ADD in our lives

It's been quite awhile since I said anything about ADD. Would you all believe me if I told you that's because it's not something that we deal with anymore? I didn't think so.

Grey at Second Verse has posted some entries lately that have hit so close to my heart. Her son has ADHD and they are struggling with finding a medication that will help him deal with the behavioral symptoms of the disorder. What's really hitting me about her writing is the raw emotions, the frustration and the helplessness, that she expresses as a mother. Like me, she writes that she feels as if educators don't understand that the behavior problems her son is having in school are a direct result of his ADHD and something he cannot just will into changing. The links to two of her most poignant posts are here and here.

As I have read Grey's words these last couple weeks, I felt as if I was reading my own words.

My journey as the parent of a child with ADD has been a difficult one. Not especially difficult, just difficult. In other words, being the parent of a child with AD(H)D is difficult. The disorder is not physically visible for all to see so that the child's challenges are understood. Rather, the symptoms of AD(H)D look like a typical bad kid. In my deepest moments of despair, I have wished that my daughter had a different disability, one that evoked more compassion and understanding from her educators, teachers, girl scout troop leaders, ballet instructors, babysitters, music teachers, family and friends, and on and on the list goes. With AD(H)D, I as a parent have heard a lifetime's worth of pejorative adjectives describing my daughter and more patronizing pep talks from others than I can count. If this is how I as the parent feels, imagine what the child hears and how she feels.

Serial Mommy published an essay by Emily Pearl Kingsley this past June, an essay about what it feels like to parent a child with a disability. When I read it, I felt like my feelings had been captured perfectly. Check out the link when you have time.

This school year is going well. Yes, Grace still deals with ADD. It's with her every day. Her friends comment all the time that she is the energetic and hyper one. But she's doing much better with her studies (all As and Bs since last March) and she's much better at coping with symptoms and advocating for herself now. By conversing with her teachers and guidance counselors, her pediatrician and other professionals, she has become much more aware of who she is and how she can accomplish everything she wants to -- with ADD. In the last six months, I discovered that two of Grace's closest childhood friends also have been diagnosed and that their respective mothers have gone through the same roller coaster ride I have. By no coincidence, the mothers are two of my closest friends. One of the things I wanted to accomplish by starting this blog was to find people who could support me and advise me on the struggle I had in parenting Grace. Thank goodness I found some.

I wish Ken Burns had gotten my attention when I was in high school

If you haven't seen it yet, there's a new documentary debuting on PBS this week, The National Parks. It's the finished project resulting from almost a decade of work by Ken Burns, one of the most recognized documentary film makers of our day. Since everything I know about this documentary is from interviews with Ken Burns that I watched last week, I'll save you all the trouble of reading and simply embed two of the videos here.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Ken Burns
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Twelve hours long, divided into 6 2-hour segments. Tonight the final installment is airing. At the start of the week, we scheduled the DVR to record all 6 segments so that we could watch them as we had time. (Yes, I figured out how to use the DVR, that wonder of modern technology that lets you watch a television show whenever you like and pause it in the middle too.)

I've gotten the chance to watch the first two hours so far, about the beginnings of the National Parks at Yosemite and Yellowstone. As I watched it, I started remembering my high school lessons from US History. Vaguely. John Muir, that name sounded familiar. Wasn't I supposed to know who that was once upon a time? It seems like I was supposed to have read something about him that I didn't and then there was a question on a test that I didn't know. Nez Perce sounded familiar too. I knew it referred to an indigenous language of the Americas, but I seemed to remember that there was some other important thing about the people group that I should know. But I couldn't call it up.

As a junior in high school, I took US History as an AP course. It was what you were supposed to do if you were headed to college. I took it and I never cracked higher than a C in the class. Worse, I didn't learn much about American history. It wasn't until long after I finished my BA that I started wanting to understand the history of the country I grew up in. I realized that it affected my daily life. I needed to know what had happened in the tract of land and to the people who lived there, regardless of their citizenship and ancestry.

As I watched the first installment of The National Parks, I started wishing I could have seen it as a high school student. Maybe I would have had a chance at understanding why history mattered. Maybe I would have paid attention long enough to realize it was an interesting story.

I really found myself having a lot of regrets about how I approached my education.

And then it occurred to me: I can't go back and change my own high school experience, but I can influence Grace's experience. Grace is taking AP US History this year. I could suggest to Grace that she watch the series on the National Parks. She could enjoy learning about the history of the United States instead of trying to reconstruct the stories from the dry text in a thick, heavy coursebook.

I must say, so far she's taking the course a lot more seriously than I did. She seems to understand the ideas more fully than I did, too. When I suggested that she watch the series, she responded well. The next day she watched about an hour of the first show and took notes.

Once again, I'm realizing that Grace is a far more mature person than I give her credit for. And she's a far more mature person than I was when I was her same age.

And yet, it happened again

Grace was away for the weekend. She spent it with her father and his family.

Her younger sister, her father's daughter, turned three years old last Tuesday. Grace spent that evening with her father's family to celebrate. Then this weekend her father and stepmother decided to travel north, 150 miles, to her stepmother's parent's home to celebrate again. They left on Saturday morning around 10a and returned Sunday by 8p.

When Grace came in the front door last night and said hello, it was apparent she was sick. Not only did her voice sound like a frog's, she was coughing and then said her nose was stuffed up.

Over the weekend, she had taken cough drops from Friday night until she came home and she took an allergy medicine (given to her by her stepmother) on Sunday morning. Then she rode home in the car for 3 hours in a t-shirt and short shorts...when the temperatures were dropping and well into the low 50s already.

Once I had assessed the situation, I gave her a cough suppressant and a mild decongestant. Then I told her if she felt sick in the middle of the night to come tell me so she could take more medicine. This morning at 5a when she woke up for swim practice, she asked for more medicine. I told her that if she felt sick when it wore off to call me from school and that I would come get her. At 11a, she called from school. I went to school immediately and picked her up. She came home, put on her pajamas, and got in bed. She's sick.

The last four times Grace has been sick, this has occurred immediately upon her return from her father's house. In fact, I can't remember the last time she fell ill while being at home. Neither can she. In longer than the past two years, since she started eighth grade, I can't remember a time she was sick and missed school or anything else due to illness when she was home with me. But I can remember many times she missed school in that time period. Each one of these times immediately followed a visit with her father.

I spent the entire hour I met with my therapist this afternoon unloading all my frustration about this. Now that I am finished with that, I have only one question left. What is her father doing in the 48 hours she spends with him that gets her so sick so fast? I mean, this is a kid who never gets sick in any other situation. My God, how oblivious do you have to be as an adult in order for a teenager to get sick so often when she is in your care?

For those of you who (rightfully) give me the following advice every time I broach this issue, I talked with Grace last night about how she can take care of herself. I told her that since she is the only person looking out for her health when she visits with her father, she needs to start paying attention when I teach her about monitoring her own symptoms and about over-the-counter medicines. And I told her that whenever she feels sick, she should call me and ask me what she should do. The last thing I told her was to try and figure out what the factor is that causes her to get sick when she visits with her father (some ideas: not wearing warm enough apparel? not eating well? not getting enough sleep? sleeping on the floor? inhaling second-hand smoke nonstop?)

I wish the courts would mandate that non-custodial parents parent during visitation, not just visit. Maybe they should rename visitation 'parenting time.' Just an idea.

The up side

I've been a bit melancholy. That's an understatement, actually. I'm depressed. I saw a PSA on television yesterday for some depression medication and it included the rhetorical question, 'what does depression feel like?' Then the answer: depression hurts. And...I started crying. 'nuff said.

The family is doing well. I went out with a friend to bridal luncheon yesterday. While I was gone, which frankly was a long time because I got on the wrong highway and drove 20 miles out of my way, my husband took Grace to the hardware store to buy some last materials for her science project. They also bought a wheelbarrow, some planting soil and some seeds.

When I arrived home, Grace was upstairs working on the last of her project and my husband was out back planting seeds. There were little tags that said "basil" and "eggplant" and "watermelon" that Grace had made. Watermelon was Grace's pick. They also got some tomato seeds and zucchini seeds in the ground.

I'm a pessimist when it comes to gardening. I kill almost everything. Grace gave me a couple of those seedling kits for my birthday this year. You know, the kind that include seeds and a little pot and a disc of fertilized soil? All you have to do is follow the directions and give the newly sown seeds some TLC? She chose strawberries and lavender. I decided to get after it and try to see what could become of the thing. I saw some sprigs about two weeks into it and I had a tad of hope. That hope, however, was dashed when the green sprigs wilted away and two months later all that was there was dirt in two little cute pots. I bought 6 herb seedlings four weeks ago. Basil? Dead within three days. Marjoram held on for a couple weeks before biting the dust. So for me, I just feel like it's so defeating to garden. I feel like Dr. Death.

But not these two. They are optimistic. They believe that watermelon can grow in Michigan. And they're hoping their tomato plants sprout, despite the fact that they are months overdue for the prime growing season.

In the flower beds close to the house, there are several plants we've had the pleasure of discovering throughout this spring. Just in the last few weeks, we realized that we had three healthy peony plants getting ready to bloom. The biggest plant had one bud so heavy, the whole branch was falling over.

After I watched the depression PDA yesterday afternoon, the sun was setting and my husband finally came in from gardening. Everything felt odd. All was good and right with the world, yet something was not right. He said to me, you haven't even noticed anything around you, have you?

Indeed, I had not. There, only a few feet from me, was the biggest, heaviest peony, carefully cut and opening in a crystal bud vase on the mantle. A gentle yet robust expression of life, sitting there as if it came into the world just to try and cheer me up.

Hopefully this is a passage in my life, a phase. Maybe it will bring me to a better place. But in the meantime I'm trying to realize that the world around me is much, much better than I deserve. I have people around me who love me and who are happy just to see me happy and laughing.

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.

More unexpected news. Well, at least coming from me, it is.

I started this calendar year by throwing you all for a loop and announcing I was pregnant. That was such unexpected news, given my previous constant rantings about having only one child, a teenager, and you all have been great with that change in tone of my blog.

And then shortly thereafter I started in on my two month or so rant about Grace's diagnosis with ADD and what all that meant for her medically and at school and beyond. Again, you all were great. You gave me so much encouragement and advice.

So it seems I have come to another completely unexpected turn in my life. Most likely, for Grace's sophomore year of high school next year, we'll be doing homeschooling.

No, really. I'm not kidding.

I've never even considered doing this before, much less actually plan to do it and go through with it.

Just call me Dr. Homeschooling Mom.

It's a long explanation, and one that's worth dishing out. If this actually goes through, I'll fill you in when the details are settled. If it doesn't work out, I'll still give you the abbreviated explanation.

As you can imagine, any thoughtful advice is welcome and sought out by me at this juncture.

Me, as described by my teenage daughter

A few months ago, a friend of mine on facebook tagged me on a question series for moms. I have grown a little weary of reading these things by other people and I am far too private to consider actually doing them myself. But this one looked like fun. Since Grace went along with the whole thing gleefully, I'm posting it here for fun.

The idea behind this thing is that you ask your child a bunch of questions about you, their mom, and they get to supply the answers unedited. I think the original intent of this thing was to get cutesy answers from preschoolers. You know, like asking how old your mom is or how tall she is? When I got it, I couldn't help but get Grace to answer it. I thought the perspective of a teenager would give the set of questions a new life. I was happy to tag all my friends who also had teenagers in the house. The result was that the early childhood cutesiness and love of mom was warped into something a little twisted, but still full of love for mom. Also, I love that Grace and I did this whole thing through messaging on facebook. Seriously, we never spoke a word about it to each other in person until the text was posted.

I give it to you all for fun. If you want to try it yourself (and haven't done this yet), just ask your kid the questions and write them down exactly how they respond. Grace told me I could put it up on facebook, so long as I did NOT change her answers. Too funny.

Without further ado, here it is as originally published.

-------------------

by Grace, 181 months (heh, heh. I love that I'm still saying how many months old she is)

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"What's your goal Grace?"

2. What makes mom happy?
Chocolate, a happy house

3. What makes mom sad?
bad grades

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
i dunno... i'm just a laughable person XD

5. What was your mom like as a child?
smart... she still is smart

6. How old is your mom?
37

7. How tall is your mom?
5 something

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
read, facebook, be with family and friends

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
work... the usual

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
being fabulous!!!!!

11. What is your mom really good at?
being a mom!!!!!

12. What is your mom not very good at?
singing

13. What does your mom do for her job?
she's a linguist

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
chocolate!!!!!!

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
she's MY mom

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
i dunno, i don't think as my mom as a cartoon type.

17. What do you and your mom do together?
watch movies

18. How are you and your mom alike?
we both play musical instruments.

19. How are you and your mom different?
she's heather, i'm grace... enough said

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
she says "I LOVE YOU." it's pretty self-explanatory
(I have to interject here, I wish you could hear her say this. The capital letters and the period are intended to convey a tone of sarcasm, as in, 'duh, what a stupid question!')

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
she likes to travel in general.

---------------

Some advice needed regarding semantics

All appears to be doing well in the land of ADD and medication. For those of you who have been through it either yourself or with a child, you know it can be a bumpy road. For now, things are stable and as I wrote a few days ago, Grace seems to be benefiting both academically as well as socially from using medication for ADD. That's good.

Grace has even changed a lot of the way she views herself with respect to having ADD. She wants to find out more about the disorder. She has read a couple books about the ways it can affect her and the ways in which she can overcome the symptoms she has. She's also looked up some websites and read some of the information available on them. And as a surprise to me, she told me that she doesn't mind her peers having knowledge of this information now. All of this is good too.

A few weeks ago, she said something casually that concerned me. She referred to the medicine she was taking as her "meds," and going on, said they were her "crazy pills." I don't have to think hard to imagine where the reference came from. For well over 15 years now, Grace's father has worked with people who have serious mental illness and he uses both of these terms to refer to the medicine that his clients take for their various disorders. I also have a professional background in dealing with people who have mental disorders. Though I think it's good for a person to be aware of a disorder they suffer from and have as much information about that condition as is helpful to them, I'm very sensitive to terms like "crazy." And "crazy pills," though I know it's a term that people use during staffing meetings, is not exactly a term I would feel comfortable using around the person taking a psychotropic medication.

When Grace called the medication her "crazy pills," I said that wasn't a term she should use. I explained that we both knew the medicine was to help alleviate some of the less desirable symptoms of ADD, not to prevent her from becoming crazy. And I left it at that.

The issue didn't really worry me again until last Friday. Since Grace has started taking her medicine for ADD, we've had to change the way she gets picked up and dropped off when she has an overnight stay with her father. She can't just take the medicine with her, throw it in a duffel bag with other overnight stuff and then meet her father. No, I have to give the medicine to her father personally, and he gives it back to me when she returns home. Though it seems simple enough, it actually caused quite a change in our habits. Grace's father doesn't plan ahead and in the past, often times we didn't know when or how he would pick her up. So a lot of times I wasn't at the house when he showed up. Consequently, communication broke down because there was no requirement for us to be in the same place at the same time. But all that has had to change. A good change, I think. Last Friday was when she was scheduled to be picked up by her father and spend the weekend with him. We waited for him and eventually he showed up at the house to take her to his house.

Earlier in the afternoon I had put Grace's medicine for the weekend in an overnight pill container in the kitchen. When her father arrived, she scurried to gather her things about her. I and her father were standing by the front door and she called to me to ask where her medicine was. Since she was close to the kitchen, I told her where the container was and told her to grab it and bring it to her father. Then he called out, "Yeah, make sure you gimme your meds." So, I get the idea that this medicine is always referred to using some kind of a slang term from the field of those dealing with the mentally ill.

There is no point in me addressing this with Grace's father. In the few months that she's been taking the medicine, I'm sure she's heard these terms over a hundred times. And if he's not aware of why it would be best not to use these slang terms with the actual person taking the medicine, I'm sure not the one to start educating him. He's the one with the degree in social work, not me. But still, I don't want Grace to incorporate into her identity of herself the notion that she takes medicine to keep her from going berserk. I just have a bad feeling about it.

So I ask those out there who either (1) have dealt with AD(H)D personally, (2) have had a child with AD(H)D, (3) work in a field that deals with mental illness, (4) have some other experience with taking psychotropic medication or another controlled substance, or (5) have had a similar situation with a family member or friend...what is your take on this? What would you do if you were me? Given the drastic contrast in Grace's behavior and school performance with and without medication, it may be the case that some kind of medicine would help her in the long term. I want to make sure that if that is the case, there aren't unnecessary social influences that would cloud her reasoning on whether she makes that choice in the future. Also, I'd like to detract from the emphasis on this medicine being a controlled substance. She's a teen, after all. I don't want her to have any unnecessary negative issues of thinking she's taking a drug every day. Yeah, she knows what a controlled substance is now, but I was careful to explain that this was only important insomuch as she be careful with letting other teens know about it. Every kind of medication can be beneficial or abused in certain doses, and she just needed to know that this medicine was one that teens often obtained for the wrong reasons and abused. She's a good kid with respect to substance abuse, both in her actions and in her words, so I don't worry too much about the likelihood of her abusing the medicine. But I wanted to make sure she was aware of the situation so as not to get in trouble over her naiveity.

I just want to be wise in my words on this one.

How the grades go

Grace, my husband and I met with her vice principal and another teacher at school a week ago. This was the follow-up meeting to our first meeting in January to address Grace's troubles in school. Originally the meeting was scheduled for mid-February, but at that time it was clear that she still had not figured out a way to keep up with her work and keep track of missing assignments. By the end of the term, she had managed to complete all her missing assignments and her grades for term were actually not bad at all.

However, there was a lingering problem that no one seemed to be able to solve. Tests. Quizzes. Examinations. We couldn't figure out what to do about it. Her Algebra teacher, very dedicated and helpful, was throwing up her hands in befuddled confusion. The basic idea is that no one could seem to figure out how Grace seemed to know something at one time and then completely forget it a very short time later. So our meeting a week ago was focused on figuring out this answer to this unsolved mystery.

Though it may seem obvious, the strategy we settled on was to have Grace take control of the situation. When she found out a closed-book exam would be given in any class, she has to find out from the teacher what specific concepts will be tested, what the format of the test will be, and how long the test will be. Her task at that point is to prepare a review sheet and have her teacher look at it, adding things she may have left off. The final step is for Grace to find or create a practice test that is as close to resembling the actual test as possible. The afternoon/evening before the test she takes the practice test just like it was the real test. Whatever she doesn't know, she then finds the answer to and commits it to memory.

It assumes that nothing will keep her from learning, that there is no learning disability that would hinder this process (aside from ADD which is being treated medically).

I'll admit it, I was nervous leaving that meeting. We arranged to let 4-5 weeks pass and then meet to review what the results were. At that point if it was still clear that the tests were a problem, then we'd have something concrete to go on. I guess I didn't realize that getting assessments done at the high school level takes a lot more work than it does at lower grades. My biggest fear walking out of that meeting was that Grace wasn't capable of doing what she was being charged with. My husband said I shouldn't worry, that he felt she was quite able to do it and that if she valued the results that would come (good grades), she would do it. Still.

One week later. Grace has taken a test or quiz in four of her five classes this week. The results?

Science: quiz, 93%
English: quiz, 90%
World History: quiz, 100%

and...


AND.....

.....

Algebra: test, 95%

That's right, friends and neighbors, for the first time in FOUR YEARS, Grace passed a math test. And not only did she pass it, SHE GOT AN A.

I know that it's not like everything is fixed and we'll never have troubles with her schoolwork again. I'm sure we are on a peak now and the valley will come. But GOD ALMIGHTY, I cannot BEGIN to tell you how awesome of a feeling it is to realize she took four exams in a row and got an A on every single one.

The next time I start complaining about her here, someone remember to slap me upside the head comment-style, ok? I think everyone else had confidence in her, including herself, except me. And for once, I didn't voice my skepticism to her. She is a victor, my friends. She knew it, she just made a point of letting everyone else know it too.

****Of course, maybe this was all a result of her getting her hair cut. What do you think?****

Poor parenting choices

Every so often I have a realization and something that's been eating at me for a long while makes sense. I have an insight about myself that makes it possible for me to stop visiting some vexing episode from my past. When it happens, I try to share it here. Let's hope that by doing so it not only helps me square things away, but maybe others can comment on the situation too and I'll learn more. And someone else might learn something too.

For this a-ha moment, I will revisit my relationship (or lack thereof) with Grace's father and stepmother. Though I have written about the topic here before, I'll recap the essential points. They met and began a relationship while Grace's father was still living with Grace and me, while he was pretending all was well with our home life. When I found out about that affair from him and he didn't show signs of remorse or intention to end the relationship, we separated right away. He moved in with Grace's eventual stepmother immediately and they've been together even since. About a year later, once our divorce was settled and everyone seemed to have the feeling that all was forgiven, the eventual stepmother introduced herself to me in a typed letter. In the letter she suggested that it was the time for us to meet, given that this would be the best thing for Grace. She also included some complaints she had about my parenting. It wasn't the first time I had heard from Grace's father or his girlfriend that they believed my parenting skills were lacking. I was, to say the least, insulted.

That was many years ago. Half of Grace's lifetime ago. The once-upon-a-time girl-on-the-side/mistress/girlfriend stuck through all the ups and downs, married Grace's father, and they have been together for the last seven years. I must say, I'm surprised; they definitely have defied all statistics I have heard regarding what factors can make or break a relationship. I assume they are a match made in heaven. They have two children together now, both toddlers. And so it is that Grace's stepmother has now achieved a new status -- mother. If there was any question about whether her parenting skills were adequate when she entered Grace's life, those questions are now answered by her birthing her own two children. I hear some anecdote about these munchkins almost daily. Grace loves to talk about her stepmother and those babies. The stories usually don't involve her father at all, just her stepmother and the babies.

How do I respond to these stories? It varies. Sometimes I react neutrally. I let Grace talk and then I just say something dismissive like, 'that sounds interesting' and try to change the topic as quickly as possible. Sometimes I intentionally lend a deaf ear. I don't respond in any way negatively. The next comment out of my mouth is something completely unrelated. Or if the story seems to be going on and on with no end in sight, I either ask an unrelated question or I say I need to excuse myself from the room. And then there's the worst response: when I actually listen to the content of what's going on with the woman and her children. Most of the time I have very little good to say about it. And during the whole interaction, I'm thinking in my mind of how much I wish this person and her children had never had the good fortune of having the small minute details of their lives take up my precious time.

Why? Why do I dislike hearing about Grace's stepmother and her children?

It would be easy to think that I was mad at her because, well, she ruined my marriage and stole my husband. Sometimes when I write about these situations here or talk about them in person, people say this must be the reason I'm so mad at her and not Grace's father. If it were otherwise, I would rant on and on about him, not her; the fact that I don't go off about him must mean that I'm still liking him. However, such a conclusion would be erroneous. Though the explanation seems to be logical, it leaves out an important detail. She was not, by far, the first affair my ex-husband had while he was involved with me (thus my surprise at the fact that the relationship actually lasted). No, the affair my ex-husband had with her just happened to coincide with him telling me many other details of his sordid dealings during our marriage and my choice to end it then and there. Many times in my retrospection I've realized that I could have saved our marriage, if by "saved" we mean something like, "keep it legally binding while extending sexual relationships far beyond the confines of monogamy." Instead I soundly chose to end the marriage. I told him I wanted him to move out, I told him I wanted physical custody of Grace, and I told him I wanted a divorce. And he never protested any of these points.

Still, the question remains, why do I so strongly dislike any mention of Grace's stepmother and her children? I believe this is the reason: it's because she, along with her now-husband, created a situation that was difficult for my child. I think it's fair to say that up until the point in her life when her parents separated, Grace hadn't faced anything quite as difficult as that. During that time, her father and eventual stepmother didn't exactly give her room to breathe. From the first visit Grace had with her father after the separation, his girlfriend was there. Grace and her father never spent a moment together without his girlfriend being physically present. And it wasn't just that she was physically present and with Grace; it was that she was physically involved with Grace's father openly in front of Grace. Essentially, I got the impression that Grace's visitation times with her father boiled down to her being included in her father's dates. I wasn't the only person who suggested to Grace's father that this might not be the best thing for Grace at that time given the goal of building a relationship with him now that she was seeing him a small fraction of the amount of time she used to. Teachers, counselors, Grace's godparents all questioned the wisdom of this choice. Yet he and his girlfriend stood fast -- they were there for Grace and there was no need for anyone to be concerned about their choices or their parenting styles.

As you may well imagine, I considered their choices at that point to be poor. They should have realized that this all was going a little too quickly for Grace. I addressed this a couple times to the court through legal process and through mediation and was basically told that I had no legal or moral grounds to make the argument. Grace's father was her father, and his choice to include his girlfriend in everything was not abusive or negligent, therefore there was nothing more to be said. So I swallowed that bitter pill. But as if that wasn't enough, Grace's father and his girlfriend went one step further and actively questioned my choices in parenting. They said I was too strict with Grace and didn't let her be enough of a free spirit. They said I punished her too much, scolded her too much. (Mind you, my use of "they" here really refers to Grace's father's criticisms given in the form of "Amy and I feel that you...") I suppose what "they" meant in their criticisms of my parenting was that I should parent a little more like they did. Like maybe I should take Grace out with my friends to bars and let her sing karaoke while I got a bit soused. That's what her father did, anyways. In the back of my mind I thought of Grace's father, 'you leave your kid so you can be free and wild, you don't give so much as a protest with respect to custody, and for you the most logical next step in addressing our responsibilities as parents of this kid is to question my parenting?' And where did the girlfriend fit into that whole picture, exactly? She hooks up with a married guy who's still living with his wife and kid, has him move in with her once his wife asks him to leave, and then suddenly she's an expert on parenting?

Within a few short months of our separation, Grace's father told me that his girlfriend loved Grace as much as he or I did. I almost choked on my words trying to protest that. A woman who doesn't see value in a man spending even one moment alone with his daughter immediately after the dismantling of her nuclear family, even when many other adults in the child's life are strongly suggesting that, and this is a demonstration of love as strong as the child's own mother and father? That in only a few short months of her seeing Grace once a week for a few hours while she was making out with her boyfriend, she had reached a level of intimacy and affection for this child as strong as the feelings the child's mother and father, the ones who had sacrificed day after day and year after year for her well-being? This woman loved this child as much as her mother, who twice put her education and career on hold for years because her child needed to come first? This woman, who had never so much as seen the child's school, loved Grace as much as the two parents who had spent night after precious night, year after year, watching their child struggle through classwork and homework and a possible diagnosis of ADD?

The response I did give to his suggestion that his girlfriend's love for Grace was equal to ours as her parents was to ask him whether he agreed also that his girlfriend's love for Grace exceeded that of her grandparents and godparents. The logic behind this argument was that, though we knew these other people loved Grace a great deal, certainly we both agreed that our love for Grace was greater than these other people in her life. He didn't respond.

The details I've given above all took place in the year immediately following my separation from Grace's father. If I continued through the next 6-7 years, citing other instances that were poor choices in parenting on this couple's part, perhaps even negligent, we'd all just be bored very quickly. Though the couple seems to have settled down a bit in recent years with the addition of more children to their life, those critical months of Grace's life were not treated with care.

But here's the point: this is why the constant cutesy stories about this couple and their new children ire me so much. I don't want to hear about this man (Grace's father, my ex-husband) and this woman (Grace's stepmother) and their children. They questioned my parenting, and worse, they questioned it at a time when they themselves were guilty of putting their own needs before my child's. Their parenting was lacking. And now I am faced with hearing Grace talk about them in a glowing way as parents to their two new children. My very child, the one who I fought hard for the well-being of, she is glorifying the role as parents of these two people who I believe didn't practice what they preached at a critical time in Grace's life.

Practically speaking, I've told Grace all this. In calm tones, in implicit messages, in yelling, in anger, in tears. I've explained it all to her many times. When all that didn't seem to make a dent in her enthusiasm for relating every single event in her father's family life, my husband, Grace's stepfather, took a stab at it. He tried to explain my feelings to her from the perspective of being the child of divorced parents. Yet still, she didn't stop. Sometimes when she brings up these stories, I just turn to my husband and start a different conversation, hoping that Grace will remember that the topic of conversation is one we don't want to have in our home. But she doesn't understand that. She just keeps talking, even telling us to pay attention to her because she was telling her story first. It's as if she can't accept that this is painful to me. It's as if she needs me to forgive her father and stepmother and be excited to hear about their kids. Why? Why can't she accept that they hurt me once and that hearing about their life day after day after day, when I've asked not to be told about it, is like reopening a wound and pouring salt into it, a wound that I would just as soon would never be reopened?

There is a bit of this that I understand from Grace's perspective. Grace really likes these two kids. I imagine that in her mind she believes that I will like them someday as much as she does. They are, after all, her siblings. But it's a little wacky for me in my mind. I can't seem to find a way of explaining to Grace that, though she thinks these kids are terrific and that they are really cool to her because they are babies and her siblings and lots of fun, I do not desire to know these kids or to be affectionate with them. Sure, I've been around them. Grace and her father and her stepmother seem to have no qualms about me interacting with these kids. I'm not cruel. I don't give them dirty looks or spit hateful words or all the rest. I think the last time I even saw or spoke to Grace's stepmother was shortly after the second one was born; we had come by to pick Grace up and they were eager to invite us in so we could see the new baby. I really would have rather not come in, but what are you going to do, refuse and say you're going to wait outside in the cold because you don't want to be in their home or see their infants? And there this mother was, beaming, showing me her new baby. I smiled and asked her how she was recovering. Whatever. Thank you southern upbringing that allows me to feign congeniality in the midst of my discomfort.

I guess it still comes down to me feeling like my perspective is missed. More than missed, it's entirely ignored. These tiny children are being used as objects of affection in the hopes that I will get over my feelings of the past and believe that these two were always good parents. I don't want to see the kids. I don't want to find out how they do as parents to their own biological children. I just want my daughter to be ok and I want to move on. I don't want to constantly be reminded of people from my past and their attempts to reconcile their past wrongs towards me. Wrongs that they don't even accept ever existed.

Now I ask, is there any chance that Grace will be able to understand my perspective? Ever? Or will she continue striving to find some way to get her two families to actually reconcile and enjoy one another? Doesn't everyone have a situation in their family, intact or not, where they figure out that two people don't get along? And you learn to work around it and not mention them to each other? Is this situation so very different than that?

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?

Doodles

As evidence that I may indeed had AD(H)D myself, here's something that has been rolling around in my head the last few days that I can't seem to figure out or stop thinking about.

Grace doodles a lot. When she was in elementary and middle school, her assignments were littered with drawings in every single spare white space. One of the special ed specialists in elementary school complained about this A LOT. She considered it a serious problem. She thought Grace was unable to complete her work because she couldn't stop doodling. But then yesterday I came across this news story about doodling and why people actually benefit from doodling instead of daydreaming when they lose interest. Now I can't help wondering, maybe the doodling was actually helping Grace pay attention to what was being said in the classroom, rather than hindering her. And scolding her for doing it and imposing all sorts of punishments for doodling exacerbated the problem rather than help it. Sure, she wasn't completing her work, but not allowing her to doodle didn't solve that problem.

I never liked that specialist anyway. She was a complete idiot. She told me I should check Grace's backpack every single morning before school for anything that might distract her at school and take it away. She said Grace needed to only have a black pen and a single pencil with eraser as writing implements. She said that would solve a lot of Grace's problems. I think she realized I didn't agree with her when I said in a meeting, "shall I take away her mind, as well? Because that seems to be distracting her." This was the same specialist who 12 months earlier felt Grace should be completely discharged from receiving any special attention at school because there was nothing really wrong with her anyway. Like I said, an idiot.

One. Last. Assignment.

It is the last week of the term. This is pressure time, folks. My girl, the freshman who lives in my house, has to make sure every single assignment is turned in and graded and that she got correct credit for it. And she needs to study for finals and take them this week too. It is not an overstatement to say that she has never succeeded at doing this before. But with a little help from her family, her teachers and administrators, her doctor, and a significant amount of effort and determination on her part, she's actually pulling it together. We may actually get to see a grade report that is (mostly) clean.

Do you believe me? Do you really think that this is going off smoothly and without a hitch? I didn't think so.

Last night Grace and I took one last look together at her online grades. Her score on every single assignment she does all year long in on that website. Every single comment from a teacher. Every absence or tardy. All looks good except for three assignments. One she had a good explanation for, but was dragging her feet on working through. Another one she said she just forgot about. And there was the third. An assignment in Algebra. Grace's favorite subject, the one she loves, the one she anticipates with glee every day, the one she wishes she could just learn more and more every single day. (Not.)

This one assignment in Algebra is the last one that's not done. The score has been online as a "0" for a month. Every time I ask her about it, she swears she's done it and that she turned it in and that it must just be in her teacher's inbox. I don't think she's lying. I sincerely believe she believes that she did the assignment the night it was assigned, turned it in, and her teacher just never graded it. In fact, I believe her so much that I believe she may be accurate in her recollection of the facts. Still, a zero is a zero, and when your grades aren't hot, you can't just stick it to the system.

My husband and I have explained to her many times, just do the assignment again and make sure your teacher gets it this time. It can't hurt. It will give you more practice at something you struggle to understand. You will get credit for the work. And you won't have to worry about it anymore. But she was steadfast in her determination to demonstrate that she already did the assignment and that her teacher just must not have graded it.

Last night at 8:30p, after we had identified this assignment and the other two that were missing, I told her to go upstairs to her room and complete all three assignments. She said she had all the materials and information she needed in order to complete them all. And off she went. Three hours passed. I was going to bed and I decided to check and find out whether the assignments were actually completed. Nasty one that she was dragging her feet through? Done. One she just forgot about? Done. And that one last Algebra assignment? Not Done. Not Even Started.

"I'm going to check in my teacher's box tomorrow and find it!" she protested.

And then it dawned on me. I told her that it was irrelevant whether she had done the assignment once before. I told her this had absolutely no bearing on whether she should do it now and turn it in. The interchange lasted about 60 seconds. At the end of it, she crashed onto her bed, tore open her algebra book, and furiously started going through her papers to get a piece of paper and start the assignment. 45 minutes later, done.

God Almighty.

An unplanned ending to my sequence on fatherhood. Grr.

Grace has finals next week. A little important, could we say? Why yes, they are.

Grace is taking medication every day for ADD. It is important, as per her doctor's orders, that she get regular and adequate sleep, and eat regular and adequate meals.

Grace has a chronic disorder that gets exacerbated when she gets sleep-deprived and goes a few days without healthy food. It lands her in the ER and she needs about 4-5 days to recover fully.

A few weeks ago, many of you witnessed my ire as it was evident that Grace had gone away to her father's house for the weekend and neglected to do several school assignments. Actually, it was the third weekend that she had spent at her father's house in a row that I had told her to make sure she did the missing assignments and she failed to complete them.

Since that time, you can imagine that I have had some attempts at communication with Grace's father regarding the importance of regularity in Grace's life. Let's not get into the details and just leave it at this: he has unequivocally assured me that her time with him is organized, balanced, and normal in every single way I would hope for her time to be. Lots of words have passed. No hint that there was any disagreement with what I had laid out.

Additionally, there was scolding of Grace (by her father in front of me) that she was sneaking behind her dad's back, doing things she wasn't supposed to. Like staying up surfing the web, watching late night tv until wee hours of the night, and concealing homework she might need to do.

Did I tell Grace's dad going into this weekend that it was an especially important weekend, given finals next week? Hell, yes. Once over the phone, once in person, and twice in email. In the last three days. Did I explain it clearly? Oh, yes sirree. Was there any possible miscommunication? No, none. Absolutely none. Grace's dad and her stepmother are not only able to help her be disciplined in her daily schedule and in doing her school work, they were committed to making sure nothing interfered with what Grace needed. This weekend or ever in the future.

Here goes.

I just got a message from Grace via facebook as part of an ongoing thread she and I have had going today. It was date stamped 11:14p. She explained that she had studied a bit this afternoon, then went to the mall to go shopping. But most importantly, she wanted me to know that she was staying up to watch Saturday Night Live. Until 1a. On the weekend of daylight savings time spring forward, which means she's really watching tv until 2a. I replied and asked her PLEASE GO TO BED and DON'T STAY UP WATCHING TV.

I'm just now realizing that it was her father's snowjobbing me so well that kept me married to him for so many years despite all warning signs that he was a functionally-absent husband and father.

As a last note, I throw this one thought out there. I'm realizing that Grace, while visiting with her father, will never choose to do the "right" thing rather than the fun thing. Because her father is a fun times guy who's enjoying life despite his lack of taking care of his responsibilities. And for Grace to choose to do something different while she is with him could mean risking the close relationship that she strives to acheive.

Fatherhood part 2: Parenting through time and few words

My dad is a self-described plugger. He has Scotch-Irish roots, from a long line of those who emigrated to the United States during the 18th and 19th century and settled in Appalachia. His clan continued to migrate southwest and settled in Alabama, some a little over the Georgia border, where most of them continued earning their bread and butter through farming, some well into the 20th century. He was raised in a culture that says you work hard and look out for those in your family. You don't turn your back on them, no matter how bad they do you. You may need to take few steps away from one of them for a short while if they seem like they're taking advantage of you. But you don't ever close the door to communication. Always be willing to take another look at your kin and be compassionate in their time of need.

We have three girls in my family. I was the third. I hear that the pregnancy was a hard one. When my mom finally went to the hospital to give birth, she spent all day at the hospital hardly being noticed. She wasn't in active labor, the doctor just told her to go there. Sometime in the late afternoon/early evening, my dad was told there was no way the baby would be born any time soon. He decided to leave and go get something to eat. She never went into active labor until the last minute. Sometime around 6p, my mom called for nurse and said, I'm going to have this baby. I was born at 6:30p, much to the disbelief of the entire staff. (Don't ask; my mom has some amazingly horrific stories to tell about what happens when you can't help but give birth even though you're not fully dilated and the contractions are coming so fast you don't even get a chance to catch your breath, much less control your breathing.) My dad says he got a burger, then went to the library to read and fell asleep. When he woke up around 7p, he went back to the hospital and he found he had a new baby girl. I didn't get named for a week. To this day my sisters tease me and call me "the baby" because indeed, that's what I was introduced to them as.

From my perspective, I was the troublemaker in my family. I spent most of my growing years listening to my mother tell me how, when my sisters were my age, they were so much more x than I was. Fill in "x" with whatever positive character trait you can think of: hard-working, disciplined, obedient, kind, aware of the world around them, Christ-like, conservative, respectful, well-behaved...

Consequently, Heather caused a lot of disruption. Many, many parent-teacher conferences. Sunday School teachers and youth pastors and choir directors were always requesting some kind of intervention. I would try a lot of stuff, like putting together outfits I knew they would never let me wear and sneaking them to a friend's house for a sleepover, someone whose parents I knew would never say anything because they weren't so strict. I listened to music that I knew my parents didn't approve of. A few times they asked my oldest sister to address the issue. She would explain how she made the choice not to listen to some music because of the ungodly messages they contained. I listened, bored, and gave her the chance to talk. And then I continued buying my tapes and records, eventually CDs, and recording what I wanted to when it came on the radio. I bought the single to "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince when I was in 7th grade. The flip side was "Erotic City." The cashier at the record store told me that it was pretty explicit and maybe I should think about not listening to it. Well, that was enough to get me interested.

How does a plugger deal with a youngest daughter who is like this? My mother lectured and yelled and told me all the ways I wasn't measuring up. But that wasn't my dad's style.

There were times when his patience was pushed to the edge. It came when all three of us girls were completely out of control and my mother was pulling her hair out. He would raise his voice and yell. When that happened, we all knew the worst had happened. You didn't yell back. You quietly went to doing whatever it was that you should have done in the first place. But this was a rare occasion.

For the most part, he parented by spending time with me.

When I was in preschool and he was in town (he was an airline pilot), he would ride my mom's bike that had the kid-carrier on the back to the preschool. When he got there, he would strap me into the carrier and take off towards home. Every day I fell asleep during the ride home and he reached back and cradled my head in his hand and arm until we got home.

When I was in 2nd grade, I went to school on the bus by myself since both of my sisters were in middle school. The bus dropped me off at the front of my neighborhood. Sometimes he would meet me on his bike. I was too old to ride on the back of the bike by then, of course. So he would ride to my bus stop and steady my bike next to him with his free hand as he rode. When I got off the bus, we would put my book bag and my lunch box, sometimes my violin too, into the bike baskets and then we rode home together, each on our own bike.

When I was a bit older and he had an errand to run, he'd ask if I wanted to come along. If I shrugged it off, he'd press a little more and say something like 'it'll do you good. You can take a break from [whatever I happened to be doing at the moment]."

About the time I was starting middle school, he started playing backgammon. He tried playing everyone -- my sisters, my grandfather, my mom -- but no one seemed to want to keep it up. I asked if I could try. Within a few games, I was hooked. We played that game faithfully every day he was home until I left for college. I never found another opponent who was any good; neither did he. Sometimes we would play up to 10 games at a time. When we started he would say, "we will play until Mama calls you to come help her with dinner. When she calls, you have to go straight to the kitchen and help her with what she needs done." Sometimes I would be in big trouble at school for not doing my school work. He would come in and say we could play one or two games, and then straight to the homework. Sometimes my mom would have been fussing at me for days about slacking at something. On those days he would say we could play a few games, but only if we did so especially quietly. If my mother heard the dice falling on the board, she would surely come in and fuss at me about what wasn't yet done.

Through the bike rides and the errands and the backgammon games, he would ask me different things. He would ask me what I saw myself doing as an adult. He would ask about my friends, or what I liked doing most during a day. He would ask me about people I didn't like so much. The point was, I never saw it coming because I thought the point of us being together was just so he'd have company or so we'd both get some enjoyment out of playing a game or something.

Sure, he came down on me when things were bad. If I really messed up badly, he laid out strict rules as to how things should be done in order to get me in order. But in the end, he reminded me that these rules were in place so that I could get back to a balance in life, a way to get to have free time and enjoyment after the work day was done.

I realize now that I learned much more by the calm times I spent with him than any measure of discipline or lecturing he gave me. I am much more the kind of parent who talks too much and doesn't listen. Hopefully I can get past this and start parenting through the time spent in casual conversation, rather than through lecture after lecture.

The weekend is here.

This was a long week. Not as bad as it could have been, though. After writing about how crazy the week looked, I took a serious step backward and cut things out. For instance:

• I canceled the meeting at Grace's school for this morning to talk about her grades with school people. I realized that since she was not on top of things yet, it would be a waste of time. I emailed the assistant principal and the guidance counselor and discussed new ways to help Grace. This was more helpful than the meeting would have been, I think, and much less time-consuming. And less stressful.
• I didn't make Grace a cake or even cupcakes to celebrate her birthday at home as a family. She was completely fine with this. We really did pull out the leftover Sara Lee frozen cherry cheesecake from Valentine's Day, put 15 candles in it and sing 'happy birthday,' then Grace said she'd prefer a piece of the leftover Coca-Cola cake. She put three pink birthday candles in the slice and we sang again. She was completely happy with the whole thing.
• I smacked myself on the forehead and remembered for half a second that I am not a single parent any longer. I have a husband who is an amazingly sacrificial step-parent to Grace, and he is so good at it that I forget it many times. I'm not making this up or exaggerating the situation for effect. To give you an idea, he gets up every school day morning with her, makes sure she gets up in time to get ready, makes her lunch, and makes sure she gets out the door on time. I often times am sleeping in and don't even know she's out the door until after I wake up. I never asked him to do it, he just started doing it because he knew it was the best thing for Grace, for me, and for our budget (packed lunches instead of school-bought lunches). That's just the beginning of the ways in which he goes over and above what any parent would do, so much so that I don't even remember how wonderful it is. Noticing my stress early in the week, he piped up and told me he could easily run some of my errands for me given my busy week of appointments and other demands at work.

All this to say, though it didn't seem like it here as I was writing, our family took some time out to reflect and take stock of things.

I decided to let Grace have her birthday party tonight. This decision came after a good deal of reflection, a lot of which centered around fathers, including stepfathers and my own father's parenting of me, and my grandfather's (his father) parenting style as well. The short of it is, I came to Wednesday night going to bed and asked my husband what our decision was on the party. Without pausing he said, "She's having a party; it's not even a question to cancel it." The explanation of this position will take a lot of words, so I'll save it for next week. But suffice it to say, I feel very calm that it is the best decision.

Given who I am, one thing I was blessed by was my own father's demeanor and approach to life and parenting. I'm so grateful for this that it grieves me terribly to watch Grace have such a crappy dad. We all get blessings and bummers, and Grace and I got completely different ones in the father category. I wrote yesterday about the tension I sense that Grace has in not wanting to be close to her stepdad while also chasing her biological father to extreme lengths in order to get him to have a relationship with her. I wrote this in light of my continued reflection on her lack of the kind of relationship that I had with a father. There's much more to be written, but it'll wait 'til after the weekend.

For now, my husband is going to Sam's Club this afternoon to get pizzas for tonight, and we are picking up Grace's ice cream cake at Baskin Robbins on the way home. Grace is cleaning up the house after school today before her friends arrive. Then Grace and her three girlfriends are going to go shopping for a couple hours. I'm planning on getting a haircut while they are shopping. Afterward, we'll all have pizza and snacks at our house, and then a sleepover. Probably a fire in the fireplace. I may even get more than 6 hours of sleep tonight, more than I've gotten any other night this week.

Just so you know, since I'm sure you all want to know, as of yesterday afternoon she finished and turned in 9 of the 10 missing algebra assignments. The last one she is having difficulty understanding and her teacher is meeting with her at lunch today.

GIVE ME YOUR VOTE, PLEASE

I just read Amy's and Bubblewench's comments about my last post (actually, they both left their comments on the post before, where I groaned about the furnace. Update on that little problem later). They both say that given Grace's recent actions, I should consider canceling Grace's birthday party, currently scheduled for Friday night. Actually, I think they're saying more than that. I think they're saying "Heather, you should cancel Grace's birthday party."

So PLEASE VOTE on the poll on the sidebar. Please do it sooner rather than later. And please feel free to leave comments, email me more opinions, etc.

THANK YOU!

I hate this

I am a little angry. I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed.

Grace lied to me, and in a big way. It's not the first time she's done it; I doubt it will be the last. But I'm really disappointed.

About four weeks ago, Grace had 13 outstanding assignments to do in algebra. There were missing assignments in other classes, but algebra was the one that really kicked her butt. She stopped doing homework in the last term, failing partially because she didn't do the last 10 homework assignments. But once the term is over, you're off the hook. Not so with this term. 13 missing assignments still out there.

When I met with Grace and her administrators/teachers at school four weeks ago, we all brainstormed on a way for her to just get the work done that she didn't want to do. The point is, she had to figure out a way to get herself to do it, not a way for us to get her to do it. Yes, we would monitor the process to make sure it was working for her, but she needed to do it. So Grace made a master list of all the missing assignments, then put a column to check off when the assignment was done, and another one to check off when the assignment was turned in. She also made a different chart for herself to use every day at school to keep track of her daily assignments, whether she completed them, and whether she turned them in. In short, she came up with a system where she could check every minute of the day whether she was on track. Every week, she turns the charts in to her guidance counselor. She said she'd show me the charts at the end of every day.

Throughout these weeks, she's reluctantly showed me the charts. She really doesn't use them during the day. I would check her grades online, and the missing assignments (most of them) remained. Yeah, she got better and kept up with the daily assignments, but the missing assignments seemed to persist. The information on her charts often wouldn't jive with what was online.

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Me: "Did you do these math assignments, Grace?"
Grace: "Yes, I did them this weekend."
Me: "Did you turn them in?"
Grace: "Oh, I was waiting until they were all finished to turn them in."
Me: "No, turn them in now.

A following day:

Me: "Grace, did you turn in those math assignments you completed?"
Grace: "Huh, what? Which assignments?"
Me: "The assignments that you told me that you completed that still show as missing on your grades online."
Grace: "Oh, um, no, I didn't turn them in today because we got really busy."
Me: "Turn them in tomorrow."

A subsequent day:

Me: "Grace, remember those assignments you did that you never turned in? They're still showing as missing on the online grade site."
Grace: "Oh, I forgot them in my locker and I didn't get a chance to turn them in."
Me: "Grace, turn them in. Tomorrow."

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If you have ever had a teenager of your own, I'm sure you can imagine that there have not been only three discrete clean conversations like this, but rather more like 10-15, or 20, in which she gets mad because I'm using a tone of voice that isn't nice, and I get mad because she's not making sense and not clueing in to the big picture. She's also less than respectful during these conversations. I was at the end of my rope by midweek last week. She swore the 13 missing assignments were all completed, but that five were still in her locker because she kept forgetting to bring them to class, and the rest had just not been graded. I told her to resolve the situation by the next day OR ELSE.

The "or else"? She didn't get to be in the talent show on Friday night. See, she auditioned for the talent show without asking permission. And she spent an entire day after school at a rehearsal, a day when she was supposed to go to the math help center until work gets under control. She spent a lunch hour on another day, a lunch hour that she was supposed to meet with her math teacher, in the library printing out the lyrics to the song she was singing in the talent show. Despite this distraction, my "or else" seemed to do the trick -- when she came home on Thursday and told me yes, she had turned in the assignments, and all was well in the world of algebra.

We all went to the talent show on Friday night. It was ok. I won't say it was great, but it also wasn't bad. She came home, gathered her things to go to her father's house for the three-day weekend, and bid me adieu.

Then I got the email from her math teacher. Grace is missing ten assignments. Ten. Not one, not two. Not even four or five. Ten. In a bit more than three weeks, she had completed three missing assignments and turned them in. And the worst part? She went through an amazing amount of work to deceive not only me, but a huge number of other people, into believing this wasn't the case. She turned in those charts to her guidance counselor, see, so that he can also see whether her system is working. So he's got in writing her verification that she did this work. And turned it in. Only she didn't.

I called her on the phone at her dad's house on Saturday. I told her she'd better get those ten assignments done this weekend. And I told her to tell her father exactly what was going on. The result? She came home last night with two assignments done and lots of excuses, I-thought-I-turned-it-ins, I-forgot-to-turn-it-ins, and it's-in-my-lockers.

There are many levels on which this drives me crazy.

• Grace knows she's lost her permission to audition for plays at all this year. Her colleagues in theatre are doing all the cool stuff that kids get to do, like work up special bits and compete at states, do special performances, etc. But she's not getting to do it because she needs to concentrate on her core subjects before doing extra stuff. She's also lost permission to go to performing arts camp this summer. Whatever. Despite all this, she's still not getting her act together and just doing the work.
• She lied to me. Instead of just doing the work and turning it in, getting the monkey off her back so to speak, she went through great efforts to make it look like she had done the work when she didn't. What is the point?
• Grace demonstrated a poor level of priority-setting. It never occurred to her that since she was so much behind where she needed to be, and since she had lied to everyone about it, maybe she shouldn't do the talent show. Yet she chose to do it, and waste another entire week without doing the missing work, some of which is over two months late now.
• If she doesn't do the homework, then it is difficult to assess whether she's having difficulty taking tests independently. I explained this to her, I explained to overwhelming importance of getting caught up. Yet still, no change in her actions.
• Her stepdad and I have been working overtime to encourage her to nip this thing in the bud. We've said that we believe in her; we've told her that we're helping her through a process of ending school as a nightmare and the beginning of it being something she "gets;" we've done tons of monitoring to make sure she has time and space and resources to get her work done. Yet still, on "getting the work done," we're seeing little change in her attitude.
  

My resolution? Summer school. It's unlikely she's pass algebra at this point unless she has a complete change of heart, but she has the option of summer school. But since she's only needing this because she chose not to do the work when given the opportunity, I'm going to let her pay the $250 tuition, and I'm going to make sure that the summer school term is during the time she spends with her father this summer. If she doesn't have the money in time to pay for tuition, or she doesn't pass the class during summer school, she'll just repeat 9th grade.

Yeah, I'm in that mode of "let the kid learn life the hard way." It happens every school year about this time, so I just feel like I'm right on schedule.

I would LOVE to know if this will ever stop. I would LOVE to know how to get the kid to change her ways, insomuch as her ways are pretty destructive to her ability to get past this stage of life and education she hates so much.

This week in preview

This week is going to be a doozie. I'm a little overwhelmed by the schedule.

This morning I have an appointment with the obstetrician. Regularly scheduled monthly appointment. Maybe I'll get some information about weight loss/gain. More than likely I'll get information I already have that doesn't seem to be helpful (i.e., eat in small quantities regularly, make sure you when you eat you are getting the right kinds of food, and get plenty of rest and don't be stressed out).

Then Grace's birthday is Wednesday. As usual, I waited until the last minute to go shopping for any gift for her. So last Saturday (yes, on Valentine's Day) I finally went out and bought her a new case for her viola and some tall brown boots. I also bought her a birthday card. I should probably try and come up with some kind of a cake and a special dinner that night that she will like. I don't want to make a big cake though, because there's still leftover Coca-Cola cake and because she's having a party for friends later this week (see below).

On Thursday night, there is a huge concert where all the city middle school and high school orchestras perform on one night. HUGE deal. Grace's orchestra is rehearsing after school at the high school on Wednesday, early Thursday morning at the auditorium, and then the concert begins Thursday night at 7p. I, of course, volunteered to help transport cellos from the high school to the auditorium on Thursday morning.

Friday is the big finale, with more going on than I can keep track of. At 8a, I have an appointment at perinatal assessment for counseling and for an ultrasound. This is for them to assess my risk of giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder (like Down's Syndrome) and then to counsel me after I get the results. This will take at least two hours. (Yes, I'm nervous about this, and in fact I'm putting off telling anyone in my family I am pregnant until after this appointment.) Then, I have a meeting at Grace's school with her, her assistant principal, her guidance counselor, and whoever else seems like a good person to have attend, to talk about her progress in the last four weeks. The meeting is scheduled at 10a, but clearly that will need to be pushed back. Hopefully they can accommodate my schedule. THEN, at 5:30p, three of Grace's girlfriends are coming over for a birthday sleepover. Grace agreed to a scaled down party where we have pizza and pop and cake at the house, then they get to watch movie or something on tv and do other good sleepover stuff. But that means I have to plan for it.

So sometime this week I need to get myself over to Sam's Club to buy some of those huge pizzas that are good tasting while also cheap. And I need to figure out when I have time to make a birthday cake for Grace's party. And for her birthday on Wednesday night for our family.

Did I mention that I work fulltime?

I am not looking forward to this week.