Stream of consciousness from a mother on the edge

Walking on the treadmill this morning because there is literally a blizzard of snow fall out my window I found my mind racing, running, and spewing. A week of babysitting special educators and administrators at one of the state’s highest ranked high schools left me mentally exhausted.

One would think the fucking standardized tests that take over the building once a year would require a great deal of planning. Ts to be crossed, Is to be dotted – yet in the enormous amount of preparation my child did not receive the accommodations detailed in his IEP. The special educator who I suspect was in charge of putting his name on a list for extended time and use of a keyboard during these stupid tests forgot him. That is the only logical explanation I can come up with. FOR-FUCKING-GOT him!!!

I asked son after day one of testing if he received extra time. He didn’t know. He doesn’t often “need” the time, but definitely NEEDS the illusion of extra time as a stress reducer.  I sent a brief email to special educator verifying his standardized test accommodations. She responded, like a coward, I will forward your question onto our vice principal in charge of testing.

He responded, “We have been monitoring students use of accommodations in the regular classroom and since your son has not requested extended time this year he will not receive the accommodation.”

My first thought was, well he also has an accommodation for a quiet place to regroup if he has an emotional breakdown, he hasn’t used that this year either.. is this no longer available too?” Email back to vice principal was sent after I called my son out of school on the day they would be testing for reading and writing, asking if he would also not be allowed to also use a keyboard – an accommodation he has received since fifth grade. Vice principal calls district testing coordinator who verifies that my son does actually get that one.

Son goes back to school and completes the rest of his testing in a private room with keyboard and extra time. WHAT THE FUCK! What a huge, fucking crack my son just fell through. This makes me question every single moment of his day and if he is receiving anything at all from this highly ranked, award-winning high school. My next question, will he receive accommodations on his ACT? Oh, that’s a different story. We need to document that he has used extended time on exams/assessments during the regular school day. My question, one of my child’s IEP goals is in self advocacy. Do you think we would even have an IEP if he were organized enough to schedule a room with extended time for each test or quiz? This would be one hell of an accomplishment for a kid with executive function issues. They could cross that goal off the list immediately.

So, next week I learn more about ACT accommodations from the vice principal and apparently a room full of other professionals at the school. I am pissed, I am tired, I’m broke and I don’t want to babysit anymore!

A scene from the movie Terms of Endearment keeps running through my head.  Shirley McClain’s character is at the hospital with the dying Debra Winger. It’s time for her pain medication and it is not coming. She runs through the hospital screaming, “GIVE MY DAUGHTER HER SHOT.” I feel like that lunatic mother screaming, yelling and demanding what her child needs and DESERVES.

Rant over. Thank you for letting me also include some much-needed curse words. ROAR!

Dude, just turn your crap in!

Another school year is in full swing. Summer was awesome. It was blissful. It was a time of loose schedules, independent learning, fishing, floating and fun. My twice exceptional guy had a great time. I am always thankful to know he does have great moments, actually months, of contentment.

Then school starts. And, over here, that means the area of his brain that controls organization, motivation, general giving a flying fuck about a structured learning environment starts to misfire. Some people say this will be the year he matures. Boys take longer. Harrumph.

Backpack starts to fill with crumpled papers. Grades begin to plummet. He has an Honors Biology teacher who summed it up so beautifully we may submit his quote to thinkgeek.com for a t-shirt design. After reviewing my child’s list of missing assignments (including signed syllabus, signed safety sheet – really, easy stuff!) he said, “Dude, just turn your crap in!”

So, supermom/tigermom/somewhatdazedandconfusedmom kicks into overdrive. I arrange a twice weekly check in with his case manager to keep on top of the black hole backpack issues. Some progress is made. I begin making calls to find an “Academic Coach” for him. He doesn’t need a tutor. I swear I’m not trying to pull one over on my kid – he’s too smart to fall for that. This is actually someone who is going to meet with him weekly to find out his long term goals and help him reach them – with his own system. I do believe that system will be called, “Dude, just turn your crap in!”

Still struggling, I fell into a small hole of self pity. I retreated from my child. I was genuinely mad at him. In either a moment of weakness (or a grand epiphany) I lost it with him. I screamed, “dude, being smart on paper means jack shit if you can’t produce, period!” In a fit of anger I wrote a list of new rules. No afterschool activities if homework isn’t done. You will learn how to do dishes, laundry, clean your incredibly toxic bathroom, and do your homework. I was stern. I was angry. I was a little immature. I presented my child with the list, walked away, and searched the wine cellar for the last bottle of anything.

A few hours later my 2e guy presented me with a piece of paper, “Mom’s Rules.” I was hesitant to read them, thinking they would be snarky and potentially mean. When I started reading I found a list of ways I can help my son help himself. It was actually quite smart. Here is a brief sampling:

English:  Monday night, I WILL have a list of vocabulary words that I have to define. If I say that I do not have them I am lying to you. Make me find them.

Biology:  EVERY DAY, you are to ask me this question, “What did you do in Biology today.” If my answer is “I don’t know” or “nothing” I am lying and have something to do.  If I answer “a lab” or “a project” or even “a fun little game” – 99.9% of the time I will have homework and I am just not telling you.

So now I ask him these very questions each night. Homework is still linked to being able to participate in outside activities. He told me he is planning to put together a dichotomous flowchart so I know how to appropriately question his homework system.  Yeah, I had to look it up too. My first thought was, perhaps you could work up that flowchart AFTER you do your homework. Silly me!

Gotta run — submitting t-shirt designs to thinkgeek.com today. How a 2e kiddos brain really works when it comes to executive function using a dichotomous flowchart and how his mother copes using fermented grape therapy. Exhale!!

 

 

Not again…

http://www.loriwerhanephotography.smugmug.com

I have lived in the suburbs of Denver for 6 ½ years. While I wasn’t here for the Columbine massacre, I was glued to my television wondering how and why something so horrific could happen.  It still seems so incredibly unbelievable. Our community still grieves more than 13 years later.

I also remember being at work in 1995 when someone walked in and said, “Something big just happened in Oklahoma City!” I was, again, glued to the television and radio while the results of an angry, misguided Timothy McVeigh unfolded.

I remember exactly where I was when the phone rang; my husband told me he was coming back home and that something terrible was going on in New York. I was in my living room in California watching as the Twin Towers fell. My toddler was obliviously stacking blocks and eating Cheerios. Thank God!

Just last year I vividly remember hearing about Gabrielle Giffords being shot in the head by a stranger in Arizona. I screamed gun control and mental health budget cuts. Why, why, why!

Over the course of twenty or more years during my adult life I have watched and taken in so many incredible, sad and senseless acts of violence between humans. I am not numb. I am not complacent. I am as shocked today as I was 17 years ago when Oklahoma City happened.

Yesterday, way too close to home, a madman went into a theater in Aurora, Colorado and killed 12 innocent people — and injured so many more mentally and physically. I heard one of the victims in a television interview very eloquently articulate, “I am saddened he chose to cope with his own clearly declining situation with violence.”

Mr. Holmes was able to legally purchase four firearms at local gun/sporting equipment stores. He was then able to purchase over 6,000 rounds of ammunition online. Reports are still coming in, but it appears his apartment is filled with booby traps, ammunition, toxic gasses and bombs. He was somehow able to purchase everything he needed online, locally – and legally under the radar.

I support safe hunting, gun safety and the legal use of firearms. I don’t own or use guns, but I know many people who safely and responsibly do. However, the line has officially been drawn in the sand. This crime was committed using legal means of purchase. I sadly don’t think our founding fathers meant to include, “The right to bear arms – even if you are a madman with a credit card” in the verbiage of the second amendment.  I don’t think over 200 years ago they meant, or could comprehend, bearing arms including assault weapons capable of shooting hundreds of rounds per second. All I know is gun control in America is broken and needs to be fixed! I can’t put my head around any of this right now. I am not numb. I am not complacent. I am just sad!

As I put my daughter to bed last night she cried, was genuinely afraid and said, “Mom, that guy was smart! What if he gets out of jail and wants to kill us!” She was worried. Random violence is hard to explain to a nine year old! I told her, “Sweetie, I think he really wanted to be caught. He is clearly not mentally stable. The police/FBI are very smart and will make sure he never hurts anyone again.” That was the best I could muster – but secretly I worry about the next massacre.

Hug your children. Listen to your teenagers – take their angst seriously. Give blood. Be kind!

Enough!

http://www.loriwerhanephotography.smugmug.com

Is it odd so many of us do what we are supposed to do, instead of what we really want to do? Why? Apparently there is some wise guy named “Jones” living in the universe telling us that we need to keep up. But why? I promise this won’t be a blog filled with typical four year old responses, but, seriously why?

Why do I “need” a house with six, no I didn’t stutter, SIX bathrooms? I do believe Mr. Jones is also in charge of the national builder’s association on what we need in our homes. I recall growing up with three siblings and two parents in a modest house with exactly TWO bathrooms. I was clean! Unfortunately, Mr. Jones also tells us we need to hire a housecleaner to keep all of those tiled, toileted, and tubbed rooms perfectly sparkly. Why? We also need perfectly manicured yard, perfectly sculpted bodies, nails, hair, and we need new wardrobes every season. Why, why, why?

I recently listened to an interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She was interviewing Anna Quindlen who is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Times columnist. I do believe I have found my new mentor/hero. I just downloaded her book, “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake” and will certainly post a review once I am finished. Ms. Quindlen is a women in her 60s who not only speaks feminist, she speaks realist — my favorite combination!

In the interview she describes a realization she had after turning 50.

 ”After all those years as a woman hearing ‘not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,’ almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, ‘I’m enough,’ ” she says.

In a way I believe she is also referring to the pressure the Joneses put on most of us.

I fall into the category of suburban mom. I think I’m supposed to play Bunco, volunteer for the PTO, exercise/nip-tuck/manicure-pedicure/Botox to perfection and have a home that rivals Pottery Barn catalogs. I hate to say there was a time when I thought that was who I was supposed to be. I tried very hard until one day I couldn’t breath. I felt as if I were suffocating under all of it. I was drowning in a sea of pressure to be something I couldn’t and didn’t want to be!

I was recently at a concert with a friend. We were laughing, dancing, and having fun like no one was watching! Best ever! We saw a woman walk by who looked miserable. My friend actually said, “She needs to get that pole out of her ass!” I thought to myself, “Wow, I was totally that woman.”  I am thankful for the epiphany that happened around 40ish! Kids aren’t perfect, house will never be perfect, and I am not perfect. I think I came to the realization that “I was enough!” and the pole just fell out! Epiphanies rock!

I can honestly say kicking Mr. Jones to the curb (it is still evolving) has brought out the more authentic me. I say what I feel. I am content to have just a few close friends. I am happy to be by myself too! The beautiful result is some amazing, equally authentic new people in my life! I exercise for inspiration and health (not for perfect abs/ass) and I laugh a lot more!

I AM ENOUGH! I am still a work in progress, but friends who know me well would know I might respond to that with a sarcastic, “That’s what she said!”

Cheers!

If you are interested in the entire Terry Gross interview with Anna Quindlen, I will kindly share the link! http://www.npr.org/2012/04/24/150738848/anna-quindlen-over-50-and-having-plenty-of-cake

Cocktail?

photography by loriwerhanephotography

After an hour of gardening in the backyard I walked into my home to find my children discussing chess strategies and contemplating a healthy snack. NOT! Actually I came into my house after gardening (I really was attempting to pull a year’s worth of grass growth out of my perennial bed) to discover not exactly utopian summer activities. My smart middle girl was actually reading a book on her Kindle Fire. She had a great year in school and used birthday money to treat herself to e-books 24/7!

She had received an A on a Spanish project where she had to build a mini town out of found objects – all in Espanol, of course. She made a little restaurant with umbrellas made from tiny little cocktail umbrellas. You know, the kind with paper up and down umbrellas on toothpicks. She had a handful leftover and they kept creeping back out onto the living room coffee table. An area I commonly refer to as no man’s land. It tends to accumulate Build-a-Bear outfits, Barbie shoes, leftover homework, library books, shoes, socks, candy wrappers…. well, you get the gist. I sometimes tell my children, in a lame attempt to get them to pick up their shit, that the carpet is made of lava. Anything that is left on the floor will burn up and disappear. So, they get resourceful and move said shit to the coffee table. They are always a half a step ahead of me! SNAP!

I digress. I came into the house after many hours of Bonsai gardening in my matching sun hat and Martha Steward knee pads (digression continues) to discover my middle girl crying. Not whining! Actual, I’m hurt, OMG come quick crying. I walked over to the couch, stepped around the “piles” and found her hyperventilating and squeaking, “Mom, help, hurry, uh, ooh….”

I discovered in some strange act of hyper flexibility or contortionism she had fallen from the couch, while reading, and landed 18 inches down to the carpet onto a cocktail umbrella! Apparently she had double checked her trajectory and measured ahead of time because she landed so perfectly on the umbrella that it had stuck into the side of her heal. Not just a little stuck, but so stuck that when I told her to take a deep breath so I could 1, 2, 3 rip the band aid off and dislodge the cocktail accessory from her foot it would not move. STUCK! If I weren’t actually a compassionate parent I would have run for my camera and documented our first freak accident of the summer. Instead I put on my crisis intervention hat and said, “Clear the room! Henry, muzzle the dog! Alice, stop telling your sister she’s going to die!” In my head I thought, we may be actually headed to Urgent Care if I don’t get this out in round two. What a story that would be!

Room cleared. Middle girl beginning to panic! Mom, calm and cool as a Margarita on the beach with a.. wait for it… cocktail umbrella! I tell her to look away, take a deep breath and I grab hold of the umbrella. Big breaths, 1, 2, 3, pull really hard and BAM, it’s out! I tell Henry to get ice and a cool wet rag. We apply pressure, administer Motrin, take a deep breath…. AND LOL!

I was certified in CPR/First Aid this year and was told to always approach an injured person by saying, “I’m trained in First Aid, can I help you!”  Funny thing is they never covered cocktail umbrella impalements during my six hour class.

Trip to Urgent Care – averted!

Cheers!

Mamma Mia!!

First I think it is totally unfair that Mother’s Day falls in mid May. Mid May is when all hell breaks loose at my house. The end of the school year!! This is when we are scrambling to get end of year projects complete. This is when we usually discover dozens of missing assignments that must be completed by my 2e guy. This is when all the ballet recitals, final track meets, and field trips occur. My heart rate just went up thinking about the oodles of kid related stuff I need to micro manage today alone. I think a dude must have come up with the mid-May thing! I propose Mother’s Day be moved to July 24^th! That is a time when things are quiet, no school stress, no activities – a real time to enjoy a holiday just for me!

But, I can’t change dates and calendars! So I’ve decided to write a blog about what real moms want for Mother’s Day. Well, at least what this outta the box mom wants anyway!

1) A day free of fighting, bickering, brawling and bitching! PERIOD!

2) A clean house. Top to bottom including blinds, all bathrooms, and the garage! BAM!

3) A beautiful, manicured, poop free yard with perfect perennials, blooming trees and a brand new chaise lounge with drink holder! HINT HINT!

4) A laundry and dishes fairy! FOREVER!

5) A day with no bags/dark circles under my eyes, no crow’s feet, and NO GRAVITY!

6) A day free of extended family drama! DISFUNCTION be gone!

7) Brunch AND dinner out (reference #4 dishes fairy will be busy)!

8) TIME TIME TIME!! Books are piling up, nails are a hot mess, and mountains are waiting to be climbed!

9) Homemade cards and gifts! CAVEAT – they have to be honest and thoughtful and not finger painted with peanut butter on the sliding glass door!

10) UNPLUGGED! No computers, iPhones, or iPads to waste the day away!!

11) FUN! Inflatable footbaths, Twinkies and other assorted items purchased at Walgreens on Sunday morning will be accepted AND THEN regifted in mid-JUNE!!

Cheers and happy mom’s day!

 

 

Psych!?!

I’ve been told, on paper, my child has an IQ in the gifted range. He also has some learning struggles that make life hard.

I do on somedays, wonder if perhaps we got someone elses results from the testing psychologist — and perhaps the universe is playing a very long, drawn out trick on us.

Smart on paper, not so smart in school. Brilliant mind, terrible student. Creative thinker, scattered and unorganized backpack/existence. Can I be the only parent who feels this way?

We’ve entered high school – where, supposedly everything now really counts. My guy isn’t quite there yet. It doesn’t seem important enough to him. Will it ever be important enough?

I encourage, I follow up, I gently remind – I NAG! No effect. Will he ever be self motivated enough? I told my husband just yesterday – we have to let it go. He just might be a late bloomer. He just may be one of those smart kids who starts in community college until he figures it out.

All I know is I’m tired, confused, and patiently waiting for that light bulb to go off in my Edison kid’s brain. I swear,  it’s there – just enough brilliance to WANT to turn in homework!

I have a piece of paper – shit, a whole file cabinet full of documents that tell me to be patient. Apparently the road less traveled doesn’t have a roadmap, an iPhone app, or even a freakin’ light post.

If you’ve read this far, I appreciate you putting up with my little rant of the week. Cheers!