"Teachers Don't Have Phones."

And with that, the question over whether or not he was telling me the truth was answered. 

We caught Noah in his first big, sustained lie yesterday. The details are exhaustively boring, but suffice to say he'd figured out a way to game his token/reward system at school and make us think he was earning more points for good behavior than he was. Then exchanging those points for treats at home like playing video games or getting some Halloween candy. (That is not actually from Halloween, but just what the boys call candy year-round here.)

I'd grown suspicious and questioned him a few times, and he remained consistent with his cover story (his teacher couldn't find the stamp so she marked his paper with a crayon instead) and insisted that he was telling the truth. 

"I promise, Mom," he'd say, cooly and calmly, with perfect eye contact and an earnest, dimpled smile.

That was what made me back off, every time: the eye contact. Noah remains a jumble of different quirks from both on and off the Spectrum -- at his last IEP his teacher said she absolutely didn't want to change his diagnosis code from the catch-all "Developmental Delay" yet because she simply cannot figure him out, because he simply ISN'T just one thing or the other and doesn't seem to really fit any of the "usual" codes -- but eye contact is a big deal. If he's upset or overwhelmed in the slightest, it's the first thing to go. 

But yesterday the cover story took a turn for the improbably convoluted. I listened to him chatter on, asked a question and sensed the teeniest, tiniest bit of "OH SHIT MAYDAY MAYDAY" in his voice as he quickly tried to backtrack -- yet his words never seemed to fail him, and he continued to speak clearly and articulately. He wasn't making sense to me, but in a different way. There was no hint of his word retrieval/processing problems; he just sounding like a typical kid attempting some verbal gymnastics while trying to assure me that I'd misunderstood the first version of events he'd just described.

Finally, I told him I was going to call his teacher and ask her about it. He jumped back three feet and froze. "Don't call her," he whispered. 

He wouldn't tell me why he didn't want me to call her. He repeated the story again. He promised he wasn't lying. 

"Why don't you believe me, Mom?" he asked, his voice so full of hurt that I wavered again, because if there's one thing Noah is not, it's an actor. He still won't wear costumes or pretend to "be" anyone during play, and he gets unnerved when Ezra incorporates emotions into their games, like fake crying or anger.

But still, I didn't believe him because my gut didn't believe him. The developmental stuff was a convincing smokescreen, but if I pushed it back and stared at the piece of paper covered with suspiciously childlike scribbles that he insisted were done by an adult, well. Come on, dude. 

I repeated my intention to call his teacher. 

"You CAN'T!" he wailed.

"Why not?" I asked. "Is she going to tell me something different?"

"No! I don't know!" he paused. "You can't call her because...TEACHERS DON'T HAVE PHONES."

Aaaaand there it was. The wheels were falling off. We'd hit the limits of the logic ceiling. 

I gave him another chance to fess up -- I assured him that I cared much, much more about the truth than I did about how many points he was getting at school, but that there would be definite consequences and loss of privileges if I had to find the truth out from someone else.

Instead, he opted to double down. "I am telling the truth," he said, with a perfect poker face.

I went upstairs to get my shoes on -- we needed to leave in a few minutes for his occupational therapy appointment, after all -- but apparently Noah thought I was calling his teacher right then. Jason found him staring up after me with a look of nervous, stomach-churning agony. 

I was halfway back down the stairs when the confession started. 

"I just wanted more Halloween candy," he admitted.

***

Lying is bad and wrong, of course. And being lied to by your child is annoying. Choosing punishments and reinforcing the importance of the truth while curbing your own white-lie fibbing habit is an exhausting and not-particularly rewarding part of parenting.

But oh, you guys, it's also just so normal. 

Mr. Fixit

We have an IEP meeting today, the first of two IEP meetings scheduled over the next few months. For this year is Noah's re-evaluation year, the year he's due for...wait for it, oh, you'll never guess...a re-evaluation of his strengths and weaknesses and needs and services, up to an including the Big Label that keeps him in special education and keeps my mother-in-law up at night for fear of his PERMANENT RECORD and her continued, unshakable belief that the public school system is legally allowed to tie him to a cheerful Circle Time Chair and forcibly inject Ritalin into his veins. IT HAPPENS. SNOPES IS IN ON IT TOO.

This particular meeting is, quite frankly, going to be bullshit. Not much more than a procedural checkpoint. We will show up and be told about all the different evaluations and testing procedures they plan to do before our next IEP meeting, the big one that will determine his placement for first grade. (Where there are no Circle Time Chairs, but I believe you may be able to request one of those coin-operated massage recliners for your child's Clockwork Orange-style med drip. Fingers crossed!) They will hand us five trees' worth of paper detailing everything we just talked about and our 17th copy of the Parental Rights & Responsibilities handbook that we cannot turn down because they found a typo on page 47 of the last version, thank you and we'll see you again in a couple months, time for the next family, moving on, thanks. 

***

At almost half past six years old, Noah has no real trace of a speech delay, the thing that started All Of This. He never shuts up, actually. Sometimes his grammar is a tad mixed up and full of extra words that buy him precious processing seconds, and he still adorably pronounces V as B. (As in "This lebel of Plants Bersus Zombies is really hard.") But other than that, he's your typical chatty exuberant omg inside voice, Noah kid. Bonus: he's learned all kinds of delightful words from his classmates, or at least he thinks he has. 

"Damage!" he says, deviously scanning my face for a reaction. "Beenis slug! Poople tale!"

His brain seems to be running a constant loop of things he's seen or heard -- usually TV or movies which he memorizes like a human tape recorder -- and he has a hard time turning off the recall or understanding that not everybody else in the room has any idea what he's talking about when he randomly decides to talk about how the bad bird was up on the roof but then the thing fell down and that was funny, right? Right? Right Mom? Right? 

"What are you talking about?" I usually end up asking, exasperated that I am unable to coax more than five words from him about his day at school but will get several hundred about some bit of an Angry Birds fan video he watched once on YouTube.

The thing is, TV and movies help, too, especially with the bigger social picture and his ongoing issues with rigidity and anxiety. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies and books, for example, maybe play to his current obsession with potty talk than I'd like (OMG THE MOTHERFUCKING IRONY), but have completely changed the way he treats his friends, and especially Ezra. "I'm not a mean brother like Rodrick," he says. "I'm a nice brother. I'm a friend brother."

The various iterations of Star Trek -- with different costumes and ship details and characters and hell, even actors -- have been hugely helpful when he's confronted with something being "different" or "not normal." Before that, Star Wars and Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz taught him how to use his imagination.

And Kung Fu Panda 2, of all things, gave us the phrase "inner peace" as an effective code for "rest your body" or "holy sensory freakout child, please calm dowwwwwwn." 

And the auditory recall seems to work at school, too, despite how easily distracted he is by...well, EVERYTHING. The wiggly leg on his chair. The edge of his shirt sleeves. That other kid who is in time out for saying Something That Sounds A Lot Like "Damage." Anything and everything in the classroom that may have been moved from its usual location. The sound his mouth makes when he blows air out like this or like that.

Despite all the distractions, he's learning. He's reading. He's writing. He's drawing elaborate re-tellings of his favorite movies comic-book style on the wide sheets of paper we set out on his kindergarten-teacher-recommended Writing Station, up to and including the closing credits. His fine motor skills have never been better, and his teacher even declared his handwriting "beautiful," especially for a kid who only really figured out how to hold a crayon properly a year or so ago. 

He says he hates school, which of course bothers me, but I sort of think that's the point: I roll my eyes at "damage" and "fartle fart" and "pooper diaper" but have a hard-to-resist kneejerk reaction to "I hate school." Why? Why do you hate school? What's wrong? What's happening there? Is it your teacher? The other kids? TELL ME SO I CAN FIX IT. I CAN CALL ANOTHER IEP MEETING AND FIX IT.

I should know by now it doesn't exactly work like that. Sure, there are things about Noah that I could cautiously, inelegantly call "fixed" or "resolved." Things that took years of therapy and effort and money. And other things that simply faded away with a little extra time: maturity on his part, understanding and creative thinking on mine. And other, other things that found unlikely, almost sudden solutions: A curved exit ramp, Star Wars, karate or sometimes just actual, real-life magic. 

And of course there are still other things. Big things, subtle things, question-marky-let's-keep-our-eye-on-that things. The IEP helps with some of those things, along with OT and diet and a truckload of patience, so we keep chugging along and showing up and doing everything we possibly can to help, to guide, to aid.

But not to "fix."

Because you can't fix something that isn't broken. And my child is not, and never has been, broken. 

 

Halloween in Real Life

Noah still won't dress up for Halloween, by the way. Won't even consider it. In the past we've managed to get him semi-costumed at the 11th hour via:

1) Lying. 

2) Candy-fueled panic with a side of peer pressure. 

3) Bribery. 

While I was debating which one of these FANTASTIC options to go with this year, my mom actually had an inspired idea: Why not just let Noah wear his karate uniform? 

I asked Noah what he thought about that: It would look like a costume without actually being a costume. We'd be playing a little trick on people, kind of.

He liked that idea. He liked that idea a lot.

"Everyone will think I'm the Karate Kid from the movie but actually I'm just Noah the Karate Kid. From real life."

It didn't exactly make for very exciting pictures, but still. This is easily the happiest he's ever looked on Halloween.

And everyone in the neighborhood was completely fooled by his non-costume costume. 

Ezra, on the other hand...

Ezra just can't even deal with any of y'all right now.

I mean, God. You people.

Around 5:30 pm, Young Master Ezra was sent to his room for a time out. By 6:00 pm, I was scrambling to make the boys some non-chocolate form of sustenance while simultaneously answering the door for early-bird trick-or-treaters and gathering up costumes and realizing that I couldn't find the boys' beloved Pumpkin Buckets (hence the last-minute procurement of They-Only-Had-Cauldron Buckets by Jason, a substitution that damn near RUINED HALLOWEEN)...and Ezra was sound asleep. 

Sound asleep and not at all happy to be dragged out of bed and propped semi-upright at the table in front of a sad bowl of non-sugary pasta.

His mood did not improve with the addition of his little chef's jacket and hat.

(The giant RANDOM HIVES ON HIS FACE didn't help either.)

Stop taking my picture or I will beat you with this wee wooden spoon, woman. 

Real chefs have knives, anyway. This is the worst Halloween ever.

Like last year, Ezra tried to pitch us on HIS version of trick-or-treating: Grab candy from house bowl, deposit in bucket, done. So streamlined! So simple! With no walking around in the scary dark AND less time between the acquisition of candy and the face-stuffing part. 

We didn't go for it. He showed up at a good five or six doorsteps still sobbing his eyes out about it. "TICK OH TREAT," he bawled to several slightly alarmed homeowners, miserably accepting Reese's Cups and lollipops before FINALLY snapping out of it and realizing that all told, this Halloween thing is a PRETTY GOOD DEAL.

(Please note that the one person in the house who could have been worn any costume of my choosing without means of protest was basically dressed as Mommy Bought a Hat* & a Onesie On Sale At Old Navy, What More Do You People Want From Her, Jesus Christ, She's Tired.)

(If you're wondering where the pictures of my costume are, I didn't take any. I went as an Exhausted Suburban Wrangler of Many Small Children. I wore jeans and a headscarf and an overwhelming sense of not giving a shit.)

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how sneak all the Red 40 and Yellow 5 dyes out of Noah's candy stash before I have to peel a six-year-old gremlin off the ceiling later today. Because yes. Every year we go through all this sturm und drang over costumes and parties and trick-or-treating...and then everything fun magically vanishes the next day and I leave them with like, a bag of pretzels and one Hershey's fun size. 

*The hat actually says "BOO!" on it, but I now realize I put it on him backwards. I WIN AT EVERYTHING. 

And On Third Thought...

So. Yeah...turns out that was nicely anticlimactic, in the end. 

The best thing about about this whole...uh, thing (besides working itself out fairly quickly) was the fact that it rallied our mostly-dormant parent email distro list like nothing else in the world. What had previously only been used to send out links to special-needs talks and events and charity 5Ks suddenly came alive with the sound of HIGHLY ALARMED MOTHER BEARS.

Everyone quickly passed along whatever bits of conflicting or corroborating information we'd received from the school, the teacher, the administration. We compared notes and conspiracy theories and even a horror story or two. (It was a dark and stormy Tuesday after the first day of school when one child spent 40 goddamn minutes wandering around the school completely lost because neither his homeroom teacher nor special education teacher realized he was missing, holy shit, the end.) By late last night, we were virtually toasting each other's wine glasses over email and firming up final details on a class playdate next week and a mom's night out the week after. It was beautiful.

It was also interesting to see the different advocacy styles: Some go in with guns blazing. They argue, they hang up the phone, they say things like "if I find out you've pulled my child out of general education for even five minutes because of overcrowding, I will file a discrimination lawsuit." Others are more measured and willing to give the school the benefit of the doubt...but not too much benefit, because...you know. Some see conspiracies everywhere, or can always find a reason to be angry, while others have to get dragged kicking and screaming from their confrontation-adverse corners, and fight only when they absolutely have to. Some get amped up by the process, injected with nervous energy that keeps them up and emailing until midnight, while others get so emotionally wiped out by an afternoon IEP meeting that they have to go home and crawl back into bed for a few hours before they talk about it. 

I'm sure for teachers and therapists and administrators it gets AWFULLY exhausting dealing with some of these personality types, and easy to point at a particular reaction and say YOU'RE GOING ABOUT THIS THE WRONG WAY, STOP. The thing is, though, that every one of these parents got to where they are -- to this X-Files-like point of TRUST NO ONE -- honestly. Usually the hard way. From the time they didn't fight back or argue or ask that one last pointed question because they didn't want to seem mean or be a bother. Or the time they DID fight and argue and question...and still were unable to get what their child needed. It doesn't make us right all the time, but just another imperfect part of an imperfect system. 

Personally, I spent the bulk of my afternoon composing a (hopefully) polite yet undeniably pointed email to the involved parties. (Probably shouldn't come as a surprise that writing tends to be my best medium for confrontation, rather than the phone or in person.) I tossed around the proper acronyms and dissected my son's day, calling his service minutes into question while also attempting to appeal on a personal level, describing Noah's level of stress and anxiety about school in general and c'mon, dudes. Don't be dicks about this. LRE, man. LRE.

Within 15 minutes of the dismissal bell ringing at school, my phone was ringing and my email was replied to, with a good three or four other higher-ups from the school now CC'd on it. 

Basically, what we all had here was a failure to communicate. Basically, this kerfluffle is what happens when a principal (who is actually an assistant principal filling in temporarily while the "real" principal is on maternity leave) makes a phone call that probably should have been made by the teacher, and with a lot more notice or lead time to prevent parents from feeling railroaded, or like someone was trying to pull a fast one on us. 

Upshot: I thought Noah spent more time in his homeroom than he actually does, thanks to a misunderstanding at our last IEP meeting, some bungled information we received at Back To School Night and from...yeah, okay, I know...Noah himself, the most unreliable of narrators. He actually gets off the bus, goes to the gen-ed classroom, hangs up his coat and backpack, sits down to listen to about five minutes of all-school announcements via the Promethean Board...and then is immediately told to get his coat and backpack again, line up at the door, and head to his other classroom. 

Oh. 

Well.

Would it be okay if he listened to the announcements in the other classroom instead, so he's not having to transition 10 minutes into the school day? Because the kids are so tightly scheduled down to the minute this year -- all because of statewide changes to the curriculum, which is why this is a new problem -- and the special ed teacher isn't able to get the new, longer math lesson in. So it would really help her if she could have the kids there from the beginning. Then they aren't running late to rejoin the gen-ed class for art and music and science, which is what's currently happening almost every day. The 10 additional minutes a day would not actually eat into his IEP-dictated gen-ed time, but would instead make sure he WASN'T missing more valuable peer interaction later in the day.

Oh.

I see.

I have to admit, there was a part of me -- a small, petty part -- that wanted to stick to my original guns. To cling to Noah's five minutes of homeroom time no matter what. MY PRESHUS! HISSSSSS! To insist that those five minutes provide invaluable peer interaction that they will take from my COLD DEAD HANDS, just to stick it to them for handling this so badly and not explaining things well. To continue to nurture my pet theory that this was still some kind of fallout from the overcrowded kindergarten rooms. 

But I had to admit that his teacher really had a point. Moving Noah around that much in the morning is kind of silly, and probably feels like transition-whiplash to him. For kids without transitioning difficulties, it's SUCH a nice idea to have everyone arrive on equal gen-ed footing before scattering out to special ed and ESOL and the resource room. I mean, I love the sound of that, because it's just so...up with integration! everybody is different and special but also the same! and stuff.

But for a kid like Noah, well, the reality is that it probably makes things harder for him. 

Some of the other parents have decided to reject the schedule change and keep things as-is, and of course the school is bending over backwards to agree that yes! That is completely within your rights! We will of course honor your wishes! Our bad!

I asked Noah what he wanted. I assumed he'd pick the original homeroom option, since he likes that teacher a lot more. (Mostly just because he only sees that teacher for the fun, easier parts of the day.) 

No, he said. He wants to start off in the smaller classroom. He doesn't like lining up to leave all the time, and he always forgets which room he's left his jacket in and then Mommy gets annoyed with him when he gets off the bus with no jacket. It was just too much moving around all the time.

Oh.

Well.

I see.

As you wish, Noah. As you wish.

 

(Photo by Wendy at Blue Lily Photography, and HELL YES SQUEE I have dozens more to inflict on you guys, now that I'm done talking about the latest crisis of my own fool creation.)

On Second Thought, Hell No

The principal at Noah's school called us mid-day on Friday. She abruptly dropped an oh-HI-THERE-just-wanted-to-let-you-know-something-we're-changing bomb, in that sweet disarming way only cheerful elementary school ladies can. And after I hung up I stared at the phone for awhile, trying to figure out what just happened and why.

The change in question felt like...not a good change, or at the very least felt like a change we should have been able to say "no thank you" to, or discussed a little further, instead of what it was: On Monday we're moving your child out of his morning homeroom, and sending him directly to the special education classroom. Try to give him a heads' up over the weekend, kthxbye.

A flurry of emails among the other parents with children in the special education class confirmed that I was not alone in my unease. The "change" seemed to fly in the face of the program our children are in (small, self-contained classroom only when necessary, integrate at all other times), in the face of our IEPs, our right to be involved in these sorts of decisions ahead of time, and our right not to be fed a line of complete horseshit, just because the school is overcrowded and overwhelmed and hey! You know what's easy? Move the special ed kids out. A couple less kids for the general education teachers to have to deal with in the morning. Tell the parents it's a transitioning problem, or something, and we're only talking 10-15 minutes or so a day, no big deal, right? 

TL;DR version: Big deal. Somebody hold my earrings. 

UPDATE: Oh, school. How hast thou violated my child's IEP? Let me count the ways. In excruciating, exhaustive detail, cuz I gots alllll afternoon and every piece of paper you have ever sent me EVER:

You fools! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a compulsive paperwork hoarder when her kid is on the line!" MWA HA HA HA

Unexpecting the Expected

Confession time: I really let Ezra down this past week, during the beginning of school.

I mentioned already that sometimes I FORGET. I forget that for all of his highly-verbal-ness and typical-development-ness and bubbly cheerfulness, I can't go and turn on the auto-parent cruise control. 

Too often, Ezra is The One I Don't Worry About.

I mean, not really. That sounds worse than what I'm really trying to say. It's just, as a younger sibling of a special-needs child, each new stage of Ezra's development was met with a big sigh of relief. He talks! He eats! He runs! He holds a crayon! He uses utensils! He thinks other kids are fun! He has a wild imagination and an even wilder appetite for full-tilt adventure and destruction! 

At some point, I was just like: Okay. We're good. I can stop looking for things. 

I have conversations with Ezra that you wouldn't even believe. I feel like I haven't even come close to capturing how amazing he is through my own words here. At not-even-three, he is better at expressing his emotions and telling you about his day than Noah is at almost-six. His occasional toddler stubbornness and temper outbursts are nothing compared to the fits Noah would throw, back in the day. HOOOOboyfuckballs, not even close.

Noah would get mad because a light bulb was flickering or a clothing tag was bothering him or he was convinced we were taking him someplace that might possibly maybe require him to sit in a chair. There was never a full-proof way to reach him during a tantrum, to calm him down, other than to completely remove him -- physically, kicking and screaming -- from the situation and wait for the adrenaline to even itself back out.

Ezra, on the other hand, gets mad when I tell him he can't have another cookie. He'll look me in the eyes and say "I'M MAD," and then maybe kick the side of the couch. "UH!" he'll add, for emphasis. I raise my eyebrow at him, like, is that all you got, dude? And then he silently goes and puts himself in time out. 

Oh, this sounds so cold, like I don't take Ezra's moods or emotions seriously, because I do. I DO. I'm actually the world's BIGGEST SUCKER around that child, because when his sweet little face turns sad, I turn into mush.

Noah requires so much effort on my part to be perfectly consistent and even-tempered and patient and digging through my knowledge stores about sensory processing to come up with the appropriate, non-shit-losing reaction. Ezra gets the fun, impromptu Mommy who figures maybe it isn't the biggest fucking deal in the world to let him have another cookie, at least he's not screaming at me because our neighbors are playing the radio outside and it's completely unacceptable that I cannot make them turn it off. 

This past week, though, Ezra also got the hurried, oblivious Mommy who was completely blindsided by a wicked case of separation anxiety.

After the first couple "introductory" days of school, Ezra was expected to separate from me outside of school, either at the front door or curbside. A teacher or aide escorts the kids the rest of the way. 

Our first attempt at the new drop-off order resulted in him sobbing his face off and screaming my name and begging me to take him home.

BECAUSE IT HADN'T OCCURRED TO ME TO TELL HIM I'D BE DROPPING HIM OFF, THAT THINGS WOULD BE DIFFERENT THAT DAY.

Me! The queen of visual schedules and social stories! The one who hasn't driven ANYWHERE without briefing Noah on full detailed run-down of where we're going and what we'll be doing since oh, 2007? Who prepares for each and every little transition like some people prepare for hurricanes! 

Nope. Sorry Zah, we'll just have a little conversation about cars and trees and then Imma gonna pull up to school and let a stranger reach in and carry you off. You're cool with that, right? 

*headdesk*

Yesterday was our first day with no crying at the drop off. Today was pretty good too. I can still sense his anxiety all morning about going to school, though. I can tell that he's worried someone is going to change all the rules on him again, like today's the day I'm going to launch him out of the car towards the school on a giant slingshot, Angry Birds style. 

His teacher reports that he's completely fine once he gets to the classroom -- he's very into the shoe-changing ritual where he puts on his special "school shoes" -- and says that really, he's integrating into the Montessori way of doing things at exactly the usual pace, for a child his age. He's independent, yet eager to learn and happy to please. Stubborn, yet social and charming. Typical. Nothing out of the ordinary. As expected. 

The school director (whom I think completely loves us and Ezra thanks to our South Park bonding moment. boo-yah), did tell me about one incident when she was leading the class: Ezra had a bit of a meltdown after snack because he wanted more snack and there was no more snack. Instead of putting himself in time out, though, he threw himself at her legs and asked to be picked up. She obliged and he snuffled on her shoulder for a minute, then announced that he was "all better" and ready to go to the playground. 

"I FORGET," she said. "He's so highly verbal and everything that I forget that he's not even three years old yet. He seems so...beyond that, sometimes."

Yes. Exactly. Beyond. Just complicated, unique and amazing little Ezra, going beyond my wildest dreams and expectations.

 

As usual. Just like I always expected. 

The Road To Here

I woke up this morning to discover that a big giant kid crept in and ate Noah up last night.

I was pretty annoyed, so I walked him to the neighborhood bus stop and sent him off to school with a bunch of other big kids. Whatever.

***

The other parents snapped pictures as their kids lined up and boarded the bus. I just stood there. I'd abandoned my camera on our front step because Noah was having a hard morning and me standing around trying to capture the preshus memories of childhood rites of passage was clearly NOT HELPING. He didn't want to get out of bed, he didn't want to get dressed, he didn't want a shirt with too many buttons and he didn't want breakfast and he CERTAINLY didn't want to walk to the bus stop. 

But of course the minute we rounded the corner and he spotted other kids at the bus stop his anxiety melted. He cheerfully climbed on the bus and stopped mid-step to turn around and give me the most picture-perfect first-day-of-school wave in the HISTORY of first-day-of-school waves. 

I waved back. I bit my lip. I turned around and walked home. 

Noah will spend part of his day in the mainstream kindergarten classroom. Mostly the "easy" stuff like homeroom, lunch, art, recess. Close to 30 kids with one teacher. (Who, okay, is a dude. And Ezra's preschool teacher [he starts next week] is a dude. Lots of dudes all of a sudden!) The rest of the day he'll be in a smaller special education class. He'll get one-on-one OT once a week and other support services as-needed for issues related to attention, behavior, anxiety, sensory stuff. It's all good. We're extremely pleased and are hoping for a mostly-smooth year. We're also continuing to take Noah to private services every week to plug the holes in his IEP, because we still aren't that idealistic. Ain't our first rodeo, and all.

I get asked from time to time about the whole blogging-about-Noah thing, and it's a totally fair question. (Provided it's asked in a way that doesn't assume 1) that it's something that has NEVER EVER OCCURRED TO ME TO THINK ABOUT, and 2) that there's only one right answer, and that it is not the one I've come up with.) 

Here's the thing: Yes, I suppose it is possible that Noah's classmates might one day read this blog and learn that he experienced developmental delays. It is possible. Likely? I dunno. I imagine by the time they're of the age where they're Googling each other and allowed to visit random blogs with R-rated langauge unsupervised, Noah will have his own online presence that will supercede this one in the search results, or this blog will be offline or entries will have been removed (I do that, sneakily like, sometimes) and hey, if kids really want to spend hours and hours tracking down an unformatted cache of overwrought ramblings from somebody's boring old MOM on Wayback Machine, well...Noah has my blessing to mock the SHIT out of them right back. 

(I also own the possibility that any of my children might one day look at me and say, "Wow, I really wish you hadn't done that," about blogging or posting pictures or hell, any number of parenting choices we make that might, in hindsight, suck.)

But the fact is, other kids don't need to do all that much to figure out some of the things I've shared here, if they want to. They just need an older sibling with a yearbook, because Noah's name and picture have been in there for the past two years, as part of the district's preschool program. 

And they'll see him leave the classroom every day. That part worried me, as hypocritical as that probably sounds.

I asked the special education teacher about it on Friday: Do the other kids...notice? Do they ask? Do they figure it out? 

No, she assured me. Just about every kid gets "pulled out" at some point during the day or week. There's a large ESOL population and those kids go to their own classroom too. Some kids need handwriting help, or speech therapy for lisps or stutters. Others go to special reading groups -- both remedial and gifted. Some kids see the school pyschologist, some get tutoring, and all of this happens in mysterious "other" rooms than the homerooms, so no one knows why anyone is leaving. When everyone is special...no one is. Huh.

"Mostly, the kids who stay behind think the ones who leave are lucky," she said. 

And really, Noah IS lucky. He has an amazing barrage of services being made available to him, even in an age of crazy district budget cuts and school overcrowding. He has received great services from this school already, in addition to all the private therapy and camps and whatnot. 

And he is lucky because once upon a time, his mother poured her heart out to the Internet when she feared her baby might be speech delayed. And when she found out that he was. And when she first heard of "Sensory Processing Disorder" and "Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified" and Asperger's and dyspraxia and ADHD and any number of acronyms and diagnosis codes that have shown up in paperwork or conversations. 

He is lucky because when I did that, people listened. And they helped. They left comments and emails and sent me book and website recommendations and phone numbers and taught me how to be his advocate and let me cry on their shoulders both virtually and in real life. They taught me how to write social stories and that visual schedules help and have you talked to the miracle workers at The Treatment & Learning Centers? They donated money and a kick in the pants when I was stressed and hesitant about an insanely expensive private school tuition bill. They told me I would never, ever regret spending that money and they were 100% right. They taught me not to be afraid or ashamed, but let me know that it was okay to feel that way sometimes.

You listened. You shared. You taught. You helped.

Thank you.

I don't really feel compelled to share the daily ups and downs of raising a challenging child quite the way I used to, when Noah was little and baffling and I felt so lost and overwhelmed all the time. He's big and still baffling but...we got this. More or less. Some days are better than others, just like always. We're trying some new things and re-introducing some old things that stopped working so well but seem to help again but mostly we just...enjoy being around our boy. Who enjoys going places and doing things except for the places and things that he doesn't. We just have to try to keep it all straight, and then be prepared when he changes the rules on us again. No biggie. 

But, you know. I'll still keep you posted. Don't worry. 

In the meantime, though, one small favor: If your child comes home from school and tells you about how some kids talk funny or can't sit still or can't keep quiet or don't like to be touched and those kids get pulled out of the classroom during math and reading and science and asks you where do those kids go? And why? 

Tell them that gee, you can't say for sure. But those kids sound pretty lucky. 

Little Fish

Noah spent four weeks at a OT/social skills camp this summer, and then we set him loose for two weeks at the YMCA's swim camp. It was our first crack at mainstream program in over three years. It ended on Friday.

He received a certificate for "Honesty." Which as far as I can gather he earned mostly because 1) everybody got one, and 2) whenever he got in trouble, it never occurred to him to lie about it. 

But he did it. He made it through all 10 days of camp. We signed one incident report for hitting and one for towel-whacking, and by the time the kicking happened...well, his counselor went easy on him and skipped the written report, which spared him from getting kicked out on the third-to-last day. We explained and reminded and begged him each morning to keep his hands to himself, to use words instead, come on, dude, you know this. We had to remind him to respond when other campers said hello, we had to provide the teenaged CITs with strategies to help him transition without tantrums or play competitive games without rigid frustration, and we had to face the hard fact that none of this is easy for him. Still. Not yet. 

But he did it. He learned to swim underwater.  He went down a waterslide. He swam in the deep end. He gained a pound of strong, solid muscle. He hung upside down from the monkey bars. He lost his first tooth at the lunch table. He learned that sticking both your fingers in your nose at the same time is HILARIOUS. 

I'm really proud of him, you guys. 

Humble Pride

There's nothing quite like those moments -- those rare public moments when the child you've spent years of your life raising as a kind, empathetic and polite human being opens his mouth...and says the most impulsive, selfish and socially tone-deaf thing he could possibly come up with. In front of God, everybody and at least 50 other adults with video cameras.

So I left a little anecdote out of my entry about Noah's belt test. Because...well, it wasn't exactly the sort of story I felt deserved to be preserved for posterity. At least...not at first. At first it was one of those "let's forget THAT ever happened" stories.

So Noah was waiting for his turn to break his board. It's the last task of the test, the big moment that signals your successful graduation to the next belt level, the part where everybody claps and cheers for you, and not to mention, is completely fucking awesome, because you get to break a damn board with your fist. 

But the little girl ahead of Noah was not getting that completely awesome moment, because she could not break her board, no matter how many times she tried. The instructor switched boards, had her practice over and over again, but the board would not split. They quickly abandoned the punching idea and had her try an easier stomp kick move. But the board would not split. 

The instructors continued to cheer her on, as did the entire audience of parents, grandparents and siblings -- you know, ANYTHING to keep the poor thing from getting upset or embarrassed during a moment that is solely intended to be a self-confidence booster, as I've always suspected that those balsa wood boards get a secondary helpful bit of snapping pressure from the instructors. 

Noah sat silently during this, growing slightly more impatient with every failed attempt the little girl made. Finally, he could take no more:

"SHE'S NEVER GOING TO BREAK HER BOARD!" he announced. Loudly. Very, very loudly.

There are a few sounds that I will never, ever forget, dear readers: The sound my car made during a violent head-on collision in high school, the sound of my newborn babies' cries for the first time...and the sound of every other person in that room making the same horrified and dismayed "OHHHNOOOOOOO!" sort of gasp.

Noah was quickly admonished by an instructor and we, the audience, were ordered to cheer for the little girl even louder. Jason and I looked at each other, completely mirroring the other's embarrassment and desire for the floor to open up and swallow us whole, because yeeeeah.

That's my kid, right there.

 The one that EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THIS ROOM is thinking, "oh God, I'm glad that wasn't my kid."

Argh. Kids. Five-year-olds. Whattaya gonna do, right? 

Well, if you're Jason, you spend a nice chunk of your afternoon assembling an extremely complicated Harry Potter Lego set while talking to your kid about why that wasn't a nice thing to say, how that probably hurt that little girl's feelings, and what "encouragement" means and why it's important, and suggesting that maybe an apology is in order, the next time that little girl comes to karate class.

But you might also probably feel like everything you said went in one ear and out the other, cuz LEGOS LEGOS LEGOS.

And if you're me, you'll completely forget to bring the topic up again and prompt your kid about that outstanding apology while driving to karate class a few days later. Until you watch the little girl in question arrive late and take her spot directly behind your kid in line, like, ooohhhhhhhhhrightthat. 

But if your kid is Noah, you will also watch him immediately turn around and face the little girl. And you will hear him, clear as day, say, "I'm sorry I said you couldn't break your board. I'm sorry you were having a hard time. But you did really, really great and I'm happy you got your yellow belt too."

And you will realize you are sitting next to the little girl's mom. And you will see the corners of her mouth turn up in a charmed sort of smile. And you will see the instructor's face similarly melt, as he turns to your child and thanks him for being such a gentleman and a good friend, and tells him he just earned himself an extra raffle/prize ticket for a random act of kindness. 

And then you will watch your kid earn a second ticket for winning that day's special "flying kick" competition, expertly performing a new double-leg jump-kick thing that requires all sorts of gross motor skills and coordination and crossing the midline (and lands 90% of his classmates on their butts), and you will think, "That's my kid. That's MY kid. That's my amazing, unbelievable kid."

Apple Store of My Eye

I had to ask what, exactly, a "word retrieval disorder" meant, when we met with the child psychologist to go over the action-packed, 25-page report on Noah's evaluation. I understood most of what was in there -- ADHD, auditory processing, some too-early-to-tell red flags for dyslexia for us to "keep an eye on" -- but the word retrieval bit was a new one. 

Was it like apraxia? I asked.

No, she said. That's an inability to form words. This is more about plucking the right word from your brain soup. Basically having it right there on the tip of your tongue, but unable to remember it, or only coming up with words that are similar in concept, but not quite right. 

For example: saying shovel when you mean hammer, bicycle for motorcycle, or in a unique-to-Noah coping mechanism the psychologist noted, expanding a simple sentence to include a ton of extra, early "filler" words, thus buying himself more time to come up with the more difficult verbs and nouns that would come later. 

That was really fascinating to see, she said. He's already very aware of what's difficult for him, and is coming up with his own accomodations in lot of those areas. That's a very, very good thing. 

***

The suggested school-based accomodations for a word retrieval problem include providing Noah with a "word bank" to choose from during fill-in-the-blank tests, or allow him to write expanded responses instead of counting on him to remember a single specific word, and to use lots of mnemonic devices and categorization exercises to help with his word-memory skills. 

I couldn't help but think that man, we are getting crazy obscure here, with the stuff you can now officially label as a "disorder." I mean, really:

PROBLEMS WITH WORD RETRIEVAL! CAPS LOCK COMPULSION! PUNCTUATION DEFICIT DISORDER! I HAVE ALL OF THESE PLUS WEIRD DOUBLE-JOINTED RING FINGERS. 

***

Last night, after dinner, Jason suggested we all head to the Apple store to check out their selection of educational games, to see if they included some age-appropriate typing or keyboarding skills. (This was another accomodation the psychologist recommended, to teach Noah to type as a less-frustrating alternative to handwriting.) Noah demanded clarification, probably thinking that we wanted to take him to a fruit store, which would have to be one of the WORST IDEAS EVER, unless we were talking bananas. Did the apple store also have bananas? 

No, we told him. The computer store. The one with the Dora games you like to play. 

Oh, okay, he nodded. I like the computer store.

A few minutes later we hadn't left yet, and Noah was getting impatient. 

Are we going to the...

That's as far as he got before his face contorted and the tears started. 

The word! I can't say the word! My voice doesn't remember that word! Naughty voice, why won't you remember!

Then he balled up his fist and started punching himself in the throat. 

Holy shit, I thought. Stop!

Computer, I said, as soothingly as I could. The computer store.

He repeated it and immediately calmed down, taking big deep breaths. I don't like when my voice forgets the words. It makes me angry. 

Of course it does, I said. It's frustrating. Everybody's voice forgets the words sometimes, though. 

We decided to go to the fruit store another time. We went to the playground instead.