a not-quite Christmas Eve post

*grin*

Its not just a question of religion that keeps me from joining the NoN (Naughty or Nice) adherents. I'm one of those people who will look at a filthy, grinning urchin - preferably one holding some crucial bit of electronics that, oh, probably used to hook up to other bits of electronics in some necessary fashion - and say, oh, but no child really wants to be bad.

I'm sure they don't. I'm also sure that occasionally, the evidence may be against me. And I know that some of you are nodding wisely, and contemplating those moments when my own offspring have provided that evidence. He'll have the shortest criminal career on record, said the Grandmere. The Toddles looked up from his delighted recitation, blinked and wisely made a break for it. He'll turn himself in, just as soon as he's committed the crime, she murmured. And in fact, his brother had done much the same.

um.

Dunno if it's naivete or really, really poor memory that has them telling me their tales of evil genius, but hey, I do love that moment when I'm really, really not allowed to laugh. Still, because I'm a loving mother, and because the NoN database would eat my guys aliiiiiiiiive, I propose a different metric: Gets It or Not. Because really, if you are going to be naughty, you must be committing a deliberate act or misdemeanor - and I'm not sure my guys are reliably equipped to recognize the misdemeanors until a frothing parent is looking around for nicely aerodynamic objects. Or possibly until after.

(Again, the evidence may be against me here. Some of which we scrubbed off the walls just this morning, but hey.)

In the hopes of persuading the Powers That Might Be of the usefulness, or at least the entertainment value of this new approach, I offer some evidence that may or may not incriminate my children. Or their mother.

Eldest:

When it comes to this kid, he absolutely Gets It, assuming that "it" involves an inanimate object, written or calculable. (okay, maybe.) But he does not get Girls.

Yes, please note the capital "g" because oh, baby, here it comes: someone has a crush on our lad, and boy does he not get it. It's come in stages: last spring, he noticed that his female friends were much less fun to play with when they were together.

I don't know how to play those games right, he told me. What games?

Games pretending to be a family, or other people, he said.

Ah. And now, here is a girl who is metamorphosing into the more complex Girl, and he's even more baffled. She's my friend, he told me. It just means that she's a friend, he told the classmates teasing him about the crush. Maybe she's looking for more than simple friendship? I suggested. The Eldest looked at me, mildly irritated. She is a FRIEND, he said, and huffed exasperatedly.

Right, then.

Toddles:

To ask whether this kid Gets It or not, you need to first figure out whether he lives on the same sphere as the rest of we mortals. I'm not entirely certain that he does. Or that, if he does, the time and space match is quite right. Or something.

Oh, no! I say to the Toddles, we need to have left four minutes ago. We have to hurry - we have to go. Appalled, I begin grabbing more or less randomly for clothes and shrieking quietly about the lack of breakfast in my mornings. The Toddles, entertained, pauses at the top of the steps and watches.

What are you doing? I say, hitting a distinctly coloratura note. The Toddles looks at me, surprised. You have to go and get your shoes on! Your jacket! Your mittens! The Toddles meditatively strokes his favorite raggedy sweatshirt, and waits. NOW!!! I shriek, and the Toddles realizes: oh.

Before you ask, no, checklists mean nothing. Except to the Eldest, who very much does Get mornings, and takes checklists/maternal notes/time, space and all that jazz oh-so seriously. Dressed and packed up, the Eldest runs around in a near-panic, trying to suction his brother into a jacket, insert sibling feet into shoes, lunchboxes into bags. And his brother grins, loving the new player in this odd, morning game, while I irritate the dog next door. Cheerful ditties and sayings about "ready for the day before you play" merely entertain the Toddles. And rewards are a cruel tease for a child who wanders through the morning, cheerfully certain that all of this bustle is someone else's problem.

(I might possibly be jealous - but then again, I'm fairly certain that the someone else is, alas, me.)

But for all that the Toddles does not Get It re:mornings, perhaps he Gets one thing - he has, he informs me, a girlfriend. Oh, I said. Who? The Toddles grinned proudly. Girl Adorable. She's my special friend. I grin back. I can deal with that, I told him.

The Eldest, bustling through his morning routines, paused, shook his head at us, and kept moving.

Driving to school, late for the nth time, I make a mental note: yes. Boo to NoN - and yes, to my poor, straw GIoN, we're wallowing in the process.

Coming Soon: the Eldest kicks some process tushie, and we all follow him

oh, la difference kicks some heiny

If you haven't met this blogger yet, you might want to reconsider: I just read her latest post, and it left me thoughtful. And appreciating what a doctor has to do, in the face of a patient's need.

Oh, my.

But I digress. (go, digress. I'll wait.)

**********************************

I cannot help but muse: one of these years is not, thank heavens, like the other. This time last year, I was wrapping up homemade yumminess for the boys' teachers. It was chocolate chip granola bars last year, and the bittersweetness, the splintering care to teach the Toddles to say thank you, even to the teachers who'd tried, but ultimately failed him. "That was good, the Toddles told me." And, picking my way between pride and sadness, I agreed.

But now, I think: kid, we had no idea.

That was my kid at the Chanuka celebration last week, you know. Mine, shoveling in potato and applesauce with the rest of the pack, singing the funny verses to I Have A Little Dreidel, and thankfully, without the potty humor. Mine. And absolutely, positively safe in a roomful of munching, belly-filling kids. Because the food is safe.

Because the teachers - and the school - gets it.

So, this year we said thank you again, and we did it in style, baby. We did it with sparklies.

The boys made necklaces and bracelets for their teachers, and I had a ridiculously wonderful time talking with them about the colors their teachers wear, what kinds of people their teachers are, and then, oh my goodness about design. Even the Toddles was happy to think about symmetry, and his second necklace was a two thread, three bead design: small black bead, chunky red bead of various types, small black bead. Knot. Switch to the other thread, and repeat. He laid out his beads in advance, considered how best to balance the various shapes and sizes of the red beads, and then patiently threaded and knotted.

See?

And nobody splintered - but my heart was very, very full. For this, as for so much else, I give thanks. Except, possibly, first thing in the morning, when I realize that I have to get the kids out of the house and to the car, and for some reason, this is going to take well over an hour and all of my patience.

But yes, we gave thanks. The Eldest, to nobody's surprise, muttered something about basketball until I mentioned that we could use stone beads. The kid loves stones, filling his pockets with the muddiest he can find, certain that each is enormously valuable and beautiful. He rummaged happily among the stones, and started jamming them on. Um. Not that he shouldn't do it his way, but, well -

I handed him a printout about Morse code. Design, I told him, is code. Sometimes the message is a feeling, or an idea. Sometimes, it's literally words.

And the kid took me up on it. He designed an organdy and cord necklace of unakite, jasper and hematite, of which the stones made perfect sense for my young miner-in-training, but the ribbon was an unexpected touch. And a nice one. And he arranged the stones in a code, to spell out his teacher's name.

And so, we gave thanks. You know, the Toddles' teacher whispered, fingering her necklace, just getting to have him in the classroom is thanks enough. My throat filled, swelling with old splinters and newer joys. I couldn't get the words out to tell her that she was absolutely right.

This year, it feels as if we'd lit our menorah in the midst of memories of desecration and betrayal, hopeful but not letting ourselves rest on that hope. And slept, only to wake and find it still burning, ruthlessly pushing us past sharp memory and into what comes next.

Wishing you all a season of light, joy and shared tables.

plundering buckets

Of course, there's a story - but most of it is in the letter I carefully didn't write, so I think you're probably up to speed. Fill in my face, trying for calm, reminding myself that if I listen, he will talk, and if I shriek, he'll stop.

(Listen, woman, listen. Oh. And try not to laugh out loud, 'k? Because damn, when my kid decides to get himself tossed out of class, he does some very fine work.)

So, I listened. And I asked him about the teacher's response, looking to see if she gave him warnings (she did), used teamwork to help him change course (yep), and how quickly her head started revolving on her shoulders (inexplicably: didn't). Oh, and how much of each happened before the kid ended up a. in a quiet corner before being b. tossed out and c. talking to the head of the lower school.

Who, to her credit, responded by beginning a revamp of the class that the kid despises. Which I find kind of staggering, and more evidence that the kid is luckier than he knows: I was all in favor of a revamp of the kid. Possibly involving a welder, definitely with some wicked wrench work. Because here's the thing: insofar as I can see, every kid has a quota of Crap You Can Pull, which is dipped out of their Effort You Can Require of the School bucket. And I'm worried about his.

This isn't a question of being a class PIA, it's a question of needs. And this isn't just a question of going to a private (read: teeny religious) school rather than a public one, it's a practical matter. If you have a kid in your class who needs, needs, needs and then some, at some point when you look at that kid, you are going to feel pre-steamrollered. Teachers can give, and the good ones give a hell of a lot. But kids need to give back, too, refilling the bucket - or things can get strained. And strained means that there's less resources left, should you need more, simply because you are dealing with human beings. A long list of needs means that there's less left for that individual to give, because again, you are dealing with human beings.

As I might possibly have cause to know, human beings get tired. Possibly, if you are a mama, that's when you hear that vicious little snap! and begin roaring with all the love that you can muster in the midst of end-of-ropeness. There's a reason why the Short Bus parents talk so much about being tired. But I think about managing 24 kids, their needs and habits and personalities....and shudder. Because to each of their parents, every one of the 24 isn't kid, but rather Kid. And we expect the teachers to think so, too. At the Eldest's little school, we are certain that the teacher must think so. Thus: tired.

We've worked hard to expand the Eldest's EYCRS limits, mostly by being nice people and the best teammates we know how. And we try to refill that bucket by telling his teachers how much we appreciate them, and yes, I'll admit it, by making our by-now famous cookies. (At the Big Meeting before school started, the head of the lower school asked me for the recipe...having been given a tin of these the previous winter. Who knew?) I communicate whatever I can, as best I can, and do a careful if slightly desperate dance between working on the Eldest's interests and maintaining relationships. I actually like the people I'm working with, but it adds an odd flavor to really need them to like me back. In a public school, maybe I could afford to be more of a bitch, or maybe to do less baking. Have fewer meetings.

Maybe not. Because at the end of the day, there's still that bucket, limited in size by the humans toting it around.

So, here's the deal: the Eldest uses EYCRS resources by needing a little extra watchfulness, for his hemophilia. He uses a lot more for his food allergies, which slide themselves into class trips, the Head of the School's beloved squash project, Thanksgiving celebrations, and oh, just about anything Israeli/Jewish and involving food. (Ah, tahini. We meet again.) And he requires more because he tends to feel awkward in social settings, and his response to this is clowning around. Which is lovely in a classroom, dontcha think?

(more on the social thing in another post, but the short version is, unexpectedly: shy)

And oh yes, he uses more EYCRS because he's smart. Not the next Einstein, no, but can do sixth grade math smart (if I explain - okay, look up online - words like "mass," and "factors" to him). It sucks right now that the math problems that he's getting are chock-full of vocabulary that he doesn't understand, or skills that he doesn't have - like drawing a family tree - and so he gets stumped. And frustrated, knowing that part of the problem is something he could do, if he could only reach it. Does his brain fire like that in other areas? I'm not sure. But the kid drew Moh's scale of hardness for me the other day, explained it, and I thought that was pretty flaming awesome.

But hey, I'm his mom.

He's got buds in this wierd, fiery learning thing - a classroom of them, all delighted to learn and alarmingly good at it, in their various ways - and they egg each other on. The school, we're told, is both stunned and tickled. And they're throwing resources at the kids, but still, there am I, asking them to adjust to my kid's quirky levels (because there's never just one level for a kid, they vary by subject, y'know? untidy, that), and drawing on the EYCRS. Because heaven help us all if he gets bored. Trust me on this one.

So when it comes down to it, kiddo me love, you've got too much going on to be pulling more out of the bucket. It's unfair, but that's just how it goes. Can you talk to us, work with us rather than getting wired up and achieving new heights of grinning, PIA kid-ness? We-ell, maybe. The Eldest is blessed with two teachers of an admirable degree of probity and sense of humor, one of whom is openly fond of him. And who tossed him out into the hall. I asked him, she said on Friday, if he could work with me, so that he could make a good choice. I explained that he was not making good choices, she said, and sighed. I dropped my head into my hands. Not again.

I know the answer to the teacher's question: I'm sorry, the Eldest told me recently, but I really just can't. I looked at his earnest face, had seen his efforts to work with me on a calming technique, and I knew he was telling the truth. And it hurt to watch him run out into the hall, jumping and twisting so that his body bounced off the wall, mid-air, land and run on.

He can't help it. We've done testing (more on that later, too), and we know that sometimes, he really can't. Still, the kiddo wants to please the adults, he wants to do right, but it feels good to be ramped up, he told me. And he can't - yet - ramp down without my help, and he certainly doesn't understand why he has to. And I know absolutely and with a fierce pleasure, that the bucket doesn't mean crap-all to him.

And honestly, it shouldn't.