The Small Things Can Mean a Lot

Tomorrow my son graduates from 8^th grade.

I’ve heard people my age talking about how we didn’t graduate from anything until high school, that we didn’t have dances, that we didn’t get gifts for finishing what we then called Jr. High, and that it is crazy that we make a big deal out of it now.  I admit, I have had some of the same thoughts.

Is 8^th grade supposed to be that much of an accomplishment?  Do we need to buy fancy clothes our kids will never wear again to watch them go up on stage somewhere the school shelled out big bucks for to hold the event?  Does the 8^th grade dance take away some of the specialness of high school homecoming and prom?  Are we making our kids expect gifts for every little thing they do?

I’m still very excited that my son is graduating. 

His school doesn’t have dances.  Graduation is in the lunch room, they won’t be wearing caps and gowns, and parents donated money to have a cake and sodas afterward.  My son goes to a school for children with various learning and neurological disabilities.  For us, yes, this is a huge accomplishment to be celebrated, especially because he is not attending there for high school.  We were told he is ready for, and needs to, attend “regular” high school, that they cannot provide him with the more advanced resources that he is ready for.

He went to a normal public school for all of elementary, and his “first” year of 6^th grade.  I can’t even begin to count the number of conferences I’ve had with teachers, principals, and ESE staff over the years.  Not the projects that caused severe meltdowns, the homework cried over and then never turned in, the tests failed, the being taken advantage of by other students, the notes and calls from teachers, the lies, the tantrums.  He was actually even suspended once in the 3^rd grade.

I seriously had days, tearful days, when I couldn’t imagine that he would ever make it this far.

When he came about 2 percentage points from failing the fifth grade, I started pushing.  Pushing teachers, pushing his doctor, aggressively pursuing anything I could find that might help him.  He is bright, funny, sensitive, caring, he is a GREAT kid, but all of that was getting lost somewhere, and that’s not who people saw, sometimes even me.

He started on medication.  It helped a lot at home, but at school he was still having issues, both socially and academically.  He wasn’t developmentally ready for middle school.  He failed sixth grade.

That is when I moved him to his current school.  There, he has had peers at the same developmental level as him.  There he has had individual attention to teach him in the way his brain works.  He has made a lot of friends his own age, and has had some extra time to catch up to what it is to be a young teen.  He has gotten all A’s for THREE years, with the exception of one B+.  His behavior issues have disappeared.  He recently got the student of the month award for the month that celebrated integrity.  He does his homework without prompting and in the last year, even with very little help.  He doesn’t lie to me, argue with me, and in fact he goes out of his way to help me and show he cares.  He is a pleasure to be around the majority of the time (he IS still a teenager!).  I don’t have to hide in the bathroom and cry anymore.

And I am so proud.

While we still always have to deal with some issues, he has worked so hard to overcome his obstacles, and I think he has even exceeded his own expectations.  So, I took the day off to not only attend his graduation, but to take him to do something special afterwards.  And we got him a gift.  

Graduating from 8^th grade IS an accomplishment.

That's why they have wine.  You need something to toast with.

I Don't Want Him in the Bathroom With Me

I don’t want him in the bathroom with me.  I never will. 

It’s not that I think he is a bad guy, that he is going to leer at me, or that he is going to hurt me. I don’t care what he is wearing or looks like.  I just don’t want him there.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I have a difficult enough time using the toilet if I think someone, anyone, can hear me, there is no way I could do it if he were in there with me.

I’ll hold it and wait until he is gone.  I’ll even wait till he is nowhere near the door.

Right now, some people are thinking I’m ignorant.  Or bigoted, prejudice, or hateful.  Some even construe that to mean I’m also obviously a bad parent and even racist.

No one wants to listen to my reasons, nor cares about my comfort.  My comfort is not important to anyone.  Apparently I’m so used to my privilege, that I feel persecuted when someone else is being treated equally to me, and it’s his right to go into any bathroom any time, and I just have to deal with it.

It doesn’t matter that we’ve both been using the bathroom all along without any issues, suddenly our feelings about bathrooms are everyone’s business to judge.

But, I’m sorry, I will never change my mind.  He’s not going to be in there when I’m peeing. He is just going to have to accept the fact that we will never use the bathroom together.

If you’re still with me, still reading, still think I’m an OK person, your reward is knowing that I am talking about my husband.  Those that didn’t because you assumed I was talking about something else and are writing me nasty comments and unfriending me, well, sorry you couldn’t hear me out.

There is so much division in society, so much “us versus them,” so much hate and anger and so little true caring and compassion.  We can’t even listen to each other.

Your neighbor, your coworker, your family member that isn’t just like you – invite them over and talk.  Listen. Care. Learn to understand their viewpoint.

Share a bottle of wine.  That’s why they have it.

A Shout Out To Working Moms

I don't usually give a crap about the "Mommy Wars," probably because I'm too worn out to worry about it, but today I read a blog today where the author, a stay at home mom, was "tired of being judged" because some working mom's said they envied her, and it really rubbed me the wrong way.

First, envy and judgment are not even close to being synonyms.  If someone says they envy you, how in the world is that an offense?  I'd like your life, and that makes me a terrible person?  Makes you a victim of something?  If so, I guess I'm also guilty of victimizing women with flat stomachs, anyone that doesn't suffer from acid reflux, and anyone who has hair that is not so baby fine that the only possible "style" you can have is pulled back in a sparse, pathetic pony tail.

Second, because I can afford a weekend getaway or a $300 baseball bat for my kid, is because I have a job, but that is not what all of my salary pays for.  When I say I NEED a job, it is because I have bills to pay.  Because I choose to use my college degree (the one that the students loans that paid for it were just paid off recently, when I was in my 40's) instead of working at McDonald's to earn that money, therefore make a little more of it, does not mean I'm lying.  You can't look at my new car and decide that I don't need my job.  You have no idea what actual bills I need to pay (like those pesky student loans or expensive medication for my child).  When you write a blog acting like anyone who can do more than you doesn't need a job, guess what, you're actually creating that bubble of judgment that you are claiming to be a victim of.

And lastly, yes, I do understand your job as a stay at home mom.  I understand it very well.  Why? Because I do it too, it just has to fit around that 8 hours a day I have to do my other job.  I still do laundry, buy groceries, cook dinner, clean, help with homework, take care of the pets, sew the stray button back on the school uniform, get up in the middle of the night with a vomiting child, take my kid to doctor's appointments, to sports practices, to tutoring.  I don't magically get granted a housekeeper and nanny because I work.  And you know what? I'm not going to feel guilty about that because you feel judged if I am honest about my life.  This is actually why I envy you, because that extra 8 hours a day might mean my bathroom stays cleaner or my family doesn't have to eat fast food because I have to spend that evening cleaning the turtle tank, and my son might not ever get annoyed with me because he has to wear baseball pants to his game that I pull out of the hamper.

I actually feel very blessed because my company allows me to work from my home office, so I do have the time to spend 2 hours a day in the car driving my son back and forth to school, and I can throw a load of laundry in real quick when I get up to take a bathroom break.  Most working mom's don't have that opportunity.

I have no issue with someone who is a stay at home mom, again, I would love to be one.  But for my fellow working moms, I feel your pain.  That's why they have wine, and sometimes we might need an extra glass.

Anxiety: Sometimes Its More Than Just Being Nervous

Anxiety.  We all have it from time to time.  Speaking in front of a crowd, job interviews, getting married, having a child, all of these tend to cause anxiety in most people.

Some people, however, they have anxiety about much more.  Talking to strangers, or even those familiar, can render someone speechless.  Going to a new place can cause nightmares.  Talking on the phone is something to be avoided.  Physical symptoms illnesses can actually occur as a result.  Other people often view those with extreme anxiety as weird, incompetent, stupid, rude, or “bitchy.”  All of this can cause even more anxiety.

I have Anxiety Disorder.  I was diagnosed as a young adult, though I can assure you I developed it much earlier.  Anxiety is more common than you would think in children, but even parents, not knowing it is possible for this kind of thing to happen to a child, tend to label it as being a brat.  My own child has anxiety also, and has from a young age. He is not specifically being treated for it right now, though he is treated for other issues, but if it becomes unmanageable, I will not hesitate.  A close friend recently told me that I’m probably just really good at helping him deal with it because I understand it on a personal level.

Some of the things to recognize that your child or teen or an adult close to you might have anxiety include a sudden loss of interest in their favorite activities, not wanting to leave the house, not wanting to attend social activities, not wanting to learn to drive, bad test grades (especially if they obviously know the material), unexplained stomach and headaches, extreme stubbornness, argumentativeness.  Anxiety also often occurs hand and hand with depression.  If your child or loved one appears to be exhibiting these symptoms, especially if it is diminishing their quality of life (and probably even yours), please speak to them and their doctor about it.

None of these things can be helped by yelling at your child, grounding him, or taking away items, and you can’t “guilt” your loved one into changing.  They aren’t being bad or rude or uncaring, they are truly suffering.  They need understanding, reassurance, structure, coping skills, and sometimes medication.  Yes, medication.  We don’t question taking Penicillin for a sinus infection, but we shame people for taking medication for a problem in their brain.  I have a prescription bottle in my purse I was prescribed almost 2 years ago to the day for 10 Xanax.  I still have 2 left.  When I take one, I don’t feel a “high”, I actually just am able to feel normal. We’re not just looking for drugs.  There was a time where I took 2-3 per day just to get through (and was actually prescribed 4 per day), but that was when I was still in therapy and hadn’t mastered my coping skills yet. Those same coping skills I’ve taught to my child in the hopes he will never need medication for it. 

Anyone who is a parent of a child on a baseball team Aiden has played on has heard me yell “Deep breath!” when I see the look on his face that tells me he is not feeling so great, especially when he is pitching.  That one works so well even coaches have picked up on saying it, not only to him, but other players. I don’t question him when he says he wants to eat at a table outside even when it’s 95 degrees, because I know the loud, crowded, hectic environment inside the restaurant is aggravating to him.  I try to map out our plans for the week and stick to them, because the structure and knowing what to expect is comforting (this one is not hard for me, because I need it too). This doesn’t mean I don’t try to help him overcome his anxiety, I just know what battles to fight.  There have been several occasions where I’ve told him he has to do something he obviously wants to but is afraid to do (birthday parties, joining a new team, etc), and I tell him it is because he is stronger than the anxiety is and I refuse to let it beat him.  It’s a struggle sometimes, and he may temporarily hate me, but in the end it always turns out for the good.  And he’ll be the first to tell you that. I know it works because I often have to force myself to do the same sorts of things.  

Ironically, having a child has helped me to overcome a lot of my own anxiety, because I am forced to do things for him and consult with people about him.  The discovery that singing out loud to my child in public would help to calm him was absolutely horrifying to me, but I had to face my fear and do it for him.  That one thing alone dissolved most of my self-consciousness.  As he’s gotten older, the mutual understanding between us has done both of us a lot of good.  He knows to turn the radio down and be quiet when I’m in a stressful driving situation, I know the right questions to ask when he suddenly decides he’s not going to do something he’s been dreaming about for years.

I apologize for the lack of usual humor in this blog, but to me this is a very serious topic that often gets ignored, if not slammed as something that is just a discipline or character problem.  Please take it seriously in your loved ones.

Life isn’t always perfect or easy.  That’s why they have wine.

Ironies of Life

1. Having to deal with wrinkles and pimples at the same time

2. After you finally think you understand toddlers, your child becomes a teenager

3. White wine does not necessarily come from white grapes

4. Windows that don’t open

5. Friends who think you are not accepting enough but don’t want you to be friends with someone they don’t like

6. Your kid can’t tell when the trash is full, but they are the only one in the house that can turn on the surround sound system

7. The Happiest Place on Earth makes you cry when you see your credit card statement

8. Exercise that causes arthritis

9. As soon as you feel like you’ve achieved the perfect body, standards change

10. Self cleaning ovens still require your involvement

11. Using your cell phone for hours and never speaking to anyone

12. Having 500 TV channels and nothing to watch

13. No one is alarmed when a car alarm goes off

14. Diet foods can still make you fat

15. Daylight Savings Time does not increase the amount of daylight or time.

That’s why they have wine.

I Want To Stand FOR Something

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, when it’s time for dessert, 5 order ice cream and the other 5 order pineapple upside down cake.  You have sensitive teeth and ice cream causes pain, and you allergic to pineapple, so what do you order?  Of course you order the apple pie, I mean, really, is there even a second thought?  

Why do we put less thought process in who we exercise our right to vote for than we do in picking our dessert?

While we are not yet nearly done with the primary elections, the country seems to already moved on to the general elections with assumptions of who will be nominated.  From what I can tell, neither of those people are supported by the majority of their own party, much less by Americans in general.  In fact, many people really abhor them (for good reason, if you ask me) and don’t want either as President.  However, even more, they just don’t want the other one to win.

One of the candidates is running with a campaign with talking points about making American great again and getting our country back.  I’ll skip over, for now, the fact that our country still IS great and, um, it’s still here, under American control, but you know what is not so “great” about our country right now?  That our choices are so poor that the majority of people aren’t voting FOR someone, they are only voting AGAINST someone.  Is this the best we have to offer?  Have we as Americans become so jaded and determined to tear everyone down that we’ve scared off the good people from running?

Many people think this is the election that will make some big, mostly undefined, changes for good or for bad in our country and think this will be some kind of turning point.  Those same people, they are trying to convince you to vote for the candidate with the “R” so the “D” won’t win, or to vote for the one with the “D” so the “R” won’t win.  They don’t tell you why should vote FOR that candidate, only that you can’t let the other letter win.  We’re playing middle school playground mean girl politics.

If you really do stand behind one of the main party candidates, vote for them.  If you really want to make a change the landscape of our government, and not just exact revenge on the people you blame for your misery, quit ordering the ice cream or the pineapple upside down cake just because that is what everyone else is doing, or because that friend who talked behind your back ordered the opposite.  There are 3^rd party candidates.  Look into them.  You might find that one is everything you are looking for.  If people quit analyzing what the person sitting next to them is choosing, the apple pie just might be the most popular dessert on the menu.

We’re told that voting for a third party is a “wasted vote,” but if you ask me, voting for someone you can’t stand just so someone else doesn’t win is wasted freedom. 

Stop giving your freedom away.  I know I won’t.  That’s why they have wine, because a glass tastes even greater after you’ve done something you can feel good about.

Shades of Gray

Life isn’t black and white.  I think that’s why they made color TV, so we could see all the nuances.  If only we could train our brains to see the colors.

Politically, I’m a bit towards the conservative side, but I don’t always agree with the conservative view (as my conversations tonight could certainly attest to).  I consider myself Libertarian as that is the political philosophy that seems to most align with my beliefs, but even then I don’t always agree.  I look at issues, and decide for myself what I think of them individually.  I don’t care if there is an R, a D, or neither next to the name of the person proposing a bill or running for office.  I have MY beliefs, and I really don’t care what organization endorses them.

Tonight I was discussing the elections with friends, friends who for the most part share most of my beliefs.  On a few issues, however, we certainly are far apart.

One of those issues was immigration.  I do believe that we need to control who comes into our country, and stop illegal immigration.  I do understand that most people come here because they are looking for a better life.  I do think that if you chose to come here illegally, it is not right to have you stay here ahead of those that went through the legal processes, in fact it is insulting to those who came here legally.

But I also believe that there is space between the black and the white.  Every rule has an exception, and we need to be able to account for those.  We may cheer at the notion of building a wall and somehow miraculously rounding up thousands of people in a few days and sending them back to where they came, but we’re not actually thinking about reality.

What do you do with the child who came here as an infant with parents that came here illegally, and obtained illegal documents, who 40 years later has no idea they are an illegal citizen?  Yep, you can be like some people I talked with today and deny that scenario ever happens, but that doesn’t help the thousands of people that the situation likely actually applies to.  Yes, some people come here for “handouts” or because they are criminals, but most people, just like your ancestors, came here because they wanted a better life than they could have where they came from.  So that child who is now 40, with a family, friends, job, and productive member of society, who only knows what it is like to be an American and has no life  their native country, what do you do?  Do you just tell them, “Too bad, so sad, you will be out of here tomorrow,” or do you give them a chance and a window of time to gain citizenship?  Sure, there is bureaucracy involved in helping them stay, but there is in kicking them out too.

And don’t even get me started on how we supposedly need to keep out all Muslims because a handful of them might be bad.  Wasn’t freedom of religion one of the things this country was founded on?  Should we make sure to ban all people from countries that have any Muslim citizens, wouldn’t that make us stop immigration altogether?  Yes, I understand that there are terrorists, and some of them are Muslim.  Some of them, however, are the sons and daughters of lily white people who have lived here in the United States for 5 or 6 or some number of generations.  Yes, we should vet people who choose to come here, but banning entire nations of people also bans the people who are escaping persecution from the same people we are trying to protect ourselves from.  And maybe I shouldn’t mention that a certain charismatic, egomaniac leader already tried this with another religion.

Things aren’t always black and white.  Building walls is only an attempt to hide from our problems and pretend they don’t exist.

If you really want to make a difference in how your country is run, choose a leader who will let all American’s have a voice by allowing our government to work as it is designed, and not someone who will dictate by executive order to only represent either their party or just themselves.  And when you have an opportunity to vote locally, for local and state government and your representatives in the house and the senate, take an hour and Google, see what your candidates stand for, and vote for those who represent what you think.  If you want to see real change, the congressional level is key.

In the mean time, I’ll listen to people explaining why they are voting for a President because they don’t like Congress, or because there is a certain letter next to their name, or because they believe our Constitution is something to be ignored if it gets them what they want.

That’s why they have wine.