Last Thursday, I opened my e-mail in the early morning to two e-mails from the school, or, at least, from people at the school.
In the first, a staff person wrote to me from his/her home e-mail address and said that recent communications from the school s/he had seen did not make sense in light of other similar cases—i.e, it was clear that I was being picked on and that I should consider getting an advocate and asking the advocate to come with me to the next version of the IEP meeting. I cannot tell you how affirming it was to see an e-mail from an insider after so many weeks of feeling like I was crazy for requesting very simple things: notes, in a place where I could access them; assignments, a week in advance.
And, I got another e-mail from S’s special education advocate. I needed to either sign and say I agreed with the IEP or sign and say I disagreed with the IEP. My 14 days are almost up, and when they expire, the new IEP will go into effect no matter what I’ve done.
I responded by simply stating that I needed more time to think about what was best for S’s education, and left it at that. It felt good to put something off for once, rather than responding with a knee-jerk reaction. I think in most cases my knee-jerk reactions have actually been the right reactions, but I don’t think they have always been executed in the most effective way. I hate the idea of being tactful, careful, calculating--but I realize now why so many books about parenting special needs children advise us to be.
The day degenerated after that: a near-suicidal student reaching out for help, another student in deep grief, several students panicked about their work and progress in the class, meetings and more meetings with bad news about our scary budget situation that continues to threaten my job. In short, I got very little work done.
And then, suddenly, in the midst of my trying-to-work, I realized I’d left a telephone I needed to return at my last conference call in the student center. This turned out to be the greatest of gifts.
On my way through the student center, I ran into a woman I love dearly but whom I never get to see. She stopped me and asked how S was doing. Usually when someone asks this kind of question—particularly someone I don’t know well—I just say fine, or I tell a funny story that captures the positive, albeit wacky, parts of her personality. But for some reason I said, “Not so well. We’re having a hard time right now.”
“How old is S again?”
“15.”
“Fifteen? Oh, god, those were the worst years of my life. And of my daughter’s life. No wonder you’re having a hard time.”
No, I explain, S is different. She was abused for 10 years, then spent five years in non-committal foster homes. She’s not really emotionally 15. She has, as they say,
“issues.”
“Still.” D insisted. “She’s 15.”
She went on to tell me that she gives her daughter her teenage journals each year. When she turned 13, she gave her her 13 year old journal; at 14, her 14 year old journal, etc. “I vet them first, of course,” she said. “And you know what I wrote in the 15-year-old journal?”
“What?”
“That I never, ever wanted a daughter. So before I gave her that one, I had to explain why. I was so miserable then, Argie. Everything about me, my body, my mind, was wrong. So of course I didn’t want to care for another life like my own, to put someone else through the same kind of misery.”
“So what did you say to her?”
“I just told her the truth. When I was 15, I didn’t want a kid who would suffer as I was. And now you’re suffering, and it’s hard to watch, but I know you’ll come out on the other side as I did.” D sighed. “I’m telling you, this is all normal.”
“I don’t think it’s normal,” I replied.
“ Is she refusing to do anything you say?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she clingy one moment and then totally distant the next?”
I can only imagine what I looked like, mouth gaping open. “Um, yeah.”
“Doesn’t want to do whatever it is she has to do, homework, chores, whatever? But then sometimes suddenly becomes super-responsible and super grown up?”
“Yeah.”
D nodded. “OK, then. You have a 15 year old daughter.”
For some reason, my eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t have a mom,” I said. “I think my perspective is totally off. My mom was sick from the time I was 8 until 15, and I loved her and wanted to be by her all t her all the time. And then she died. I’m sure I treated her badly, but I don’t really remember it.”
“You didn’t make it to the age when you would have treated her badly,” D said. “That starts at 12, 13, but your mom was sick. So it was different for you.”
I let the tears spill. We were standing in the middle of the busiest place on campus: the student center, right outside the cafeteria. I realized a former student was sitting at the information desk, trying to work her job, but too intrigued by our conversation to not listen. I thought these thoughts and immediately realized it didn’t matter. I was who I was, and I was supposed to be having this conversation, here and now, with this woman I don’t know well.
“I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not,” I said, incredulously.
“Well, then, honey, you just come to me when you want to know what’s normal and what’s not. But I’m telling you, S sounds like a normal 15-year-old girl to me. I don’t mean to downplay her horrible past, or how immature she is, or anything else, but honey, she’s 15.”
I went on with my day, a little more focused, a little more willing to admit that maybe everything I thought I understood wasn’t totally accurate. I got at least a little work done.
Thursday is the night S is with her college buddy and I work late. I couldn’t concentrate. I opened my facebook account to find out about a friend who recently had an operation. I promised myself that was all I’d do—the e-mail list I’m on had been eerily silent, and I’d not heard about the outcome of the biopsy. No news. But now I was on facebook, and it had been at least a week since I’d checked my account, so of course I was also greeted with a number of other posts and updates, and I got lost in it all. A message from someone in a dissatisfying marriage who seemed to want my advice, though she didn’t ask for it. A message from an old student who wanted to update me on his life. Another student, puzzled over a recent interaction with friends, needing to vent. And so on. It felt good to spend some time attending to people I care about who are not, at this moment, fighting with me about anything, but at the same time, I realized I was exerting more energy helping others. I wasn’t getting my work done. I wasn’t taking care of myself.
In the midst of this, a friend of mind popped up on facebook chat. He owns a shop in town, which S had apparently visited with her college buddy earlier in the week. He had a dress for S’s first formal, but she would need spank (and I had no idea what these were) if she really wanted the dress.
Oh, god, the formal. It’s in a week. None of her friends are going, but she wants to go, and she wants me to chaperone. I am going to do it, of course, but I’m also terrified for her—showing up at a formal alone is one of those things that my nerdy, self-conscious 9th-grade self would never in a million years have done. And yet, she wants to go solo, dressed up, and I can’t help but be proud of her at the same time.
Anyway, I went ahead and asked this fashionable, flaming friend of mine what spanks were—among other things. We chatted for awhile. Eventually, he wrote, “I really adore her, you know.”
No, I didn’t know. My eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll do her hair and makeup for the dance,” he went on. “And you know, she’s really interested in fashion. I can’t pay, but if she wanted a little internship in the summer, I’d totally do it.”
More tears.
“We’re going through a rough time right now,” was all I could manage to write back.
“Aren’t we all?” he responded. “LOL.”
Oh, god, I hate chat and text language, even though I’ve forced myself to learn more of it. But this time, I felt a lightness seep into my body, and I actually laughed.
We made plans: we’d go get what she needed for undergarments over the weekend. He had specifics: got to one store, get measured, say you’ll think about it, then go to another store for the cheaper version of the exact same thing.
Then we’d go to the store on Tuesday to try out the dress with the new undergarments. Then, on the day of the formal, he’d do her hair and makeup, on one condition—that I come and watch and learn.
OK, I’m a pretty typical 30-something (OK, almost 40) dyke, and I hate makeup and clothes and pretty much all of it, but I’m willing.
“She needs you to be there,” he wrote, and he is so right.
Later, I talked again to D, who told me her outsider daughter had gone to prom alone. “I drove her around, you know, from place to place, because prom is this complicated series of events” she said, “and then at one point, she got into the car and looked down, and I told her I could either drive her to the next place or I could take her out to eat. Do you know what she chose?”
“Out to eat?” I guessed.
“Yeah. She’d had enough. You just have to be there and know when they’ve had enough,” D said.
Maybe the best parenting advice I’ve ever received I got from a woman I don't know well and from a gay man who has never had children. God knows I’ve read enough books on parenting special needs kids, gone to enough seminars. They were all helpful—don’t get me wrong. But really, all along, there was all this wisdom right here, in this little town among people I see every day.
In the first, a staff person wrote to me from his/her home e-mail address and said that recent communications from the school s/he had seen did not make sense in light of other similar cases—i.e, it was clear that I was being picked on and that I should consider getting an advocate and asking the advocate to come with me to the next version of the IEP meeting. I cannot tell you how affirming it was to see an e-mail from an insider after so many weeks of feeling like I was crazy for requesting very simple things: notes, in a place where I could access them; assignments, a week in advance.
And, I got another e-mail from S’s special education advocate. I needed to either sign and say I agreed with the IEP or sign and say I disagreed with the IEP. My 14 days are almost up, and when they expire, the new IEP will go into effect no matter what I’ve done.
I responded by simply stating that I needed more time to think about what was best for S’s education, and left it at that. It felt good to put something off for once, rather than responding with a knee-jerk reaction. I think in most cases my knee-jerk reactions have actually been the right reactions, but I don’t think they have always been executed in the most effective way. I hate the idea of being tactful, careful, calculating--but I realize now why so many books about parenting special needs children advise us to be.
The day degenerated after that: a near-suicidal student reaching out for help, another student in deep grief, several students panicked about their work and progress in the class, meetings and more meetings with bad news about our scary budget situation that continues to threaten my job. In short, I got very little work done.
And then, suddenly, in the midst of my trying-to-work, I realized I’d left a telephone I needed to return at my last conference call in the student center. This turned out to be the greatest of gifts.
On my way through the student center, I ran into a woman I love dearly but whom I never get to see. She stopped me and asked how S was doing. Usually when someone asks this kind of question—particularly someone I don’t know well—I just say fine, or I tell a funny story that captures the positive, albeit wacky, parts of her personality. But for some reason I said, “Not so well. We’re having a hard time right now.”
“How old is S again?”
“15.”
“Fifteen? Oh, god, those were the worst years of my life. And of my daughter’s life. No wonder you’re having a hard time.”
No, I explain, S is different. She was abused for 10 years, then spent five years in non-committal foster homes. She’s not really emotionally 15. She has, as they say,
“issues.”
“Still.” D insisted. “She’s 15.”
She went on to tell me that she gives her daughter her teenage journals each year. When she turned 13, she gave her her 13 year old journal; at 14, her 14 year old journal, etc. “I vet them first, of course,” she said. “And you know what I wrote in the 15-year-old journal?”
“What?”
“That I never, ever wanted a daughter. So before I gave her that one, I had to explain why. I was so miserable then, Argie. Everything about me, my body, my mind, was wrong. So of course I didn’t want to care for another life like my own, to put someone else through the same kind of misery.”
“So what did you say to her?”
“I just told her the truth. When I was 15, I didn’t want a kid who would suffer as I was. And now you’re suffering, and it’s hard to watch, but I know you’ll come out on the other side as I did.” D sighed. “I’m telling you, this is all normal.”
“I don’t think it’s normal,” I replied.
“ Is she refusing to do anything you say?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she clingy one moment and then totally distant the next?”
I can only imagine what I looked like, mouth gaping open. “Um, yeah.”
“Doesn’t want to do whatever it is she has to do, homework, chores, whatever? But then sometimes suddenly becomes super-responsible and super grown up?”
“Yeah.”
D nodded. “OK, then. You have a 15 year old daughter.”
For some reason, my eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t have a mom,” I said. “I think my perspective is totally off. My mom was sick from the time I was 8 until 15, and I loved her and wanted to be by her all t her all the time. And then she died. I’m sure I treated her badly, but I don’t really remember it.”
“You didn’t make it to the age when you would have treated her badly,” D said. “That starts at 12, 13, but your mom was sick. So it was different for you.”
I let the tears spill. We were standing in the middle of the busiest place on campus: the student center, right outside the cafeteria. I realized a former student was sitting at the information desk, trying to work her job, but too intrigued by our conversation to not listen. I thought these thoughts and immediately realized it didn’t matter. I was who I was, and I was supposed to be having this conversation, here and now, with this woman I don’t know well.
“I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not,” I said, incredulously.
“Well, then, honey, you just come to me when you want to know what’s normal and what’s not. But I’m telling you, S sounds like a normal 15-year-old girl to me. I don’t mean to downplay her horrible past, or how immature she is, or anything else, but honey, she’s 15.”
I went on with my day, a little more focused, a little more willing to admit that maybe everything I thought I understood wasn’t totally accurate. I got at least a little work done.
Thursday is the night S is with her college buddy and I work late. I couldn’t concentrate. I opened my facebook account to find out about a friend who recently had an operation. I promised myself that was all I’d do—the e-mail list I’m on had been eerily silent, and I’d not heard about the outcome of the biopsy. No news. But now I was on facebook, and it had been at least a week since I’d checked my account, so of course I was also greeted with a number of other posts and updates, and I got lost in it all. A message from someone in a dissatisfying marriage who seemed to want my advice, though she didn’t ask for it. A message from an old student who wanted to update me on his life. Another student, puzzled over a recent interaction with friends, needing to vent. And so on. It felt good to spend some time attending to people I care about who are not, at this moment, fighting with me about anything, but at the same time, I realized I was exerting more energy helping others. I wasn’t getting my work done. I wasn’t taking care of myself.
In the midst of this, a friend of mind popped up on facebook chat. He owns a shop in town, which S had apparently visited with her college buddy earlier in the week. He had a dress for S’s first formal, but she would need spank (and I had no idea what these were) if she really wanted the dress.
Oh, god, the formal. It’s in a week. None of her friends are going, but she wants to go, and she wants me to chaperone. I am going to do it, of course, but I’m also terrified for her—showing up at a formal alone is one of those things that my nerdy, self-conscious 9th-grade self would never in a million years have done. And yet, she wants to go solo, dressed up, and I can’t help but be proud of her at the same time.
Anyway, I went ahead and asked this fashionable, flaming friend of mine what spanks were—among other things. We chatted for awhile. Eventually, he wrote, “I really adore her, you know.”
No, I didn’t know. My eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll do her hair and makeup for the dance,” he went on. “And you know, she’s really interested in fashion. I can’t pay, but if she wanted a little internship in the summer, I’d totally do it.”
More tears.
“We’re going through a rough time right now,” was all I could manage to write back.
“Aren’t we all?” he responded. “LOL.”
Oh, god, I hate chat and text language, even though I’ve forced myself to learn more of it. But this time, I felt a lightness seep into my body, and I actually laughed.
We made plans: we’d go get what she needed for undergarments over the weekend. He had specifics: got to one store, get measured, say you’ll think about it, then go to another store for the cheaper version of the exact same thing.
Then we’d go to the store on Tuesday to try out the dress with the new undergarments. Then, on the day of the formal, he’d do her hair and makeup, on one condition—that I come and watch and learn.
OK, I’m a pretty typical 30-something (OK, almost 40) dyke, and I hate makeup and clothes and pretty much all of it, but I’m willing.
“She needs you to be there,” he wrote, and he is so right.
Later, I talked again to D, who told me her outsider daughter had gone to prom alone. “I drove her around, you know, from place to place, because prom is this complicated series of events” she said, “and then at one point, she got into the car and looked down, and I told her I could either drive her to the next place or I could take her out to eat. Do you know what she chose?”
“Out to eat?” I guessed.
“Yeah. She’d had enough. You just have to be there and know when they’ve had enough,” D said.
Maybe the best parenting advice I’ve ever received I got from a woman I don't know well and from a gay man who has never had children. God knows I’ve read enough books on parenting special needs kids, gone to enough seminars. They were all helpful—don’t get me wrong. But really, all along, there was all this wisdom right here, in this little town among people I see every day.
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