Effectively Nudged.

Okay. So. Um.



The other day my sister told me I needed to update my blog because my last post was just not 'me;' in short, it was overdramatic, it was depressing, it was eeyore. Things have not been good. I do not have time or energy to give an update quite yet, but since Mr. Lady tagged me for a meme that will talk, however obliquely, about how I blog and what I struggle in attempting to write this blog, it's kind of a perfect seque. I'll try to keep out the overdrama and the depress-ment.



How long have you been blogging?

Just under 2.5 years.



What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?



My friend Matt emailed me during the summer of '05 that he was starting a blog about food and wine, which is his thing. This would be my first visit to blogger-based blogs. I didn't read a bunch of them, or even think about writing, until the end of that summer and the shit started to hit the fan with The Kid. His preschool staff said he was too energetic and too hyperactive to fit into preschool anymore, just two weeks before Kindergarten was set to start. I knew I had a battle, I knew my brilliant child was a square peg, and Kindergarten was going to be a circle hole, and I just wanted to diarize it. And so Soapy Water started, during that two week period where I took a lot of time off of work, for the first of many times I found myself without childcare. While my views on what's going on with him have changed STARKLY since this blog began, I'm happy to have the blog to look back on, a document to my work on his behalf. Me (and my family) have been the only consistent thing to stand by The Kid these two and a half years of his very rocky education, and while my conclusions have evolved, the way I approach problems (critically, with much ire), has not changed.


I sent an email sending out the link of my brand spanking new blog to my bff and a few other friends. She wrote me back that she, uh, had been writing one herself for about six months. Here's the link. Go check it out. So, she didn't make me want to have a blog, as I didn't know hers existed until after mine did, but she made me want to write for her. She's the best, yo.



Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?



Is what I do fun? I think this is the problem lately. I do not make a dime off of this blog. No ads. No point. No traffic.



What 3 things do you love about being online?



1. I have connected with people that I know well, better.
2. I have connected with people that I don't know at all but are similar to me, or have perspectives I wouldn't have known about or considered prior to the blogging.
3. Primal scream. I've written some really angry posts in my day. I've also written thought processes out so that I can sleep at night.



What 3 things do you struggle with online?

1. Actually writing the blog. When life speeds up, and I have more to write about, I tend to post less.
2. Overdocumentation. I know that I am the only person who is actually interested in the ins and outs of everything I think about. In general. In relation to The Kid and The Kid's education, I think I tend to go overboard with details of his school issues, to the point that no one will read this but a person who loves me very much and wants to read our updates, and/or someone who is searching for answers to the same questions I'm asking, or teachers. I think. No one else wants to read about a mentally ill kid. Rarely do people even want to even acknowledge they exist.
3. This is not a fun blog. I used to write about funny stuff, about how The Kid's challenges were beautiful and entertaining somehow. But lately, not so much. Life is heavy, and so are my posts. I want to lighten things up, but I think so seriously, and this subject is so very serious, that the posts end up sad, troubling, troubled.

I should so know better...

...than to be optimistic...

In real life, I really do say Dude this often.

Question: Gee, Molly, you've been notably absent from the internets lately. I mean, you've been logging in to facebook to play scrabble and whatnot, but no blog posts. What gives?

Answer: Dude. So much is going on. Too much, in fact.

Question: Like what? A fabulous vacation? A new hunky love interest?

Answer: No, dude. It's like I've traveled back in time to that one time The Kid was going to hospital school and my mom had eye surgery. Remember? I'm saying this because these exact things are going on right now. Again.

Question: Dude.

Answer: I know! But, apart from my mom and her retinal detachment (which we believe is going to be fine, she's just not seeing all that well yet, so we've moved house and home and cat over to her house to make her coffee and clean her house and wrestle in her bathroom*), this is all ultimately for good, and will have good results.

Question: So, putting The Kid in the hospital for school is a good thing?

Answer: Absolutely! His school was just about up to their ears in The Kid's horrible, difficult mood that is a direct result of his withdrawal from the biggest mistake I've ever made as a parent, Abilify (a psychiatric drug which is supposed to make children with various psychiatric and developmental disabled diagnoses less self-injurous and labile, but in The Kid did, um, nothing except make him gain 50 pounds). So, he was slowly going off of this med, and believe me he is not a dream to be with those first 7 days after a lower dose, and the school is on their last nerve, and while I agree they had every right to complain, they were kind of out of ideas for new interventions... Or at least, they weren't taking my suggestions and don't want to shell out the money for a 1 to 1 paraeducator for The Kid. Also, the class is too big and the teachers are stressed. Yes, it's all true. However, The Kid was not in the classroom for more than 70% of his days, and I just decided that he needed to finish out his last withdrawal period (HE'S DONE WITH THE ABILIFY!) and he needs to be assessed by the best. We need some new recommendations for helping him with his social skills, we need some new recommendations for how to help him focus when he avoids doing his work (we need to figure out what's going on in head that makes him avoid doing his work, first of all), we need to figure out why he behaves like a holy terror in school but not at home, we need to meet with someone regarding diet and supplements, and/or other alternative therapies (yes, the hospital actually has a clinic specializing in these things ready to meet with us and make recommendations. I may just be gluten free shortly, dude.). Most importantly, we need to see what he's really like without being given atypical anti-psychotics.

Question: Will he look different?

Answer: Well, physically, he's already lost three pounds. I do suspect we'll see different behavior. What it will look like, and how we should deal with it now that I've made my decision regarding certain medications, I do not know.

Question: Anything else going on?

Answer: Not really. I'm taking care of my mom, who rocks, taking care of The Kid, who also rocks, driving a lot (because they moved the hospital 20 miles further from home), which sucks, taking partial FML to do all of this, which also sucks but also, secretly, kind of doesn't suck. Seriously, a 30 hour week is just about ideal for a working mother. I can work, cook AND clean. Anyway, this doesn't leave me much time to do much of anything else, short of scrabble on facebook. Oh, except that I met about 40 other moms like me and I joined a supersecret club, but really that's just my business and not the business of the internets. However, if any of them read this, Hi. I'm so glad I found you.

The End.

*That would be The Kid and I. My mom isn't so much into the wrastling these days. Or any days.

All you need is an hour and an internet connection!

Please follow this link and watch the Frontline documentary, "The Medicated Child." I offer it without comment. Please do watch it and let me know what you think.

how could so many docs be soo wrong?

Quickly, and from work.

The NY Times has an article up today about how the use of antipsychotics is not proven to reduce irritability and aggressive and violent behavior in people with developmental disabilities and the elderly, as it has been widely, and off-label, prescribed. The study blows up the assumption that these drugs help, at all, not to mention their addition of troublesome side effects such as weight gain, diabetes, tardive dyskenesia. The drugs used in the study were Risperdal and Haldol, but the study concludes that the entire class of anti-psychotics can be brought to the same conclusions.

But the routine prescription of the drugs for aggression, they concluded, “should no longer be regarded as a satisfactory form of care.”

How could so many people get this so horribly wrong? Greed? Why were such studies not conducted before this? Before the Zyprexa lawsuits and my own son's 50 pound weight gain and absolutely no reduction in troublesome behavior? It kind of makes me sick.