported on the blog, gets you a separate entry into the contest. Don't forget to leave a valid email address!)

The contest runs between today, October 1, and November 11. But why wait? Act now, to avoid the rush!

See you over there...I'll save you some pizza.

The Update (Ta Dum)

I'm not going to try to make this cute or sweet or funny. I'll just give you as many of the facts as I can before I pass out from a combination of exhaustion, stress, 98 degree heat at 7 pm, and cuddling with my boy while his father and sister are out seeing Fame.

The 411:

1. I did NOT get what I went in to the principal to ask for, which was a class change; she said they're at the legal limit in the only other third-grade class (small school size has its ups and downs), and so she'd have to switch him with another student.

2. On the other hand, the principal gets it. She was saying things that were exactly what I've been saying, and without me feeding them to her. Most notably, she said that N "shouldn't be punished for things he can't control." She likes him a lot; she's worked with him in small groups in the past as part of a reading intervention program, and she's so excited that he can and will now talk to her and tell her what the problem is. It helps that he is not in any way, shape, or form a behavior problem. His biggest problem is that he tries to become--and often succeeds in becoming--invisible in a classroom.

3. She was clearly disturbed by some of the things I brought up, and says she will be taking much of the responsibility for getting things back on track. She promised to talk to his now-teacher, his last year's teacher (to find out what strategies she used that helped her be so successful with N), his Occupational Therapist (to ask her to come and talk to/train his now-teacher and give her some other ideas of classroom strategies to use with N), and his speech therapist (who is his IEP leader, and who was responsible for getting the IEP to his teacher in the first place; since she's N's biggest fan and advocate, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on this one and wait for her to call, which the principal said she'd ask her to do early next week).

4. She encouraged me to ask for a reevaluation--a full-scale, soup-to-nuts set of tests and potential diagnoses. As she explained it to me (and this may not be entirely accurate...either in what she said or in my intepretation thereof), the basis of the problem is that his IEP is not really a special ed IEP; N's considered to be a speech student in general ed. WE all know that he's in speech as a way to get him into clinical OT, but he's being TREATED as 'just' a speech student. (I don't know about the rest of the country, but for some bizarro-world reason, social skills deficits that require OT intervention--even if they have huge academic impact, as N's do--do not qualify you for services. You have to have some other 'qualifying' disability, and for him it was speech. Once speech said there was a problem, they could THEN add on OT as a secondary service. Except, in N's case, it's really the primary service he needs.)

So what does it mean that he's 'just' a speech student? Apparently, IEPs that come through speech get looked at differently than IEPs that come through special ed. His classroom teacher wouldn't normally really need to see his IEP; she'd just need to know what days to send him up to speech therapy. That doesn't explain why she didn't aggressively pursue getting a copy of his IEP once I'd implied that it was relevant and needed discussion, but it might explain why she seemed so bewildered that I made such a big deal about it in the first place.

What the principal wants to see--through this re-eval and through my seeking an outside developmental pediatrician's evaluation at her urging--is if we can't get him into special ed SOMEHOW, whether that's through an ASD or other diagnosis or through a learning disability diagnosis. (She thinks that MAYBE the IQ test will provide insight this time, since N no longer actively resists testing the way he used to. She also vehemently agrees that his previous low IQ test score is malarky.)

5. There's another reason she wants me to push for a quick, early redo of his IEP: She thinks we need to significantly rewrite his accommodations. She wants to add specific accommodations about how to deal with him when he's expected to speak or read aloud, what to do when there are group or partner activities in class (he's apparently absolutely refusing to look at or work with any other child), even what kind of discipline methods (positive only) are to be used.

6. As I told Baroy, I didn't get what I wanted, but I got stuff I wasn't expecting--like HER pushing ME on getting him evaluated again. I felt like I was heard. And I made it very clear as I left that all bets are off if the teacher couldn't be brought into line.

7. As an aside, this conference included yet another discussion with a long-time professional in either the teaching or medical profession about how N is like no other kid they've seen before; that he fits into no box, doesn't fall into line with any obvious label. She understands that his needs are both unique and difficult to figure out...but agrees that they're real and significant. There's something simultaneously gratifying and disheartening about this; we all like to think our kids are special, right? But at the same time, knowing that there's no obvious signpost, no "he has this, so try this therapy first and this other one next," leaves me so often at a loss. What do I do for him? I have this fierce and unwavering belief that he's going to be OK as an adult, but for that to come true, we have to get him to adulthood in something resembling good shape. That's the challenge.

So, I'm not happy, but I'm not miserable. It helps that N's still relatively OK with everything, overall and relatively speaking. I stopped in the schoolyard on my way back to work after my meeting, and he was chattering away about how they made masks today, and it was fun, blahdeeblahblah. I figure we still have a little wiggle room in which to get this straightened out. I'll put in the request for testing on Tuesday (Monday's Yom Kippur) and that will get the clock started. We'll see...