2012...OVER and OUT

I’ve never been so sick of anything in my life. I will elect to take on a month long flu, a canker sore and a yeast infection, all at the same time, just to have it over with.

Please, please election…BE OVER.

Let me get to the inside of that cramped, well constructed voters booth, with that beautiful red white and blue curtain sewn by somebody’s grandma, before I SCREAM.

Quickly…let me vote for the lesser of two evils, let me get to that crisp November day were I get to cast my vote AGAINST somebody instead of  FOR somebody.

The worst part for me, is not listening to the candidates, but the public reaction to them. We could go around and around forever. Our tongues falling out of our mouths, shriveled, dehydrated.

In a nutshell, they are both wrong. They both lie. It is Hollywood folks. Not real politics any more. Running for office used to be a pain in the ass, not a privilege for the wealthy.

Designer dresses, the ‘right tie’, prescreened questions, millions of dollars wasted on advertising. These are not campaigns. They are public and privately funded scripted documentaries of two men, with large, stroke thirsty egos, who have more money than the rest of us.

The casualities of these types of performances are visible in all of us. We slowly want to choke the life out of each other. We, as human beings, have become less and less tolerant of each others beliefs, feelings and needs because how on earth could someone not have the same views as our own?!

As a registered independent, I have to say, I hear the most shocking side of this coming from the Liberal community. Insinuating that someone is literally unintelligent, dumb, because they would check a Republican box is devastating to me. To hear someone say, if you vote a certain way, then you have no right reaping benefits from the opposing side is simply ridiculous. We ALL reap benefits from each political party. That is what we have here in America. It’s called a Democracy. The more that we exhibit less tolerance for the other side, the quicker we wind up in the shitter. So smarten up.

In addition, associating conservatism with racism or sexism, is dangerous. Not all people who chose to vote republican are old, white, intolerant men. If you think this, you are ignorant.  

On the other side, Conservatives need to advance their views on social topics and it’s time to really, really, truly separate church and state. It is unconstitutional to deny anyone the right to marry. Go ahead, argue it with me nicely. It is simply unconstitutional. I don’t care what your religious beliefs are. This is not church. Reactions and interpretations to religious beliefs are responsible for more of the hatred in this world than any other belief system. And please, please never tell me again that a single mother, two mothers, or two fathers can not raise a loving, intelligent, caring and responsible child into adulthood.

When I was a young mother, like a lot of young mothers, I became an at home sales representative. Pampered Chef, Bath and Body Works, Tastefully Simple, etc. became a monthly entry on my calendar for attending at home parties with my friends. As a representative selling home goods and wares, every year during the month of October, we would give away starter kits (normally it cost $99) to those who were interested in becoming at home sales reps like myself. We would have a serious increase in the amount of those joining us, because of the free starter kits, but those women would have the lowest success rate. That was because they had no monetary investment in their “business” so it was easy to walk away from. Sometimes a hand out is not the answer.

Our government has to stop the hand out. Welfare is great when it works. But when it is abused, it hurts everyone.

I have worked in the healthcare field now for over 15 years. I am still to this day astounded by the number of people who present proof of state or federal aid to pay for their visit after watching them park a luxury vehicle in the parking lot and walk in holding (with their perfectly manicured nails) a venti cup of Starbucks, the kids passing their time in the waiting room playing around with their very own iphones. You would think I would get used to it. But I don’t.

That is a broken system.

I have stood in line at the grocery store and at convenient stores and watched many patrons pay for alcohol and cigarettes with a card that our taxes pay for. Broken.

When you experience financial hard ship, what do you do? Keep spending? Bail out your friends? Send donations to other countries? No, you tighten your purse strings, stop eating out, shut off the cable, no more coffee at the drive through. If you don’t bother, than you can’t cry about it. And the last thing I as the person in financial hardship should expect, is for others to bail me out. Learning and working through hardship creates strength, innovation, perseverance. 

Those that are born into situations that are not on equal ground with the ‘rest of us’, deserve the tools to help succeed. Proactive tools, not just reactive tools. Help others to help themselves. Stop supplying and start teaching. Stop the act of teaching and learning  to rely on the supply (hmm, that rhymes).

For those of us fed up by all of the back and forth and not embedded in one party or the other that will probably never serve us to the fullest, get motivated. Change comes from within the soul of a person who is frustrated with their surroundings, do we really want to pigeon hole ourselves into only believing one set of principles or the other. How narrow minded. Make change happen, don’t just wish for it.

And more importantly, what about friendship? Does anyone out there really want to insult or hurt a friend because their views on politics are not in line with their own? There is a reason that many of us don’t like to talk politics and religion with our friends. Or even strangers. Don’t hurt the people who are your lifeblood over something so insignificant as a candidate for President. Instead of badmouthing, log off of your computer world and get out there and hold a sign for your favorite candidate, bake some cookies, or go for a long walk.

So come on November 6^th 2012, let’s get here and be done.

 Just in time for the world to end.

The Journey of Will...So Far.

**By no means does anything written in this blog insinuate that medication is a wrong choice for any child or adult. In fact, I have witnessed many amazing occasions where medications have worked wonders for people. I am not clinically trained in any medical field. I am just a Mom who will always be an advocate for my kids. The needs of every child are very individualized and vary from person to person. This is just one story.


"He was kicked out of preschool today." My husband looked up at me as he twirled his spaghetti on his fork, wide eyed. He scoped out my face for any indication of a smirk or any trace at all that I was joking with him and when he realized I was not kidding, said with half a laugh "What did he do?"

He knew about our son's preschool teacher's repeated concerns about how our son "Will" (I'll call him) was relating to the other kids around him. Mrs. Carpenter had pulled me aside at pick up on more than one occasion. "Will has trouble if he is not first. He has to be first in line. First to sit down in reading circle. First to get his snack. First for just about everything." I knew this already. The first day of preschool, he actually melted down right on the school black top because other children had beat him there and he would not be the first one in the classroom. I sat with him crying on my lap as he reduced himself to a small puddle. I soothed him and held him as the other parents and preschoolers stared at us as they filed in with the excitement and nervousness that is the first day of preschool. After what I felt was a suitable time, I told my son that it was time to get up, dry is eyes and get ready for school. He could not always be first. He was angry at this, but I explained that it was not possible to always be first. That he had to get used to second, third, fourth and last when it came to his peers.

This was an integrated preschool. Done by lottery. I loved the idea. My son would be going to school with a mixed classroom of children his age, some of whom were not 'mainstream'. Blindness, severe autism, cerebral palsy. I thought that this would be a great experience. I wanted him to know that everyone is different. Everyone has challenges and individual needs in their learning process and in life and I was hoping he would develop a keen sense of this. What I failed to recognize is that my son would indeed be special needs.

The day that I got the phone call that Will had to leave preschool and never come back, I had picked him up amidst a frenzy in the classroom. A boy, "Josh", that had had a meltdown and thrown a bin of Lego's all over the floor, was sitting off to the side, rocking back and forth and smacking his own head with the palm of his hand as his aide picked up all of the Lego's and put them back. I found out later that this was the fourth time in a 3 hour period that this had happened. At 3 1/2 years old, shortly after the second Lego incident with Josh flailing and throwing Lego's, my son had decided that he did not want to sit next to Josh in reading circle. He announced this out loud. In his little mind it was probably for self preservation for fear of being beamed off the head with a Lego or a fist. But this was unacceptable.Very hard to explain to a small child. I felt terrible for Josh.

Mrs. Carpenter called and regretfully informed me that Will was not welcome back. I asked her if she thought that maybe my Will, had special needs of his own due to his inability to understand some social queues. Her response will forever stay with me. "Probably, but we have reached the special needs quota in this classroom." I have never forgotten the tone in her voice. Very flat and cold.

A close friend of mine, who had twin boys the same age as Will, and who were also in the same preschool class, wrote me a letter a few days after Will was asked to leave preschool. Her and I had coffee every Friday and playgroup with a gaggle of kids and their Moms, but felt I needed a letter for some reason. It's basic message was that I needed to seek out direction from my pediatrician, because in her opinion (she is a nurse) Will may have ADHD and that my parenting style was not going to work on him. Our Friday coffee thing ended shortly thereafter.

I scheduled an appointment with my son's pediatrician, who I love and trust with every cell in my body. He and Will got along great. They joked and laughed at every appointment. They had this funny repore, Will giggling through any visit he had with Dr. O'Neil whether it be sick or well. I told Dr. O'Neil what had been going on and my concerns about some of the things that we had been noticing. I gave him the example of one day when Will asked me if he could see a box of 1000 toothpicks that was up in the cupboard, which he had asked about before. There were 4 different colors of toothpicks in the box, red, blue, green and yellow. Part of me wanted to say 'No' again, but this time, I was curious why he was so drawn to them. I joked internally that he secretly wanted to impale his sister with them while we all slept. Will responded with "Because I want to put them in order." I let him sit at the kitchen table while I prepared breakfast. I told him he could absolutely not stick them in himself, his sister, the dog, me or anything else and he giggled and said "Why would I do that?" For the next I-don't-know-how-many hours, Will sat with all the patience and precision in the world as he lined up, in a perfectly straight line, and by color, all of the toothpicks on the kitchen table.

Dr. O'Neil looked at me with all the care in his face that I needed and put my concerns to rest with this: "Lisa, he just marches to the beat of his own drummer, that's all."

In first grade, things kicked up again. Everyday that I went to pick up Will at the end of school, his lovely teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, would have appeared to me to run what I will call a 'mental marathon'. Hair disheveled from trying to pull it out, tired eyes, lacking in spirit. I knew that look was from Will. As she confirmed I was right, my concerns came back again that Will was floundering. "He can't focus, Lisa. He challenges me on everything. It's a long day." He was all I knew. My first child, my heart, my boy.

So, we decided to have him tested. And the short of it was, we found out that he fell on the Asperger's spectrum.

Following this news, I made an appointment with one of the top specialist in New England for Asperger's. We waited 3 months for the appointment. On the day of the appointment, we walked in, Dr. Specialist observed Will for 5 minutes, asked me some questions, and then in a heavy Austrian accent said "No, he does not have Asperger's Syndrome. He is a spirited child."

So, I grabbed onto all of the information on how to best raise a 'spirited child'. I read books, took parenting classes, asked a lot of questions. Some of it I believed, some I did not. I filtered through what felt best.

Side note: When Will was born in the mid to late 1990's, I worked for a pediatrician. I saw a huge influx of kids coming into the office with parental complaints about behavior issues. ADHD diagnoses were on the serious rise along with other hyperactivity disorders. Medication was regularly being prescribed. Through comments made by the doctor's and nurses' that I worked with, I devised that while many of the kids with the diagnosis were warranted, there was a large percentage of parents that wanted their children medicated despite the doctors urging that this was not necessary. ADHD had become a catch phrase that a kid with behavior issues or the inability to focus was tagged with. Some not suitably so. Some really did need it. Again, I am not a doctor. Just an observation.

In Elementary school Will was challenged. He had trouble reading. His spelling was horrific. Will's grandfather is dyslexic and I believe my husband went undiagnosed, so I knew what was coming. He was coded in Reading Comprehension and given an IEP (Individual Education Plan). He also was taken out of the classroom each day to meet with a specialist and a small group of his peers to help with his social interaction. At every IEP meeting that I had, every teacher, specialist, and counselor repeated their concerns over Will's inability to stay on task. In one meeting in particular, his reading specialist got angry at my refusal to seek out our options for medication for Will. I had the utmost respect for everyone that my son came in contact with. They were all incredible! She knew that she could push me on this topic and I was fine with her expressing her level of concern. I explained my position and feelings about Will to her like this. "He is all I know. I like his personality the way it is. Challenging does not equal a problem for me. I don't want to dull him. He is who he is. I will not medicate to make things easy. I think he can stay on task and focus if he is interested (toothpicks) in something. Will has to be taught through all of us how learn, that's all. Sorry if it's not easy guys."

He was not tortured, he was oblivious and having the time of his life. He really was. He was unfazed. As he grew older, his meltdowns had stopped and we noticed that things just kind of rolled off his back. He had learned to persevere, because my husband and I had taught him the value of that. He was enrolled as a student of Tae Kwon Do, and that had done wonders for him. We knew competitive sports were not a good idea for Will, but a sport that challenged the individual would be right up his alley. He would eventually earn a second degree black belt. So I knew Will could focus if he was interested.

In sixth grade, Will was taken off of his IEP. He is not an avid reader and never will be, but he can read well. He is a poor speller. He will struggle with foreign language, as it is hard for a him to understand words that he does not have in his arsenal already and how they relate to one another. Sometimes he is quirky. Awkward maybe. I notice that when I use sarcasm he somtimes really studies my face for a few extra seconds before he reacts.

On the other hand, he is an honors student. Today Will is a sophomore in high school with a busy schedule. A linebacker on the Junior Varsity Football Team. His coach pulled me a side recently and told me that Will has the biggest heart in a young person that he has ever seen. He's not the most skillful football player, but he is a team player. Will is an actor. He has been in 12 plays and can memorize a script or song in no time. By the time one of the plays opens, he knows everyone else's part, too. He hugs me almost everyday. I bug him like a mother does, and we dance with each other in the typical teenager and parent hoe down, but he is never disrespectful. Sometimes I think he is more mature than me. He is a leader and one hell of a salesman. I refuse to play Monopoly with him as he is vicious. If he acts like a know-it-all, I still put him in his place. The last time we had to ground him, was in 6th grade. He is sweet, caring and a great conversationalist. He has many friends, yet has no need for the typical clique safety net. He will go to a play that his fellow theater friends are in and sit in the theater by himself. He does not care what others think about him as he seems very comfortable with who he is.

Sometimes I wonder if Will would be a better, even more comfortable version of himself if he was medicated. Would things not have been such a struggle if we had tried it. I think part of him is the struggle. He learned to cope and adjust. We learned so much from taking a different path. I would assume any path would have been a learning experience. Will is exactly who he should be and I couldn't be prouder of him.