Plague & Privilege

I don’t mean to make light of it. Or maybe I do. It all feels so familiar, is all. Remember swine flu in 2009? Remember how people drove to other counties and stood in line for hours with their kids for the vaccine?

Grrrl was one month away from her 3^rd birthday – just young enough to get her in under the wire when a limited supply of the vaccine became available at our pediatrician’s office. I felt a little silly showing up an hour early, but there was already a line around the block. In November. In Seattle. During a phase when Grrrl had some pretty serious opinions about never wearing a coat. Other parents were smart and had one waiting in line while the other waited in the car with the babies and toddlers. And they all had coffee. Why oh why had I not thought of bringing coffee?

Meanwhile, Mr. Black had already survived a confirmed case of that very swine flu two weeks earlier. He’d quarantined himself in our bedroom and actually managed to not pass it along to the rest of us. Still, my Grrrl and I hunkered down in the rain and waited for the vaccine line to move, reading her favorite books and singing her favorite songs, coat-less and coffee-less. We didn’t get swine flu. We didn’t even catch colds.

Now my Grrrl is 13, and she diplomatically asks if she can stay home from her Saturday activities. “Are you worried about coronavirus?” I ask.

“No, I’ve just had a bad week,” she says stoically, and after some encouragement tells me that some adult at school publicly called her out and scolded her for holding hands with one of her friends in the hallway. She’s not outraged, or even angry. Just quietly, deeply mortified.   

To make her feel better, I shared some of my own stories from the week. It started with dumb jokes, of course. Somebody coughs. Three other 8^th graders yell and point “Aahhh! Coronavirus!” and it’s all fun and games until the anxious kid with seasonal allergies won’t come to school anymore.

The next time something like that happens, it’s not a joke at all. A different anxious student is screaming for real and demanding that student at her table stop sniffing (to be fair, it is pretty gross). But the also-anxious sniffing student she’s screaming at is crying. “It’s just phlegm. I don’t have coronavirus.” He happens to be Asian, and he’s fed up in a way he doesn’t completely grasp after several days of this. I intervene and manage to make it a little bit better. But the boy still cries on and off for much of the day, and the girl hasn’t been back to school since.

At my yoga class, the teacher asks us if we’re all working from home as much as possible. I’m surprised to be the only one in the class who doesn’t answer with an enthusiastic “YES.” When I say that I work in a middle school, so much about them freezes. Not just their bodies, but their facial expressions. It’s like..they have the presence of mind to not chase me from the room with pitchforks and torches, but they haven’t perfected a replacement behavior for that impulse. I joke about it on social media, but that look of frozen terror in those faces is going to haunt me. There’s something very….not funny about it.

At school, the jokes continue. We’re asked to present a lesson from our school nurse during homeroom to curb the hysteria and channel all that anxious energy toward hand-washing. You're welcome:

In the hallway, students are joking “Let’s lick the doorknobs so they cancel school!” There are reports of students fake-sneezing at people in Starbucks because HILARIOUS.

By Friday, well…shit gets slightly more real.

I am almost supernaturally calm, because this was inevitable. While the parents of our school’s Facebook page start engaging in exactly the rhetoric one would expect of parents on a school’s Facebook page, I wash my hands and discreetly message my doctor’s office for next steps.

Over the phone, a Public Health nurse advises me to just keep swimming, but monitor for symptoms for the next fourteen days. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Fever? Nope. Coughing? Nope. Shortness of breath? Nope with a side order of nope sauce. Lately I’ve been starting each morning by taking a big, luxurious breath of rich, creamy, full-fat oxygen. I count my blessings. And I acknowledge the privileged space I take up in this world.

I’m honest with Grrrl about all this, and I talk her through the likeliest scenarios. I assure her that even in the worst-case one, the four of us will be safe and sound with our health insurance, our paid sick days, our ability to purchase food and supplies ahead of time, our access to technology at home, and our being in low-risk groups to begin with.  

My fears are for the people who don’t have access to all of that. And my fears are for a society that is elbowing them out of the way to snatch up the last bottle of hand sanitizer.

My Vitriolic Valentine

How do we know it’s that bad? He sent me an email that was maybe an apology, or more likely one of those “sorry you’re such a fruitcake” non-apologies, and I didn’t even read it. Instead, I blurred my eyes out of focus so as not to accidentally ingest any possible doubled-down toxicity as I clicked through all the necessary steps to send it and any further attempts at contact directly to my Junk Mail folder.

And even though it happens to be Valentine’s Day, this has nothing to do with ghosting some bad old boyfriend. No. I’m ghosting my son’s high school guidance counselor instead.

I don’t care to share my son’s business on here, but I do want to write about my own experience of the fallout from my attempt at helping him sort out some things at school. I want to share it because it was one of the more surreal moments in my 10 years of IEP team meetings, and I need to air it out before it rots in my soul and hurts forever.

The last time something like this happened, The Boy was 4 or 5 years old, still in preschool and undiagnosed. Some preschool dad went full asshole on me on the playground. Screamed at me “I’m sick of YOU, I’m sick of your KID! He should be kicked out of school!”

I high-roaded it and waited for an apology that never came. I heard through the grapevine that his wife was “torn” – appalled by hubby’s bad behavior but super-proud of him for standing up to, um, that autistic kid and his mom on a preschool playground. I saw him years later at some kid’s birthday party and he actually tried to talk to me as if nothing had happened. Ha. I saw him again at a high school open house a few years ago and I actually moved seats so I wouldn’t have to see the back of his big stupid head.

There have been a lot of awful moments between then and now on the ASD Road to Life in the Mainstream, but that first moment is the one that can still bring bitter tears to my eyes all these years later.

Today, though, I might have to crown a new king of that particular domain.

He didn’t like that I’d emailed at night and then expected to hear back by late morning. He didn’t like that I said I’d drop by the school that afternoon if I didn’t hear back. “Didn’t like” is putting it mildly, though. He rhetorically tore me several new ones today. Scolded. Talked over me. Scoffed and made these little high-pitched laughing sounds. Kept on going even after I’d said “Please stop, you’re making me uncomfortable.” I am not exaggerating any of this. And yes, I admit that my whole email/drop-by strategy was on the obnoxious side, but the vitriol he spewed in my general direction….he hated me in that moment. Hated me for sending an obnoxious email when I was confused and upset and worried about my kid. Hated me for showing up at that meeting still upset and worried and confused.

He tried to explain how busy teachers are. I told him I know that, because I am also a teacher. He told me he was surprised to hear that I’m a teacher, because I don’t conduct myself like a professional educator. He told me my email was bullying. The Boy was sitting right there crying. I started crying too. Nevertheless, he persisted. Eventually he had to leave for another meeting, and it was time for The Boy’s dentist appointment anyway, and we left.

Yes. This all really happened. I don’t believe it either.

So. I didn’t curl up in a ball and die like I wanted to. I cried in my car for maybe 30 minutes, replied to the administrator’s apologetic email with a simple, straightforward account of what had happened, gathered my wits about me, and drove to my own school.

My students had been making valentines…little choppy pink and red hearts and scraps of pink and red paper all over the floor. They were so excited about our upcoming mid-winter break that they all joined in with the kid who makes fart noises and fart-noised up the joint until I begged them to stop and a girl explained “Fart noises are how you know we LOVE you, Ms. Floor Pie!”

Still, in the pit of my heart I kept hearing it. “You don’t conduct yourself like a professional educator.”

When the kids went joyfully home for the day, I cried all over again. A few colleagues have reassured me that I’m not crazy and that I did not, in fact, deserve that level of vitriol. But I’ve been at this game long enough to know that I’m never going to change vitriolic minds.

So, okay. I don’t need to.

But I also don’t need to shut up about it.

It Takes a Village, People

I’m shivering on the concrete steps, huddling in the last winter afternoon sunbeams. Halfway across the school playground is The Boy, playing an impromptu game of soccer with a dozen other boys and girls from his class. They organize themselves into teams and positions. They kick and run, argue and resolve. There are parents all around, but we’re on the sidelines – chatting, reading, or just trying to stay warm. The kids are a little society unto themselves, Peanuts-style.

I’m on the edge of my seat, of course, knowing The Boy could lose it at any moment. The other team scores and scores again. He breaks a rule he didn’t understand and a girl loudly corrects him. A little sister runs amok through the game, throwing everything off course. I brace myself. But he stays calm and keeps playing. Later, they organize themselves into a kickball game.

An ordinary scene, but it feels like a small miracle. These kids accept him. And he accepts them. He even follows their lead, acquiesces to their rules, high-fives a teammate who scores. He plays until most of the other kids have gone home, and his good mood lasts for the rest of the day. When I think about it, I realize that his meltdowns are getting fewer and farther between. And when they do happen, they’re much more easily managed.

I know we’re just going through a good patch right now and I shouldn’t get too cocky. There’s no “cure” for Aspergers, after all. One doesn’t outgrow it. I know the moods and meltdowns are lurking not very far beneath the surface. But I want to stop and give this good phase the same attention I’ve given to the rough spots. I want to go ahead and be proud of him, and proud of myself. And I want to recognize that while I did a lot (a lot!) to get us to this point…I didn’t do this myself. Not even close. Meet the village:

Parent Advocate Pioneers
Other special ed families’ struggles make ours look like a trip to Hawaii. There’s a parent at our school who’s been a particularly fierce advocate in the face of some pretty extreme adversity. But she managed to convince them that her son needs and deserves to participate in an advanced learning class with special ed support.

By the time we were reassigned to this school, I was too exhausted to fight for advanced learning placement. I was ready to back down and not push for it if they said no. But because this parent paved the way, all I had to do was ask the principal about it once and she said yes. And what an incredibly positive difference it’s made for The Boy to be in a class that truly challenges him. He’s reading classic children’s literature instead of those dry committee-generated readers. He’s learning the multiplication tables and long division. And he’s in a classroom full of kids who are psyched about math and science. (And Harry Potter. Holy moley do those kids love Harry Potter.)

I wouldn’t have fought for any of this. But another parent did, so we get to reap the benefits. I’ll remember that the next time I’m tempted to back down.

Teachers
Of course, the credit for this particular class goes to The Boy’s excellent classroom teacher. He’s the kind of teacher who calls after the kids as they’re heading for the buses “Don’t forget to watch the lunar eclipse tonight!” He genuinely likes them, and they like him right back. They have this incredible energy together.

He’s been very flexible and understanding with The Boy, and he’s been welcoming and open to feedback from me. But the really wonderful thing this teacher has done – the thing I absolutely couldn’t have done myself – is hold very high expectations. Not in a mean, Tiger Mom-ish way. Just simple and firm. “He can do this.” And most of the time he can. He’s so proud of himself. And I’m learning how to gently, kindly, set the bar a little higher for The Boy than I used to.

Special Ed Support
Words fail. These people make it possible at all. The teacher’s aide who helped The Boy through those first terrifying weeks at his new school. The special ed teacher who talks him through his meltdowns and bouts of crippling perfectionism; who gives him unbridled encouragement when he tries something new; who called me at home on the first day of school to tell me he’s having a great day. The teacher’s aide who researches topics he’s interested in so they can have conversations about it. The resource room teacher at our old school who was The Boy’s sole advocate, who wrote him a great IEP and helped us get him to a school that was a better fit. Their depth and breadth of knowledge, their empathy, their infinite patience. Where would we be without them?

Viewers Like You
I owe my relative sanity and overall well-being to every friend, family member, and reader who’s ever listened to me talk or who’s read and shared my writing about all this. So many of you have given me such generous room to vent, ponder, cry, head down a completely wrong path and backtrack to square one, worry, and ponder some more. You’ve given advice, offered resources, validated my feelings, challenged my perspective, helped me feel strong and capable. Thank you.

School…When it Works
We had a “Getting Ready for Kindergarten” parent meeting at Little Girl’s preschool earlier this week. Our parent educator asked those of us with children in elementary school to talk a little about our experiences. I don’t think any of us intended to scare the pants off the first-timers. We all love our schools, and the kids are having a great year. But it took some of us a while to get here.

We had to stand up to teachers and systems that misunderstood or undervalued our children. We had to improvise solutions. We had to teach our children even stronger coping skills, and deal with our own disappointment. It wasn’t easy. But I believe that every single one of us came out of it stronger and smarter from the experience. You don’t always get it right the first time. But human beings are incredibly resilient.

Yesterday afternoon, we gathered in the elementary school library for cupcakes and popcorn to honor the teachers who are doing special ed inclusion in their classrooms this year. The special ed teacher had prepared one of those “You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” Powerpoint slide shows, featuring heartwarming photos of the students all working, learning, and being part of the group under the gentle guidance of these teachers.

My favorite part, by far, was watching the audience’s reactions. Some of the teachers looked close to tears. Some had the biggest smiles on their faces. The Boy was delighted to see a slide of himself, hard at work writing a story at his desk. At the end of the slide show, the principal did a mock collapse, showing how incredibly touched and proud she felt.

School isn’t perfect. Life isn’t perfect. I know there are challenging times ahead, maybe even later today. But at this moment, I’m feeling so happy for simple moments like that after-school soccer game, and so grateful to everyone who’s helped us get here.

My Girl

Little Girl turned five yesterday, the same day as our preschool trip to see The Nutcracker. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I had a little moment there, just as “March of the Children” began, when I turned my attention from the lavish production on stage to her mesmerized face in the dark. She was perched on the edge of her seat, holding an armload of stuffed animals, clearly recognizing the song and delighted to see it come to life so vividly in front of her. I nearly started to cry.

There’s a joy in this girl that just about breaks my heart sometimes. It’s so pure, so free from the fears and self-doubt that come later in life. She throws herself into the things she loves with full force, unapologetically. She is my girl in motion – swinging on the playground for incredibly long stretches, mired in a gorgeous world of imagination. She adorns herself in mismatched pinks and sparkles. She narrates as we go about our daily business, or holds conversations with stuffed animals and imaginary friends. And her joy in her real friends is enormous, especially when they join in her story-playing. She’s even got The Boy doing it. They can play for hours, those two, just making up stories and acting them out.

I see so much of my childhood self in her, it’s a little scary sometimes. Scary, because I know what comes next. You turn all that love and imagination and intensity loose on the world and, well…mixed results, at best. There will be people who get you and love you for being your rather unusual self. Others, not so much. She has no clue yet, bless her heart, about people who want to take others down a peg with rigid standards of “normal” and “feminine,” or just plain competition. She can’t begin to fathom that there will be people who won’t love her as much as she loves them. Knowing that this awaits her is almost too much for me sometimes. Will her spirit survive it?

Well…yes. I think her spirit will do just fine. She’s got so much of it to begin with, not to mention a mother who’s been through the woods and back and could maybe help show her the path, if she’s willing. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Might as well enjoy that unbridled innocence while we have the chance.

Happy birthday, Little Girl.

Where Do You Go From a Thanksgiving Layoff?

Down the hall in the break room, every inch of counter space was packed with various crock pots and pies. The smell of turkey wafted through the air. But first, our entire branch filed into the training room for an impromptu meeting.

Here we go again, I thought. The whole time I’d worked there – nearly four years at that point – there’d been rumors of downsizing, departments closing, even the entire branch closing. Nothing had ever come of it. They’d call us up to those meetings, amid a heavy mood of anxiety, just to announce personnel changes or some new policy. Surely today wouldn’t be any different. Who would announce a branch closing right before the Thanksgiving potluck?

And yet, that’s exactly what they did. “You’re all fired. Have some turkey.”

Okay, it wasn’t quite that harsh. They tried to let us down easy. They told us the office would be open through January, so there’d be plenty of time to look for new jobs. They let us know we were welcome to apply for jobs at corporate headquarters in Atlanta, or apply for retail jobs in any of the big box stores our office supported. They answered our questions as best they could. All around the room, you could hear people quietly crying.

Finally, we adjourned to the break room for one very stunned and surreal Thanksgiving feast. I think I ate about five desserts and very little else. We let each other vent. We wondered what we’d do next. We debated whether to call our husbands and wives now, or wait and tell them at home. Some of us were stoic, some were anxious, some were angry. Everyone had their own unique way of coping.

As for me, I was a little bitter, a little worried, a little ashamed, but mostly…overjoyed! So happy! I was pregnant with The Boy after nearly two years of trying and three early miscarriages. In fact, I’d just found out it was a boy that very week. I knew I’d miss my co-workers. I knew I’d miss a good job and a steady paycheck. But really, I was dying for a break. I wanted to stay home and start nesting, take walks, indulge my urge to nap at 3pm, maybe attend a weekday prenatal yoga class that wasn’t packed to the rafters like the Saturday one. Losing one's job while pregnant is an unfortunate situation. But I could barely suppress a wild, childlike sense of “YAY!!! NO SCHOOL!!!”

The bizarre thing is, that feeling lasted for nearly eight years. Every time I told the story of my layoff, it was with a “Can you believe my good fortune!” tone. I loved being a stay-at-home mom. Was it tedious? No more so than pricing water heaters for the monthly catalog. Was it mindless? No more so than chanting the corporate loyalty cheer at quarterly meetings. Was it a waste of my education? Please. I have a Masters in English literature. Anything that doesn’t involve analyzing food motifs in late 20th Century fiction is technically a waste of my education. No question about it. SAHMing rocked. And if I hadn’t been laid off, maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage to try it. No regrets.

Until recently. You see, I never intended to stay out of the game for quite this long. I did some freelance work here and there over the years, but The Boy is seven-and-a-half now and I have yet to set foot in another office. Little Girl starts kindergarten next year. It’s almost time. I’ve got to start getting ready to leave my own nest.

And as I look over my prospects and start dusting off the old resume, I can’t help but wonder…what if I hadn’t been laid off? What if I’d taken my little three months of unpaid maternity leave and gone right back to the old job? Would I still be there? Would I have developed new skills and made connections to get myself into an even better job? Would our finances be in any better shape than they are now, or would most of my money have gone to childcare?

More to the point: Would childcare have even accepted my little Aspergian toddler? When I was hoping to expand my freelance work, I tried sending him to a drop-off daycare. They kicked him out for crying too much. “This is a happy place,” the director explained as she refunded our tuition. I tried another daycare with a better reputation, but he hated that one, too. They didn’t kick him out, but they called me to come get him whenever he had a meltdown, which was often. After a while, I gave up on daycare and quit the freelance work altogether.

Again, no regrets. The Boy’s early years with undiagnosed Aspergers may have put me through the wringer, but I came out of it with all kinds of parenting superpowers and a fierce commitment to special ed students and teachers everywhere. I’ve learned so much, and I’m learning more every day – from his teachers, from his occupational therapist, from special ed activists and writers, and from the children themselves.

Lately I’ve been thinking I ought to put that to work instead of my mad corporate communications skillz. If it works out, then maybe that Thanksgiving layoff really was for the best.

Above Average

“ELL, Special Ed, and an assortment of behavioral problems are mainstreamed on the backs of average students.”

This from the school board candidate I was supporting. I’d put up a yard sign and everything. Now it looks like I might have to go out there in the rain and rip that sign out with my bare hands because, excuse me, “mainstreamed on the backs of average students”?!  

Sigh.

I mean…I get it. I do. Teachers are spread incredibly thin. The more variables you dump on them, the less time and energy they have to actually teach. And, for what it’s worth, I was that so-called average student back in the day, sitting stoically through the chaos, sometimes learning, sometimes not, counting the minutes until the dismissal bell. And now I’m an average mom with an exceptionally brilliant, anxious, super-charged, sensitive, anything-but-average little Aspergian.

I didn’t mainstream him on anybody’s back. I hadn’t intended to mainstream him at all. Believe it or not, we special ed parents are just as afraid of “average” students as you are of us. You think I want to expose my little boy-child to the teasing, the judgment, the scapegoating, the willful ignorance, the ostracism? I pulled him out of general ed last year, not even knowing where the hell the school district would reassign him and not caring, because I knew it had to be better than where we were. I had no idea he’d end up right back in another general ed classroom at a different school, mainstreamed before we’d even had a chance to de-mainstream.

But you know what? It’s working for him. With a supportive principal, a caring and dynamic classroom teacher, support from a well-equipped special ed staff, and one very, very engaged mother, inclusion is working for my son.

Is it working for his “average” classmates, upon whose backs he’s supposedly been mainstreamed? Hard to say. I’ll admit that sometimes The Boy can be a downright pain in the ass. But having spent a fair amount of time in that classroom, I’m quite confident that he’s not the only one. Kids bump up against each other in all kinds of ways in a school setting. They cry, they tattle, they tease, they shove, they make the most unpleasant sounds and smells.

It’s not so much that the “average” ones have to endure the different ones; it’s that they’re all enduring each other. For the most part, they really do adapt to each other’s quirks and differences. They adapt a whole lot better than the adults do, that’s for sure. And they adapt especially well when the adults set a tone for acceptance.

Inclusion doesn’t work when the teachers resent it, the principals don’t support it, and the special ed services are spread thin-to-nothing. It sure as hell doesn’t work when other parents regard our very presence in the classroom as a threat to their “average” students’ academic success.

But here’s the thing: Inclusion isn’t going away. The school district wants it, most of the special ed parents want it, and it’s on the right side of the law. You can complain about it, you can hightail it to private school, or you can get on board to help make it work. Advocate for better special ed services and support for classroom teachers. Educate yourself about your child’s classmates’ disabilities. Volunteer in your child’s classroom.

Or…just take a moment to smile and chat with the special ed mom on the playground, even if she doesn’t have a friendly look on her face. Chances are she’s too nervous to reach out to you. Let her know she’s welcome. Because she’s a lot like you. And there may come a time when your child finds herself on the wrong side of “average.” How will you want to be treated by other parents when that time comes? Will you want to be seen as a burden, a label, part of the problem? Or will you want acceptance and a sense of community? Might as well pay it forward.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a yard sign that needs removing.

Fresh Start

So, here’s a new one:

Last week, mere hours before we’d planned to leave for Big Family Final Beach Weekend of the Summer, I had a meeting at The Boy’s new school. (I know, what a great way to get psyched for a beach trip. Pass the tanning butter.)

So, I gathered up The Boy’s IEP and behavior plan, the handout they gave me back in June, my list of concerns – oops, I mean, “questions” –  about this program and its appropriateness for him, and marched into that school ready to advocate.

Except…I didn’t really need to.

Somehow, over the summer – maybe thanks to the tireless advocacy of pioneer parents before me, or because school district lawyers successfully managed to explain “least restrictive means” to the administrators, or perhaps a rare alignment between school district politics and my child’s best interests, or maybe just plain dumb luck – the program changed. For the better.

• It is no longer a behavior intervention program.
• Enrollment in the program is now 80% autism/Aspergers students.
• The Boy is in a regular 2nd grade “gifted” classroom with support from an instructional aide  
• The old self-contained classroom is now a "learning center" where special ed students have access to pull-outs for extra support, as needed.

If I could have designed a program for him myself, this is pretty much what I would have done. Well…I’d have the day be a little shorter, the class size a little smaller, include a big block of time for Lego-building in the afternoon, and tell the parents about it in freaking JUNE so they wouldn’t have worried about it all summer long! But otherwise, it’s pretty darn close to ideal.

So, now what? There’s plenty more to worry about, of course. How will the pearl-clutching “not fair to the other kids!” anti-inclusion parents react to his presence? What if the “gifted” curriculum is too hard? What if the other kids exclude, or tease, or bully? What if he lashes out at them? What if this simply…doesn’t work?

But now, with the long-anticipated first day of school finally behind us, there’s a lot to feel optimistic about, too. The Boy was so excited to walk to his new school this morning. He’s so proud to be a second grader. His classroom teacher is a guy who seems to genuinely love teaching and was positively glowing when I picked The Boy up at school today. He’s happy to have The Boy in his class. The special ed teacher actually called me at home to tell me The Boy was having a great first day. (After I recovered from the shock and panic of seeing SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS on my caller ID, I was delighted with the news.) 

I know it could all go terribly wrong tomorrow, or next week, or months from now. All the more reason to savor it today, I suppose. And keep hoping for the best.  

Back to the Prairie

My summer reading list has been a strange combination of Aspergers this, special ed that, and…Little House on the Prairie? Not the books. Not the TV show. Books about the books and the TV show.

The best by far was The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, in which the author and her boyfriend set out on a series of road trips to visit all things Little House. McClure delves into the beloved books of her youth, examining history and nostalgia; the books’ cultural impact and wide variety of fans; which parts were fictionalized; whether the books were mostly written by Laura Ingalls Wilder herself or by her daughter Rose; the books’ occasional cringe-worthy racism and politics; the sweetness and absurdity of Little House tourism; and the author’s own need to connect so deeply with the Little House world again in the first place. Loved it.

The other two books were more beach reads and Hollywoody than I usually prefer. But how could I resist Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on the TV series? Delicious. I wish I’d stopped with that one instead of slogging through Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale, which read like a Twilight book without the vampires. Likeable enough, moderately introspective, but in the end I didn’t much care about all the boyfriends and Lifetime movies that followed her Little House career. Sorry, Half Pint.

Rather than plunge into Melissa Anderson (Mary)’s poorly reviewed The Way I See It, I’m thinking I might go back and read the later books in the Little House series: Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. I read them both during the summer between 5th and 6th grade – an awkward, searching, “crossroads” kind of time in my life for which I’ve recently, inexplicably, become rather nostalgic.

Then, as now, I was an anxious dreamer – yearning for adventures, but ultimately too freaked out by the whole business of dealing-with-other-humans to do much about it. So I wrapped myself in the comforts of bookworm solitude and the notion that things must be so much better on the prairie (or in Narnia, or Marilyn Sachs’ Brooklyn, et cetera).

The Little House books exemplified the very “simple country life” dream my family was striving for, with Emmylou Harris on our stereo and a brooder full of chicks in our living room. Reading those books was simultaneously escape and home…or escape to an idealized version of home. We already had the old stone farmhouse, the woods, the fields, the antique rocking chairs. All I had to do was glorify the mundane spaces with Laura’s wide-eyed narration; apply her pure sense of joy and wonder to my ordinary life.

That summer, as middle school drew nearer, I immersed myself even further in the Little House fantasy – imagining my shirts were long dresses, that our station wagon was a horse drawn wagon, describing my surroundings to myself in third person narrative prose. I’d read all the earlier Little House books about Laura’s girlhood. Now it was time to read about Laura as a teenager. It was the safest way to dip my toes in my own impending adolescence, wrapped in layers of braids and calico, buggy rides and sociables.

I remember holding on to the Little House fantasy well into 6th grade, willfully blurring the edges of my reality into a nice, gentle fictionalization. Maybe I was scared or overwhelmed, but I don’t remember feeling that way. I think I just really wanted life to be that joyful, instead of the raw mess of clanging lockers and flailing hormones and insecurities.

Looking at the covers of those later Little House books sends me right back there again, reading in my nightgown, yearning for my almost-teenage life to start but holding dearly to my summer. And – come to think of it – holding dearly to my childhood. Because, really, that was the last true summer of my childhood. The calm before the storm.

It’s nothing I’d ever want to relive. Yet I’m strangely, strongly compelled to revisit it now. Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for a time when I had the ability to escape and imagine. To delve into a jarring situation and soften it with idealizations and hope.

This isn’t the last summer of my children’s childhood. Not even close. But it feels like an end of sorts, at least with The Boy. I’m striving to see him, the real him, not my hopes and disappointments, not my advocacy for him at school, not the politics of Aspergers. Him.

And part of what I’m seeing is that even now, even at age seven, he’s miles beyond my grasp. I can’t impose peace and happiness on him any more than I could impose it on those noisy middle school hallways years ago. He is on his journey, not mine. I’ve always known that. But I’m only just now feeling the sharp truth of it.

Is it any wonder I find myself grasping prairie-ward again, seeking the comforts that got me through the first steps on my own path? Fasten your sunbonnets, pioneers. We’ll get through this one, too.
     

Welcome to the Cracks

Ever sit around just reading your kid’s IEP, trying to imagine how it actually translates to a happier child? And let me be clear…I’m not complaining about The Boy’s IEP. It was written by an excellent special ed teacher who was his biggest advocate and strongest support last year. She herself expressed frustration with the rigid nature of these things.

You can dictate what a child needs and what the school must provide – to a point. They can have X minutes of services here, Y minutes of services there. They can have a teacher with a special ed degree (or, apparently, a Teach for America recruit who’s successfully crammed for a special ed test). They can be in a small classroom with a high ratio of adults to students. They can have access to an aide (just hope you don’t get the bitter, disgruntled type).

It can look good on paper, but so much slips between the cracks. Because you can’t dictate human nature. You can’t dictate empathy, common sense, or even the slightest real understanding and acceptance of Aspergers beyond its stiff, inadequate textbook definitions.

Welcome to the cracks.

It would appear that I have been ever-so-slightly misled. Some of the misleading, I’m afraid, was my own doing. I was desperate to get The Boy out of his old school and into a situation where he’d have more support and understanding. So, I enthusiastically accepted a spot at our neighborhood school where, my contact from the school district acknowledged, it wasn’t exactly an autism-specific program and it wasn’t exactly an inclusion model. But she, the principal, and the special ed teacher offered enough reasons to make me believe it would be a good-enough fit, that they’d be flexible and do their best to meet his individual needs.

And who knows. Maybe it will work. But it’s not what I was expecting. For one thing, autism is a relatively new thing to this classroom. Half of next year’s students will be on the spectrum, but traditionally it hasn’t been that way. Traditionally, it’s been a self-contained classroom for neurotypical kids with behavior problems, and it’s still very much run that way – with the teacher and aides kind of figuring out how all this applies to autistic kids on the fly.

So…not an ideal fit. Hopefully not a flat-out freaking disaster, but not an ideal fit. I wanted autism inclusion. I was led to believe (and very much wanted to believe) that this program was similar enough, but it isn’t. Meanwhile, the school district wants to phase out autism inclusion programs entirely. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward, but I’m puzzling out the details of Plans A, B, C, and D right now and there are several possible outcomes. Time will tell. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.  

But in the meantime…welcome to the cracks.

We will start second grade at this school, in this program, as planned. The things I liked about it two months ago are still mostly true. And there’s still a chance that it might be a good fit for The Boy. My first action won’t be whisking him out of there. My first action will be trying to see if we can settle into these cracks we’ve slipped between and make it work for the time being. I’ll be navigating the system, but I will have both eyes firmly on the child himself. How will he thrive? What strengths can we build upon and what coping skills can we teach? Where will he find his small comforts and joys to help him through?

We made incredible progress last year. This coming year presents a whole new set of challenges, only some of which I can anticipate. Maybe someday we’ll have a school year where I can just put him on the bus and relax into my own day, but this isn’t going to be it. 

On the plus side, maybe this will be the year I earn my Ms. Special Ed Parenting America crown. Stay tuned…

Not Done Yet

“Are you done?” a friend recently asked me.

It took me a little longer than it should have to realize she meant “Done having babies.” To which the answer is simply “yes.” The good folks at Paragard are helping me see to that.

But when she first asked the question, before I knew what she meant, my first thought was “No. Not even close.”



School ended on Tuesday. By Thursday, I found myself luxuriating on our crummy old beach blanket with a fresh pedicure, watching The Boy and Mr. Black build a sandcastle while Little Girl made up a story with a pair of plastic shovels. It was a rare peaceful moment, complete with the sparkling, crashing waves of the Oregon Coast Pacific in the background.

Nine months ago we were right here on this very beach, enjoying one last adventure before the start of school. I can’t help but sit back and marvel at all that’s transpired between then and now.

First freaking grade. Who would have thought? I guess on some level, I’d known we were in for a wild ride of a school year. I’d already scaled back my volunteer duties at Little Girl’s preschool in preparation. I’d been warned by The Boy’s awesome kindergarten teacher that first grade is a whole different ballgame. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I had a vague, foreboding sense that a huge pain in the ass was in store.

The last time we sat on this beach, I had no idea The Boy had Aspergers. But I knew something was up with him, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to fix it before school started. At that point, I was still kind of hoping it would somehow fix itself. Well…it didn’t.

The amazing thing is how incredibly positive I’ve been feeling about this crazy year. And not just because we’re sitting on a beach. Even before we left I was elated, on the phone with my mother trying to explain that no, really, it was a good year! A growing year! Look at how far we’ve come:

We have a diagnosis. We have an IEP. We won over his classroom teacher – who started out the year disgruntled and overwhelmed – and watched her really learn and start to get him as the year went on, patching things together with common sense and empathy even before there was an IEP in place. We stood up to kids who picked on him and parents who didn’t want their kids to associate with him. We got him out of a disastrous reading group and watched his behavior improve dramatically as a result. We got him reassigned to a school that routinely serves students on the autism spectrum, where he’ll have the professional attention and understanding he’s needed all along. Let’s face it, people: We kicked ass!

And no…we’re not done. But it’s awfully nice, after all that, to just sit by the ocean again.



Watching my happy little nuclear family on the beach reminds me of another Oregon Coast trip a few years back. The Boy was two, and I was pregnant with Little Girl. So pregnant, in fact, that I wore one of those dreadful maternity belts under my tank top so that I could walk on the beach without being sabotaged by preggo-related sciatica.

But I was so joyful the whole time. The baby-to-be kicked merrily when her brother-to-be ran around the hotel room, as if she couldn’t wait to get out and join the party. I watched other families with multiple school-aged children, imagining ourselves in that place in a few years. There was this blissful sense of “Soon Our Family Will Be Complete.” Or something less cheesy than that. I don’t know.

And now, here we are. Brother and sister, Aspergian and neurotypical, Legos and stuffed animals. Complete.

But not done.

Drinking the Skool Aid

The worst part is, I knew better.

It’s written all over the notebook I brought with me on the kindergarten tour. I’d been skeptical when they trotted out the panel of meticulously multiracial 5th graders. I’d been embarrassed when the panel’s only white boy did all the talking, and rather amused by the touring parents who eagerly asked these 10-year-olds question after question. I sat out the excited murmuring when they mentioned 3rd grade Shakespeare plays and 8th grade homeless role-play “empathy building” activities. Even the gorgeous library rubbed me the wrong way.

I tried to explain it to Mr. Black afterwards, but he takes everything so damn literally. Gorgeous library, Shakespeare plays, great test scores. What’s not to like?

“You don’t understand,” I tried to explain. “Everyone was so happy there. So self-satisfied. Like nothing could ever go wrong there.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s good if it works for you,” I said. “But what if it doesn’t? What if your kid is in the midst of all this feel-good Shakespearian high-test-score empathy building and he still has problems and doesn’t fit in? How do they treat people who aren’t happy?”



Back then I didn’t know The Boy had Aspergers. In fact, the first therapist who evaluated him assured me that he didn’t. I didn’t know he was academically gifted, either, although I had my suspicions. Mostly, I just knew we were having a truly horrendous final year of preschool. The teacher didn’t get him. Some of the other parents didn’t even like him. There were serious looks of concern when I’d mention he was headed for kindergarten in the fall.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. That’s why I was so determined to send him to the Absolute 100% Best of All Possible Public Schools. Of course, none of the schools we toured fit that description. How could they? It’s like looking for Mr. Right. There’s no such thing. But I’d pinned all my hopes for The Boy on this notion of the Right School. I guess it stood to reason that, sooner or later, I’d have to start believing the hype.

I wasn’t expecting to get into that super-nice school with the Shakespearian 3rd graders. It’s hugely popular, open to the whole city by lottery alone. Everyone warned me not to get my hopes up. No one gets in.

Except…we got in.



I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted it until it was right there in front of me on the school assignment letter. I actually dropped the letter in shock. Everyone was amazed and delighted for us. Even our preschool friends who got into the coveted foreign language immersion school were impressed. You’d think the kid had won a full scholarship to Yale or something. But it felt so good to have people happy for us for a change. I felt vindicated, somehow.

And then…I kind of started to lose sight of reality. Somehow, I conflated all the praise and congratulations with The Boy’s actual state of well-being – which, let’s face it, hadn’t changed just because we’d lucked into a prestigious elementary school. But I couldn’t make myself slow down and see that.

There’s a lot to like about that school, for sure. It sits on a woodsy hillside overlooking Lake Union. The kindergarten was nurturing and fun. He sang in a coffee house holiday concert, performed in a shadow puppet show, participated in a salmon migration parade, sang in the chorus of a Shel Silverstein musical revue. He made good friends. He learned some sign language. He was happy and proud to be there.



But the tension was never very far below the surface. Poor little guy. It’s hard work to have Aspergers when none of the adults in your life know or understand. He didn’t need a gorgeous library or a salmon migration parade. He didn’t even need “empathy building.” He needed teachers and a staff who’d seen kids like him in action before and knew what the heck to do with it. Or, in school district lingo, he needed a “more intensive service model.” He was more than halfway through 1st grade before I finally figured that out.

Of course, these “service models” typically aren’t offered at the fancier, more prestigious public schools like Empathy Building Central, here. Coincidence? Are these schools considered “good” in the first place because there’s conveniently no room for kids like mine?

If you believe the rumors in the special ed community, a previous administration did all it could to keep special ed students out of this school. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but it would certainly go a long way toward explaining some of the cluelessness we’ve encountered there. Kind, well-intentioned cluelessness. How would you know what to do with Aspergers if you’ve never seen it in your classroom before?



Next year, he’ll attend a school that’s walking distance from our house. They have a special ed inclusion program that’s taught by an award-winning teacher. He might even be able to participate in gifted classes. If I hadn’t been so stuck on finding him the Best of All Possible Public Schools two years ago, we could have just sent him there in the first place. But our new school, for whatever reason, is not very highly regarded by parents. And again: coincidence? Is it considered “not good” because there is room for kids like mine?

Well, we’ll see. Meanwhile, at the risk of pouring myself a new flavor of Kool Aid, I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about the new school. The Boy’s excited about it, too. And yes, we know by now that there’s no such thing as the Right School. This isn’t going to fix anything. It’s part of the process, not a happy ending.

Although…gosh. After all we’ve been through, maybe for now I’d like to just imagine that it is.

Beyond the Broom Closet

“It was basically a glorified broom closet,” the speaker says, recounting her own experience as a child in a special education classroom. She describes sitting in that room day after day with the other children who didn’t fit the mold, sometimes completely unsupervised. There wasn’t much learning going on. They were there to be kept out of the way. She’s not sure, even now, why she was assigned to special ed in the first place. Perhaps some quirks of temperament mistaken for a disorder? Perhaps the fact that she was a late reader?

It’s heartbreaking, of course. Maybe a little less so in the context of this multi-speaker presentation, which is a self-congratulatory parade of our city school district’s accomplishments in special education. We’ve come a long way, baby, from those broom closets. Special ed students are in general ed classrooms at their neighborhood schools now! And the teachers (who are totally happy to have this new challenge and never say hurtful insensitive things to the kids’ parents or mistake their disabilities for discipline problems, right?) are coming up with innovative ways to nurture and teach them! We even have instructional coaches to help schools get the inclusion thing right! Except…well, we just lost funding for that last one.

Somewhere beyond the broom closets and the mess we’re in now, I know The Boy’s going to be okay. Although I doubt he’d be okay under our district’s new “Send ’Em All To General Ed and Let the Teachers Figure It Out” plan (or ICS – Integrated Comprehensive Services, as it’s officially called). No, even at our Very Special Alternative School with a truly amazing resource room teacher, it’s been a tough year. Wonderful as she is, that resource room teacher is spread incredibly thin. And the rest of the school’s teachers and staff? Variable at best. Kindergarten was great. First grade? Well…

Let’s face it: Aspergers isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like a disability. Sometimes, frankly, it just looks like a smart little boy being a tremendous asshole. Sometimes it looks like any other Lego-loving kid. He can almost blend right in.

Until there’s a fire drill. Or an unexpected break in routine. Or anything that involves handwriting or drawing within the lines. Or classmates who have figured out how to tease and provoke him without getting in the least bit of trouble themselves. Or a principal who writes off that teasing as “normal” behavior and tells me this boy – who is trying so hard just to show up every day and be at school like the other kids – just needs to learn to deal with it.

At first, I didn’t want to change schools. This is his school, I thought. You guys step up. We’re here, we’re on the autism spectrum, get used to it! Which, I guess, isn’t much different from what the school district is trying to do. Cram these kids down an ill-equipped school’s throat because, in theory, the schools should be able to handle it.

Then I learned that some other schools in our district offer a middle ground between the broom closet and ICS. They have autism inclusion programs. The kids are still in general ed, but there’s more adult support. There are more services and pull-outs. Unlike our current school, where he’s expected to blend in and see the resource room teacher twice a week, these kids are an intentional part of the community. The teachers, the principals, the other kids and their parents – while still variable, I’m sure – know what Aspergers looks like. And he wouldn’t be the only one.

I broached the topic with The Boy. How would he feel about moving to a new school next year? One where there are other kids with Aspergers, too? And The Boy – who typically freaks out at the slightest change in routine, who’d wanted nothing to do with that “highly gifted” school he also tested into – got a very hopeful, thoughtful look on his face, and said he would like that a lot.

By the time I learned of these programs’ existence, there were only a few days left in the enrollment period to make the change for next year. With help from the resource room teacher and an old preschool friend who teaches at one of these schools, we raced through the obstacle course of red tape at break-neck speed to get his paperwork to One School Board Plaza by the deadline. And now…I’m on week 5 of the 7-week wait to find out which school he’ll be reassigned to. I’m feeling exhilarated and cautiously hopeful.

Too bad the school district wants to phase out these autism inclusion programs. They’re just too broom closety, I guess. Or too expensive, maybe. I really don’t know why.

But I do know the district’s gotten a big pushback from autism parents around the city, and there’s some indication that they’re starting to at least think about listening. Although there wasn’t a whole lot of listening going on at that presentation, touting ICS’s success at a handful of schools where it’s actually working. At least the director of special ed acknowledged, with an apologetic look on her face as she encouraged us parents to keep faith in the program, “We know it’s not perfect.”

Driving home, it’s the broom closet story that sticks with me. The speaker had marveled in outraged disbelief that self-contained special ed classrooms still exist, as if we were talking about dunce caps or something.

But it’s not the self-contained part that makes it a broom closet. Those rooms have dedicated special ed teachers who see the good in these kids and help them overcome their unique challenges without the distraction of a crowded, chaotic classroom. I don’t buy the “All Education is Special” line any more than I would buy “All Doctors are Surgeons” from my health insurance company. (Not to give them any ideas!)

Throwing my boy into a general ed classroom to see how he fared was worth trying. There were definitely a lot of positives, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity. But we’ve learned that without an experienced teacher who sets the tone for acceptance, without extra support from adults who get him – it doesn’t work. Aspergers is, absolutely, a special need. We’re not ashamed of it. It simply is.

A separate program doesn’t have to be stigmatizing. In fact, I see it as empowering. We’re not slinking off in shame. We’re taking our business elsewhere. I refuse to have our metaphorical wheelchair forced up a flight of stairs when we know there’s a ramp somewhere.

And in a few short weeks, we’ll find out which “ramp” it’s going to be. Stay tuned…

Life is Like a Box of . . . Tulips

Maybe it was a rare moment of male “nesting.” More likely, some sale on mystery tulip bulbs at Fred Meyer was too good to pass up. Whatever the reason, Mr. Black spent one autumn afternoon in 2003 planting bulbs all over the front yard. Our neighbors gave us some of their extra bulbs, too.

I was pregnant with The Boy, just entering the dreamy second trimester and blissfully ignorant of so many things. I didn’t know what color those tulips would be when they came up. I didn’t know I’d be losing my job in a few months. I didn’t know our underground oil tank was leaking, or that we’d discover this fiasco mere weeks before the baby would be born. And I certainly didn’t know how intense and relentless the undertow of parenting a new baby was going to be.

I didn’t know how much I was going to love it, either.

Mr. Black drove us home from the hospital in my trusty old Volvo. I sat in the back with The Boy in his infant seat, bracing myself in terror each time we hit a bump, checking to make sure the baby was still okay. He was, of course, snoozing away with those velvety eyelids. Soon, we were home.

And there were the tulips! For weeks I’d been watching them inch their way up from the ground. Now, seemingly with the birth of our son, they’d burst into bloom – red, yellow, orange, pink, scattered amid the cool greens and greys of the shrubs and bare branches on that cold spring day. Welcome home, little baby.

Those tulips would return every year, blooming just in time for his birthday. I’d see them and instantly remember the early baby weeks: Those first tentative walks up and down the street with him in the sling. Marathon breastfeeding sessions in front of “Love Boat” and “Little House on the Prairie” reruns. The psychedelic depth and dimensions of sleeplessness that the mere word “sleeplessness” doesn’t even begin to describe. The near simultaneous waves of anxiety and overwhelming love.



With each birthday, though, we get a little further away from the baby nostalgia and a little closer to “Who is this kid and what is he becoming?” The day before his third birthday party, for example, I had to drag him out of a group playdate for ferociously tackling the other children. Before his fourth, I was getting e-mails from his preschool teacher about his aggressive behavior and tantrums. Right before he turned five, we had our first diagnosis – an incorrect one, it turned out, that only caused more confusion and worry than necessary.

Even now, knowing that it’s simply the gifted/Aspergers combo and not some demonic possession or epic parenting fail…it’s still hard to get the birthday warm fuzzies for this kid. There’s lots celebrate, of course – his joy and sweetness; his pure love of math, Legos, and any kind of building project; his burgeoning interest in all things non-fiction, from world religions to oceanography; the fun he has with his little sister.

But I’m so worried about him, too, and the worry tends to override the other things. He still hits. He blurts out hurtful observations. He delves into his interests to the exclusion of just about anything or anyone else. He can be moody and sullen as any teenager, using his sharp vocabulary to pick semantic fights with me. Sometimes I try to talk to him and all I hear is the voice of a nagging, ineffective mom with a screw coming looser every day. I’m glad we finally have access to services at the school, because much of the time I have no flipping idea what to do.

But last fall, when things were particularly bad, I was sure of one thing: I wanted more tulip bulbs. The old ones hadn’t been blooming much lately, crowded out by the encroaching trees and shrubs. And when they did bloom, that clash of colors that I’d found so charming before just didn’t work anymore. I didn’t want mystery tulips scattered all around. I wanted unique, color-coordinated tulips that I picked out myself. So, while I sat at my desk hoping the school wouldn’t call that day, I pored over pages and pages of tulips online. I studied and compared, finally deciding on a girlish cotton candy pink and a subtle, creamy yellow fringed variety.

The Boy helped me plant them. He insisted on making a pattern with the pinks and yellows, which wouldn’t have been my choice. But I let him do it anyway, because it was good to see him feeling so proud and self-assured about something…anything. We even worked it into a homework assignment about patterns, and he did a very detailed drawing of each bulb in the ground.

And now, just in time for his seventh birthday, here come my new tulips! Except…they’re not what I ordered.



Instead of the yellow-creamy-fringey ones, we’ve got these coral pink ones with pointy petals. They clash with the cotton candy pinks, which are a little more two-tone than they looked on the Web site. And we planted them way too close together. It’s not what I was expecting at all.

Well. Is any of this what I was expecting? I suppose not. Turns out those tulips are my own little version of Forrest Gump’s box o’ chocklits. You never do know what you’re gonna get, do you? I know, I know. But when real life gives you a heavy-handed metaphor like that, you take notice.

My tulips are a well-intentioned, joyful mess out there. But The Boy is so proud of them. And I’m so proud of him, quirks, challenges, and all.

He’s working so hard to adapt and cope. Think of how hard it is to change our own thinking about something (even something minor, like letting one’s partner load the dishwasher the “wrong” way). Now imagine doing it as a first grader. Seems damn near impossible, doesn’t it? But he’s doing it. I can see him putting his new coping skills into practice. Every professional he’s worked with remarks on how sweet he is, how eager to please. And they’re right. There’s a lot of love in this kid. Joyful, messy, imperfect love.

Happy seventh birthday, little boy. Let’s see what comes next.

Smart for Smart's Sake

Didn’t we just do this two years ago? Another public school cafeteria, another stack of multi-colored handouts, another gathering of fresh-faced parents with carefully prepared questions for the principal and tour guides. But it’s a little different this time. Everyone kind of looks like they just won the lottery.

There’s a cluster of moms at the end of my table who all know each other, and they’re happily – almost giddily – comparing their children’s test scores. “But what was her combined score?” Et cetera.

There’s a dad whose daughter looks about The Boy’s age. “You’re the only kid here!” the dad tells her, brimming with joy and pride…and maybe just a hint of smugness.

“No I’m not,” she says shyly, glancing around the room at the unlucky babies and toddlers who’ve been dragged along for this.

“Yes, you are! You’re the only kid who came on the tour! Want to meet the principal?”

She doesn’t.

Although the principal seems like a nice enough guy. Young. Hip glasses. Way better dressed than your average Seattleite.

He asks how many parents are here for the highly gifted program. (They call it APP – Accelerated Progress Program.) Nearly all of us raise our hands.

He asks how many are here for the special education program or whose children are “twice exceptional.” I proudly raise my hand again. Highly gifted with a side order of Aspergers. That’s my boy.

My hand is the only one raised. The moms at the end of the table giggle at the term “twice exceptional.” I raise my hand a little higher.

It’s not easy, this business of having one foot in “special ed” and the other in “gifted.” Quite the roller coaster ride. One day, I’m talking to the school’s occupational therapist about The Boy’s labor intensive handwriting. The next, I’m getting a call from the school district’s Advanced Learning test provider to let me know The Boy’s made it to the next round.

“Yeah…about that. He’s going through a lot of evaluation this month to qualify for an IEP. Can we just opt out of this?”

It was like asking if we could opt out of our golden ticket to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. She was appalled. Why would anyone want to opt out? Ultimately, she persuaded me to keep him in so we could at least have his test scores on record with the district. Besides, The Boy actually likes those tests. “Logic puzzles,” he calls them.

Sure enough, in between an e-mail from a teacher about his latest meltdown and a round of phone tag to schedule his evaluation meeting, we got this in the mail:

The Advanced Learning Review Committee has determined that your child is eligible as a student who is academically highly gifted and qualified to enroll in the Accelerated Progress Program (APP).

I’m not going to lie…that was a pretty damn satisfying letter to get. Like, Jane Austen satisfying. The kid had four years of play-based preschool, never saw a flashcard in his life, raised the eyebrows of many a judgmental parent on many a playground – and he gets into the APP program simply by being his own wonderful self. Delicious.

We had no intention of actually enrolling him. That would mean uprooting him to a whole new school. But once we had that letter…well…we might as well take a little peek inside Wonka’s chocolate factory, right?

There’s a lot of material out there to suggest that highly capable kids do best in programs designed to meet their academic needs. We’re all familiar with that trope – the smart child who acts out simply because she’s bored. In fact, The Boy complains about being bored by his school work all the time. “He probably is bored,” observed Mr. Black, an erstwhile Little Man Tate himself. Fair enough.

The school’s handouts made a similar argument, with a persuasive emotional appeal:

These children need each other as much as they need the differentiated curriculum. They need to be surrounded by other children who pursue special, often idiosyncratic interest in depth, who read widely, who see multiple sides to an issue. Without a supportive peer group, our children can experience painful social isolation and learn at an early age to hide their gifts and abilities.

Gulp. I remember feeling like that as a child. Heck, I remember feeling like that as an adult. No parent wants that for their kid.

But as I followed our fashion-booted tour guides down the halls, it wasn’t clear to me how this school would be a haven from “painful social isolation.” The playground was just a playground. The gym was just a gym. The kids were just kids. And the classrooms looked a lot like the classrooms at our current elementary school. They even use the same district-mandated materials and lessons – although a teacher explained that they provide a unique approach and go into a lot more depth than in an ordinary classroom. And, of course, they’re working a grade level or two ahead.

I asked about other students with special needs in the APP program. What was their experience like? No one seemed to know. I was hoping that at least one person would know of a classmate or parent. I was hoping for a welcoming attitude or some version of reassurance. What I got was a bunch of blank faces. Ask the principal, they all said.

He was nice. And frank. He said we could meet and go over the IEP; talk about what they’d be able to replicate at this school. There are students with Aspergers in the APP program, and their success varies depending on the kid. Some thrive. Some struggle. Ultimately, he advised, we should send The Boy to the school where he’ll get the most support.

I’d made up my mind even before the Q&A was over. Time to click those ruby slippered heels and keep The Boy at his current elementary school. We’ve had our struggles there. But he’s also made some good friends and connected with some talented teachers who genuinely like him and want to do everything they can to help him succeed. He’s made so much progress since those rocky early weeks of first grade. Might as well stick around and build on that success.

But here’s why I’m no better than those smug prospective parents on the tour: I’m just slightly – ever so slightly – disappointed that APP isn’t going to work out. There’s a small, superficial part of me that felt vindicated by the designer label, if only to stick it to all the people who’ve ever made me doubt my boy or doubt my own parenting.

I know it’s wrong. Being able to say “My kid tested into the super-giftedy-gifted school, so suck it, yuppies!” is fun and all…but fleeting and mired in bad karma. It’s only the start of a rat race I could never hope to win, because nobody wins. And it takes the focus off of my actual kid and what’s actually best for him. I know that.

Still…the external validation was nice while it lasted. I’m totally saving that APP letter.