Oops! My brain just exploded.

Whoa.

Did you guys read Shannon's post yesterday? I mean. Dude. Do you love her forever right along with me?

I couldn't write myself, as I was attending a three day conference called Parents Encouraging Parents put on by the Colorado Department of Education. It is for parents and support people (teachers, various kinds of therapists, educational advocates, doctors) involved in raising children with disabilities and exceptional needs.

It was seriously and in all honesty one of the best things I have ever done for myself as a parent, ever. I learned so much, and I got to stay in a cushy hotel room in Breckenridge. I had a beer or two. And I felt so in tune with 100+ people in the same room with me and at the same time. That's saying a great deal for me.

My brain is processing. Unfortunately for you, dear readers, you will be getting numerous posts on this conference for the next few days. I'm going to chew this sucker over for a long time. So, I have to move to the meaningful but trite... They read this to open the conference, to a packed house of dewy eyes:

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
byEmily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy.
But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

November the Two

Okay, so I join NaBloPoMo. Then, I force my best friend, who is also doing the whole NaBloPoMo thing plus writing a novel and sometimes she is the mother of three children and stuff, to guest blog today. I am going out of town for a really good reason, it's all kid centered and education-y. I'll tell you about it on Saturday...

So, Mr Lady, Guest Blog. Guest Blog like the wind.

For the Kid: How I met your mother.

Dear Kid,

Someday you're going to be all grown up and scientificating and stuff, and you're going to stop one day in March; you're going to get a call from your mom to pick her and her best friend up from some whiskey bar at 3:29 am because they're all shnockered and can't drive. And you're going to wonder how your lovely momma got tangled up with such a weird woman. Here's how it all happened.

One day, a girl from Illadelphia hopped on a plane and became a girl from Arvada, CO. Her evil step mother wanted her to go to Pomona High School, because that's where she went, but her father realized that Arvada High School was, like, 4 whole steps less to walk to and sent her there. This girl was very nervous, and totally scared, and started the second half of her junior year at this new school filled with dread.

A week or so later, the girl that sat across from her in the world's least informative Chemistry class, a girl named Caty with the best bangs the world has ever seen (and she still does), looked at the girl and asked if she was from Philly. The girl answered that she was, and Caty said she was from Pittsburgh (GO STEELERS). And that was about that. A day or two later, the girl was sitting alone at a lunch table in the back of the cafeteria, and Caty came over and asked the girl if she'd like to come sit with her. The girl did.

This, dear Kid, is one of the moments that completely changed Auntie Mr Lady's life. In a school cafeteria. You never know when it's going to happen.

At Caty's table sat a boy named Scott, who auntie Mr Lady ended up dating for 3 1/2 years, a couple other assorted people who stayed friends with me throughout high school, and your mother.

One day, your mom came over to my house for a visit. She walked in and said something I will never forget. She said, "I love coming to your house because it's always messier than mine." That day, I smiled. For the first time in a very long time.

Your mom and Caty were totally BFF's in high school. I was really close to another girl, and the four of us sorta ran together. We had lunches together and hung out after school together and there were weekend trips to Boulder to mingle with the hippies and listen to Big Audio Dynamite on cassette. There were Lollapalooza concerts, odd tasting brownies, school musicals and loads of silly Monty Python jokes.

I used to hang out at your mom's house a lot, because they let me and I liked it there. Your aunts were almost never around, but when they were they were hilarious and older and COOL. Your meemaw, well, she's the nicest woman alive. She was comfortable to be around and I'd never seen a mom who was nice and pleasant and relaxed before. I kind of leeched myself on to your family, and they kind of let me, and it was lovely.

And then, one other day, your mom and I were in the hall at school and got to talking about something or the other in the VERY SERIOUS department. We ended up gushing a whole bunch of secrets that I think we'd never told anyone about before. We had THE MOMENT.

I graduated high school; your mom and Auntie Caty and most of our friends still had another year. I got a job, and bought a car, and had a boyfriend, and was totally busy. I didn't see an awful lot of them. And then they graduated and went off to college, and that was that. Your mom and I kept in touch as best we could, which wasn't very much at all. Your mom totally came to my wedding, though, and so did Auntie Caty, and I'll never forget the look on your mom's face when I asked her to be my maid of honor. I'm not sure she realized before then that I was hopelessly devoted. And then your mom went off to Ireland. And then your mom met you.

I remember being at your baby shower and all of your mom's college friends were there, and I was pregnant with 2of3 and really upset that night. It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong with me that day, but I think that it had a lot to do with seeing your mom in a new light. She wasn't the cheerleader from high school anymore. She was a woman, with an incredible mind, a great education, loads of swanky friends, and now about to start her own family. And Auntie Mr Lady is a great big insecure scardie-cat, and I thought I was losing her.

And then, one night, after a great big todo, you came into the world, and into her life, and into mine. I came to meet you and I brought your mom the only gift i could think of, Guinness and Marlboro Lights. I looked at you, and looked at your mom, and I saw forever. I saw watching you grow, and watching your mom raise you, I saw myself playing some role in that. I also saw the Guinness and the Marlboro's in that picture, but that's a grown up story.

So far, so good.

So, Kid, when you get that drunken call in the middle of the night, you can blame Auntie Caty. With one random moment of kindness, she gave me the best gift I've ever gotten ever. I will never, ever be able to repay her for it, but I'm always going to love her for it. And you can blame yourself, too, because this thing, this mothering together, is the whole reason I met your mom in the first place, and I know that now, and if it wasn't for you we wouldn't have the perfect perfectness we do.

Again with the Harry Potter

This is my first post of National Blog Post Month, wherein I have decided to torture myself and write a blog post every day of the month of November. What was I thinking?

But, being November 1, I must take the easy way out: Happy Halloween.

The Kid, again, went trick or treating as Harry Potter. If you need proof of how freakishly much this child has grown in a mere two years, you need only look below and then click here and here. Same costume. Not exactly the same Kid.

So anyway. Harry Potter. He plays with his Halloween costume and Harry Potter accoutrements year-round, so I totally manipulated him into being Harry Potter again. He was thinking about costumes of other [mostly lame] stuff like Pokemon and Superman, but I told him, "Dude. If you are Harry Potter again this year, I'll buy you a Firebolt." And ding! Harry Potter again. My philosophy? If you are going to spend $25 (or more!) on your kid for Halloween, make damn sure there will be full-year use of the costume.

Plus, he's just such a good Harry Potter.

Bipolar is so five minutes ago

PREFACE:

I've been writing this post for over a month now. See, the thing is, when I write about my feelings regarding diagnosis and psychiatry, my opinion changes constantly. If I don't publish as soon as I write? My mood, my opinion, my knowledge about the subject, will change. So. Here's a highly UNFINISHED post about how I feel about the high incidence of bipolar in children, which hit the airwaves in a big way about a month ago...



So. The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children. Two weeks ago, I linked to only one of the many articles that have been appearing in many news outlets in the last couple of months, outlining a recent report on the increase in the bipolar diagnosis in children. I asked you to read it, and promised an opinion at the end of that day.


Um, well, you see... I've been distracted.


Nothing is going on, in any historic sense. I've been working on organizing my DVR for the fall TV season, doing homework with The Kid and getting attacked by my kitten. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Also, my sister had a baby. And my best friend came to visit. And I find this difficult to get out because my mind changes often.


I've also had a difficult time organizing my thoughts in my response to all of this talk of childhood-onset bipolar disorder... Believe me, I think about this stuff as much as a 17-year-old boy thinks about sex (which is sad, I admit), but actually getting it all written down has been a feat lately.


See, I've come a long way on this 'coming to terms with having a child with difficulties' thing, and I've just realized that fact.


I've been blogging for two years now. I started right before The Kid started Kindergarten, when I knew the shit was just about to hit the fan. I knew public education and The Kid were going to bump heads. Sure enough, the first day, I went home in tears. Not because I could not believe my baby had gotten so big that he had started school, but because I knew that his personality, behavior and social skills were going to present issues. Two months later, I shelled out the money for the big neuropsychological testing and he was given a diagnosis of bipolar, more technically 'mood disorder, not otherwise specified, on the bipolar spectrum.'


I honestly didn't expect a bipolar diagnosis. I've written this before, but my boss's son is was diagnosed bipolar at 7 or so. I was conversant with it, but didn't think that was what was going on with The Kid. I wrote this post, then, terribly confused about the DSM-IV criteria. At that time, The Kid had certainly displayed every possible ADHD symptom. The 'mania' symptoms, however, we had not seen the majority of. The 'depression' symptoms, we had seen none of. But at the same time, my difficulties with my son had a name. We identified something, we could set a track and a plan. I was relieved with that. Over the intervening years, I've joined support groups and now moderate one online and see this reaction by parents all the time. A confirmation that it is not just your parenting skills, or the amount of TV you let your child watch, or the myriad ways parents of children with emotional/behavioral disabilities are made to feel inferior as parents, or, not just inferior, but to blame for every action their child makes. It is a huge weight off of one's shoulders.


I never thought I'd give The Kid medications for behavior at all, let alone at the age of 5. I had the sneaking suspicion of ADHD for many years, and believed that there were accomodations and diets and supplements I could give him before I moved to psychiatric medications. But here's a fact I can't shy away from, and that my e-friend Philip will find interesting: With the diagnosis of bipolar, it seemed as though he had more of a disease. A disease that nothing but meds would fix. And it would mean a lifetime of them. And at that time, that was okay, it was something that, if we just found the right combination of meds, we could solve, and The Kid would be alright.

Then last year, he was given a cocktail of meds, Concerta and Risperdal and Depakote, that shot him straight into the most unstable mood and behavior I've ever seen. He developed tics, he didn't sleep, he was so physically violent I was scared for his safety, mine, my family's, the school staff's. He was kicked out of public school.

At the time, I thought, poor kid. He's SO sick with bipolar.

We hospitalized him. He was inpatient for 10 days, and in the hospital's day treatment school program for four months. During that time, the psychiatrists there started saying, it might not be bipolar. It might be autism.

The paradigm of moving from a mental illness to a developmental disorder is huge. It moved me out of a 'he's sick' frame of mind into a 'he needs skill development and therapy' one. It took me out of the thoughts of 'thank god for these meds' way of thinking and into one that questions his need for them, for the long term (he certainly needed something when he was in the hospital, if for no other reason than to reverse the effects of the risperdal and the concerta, which were horrible). His current psychiatrist, who I trust a great deal, supports us in this new way of thinking, and is helping taper him from the three highly active medications he's currently on.

And yet, I'm convinced that the autism thing, Pervasive Developmental Disorder and/or Ausperger's, is yet another misnomer for him. Some of his behaviors fit their categories, and many do not. He misses social cues but he is not un-sociable. He perseverates on things, but not in an overriding way (perseveration is concentration on one thing, and is typical of autism... An autistic person may know every fact possible to know about baseball, for example. The Kid does not do that in a universal way, but he does immediately perseverate: He wants to play with someone, or something, and must do it NOW!!!! and won't take no, or not now, as an answer, and this is not necessarily being bratty, it smells of obsession with the thought to do whatever it is he's perseverating about, if that is even the correct term, but I digress.)

But, read around the internet just a little bit, pay attention to the newspapers and the news broadcasts that continue to be on and around us all of the time, and you will see a change going on with the idea of what a bipolar child is. It is a misnomer. A bipolar child today may not grow up to be a classically bipolar adult, and therefore, it is not the right thing to call a child. It's a simple as that.

And so, doctors need a new diagnosis to name for these defiant and difficult children. In our case, it's shifting to autism. The funny thing is that I'm far more comfortable telling people that The Kid has a diagnosis of Autism than I ever did telling people about the bipolar or even ADHD. I think this has to do with all of the awareness campaigns and Jenny McCarthy, and even the gorgeous girl on America's Next Top Model. Autism is the thing to talk about now.

But I think it's another misnomer for The Kid specifically, but only time will tell.

Dear Universe,

Thank you.



A year ago, The Kid was struggling with sanity, going into the hospital, and I was in survival mode such that I had a million emotions all at once, and yet none at all (which is to say I cried all the time but I couldn't tell you what I was thinking, at all). Never in a million years did I think that exactly a year later, I would have a new person in my life to put so much hope and love and receive so much joy and optimism. My baby neice was born yesterday, a perfect 6lbs 5oz of babydoll bliss and soft skin and coos and sweet baby head-smell. She is my sister's, of course, my sister who also happens to be my best friend and finest confidant. The joy, the optimism, the hope of a new baby. I couldn't ask for more.

And as far as my message to Baby Q goes, I must say, Thank you. Thank you for choosing my sister and my brother in law and my neice and nephew. Thank you for coming. Oh, and as The Kid and Kurt Vonnegut like to say, "Welcome to Earth." You know all of the secrets of the universe right now, and will for about three more days. Can you please tell me some of them?