Success!

Raising a child with varying emotional and behavioral diagnoses is a challenge, no doubt.  Actually, raising any child is a challenge...kids who have different disorders just take a different path.

Sometimes, depending on the disorder, the path goes up mountains, down through valleys, crosses oceans on a rickety boat and requires tremendous skill and dexterity.  Other times, it's like skipping through the park.  I think when you're used to sailing on a rowboat through a hurricane, you're so much more thankful for those days you get to skip through the park.

I actually shouldn't call it days, because with my son, it's often moments.  We have skipping moments mixed with mountain climbing followed by swimming the English Channel and finishing with watching the stars.  You just never know what life is going to bring with that kid.

Today we had a wonderful skipping through the park moment.  I'm so thankful for that, and for him to experience that success.  He came home from school and announced that his dad and I would be proud of him, then produced two school papers that had been graded 100%.  Yes, I was proud (insanely proud, actually, because although he's incredibly bright he struggles to interpret information and get it on the page accurately).  But more than my own pride, I was so pleased for him.  The sound in his voice--that he believed in himself--was worth a million bucks.

I've blogged for over a year now about our lives...how much this child struggles, my fears and dreams and wishes and goals for him.  His fears and dreams for himself.  A year ago he was in a residential facility, struggling with daily living and making appropriate choices that should have been easy for a child much younger than him.

And today he brought home two 100% papers from school.

God is good and we are blessed.  My son is an inspiration to me, and I'm so proud to be part of his journey...no matter where it takes me.

Gratitude

This morning I had a meeting at my children's new school regarding my son's IEP.  There apparently had been some confusion and the school was "unaware" that he had an IEP.  I could launch into an irate tirade about this, especially considering we gave them a copy when he was enrolled, but I won't.  It's not really what I want to write about.

The woman I met with was very nice, and it was the first time I had ventured into this particular school.  Considering it's very large--four floors with eleven hundred students--it seemed new and clean and well-organized.  Everyone was polite and pleasant, including the security guard (security?!? yikes!).  Overall, I got the impression that it's a decent urban school.

Afterwards, I came home and took my dad to the grocery store.  He likes to shop on Thursdays because he gets a senior discount, and so off we went to his favorite store.  He usually uses a motorized cart these days, as he can't stand for very long without fatigue in his legs and pain in his back.  So I basically followed him around, helping him find whatever was on the list that he couldn't reach.

We came home and I unpacked the groceries, checked my email and message boards, and began to write this blog.  In another fifteen minutes,we're off to the neurologist so she can monitor how my dad is doing regarding his gait.  He has had difficulty with walking and balance.

This time in his life is difficult for everyone.  It's hard to watch people you always saw as being strong and competent slip into a level of no longer being able to care for themselves.  But one of the life lessons I'm learning is to enjoy the time I have left with him.  No day is one to take for granted.

We might have months or we might have years.  Either way, I'm thankful for his good days when he's sharp and can joke with me and carry on conversations.  I'm sad for the days when he can't and devastated for the days that bring increasingly more tests and more serious prognoses.  But we've got each other, and that counts for something.  I'm thankful for that.

Life Lessons

Okay, so it's been forever and a day since I last wrote on this blog.

Life's a funny dog.  This has definitely been a year of upheaval for me.  A year ago, my son was in a residential treatment facility and we were dealing with the ramifications of that.  I was loving my job and busier than ever at work.  My daughter was struggling in missing her brother at home.  My husband was working part time while looking for a job in his field.

Now I've left the job I once loved, moved halfway across the country to live with my aging parents and help care for my father, who is pretty ill.  My husband and I are both currently unemployed but both kids are doing better than ever.  Weird.

Oh!  And who could forget...on the fringes of my life, my love for all things Criminal Intent, and a year ago when the series was massacred with a quick, unceremonious exit for my favorite detectives.  Now both have signed back on for an eight-episode final season.  It's like the TV gods smiled on me.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, I just know it.  I'm still figuring it out.  But here are some of the things I'm learning.

1.  Never underestimate your kid.  Just because he struggles in one setting doesn't mean he'll struggle forever.  And kids can rise to meet some amazing challenges if given the opportunity.

2.  Never pass up time with your loved ones, even if it's painful.  I'm well aware every time I look at my father and he's having trouble walking or remembering things or performing basic functions, that he is in the process of dying.  I know it, my husband knows it, my mother knows it.  I'm not sure he knows it, though.  But every Tuesday he and I have a lunch date, whether he's sharp as a tack or having trouble recalling what's going on.  And I know that when the time comes, I will cherish those moments with him.

3.  Don't underestimate yourself.  In this job market, I took a job initially that seemed safe and I had done it before.  It was during the second day of training that I realized how much I had changed in ten years and how unhappy I would be trying to return to myself ten years ago.  I ended up turning down the job.

4.  Don't be too picky.  On the other hand, I'm so incredibly ready to get back to work.  I miss being useful, being involved.  Finding something useful to do with my time is critical to my well-being.

5.  Nobody's meant to cocoon for forever.  Just as butterflies metamorphose, so do we.  I spent three months holed up, depressed and trying to come to terms with the changes in my life.  One day I suddenly realized I was free to do whatever I needed to do, and what I needed was to get out and breathe.

6.  Family is everything.  Both extended and nuclear--family means the world to me.  I love my kids and my husband tremendously.  As difficult as all these changes have been on all of us, I feel so blessed to have made the changes with these people.  That despite the fact that I'm far from a perfect mom and wife, I have three wonderful people who love me and I adore them, more than ever.

7.  Everybody needs space.  I thought at first it wouldn't bother me at all to live with my parents again.  I was helping, right?  What I've learned is that everyone gets annoying after awhile if they're too close to you in proximity.  A separate home is a top priority as soon as we can do it.

8.  It is absolutely possible for hell to freeze over.  After all, Goren and Eames are back on Criminal Intent.  Need I say more?

Alternative Jobs and Criminals

Well, it's another Monday, and I am working while watching Criminal Intent.

How is that possible, you ask, puzzled expression on your face. People go to work to work.

Well not me!

After applying and applying and hearing nothing from one too many jobs, I decided I would have to make my own opportunities, and have done so. I'm opening my own business that will include, initially, an e-newsletter (subscriptions are ten dollars a year), a blog, and training materials for child care centers. I set today as my first day of work, and I did so. I worked. I began my blog, posted it on facebook, sent notices to some of my friends, and can't wait to see what happens.

Ironically, after making the decision to start my own business, I got a call the other day for an interview to adjunct at the local community college. Hopefully that will pan out well for me. I have been surprised by how much I truly miss teaching in a college setting. As much as I miss working with young children, I almost think I miss working with college students more.

Obviously, I didn't choose this so I could stay at home and watch Criminal Intent. But it's been a rough weekend, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't glad to be able to work at my own speed while watching my own eye candy.

My son has had a rough couple of weeks, and is struggling with the transition of our move. Heck, I'm struggling with it too. I was thrilled, though, when he came home on Friday and announced he really likes his new school. It was what I thought would happen, and what I believed would happen...but hearing it from his mouth made it worthwhile.

Well, if you're reading this blog and you want to check out the new one, feel free. You can find it at www.jumpingbeankids.blogspot.com. Hopefully it will be my opportunity to affect my little corner of the world in a positive way.

Doing Good

One of the best parts of my last job was all the wonderful people I met on a regular basis. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day about how I feel like some sort of "mama" to my former students at times. It's amazing how we mature over time, and how the people that I saw entering my courses with enthusiasm and a desire to conquer the world are now teachers, mothers, wives, and all around amazing people. I love to hear what they're up to, to share their joy as they marry or bring a new life into the world. It's exciting to watch their children grow and to see them accomplish their professional and personal goals.

One of my former students, Kellee Tomlinson, is one such person. She and her husband Doug set a goal to be missionaries to Thailand. They have been working doggedly on planning a successful mission trip to serve the needy in Thailand--including opportunities for education. I first met Kellee several years ago as an undergraduate student in one of my classes. Quiet but thoughtful, it was clear that she took her responsibilities as a student very seriously. I had the opportunity to coteach with Kellee as she advanced in her program and found her to be a dedicated, impressive young teacher who understood the developmental needs of children and held herself to a high standard to challenge them.

Kellee and Doug are making tremendous progress toward their goal of moving to Thailand. I admire their tenacity and dedication tremendously. I see so many of my former students doing good in this world, making a difference in the lives of children both locally and around the world. What we put out, we get back.

Recently, in my own search of where I'm supposed to be going professionally, I was talking with Kellee and trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Our conversation gave me fire and encouraged me to start my own business. I asked Kellee if it would be okay for me to link her Thailand missionary information to this blog, and she said yes. She and Doug need support in many ways. Even if you are able to send your support through prayer, it is greatly appreciated. If you'd like to read more about what they're doing, click on the link. (This is my first attempt at linking anything, so hopefully with my dear husband's help, we shall be successful!). You can also look them up on facebook: Tomlinsons to Thailand.

It's often said that students are inspired by good teachers. I would argue that teachers are also inspired by good students. And we're all inspired by good friends. Here's to Kellee and Doug and their little boy...and the great changes this family will bring to the world.

Tomlinsons to Thailand

Enjoy!

Listen up

I am currently writing this from my bed, where I do a good deal of my writing. Unfortunately, this time I'm in my bed because I feel like somebody has stretched me on a taffy machine, kicked me in the gut, and stuffed a worm in my ear.

This is my fourth day going on feeling like crap. It started out with general muscle discomfort, which I'm used to. I have some muscular issues that flare up from time to time, and so I initially wrote it off as that. Then I started to get tired. As in, no energy to do anything tired. As in, if I didn't know better I would think I had mono tired. Hot and cold flashes accompanied this...for five minutes I was burning up and then I thought I was in the tundra. Then I started having stomach cramping and nausea. The muscle aches continued, along with an unrelenting headache on my right side--the same side where I have muscle pain in my neck and shoulder. The final straw was when I woke up from an unintended nap this evening with the imaginary worm in my ear. I hurt. And nothing was making anything better.

So I threw on my shoes and asked my husband if he'd take me to the urgent care. He agreed and fifteen minutes later, we were at the urgent care our family uses the most. Unfortunately, we had arrived twenty minutes before they closed, and the doctor wanted to send us to another urgent care that was open later--my guess is because he knew I'd need labs drawn. Practically in tears, I agreed, because I just wanted to see somebody. If you've ever been incredibly uncomfortable for days, then you know how it feels. At that point I was willing to do just about anything for some relief.

My husband took me to the other urgent care a couple miles away. After a short wait, I was taken to the back, weighed and measured (I still don't understand the necessity of this unless it's for medication) and put in a room. A very nice lady came and drew labs on me, explaining that they wanted to check for infection and make sure my electrolytes were fine, since I had been so nauseated. After that, I waited. I watched a doctor help three other patients, two of whom arrived after me. I tried to take a nap but my body hurt too much. Finally a doctor appeared and asked me what was going on. I explained my symptoms to her, and she explained my bloodwork was fine so I couldn't possibly be sick.

Now--if you are a doctor, or you know a doctor, this is a key point--if a patient is telling you they feel like shit, chances are they aren't lying to you. There is Something Going On. Whether you can identify it in a CBC panel, who knows? But most people don't make random trips to an urgent care center at eight p.m. on a Friday night so they can toss a hundred bucks in the trash can. Or because you, the doctor, are cute and adorable. In this case, the doctor wasn't even male, so she wasn't my type anyway.

She checked out my ears, one of which I was holding because of the pain, to tell me everything was fine. I explained again that everything most certainly was NOT fine...I am holding my face for a reason, and it isn't because I'm planning to be photographed. She admitted I could have some sort of infection in my inner ear that she could not see. Hmm...possibly???

Since everything else seemed to be a no-go, she insisted on testing other things, of which I won't name here, but trust me when I say it's nightmarish to me and all of it came back negative. She came in and announced everything was perfect, I was fine, and if anything, I might have a minor stomach virus. Then she gave me three medicines--one to help with stomach cramping, one to help with nausea (which apparently works in exactly 23 minutes--who knew) and another to deal with the potential ear infection. Nothing for muscular pain or discomfort, nothing to help me sleep or make it through the next several days until this bizarre thing goes away. I was so incredibly frustrated I was crying when I left. If nothing else spoke to that doctor, my tears should have been a clue.

And this is what they should have said: Hey lady, LISTEN TO ME. I'm your PATIENT. I didn't come here for fun. I came here for relief. I'm telling you I'm in pain, and more pain than you're giving me credit for. You have a responsibility to run tests and interpret results. But you also have a responsibility to ME, your PATIENT. You have a responsibility to listen to me. When I tell you I've been in constant pain for four days, that I can't get comfortable, that I can't eat, that my head hurts and my ear hurts and I'm coughing and feel like I've been hit by a MAC truck, that I'm doing downward dog to relieve the muscle pain throughout my body, you have a responsibility to do more than run a blood test. At the very least you have the responsibility to listen and to help me find out what is wrong...and if you don't know, to send me to someone who might.

I'm a teacher. Part of my job is listening to nineteen preschoolers about what's important to them. What is funny, what they want to do, what they're trying to do, what's not working. Another part of my job is to listen to their parents--about their worries, their hopes, their dreams. In my last job I also listened to college students--their goals, their successes, their problems. And we worked together to make those things happen successfully.

Perhaps it is this drive in me, this need to help people meet their goals, that causes my lack of patience with those in other professions such as this woman tonight. I cannot stand a doctor who doesn't listen to what I say as a patient. My last doctor, before I moved, was fantastic. His philosophy was that I knew my body, and he knew body processes. His job was to educate me so that we could make decisions together about what was best for my care. His approach was refreshing and very rare. I never felt like he didn't listen to me. I never felt like he glossed over things I felt were important. He set a high bar, and this urgent care doctor fell extremely short.

So all you people who work with other people out there, like I do--LISTEN UP. Part of your job is to LISTEN. Whether you work with a two-year old who's mad that he can't have the broom in dramatic play or you're talking to an adult who's come in with acute pain, you'll learn a hell of a lot more--and be a hell of a lot more effective--if you shut up and LISTEN. Put down your test results, your assessments, your holy grail to unlock what's going on, and LISTEN to the person in front of you. You might just be shocked by what you hear.

And maybe the person you're talking to might help you find the answer.

Moving on

So this has probably been one of the most difficult summers on record in a long, long time.

First, I quit a job that I had absolutely loved. Until six months ago, I never imagined leaving that position. I was happy there and knew I did good work. It's funny how life can turn things on its head so quickly, and how isolating those experiences can be. By the time I quit my job, I had come to the conclusion that it truly would be best for me and my family if I were to resign. It was not something I ever imagined I would do, but here I was, doing it.

Then we moved across the country. Fourteen hundred miles, to be closer to my family. Well, we're close all right. We're currently living with my parents. So far that's going okay. There's kinks that have to be worked out, but so far it's been livable. Definitely better than what we left behind, anyway.

Out of fear of having to COBRA our insurance, I accepted a position with a company I had worked with previously. I started that position last week and found that things have changed a LOT in the last ten years, both for the company and for me. During our first day of orientation, after child abuse prevention training, several of my new coworkers got into a discussion about how hilarious it was to beat their own children, and as long as they don't leave marks, it's okay and funny. Many went on to describe how they hit their kids, to the cackles of one another. Anyone who knows me can imagine how disgusted I was by the end of that day. One of my children has special needs, and the children in this program were there because they were considered "at-risk" due to a variety of circumstances. THESE children are the most challenging, and if you routinely can't come up with anything better for your average child than to "beat" them, how in the world will you handle a child at-risk--or a child like mine, who's more challenging? Needless to say, my time at the job ended that same day.

So I'm still looking for a job. My kids are going to be enrolled in the public school system shortly, and school starts in two weeks. We received standardized testing scores on my youngest child, and she scored advanced in nearly every category, showing a particular penchant for math and science. She'll fit in well here, because those are the areas this school system pushes tremendously.

My son is still homesick. He's thirteen, probably one of the harder ages to move anyway, and is struggling with ADHD and depression. His ADHD is more noticeable some days, as he has trouble controlling his impulses and making good choices. No amount of talking seems to help sometimes, and the frustration of seeing your child make the same mistakes repeatedly is hard. My husband and my parents have been tremendously helpful in trying to provide consistency and appropriate consequences when needed.

I do believe my son has a variety of diagnoses that work together to make life more difficult for him. But ADHD seems to be the one that is most in our face these days, the one that never lets go and makes our lives difficult. His boundless energy is hard to harness. His inability to calm down after exciting experiences makes it hard to take him places. His naiviety and immaturity, mixed with the average thirteen-year old attitude of knowing it all is a constant concern to me. When I hear him talk as though he knows it all and dismisses what we say, I actually rejoice in thinking he's acting like a typical kid his age! But his inability to discern realistic scenarios from unrealistic ones concerns me. He believes most anything other kids tell him.

One of my biggest challenges personally this summer has been trying to move away from thinking in diagnostic terms when it comes to this child, and to look at him as a person, and deal with the behaviors that come our way appropriately. I'm extremely analytical and want to compartmentalize his behavior. His inability to discern reality from fantasy, for instance, could be due to fetal alcohol syndrome. His constant movement, ADHD. His up and down mood swings, bipolar disorder. All of these disorders, along with many others, have been tossed around and even listed as positive diagnoses for him. But none of it changes the fact that at the end of the day, he's not a multitude of diagnoses--he's a thirteen year old boy, who's been moved away from his world, and is struggling to make a new world work for him.

Moving is hard. Last week I spent the majority of the week in heartbreak, crying off and on, over leaving the job I had loved. You see, last week I would have gone back to work, to the same pattern of things that I had done for the last ten years. Things I knew and loved to do. But instead I didn't...instead I found myself in a new teacher orientation with unsavory people who think it's funny to hit their own children.

Any move is going to have missteps. I keep my fingers crossed and say my prayers that we have fewer missteps and more finding our way. In the end, I believe in my heart and soul this was the right path for us...and I hope in the end, my son will too.