The trouble with psychiatric evaluation

I think I have hit a wall and I'm not sure I can ever get around it. I had to be linguist so that I wouldn't be able to answer simple questions...

Every so often, before I see my therapist, I have to fill out a battery of questions about how I feel, how my sleep is, do I feel sad or anxious, and a bunch of other stuff she would care about while treating me. The answers required are always on some sort of a Likert scale, like this:

In the past 2 weeks, have you been able to see the funny side of things?

• As much as I ever could
• Not quite so much now
• Definitely not so much now
• Not at all

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, here's where I hit a wall:

Try to characterize your mood in the last two weeks:
"I was always worrying about something."

• never
• very rarely
• rarely
• sometimes
• often
• very often
• almost constantly

How am I supposed to answer that if I was worried a couple times on a few days? What does it mean to say "I was always worrying about something sometimes" ?!?!???!!!?

Sheesh.

And just for kicks, here's my favorite question that I get to answer:

Have you felt peaceful and calm?

• all of the time
• most of the time
• a good bit of the time
• some of the time
• a little of the time
• none of the time

Have YOU felt peaceful and calm during the last two weeks? I feel like if I answer "all of the time" that I should walk into my therapist's office and say, "I'm cured! I'm outta here!"

Guns and racism and censorship and drama and education. What's that? You think I'm being controversial?

Some of you may remember that about a month back I wrote about the selection of the annual musical at Grace's high school, Annie Get Your Gun, and whether the arts should be censored for teenagers. I argued that the arts should not be censored for teenagers and that parents alone should be held responsible for addressing their own values surrounding controversial issues at home. There were no dissenters in the comments. I was surprised. I expected at least one of you out there to say I was off my rocker. You really all agree with me? You believe that the public schools shouldn't limit access to the arts?

I bring this up now because one person who read the post emailed me directly and told me I was wrong. Dead wrong. On Monday, after we finished our family celebration of Children's Day, I read my email and received a message from a parent at Grace's school who had been forwarded the URL of the post. And it wasn't just any parent; it was the parent who had raised the objection to the choice of the musical in the first place. She corrected some errors I had made in the original post (there is an amendment to that post now). She also revisited the issue of how the school should be responding to Native Americans and women being marginalized in Annie Get Your Gun, as well as firearms being glorified. Since she presented her points in an email, unfortunately those of you reading the post wouldn't have the benefit of her comments. I thought it would be fruitful to revisit the issue again in order to give voice to an opposing view.

The concerned parent and I agree on the core issues, like the problems stemming from children having access to firearms and the desensitization to racial and gender-based discrimination when it arrives in subtle forms (or in any form, for that matter). Despite this common agreement, from reading what she has written to me, we disagree on how minors should be educated about these issues. I take it to be my role as a parent to educate my child at home as to what values I hope for her to take as her own. The other parent believes that some collective body should make those decisions for all students and all of them should be taught those values at school. For instance, this parent wrote to me in her email that fake firearms, such as those used as props in a play, are a public health risk, plain and simple. Since this is fact, we should never allow guns to be used as props in a school building since the presence of firearms anywhere constitutes a public health risk to all exposed (most importantly, minor students). Further, if arts containing firearms are present in the school, it is the responsibility of the school to educate students about gun control. In order for these actions to be made, some appointed authority would need to endorse these decisions as fact. If individuals hold a different opinion from that which the authoritative group decides, too bad. Now, while it is true that the majority of voting adults in our community support gun control, I'd say that the issue is a far cry from a closed-book issue. I mean, if we were suggesting that high school students in a public school located somewhere differently, like, say, in Oklahoma or Texas, should be taught that gun control is the only policy that will do, I can imagine that there would be some vehement vocal disagreement. So rather than bring controversial two-sided arguments to the school system to render a verdict on, I prefer that the educational system educate students about the issues and leave the verdicts up to parents.

So that's gun control. For me, I err on the side of protecting individual rights. I may not exercise my right to have a firearm at home, but I want to be very careful about limiting the right altogether. Maybe it's the American in me. Maybe it's the southerner in me. Maybe it's my experience in rural parts of the country that makes me feel this way, you know, places where it's useful to have a firearm because if someone untoward drives into your farm up to no good, you can meet them at the door with your rifle aimed just in case law enforcement doesn't show up before the ruffians do.

But on a broader scale, what about other topics? No one who commented on my original post indicated that they thought the educational system or some other authority should have the right to limit students' access to the arts, no matter what the content. Really? You guys think that sex and rock 'n' roll and rap and all the rest should be available to teens?

Do you think we should have rating systems on movies and television and music, keeping minors from their consumption, or do you think that kind of censorship is ok?

Birth control? Abortion?

What about argumentation that the sex industry is liberating?

What about expressions of disgust for the government?
What about expressions of disgust for opposition to the government?

War? War protests?

Gang warfare? Legalizing all mind-altering substances?

All of it? You all think that all of this information should be openly available to teens to digest for themselves, hoping that their parents or guardians will help guide their thinking in order to prevent societal chaos?

In all fairness, in the comments of my original post, Angelawd qualified her support for my position by writing "I do believe all ideas and materials should be appropriate for the age, and for the individual. Some kids are able to handle more reality than others." That sounds sensible. But now we have to ask, what is appropriate for teenagers? And what if some of those teenagers are able to handle more reality than others? How do we teach them all in the same school? I'm sure there are things that some of you think the schools should not allow students to access, aside from those things that are illegal. As you can see from my laundry list of questions above, Annie Get Your Gun is nowhere near as controversial as we could get.

I'll give you the behind the scenes to why I think parents should be the ones making these decisions at home and teaching their children those values at home. I've lived in four very different regions of the US: South Florida, Central Texas, Southeast Michigan and Washington, DC. You can imagine that the mainstream values in each of these locales differed considerably. But whether or not I shared those mainstream values, that was what my community would endorse in the educational system. Along the way, through my own education and in taking part in my daughter's, I realized that it was not the values that were taught in the schools that were important. What was most important was that no matter what the majority of concerned citizens around us valued, my daughter would learn from me the things I believed were correct. For myself, I wish I had gotten the benefit of other viewpoints and opinions than the ones I was taught at school. For my daughter, I've realized that my involvement in her life as a parent is far more important than my involvement as a mover and shaker in her community. But once someone else has taught your child a value, sometimes it is difficult to teach your child something very different.

Now, that's a more lengthy version of my stance and I'm still sticking to it. But I really want to hear from the rest of you. Think about it. Are you willing to have your children hear information that you vehemently disagree with in order for them to hear a balanced view? Or would you rather they be educated in line with your own values? Are the arts (literature, drama, music, visual) any different from social sciences or physical sciences? How does religion play into this, if at all? What do you think of the education at the college level?

~~~ For those of you out there who want more controversial discussion, stay tuned. Monday I will finally publish a post that has been rattling around inside my head and in various drafts for over a month. Annie Get Your Gun raises issues of racial discrimination; I have been wrestling with the marginalizing of biracial couples and mixed race children. ~~~

Honest Scrap Award

ONE MONTH AGO, Crys at Modifying Motherhood gave me an award. I thanked her right away and thought, 'thank goodness I have an idea for an upcoming post.' Um, yeah, right. I don't think "upcoming" translates into ONE MONTH LATER. But Crys is a great sort of person, or, rather, I imagine she is face to face since she seems to be a great sort of person as I see her through her writing. So I'm sure she understands that I don't mean any offense by taking ONE WHOLE MONTH to accept this award and pass it on.

Here goes.

Crys gave me the Honest Scrap Award. Sounds nice, eh? I'm supposed to list ten things that you probably didn't know about me. Then I pass the award along. Easy 'nuff. Here is my list:

1. When I was in high school, I was in love with England. I wanted to travel there. I wanted to move there. I thought everything about England was amazing. I knew every single fact about the British royal family and the Beatles that there was to be known.
2. When I was in middle school, around 1984, I thought Michael J. Fox was about the most amazing thing in the entire world. I would have done anything to see him in person. I couldn't imagine that anyone was more fantastic. Then the crush waned. Then about 1998 I told someone how much I liked him as an actor. And that person said, 'yeah, but what has he done lately?' Oh. My. And now? More than ten years later? I respect him and love him even more. He is, in the language that Mrs. G would use, my secret boyfriend.
3. I was a cheerleader in middle school. I would have done anything to be a cheerleader forever and be an 'it' girl. When I tried out in high school I was cut for the squad because I couldn't do a split.
4. I tried yoga for the first time when I was 24. I was really good at it. I apparently am very flexible. I never really did yoga after that. I should.
5. I bite my fingernails. And my toenails.
6. I love Project Runway. I find those designers very talented.
7. I don't understand poetry at all. It's not that I dislike it, I just don't have the ability to understand it.
8. For reasons I cannot explain, I don't like U2. I can't think of any song by the band that I like. I saw them once in concert during their Pop tour and I was bored. And I was completely burned that I had paid so much for the tickets and driven 100 miles to see the concert.
9. In middle school I made up my mind that I was going to go to college at Florida State. There I would major in music and minor in mathematics. I planned on becoming a piano teacher.
10. The only beer I enjoy drinking is Bell's Oberon, only available during the summer.
    

There you go. Now, to the passing onward. I, Heather at Comparative Childhood, do hereby bestow the Honest Scrap Award to:

CDP, aka Aunt Dahlia, at (parenthetical)

Amy at Welcome to Amy's World

Melissa at Buddha Mama

Go visit their blogs! They are very entertaining!

The beginning of Stella

Yesterday Stella turned one month old. I haven't said much about her. So here's a tidbit. As usual, it's really about me.

Lately I've been telling stories to Stella as she is nursing or is falling asleep. I started with telling her about the day she was born. That was when she was two weeks old. It was inspired by my neighbor who came over to visit a few days earlier with her two kids, 8 and 6. As we visited, she asked how I was and how Stella was at birth. Her kids chimed in and asked their mother, 'how much did I weigh, momma?" and "what was it you said the first time you heard me cry, momma?" It was clear that each one of them had heard the story of their birth over and over.

Then I moved to telling Stella how much her daddy loved her. I told her about how much we wanted to have a baby and how long we waited and how, the entire time I was pregnant, we were careful, and a little nervous that something would go wrong, and a tad scared that she would have a problem or not be healthy and that we worked so hard to make sure she was healthy and happy and safe.

And then I realized, part of the story goes back to when my husband and I first started seeing each other. He told me he wanted to have children. Like, in week two of dating. And I said something like, I don't believe you, or, you needed to explain what it is exactly about children that you want. It was only after much time had passed that he told me how much my response revealed about me. He told me I was seeing him as just a typical man and that I assigned all the stereotypical values and perspectives to him without ever even probing to see if those were valid assumptions.

See, I had accidentally gotten pregnant with Grace by my first long-term boyfriend. I thought he was great. I was in love, as they say. I thought, nothing can stop us now. We'll get married and be together forever. We can survive. It was like that country song by Trisha Yearwood, "She's in Love With The Boy."



God, when I hear that song on the radio it makes me sick to my stomach. I wish I could grab every young girl who's fantasizing while listening to that song and shake her up and say, 'for the LOVE OF GOD and all things holy, LISTEN to your father for half a second and don't even THINK about marrying that boy some day!" As you all know, things did not work out with my boyfriend in the way I envisioned. Yeah, once Grace was born, he thought she was cute and all. And he played with her. On some days he got inspired and planned a whole day of fun with her. But...

Parenting is hard work. It's not all fun and games. He didn't like the hard parts. So he got to do all the fun stuff and I ended up with the rotten stuff like changing diapers and giving time outs and staying home while he went out (with who?) and working on homework. At the tail end of our relationship, he would want to have fun with me alone and would get angry if I didn't find a sitter at short notice, saying it was like I didn't even like being with him (well, truth be told...). I haven't even touched whether my job or career was as important as his; suffice it to say, mine was a needed source of income, his was the one that mattered. When push came to shove, I needed to work, and I was the one who needed to figure out childcare and everything else. After we divorced, it was clear who was the "fun" parent and who was the "disciplinarian." I made up my mind then and there, I'm never having kids with anyone again.

I admit, it was a completely sexist decision. I actually always wanted to have a big family with lots of kids. Four sounded perfect to me. Sure, a lot of work, but if there's two people who love each other, two people who are really invested in a family and committed to making it work, then a big family can be joyful even though it is a bit hectic. But through the course of my first marriage, I decided that men are not prepared as people to take on the commitment of parenting in the way that I envisioned they could. They wanted to have a healthy sized progeny in order to ensure that they passed on their genes and their name. I wanted my kids to have a father who was involved in their lives, one who would love being with them as much as I did. One who felt like they were a part of him, not just an extension of his life. By the time I was separating from Grace's father, I had had enough of it. I wanted Grace to have an awesome dad and she didn't. I had tried to make a family work, it didn't work, and now I was 30 and didn't want to try and fail again. And so I let the dream that I wanted, the dream of the big, happy family, die.

Enter my husband-to-be and his comment during our nascent romance. He wanted to have children. I had been divorced long enough to know it wasn't easy to rebuild a family, that is, to create a stepfamily. In fact, it was a hard thing to do. And I already had a daughter who was nine and I was starting a 5-year PhD program within months. There would be a big age gap between my only child and her next sibling. Was it possible to build a family?

After two years of feeling each other out and making sure this was the 'real thing,' we got married. See, along the way to marriage, my husband convinced me through the ways he treated me and cared for me that he valued me as an equal in our relationship. I also saw how he cared for Grace, Grace, who wasn't making forming a parent-child relationship between the two of them easy. Once we made the decision to get married, we immediately started thinking about another child. But within two months of our wedding, we were seeing a reproductive endocrinologist at the infertility clinic because me, I had some bad symptoms and some bad family medical history. It took a little more than four years and a whole lot of medical treatment for me until we held our baby Stella in our arms.

I tried to tell Stella the abbreviated version of the story a few days ago. It wasn't easy. I don't think it ever will be. But I did manage to tell her that we were very, very happy to finally have her in our lives. I hope that I can explain the story to her in a way that she can understand while she is young so that she can grow up knowing that her parents longed for her more than she can imagine.

That's a bit too personal

So over there on the left sidebar have been sitting the results of a brief poll I took during July. The question asked was simple: "Here at my blog, do you think I should delve into discussing issues that might hurt people I care about, even if such ruminations on my part might help me be a healthier person?"

It's something every blogger has to decide for themselves. Of course, the slant of a blog tends to dictate some of this; if you're writing a foodie blog, you're less likely to find yourself at a fork in the road where you must ponder the question. But if you're like me and write a blog about yourself, your past, your parenting skills, the way you were parented, your children...these things tend to smack you in the face more often.

I've decided not to write stuff that here that I wouldn't want someone to find because the bottom line is, sooner or later someone will find it. However, I could share some things without pointing fingers. And a bit of my thoughts without giving away all the secrets. And reveal things without risking hurting others.

I write a lot about political commentary and religion. Not that those two are necessarily intertwined, but they can be. And they have been intertwined in my life. And their intertwining oftentimes causes me to react.

I realized over the past couple months that I am not reacting to politics or religion primarily. If I meet someone who is devoutly religious, I don't damn them in my mind. If I talk to someone with differing political views than mind, I don't instantly judge them and write them off. Rather, most times when I sound off on an issue here at my blog, I am reacting to the source of these opinions. And many times the opinions are coming from...my mother.

I know, I know, I can imagine what you're thinking. This is everyone's plight, I'm just another middle-aged mom with a mother who is critical and disagrees with everything I value. I can't tell you how many times I've read bloggers who have banged out tomes on the same train of thought. But for me the friction I experience with my mother has a deeper root than her being a little cranky and irritable and disagreeable. Recently I realized, I don't have the strength to tolerate the banter. Why? It's because of the mixed past I have the source of the banter. When I get these emails from my mom, I don't hear "I disagree with your politics;" I hear, "I disapprove of you and who you are." And so I blog about the issue, believing it's the politics or the religious overtones that are at stake. But that's not really what's bothering me.

CoffeeYogurt has a great blog. Go visit it. I mention it here because she's a psychologist and there is one small tidbit there that will make you laugh. In her comments, she set the text to read, "Tell me about your mother..." Perfect, eh? I've never told her about my mother (I don't think), but man, if I did, I could say a lot. So thanks for the continual source of amusement for me, CoffeeYogurt!

OK, so to the point. What has this got to do with my blog and my decision not to discuss issues that could be hurtful? Well, I realized that some of my ranting here is a little out of place. Do I believe God exists? I don't know; I'm a trained scientist, so I don't know how to even answer a question that can't be answered through research. So I'm not an atheist. Would I ever consider going to church again? I would, especially if I found a church that was "right" (and I don't mean that in the US political sense). It's just been hard to find that. Would I ever lean to less liberal politics? Hell, yes. I value equal rights and a strict separation of church and state (even if the state church is my own), however, I'm a bit concerned about liberal use of money these days. For the record, I was concerned about it when it was a Republican administration that was spending so much too...

So I think I'm going to stop using this blog as the outlet of my frustrating relationship I have with my mother. I don't know why she sends me the messages she does or why she says the things she does. I've decided not to engage the conversation with her anymore. And I've decided to stop letting these messages affect me too. Including composing whole posts for my blog in order to vent my frustration.

Anyone out there who thinks I may get my emotions bottled up and burst one day due to the lack of venting, don't worry; I have a therapist ;-)

Update on homeschooling

When I was a sophomore in high school, while studying the Renaissance as part of World History, I was assigned to write a short report on the Italian architect Brunelleschi. I remember little else about the architect except that he designed the dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. It never occurred to me at that point in my life that I might get to actually see the dome.

As if our family life did not involve enough ups and down and turnabouts, my husband and I decided the last couple weeks to do something a little unexpected. Not crazy, just unexpected. We thought we'd take the family to Italy for a semester. My husband had been pursuing teaching abroad for the winter and spring of next year. I encouraged him to do this, since he hasn't gotten the chance to travel for a sabbatical. The one snag of course was that going would mean he would leave our family behind. Me, Grace, and our new baby. Not the end of the world, but not what we really wanted either. So we started working on the unexpected plan -- taking the whole family to Italy for a semester.

No problem for me. No problem for the baby. But Grace. How do you work in a semester away when a kid is in high school and still make sure she stays on track to graduate? People do these sorts of things, there must be a way to do it. I contacted her guidance counselor and asked what we could do. He was more than enthusiastic and helpful. He said, no problem, he'd contact one of his colleagues at one of the other high schools in the city. The solution? Grace could do her studies at home using online resources already approved by the district, and while she was here in the states, she could still participate in swim team, orchestra, sit in on classes that would be good (like language classes and an AP course). Once we went abroad, she could continue her homeschooling using these resources and supplement using anything we wanted that seemed of use abroad (hello, AP World History).

We didn't tell Grace. We wanted to wait until we knew everything was a go. I was pretty sure she would go for it because she had been begging us for weeks to let her do an exchange program abroad during her sophomore year. That was out of the question because, oh my god, do you know how much those programs cost? But still...Italy...in the spring...I didn't think it would take too much convincing.

I started thinking about all the amazing benefits and possibilities. Our family, by that point the full four of us, could travel together and live away together. We could spend 4-5 months together. Grace with a new little sister, me with my two daughters, my husband with his daughter and his stepdaughter together, my husband and I, away from the hub bub of our typical American life. We'd get the chance to be in a new place for longer than a few days or a few weeks...we could actually get the chance to settle into a place and get to know it, a place that presents new perspectives and new experiences.

Under these conditions could I take up the task of homeschooling? Oh, yes. Sure, it would be a change of pace and something I'd have to begin planning for. But the chance to have one year just to give it a shot, spend time together, do learning in a way that Grace wanted to rather than how a teacher wanted to...that is irreplaceable.

Just about the time everything was settling down and the guidance counselor was pulling together all the information, we hit a glitch. The project abroad had been downsized and we no longer had the opportunity. Some other year in the future, maybe, but not now. But at that moment I realized what I had lost. It occurred to me that my family, one that is still in the making, has precious short years before the oldest child becomes an adult. The chance to sweep the whole family up and go on a venture together is slipping away from us.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to have that experience without the actual act of going away physically. I'm realizing that it's very important for me to have the family bond. I'm trying to figure out how to make the most of every day, every holiday, every birthday, every moment.

Ciao, Italia.

One more try at bringing awareness to discrimination

How much do you spend at amazon.com every year? A lot? I know I do. I spend a whole heck of a lot of money there. It's things I would buy elsewhere, but because I can find it at amazon for less money, a lot of times they get my money. This goes for everything from my daughter's books for gifts (4 so far this year) to mp3 downloads (over 100 so far this year). And I'm an academic. I've got a truckload of local bookstores I could buy from, and I buy a lot of books every year. I most recently bought a copy of the Twilight DVD for Grace from Amazon.

Check this out: Amazon is making books and media with any positive reference to gay or lesbian content, or those written by known gay or lesbian authors, invisible to searches and sales rank status. You can read a nice short synopsis of the issue here, and read Mark Probst's post about the issue on his blog here. In short, if you do a search at Amazon.com for anything about gays or lesbians, you won't find anything positive, only anti-gay propaganda.

Who cares, really? I mean, what difference does it make? It makes a huge difference. From everything to depriving authors of sales to limiting information available to the public, it makes a big difference.

Amazon.com has the right to do it. They have to right to limit their inventory, bar consumers from seeing certain things, and to classify gay and lesbian literature as "adult material." This includes things like a book by Ellen Degeneres, regardless of what the central topic of the book is.

But you have a right to know. And you have the right to choose whether you will continue to shop there. At least let your voice be heard if you find this unacceptable. Do something. If you sit back and do nothing, you are saying that this kind of discrimination is ok.

Catching up on some open folders in my inbox

Let's see here, where were we? I left off last Friday saying that we were headed to the DVD premiere party of Twilight at a local bookstore. How was that party, then? Well, it certainly proved to be fodder for photography, though the events scheduled were a bit, ah, how shall we say? Ah yes, lame. A couple of sales girls from the store led the happenings by reading out various trivia questions about the movie to a group of fans about 40 strong. The attendees were mostly teens, some trying to look cool because they were out alone late at the bookstore alone, others trying to look cool despite being there with their parents. There were also a few adults who seemed to know all the right answers to the questions. Not me.

Grace was happy enough. She had $11 dollars, enough to buy exactly nothing. There was an Edward Cullen action figure for $20 -- I don't think so. Maybe that was marketed to the adults who knew all the answers to the trivia questions. What do you do with an Edward Cullen action figure anyway?

Despite the rather flat entertainment, there were some payoffs after about an hour. Grace got a free advertising poster for the motion picture soundtrack, which she promptly posted to her bedroom wall the next morning:


And my husband, a fluent French speaker, found something fun to read:


No, I'm not worried that he's getting ready to pick up women in a language I don't speak. We actually loved reading it because we're nerdy linguists and we love to read about how to make language learning more enticing, especially in the US. The book's called Hide This French Book (Berlitz, retail $9.95) and it's full of all the stuff they never teach in language class but that you really, really need to learn if you intend to survive in somewhere that the language is used. Like how to really order drinks and talk about sex (both actively and passively) and gossip and more. After enjoying it for about 30 minutes, we decided Grace didn't need it for her French studies quite yet and $10 was way too much for this kind of information anyway.

Just before midnight rolled around, when all the other fans lined up to buy their DVDs, we decided to go home, smiling because we knew our copy of the DVD had already shipped and we had paid $15 less than we would have at said local bookstore. I know, it's sad; we're taking the sale away from a local bookstore and giving it to a big warehouse dot-com like Amazon. But $15 is still $15, and we figure local businesses, while we strive to given them our business whenever possible, have to be able to compete while not breaking the pocketbooks of local patrons. Alas.

On to other issues. If you'll recall, a month ago the furnace was acting up. We called and had it repaired. But that really didn't quite address the bigger issue: our bedroom that is freezing cold that we still haven't moved into. As it turned out, the repair that the furnace needed was covered under our home warranty, so the money we saved in that slight inconvenience is now being applied to the purchase and installation of a new furnace. The work was completed yesterday. Thank goodness. Now that winter is over, we may have a furnace that works properly and doesn't cost an arm and a leg to operate. The furnace salesman/installation specialist swears that we'll see our winter power bills drop by 20%. I sure hope so.

A much more enjoyable and superfluous detail that I left open-ended was what Grace would decide as far as cutting her hair. As of Friday night, she was still going with the trusty ponytail, full as it ever was:


By Saturday morning, she was ready. She asked for me to make her an appointment. She said she wanted it short, and could we also have it dyed a dark brown color?

A. Ha. I laughed. Could she have it dyed dark brown. Her hair is dark brown, she just couldn't tell anymore because it's so damaged and bleached out. I assured her that if she cut it short, it would be dark brown.

And so we made the appointment and she excitedly found two pictures online that captured the look she wanted. Pixie cut. Really, really short pixie cut. I wasn't sure she would really go through with it or that she would be happy with it when it was finished. Nonetheless...


...off came half of it in the first snip. The stylist held the fistful of hair in her hand and showed it to Grace. Then Grace took it from her. Her eyes opened like saucers sitting there looking at the massive tresses and feeling the weight in her hand and no longer on her head. And then she smiled and started laughing. She threw the wad to the floor and the stylist went on from there.


You can't tell from the picture, but the toes inside those Converses were wriggling with excitement the whole time.

I gotta say, it looks so cute and so good. We went shopping for about an hour afterward and she just kept saying, I look so mature! I look so stylish! I look so fun!

I guess I'm not such a bad role model for hair care as I thought afterall. And yes, she was relieved to discover that her hair is still dark brown.

Lastly, while downloading pictures off Grace's camera for this post, I found all the other pictures she had taken lately. I wish I could entice you with something spicy, but alas, my daughter appears to be rather well behaved. She did take several pictures of this, though:


It's the Bach Prelude she's in the last stages of working on now. It's getting better and better each day, and bringing joy to my heart each down it springs forth. Kind of like Grace.

How to get over the hurdles

Sometimes in academia, I feel like I don't fit in. It's not all the time, and it's not a big deal. But it has to do with the typical person who chooses a career in academia and how that is a stark contrast to me.

I was not a valedictorian. I didn't get any special awards when I was a student. I didn't get on the high honor role or earn scholarships to college. I was just an ordinary girl. Most people thought I was smart, and my family told me I should work hard. For the most part, I spent my entire educational career at the bottom of the top. Get it? Yeah, I got into the honors classes, but I was at the bottom of those classes. And I got into the honors program in college, but I dropped out within the first year.

This is not what the typical person in academia is like. They are who you'd expect they would be -- very bright, very successful academically, and very driven. Like all professions, personalities vary. Some people are arrogant, while others are humble. A few are out to prove something, but others are more aptly described as curious knowledge seekers. There are workaholics and people who take their breaks and vacations and weekends without any guilt. But overall, they all succeeded academically.

There is a certain group of people in academia though, not so different from myself, that irk me. It's those that come from a privileged group -- smart, affluent, successful, mentored -- and the belief among these people that all they've achieved is directly related to who they are and their hard work. Let me explain. I went to private school all through grade school and high school. I used to find it so funny when the school publications would go on and on about how much higher the average SAT scores of the student body was than the country average. Really? You charge outrageous prices for tuition and require an entrance exam for admittance, and you thought that the average scores would be, well, average? Of course not. If the school's student body had been a fair cross-section of the county's population, then I could where this would be quite impressive that the scores were so high. But it wasn't a cross-section at all. They did the same thing with percentage of students who were admitted to four-year colleges, got scholarships, etc. I know, it's PR, they have to do it because they have to sell the school to prospective students. But it sets up a deceptive image in the minds of the students there. They start to believe they are better than average, and it's all because they have been pushed harder, they have worked harder, and they just did it better than everyone else out there. Those who didn't do as well as they did just didn't work as hard or weren't as smart.

Vicious, isn't it? No mention of how much harder it would be if you were trying to achieve these academic accolades while also working 20 hours a week to help support your family and living in a less than savory neighborhood. And you hadn't gotten the chance to take private music lessons. Or traveled to Europe when you were 14 with your school chorus. It's easy to see how these students didn't see that their higher achievement over other students didn't exactly boil down to who was brighter and harder-working and more deserving. I sure didn't see it that way.

I wasn't exactly a member of the privileged class. Though my parents both graduated from college and my dad made a good living, we didn't exactly come from elite roots, you know? We were raised to work hard. We got piano lessons and such, but my parents didn't treat it like something that we had to do to stay ahead. They encouraged us to work hard and they made opportunities available. But if we said we didn't want to take the lessons or be on the sports team or go on the youth group mission trip, they didn't insist. When my sisters and I applied to college, we didn't really have any legacy to rely upon. My parents and teachers didn't know any big people who would write a letter of recommendation for us to guarantee our entrance into the college of our dreams. We just put our SAT scores and our transcripts into an envelope and mailed them off to colleges hoping we'd get in. And we really believed it came down to who was the best. Little did I know at the time how sorted to situation becomes as to who gets in and who doesn't. Who succeeds, who soars to the top because of who they are and who soars there because they truly are dynamic, this is all a mixed bag. The bottom line is, colleges want to admit students they know can handle the work and that are likely to stick with it to the end. Once that criteria is met, they are fortunate to consider questions of who is likely to bring valor back to the institution. Like it or not, students who are well connected tend to meet these criteria. So if you are not well connected, you have to compete with the rest of everyone who's just trying to look as good as they can on paper and convince a board of admissions that they've got what it takes.

You'd think with as much exposure as I have had to colleges and admissions and all the rest that I would be perfect at looking at my daughter objectively and helping her steer her way through the educational process. She wants to go to college, there's no question about that. But she's not your typical honor roll, eager beaver student. It occurred to me when she was very young that I would need to think outside of the box with this one. She wasn't going to make it to college by playing by the rules. Despite this enlightenment, so to speak, I regret to say I've come at the task in a somewhat naive way. When it comes to Grace's performance in school and her grades, her interaction with teachers, the way she dresses, the activities she's involved in, all of it, I think inside the box. I think, you have to work hard and get good grades. You have to take the right classes and soar above the rest. You have to go, go, go and not stop because it's hard to get where you need to go. And the message she's gotten, loud and clear, is that mom wants good grades and success. If there's not success, mom will probably not be happy.

During the last few days, I was reflecting on my feelings towards people and their success in my own field. I often times find myself listening to someone's tales in academia and tiring of the overabundant evidence of privilege. I think to myself, what have you overcome in your life? What were the challenges put before you? It gets tiring. I sometimes meet undergrads and read their personal statements on scholarship or grad school applications. I'll hit one that cites all the ways their great family, great school, great community, great activities, and great teachers have made them so excited about learning. And I think, that's kind of boring. What did you do other than receive all this greatness? What did you draw on that was inside you that I can see? In the end I think, I want people who are interesting to be at the university. I want the people who have faced a challenge and overcome it. I want my professors to be people who have gone to the other side of the mountain and back.

I'm not tooting my own horn here, because I'm not sure how well I fit this description.

And then suddenly, like a gift from heaven, it occurred to me. I want someone like Grace to succeed at college. She's the kind of person who has faced some real challenges and overcome them. She's failed classes and kept her chin up. She gets a lot of negative feedback, and yet she's never thrown in the towel, never given up on school, never said her effort doesn't matter, nor changed her life plans because she thinks she can't achieve them. She is passionate, and despite everything negative that gets thrown at her, she perseveres. I've said here that I admired her confidence. I've said that I thought she aimed high. But I've never realized that these qualities are exactly the ones that make her the kind of person you want to keep around.

She's faced a diagnosed disability, discrimination, a broken home, tough financial circumstances, the illness of a parent, and move after move after move after move. She's traveled the world, but not the posh world. The third world. And she completely takes in the whole experience and thinks it's normal.

In the end, she looks great to me. I mean, really, it's shocking to me when I think about what her life has thrown at her so far and how much she looks like girls in her school who have lived in the same tree-lined suburb since they were conceived. I realized at the beginning of the swim team season this fall, Grace was the only member of the team who didn't live in an owned home (we were renting an apartment at the time). It doesn't seem like much, but of course when a sport requires practices 5-6 days a week and early morning pick ups and $50 suits that must be replaced every 3 months and year-round training and team fees, it weeds out a lot of the single parents, financially-strapped families, and others. I just use this as an example of how the rich get richer, and if Grace is diligent enough to keep on keeping on despite not having certain privileges, well, hurrah for her!

So that's my great thought of the week. My kid is not someone to worry about in the long run. She's facing challenges and tough challenges they are. But in the end, she is a great person who will triumph. Like everyone, she'll face moments when she feels like she doesn't measure up. She'll have to decide whether to quit or keep going. But so far in her life, she's done pretty well. And who am I to tell her that she can't do something when she believes she can do it?

Another unlikely commonality

Way back when on National Stepfamily Day I wrote about how Grace and my husband have some weird things in common. They are very different people, but yet they have things they both like. A lot. Things that I don't have any interest in.

Enter in something I have never really been fascinated with: vampire lore.

Yes, I've read Bram Stoker's Dracula. And several of the Anne Rice vampire novels. And I saw the movies made of both Dracula (with Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves) and Interview (with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and itsy bitsy Kirsten Dunst - *shiver*). And I also watched Lost Boys when I was a teenager. And Buffy, the original movie and the tv show. So it's not like I haven't had my share of exposure to the genre.

I like sci-fi of other genres, like Star Trek and Star Wars, Stargate*, Quantum Leap, Buck Rogers, and the best, Battlestar Galactica. That Dirk Benedict, man, he was awesome. So it's not that I just don't get plot lines that require imagining a world very different than the real one.

But vampires. You know what it is that keeps me from just staying completely obsessed with it? Eventually I just start thinking it's all about sex and the plot can't really hold my interest for the long term.

Not so for many, many people around me. MANY of them love this stuff. One of my best friends from high school. My college roommate. As it turns out, my husband. And now? My daughter.

She's reading the novels in the Twilight series. Yeah, I know, so is every other teen in the country. But she's really into it now. She's gone way beyond the girly affection for Robert Pattinson; now she's up to the third novel. My husband doesn't have enough time to read the books and the movies are far too sensationalized for him to pay money for. Still, he wants to know the plot. And so he's taken to running every single errand with her and giving her a ride every time she needs one. So he can ask her about the plot. She's happy to oblige, giving him a detailed summary of whatever she read in the last 24 hours. So he gets his vampire fix, she gets a willing audience to listen to her obsession, and they both get quality time together.

Weird. If you had asked me what a teenage girl and her stepfather who's a linguistics professor would bond on, I wouldn't have guessed vampires. But there you go.

photography by Grace

* By the way, whenever I mention Stargate, there's something important I always have to point out. In the film, one guy gets some action during the entire plot. Only one. Not a marine, not a brawny guy. Who is he? Why, a PhD, a professor, and most importantly, a linguist. I love that.

Fatherhood part 3: Parenthood sneaks up on you when you least expect it

When my husband and I first started dating, he was unlike anyone I had ever been with before. When he speaks, it means that he has something important to say; he doesn't just go on and on without thinking first. He is careful in his choices; he likes to have things that are not too expensive and worth what you pay for them. He didn't shower me with gifts; occasionally he brought me small treats, like two or three chocolate Lindor balls.

I knew he cared for me through the small things he did. For instance, I moved away from Michigan to Maryland for grad school after we had been dating about 3 months. He was in Brazil at the time, teaching a course for four weeks. He left about 10 days before my moving date. Before he left, he purchased several calling cards for me and gave me clear instructions on how to reach him. Then we spent about 2 hours learning a little Portuguese so that when I called I could say who I was and ask for him. And so that if he wasn't home, I could understand what the person on the other line was saying to me. More or less. He explained that phone calls from Brazil to the US are way more expensive than the other way around, so he made it possible for us to talk while he was gone without breaking the bank. I spent the morning he left for the trip at his apartment with him while he packed and got ready, then we left for the airport and I told him goodbye, knowing we no longer would live close to each other at all. His trip to Brasilia took 24 hours that trip. We had arranged for me to call him a few days later, once he was settled and had gotten a chance to visit with family. 24 hours later I got a call on my cell phone from an unrecognized number. It was him. He said he couldn't wait to talk to me and wanted to tell me that his trip was a safe one. I was elated and the 10 minutes passed far too quickly.

Or sometimes he showed that he cared for me through the not so small things that took an enormous amount of caring to do. Like one time when we first starting dating, we went to conference out of town together. I was the conference organizer, so I spent every day running around, taking care of every little detail, and getting very little sleep. Late one night I discovered that I had left my reading classes on the other end of the university campus from the dorm where I was staying, and I had a lot of reading to do the next morning. It wasn't really a great idea for me to walk across campus so late, and I was physically exhausted. I couldn't move one more inch. I felt defeated. My husband was having knee trouble, bad enough trouble that a couple months after this conference it required an MRI and some physical therapy. But at that moment when he saw me falling apart, when he knew I couldn't do any more, he told me to rest and relax, that it would all be fine. He gave me a kiss and turned out the light. An hour later he came in with my glasses and quietly put them next to me while I slept. He had walked about 2 miles to get those glasses and limped for the next two days. I had to drive home he was in so much pain.

A man of few words, but words that count, who demonstrates his caring and affection through his everyday actions and activities.

That man is about to become a father for the first time later this year. It's been a long road to get here, and we are relishing every moment of the waiting together. But his parenting isn't just starting now. It started a long time ago. First as a godfather to a nephew being raised by a single mom, and then as a stepfather to my daughter Grace. So it seems kind of strange to say, what kind of a father will he be? In many ways, he has been a father for many years already. And in a way, the parenting he's so far has been the hardest parts. He didn't ask to become an ad hoc father-figure when his sister left her husband after he was cheating on her. But he did. He completely took over, even going so far as to bring his nephew to his apartment to stay when his mom was working at night. Dinner, bath time, homework, bedtime, everything. When he was a 25-year-old bachelor. He did it because someone needed to do it. When he fell in love with me, he knew there was a little girl involved in the picture. He didn't have to be a father to her or to be responsible for any part of raising her. But again, he realized that she needed someone to help her, and I needed someone to help me parent. So he stepped in, giving her rides to school, packing her lunch, attending school conferences and orchestra concerts (no matter how painful those early ones were!), and generally being available. For a long time, I was hesitant to let him do this. I thought, it's not his job, it's MY job. I wanted to make sure that I was always able to do it, and he was just doing these things because he wanted to, not because I needed him to. But as most single moms can tell you, I needed him to help. There were days when I fell down and I really needed someone to pick me up and help me out.

When we lived far away from each other, I was having some horrible medical problems. Both pain from fibroids and migraines. The migraines were (and still are, when they aren't properly medicated) very, very bad. Lights out, no sound, me in bed in agony. What is a man to do when he's 500 miles away? How can he help? He would call Grace and talk to her. He would ask her how I was doing. He would tell her how she could help me, like getting me juice and keeping the house quiet. Then he would ask her how she was, what did she need. He would ask her about what she could make for dinner. Together they would find leftovers in the fridge or something else easy she could make on her own. He would talk her through the whole thing, because Grace was afraid of being downstairs by herself at night. And he would often times stay on the phone with her until it was time for her to go to sleep, making sure she was in bed with the lights out and had her alarm set for the next morning.

He was careful with her. He didn't assume that she really wanted to have her mother get remarried, much less to have a relationship with her mother's husband. He said he would be there and he would help her, and if she wanted to start getting to know him better, she knew that she always could. It took a long time. It's still taking a long time. But he was and still is patient. For him, their relationship, should they choose to have one, should be based on genuine feelings, not on a pretend display of affection that was mandated just because he wanted to be with her mother. He's always there and always available for her.

He wants them always to have respect for each other. If nothing else, that is important to always have. So when you come in the house, say hello, and when you leave, say goodbye. Greet each other in the morning and say goodnight when the day is done. When someone does something for you, say thank you, and when you need them to do something for you, phrase it in the form of a question, not "I need X."

As a parent, you may get angry, you may be insulted, you may believe that the child has no concern whatsoever. Though you don't hate the child or stop caring about them, you feel like whatever ill-will comes their way is deserved and hopefully it will teach them a lesson. But overall, it is best to be calm. Don't resort to yelling or using insulting language. Don't be sarcastic. As a parent, you do have the right to express how you feel about the way your child hurt you and others around you. And sometimes, it's exactly what a child needs to hear.

Sometimes, many times in fact, it is good to let children make their own mistakes. Big mistakes. Mistakes that really put them up a creek without a paddle. One of two things will happen. Either they'll realize what their mistake was and do whatever it takes to correct it, or they will come to you and ask for help. Earnestly. And with humility and an apology. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get both. But if you save the kid before they get themselves into a big mess, they won't learn not to do it again.

He has a way of looking at things in a balanced way. I think he is much more balanced than I am. I know he is calmer than I am.

It's hard to say how one becomes the parent they are. It's partly your personality, partly an expression of your values, partly what you bring to the table from your own experience of being parented, and some other stuff mashed in there that you don't know where it came from. I don't care how much someone says they've got their parenting philosophy down, the truth is that you become a parent with zero experience. Whoever it was that was your guinea pig, whether it was your nephew or your godchild or your younger sister or your step child or your biological child, you started rearing children without any prior experience. You make mistakes. But sometimes you're lucky enough to have some luck with factors that don't come from parenting directly.

It's a coincidence in my life that I've had three men who were great parents, my husband, my dad, and my grandfather. It's nothing inherent about being a father that makes them good parents, it's just who they are. I believe that who I am as a woman was greatly shaped by the way the men in my life made me feel positive about being a woman. I don't think they were trying to do that; I think they were just trying to be good parents, no matter the gender of the child.

As I've reflecting on these traits the last few days, I've come to realize that they are some parts of what makes a good parent that I have been missing. So I'm trying to learn by the example of others around me and move forward little by little. Like we all do in the task of being a parent.

nobody told me there'd be days like these.

Right now, I am all of 90 minutes free of a major migraine. It started up yesterday afternoon behind my left eye after masquerading as nausea for several hours. By 5p, I just wanted to go to bed. By 8p I was resorting to my pre-migraine-treatment days tactics like drawing a steaming hot bath, lying in it until every muscle in my body relaxed, and then crawling into bed under the covers with my eyes covered and passing out. I knew it wouldn't get rid of the migraine, but I might be able to get some sleep.

Somewhere, somewhere in the house was the pain reliever that my REE prescribed for migraines while I was pregnant. While not useful for the real root cause, it's a good non-narcotic pain killer that's laced with caffeine -- nice. Given that I can't take my magic migraine-kill meds while pregnant, this pain reliever makes me positively euphoric in the face of not being able to take Excedrin, ibuprofen, or aspirin. But...I didn't have the wherewithal to actually get out of bed and figure out where it was. It belongs in the compartment in my computer bag that holds all personal items, like chapstick and my inhaler and barrettes. But I took it out the morning before and I didn't have clue where I left it. I just knew that at that moment, I would do anything for my meds despite not having any actual physical ability to obtain them.

The night was long, long, I tell you. I knew it would happen. I can't sleep with a migraine. The only hope I have is to numb the pain long enough in order to enable myself to pass out from exhaustion for at least an hour until the pain comes back. But when it comes back, oh god. I tried another steamy hot bath at some ungodly hour of the morning. It worked until it started making me nauseous again, then I got out and passed out in the bed again.

(My husband really appreciates these crazy tactics. He knows nothing works, and he's learned to just hang in there and not take the delusional things I'm saying in my half-asleep, half-impaired state too seriously.)

I got up this morning at 9:30a. I took a shower. I didn't feel too bad, though the pain behind my eye was still making me dizzy. When I got out, I fell asleep for another hour. I finally got up for good at 10:30a and went downstairs for something to eat. I took two bites of cereal with milk and realized the nausea still wasn't gone. I knew I had to eat, so I just finished the bowl. Then I decided, migraine or no migraine, nausea or no nausea, I have to get ready for the day and go to work.

When I finally pulled myself together completely, the pain was just about gone. I thought, just move ahead and try not to do anything that will make it come back. I gathered my regular things to put into my computer bag and take to work. Fortunately the bag was already next to my bed. Cell phone, check. Extra hair elastic, check. Reading glasses, check. Chapstick, check. And then I saw it, in the compartment full of personal items -- the pain killer prescribed for my migraines during pregnancy. It had been exactly where it was supposed to be, in the bag that just happened to be right next to my bed, for approximately 18 hours while I writhed and rolled in pain.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I took one pill, and thought in a glass-half-full kind of way, at least the second half of the day won't be so bad.

I drove to the university and found a good parking spot. As I walked to my office, the nausea had almost completely subsided. I thought, I should just stop by the student union for a hamburger so I can at least get some protein now that I'm alive again. Brightened by the possibility of the day looking up, I strolled into the food court. As I was standing in line salivating, I realized my wallet wasn't in my bag; it was on the kitchen table where I left it yesterday after making an online purchase. No money. Not even a quarter tucked away in an extra pocket. Nothing. Nada.

AAAaahhHHH.

Arg.

I give up. Today stinks.

Follow-up to test taking

I said it yesterday, and I'll repeat it today: THANK YOU to all of you who commented and emailed me about my post regarding Grace and test taking. As many of you noted, I was feeling very scared and very confused and very frustrated. Sometimes the best remedy for that is time to think it through. Time has helped, but it has also helped to get all of the ideas y'all made.

So here's some more information about our situation. Sorry in advance for the very lengthy post, but I wanted to address each of these ideas carefully since I don't think Grace or I are the only people who could benefit from the discussion. Hopefully it will be beneficial to many out there.

Natalie and Amanda both ask about alternative schools, educational approaches, and teaching philosophies out there. Yes, I've thought about this. We do have an alternative high school here that is hugely successful. The philosophy is that students drive their own learning. For the most part, the students design their own curriculum around their interests and learn because they are self-motivated. The high school is uncontroversially ranked highest in the state in scores on state mandated standardized testing, SAT and ACT scores, graduate rate, and placement in colleges (both by numbers and by national ranks of the college/university). Grace was enormously interested in going there. Unfortunately, so is every other 8th grader in the district. They place about 120-125 students in the freshman class every year from about 350-400 applications. No special privileges, no preferential treatment, no consideration of what the student brings to the table. The lucky new freshmen are selected entirely on the basis of lottery. And Grace was number 290-something. So, it's unlikely her number will come up anytime soon.

The high school Grace does go to has its own neighborhood district, but it also includes a magnet program. Several, in fact. The high school curriculum is tailored to one of four broadly defined career fields and the students in the magnet programs are able to spend their 10th, 11th, and 12th grade years in specialized courses that meet state requirements for graduation. Because of this, the high school also has a lottery for incoming freshmen outside the school's prescribed district. We didn't live in the high school's neighborhood district last year, but Grace wanted to put in an application. And she got selected on lottery. Elated, she sent in her acceptance right away. She's hoping she gets into the communication and media magnet program. But again, 40 slots, 400 freshmen, all on random lottery. That's good for Grace, because if it were on merit there's probably no way she'd get in right now without some major strings being pulled.

Another perk of her high school is that they do mastery learning. This means that students don't get away with just checking out of a course, not doing work, and subsequently failing the class and taking it in a watered-down version in summer school. If they get below a C in a class, they have to sign a contract with the teacher and work through the content until it is mastered on their own time in the next term. This is NOT done in a testing format. So for the first term when Grace failed Algebra, she actually got an incomplete and has been working ever since to master the content of tests and quizzes she didn't pass.

So in a sense, Grace already goes to a high school with an alternative approach to education.

All in all, I think where she's at is a good place. Especially given that the only other alternatives would be Catholic school (arguably less flexible) and home schooling (yeah, right, with all my spare time). For those who are curious, if I could do everything all over again knowing everything then that I know now, I would have home-schooled from day one using an unschooling method.

Natalie also asked about whether there's a university close by. More than close by, it's where my husband and I teach and do our research. The school district benefits greatly from this in that they work hard to work with the researchers at the university, do collaborative work, and implement the findings of research directly into the curriculum and the classroom policies. This is especially true of the two high schools that have lotteries for new students (e.g., Grace's high school). For instance, in the two lottery high schools, science is taught as a three-year integrated curriculum. There is no designated biology or chemistry or geology course; the content of these courses is taught topic by topic, since so many scientific topics require learning two or more of the traditional content areas in order to master. It's a bummer to transfer in or out of the system, but if you're in it throughout the four years of high school, the results have proven to be overwhelmingly positive. In the next two school years, all the high schools in the district will have changed completely to this model. Since Natalie suggested seeking advice beyond the district itself, I've seriously thought about going over to the relevant faculty at the school of education once I have more information and asking, what is your best recommendation? We'll see.

Phd in yogurtry and Little Miss Sunshine State both address going through the school for a full evaluation in order to identify any kind of learning disorder and to develop an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for Grace in order to implement a well-defined set of goals and strategies for meeting those goals in school. You know, if there's one thing I could tell people out there who are watching their child struggle in school, go straight to the guidance counselor or teacher and say you want your child to be evaluated. The school is required to furnish you with information about testing and schedule it in a reasonable amount of time, usually within 45-60 days. It is the law of the land, and your right to this has been fought for long and hard by thousands of parents and educators. Once testing is completed, the school district will assemble a team of relevant professionals, including the parents, in order to determine if the child has a need for special intervention and develop an IEP to address that need. Now that I've given that public service announcement...

I know all about IEPs. I used to write IEPs, actually. My first job out of college as a budding psychology BA was to work in early intervention, that is, assessing and delivering services to children ages birth-36 months with any kind of developmental delay. It's required by law to be funded by every state, free of charge, and it's the precursor to the special education system which is normally available to students from age 3 years+. I assessed the infants and toddlers and wrote IFSPs, Individualized Family Service Plans. Once the child turned 3 years old, our agency worked with the local school district to develop an IEP that would pick up where we left off. So fortunately I benefit from the knowledge of the laws surrounding kids with special needs, the obligations of the educational system, and the process by which kids are helped. More than once I have called the school on violations on the law. When this happened, my standard line was to find the appropriate supervisor and tell them, I could sue the district and win, but I'd really rather that you do your job so that my kid could get what she needs.

Grace has been evaluated three times, once in 3rd grade, once in 4th grade, and then a last time in 6th grade. 3rd was the initial eval for qualification for intervention, 4th was because she was in a new school district after we moved and they were going to end services because they doubted she really had a problem. 6th grade was in that same district and was the mandatory re-eval to determine continued eligibility for intervention. During the re-eval in 6th grade, Grace decided to conscientiously object. She told the psychologist that she didn't want to do the testing. The psychologist persisted through it, and when the results were reported, they were almost comical. When they were presented to the team, my husband and I asked the team why the psychologist even bothered to administer the tests when she knew the conditions would result in unreliable and invalid data. She didn't give a great defense. The special ed teacher was embarrassed and apologized to me afterward. The next academic year, I went through Grace's permanent file and removed all the testing records from the re-eval. Then we came back to district number one without an IEP or a current eval. That was the start of 8th grade.

In earlier evaluations, the main finding was that Grace tested positively for ADD/ADHD and that no other impairment was found. Much to her current chagrin, Grace scored the highest in mathematical reasoning and logic. She showed some delay in planning skills which evidenced itself mostly in written composition, but, as all her educators say today, she's completely overcome the evidence of this deficiency. Still, there's my lingering questions about planning skills -- wouldn't this have an effect on her ability to learn material, studying for a test, and spitting back that information in a testing environment?

Right now our goal (Grace's, mine, the team at the school) is to treat ADD with medicine, put a system in place that keeps Grace motivated to do her work when it's assigned even when she doesn't find it useful or interesting, and have her catch up on all her missing assignments. All this is in process now. Then we meet together in about 3 more weeks. At that point, she'll have no missing assignments, she'll have the benefit of 4 weeks using a medication to treat symptoms of ADD, and we can ask, are her problems solved? Maybe, maybe not. But if they aren't solved, we know we can try and identify what's causing symptoms that are independent of just lack of attention and interest in work (symptoms of ADD).

Joanna and Urban Panther and Little Miss Sunshine State all tell about family members or their own children who dealt with ADD or ADHD. This, I think, is one of the biggest things I am missing. I don't have a group of friends who have kids with the disorder. Or even one friend. I have two friends, each with one daughter, who have had a teacher suggest ADD or ADHD may be the cause of the problems their daughter is experiencing in school. Both rejected the suggestion of ADD/ADHD soundly. Both said that there was nothing wrong with their child, that the school system was deficient somehow. Now, I won't say I can't relate to this idea. The educational system in the US tends to find kids with ADD/ADHD at a much higher rate than in other countries, and these kids are treated as much more impaired than is generally thought elsewhere. For instance, Grace looks perfectly average in Brazil. The idea that a kid doesn't like school so much and talks a lot and likes to be outgoing and festive is pretty normal. However...

I realized recently in tears in a conversation with my husband that part of what makes it so difficult to help a child with ADD/ADHD is that the disorder is associated with trouble. If you're a kindergarten teacher, you'd just as soon not have in your classroom the student who's in the midst of being diagnosed. You want that over-active boy who sometimes can't help but hit other kids when he gets mad on the playground fixed. When I was working in early intervention and we heard a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, we all groaned; in contrast, we didn't groan when we heard autism or cerebral palsy or speech delay. There's a stigma attached to ADD/ADHD. There's something wrong with the child, and professionals are excused for reacting in a negative way to the symptoms.

What I was crying about with my husband was that I longed for someone to say, "I've been there; it's rough, but it will be ok in the end." All this to say, it felt so good, even from you bloggers out there who I've never met, to hear you assure me of this.

I emailed Grace's assistant principal on Wednesday evening. I told him of my concerns and asked him to keep an eye on tests and quizzes, especially once Grace has completed all missing assignments and she is keeping up with what's going on in the classroom. Hopefully when we meet in three weeks, we won't have lost any time and we can look at this with less confusion and less convoluted circumstances.

Finally, I talked to Grace. I told her how important it was for her to just keep at it. I told her that she was important, that she was smart, and that I wanted all of us in our family to work together on this. I told her that we want to solve at least part of her struggles (keeping up with daily work, having difficulty paying attention), and then we could make sure that anything else causing problems for her could be addressed better. She was receptive to this. As I've said before, she's really the core of this whole thing, and she needs to be in the middle of it, both in terms of working on the problem and in having control over solving the problem.

Hair

Well, my posts of late have been heavy, no? Are you guys ready for something a little more trivial? Something that reveals who I REALLY am in my daily life? Something that makes you think, 'wtf?' Well here is that post.

My hair is long now. It's the first time it's been long in a VERY LONG TIME. Actually, I'll be sincere with you out there, I don't think my hair has ever been as long as it is now. I can pull it back into a ponytail with no effort and there are no loose hairs anywhere. Here's a picture to show you how long that is.



Did you notice how I'm completely comfortable posting a picture that blatantly displays a chin mole and also makes me look like I have a double chin? I thought so. I'd like to say I'm comfortable with my appearance. Oh wait, I'm off topic. Back to my hair.

It's very long. Up until I started growing it out (18 months ago), I really didn't own a brush. I didn't need one, because my hair always looked like some variation on this:



Chic, no? I was very hip. But now? Not so hip. And the truth of the matter is, even though I am entirely aware that the ends of my hairs are like straw, and that this is no doubt a result of not having had a haircut IN OVER A YEAR, I can't bring myself to going to get it done.

Here's the shocking part. I lost my hairbrush two days ago. I have no idea where it is. I just wash it, blow it dry, and put it in a ponytail for work. Sure, I look like a typical brainy type who doesn't have time for beauty and appearance, or that I'm so wrapped up in my research that I can't even begin to notice that my hair looks a bit raggedy. But the truth is, I notice. And while it would be well and good to notice and think, "I wish I had more tools at my disposal to make myself more presentable," I can't even find my hairbrush. The ONLY tool I use to style -- LOST.

I need help, people. Not ideas, but motivation. Well, maybe ideas too. I fear that 7 months from now I might be a very pregnant lady with stringy hair halfway down my back that hasn't been brushed since 2008. I also need a stylist, which I haven't had in YEARS. The really chic short haircut above was done by me. Really. I cut my own hair into that hairstyle with no help. But I really don't have what it takes to go from what I have (a mop) to something chic. I need a plan. I need a model. I need someone I can pay who does this well. But I don't have someone in mind and if there's one thing in the world I can't stand, it's paying someone $60+ after realizing that coming to them was a huge mistake because they are not really that good.

It's the twilight zone, I swear it.

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know I'm trying to reconnect with some people from my past that I've lost touch with (they're all listed on the left sidebar). These are people who I found to be interesting, deep of soul, and full of potential. Life is such that we move through it without realizing which of the people in it are the ones we should hold on to. At times we also find that the ones we do hold on to may have best been left to the wayside. I hope that at least I get to say hey and have a beer or coffee with the people I'm looking to reconnect with.

But then there's something I hadn't calculated: people may be looking for me. People I didn't really think that much of or notice. There have been a few occasions like this, where my mom bumps into someone in my hometown and they say, hey, how IS Heather? Can you give me her email? Or like I mentioned a week ago when writing about the mean girls, one of them went out of her way to have a conversation with me and give me her phone number. If it were me with her, I probably would have avoided her. And I didn't call her. But I guess when she saw me, she wanted to reconnect. Or just connect. Or something.

And then there's the even weirder things: People you can't remember at all who want to reconnect. Weirder? Everyone else seems to remember this person but you.

That's what's been going on for the last few months.

My mom and my two sisters are on facebook. They were all friends with this man, Michael. I don't know who he is. But he's got the same last name as another older woman on their friend lists. The woman's name I vaguely remember as one of those regulars in the Church of my Youth. But that's all I can remember. Then one day, Michael friends me. Hm.

I emailed my sister. I said, who is this? She gave me a long explanation, including that he was three years behind me in school and that he had attended our school as well as gone to church with us. Wow. Now I really felt out of it. I guess it made sense why he remembered me; I would have been a senior in high school when he was a freshman. And I was the yearbook editor, did tech work and directing in the play, kind of a high profile high school student. But still, I couldn't remember this kid at all. But I figure, if my sisters and mom are friends with him, accepting his friend request would be no big deal.

I asked my mother to help me out in jogging my (apparently) failing mind. While she was visiting for three weeks helping me recover from surgery #2, we had a couple conversations about Michael. An older brother and a sister (I think), dad who was an accountant (or maybe a lawyer), blond hair. Somehow I started remembering Michael. But I was taking narcotics for pain. And I am a firm believer in false memory syndrome, so I didn't trust that my memories were the product of anything other than the overwhelming evidence presented to me that this of course was someone I should remember.

Then he comments on some of my pictures on facebook, noting my dad. He remembers my dad, of course. Then I realize we've got tons of common friends on facebook from my high school. I still couldn't remember anything about him at school.

He starts a facebook group called, "You know you went to OUR PAROCHIAL SCHOOL in the 80s if..." and 100 people join. He invites me to join.

Here comes the icing on the cake. About this time I realized something interesting. He's friends with the younger sister of someone I'm looking for. I send him a quick message and ask him to send my email address along to the sister; hopefully the address find its way to a friend I'M looking for! And then it comes: a lengthy email. He asks my advice on leaving his current position and pursuing an MBA, then a following PhD. He trusts me because I'm someone who made it through grad school and the PhD. OK. Then he qualifies this by saying he'd ask my sisters, except he really trusts me the most. He wrote that he only vaguely remembers them, but me he remembers solidly. (This is the part where I swear I start looking around for the hidden camera.) Then he says, 'don't take this the wrong way, but I even had a little bit of a crush on you when I was little.'

Ok, really, I thought it was weird before, but know I've got to say, this is the strangest thing that has happened in the "reconnecting with my past" EVER. What's he going to say next, that I went to a formal cotillion with him? And he's got the photos to prove it?

Lesson for life

I have a bachelor's degree in psychology. As many people know who have either attempted and/or earned a degree in the field, there's a big hurdle that must be jumped over early in your career: statistics. When I took introductory statistics, it was my first semester back at college after taking a two-year hiatus to get married and have a baby and to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had scheduled 8a classes for every day and had a full 17 hours load. I wanted to be done with this degree already. My Mon/Wed 8a was statistics lab, with the lecture in the afternoon at 1p. After the lecture, I walked home and hopefully found my daughter asleep at her nap.

I liked the class ok; I got a B+. The course was what is referred to in the trade as a "weed-out" course, though -- a course that is designed to challenge students at the start of studies so that only the strong survive. In a field like psychology it made sense I guess because tons of students come to college thinking psychology is what they want when it really is not. Nonetheless, stats was something you had to approach with gusto and courage.

The course was taught by Dr. Roger E. Kirk. He wrote the textbook used: Statistics: An Introduction. He headed the PhD program in psychological statistics. He was one of the most senior colleagues in the department and in his field. He was an expert in a field that charges a pretty penny for its services. He could have done anything other than teach 220 reluctant undergraduates introductory statistics every fall and spring semester. But he was clear to tell his large lecture every semester, he continues to teach the class because he feels it is important for him to teach beginning students.

The course material is dry and Dr. Kirk knew it. He was not a charismatic teacher, but he was sensitive to the attention level of his students. When he sensed that a good portion of the class was tuning out, he would stop and go down what he called "a bunny trail." He would tell us about his wife and a ballroom dancing event they attended together. He would tell stories about his own experience as a student and how he reacted to pretentious leaders of the field when they were less than kind (names withheld ;-) ) Or he would just say what was going on in his garden or some inconvenience in his daily life or a recent cooking experiment he and his wife cooked up. He cared that we as students were there and that we would likely not succeed if we saw our instructor as insensitive to our struggle to even pay attention.

Perhaps the best lesson I ever learned in a classroom I learned from Dr. Kirk. On the last day of lecture, at the very end of the lecture, Dr. Kirk set aside 5 minutes to give us one last lesson. He stood in front of the classroom in his same humble and reserved posture and addressed us all. As we had learned from him before, he reminded us that he had finished a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in music. He played the trombone or the trumpet, I can't remember which. He had thought his entire life he would be a professional musician. But he said that he realized he wasn't very good at playing the instrument. Yes, he could understand the principles he had learned, but he had to face the fact that he wasn't good at the career he was pursuing. It was at this turning point in his life that he applied to his PhD program in psychology and went on to become one of the leaders in the field of modern statistics. The moral of the story, he told us, is that we may have struggled through the class and found ourselves questioning our value, our worth, and our ability to do anything right. But the important thing to realize is that our success in one course in college is not indicative of our overall abilities. Maybe we just hadn't found what we were really experts at yet. He said, I am glad to have gotten to teach you, and I look forward to what each and every one of you will do in your life, regardless of what that is.

In all of my studies and training, I'm very grateful I got to hear that lesson. It helps keep everything in perspective.

Let's have some gender equality, please.

I'm taking a risk. The debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin is still hours away. Tomorrow morning I could look back on everything I've written here and think, I was so mistaken. But right now I feel confident to go out on a limb here.

In the last week, Sarah Palin has demonstrated her ignorance and inadequacies more than a few times:

• When asked by Katie Couric to name the newspapers she read to keep up with current events while governor of Alaska, she first praised the media, then said something like "oh, all of 'em."

• When asked about Supreme Court decisions other than Roe v. Wade that she felt were poor verdicts, Sarah Palin could not name one. Not one. (I have a feeling she can't name any Supreme Court decision in the country's 232 year history, much less those she thought were poor.)

• On the day US military air forces came under hostile fire from Pakistani troops, a voter in Philadelphia asked Sarah Palin what she thought of the situation. She appeared not to know about what had happened, then espoused a view similar to Barack Obama's, a view that John McCain went out of his way to scoff at in last Friday's debate.

• After the press seized on the oddity of the Philadelphia comment regarding Pakistan, Palin and McCain appeared together with Katie Couric. This interview consisted of John McCain saying that this was a press "gotcha" moment. Palin came off as impotent.

This is just this past week. I won't even waste your time writing about how one can see Russia from Alaska.

Among the women I've talked to about Sarah Palin, I haven't yet found one who isn't embarrassed by Palin's position and place in history. When so few women have ever been considered for president or vice president in the United States, to have Sarah Palin be one of them is so defeating. And if anyone who wants to decry the media for being sexist in its treatment of Palin’s general knowledge and readiness for the public office she is seeking, they should first imagine what the media would be saying about a man with such weak credentials and skills. In fact, forget those actually running for office -- imagine what the conservative media (read: Bill O'Reilly) would say if a celebrity took a stance on some political issue and then couldn't name one Supreme Court case, didn't know about the tense situation on the Afghan/Pakistani border, and wouldn't name one news source that they read on a regular basis. This is ludicrous.

So, here's my take. Sarah Palin wants me to hire her as my vice president. But since I don't have the clout to actually talk to her in person, I'm relying upon the media to conduct my interviewing for me. I'll let go of the fact that she never would have made it to my shortlist of candidates for hire based on her resume. She's on the shortlist so I definitely want to interview her. Would I consider her fit for hire? Under no circumstances. None. And I hate to admit it, but I can actually make this decision without even considering her political affiliations or her stances on the issues. She simply does not have what it takes to be hired for the position she is seeking.

Imagine your boss for a second. Think back to the job interview that landed you a job or a position in grad school or whatever. Just think back to that moment when you had to show your stuff. If you had given answers that just didn't cut it, answers that clearly demonstrated you were way out of your league, what would have been the reaction of your boss? If you're a woman, would you have cried gender discrimination in order to explain your incompetence? I didn't think so.

In a stark contrast, I would be insulted if any of my bosses or advisors let me off as easy as Sarah Palin is getting off. I would have felt like they were treating me as a fragile flower because I as a woman couldn't be expected to handle what my male colleagues were expected to tackle. Forget bosses and advisors, I would be insulted if my own father treated me in such condescending manner. And if my dad did it, and if I told him he was out of line, he would apologize.

For me this whole Sarah Palin fiasco is destroying the image of what a competent, strong, and qualified woman is. The way this campaign season has been unfolding sends the subliminal message that women need to be coddled and protected because they can't possibly be expected to perform the way a man must perform under the same circumstances. Deep inside I feel an anger about how this is affecting my life and the life of every other woman out there, like we're all going backward on the road to gender equality as a result.

Joe Biden, please debate Sarah Palin the same way you would debate anyone. And media? Whether you be conservative or liberal, kill this notion of sexism regarding Sarah Palin. If she can't handle the media during an election, there's not much else involved in being vice president or president that she would be able to handle. If everyone can just do their job of interviewing the candidate appropriately and ignore whether she has an X chromosome, we'll all be better off. Do it for your mothers, your sisters, your wives, your daughters. Got it?