Clawmarks

"Trust me" vanishes as soon as it leaves your lips, and reality
creeps in. If only I could stretch those words out forever, like a
shield. Momentum is in our favor, but it's the only thing that is,
and the storms are strong with no signs of stopping. The most
determined child's "momentum" is reduced to a stumble in a
hurricane, before she is swept away.

Would you fight for me, plant a flag and validate my footprint
on your heart... say "She was always here. She belongs here.
She is part of who I am"? Or will you let me go to dust,
replaying the memory of me as proxy, a mirage, refusing to look
too close?

Tell a joke, laugh, smile, flip the hair,
<pause>
smile again
Tilt the head with mild, friendly inquisitiveness
Studies in friendliness, well-received, good likeable girl

Platonic ritual dance, well studied, often rehearsed
divulging nothing of the dark space behind where
electronic shocks shoot out
at the first sign of connectivity, warning! Warning!

Girl in a box, pleading to be seen,
well trained rat-of-a-thing
unable to reach out through the shocks that never miss their mark,
able to be reached if only…
if only… somebody knew to look for her

The Education Blame Game

In a few weeks, I will make a formal effort to get my currently "special needs" kid booted from the system. In a sea of parents trying to get help for their kids, this may come as a surprise. What came as a surprise to me was learning that, because my child was deemed in need of OT for his poor fine motor skills (specifically handwriting, from an educational perspective), he was only attending a minority of his math lessons. To me, pulling a child from something as basic as math because his handwriting sucks - especially given that he will write nearly all of his academic work from middle school onward - is bass-ackwards.

So, color me skeptical, but I tend to assume that behind every beaurocratic bass-ackwards choice, there is someone playing a game. Most of the upper level beaurocrats I've met are not actually stupid. So I went looking for an answer... why would an intelligent white kid from an involved, educated middle class household be classified as special ed for seemingly silly reasons?
The resounding answer: it's my fault. Every place I looked, I saw articles about how involved, middle class white parents are gaming the system, getting their kids classified in order to obtain better service. The process was blamed on parents who know how to "advocate for" their kids. Excuse me?? First of all, since when did "advocating" for your kid become a bad thing? Last I check, schools were bemoaning parental lack of involvement. Their job was impossible until parents took a role. Oh, but wait... it's now equally bad to get involved! Second, and more importantly, the schools' response to "advocating" is on them... not me.

I did advocate for my kid. He was alternating between being tormented on the playground, and languishing in the principal's office, mainly because he lacks his peers' keen power of manipulation. They know when to poke and when to kiss up, and he never gets it. Also, in the classroom, his fine motor skills did impact his ability to handwrite answers, so he was constantly getting docked points for things he knew, in every subject. Within a single year, his self-image was in the toilet. So, yeah, we "advocated." The school's answer, their only answer, was to label my son disabled. I never, never advocated for that. I advocated for them to a) get control of their playgrounds, and that meant the sneaky, cruel ones as well as the clueless, clumsy ones. I advocated for them to come up with a way for him to show what he knows, despite his handwriting, so that he might have some shred of self-confidence with which to try to tackle elementary school. I did not then, nor do I now, advocate for him being classified as "disabled."

Want my opinion? Sorry, it's my blog, so you have no choice. I know the budget's tight. I know it is a matter of white privilege that I can and do advocate for my kid. But I refuse to hold the whole bag, here. When we first walked into that meeting 4 years ago, knowing very little about the educational system, it was clearly spelled out to us that the only way the school would do anything different, anything potentially difficult, was if we signed on the line to have him classified. We asked - directly - if the principal could make the para's who "supervise" recess do something crazy like, say, leave the wall they lean against and circulate. We asked if  we went out and bought a cheap laptop, could he type his assignments. We asked to brainstorm solutions. The answer, with big smiles, was Suuuure!!!!... if we have him classified.

So we can totally have this conversation about "gaming the system," but I'm not drinking that Kool Aide. This school system works for tips, and it gets them through classifying kids.

So here's the new plan. We're declassifying him, so that he can go to fucking math class. And you know I'm still going to be there, "advocating for" my kid. I'm just not going to sign the papers this time. This time, you have to educate you, you have to find a valid and effective way to teach him and assess him, and you have to manage the behavior of all your charges, and you have to do it for only the price I already paid for his education in my taxes. Because I'm no longer going to sell his self-identity as a whole and intelligent boy in order to make your job easier.

Strategic communication and eating crow

I am writing here, mainly just to process what I've been thinking about lately. Today's topic is PR and the relationship to fallability and humility. Not long ago, there were two incidents in my town which were thought to be child abductions at school bus stops. One was not, and another was a "concerning" incident but likely not a true abduction attempt. All the same, they prompted the usual flurry of frantic parents and resulting strategic & safety communication from the school and civic authorities.

For me, this reopened old wounds. Last year, three times in one month, my children's school bus left without them. This was during a time of flux for us. Chris was taking odd jobs, and the kids' pick up & child care schedules varied. But this is not a unique scenario, we followed all existing protocols, and still mistakes happened. Somebody goofed up, and the kids were left at the school with no official supervision. Fortunately, it is a small, tight-knit school. The kids were noticed quickly, I was contacted by another parent, and my children were kept safe until I could get there. All the same, as a mother I can't easily forget all the ways this could've gone so very, very badly. What if the kids had tried to walk home and gotten lost? What if they were noticed by someone with evil motivations (scared, unsupervised kids are easy to spot) rather than the trusted family friend who caught them? What if they had gotten hurt, while in this limbo? Remember, the kids fell outside the safety net. The school had "dismissed" them, but had not transported them, creating a kind of procedural no-man's land where they were at school, and yet not. No one was accountable.

My kids were safe by luck, by familiarity within the school community, by good fortune, etc. But they were not officially safe. Something went very wrong, from the school's perspective. And this brings me to my issue... what really chafes me, what makes me toss and turn at night, and makes me see red, is not that this mistake happened. It was a complicated time, and while that doesn't excuse the serious mistake, I am human and so can understand that others are human, too. I can accept that a mistake happened. The grudge I've been unable to release is that I was never contacted by any school personnel, ever. The parent who took my kids home called me. The teachers didn't. The receptionist didn't. The principal, whom I called that first evening (pretty irate, I must say), didn't call me back until late the next day, at which point she left a message which I promptly returned but then she didn't call back again. The same thing happened three times, remember, and each time there were school personnel around who saw it, but none ever contacted me.

I would think that, if ever there was a call you are sure to make, "we misplaced your children but they're ok" would be that call. I do understand that noone ever wants to be vulnerable. I get that it may seem poor strategy to call and cop to a grievous error, unbidden. True, it may set you up for a lawsuit. But here's the thing... the actions set you up for the consequences, not the admission of them. I mean, seriously, what are the odds that I would not learn you forgot my children? These things do come out. By not being forthright, by not having a person with some power and responsibility call me and admit it, the result is that I do not trust the school. I do not trust that institution. Not because a mistake could happen, but because my children could be put in serious harm and I can't trust that anyone would tell me so that I can handle it, so that I can be there for scared kids in the way I needed to be.

I don't know what I want. I don't know what will make me trust the school, or if I ever will. Frankly, that bridge may be out for good. I see that procedural changes are happening, and I applaud them, but trust? Trust isn't always rational. What I want, more than anything, is to emphasize that structures in charge of children need to be willing to eat crow if they've messed up. They need to take that risk and admit it. Because the alternative is a lack of trust, without which we cannot be of one community.

Control (thoughts in progress...)

Today's pet peeve (more to come, time allowing)

Why is this sentence so incredibly difficult for some men to swallow: "Please teach me how to do it?" I was blessed with a dad who taught, but so often I run into men who seem unduely invested in them knowing and me needing. I swear they will put their bodies between me and the task to prevent my seeing how it's done, and then act (key word: act) all offended when I keep coming back with the same need.

Now, in fairness, "could you do it for me" comes more easily to me, as well. This is an old dance, and I've had my moves, too. But it's gotten very old. I'm tired of it. But there are going to be changes. I will keep forcing the words "please teach" out of my mouth, and whether the response is that I learn peer-to-peer or that the Wizard's curtain gets ripped and he's exposed in his manly gutchies, I don't care.

Whitewashing

““Why do you look like that?”
she says, lip curled up like she smells something bad.
I give the answer the White Coats told me,
 let it roll off - sassy - hoping she may scold me
or even hold me, yeah, like that’s gonna happen
“I always felt this way. I was just hiding it.”
Smack.
“I see” says the lip.
“I think I liked it better like that, please.”
Right back at me so quick,
not missing a beat.
I retreat, stung, and freeze
And it comes clear.
Appearances are what we’re treating here.
Not feelings. Not needs.
Well, not about me.
I am well-mannered and well-churched, well-educated and well-off
and now I am, well, embarrassing.
With that pain visible on my porcelain face
putting a kink in my porcelain smile
In that moment it became clear
that my status in the world dictates even control of my eyes.

My eyes

If eyes are the windows to the soul
Mine were to be frosted,
with stick-on lilies-of-the-valley,
whatever the cost was
to make me a Good Girl

And I learned.
I learned “I’m doing much better, thank you.”
I learned charming and cute and harmless and mild
Be a sweet child
I learned how, with only my eyes,
those same eyes that betrayed us,
to soothe good folks’ fear that my depth of feeling might be contagious
I learned perfect nothingness with a side order of a slight stupid smile,
girl-next-door style
I can call up a twinkle in my eye
faster than a blink
lest you think you got in.
My eyes dance like Melissa Fucking Gibert.
Sparkle and grin

And the Nice Boys came for me at the college White Ball
And my eyes twinkled at them across the hall
And when they asked me to dance, I say
“it’s my privilege.”
And when they took me into the woods after the dance to show me their manliness, I say softly
“it’s my privilege,”
And I was Pleasant and Sweet and Mild and Accommodating,
and never showed the daggers in my eyes.

Some kinds of help...

This morning I woke up with a song in my head that I haven't heard for a while. "The Helping Song" from Free to Be, You and Me was running through my head. It's a song about children interfering in other children's activities, sometimes well-intentioned and well-done, sometimes well-intentioned but poorly done, and other times really just being mischevious and calling it "helping." It took me a little while to sort out why my subconscious gave me this song, today.

Finally, I nailed it. It came up during a conversation with a family friend 2 days ago. This friend is really wonderful to us. She is, beyond any doubt, really well intentioned. She loves the kids, and they love her. She is also one of those people who believes, without a shadow of doubt, that her neighborhood is the very best, and the school in that neighborhood is the very best, and that if kids aren't thriving there then they need to be even closer to the school. It could never be that the school, or the neighborhood, needs to be in any way different... always that the dose wasn't high enough. If the child has a fever and Advil doesn't help, give more Advil! Never consider that the ailment may need a different medicine, or even that there may be no "ailment" at all, but just a response.

Last year, we had some recurring issues with the school: communication issues, busing issues, etc. This group of friends - and they are friends - always came back with the same reassurance. The words varied, but the message was that our kids were so close to fitting in, and they would help us be Just Like Them. They would be our kids' new moms and dads, would provide us with surrogate neighbors, would make sure our kids were almost indistinguishable from The Natives. They were going to Save My Kids from the fate the other bused in kids suffer. And, grateful as I am that they did keep the kids safe during the school's fuckups, there's a place where that attitude makes me want to scream. I do not want to be you!!!! I want my children to be treated well in school, as residents of our neighborhood. I want them to be safely bused to and from our neighborhood. I want to be acknowledged. I want my neighborhood to be acknowledged as a neighborhood, and not just as some Outpost for Lesser Children.

There is an attitude there which I'm going to call salvationist, not in the Christian sense (although IMO they are related) but in the belief that the way to help You is to make you more like Me. This is arrogant. It gets on my last nerve, nomatter how well intentioned. I have tried subtle replies like "Yes, isn't it great how many wonderful - yet different - neighborhoods there are in Ithaca?" (insert smile.) This usually gets a smiling blank stare for a second, before returning to raves about the Best Neighborhood. These are the same folks who want to bring all the sweet little children to Jesus, bus poor-but-exception children (in very small, managable numbers) to schools in Good Neighborhoods and adopt all the Ethiopian children and raise them in suburban Jersey. They are the ones who encouragingly remind me how close we are to "passing" for Authentic Neighborhood Kids, and mean it with all the goodness in their hearts. And it drives me up a wall. That song just says it best: Some kinds of help are the kind of help that helping's all about. And some kinds of help are the kind of help... we all can do without.

Here's what I want: If a resource is needed by some of the students, provide it via the school. If a resource is available via the school, make it available to all of the students. Students from one background, neighborhood, etc. do not need to be remolded into images of students from another background, neighborhood, etc. in order for this to happen. Why is this such a threat to neighborhood pride?