Posted on January 20, 2009
I admit, I was a little disheartened when I realized that my experience when it comes to this historical and amazing day, is much different than I would have liked. I am, at heart and soul, an educator. And it was painful to me to sit at home, in this days of all days, with a child who can’t possibly understand what all of this means. I wanted to explain to her how far we have come, as a country, as a society, and as a consciousness. I wanted to share this with SOMEBODY, anybody.
But, instead I sat with my child while she was playing, and I listened to CNN in the background. But, while she was playing, I listened to her, too. I listened as she comforted her “babies” using the same words I use to comfort her. I listened to her explain right and wrong to her dolls. I listened to her tell me her alphabet, count forward and backward from ten, and identify her basic shapes. I listened to her tell me how she loves me. And I appreciated extra kisses and hugs. And I payed attention to HER experiences. (she loved the parade) And I listened to what she was observing and what she was thinking. I realized that not only am I creating a human, I am creating a “character.” One who knows right from wrong, one that is well rounded, one who appreciates all aspect of life. I am creating the future. I might even be creating a leader.
Suddenly, I feel at peace. I am doing what I can for the future of this country by nourishing the character of my CHILD. I am raising the future, one person at a time. It just so happens that the person I am focusing on is my own child. And I am okay with that.
I may not be where I thought I would be. But I am where I WANT to be.
And five years from now, Chloe and I will discuss what happened today. And she will have an extra understanding because I was paying attention. I am keeping track, and in some ways, score. And when I look back on my life, I won’t regret not being THERE. I will appreciate that I was HERE.
Posted on December 12, 2008
A couple of days ago, I was at the local Starbucks and the guy serving the coffee (Barista? whatever the male term is) was being so nice that I thought, “Hey, this guy is flirting with me!” This caught me off guard, because he had to have been at least ten years younger than I am.
This has now happened to me several times since: the waiter at Old Chicago’s, the usher at the movie theater, and the guy who rang up my new shirt at Old Navy. I was confused because I seriously needed a hair cut and I have the remnants of a cold sore. Surely, no one would find me attractive right now. And yet, I kept thinking that they were flirting, they were just so overly nice.
Then I had the embarrassing revelation that they weren’t flirting, it’s just that we are in Colorado where every one is really nice and friendly. I have gotten so accustomed to the abrupt and sometimes rude nature of New Jersean’s that I had convinced myself that nobody is that nice unless they are flirting.
Sigh, am I becoming one of them? Please, say it ain’t so!
Posted on November 9, 2008
Phew. I made it another year. Of what? You ask. Life.
And here is where I am at.
Birthday’s were WAY more exciting when I actually wanted tangible recognition of age. This is no longer the case. Now that I have officially reached so called “adulthood” (as if) it is WAY more exciting for me to enjoy the new experiences of my daughter.
Therefore:
We spent my birthday at Playhouse Disney.
John was able to get FREE tickets through work, otherwise we wouldn’t have gone. But free is free, and Chloe LOVES the Little Einsteins with a fiery passion.
Much to our surprise, there are many OTHER characters in the Playhouse Disney line up. We don’t watch live TV. The only TV show Chloe watches is the Little Einsteins because we record it. She has a couple of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofey, and Tigger stuffed toys. But, other than being at a friend’s house when it was on, has NEVER seen the shows. I think it is possible we saw a Winnie the Pooh show at Mama and Papa’s house, and I am positive she has NO IDEA who Hanny Manny is. So, she was overjoyed to see the Little Einsteins characters, but was a little confused by the rest. When Pooh came on, she said, “Wook, Mommy, a bear!”
All in all, she loved it because it had dancing, pretty lights, and lots and lots of music. But, I am trying to decide how I feel about that fact she didn’t recognize the other characters. Part of me feels a sense of pride because she has latched on to a show that I feel has actual merit. The other part of me, again, worries that she is missing out on a very important level of pop culture.
Seth loves Diego. I think it is safe to say that Chloe has never seen a Diego show. Jacob is infatuated with Mickey Mouse and Goofey. Again, I don’t think that Chloe has ever seen a Mickey Mouse show from start to finish. Julia wants to BE Minnie Mouse, and WAS for Halloween. Chloe decided to be a pirate.
It amazes me, still, how different our children’s lives can be depending on what we choose to show them on television.
I am not going to say Chloe doesn’t watch TV. Because, that would be a bold faced LIE! But, she watches movies. We have an extensive selection of Disney, Dreamworks, and Pixar movies. She has probably seen movies that most children her age have never seen! (Cough: Incredibles, one of John and my ALL TIME FAVORITES)
Therefore, she can’t sing the title song to Mickey’s Clubhouse, but she can sing along with Ariel.
And, she was beside herself to see the Einstein’s Live! All the other kids where like: “Look, its MICKEY MOUSE!” Chloe was like, “Wook, Leo! Mommy, Wook ANNIE, Mommy wook QUINCY! Mommy, wook JUNE!” Then Rocket appeared on stage and I flashed back to when I saw Micheal Jackson for the first time. Yeah, it was that dramatic.
So, no. I didn’t celebrate me on my birthday. What I did was WAY better.
Posted on October 8, 2008
One of the things the reviewer of my blog mentioned was that I seemed bored and I should go back to what I was doing two years ago, whatever that was. Well, I thought a lot about that. Actually, I have been thinking a lot about that over the last few months. But to really digest it, I need to go back about five years.
(Cue flashback music sequence)
Five years ago, I was still working in the day treatment facility, and I was getting more and more frustrated. I was watching my program disintegrate EVERY time we brought a new student into the mix. I think a professor I had in college said it best, “If you have a student that bites, and you put them in a room with five other students who bite, kick, fight, cuss and are rude, you develop a kid who bites, kicks, fights, cusses and is rude.” And its true. We would have a group of relatively innocent students, we would bring in a kid who did drugs or was sexually promiscuous, and suddenly all the kids where doing drugs or having sex. I saw a major flaw in the way we were running things.
Add to that, my commute was becoming more and more unbearable.
As day treatment costs were becoming even more astronomical, many of the public schools were opting to create their own programs within the schools with the hope they could avoid “farming the kids out.” I was offered my own program at a brand new middle school, and I jumped at the chance. I mean, this was my DREAM job and I thought it was finally going to be my chance to actually make a difference.
Well, I quickly realized that even though the district was in support of my program, the administration and the staff at the school still believed that students with behavioral issues should be kicked out of the classroom. So, I fought for THREE years trying to get respect, and trying to convince teachers who had been teaching 30+ years that my way of doing things was better then just kicking the kid out of the class. I had some supporters, especially in the special education department, and I eventually won the respect from the administration. But, every day I had to but heads with teachers who not only wanted my kid gone, but they wanted me gone, too. To say it was a hostile work environment would be an understatement.
When I finally got pregnant, I knew that I wanted to stay home. Not only because I thought it was best for my family, but because I was on a downward spiral professionally. The teachers, not the students, knocked all the fight out of me.
I was always very passionate about teaching. I thought it was one of the most noble professions one could enter into. We certainly don’t get paid enough for the crap we go through, and so people who do it must be in it because they love kids as much as I do, right? Well, it turns out that isn’t necessarily true. My blind idealism slowly bled away those three years at the middle school. I limped out of there, and I wasn’t sure if I would EVER go back.
When it comes right down to it, I am a type A personality who ran my own program in one form or another for 6 of the 8 years of my professional life. Now I am planning play dates and coming up with lesson plans for a toddler. I would be lying if I said I don’t get bored.
But my other life, though not boring, was destroying me. I am okay with being a little bored and boring for awhile. I feel like I am slowly recharging my batteries, and when Chloe goes to school full time, I will be ready to advocate for kids with disabilities again. In the mean time, I am going to embrace my reality as it is now. And, just maybe, try to get a hobby or something.
Posted on August 18, 2008
Le Sigh, I still haven’t lost the ten pounds I regained after my triumphant first diet. Every morning I wake up, and I say, “Today is the day! I will eat healthier! I will exercise! I will stop watching TV, read more books, find a hobby….oooh, look shiny blogs to read.” Two hours later I am still on the sofa, staring at my computer, trying to will myself to get up off my ass and go exercise (I use dvd’s so I can do it whenever.) However, with this latest attempt, whenever has turned into never.
I hate that my body rebelled against me. I hate that when you are 5′2″ (okay, 5′ 1 3/4″) every pound shows! I really hate the idea that I am actually going to have to be a responsible (ech) ADULT and watch what I eat and drink for THE REST OF MY LIFE. Which sucks.
I want to be 20 again, not for the blissful innocence, but just for the physique I SO took for granted. I want 1) the ability to survive on a diet of ramen noodles, popcorn, Mountain Dew and cigarettes and 2) the metabolism to handle eating like crap.
But, I am now 30-something. The big empty void of adult-hood where you know the right thing to do, you just don’t want to do it! (And you can’t make me, so na na!)
All right, all right. Enough of this pity party. I want to lose the 10 pounds before going to Italy, so it looks like I need to suck up all of my misplaced self righteousness (and my growing love handles) and do some actual, physical activity. Okay….any second now…motivation will kick in. Hmm…I still need to check my Facebook news feed. I’ll just do that first, and then I’ll exercise! (really, I swear!)
Posted on August 16, 2008
I worked with a kid once who saw dead people. I am NOT shitting you, she saw dead people. She told me, offhand, during lunch. “Tiffany, I don’t think the bus driver should let dead kids on the bus.” At the time, I worked at a day treatment facility, and therefore, I was used to some pretty bizarre conversations.
Me: “What do you mean J? What dead kids?”
J: “There was a kid on my bus who was dead!”
Me: “How did you know he was dead, how do you know he wasn’t just sleeping?”
J: “He was see through, and he turned around and looked at me.”
At that point, I smiled, nodded, and immediately phoned her therapist.
This same student also thought the crabs in her grandmother’s wallpaper were watching her undress, and swore to me, to the point of hysterics, that her father was watching her through the windows in our classroom, and had actually run his fingers across the window to let her know he was there. Take into consideration that our classroom was on a relatively busy street, so we kept the blinds closed. Later, we found out that one her meds, especially during her “time of the month,” tended to cause psychosis. Something that you should have total us YESTERDAY!
I had a student expose himself in my classroom. T was the most charming kid in my class. He was funny, smart, and sweet. All the girls had a crush on him. And at some point during his life, he had been sexually abused, and we were pretty sure it was by his father. The same father who was still living with him, his stepsister, and his stepmother. In addition to this, his stepmother ran an in home daycare, where T hung out when he got out of school. I was still pretty green, it was my third year of teaching and my first month at the Day Treatment facility. I was writing something up on the board, and all the girls in the class suddenly went, “Oh GROSS!” and other expletives. When I turned back around, he was smiling his Cheshire grin smile and holding his pants closed. Charges were pressed, his stepmother lost her “license” and I had to deal with a month of weeping girls who “felt so guilty” because they got T in trouble. SERIOUSLY!
One of my students (B) stabbed another one of my students (R) with a pencil. They were in our “in-house” suspension, which was basically study corrals set up in a hallway where the students were isolated from the other kids and were expected to do their classwork, make up work, or some other form of punishment for misbehavior. In B’s defense, R was REALLY ANNOYING! Probably one of the top two most annoying kids I have ever worked with. Regardless, R was pretty innocent, and probably made some comment that he thought made him look cool. Instead of being funny, it provoked our “wanna-be” gangsta, B took the pencil we sharpened to make sure he could finish his homework, and stabbed poor R in the arm. Charges were pressed, B was expelled from our school.
When I first started working at the day treatment, we isolated the kids in a therapy room when they needed some “space.” I put a very angry J in there, and let him stew for about ten minutes. When I thought he might have calmed down, I opened the door and asked him if he was ready to talk to me. He said, quite eloquently I might add, “GO SUCK A DEAD DOG’S DICK!” I said, “Okay, just let me know when you are ready,” and shut the door. Then I burst into laughter. I mean, I have been insulted by the best of them. But this kid, he covered fellatio, necrophilia, and bestiality all in one insult. I hated to admit it, but I was IMPRESSED!
My final anecdote for this evening: One of my students shot another one of my students. This is the story that keeps me up nights, that literally hurts my heart. We usually only kept students in the day treatment for a year sometimes less. It was an intensive program that included individual therapy, family therapy, and group therapy. Plus, there were small class sizes (our largest was 16) a small staff to student ratio (3 staff members on hand, a teacher-me, a counselor, and a teacher’s assistant who was usually a counselor in training) and an INTENSE behavior management program. This all meant the school districts were paying A LOT of money for our kids to attend this program. Which, of course mean that these kids were pretty fucked up, and they didn’t stay for very long.
The worst of the worst was D. His IQ was borderline, and his anger was beyond anything I had seen before. Add to it, he was at least six feet tall. However, after working with him for awhile (he was in our program for two years) it became easy to see that the anger was all a defense mechanism because he didn’t understand what was going on. Once we broke through his defenses, he became our biggest success case. He went from a 1st grade reading level to a 5th grade, which is practically unheard of. His math skills also improved dramatically. In the end, he graduated from high school with a traditional diploma.
D’s best friend M, wasn’t as successful. M was never a problem, he was a goofy kid who only misbehaved because he didn’t know what else to do. I would say his IQ was pretty borderline also, but his issue was mostly motivation. He wanted to be a professional hockey player, even though he was 15 and had NEVER taken a single hockey lesson. He decided that hockey players didn’t need to learn to read and write.
M graduated from our program first, and went back to the general ed high school, but dropped out after his junior year. D, like I said, went back to High school, and graduated. They stayed friends. One night, D and M were at M’s grandfather’s house and they were playing with Papa’s gun. D didn’t realize that there was a live round in the chamber, and shot M in the face. D was 18, M was 17.
The truly sad thing is, I was more concerned about D’s mental health than M’s death. I hate to say it, and a teacher should NEVER admit these things, but M wasn’t going to amount to much in life. He was a sweet but strange kid, and he was a serious slacker. I honestly didn’t see him doing much more than panhandling on the street. D, on the other had, he had potential. Once he was able to control his anger issues, he turned out to be a wiz with cars. I had no doubt he was going to be a mechanic.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to him. I wasn’t working at the day treatment when all of this happened, and I have since moved to another state. I really hope that D was able to forgive himself for what he did to his best friend. But, I definitely have my doubts.
Why am I telling you this?
Today, we were over at Ellen’s house making ice cream with other members of our mom’s club. Chloe threw a fit the ENTIRE time because Seth was holding the jar of sprinkles, and she was worried she would get any. Finally, the ice cream was done, I put sprinkles on it, and gave it to her. She ate three bites and was finished and wanted to play on the jungle gym. I grabbed her ice cream and followed her. She asked me to swing with her, and I said, “no,” because I was eating the ice cream. She threw a major fit and intentionally knocked the bowl of ice cream out of my hands on onto the ground.
I was INCENSED. Not just angry, or pissed off. I had to go inside for a minute to collect myself (with the excuse of grabbing our diaper bag) then strapped a sobbing Chloe into the stroller, and power walked us home. Even after we got home, I had a hard time calming down. I literally did the dishes and vacuumed before I could even talk to her.
It took me awhile to figure out why I was so angry with her. It was because I felt like MY child should NEVER ACT LIKE THIS. To tell you the honest truth, I think this is the first time I was angry enough with Chloe where I felt it through my entire body. My heart was racing and my head hurt. I had to breath in short shallow spurts. I knew that yelling at her wouldn’t help anybody, but I didn’t know what else to do. So, I reminded myself of all of the intense experiences I had when I was working at the day treatment. These are the reasons why I left that school and went to the public school. The reasons why I was now opting to put aside any professional gain to stay home with my toddler. When all is said and done, Chloe can piss me off, but she is SO mild in comparison.
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