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Last night I went with Princess Zurg to a middle school options fair. First of all, do you people understand that when I started this blog, PRINCESS ZURG WAS IN KINDERGARTEN???
[Blood-curdling scream]
But back to my story. We are fortunate to live in a school district that has many educational options for its students. Most of them are of no interest to me or to PZ, but last night we were at the middle school fair to learn more about the arts and communication magnet school in our district. It is supposed to be a very good school, not at all like that school in Fame where kids just dance in the halls and put on shows. It has solid academics, but with a focus on the arts. As the principal addressing us last night said, “The arts is infused into everything we do.” Or something like that. He probably said something that made a helluva lot more sense because the man was very articulate and not at all like that doofus principal the “Fame” school had those last few seasons. What was that cat’s name? Quentin Morloch? Could there be a more Satanic name for a character? Only he really wasn’t that bad once you got to know him, even if he was certainly a doofus–which this principal was certainly not. No, this cat had class. Like I said, very articulate–and no, I’m not going to add that he was also “clean”…except that I am, because he was, and I can’t resist. Anyway, he was also very…passionate. Which makes me wonder if the man has an arts background himself. Just curious. Not that you need to have an arts background to be passionate about the arts. I just think, “I know Quentin Morloch’s back story, but he’s not even real. What is this (very real) principal’s back story? Enquiring minds want to know. (I want to know!)”
Can I also say that I found him a tad intimidating? He was a nice man, but I got the distinct impression that you do not want to see him when he’s angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. But I’m getting off-topic now.
Anyway, he gave us this 20-minute overview, which was all he had time for, given the restraints of the “fair” schedule. I put “fair” in question marks because whenever I hear “fair,” I think carnival rides, and there were no carnival rides at this middle school “fair.” No games. No prizes. No cotton candy. Just good, honest information. Not nearly enough information to make an informed decision, however, which was why Mr. Suave Principal (Don’t Make Him Angry!) strongly encouraged all of us who were serious about applying to the arts/communication school to visit their open house next Thursday. Which made me feel like I’d just wasted a big chunk of my evening–because it’s not like I just walked into the middle school “fair” and started listening to this gentleman extoll the virtues of an arts-centered education. No, I had to sit through 45 minutes of welcoming and explaining the application process and last-minute pitches for regular old comprehensive schools, which are fine institutions in their own right. Rights. Whatever.
Most of that 45-minute chunk was indeed spent on the application process, which fact only annoyed me because the application process couldn’t possibly be simpler. To wit, the common application for most of the options schools is exactly one page long, and most of that is an explanation of how to fill out the form. On the part of the form where you actually write, you are required to fill out your name, birthdate, address, current school, and your parent/guardian’s name and address, and then you and your parent/guardian sign and date the thing. There is an optional area where you may write a three-sentence statement about why you are applying to the school of your choice. (Optional!) It is almost insulting. I have descried the application process for our district’s options programs before–before I ever dreamed of sending any of my children to any of these schools. Two-thirds of the available spaces are assigned by lottery, hence the simplicity of the common application. One-third are reserved for best-fit students who didn’t make it in via the lottery.
I was about to explain how the remaining one-third are chosen, but do you really freaking care? No, you do not. Suffice it to say that this remaining one-third of students is chosen on the basis of “strong interest” and to a lesser extent, special ability. Which is fine. I’m glad SOME of the slots are determined this way. Frankly, I have no idea if PZ stands a greater chance with one method of selection over the other. She certainly has artistic talent, as well as strong interest. She’s interested in all artistic forms. The arts is pretty much all she’s interested in. I think she would very much enjoy an arts-centered program. I know that she’s capable of doing more challenging academic work, in that she is certainly bright enough. What I’m uncertain of is her level of motivation.
My sense is that PZ doesn’t like to do things that are hard. I get that sense about Mister Bubby, too. (Elvis, on the other hand, loves doing hard things. Nay, he insists on doing hard things.) I can’t swear that this is absolutely true. Obviously, PZ has been challenged over the last several years, and she has met many of these challenges–most of them in the last year or so. I just don’t know how much inner motivation she has. I truly don’t know. I say I don’t know because my tendency is to sell her short. Her father tends to have higher expectations of her. I don’t think his expectations are unreasonable, and I don’t know that mine are more realistic. Knowing me, they are probably unduly pessimistic. I have taught myself not to have expectations. My husband tends to set the bar higher, while I set it lower. I was not always thus. I used to have more expectations. I also used to get disappointed a lot. Now I am rarely disappointed and frequently surprised in a pleasant manner. When I saw how difficult it was for my daughter to be comprehensively awesome, I decided to pin my hopes on her achieving awesomeness in those categories I considered most important, i.e. decency and interpersonal relations. I want my kids to be good people, and I want them to have friends. Everything else is gravy.
Of course, I picked as most important the two things that are probably most challenging for PZ. I just feel that if she’s going to work hard, I’d rather it be in these two areas, even if it takes every ounce of energy she has and there’s nothing left for spelling tests or college. Now, I can’t imagine that there are any parents out there who think they’d rather have kids who are suckheads so long as they’re successful suckheads. I just think there are a lot of parents who assume, without giving it any thought, that they can have it all. It’s not that they’re deluded–far from it. It’s entirely possible for people to excel in both personal and vocational pursuits, which is why parents rightly encourage their children in all these areas. I mean, I also encourage my children in all these areas. It’s just that inside me, where my most fervent hopes and true expectations reside, I really only have my heart set on decency and personal relationships. I will not be disappointed if PZ turns out to be a mediocre student, even though I know (believe) she can do better. I will be devastated if she grows up to be a suckhead.
Believe it or not, I have gotten off-topic again. I bet you didn’t know there was a topic. Well, there is. It’s What To Do About Middle School. I want PZ to want to go to this arts school. I want it to be the best fit for her. I just can’t tell if it is. I tried to gauge her level of interest and motivation last night, but what I found was that PZ is too worried about middle school in general to be concerned with any middle school in particular. She’s worried about moving back into mainstream education. She’s worried about being around kids who are older and more, ah, worldly than she is. She’s worried that kids will be mean. She’s worried that the girls will be boy crazy and only care about stupid things that she’s not interested in (and that they won’t care about truly awesome things–like Corpse Bride). She’s worried that kids will gossip and tease. She’s worried about peer pressure. I’ve tried to allay some of these fears, but some fears I can’t allay without just flat-out lying. The fact is, middle-school kids are suckheads. (Not all of them, just most of them.) I think it was something on the level of a war crime to take all those hormone-infused crazy-people and stick them all together in that Lord of the Flies ghetto they call middle school. I want to meet the person who invented middle school so I can punch him or her in the face. (Or, as MB is so fond of saying these days, “punch them in the crotch!”) PZ is worried about middle school, but I am terrified.
Terrified.
Part of the reason I hope that PZ will be motivated to go to this alternative school is that I suspect it will be a somewhat safer environment for her–socially–than the comprehensive school. For one thing, it will be smaller (probably less than one-third the size of our neighborhood comprehensive). For another thing, it will be filled with somewhat-likeminded students, i.e. students who are interested in the arts. Certainly artsy-type people can be suckheads, too. I’m not counting on there being no suckheads. I’m just thinking that maybe, maybe it will be easier for her to meet kids she has things in common with, other kids who don’t fit in elsewhere. Also, that maybe school itself will be meaningful enough to offset at least some of those inevitable run-ins with the inevitable suckheads. But she has to want it, or it won’t work.
And I haven’t even gotten to the part where the school has to be willing to support her as a student with autism. That is a totally unknown quantity. But I have blathered on enough for today. Gentle readers, enjoy your respective weekends. Adieu.
I don’t take the daily paper anymore, so I’m not up on the comic page controversies. Apparently there was a mild kerfuffle when Scott Adams introduced a new character named Jesus (pronounced “Hay-Soos) in his Dilbert strip the week before the Holy Week. I say “mild kerfuffle” because it was apparently a genuine controversy among a certain segment of the population, but I would never have known about it if I hadn’t followed a link on a sidebar of a Mormon blog that told me that the Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper, had opted not to run the strips. Apparently some students were horrified that the Daily Universe would censor a comic strip. Personally, I was horrified at some of the grammar in the DU’s editorial explaining its position, but that’s neither here nor there. All of this reminds me of a story.
I didn’t get my higher education at BYU. I went to a small Baptist college in southern Virginia that no one has ever heard of unless they live in that town and/or attended that school themselves. (Don’t bother guessing which school it is, because you’ll only guess some school somebody’s heard of, and you’ll be wrong.) It’s a good little school, and I enjoyed my four years there. It was not Baptist school in the same sense that BYU is a Mormon school. It was affiliated with the Virginia Baptist General Board, which I believe gave it some of its funding, or at least provided scholarships, or something–really, I didn’t and don’t know the particulars, but it sufficeth me to say that the affiliation was mostly a historical one. Baptists being what Baptists are, the school enjoyed much more sovereignty than BYU ever has.
However, the trappings of its religious affiliation were still present. They held (non-compulsory) chapel services and six credits of religion classes (including one on the Old or New Testament–quelle horreur!) were required for graduation. All dorms were single-sex, and no one of the opposite sex was allowed in the dorm after 11:30 p.m. (2 a.m. on weekends). It was also a dry campus (absolutely no alcohol allowed on the premises). Lots of students, unfamiliar with the meaning of the term ”private school,” complained about the religion requirement and the draconian visiting hours (hey, they never said you couldn’t have sex in your dorm room, just not after 11:30 p.m., 2 a.m. on weekends). But mostly they complained about the no-alcohol policy. Ostensibly there was this Puritan vibe emanating from the trustees’ office or something, but in practice, aside from the alcohol thing, the students had the freedom to engage in a fair amount of debauchery, so long as the old ladies from the alumni association didn’t find out about it. And there was academic freedom on a scale that BYU professors can only dream of. But more on that later.
I think it was my sophomore year that Residence Life began sponsoring Movie Night on Fridays (maybe to make up for the fact that there was nothing to do in town and also no alcohol to drink). Among the first movies they decided to show was Henry & June, which you might recall was a NC-17-rated romp for people who wanted to pretend they’d read Anais Nin (or Henry Miller, for that matter). Anyway, they had posters for it up all over campus and the dorms, until one student, who happened to be majoring in religion so she could go on to study at a seminary, complained that this film didn’t strike her as consistent with the school’s Christian mission. Bottom line: Henry & June was summarily cancelled. I think they replaced it with The Lion King. I don’t really recall.
This was a disappointing turn of events. (Damn straight my friends and I were planning on going–what did you think?) But oh well, what are you going to do, right? Wrong. A bunch of students rose up and swore they were not going to take it. They put up posters about free speech and censorship and blah blah de blah, and there was a story in the student newspaper, which quoted some English professors saying it was really so silly, as they discussed things in classes that were much more shocking and revolutionary than Henry & June and that this whole incident made the school look like a Mickey Mouse organization–or something. One professor–the History department chair, actually–was so distressed by the school’s Gestapo tactics that he walked into class with a TV and VCR and showed the offending movie to his Western Civ class, just to “prove a point.”
When I heard about this, I thought a couple things. First, it wasn’t really fair to those students who paid their tuition on the assumption that they would be learning about Western Civ in their Western Civ class. Sure, a bunch of them probably thought, “Excellent! No Greeks and Romans today!” But others may not have been pleased that they hauled themselves down to the lecture hall just to get an eyeful of Anais Nin’s goodies. (And not even the real Anais Nin, but someone pretending to be Anais Nin. And who was Anais Nin, anyway?) The second thing I thought was, if we regularly discussed shocking and revolutionary things in class, why was it such a big deal that we show Henry & June, which was, after all, so much less consequential than the shocking and revolutionary things we ordinarily preoccupied ourselves with? It wasn’t as though Henry Miller or Anais Nin appeared anywhere on any of our professors’ syllabi, so how important could it have been for us to know them intimately?
In other words, I thought it was a whole bunch of silly. And the silliest part was that these kids were crying “censorship!” when they had no idea how easy they had it. I confess I waxed a little Grumpy Old Man and told them that this was nothing compared to the oppression my people suffered at BYU, where watching Henry & June in the privacy of your own apartment (which must be university-approved) would probably get you called up on an Honor Code violation–and I never even got to the part where BYU students weren’t allowed to drink ANYWHERE, EVER. Their heads might have exploded.
See, I think censorship sucks and all, but what frosts my cupcakes is when people waste moral outrage on issues that are essentially trivial. If you wanted to go to a college where Residence Life would sponsor screenings of arty sex flicks, maybe you should have gone to a non-religious school. That you are entitled to watch a particular movie–any movie–as part of your educational experience makes about as much sense as being entitled to play ice hockey in P.E. Nothing against ice hockey, but did your college have ice hockey and if not, did you protest? Even if you went to school in Florida?
Moreover, it was not possible to escape the irony of the fact that cancelling Henry & June–which, I reiterate, was a movie sponsored by Residence Life as a recreational activity–at the request of a student (on the basis of it being an inappropriate event for a nice Baptist college to sponsor) resulted in this huge uproar, but when the college incurred the wrath of the VBGB for sponsoring a female minister’s lecture on God and gender, there were crickets chirping. Probably because she didn’t use any pictures in her presentation. But also because academic freedom doesn’t inspire the same passion as recreational license.
Now, probably the BYU students who were upset about missing their Dilbert that week also get upset about some other, consequential stuff that goes on at BYU–stuff actually related to the quality of their educations. At the same time, lots of people go to BYU so they can live and learn in a Mormon environment and not be bombarded with stuff that offends their religious sensibilities. These students have a hard enough time with Nietzche and Faulkner. How crucial is it that they pick up a paper to relax with the news of the day and have their eyeballs seared by a Dilbert Jesus cartoon?
Perhaps I’m just sympathetic to the editors of the Daily Universe, as I used to work for a newspaper, where my job description entailed fielding calls from readers irate about something they’d read in the funnies. Those calls were unpleasant and frustrating. People have strong feelings about the comics. Also crossword puzzles. And don’t you dare take away their bridge column. Oh, no–but I digress. My point is that I understand why the DU folks decided to just pre-empt the whole controversy, even if they did follow up with a self-serving editorial justifying their decision. (Hey, I do self-serving stuff myself all the time, so who am I to throw stones?)
On the other hand, talking about my newspaper experience reminds me that we had a janitor there named Jesus. Yes, it was pronounced “Hay-Soos,” but let’s be honest–who doesn’t see the name Jesus and read it as “Jesus (not Hay-Soos)”? Not me. Which is why it used to amuse me to no end when we’d get messages on the network computers telling us that Jesus would be cleaning the bathrooms between 4 and 5 p.m. Because that was comedy gold. I like to think Jesus himself would have appreciated it. (Either of them.) But then, I look at these Dilbert comics and I don’t see what the big deal is. I imagine if Jesus were to pick up the Daily Universe and see these comics, he wouldn’t just stand there somberly with a tear rolling down his face. He might chuckle at a couple of them, even–in a “heh heh, very well, Scott Adams, touche” kind of way. But no outright guffawing because eh, they’re just not that funny. Definitely not worth protesting over, in any respect.
We’re back from the school carnival. We spent the first hour and a half in the cafeteria, eating overpriced junk food. Pizza, chips, hot dogs, soda. It wasn’t that the kids ate so much food, but they took their sweet time with it. Especially Elvis, who nursed that 12 oz. can of soda so long, I thought the whole shindig would be over before the last drop touched his lips.
The problem was that we couldn’t have food or drink outside the cafeteria, so we were effectively quarantined there until Elvis decided he was all done. Of course I understand why they don’t want any food or drink outside the cafeteria on Carnival Day–would you want to clean up after 3,000 people tromped through the building with foodstuffs and little children?–but it was still annoying, especially because Mister Bubby started whining about wanting to go play games, but he refused to go by himself (Princess Zurg having tromped off with a friend about twenty minutes earlier), so we were all stuck there in the cafeteria and I really wanted to scream and/or punch someone. Not the kids. Maybe the principal I might have punched, had he walked by, but lucky for him, he did not.
Anyway, my babysitter happened to be at the carnival today. Her son doesn’t go to MB’s school, but his cub scout troop had a booth at the carnival, so they were working it and decided to stay for fun and games and overpriced junk food. Her son was the friend PZ had just tromped off with, and she said she’d take MB around to play games while I played the Waiting For Elvis To Finish Drinking His @#&$ Soda game. Fifteen minutes later Elvis finally agreed to give up the can, and we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.
We walked into the gymnasium, which was full of folks playing various carnival games–you know, the kind that don’t interest any of my children–and when we’d reached the center of the room, Elvis threw up.
Well. So much for keeping things tidy.
This is when the principal did show up, but I didn’t punch him because, well, he’s really a pretty nice man, and I was mostly over all that anger over being trapped in the cafeteria with the Slowest Drinker On Earth, and also, I was so freaking happy that Elvis threw up someplace where I didn’t have to clean it up.
I mean, imagine if he’d gotten sick in my car. That would have been the worst! My car’s disgusting to begin with, but adding vomit to the mix, I don’t know, I might have just intentionally driven us into a brick wall, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. If he’d waited until we got home, that wouldn’t have been quite so bad, but he probably wouldn’t have done me the favor of losing it on the linoleum. He always has to throw up on the carpet. And this time he probably would have gone all the way upstairs just so he could throw up on the new carpet! That would have really depressed me.
So yeah, that was awesome.
The principal assured me that Elvis was not the only child to throw up today. Which was kind of disappointing, as I rather enjoy the distinction. Everyone step aside for the Traveling Vomit Show. Thank you verrah much.
So Elvis and the baby and I went outside for some fresh air. Elvis immediately spied the bouncers and proceeded to move to the front of the line, but of course I pulled him away. I am a woman of little shame, but I seem to have just enough to prevent me from putting my kid in an inflatable bouncer thirty seconds after he’s lost his lunch in the most public of places. He took it surprisingly well. We played on the jungle gym instead. Eventually we made our way to the swings. He seemed to be feeling much better, but I figured if he did get sick again, well, throw-up flying from a swingset would be a new experience for all of us. And again, it’s not like it was my car.
I could have sworn that trip to the carnival lasted four hours, but we were really only there for two and a half. I can’t complain, though. Seriously, he threw up in the school gymnasium. How lucky can I be?
So yesterday’s visit to the School for Incorrigible Girls went very well. We visited. I don’t know if its official description is a “clinical program in an educational setting” or an “educational program in a clinical setting,” but either way, it is what it is. When you walk in, it just looks like a regular doctor’s office. That’s because the school is downstairs. In the basement. MWAHAHAHAHAHA! No, it’s not that bad. There are windows and natural light coming in. No bars on the windows.
There is a long corridor with lots of therapists’ offices. There are two classrooms and there is a common area for full-group activities and a half-gym for PE-type stuff. The gym looks like a converted chapel, what with its vaulted ceilings and high windows letting in the light from heaven. The acoustics are…amazing. I do not want to be there for dodgeball without ear plugs. They have an art room with a kiln. A freaking kiln! No iron maiden, as my husband noted.
Actually, the creepiest thing we saw was the “quiet room,” which, actually, when I think on it, is exactly what a quiet room should be: a totally blank space where kids can go to de-escalate, without any external stimulation. There’s no door–and by this, I mean there’s no door, the thing that goes open and shut. When I mentioned this to a friend of mine, she wondered how the kids got in and out, if they were supposed to climb through a window or something. No. There is a doorway, but no door. So the children are free to come and go; it’s not a check-out-any-time-you-like-but-you-can-never-leave situation. The walls are totally bare, the carpet an indescript gray, and there’s no furniture. The walls aren’t padded, but they are reinforced, to keep the kids from kicking holes in them. (Oh, you look horrified, but that’s exactly what I’d recommend for any quiet room that was housing my child.) Plexiglass on the windows. Yes, again, there are windows. It’s perfectly serene. No reason it should have given me the willies. Maybe I just long for a room like that in my own house. Maybe someday, when we put the addition over the garage. Ah, dreams.
So the program currently has ten kids total, ages 8-12. Most of the kids are in the 11-12 range. Princess Zurg would be one of two nine-year-olds; everyone else is older, including the two girls presently in the program, who are both 12. (Quoth the director, “One of them is nice.” Awesome.) Two or maybe three students have Asperger’s or something similar. They have a “Rainbow” group for kids on the spectrum. (PZ likes rainbows–and who doesn’t?) They have a ridiculously huge staff. There are more adults than children. Which I guess isn’t hard to do when you have two teachers, a staff psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, the program director, and seven interns. And that’s just for starters. The academics are very basic–three R’s, not much else. Maybe an occasional science lesson. Sugar Daddy asked if they had art, and the director laughed. They actually have three art therapists on staff, so some kids have art twice a day. Yes, they have art. They have a freaking kiln!
So they have to do an intake evaluation, to see if PZ qualifies for the program. They have to see just how crazy she is. Not that these children are crazy, mind you. Hey, I have a mental illness myself. I’m being insensitive and tacky, but in that self-consciously ironic way, so don’t judge me, people. I’m ready to put my child in a psychiatric facility. I’m just trying to keep it real.
Or maybe I’m trying to keep it unreal. This is a program for children with “serious psychiatric problems,” which means something different in the educational system than it does in the vernacular. Apparently. For the most part this feels like just another alternative placement. On the other hand, it’s a 45-minute bus ride and we have to account for her whereabouts and goings-on 24/7 and attend family therapy once a week (in freaking Tigard–gaaaah!–am I even capable of saying “Tigard” without the “freaking” prefix?) and the average stay is 18 months. In 18 months PZ will be in middle school. I could cry. That’s what I feel like doing.
But my mind is not closed. If anything, after yesterday’s visit, my mind is more open. Assuming she qualifies, this program is the equivalent of literally tens of thousands of dollars of therapy, all paid for by the school district. Your tax dollars at work, fellow citizens. My husband thanks you. My daughter thanks you. Her siblings thank you. And I thank you.
So yeah, that’s where it stands. We started the paperwork. We’ll see. We’ll see.
School started Tuesday. Today was my first morning getting all three of my school-going kids ready for school by myself. Mister Bubby’s ride comes at 7:25 a.m. Elvis’s bus comes at 7:55 a.m. Princess Zurg’s bus comes at 7:58 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday PZ’s bus was running 25-30 minutes late. Today it showed up on time, which threw me because Elvis’s bus had not shown up yet, nor would it for ten more minutes–not a bad wait, but it’s just that Elvis was ready to go when his sister’s bus got here, but PZ didn’t have her shoes on yet. To her credit, she was able to get out the door quickly. She didn’t insist on finishing her breakfast or brushing her teeth. Ahem. Of course, her hair was uncombed and she probably had jelly on her face, for all I know, but hey, that stopped being my problem at about 7:59.
Now it’s just me and the baby, and I can’t believe there aren’t ten things I have to get done in the next five minutes. We can eat breakfast at a leisurely pace. I have plenty of time to brush my teeth and comb my own hair, which happens less often than you might think. Okay, maybe you expect me to have my hair combed less often than I do. The point is, I fully expect to have combed hair at some point this morning, and that’s a treat. Yay for basic grooming.
Usually I’m apprehensive at the start of a new school year. In a way, summer is less stressful because a) I don’t have to wake kids up or have anyone’s hair combed before 8 a.m., and b) I don’t have to field calls from the principal about any “incidents” that may have occurred that day. Any and all “incidents” happen right before my very eyes in the privacy of my home. Okay, and occasionally in the grocery store. This year my major anxiety was finding MB a ride to school, and my husband ended up taking care of that one. (Thanks, honey.)
I am strangely unworried about PZ this year. Part of it is that she seems to be responding well to the Zoloft–still crazy, but less volatile. The other part is I just feel like it’s about stinking time she hit her stride. This is a ridiculous expectation, of course–kids don’t “hit their stride” just because it’s about stinking time and this foolishness has gone on long enough, missy–they grow and develop at their own pace and of their own free will. I suppose, technically, that should be “their own paces” and “their own free wills,” but that sounds stupid. You know, I studied this language in college–English, in case you couldn’t tell–and I even got paid to write in it at one point in my life, but lately I have difficulty stringing more than two words together. I guess it’s not so much the stringing as what George (H.W.) Bush used to call the “vision thing.” I have a vision of my words making sense and not sounding stupid, but I have difficulty conveying this vision to the American people. Also the Canadians. But I digress.
Where was I? Oh, yes–I know that this expectation is ridiculous, but it’s there, nonetheless. It’s deep in me. I can’t seem to purge myself of it. I must be tired. How much longer can this stage of life go on? We had an IEP meeting for her last week. I realized as I was going to it that I had no idea what this meeting was supposed to be about. We don’t usually have IEP meetings before school begins. Well, it turned out that the meeting was to discuss the possibility of alternative placement for PZ, who had an extremely rough fourth quarter in third grade, and the rest of the team was wondering if maybe the Social Communication Center classroom was not the best place for her after all. The SCC is basically the end of the line for autistic students in our district, so what did they have in mind? A clinical day program in freaking Tigard. They would have bused her, but still–Tigard! (Have you gathered yet that Tigard is a little removed from our neighborhood? Does it seem strange that my first reaction was “Tigard!” and not “Clinical day program!”?)
You know, we’d discussed the possibility at May’s IEP meeting–in very general terms–of considering alternate placements outside the district, should things not “work out” (I’m giggling here) in her current placement. The district liason told me at the time that she’d like to start researching the possibilities, and I said she could knock herself out because what else could I say? I’d learned not to close my mind to anything, and anyway, I figured we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. I really didn’t expect that the bridge would come to be on August 29, a week before school started. I kind of expected that we’d begin the school year by giving the current placement the old college try and hoping for the best. I didn’t think we’d be discussing clinical day programs in Tigard–or anywhere. Not to worry, she’d be able to stay in her current placement for the two or three weeks it took to process the paperwork. Well, that’s nice. If they were serious, why didn’t they research this possibility before the meeting in May and have us file the paperwork then? Does it really seem like a bright idea to put her back in school in a familiar environment with her friends and then rip her out of it after two or three weeks to send her to freaking Tigard?
Fortunately, I was sleepy that day and didn’t have the energy to respond with what I was thinking, which was, “AAAAAAUUUUUUUGHHHHH!” Instead, I calmly stated that I would prefer to hold off on that decision and give PZ another chance to succeed in her current placement. I didn’t say it in such a coherent fashion, no, but I was calm, and that was the important thing. They said, “Okey-dokey” (I’m paraphrasing), and we all signed the IEP and scheduled a meeting for September 27, at which time we’d revisit the proposal. I should have felt relieved–or rather, I thought I should feel relieved–but I actually just felt sick. Sure, in my hours of deepest despair I’d considered all kinds of “alternative placements” for PZ, but it didn’t seem possible that it would come to this. Is my child really that out of control? Is she really one of those children? Am I that much in denial? Are things this much out of my control?
Unfortunately, I don’t have time for introspection because the baby has opened the box of tampons and is disassembling them. Gentle reader, adieu.
From the Associated Press:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. –
An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.
“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.
Running games are still allowed as long as students don’t chase each other, she said.
Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn’t object.
In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.
This story reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time, except that other issues–such as the upcoming presidential election, Mormon movies, and the weather–have been preoccupying me.
OUR neighborhood school banned tag. Princess Zurg came home from first grade and informed us that there was a rule against “chasing.” I thought she must mean that there was a rule against unwanted chasing. Because surely they still let children play games, like tag. No, she said, all chasing games were against the rules. This really bothered me at the time, but I never complained about it because I was too busy complaining about their inadequate accommodations for disabled students. I just had to shrug my shoulders and say, “Oh well, paranoid public schools,” and make a mental note to find other opportunities for my children to engage in such innocuous activities.
Then Mister Bubby came home from kindergarten and said there was a “no running” rule. Even Princess Zurg–who didn’t have much of a problem with the “no chasing” rule because it was, after all, a safety issue (you can never be too careful)–was incredulous. “You mean there’s no chasing,” she said. “You can run, just not chase.”
“No,” MB said, “you can’t run OR chase.”
“Maybe that’s a rule just for kindergarteners,” she said.
“No, it’s a rule for the whole school,” he insisted.
I was incredulous myself. But again, I was preoccupied with other issues, so while I was certainly upset in the philosophical sense, I could not spare any moral outrage on behalf of tag, especially since MB seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride. But even if it doesn’t bother my kids, it still bothers me, for one simple reason:
IT’S TAG!
I understand that some children don’t like to be chased. Some kids are okay with being chased at some times and not at other times. Some kids are a little too aggressive with their chasing. Sometimes when you “tag” someone, you might be overzealous and maybe hit them. You might trip. You might trip someone else. I understand all the risks. I just don’t understand the remedy.
Just how often children have to be hospitalized for tag injuries? I’m sure there are freak occurrences, like two kids run into each other head on and one of them gets a concussion, maybe even sustains some brain damage. I would not put that outside the realm of possibility. Someone could trip over a tree root and break a bone, maybe. Someone with a heart condition maybe shouldn’t play tag. I don’t know.
But safety concerns apparently aren’t the issue in Colorado Springs, where they banned tagged after some students complained about being chased against their will.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you make a rule about not playing tag with people who don’t want to play tag? “Only willing participants may play tag.” That sounds like a good rule to me. A little more complicated than “no running.” A little more nuance than some school-age children are prepared to deal with. But here’s another idea: why don’t we stop micromanaging children’s games altogether? Not that recess should be some Lord of the Flies free-for-all. But would a tiny step in that direction be such a bad thing?
I’m totally against bullying and harassment. When I was in grade school, one of the boys in my class and his buddy used to throw rocks at me on the way home from school. That was uncool. Okay, they weren’t big rocks, and they weren’t aiming at my head, but still, it was annoying. That’s what I recall thinking at the time. “This is annoying. I’d like to walk home without having rocks thrown at me. I wish they’d go do something else and leave me alone.” And yes, I was ignoring them. I’ve always been good at ignoring people, or at least pretending to ignore them. But they still kept throwing rocks at me, and I was still annoyed. So I told my mother, and since we didn’t know the boys’ parents, my mother talked to the principal. The principal talked to the boys’ parents, and the parents punished the boys. (I’d like to point out that at no time were the police or the district attorney’s office involved. Shocking, I know.) The boys were reasonably annoyed with me for getting them in trouble, but they didn’t throw any more rocks at me. I wish I could say we all became good friends and that I eventually married one of them, but that would be a fiction. (I’m sure SD threw some rocks at girls in his youth, too, but that’s neither here nor there.) We didn’t stay enemies, either. We lived happily ever after in mutual indifference to one another, which was just fine with me.
See, that’s an incident of harassment that didn’t even occur on school property, yet the school did, I think, play an appropriate role. As far as I know, the boys never received any school discipline, which was fine, because none of this occurred during school hours or on school grounds. If they were throwing rocks at me at recess, I would have expected them to get, I don’t know, detention or something. Have to stand in a corner or clap erasers or something. Write “I will not stone innocent bystanders” a thousand times. How did they punish us in elementary school? I don’t know, I was always a perfect angel. But I digress. That was then. Nowadays I’d expect that maybe the whole student body would be barred from walking home without an adult escort. Because nowadays the world is crazy.
At PZ’s school they are not allowed to pick up sticks. I assume this is because they don’t want anyone hitting or poking others with sticks, or running and tripping and accidentally impaling themselves with sticks. (As far as PZ knows, kids are still allowed to run at her school.) That makes sense. I can understand telling a youngster who’s running with a stick, “Hey, stop running with that stick! You could trip and fall and impale yourself!” I can also understand telling youngsters who appear to be engaging in a mock sword fight with sticks, “Hey, put down those sticks, you could poke each other’s eyes out!” (I’m not saying that I would be so uptight, mind you, but a reasonable amount of uptightness is tolerable, I think.) I definitely understand telling a youngster who’s beating another youngster with a stick, “Hey, stop beating that other kid with a stick! And get thee to a principal’s office, go!” That is all reasonable stuff.
Telling a kid that she can’t pick up a stick to write in the dirt or build a home for the ants or some other non-violent act seems a little…excessive.
I don’t tell PZ this is a dumb rule, and I don’t complain about it, because I understand why these rules are made. I do. It’s the same reason I end up screaming at my kids, “Aaaughhhhh! That’s it! No more talking! No more touching! No sounds! Only breathing!” It’s simpler than saying, “No screaming, yelling, teasing, whining or threatening!” and “No hitting, kicking, poking, scraping, or smashing!” and “No fake flatulence!” It’s also simpler to say, “No picking up sticks.” “No fighting with sticks” and “no running with sticks” and “no striking menacing poses with sticks” is unnecessarily complex.
Likewise, “No playing tag” is simple. “No running” is even simpler. But isn’t there a better way to deal with children’s conflicts? Something that doesn’t suck all the fun out of childhood?
Just wondering.
In the old days–say, two or three weeks ago–I would chase Elvis around the house all day in a vain attempt to stop him from climbing on the stove, spraying all available kitchen surfaces with PAM, flooding the bathroom, turning off the pilot light on the furnace, hosing down the living room, playing shuffleboard with the DVD’s, dumping yogurt on the carpet, etc., until he finally got tired of me thwarting his master plan and settled down on the couch to watch Monsters, Inc. for the millionth time. Today, I have been running around the house in a vain attempt to stop him from doing all these things, PLUS my vain attempts to stop him from filling and refilling (no emptying required) the little bottle of soy sauce with the contents of the big-industrial-sized bottle of soy sauce and also diluting aforementioned (big bottle of) soy sauce by holding it under a running sink faucet (it must be full, mother! it must be full!), but so far he has not gotten tired enough to watch a movie. Not even if I ask nicely. You see, the good news is that Elvis isn’t into watching movies anymore.
That’s also the bad news.
Some other bad news is that he has replaced his Monsters, Inc. habit with a popsicle habit.
It takes much less time to eat a popsicle than it does to watch Monsters, Inc. Even those slow-melting kind.
I am tired and would like to watch a movie now.
Tomorrow morning I have an IEP meeting, the purpose of which is a “manifestation determination” for Princess Zurg. Sounds grandiose, doesn’t it? It makes you think of Manifest Destiny, right? It’s not like that at all. What it means is we all sit around and determine if the negative behaviors PZ is exhibiting are a manifestation of her disability–or if, alternatively, she is just having a really bad…decade. If the behaviors are determined to be a manifestation of her disability, we re-visit the topic of placement. I can tell you people that I have visited the topic of placement so many times that I feel like I should just leave a toothbrush and a change of clothes over there. The last time we had a manifestation determination, she ended up at her current school, in the self-contained classroom. Which is what her old school wanted all along, so whew, that was finally over. But now that she’s in the self-contained classroom, there’s really nowhere else for her to go from here. To my knowledge, the district does not have a School for Wayward Girls. So I really don’t know what to expect at tomorrow’s meeting. I’m going to be doing this one solo because Sugar Daddy has to go to work. (“Oh, I’m SD, I have five dependents to support, I’m already taking the afternoon off to take Elvis to his therapy, blah blah…”) I haven’t done a solo IEP meetingin at least a year. SD and I like to play good-cop/bad-cop at these things, but when I’m there alone, I tend to just play pushover-cop. Or, alternatively, having-a-nervous-breakdown-cop. I’m very good in both those roles, but they don’t give Oscars for either of them. It’s like voice-over work. No one cares how much effort you put into it. It appears that my metaphor has surrendered to entropy. I must start a new paragraph.
You all should know that PZ is being sent home from school for hitting staff members. Students are, quite properly, not allowed to do that. They have to be suspended if they hit staff (or, presumably, anyone). So as the principal was telling me yesterday, they’re sorry to call me down there when it’s so inconvenient, but they just really can’t have her hitting the staff. Which is so thoroughly, totally reasonable. I have no argument with that principle (or the principal, for that matter). I just wonder how I could make this a consistent-discipline issue. You know, so there’s reinforcement at home that supports what they do at school. I’m always getting the impression that I am simply too permissive and that PZ will never learn to control her aggressive tendencies so long as I fail to provide appropriate consequences for her actions. Do you think that the next time she hits someone at home, I should kick her out of the house? Call the cops on her, maybe? “Sorry, officers, I know you have burglaries and illegal lane-changes to investigate, in addition to being short on jail beds, but I just can’t have her hitting the staff.” Hm. Maybe there’s nothing I can learn here.
I assure you that I am not being sarcastic. I am simply musing out loud. You see, I’m at the end of my rope, but unlike in the school’s case, I can’t send out for more rope. Believe me, I’ve looked into institutionalization. It seems that is frowned upon these days.
There is all this pressure to put PZ on medication–and it’s not wrong to put one’s child on medication, if she or he needs medication. I want my child to be successful. I am, in fact, much more personally invested in that scenario than anyone else I’ve met thusfar. So I am not opposed to some pharmaceutical support–or as they say in education-ese, “the pharmaceutical piece.” (Good lord, the principal said “piece” yesterday, and I thought I would deck her–and I wasn’t even angry, it was totally Pavlovian.) Anyway, as I was saying, I have already gone down the pharmaceutical road. We’ve tried a couple of different medications. What they don’t tell you, or what I wasn’t prepared for, is that once you’ve succumbed to the pressure to put your child on drugs, there is the whole new pressure to get your child on a drug that will work instantly and not cause any additional problems. The last drug we had PZ on appeared to make her more aggressive. We don’t really know if it was the drug or not because there were so many variables at play, but I was not getting the message that it would be okay to give the drug time to build up in her system and know for sure one way or the other if it was working. Because she was hitting the staff, you see. And if she hits the staff, she can’t be at school. But she has to be at school. Because if she doesn’t go to school, she won’t get the benefits of school-going. So she must go to school and not hit the staff, and I must find the magic happy pill that will make it happen, post haste.
It isn’t that PZ’s teacher or principal or anyone really expects me to perform the aforementioned miracle–or rather, they would certainly deny having such an expectation, because it is obviously ridiculous. But the pressure, I assure you, is there. It ain’t going anywhere. (Sort of like PZ’s behavior plan.)
For those of you who care…
1. My father’s surgery went very well. He’s expected to make a full recovery. He has to use a walker for the next six weeks, something he finds humiliating, but at least it will keep him off the scooter for the time being.
2. Our anniversary was lovely. We went to the fanciest restaurant of our restaurant-going career. It was not as fancy as the fanciest restaurant of my solo career, which was when I went to the Rainbow Room in New York–on a friend’s expense account, I assure you. I didn’t like the Rainbow Room. It made me feel like scum. And I didn’t think the food was all that. But food tastes worse when you’re scum. By contrast, the food at this Portland fancy-restaurant was worth every freaking penny–and we were paying for it ourselves! I was also slightly more at ease in that atmosphere than at the Rainbow Room. Probably because this was Portland, where even the rich are really laid-back. Also, the wait staff was wonderful–although I remained quite convinced that they were better than I was, I didn’t feel like scum in their presence. A good time was had by all.
Dear School,
If you KNOW you are sending my daughter home for the day and that I am making the half-hour round trip in the 55 minutes I have between putting one of my sons on one bus and the other son on another bus, could you at the very LEAST have her EFFING READY TO LEAVE WHEN I GET THERE instead of making me walk down to her classroom to get all her effing stuff while carrying a squirming toddler? Are you really so very busy that you can’t do me this little favor so I can get home in time to feed my other son lunch before he has to go to school? Would you please document this busy-ness for me? Thank you.
X’s & O’s,
Madhousewife
One of the things Princess Zurg does not like about her new school is that they have “so many stupid rules.” Her own classroom, which is specifically designed to meet the needs of students on the autism spectrum, certainly has an appropriate level of structure. It does seem, though, that the program and the school in general have more rules than her old school did. PZ complains that there are “a million rules” and you can “hardly do anything.” She has a tendency to exaggerate. But part of me thinks she may have a valid grievance.
They do indeed sem to have rules about everything. No talking during lunch. No chasing during recess. No holding hands. No picking up sticks. I can understand the rationale behind all of these rules. The lunchroom gets too noisy. Chasing can lead to injury (quelle horreur!), as can sticks. Hand-holding is not always desired. However, I can’t help but think back on my own elementary school years and realize that we didn’t have any of these rules. I’m sure my elementary school was chaos by today’s standards. The lunchroom was always loud. Sometimes they even had to tell us to keep it down. Occasionally children were hurt on the playground. Once an ambulance had to come because a girl tried to do a “death drop” from the monkey bars and nearly broke her neck. (To my knowledge, no one was chasing her.) It wasn’t common, but hand-holding between classmates (of the same sex) did occur. Looking back, it’s a wonder we all survived. But then, look at what a screwed-up world we live in now.
I don’t want to tell the teachers and administrators their business. They have to work there, and I don’t. So I support their rules, even the ones I think are a tad excessive, because PZ has to learn to respect authority, even when she disagrees with it. I know that sounds like a soul-crushing life lesson, fit for breeding mindless automatons instead of vibrant, dynamic human beings, but, you know, whatever keeps these vibrant, dynamic human beings off the streets, I can live with.
I’m not entirely serious.
But this much is true: to get ahead in life, i.e. to mature and reach one’s potential, one can’t be constantly rebelling. Where ethics and morality are not concerned, it is frequently a good idea to just suck it up and follow some stupid rules. I want my kids to be productive members of society, and if PZ stays on her current trajectory, questioning authority every time it asks her to blow her nose, she’s going to end up spending her adult life living in our attic, eating undercooked microwavable entrees and voting for third-party candidates. I’d like her to reach the point when she can be faced with a stupid rule and just roll her eyes and move right along because there’s nothing to see here. That’s instead of throwing her body down on the cafeteria floor and being dragged back to the Quiet Area whilst proclaiming that just like a tree that’s standing by the water, she shall not be moved. That just doesn’t help anyone. Particularly not the person who has to make a half-hour round trip to pick her up from school because there will be No Learning Today–namely, me.
I speak as one with a high threshhold of tolerance for being put down by the Man, except when it really inconveniences me.
Nevertheless, when it comes to rules, I hail from the Less Is More school. At home the two great laws are 1) No hurting other people, and 2) Do what Mom says. For a while we had a rule about not leaving Barbie dolls lying around the house naked, but it doesn’t enjoy the prominence that it once did. (When I was growing up, my parents’ big rule was “No singing at the table.” I never understood that rule, until I had children of my own and they got to a certain singing age, but I still haven’t implemented it in my own household. I think that as long as singing is my biggest problem, I’m doing okay.) In other words, I like to leave my options open. When it makes sense to prohibit something, I prohibit it, but I establish boundaries. Don’t interrupt while Mom and Dad are talking. Do interrupt if Elvis is in the garage dumping out the food storage or setting himself on fire. You see, there is nuance there. I could have a strict “No interrupting” rule, but that can lead to children throwing up in the hot tub at the Disneyland hotel (a cautionary tale, from an old acquaintance, which I have taken to heart).
Put another way: Don’t pick up sticks if you’re going to hit your brother with them. Do pick up sticks if you’re engaging in a non-violent play scenario. To the untrained eye, this looks like flip-flopping, I know. “I was in favor of the sticks before I was against them.” But what I’m trying to teach is that context matters. True, if you never pick up a stick, you will never hit anyone with it. But where’s the room for kids to practice using their own judgment? For exercising self-restraint? I sense sometimes that the biggest problem PZ has with all these rules is that they assume a worst-case scenario. If you talk, you will be loud. If you pick up a stick, pretty soon everyone will be running around with sticks and either hitting each other or poking their own eyes out. If you take someone’s hand, it will inevitably result in a global crisis of unwanted touching.
I’m sure I exaggerate the fears of school officials, who are after all just trying to maintain some order. Goodness knows I appreciate the need for order. I also appreciate the need for students to just shut up and eat and play with the authorized equipment and stop touching each other. But I also see it from PZ’s point of view, that she’s being micro-managed and the only concept she’s generalizing is that adults are hysterical party-poopers, so why should she buy into any of their philosophy?
I’m frequently in the position of assuring PZ’s classroom teacher that we do not let her run amok at home, nor do we undermine other adults’ authority. I share that we’ve informed PZ that she has to obey all of the rules, even the ones that don’t make sense to her. That isn’t good enough for her teacher because, as she explains to me, one of the most important things they do there is teach the kids that there are good reasons they ask them to do/not do certain things. The implication–I guess–is that I shouldn’t be admitting that adults sometimes issue arbitrary fiats. I may have failed to discourage my kids’ belief in Santa Claus, and I still put money under their pillows in exchange for lost baby teeth, but I’m not about to shoot my credibility all to hell by insisting that adults and their rules are always reasonable. I just tell PZ that she’ll have a much better chance of adults listening to her point of view when she demonstrates respect for them. She’s not buying that theory yet, but she’s still young.
So today marks the first day of TV Turn-off Week, and my children’s school is again pressuring us to observe this period of Lent by sending home their little slips of paper whereupon we should mark the days our child(ren) do not watch television and which we mustn’t forget to turn in to the school at the end of the week so that…actually, I forget why we need to turn it back in. There might be some kind of certificate involved. Whatever. It isn’t that I disdain the worthy goal of watching less (or no) television. I think television is a cesspool. It’s degraded our culture and our public discourse. All people, including myself, should watch less television, except for those people who are already watching no television. They should continue to watch the same amount of television, i..e. none, because it’s impossible to watch less than none. Unless twenty minutes of vigorous aerobic activity counts as less than none, in which case they should do that, too. Unless they have a physical impairment that prevents them from engaging in aerobic activity, in which case they should read a book or switch to diet soda or something. I don’t care.
Obviously, TV Turn-off Week is not mandatory. It’s merely a suggestion, coming from the the folks at the Center for Screen-Time Awareness–an enthusiastic, guilt-inducing suggestion, sure, but you know me, I have no problem with guilt trips, even when they’re laid on thick, even when they’re laid on me. Guilt is a powerful motivator. (Also underrated: Fear of Hellfire.) I don’t think certificates do much of anything, but I guess I’m not opposed to those, either–except all that paperwork does have an environmental impact, so never mind. Screw certificates! This is what bugs me–and I admit that it’s pretty lame, as irritants go, but here it is anyway:
It’s all well and good for the school to throw its support behind TV Turn-off Week, but I wish there were more to it than merely not participating in one particular activity (make that “activity”). It’s always good to abstain from TV, but I don’t know that it does much good to make a big deal out of abstaining from TV unless you take note of how the abstinence affects how you live. I’d prefer it if they asked kids to write down what they do with their time during a typical week, then ask them to do it again during TV Turn-off Week (when, theoretically, they would not be watching any–or as much–TV). That would make it seem like more of a learning experience rather than just another deprivation. As it is, I’m somewhat annoyed by the “rules” of the game (according to the literature our school gave us). Nothing on a television set is kosher, be it broadcast or videotape/DVD or whatever. Movies watched in a movie theater are okay, though–not because big-screen-movie-watching is any less passive than little-screen-movie-watching, but because this is TV Turn-off Week, not Movie Theater Avoidance Week. As for video games and recreational computer usage goes, “Ask your parents.” Oh, you bet they will.
So my son already hates this idea, which is funny because he doesn’t watch that much television in the first place. Just telling him he can’t do something, though, makes him want to do it more. Then there’s Elvis, who, while he’s certainly cut down on his Monsters, Inc. habit, still has to watch some little-screen entertainment during the day or I will go freaking nuts. (He doesn’t play video games or use computers recreationally, and taking him to a movie theater would be Missing The Point Entirely.) To be sure, his Non-TV-Watching Activity Log would be sport lots of interesting pastimes, most of them involving sharp objects, sticky food substances, and that giant mudhole in the backyard–but as the responsible adult in the house, I take the liberty of deciding when his dance card is full, if you catch my meaning.
Anyway, I think TV Turn-off Week is more properly observed during May sweeps. People who turn their TV’s off in April are wusses!
But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,–Matthew 23:5
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