teenagers

The Brave Speak for Those Who Can’t

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

A friend recently asked me for advice. She has a family member whose toddler shows signs of autism. Knowing the importance and impact of early intervention, she  wants desperately to say something to the parents and suggest their child be assessed. She also has experience as an educator and parent that helps inform her suspicions. So, let’s say she brings up this tough issue and the parents take offense.  Based on what she told me, that’s not an unlikely response.

Does she risk upsetting her relationship with the parents to advocate for the child? That’s a tough choice to make, but I think that answer is yes.

Here was my reassurance to her, which I hope she can pass on to her relative:

  1. Getting a diagnosis doesn’t make autism (or whatever it may be) any truer than it is without the diagnosis.  In that moment that word is uttered in reference to a child (or adult), the person hasn’t changed. She is exactly who she was the moment before.
  2. One gift of the diagnosis is a life-changing light suddenly shone on your child. Many of the questions you may have had are quite suddenly answered. Not all of the questions, of course, because each child (on the spectrum or not) is a unique individual. But you can begin the process of understanding your child in a new way, enabling you to parent them with newfound empathy and patience.
  3. Another gift – and I cannot stress this enough – is that services become more readily available to you. Since Maddie was not diagnosed until around age 10, she struggled through elementary school as the teachers and staff struggled to understand her. And then, magically, we had the word “Asperger’s” to throw around and suddenly Maddie was less of an enigma despite having not changed a bit. Was everything magically solved at that point? Certainly not, but instead of just being the smart, stubborn kid who refused to perform, or the weird kid who repeated the word “paperclip” over and over until she was eventually sent outside the classroom, or the kid who would hide during school hours, throwing the staff into a frenzy, she became a more sympathetic person who deserved compassion and help. It makes me so sad to think about the years she was misunderstood and therefore mistreated.

I was recently talking with a friend in her 40s who has chosen not to have children. If she ever changed her mind, she said, she would want to go right into the teenage years, skipping right past all the noise and messiness that comes with babies and young children. We agreed adopting an older child is fraught with uncertainty, but then I pointed out that even when you have a baby, it’s still a roll of the dice. Your child might become an Oscar-winning actress, or a homeless addict, or a high school valedictorian who goes on to solve world poverty or goes to jail for insider training. Or she might have autism. Or some combination of those things.

Certainly the dreams of an expectant couple do not include addiction or a prison sentence. Or autism (to be clear, I’m not equating autism to either of those things). And yet a diagnosis of autism is an increasingly likely outcome of an assessment. Awareness and the ability to diagnose autism have improved dramatically over the last decade or two, but depending upon the trajectory of a child’s development, and depending upon their gender (boys are more likely than girls to get an early diagnosis), a chid may still go for years without getting a diagnosis and therefore the appropriate help. I know because that’s what happened to us. So many years of pain and frustration and confusion could have been avoided. There are so many things I would have approached differently if only I had better understood the daughter I so desperately wanted to know.

For my entire life deep in my soul I have believed in speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves. If anybody qualifies for that, it’s a young child with autism. It might take some real courage to speak the words, “Have you thought about having Reilly assessed?” Or “I’ve heard of some services that might benefit Sophia.” But remember, you might be the only person to utter the magic words that eventually open the door to early intervention, a deeper understanding of that child, and continued services throughout that child’s educational experience and beyond.

If you know a family who needs help navigating this special realm of parenting, or who hasn’t dared consider autism or a learning difference a possibility, look into yourself and see if you can find the courage to speak up as an advocate for that child. A gentle observation or suggestion, or a connection to a free assessment, could change the lives of the whole family forever.

Be brave. Speak up with love and compassion. And know in your heart you’re doing the right thing.

And even if you can’t, I still love you.

It’s All About the Pronoun

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

You know when your spouse says, “We should call the plumber” or “We should clean up the dog poop in the backyard” and you know what he really means is “YOU should call the plumber” and “YOU should clean up the dog poop”? The “we” is really “you,” and you both know it. A little pronoun sleight-of-hand to somehow both obscure and effectively communicate a message.

Last week I was having heart palpitations about the end of the school year, or more precisely, the end of school. Writing that sentence, I realize that might be a first for me. It’s always been the beginning of a new school year that sent my blood pressure through the roof as panic and fear of the unknown swirled in my head. The end of the school year meant a huge sigh of relief, and giant exhale, because for the next ten weeks I didn’t have to try to make Maddie do anything (well, except take the occasional shower). And yes, I still have that respite to look forward to. In fact, it might be the biggest exhale of my life when Maddie clicks “submit” on that last final exam. She never has to do school ever again if she doesn’t want to, and if she does want to, it’s all on her.  It’s completely optional! But in order to get to this particular ending, there is some work to do.

As an independent study student in her online school, she has no real deadlines except at the end of the semester. There are suggested deadlines for quizzes and assignments and tests, but the true deadline comes once. Luckily, with the help of Maddie’s tutor, we are usually somewhat on schedule (she’s always a good 10 or 12 assignments behind, which sounds worse than it is), but last week I looked and she had 23 overdue items (meaning the suggested deadline had passed), not to mention whatever had been or would become assigned but hadn’t yet become due. And then final exams.

Oh my god. How will Maddie ever get all this done? How will I get her to do all that work? I felt the wave of panic I’ve experienced so many times over the years. The insurmountable pile of responsibilities loomed dark in my psyche, the weight of it all sitting squarely on my shoulders.

Later that week, thankfully, I had therapy. I have been seeing a therapist for the last nine years, ever since I had a nervous breakdown from the sheer weight of, well, a lot of things. I am long past the part where you talk about your childhood or your traumas or whatever and figure out how to fix yourself. For years my therapist has been my coach and adviser, my cheerleader and guru. She brings me back to earth when I’m freaking out about, well, anything.

So this time we talked about Maddie and my anxiety over the mountain of work on Maddie’s plate. As I talked, I realized something. There was no way on Earth I was going to allow any outcome other than Maddie finishing and graduating. “She just has to pass,” I reminded myself out loud. “She doesn’t need A’s. She just needs to pass.” I continue to say that out loud to convince myself of the truth of it.

With equal parts realization and conviction, I said, “Oh, we’re gonna get this done.”

“I think you got your pronoun wrong,” she said wryly.

I thought for a moment. “Okay, I’M gonna get this done.” Not we. I.  “I don’t care if I do it all myself,” I said. And I meant it. At this point I would do just about anything to get that diploma in Maddie’s hands, to complete this mission on which we’ve both worked so hard.

What kind of mom announces she will actually do her kid’s last two weeks of school work? Who decides the easy route is the right route?

You know who? The kind of mom who for a solid year taught her child to speak by sounding out words using foam letters in the tub, that’s who. The kind of mom who heard only screaming for the first 25 months of her child’s life before finally hearing the word “mama,” the first recognizable speech ever uttered by her oldest child. The kind of mom who fought back tears through countless SST meetings and  IEP meetings, and changed her kid’s school three times, desperately trying to make the right choice for this puzzle of a kid. The kind of mom who braced herself for a fight–really a frustrating, defeating exercise in futility–every single morning for three years trying to get her kid to go to school. The kind of mom who for the last year has read the world history book out loud to her kid just to engage her in school, doing silly dances or making jokes to make it as much fun as I could–for both of us.

There is no way I would let all of the emotional roller coaster rides, all of the anxiety and worry and tears and confusion and countless hours of just plain old work end in a big fat nothing. So if she can’t make herself do this last little tidbit of work for herself, I’ll do it for her. I’ll do it for ME.

So this time the pronoun is clear: I WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN. I hope Maddie will cooperate and do the work, but if not, I hope she’s at least along for the ride. In two weeks we can sign off from school forever. And I can pat myself on the back for a job well done.

When a Mole Hill Really Is a Mountain

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

This week I think Maddie grew up a little. Or maybe she was just acting crazy. We shall see.

Sunday my wonderful teenage son was apparently doing tricks with knives when his finger and a sharp blade had an unfortunate and unexpected meeting. My first clue was his voice coming from his room: “MOM! BLAH BLAH BLAH BANDAGE!” I’m sure what he actually said was, “Mom, get me a bandage!” or some such thing, but at least I heard the key word. I rifled through our always (unfortunately) disorganized box of first aid supplies and found a nice thick gauze square and ran downstairs. Sure enough, there was a rather bloody finger and a pretty upset guy.

After a minute or two of trying to gauge the situation, we decided a trip to urgent care was the best coarse of action. I ran downstairs to tell Maddie, who was in the shower (woohoo!) and the two of us took off.

After lots of waiting around and a rather uncomfortable session with a needle full of lidocaine and then five stitches, we returned home. All was well with the exception of a pretty sore finger.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my son had, in a fit of panic, left the water running in the kids’ bathroom. And the only reason I found out was because of what Maddie told me later.

“When you guys were gone,” she said, “I noticed the faucet was still on and then I noticed water everywhere. So I turned it off and cleaned up all the water and left the towels in the tub.”

Oh. My. God. She cleaned it up and then, like the genius she is, put the soaking wet towels in the tub so they wouldn’t ruin the floor. I’m not sure who else in my family besides me would have done as well. (No offense, guys, if you’re reading this.)

I was floored. That sounds like such a trivial thing, really, but in my house it’s not. Maddie is so capable of so many things, but she’s not always great at cleaning up (hilarious understatement) or following through. I was both surprised and gratified.

When she was young, she once decided to make the whole bathroom into a pool. She put a towel up against the door and flooded the tub until she got her wish. Unfortunately, that water eventually had to go somewhere, and I don’t know about you, but we don’t have a drain in the middle of any of our bathrooms, so the “somewhere” was basically “everywhere.” All over the wood floors in the hall and into the next room. Ugh. Actually I think she did that twice. At the time, and for years afterwards, her plans tended to be rather short-sighted. If something sounded like fun, that was really as far as she needed to think before she proceeded to make it happen. She used to dump out entire Costco-size $50-bottles of my fancy shampoo while she took a bath too. Those times provided my earliest data that no, in fact, my head would probably never ACTUALLY explode, because I’m sure it would have then.

Of course all our kids have done head-scratching things, as evidenced by all the photos I see on Facebook of kids smeared in diaper rash cream, or art-wearing babies and their toddler sisters standing next to them holding Sharpies. The problem was Maddie was no longer a toddler—not even close—when she was purposely flooding the bathroom without a thought as to how to dispose of the water.

But now she is seventeen. Things are bound to change. And they have. I still find myself having to coerce her into taking showers or brushing her teeth. The upcoming school year remains an empty page, too. I’m not especially confident that removing the “going to” part of attending school will be the solution, but we have to try something. Having ADHD (which is part of an Asperger’s diagnosis) doesn’t mean a person can’t focus on anything. In fact, if she comes up with a duct-tape project, I dare you to try and stop her. But writing a paper on a subject she doesn’t find interesting, or doing multiple math problems that seem to repeat themselves, just aren’t particularly motivating for her. I can’t remember a time when she announced, “I have homework” and then got it out and did it. Most years I had to sit next to her just to keep her focused. I didn’t necessarily have to help her, but rather just keep her on track.

So, here we go again, I keep thinking to myself. It’s still school, after all.

Yesterday her tutor Kim came to pick her up for lunch. Kind of a “reacquaint and start preparing for the new school” kind of a thing but without any work or expectations. I had to leave about 90 minutes before Kim’s arrival. The night before that Maddie and I had been in the hot tub when I suggested she just get straight into the shower after that since she was already wet. “My body is too tired,” she said. I tried to convince her of my genius idea, but she was adamant. Instead, we hunkered down to watch The Incredibles for the gazillionth time (it’s been years, though, to be fair). But before I gave up on the shower thing, I talked to her about making the decision. So often she promises to do something in the morning that she doesn’t feel up to at night, and then bails out in the morning as well. That can go on for days, as her hair gets greasier and rattier and her teeth yellow and her BO hits Code Red levels. But I also have noticed that when she’s really committed to something, she’s quite reliable. The problem is in the committing, and only she can know if she has truly committed. So I thought I’d talk to her about that.

“I believe in you,” I said. “When you decide to do something, when you set your mind to something, you always get it done. The key is in the deciding. You have to decide right now that you’re going to do it, I mean REALLY decide. And then I know you’ll do it.”

She nodded in agreement. “Oh yeah,” she agreed. “When I set my mind to something, you couldn’t stop me.”

And then finally, “I’ve decided,” she announced. Of course you can never really know what’s going on in somebody else’s mind, so I just had to accept her commitment and move on.

“Well, then I know you’ll do it,” I said.

The next morning just before I left for my morning appointment, I woke her up. “You’re going to take a shower, right? Kim’s coming at 11:20.”

“Yup,” she said, still under her covers. Oh, I’ve seen this many times. The insincere affirmative answer and then the predictable outcome.

There wasn’t much else I could do at that point, but I knew my appointment would be over by 11:00, so I told her I’d call her later. Honestly I wasn’t expecting much. Historically meetings with Kim go like this: Maddie doesn’t get out of bed, so Kim has to somehow talk her into getting up and getting dressed and it’s a whole long scenario from which I typically remove myself (as in, leave the house) mainly to preserve my sanity.

As planned I called just after 11:00. “I’m just calling to remind you to get up,” I said, clearly thinking she’d still be in bed.

“I showered and I’m dressed,” she announced.

I probably said, “WHAT?!” but hopefully I was more composed. If life were a musical (which I always wish it were), I would have broken into a song and dance for sure. Something glorious and uplifting.

These are the moments I feel tears of joy pooling in my eyes. My heart is full and I feel hope. The hope I felt when I saw those soaking wet towels in the tub. She got herself up and she took a freaking shower! Who IS this kid?

And then, She can do it, I thought to myself. And by it, I meant life.

All the thinking and effort and talking and more thinking I put into this parenting thing is having an effect. She is growing and maturing, and although she’s younger in most ways than other kids her age, there is progress.

So many parents I know have just taken their kids to college for the first time or have that next chapter of parenting in their sights. They’re nervous about how their kids will fare. Will they be able to care for themselves, the parents wonder. Will they feed themselves OK? Do they know how to do laundry? What happens when they get sick?

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “They’ll figure it out. They always do.”

Will Maddie “figure it out?” I go back and forth on that one. But right now I’m feeling a bit more optimistic. She is figuring some things out. She might be 30 when it all clicks. She might stay with us forever. We don’t know. But moving forward sure feels good.

Dirty Shirt

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

Today is June 19th. My son graduated eighth grade last Friday, so it feels like the official first day of vacation. I slept in! I put on a pretty dress! I can run errands whenever I want because I’m not tied down by school pick up time! I didn’t pack anybody’s lunch! It’s a gorgeous day and I’m loving it.

But somebody hasn’t changed her shirt for five days. This is the sixth day. I know this because the day the shirt was first donned was Maddie’s birthday, June 14th, after she opened a small gift in the morning and then decided to wear her new Flash shirt to the Giants game.

She comes into my room late this morning. I see that shirt and my disgust rises to the surface. The dirty shirt also means she hasn’t taken a shower for at least six days because I know she didn’t take one that morning. You hope your kids stop grossing you at some point, right?

“Maddie, the is the sixth day you’ve been wearing that shirt. You need to shower and put on a clean shirt.” One doesn’t gently toss hints to Maddie. You have to (and really get to, I suppose) be completely honest and blunt. I can’t imagine how many times I’ve said, “You’re gross,” or “You stink,” or “Get out of my room because I can smell you from five feet away. Seriously, don’t stink up my room.”

“Later,” she says, dryly. Later often ends up meaning “no” in the end. I know how this works.

“Why not right now?” I ask.

She just looks at me.

“If you don’t do it later today, I’ll take your computer away.” I can’t actually take her whole computer away but I can certainly swipe her keyboard or something so she can’t use it.

“Oh, will you?” she says defiantly.

I’m now wondering why I even went down that road. Either we’ll get in a huge battle or I’ll decide against it, knowing it’s futile at best, or first step on the wrong road, at worst.

She grabs the allergy medication she came for and leaves. I move on. I can’t deal with this right now. I have other things to do and I want to enjoy this first day of summer.

Yesterday was Father’s Day and the plan was to go to my in-laws’ house for the afternoon. The whole family (minus a couple of young adult cousins) would be there to celebrate Grandpa Jim for both Father’s Day and his upcoming 78th birthday. My kids love their grandparents, and they love their dad. Grandpa Jim is also in declining health. We all want to spend time with these wonderful people while we can.

I informed Maddie of the plans the day before. “I don’t want to go,” she said.

“Well, it’s Father’s Day, and the is what Dad wants to do.”

“But I don’t want to,” she repeated.

“It’s not about what you want to do. This is about doing what your dad wants to do even if you don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t WANT to,” she said yet again.

I’m not sure if she said anything else, but regardless of the words, her expression said it all. She had no intention of going.

Sometimes Maddie is incredibly empathic. Other times she is swallowed up by her autism (the key here being “auto” or “self”), and she can’t see beyond herself.

That night I talked to my husband and informed of the situation. We agreed we would give it a try in the morning, but not engage in a fight over it. I guess we’ve finally learned it doesn’t pay. The typical scenario when we push hard is everybody ends up upset (including our son), and she doesn’t come anyway. So we’ve ruined everybody’s day for nothing.

It’s sad, time after time, to visit the grandparents with only one of our kids (and often both, because when one is down, often the other goes down with her).  They know Maddie (the explanation yesterday was H is sick—true—and Maddie is being Maddie), but it’s still sad. It’s hard for us to do anything as a family, really, often because of Maddie’s inability to motivate herself. She did rally for both Mother’s Day and my birthday, and honestly that all I could have asked of her. It meant so much for me that she got out of bed on a Sunday morning for brunch, and then got dressed (no shower, no clean shirt, a hat to cover up her awful hair) for my birthday dinner at a restaurant she didn’t want to go to, just to make me happy.

So today there she is in that stinky, filthy shirt and I’m kind of angry and rather disgusted. She’s in her smelly pigsty of a room (I’m pretty sure a cat peed in there) playing Minecraft with her online friends. She’s happy.

Maybe this will be one of those “best days of my life” when she rises from her chair, grabs a towel, and takes care of business without another word on my part. I know this is possible. But really I have to be prepared to keep pushing, gently but firmly, without losing my patience or my mind.

Fingers crossed that stinky shirt is in the washing machine by bedtime.

_____

Update: I just finished writing this and that stinky shirt walked in (with the person inside of it) and the shower is ON!!

I grabbed Maddie’s dirty clothes from the bathroom floor, ripped her sheets and comforter off her bed, and threw them in the wash, hoping to de-stink this place a little.

It’s the greatest day of my life!

Yet Another Exercise in Frustration

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

I don’t know why I haven’t been blogging. It really does help me process my experiences. And I enjoy it. Also it reminds me I have abilities outside of my parenting duties. I can type, for one thing, and the words come easily most of the time. It feels good.

So why have I been neglecting my blog? Maybe I thought it was easier to pretend it all wasn’t happening. To write is to think, and to think is to not ignore. Not that I was ignoring anything exactly, but part of the past year has involved distancing myself from the day-to-day in order to preserve my own sanity and physical health. This is not hyperbole. Here’s what happened:

Once we established last fall that going to school was not a viable option for Maddie (remember the conversation: “So it seems to me you don’t intend to go to school anymore.” “Nope.”), the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. My two-month-long migraine magically vaporized. I exhaled the longest breath of my life. And I just let it go.

But you can’t REALLY just let it go. A child under 18 who has not graduated or passed an equivalency exam is required by law to go to school. Her IEP mitigates some of that obligation, but eventually I was going to have to do SOMETHING. The school wasn’t initiating any efforts to solve the problem, so I took matters into my own hands and hired Kim, the educational therapist, to work with Maddie. Kim has been a magical force for Maddie, an incredibly calm presence who truly seems to understand her student. There would be no (or very little) actually going to school, but we managed to eek out a little school work, enough to get us all through the year.

It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was an incredibly frustrating process to negotiate with the school and the district to make this situation workable.

After a year and a half of attendance problems, which followed an initial meeting in which we cited ATTENDANCE PROBLEMS as our single biggest concern, we were still met with a serious failure to understand the core issue. Not once, despite indications to the contrary, did she see a counselor or a psychologist to help get to the bottom of the issue. It seems rather obvious that when there is a behavior issue, discovering the reason why is crucial coming up with a possible solution.

Finally, finally, fi-nal-ly, when I made it very clear that I didn’t expect any more schedule changes to affect Maddie’s ability to get up and go, the district offered something called wrap-around services. In theory, it’s great, and in many cases I’m sure it’s effective. The district contracts with a service provider who sends social workers out to your home to become acquainted with the child in the comfort of their own home (or on a nature walk or whatever works) and to learn more about the family situation, in order to address the behavior problem at its root. Very often the child has serious issues involving drugs or alcohol, so the service providers were thrilled to come to a home with a functioning family unit and supportive, loving parents.

However, I hesitated to approve this course of action. I wasn’t confident this would work. Something was holding me back, but our advisor suggested I consent because a significant part of negotiating with the school is playing the game, i.e. “pretending to go along with their recommendations so you have some legal standing and eventually they have to come up with the RIGHT solution.” Apparently this is a necessary step in negotiations, which I absolutely loathe. Why can’t we all put our cards on the table and make the best choice? Why this aggravating game in which nobody wins (except, I suppose, often the district’s budget)?

So after weeks of deliberating, I consented, and the team of ladies arrived at our house a week later to meet. It was a cadre of three women, one fresh out of college, one with decades of experience, and the other somewhere in between. These were three terrific women, easy to talk to, eager to help. I was optimistic. It really was worth a try, I thought.

Well, except for the part about playing along with the school district, it turns out it wasn’t worth a try at all. Courtney, the young woman whose job it was to connect with Maddie, didn’t have the experience necessary for a kid like Maddie. She was warm and friendly, but after the first visit, Maddie wouldn’t even get out of bed or show her face while Courtney sat there for an hour trying to get her to respond. That happened twice.

Heidi, whose responsibility was to meet with the parents and make a behavior plan, was enthusiastic and fun. Maddie’s interest was piqued when she learned Heidi knew what LARPing was. (LARPing is live action role playing, for those not in the know.) But she too missed the boat.

After repeated conversations in which I explained the history of my child, Heidi showed up one day ecstatic with her new idea: Maddie’s reward could be a weekend LARPing excursion.

Well, slap my head. I never thought of that! Just kidding! I should have slapped Heidi’s head instead.

Had she not listened when I explained repeatedly that neither rewards nor punishments have ever been reliably successful with my daughter? Had she not heard me when I told her you could tell Maddie she could go to Disneyland on Saturday if she went to school all week, and then Monday morning she would refuse to get out of bed, and then Saturday she would get up and say, “So are we going to Disneyland?” It just doesn’t work and it never has.

Did she not listen when I told her how many people have suggested we “find her currency” and that was the answer? We don’t know her f**ing currency because she doesn’t have any!

I was beginning to get discouraged, to say the least.

Then we had one more IEP meeting. Maddie still wasn’t going to school and we had to figure out how the school would accommodate her. Heidi and Courtney joined us. Heidi presented her magnificent LARPing plan and Courtney said nothing. Finally I asked Courtney to give her report.

“Oh, Maddie’s so great!” she offered, smiling wide.

I can only imagine the expression on my face. What? That’s your report? “Can you please describe your last two meetings with Maddie?” I requested, trying to hide my aggravation.

“Well she wouldn’t get out of bed or talk to me,” Courtney admitted.

I was calm on the outside (I think) but I wanted to scream. I was so angry.

Not only had these meetings been pointless, I was now frustrated beyond belief. Worse, Maddie was so tired of meeting with people and talking that she eventually didn’t want to see ANYBODY, including Kim, which whom she had developed a meaningful, productive and successful relationship.

There were countless frustrating email exchanges in the course of this failed experiment, some prompting me to cry ‘HELP ME AND PLEASE FIX THIS!” to our advisor and friend. I just couldn’t take it anymore.

At the start of that IEP meeting, my husband declared, “If don’t walk out of here with a new plan, I’m going to be very frustrated.” Amen to that. I had to say very clearly that we all had to accept Maddie wouldn’t be returning to school. A reduced schedule, the cafeteria job she loves, anything else they could come up with was not going to effect a change.

There is something going on with this kid that defies material changes in her school day other than not having a school day AT school. The district head of special education declared, “We are not a home school program. We cannot continue this course of action.” Somebody suggested the district’s alternative independent study high school. Sort of a good idea, except that there are weekly meetings with teachers and attendance is absolutely mandatory. Anytime I imagine absolutely positively getting Maddie to go somewhere, my heart sinks. Currently that’s simply not going to work. Luckily, the school counselor shook her head. At least somebody got it. She recognized the absurdity of a solution that included mandatory attendance.

Somehow or other, because the school year was winding up, we managed to come to an agreement. Maddie’s schedule would remain reduced. Eventually we decided she would go to school on Mondays, when she would attend every class and obtain her work, which she would do at home. Nobody was to make a big deal of her return: a quiet nod as she slid into her seat would be enough. She wouldn’t be seated next to two particular girls who cause her anxiety. She could work in the cafeteria. She would lie low (which, it turns out, meant doing whatever she wanted quietly in her seat, so when other kids were doing school projects, she might be writing a story on her phone, intending to do the work at home with Kim). It sort of seems ridiculous now, to force her to go to school in order to achieve absolutely nothing. But she did it. She completed her coursework. She went to school on Mondays, without a single fight.

We cheered for this little bit, but not too much because she doesn’t like it. I think she finds it condescending. We set what seem like small goals, but what are are shooting for is something challenging enough and, we hope, achievable.

I haven’t checked her grades yet. Honestly I don’t care what they are. I do hope she passed so she can have the credits as we launch into the next phase (online school!) but mostly I’m just thrilled we all made it until June 8th intact–my fiftieth birthday and the last day of school–intact.

Small Victories: A Birthday Story

Chris Irvine, Parent Coach2 Comments

Wednesday Maddie turned 17. Sounds so grown up. Most of our friends with kids the same age spent the last two school breaks touring the east coast and Southern California colleges. They’ve spent money and time on SAT prep, college counseling,  and just getting through the eternally stressful junior year. Some are launching their kids in the fall, anxiously counting the days until their babies fly the coop.

Yesterday, on the 17th anniversary of her birth, Maddie showed me the insecure young person inside and the socially savvy young lady that also resides within her. I never know what side I’m going to see.

A few weeks ago Maddie’s wonderful tutor Kim suggested they see a Giants game together to celebrate the end of the school year. A look at the Giants’ schedule pointed them to a day game which happened to fall on Maddie’s birthday. I wanted Maddie to do whatever made her happy and at the time it seemed like a great idea. Looking back I think I was in denial at best, and just straight up stupid at worst. This was in fact a mistake whose full terribleness would  not rear its ugly head until that morning.

First of all, this plan involved me having to wake Maddie up. It has been established that this is to be avoided whenever possible. Waking her up to go somewhere or do something, even something ostensibly appealing, is fraught with emotion and fear for me. I think I fake it rather well, but even a failed first attempt sends tensions throughout my body and I feel my heart clench. I breathe deeply to remain calm, but I’m immediately almost ready to give up. The problem that morning was that I had bought ferry tickets, so the arrival time mattered. The Giants game ferry really does complete the experience, but it adds significant time and eliminates flexibility. Anyway, I feel like this alone doomed this notion to failure.

Second, Maddie was sleep deprived. For some reason sleeping didn’t go well the night before. Maybe, as it turns out, she was anxious. I also know she was up at 3:00 a.m. because I, too, was up at that time searching for a cough drop when I felt a light tap on my back (DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN! I said). She was mid-allergy-attack and looking for a Zyrtec.

So at the start, we had two strikes against us.

And then, the tears. She was tired, she said. She was trying so hard to power through, but, tragically, on her birthday, she wasn’t able to cope. Her tutor, Kim, used her magical skills to try to turn it around. And in fact there was magic because although Kim ended up leaving our house, alone, in her Giants gear, there was a breakthrough. Maddie realized she just didn’t feel comfortable doing this new, out-of-the-norm thing with her tutor. She would go to the game, but only with me. The tears were from fatigue, to be sure, but also from insecurity about this new situation. This girl whom I think of as fearless isn’t in fact fearless. She’s often so brave, but the sense of being able to be in the world without her safety net (me!) is sometimes fragile.

So in her usual way, she inhabited a young child and a mature person in the same moment. Her anxiety came from insecurity, fear of the unknown, fear of feeling untethered, her inability to imagine herself through the what-ifs into a mental picture of success. And yet (and this is even more significant me) she was able to access her feelings and the reasons behind them, and then ask for what she wanted. Such a huge achievement for this kid!

And so, as it should have been all along, I took my daughter to a Giants game for her birthday. Once we arrived at this conclusion, I let go of my stress and just went with it. I ditched my long list of errands, cancelled a salon appointment, packed up my sunscreen and a hat, and off we went. It was too late for the ferry (the ship had in fact sailed by that point), so we hopped in the car and headed across the bridge. The fretting was over. Time to jump into this surprise of a day.

The Giants were terrible. But the day was beautiful and due to a lack of forethought on my part, we had tickets behind the opponents’ dugout, which put us in a sea of Kansas City fans. And that, my friends, turned out to be great! As the numbers on the scoreboard became more and more lopsided, the crowd around us erupted in cheers. They were having fun, and so were we. The couple next to Maddie was visiting California from their home state of Missouri, following their beloved baseball team around the state. They were so friendly, offering to buy Maddie treats for her birthday and engaging in conversation. We talked about all of the wonderful things you can do here in San Francisco, and Maddie asked, “Have you been to Muir Woods?”

Well, that might not seem like a big deal to you, but it sure was to me. Such an appropriate and normal thing to say! She was engaged and conversational! And she asked a relevant and meaningful question, given that we live not far from there. And when the husband repeatedly and enthusiastically offered to buy her a frozen lemonade in honor of her birthday, she politely and gratefully declined several times before finally admitting “Lemonade isn’t my thing.” I felt like a million bucks. My daughter who struggled in the morning, who seemed like a child afraid to be too far from her mother, was out in the world acting her age. Only a parent of a special needs kid would feel like jumping up and down because their kid said something appropriate.

Much to my surprise, we stayed for the entire game (well, almost). It was hot out there in the sun, and she hadn’t really been paying much attention to what was happening on the field (really, who does at a baseball game?), but although I repeatedly informed her that everything was up to her, she was happy to stay. We bought at Pence jersey (“I don’t know who any of these guys are,” she said when shopping for jerseys. “Then just pick a number you like,” I said.) and a big orange foam finger and garlic fries.

In the end, I would call this day a success. But it wasn’t easy. Sometimes I’m reminded in no uncertain terms of the challenges my daughter faces. Sometimes I’m not reminded but instead learn something entirely new. My brave, strong kid can still be a frightened young child inside. She can still struggle to know what she’s feeling, and when she is able to not only identify it but also verbalize it, it’s a small victory. I can’t even think about college, or next year, and sometimes not even tomorrow. It’s enough, quite often, to be surprised minute by minute.

Recently my sister recounted a moment with her teenage daughter. They are both musicians, and my sister has been playing more regular gigs. After a recent performance, “You inspire me,” her daughter began, and my sister’s heart swelled with pride. “To eat ice cream,” the sentence concluded.

“That was a rollercoaster of a comment,” I replied.

And that is precisely how I feel. A single moment with Maddie, a single utterance, can encapsulate a high and a low, both a pleasant surprise and a slap-in-the-face reminder of the challenges we face.

But still, as of yesterday, my daughter is 17. That is 17 years of her becoming this complicated young lady, and 17 years of my own growth into the mother, and person, I am today.

The Art of Acceptance

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

One of the many concepts I have struggled with and contemplated over the years of parenting my autistic child has been the difference between giving up and acceptance. I have come to the conclusion that it’s simply a matter of mindset because the outcome of giving up and acceptance is the same: you recognize there is a reality you probably can’t change, so you put your energies elsewhere.

So many times I have felt like I was giving up. Or perhaps just giving up too soon. I was hard on myself, too. Remember my failure to chart? I felt so guilty when every single professional we worked with, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and occupational therapists, insisted that making reward charts was the answer. THE answer. It never was the answer for us, and I knew it. But I would often try for a week, and then just bail out. Was I giving up? I didn’t know. I just knew it wasn’t working. It seemed futile. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough. Maybe I wasn’t organized enough or disciplined enough. Maybe it felt too difficult for me (it is true it’s not in my nature).

I realized at some point, however, that it wasn’t my failure. Charts were meaningless to Maddie. So I could release myself from guilt because really what I was doing was recognizing what was true (acceptance!) and acting accordingly. Maddie didn’t give a shit about a reward chart and she never would, so why keep trying? I could release myself. And guess what? That is not the same as giving up!

I also remember deciding there would be no more fights about homework. And in our house, that meant no homework at all. It wasn’t going to happen without a lot of pushing on my part, and often my energy was wasted. I really should have made that decision when Maddie was in first grade, when homework first came into our lives. What should have taken ten minutes (an appropriate length of time for a six-year-old, if they absolutely must have homework at all) took a full hour because of the Asperger’s (and with it, ADHD) I didn’t know she had. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell the teacher, “Look, this is killing us.” I now realize years later that she would have most likely said “No problem.” But I was fighting it, swimming upstream in a deluge, losing my mind over something that was at the time both impossible and unnecessary. If only I’d had the wisdom of acceptance back then. Or the next year, or the next year, or the year after that. And on and on.

Finally, after more than eleven years of this struggle, two weeks ago we began the new phase of Maddie’s education. She hasn’t set foot on a campus for months, and in fact she took a couple months off to do whatever the heck she wanted. Which, by the way, was awesome for me, too. I realize parenting involves occasional conflicts with your kids. You will inevitably be at odds at least once in awhile. But the daily grind of morning-long battles, fraught with anxiety on both our parts, was just too much. For both of us. I got to say at least a temporary goodbye to migraines. And, it turns out, Maddie was able to to go off the Prozac she’s been taking since she was nine.

I noticed a few days ago that her prescription bottle was still in the Ziploc bag she had taken to camp last month. She had been a bit less reliable with her nightly medication since she quit school. I was no longer managing my teenager’s bedtime, which involved watching the clock, telling her five times to brush her teeth, cleaning off her bed, filling her water bottle, reminding her to take her medication, and hanging out for a bit (I do miss our nighttime conversations) before turning off her light and saying good night. So I wasn’t aware she had simply stopped. Fortunately, unlike many similar medications, you can apparently just stop cold turkey without withdrawal symptoms.

After I spotted the neglected bottle, I casually asked Maddie if she had been taking her medication. “No,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“I thought so. Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

“Yup!” Clearly she was feeling better than OK.

“If you start feeling any anxiety or if you feel a little depressed, you need to tell me, okay?”

“Yup!” And I know she will. I’m so grateful for that.

And so here we are. Her decision to quit school relieved me of that two-month migraine and apparently freed Maddie from the anxiety, in particular, that had been plaguing her since the fourth grade. Seven years later (SEVEN YEARS!), we figured out together that “giving up” on school was really just accepting that it wasn’t working, and then making the choice to do something else, and rather magically, we are both okay. After all these years of struggle, all these years of meetings and IEPs, and then no IEPs, and then IEPs again, after traumatizing experiments with ADHD meds, after all those fights and struggles and tears and digging in on her part and frustration and yelling on my part, and frustration and even the occasional physical outburst on her part, and my trying and trying and feeling like a failure, and wondering what I should do, and then trying something and finding that doesn’t work, and trying something else and then something else, and feeling defeated and exhausted and afraid and discouraged, Maddie and I found acceptance.

And so, for now, we are free!

The difference between giving up and acceptance, it turns out, is in your feeling of power. When you give up, you are admitting defeat. The thing, whatever it is, has won. And so you shrug and say, well forget it. With acceptance, you are making a choice. You are not a victim. You are in charge. YOU say, I have decided this thing, whatever it is, is happening, and you find a way to embrace it, and hopefully, to make the best of it and find a new path to peace.

Still Looking for My Inner Bad-Ass

Chris Irvine, Parent Coach3 Comments

It’s the beginning of a new year. And the beginning of a new era. A school-free era for my kid. Which is great. But it’s also an era of exploration of sorts. Hmmm…now that I see those words I realize the exploration era isn’t new at all. It’s about 16 1/2 years old right now. And it’s not really getting any easier.

One of the areas I have had to explore is within myself. And that is my ability to ask for help. Oh man, do I suck at that. It is not a point of pride that I’m like that. In fact, I think it’s a deficiency. I mean, isn’t it a bit superior to think that I’m to be the helper only? That perhaps I’m beyond needing help?

I have explored this in therapy. For years, when the stress of the mornings (and the afternoons and evenings and nighttimes) was about to break me, my therapist, in her infinite wisdom, advised me to hire help. If a had a person in my home to do the mundane stuff, it would free up my energy to do the hard stuff. And perhaps I might not actually GO CRAZY. We had that conversation so many times, and I would nod my head in agreement. “That is such a great idea!” I would say. “Yes! I’ll for sure look into that!” But apparently I didn’t mean it because by the the time I was closing to door to her office and heading home, I was thinking, “Nope.”

I know where I get this from, Mom. My mom is one of those bake-a-lasagne-while-pouring-concrete kind of moms who also sewed our clothes and mowed the lawn and painted the outside of the house and made dinner out of nothing and gave us every last dime she ever had to make us happy. But would she ever ask for help? Uh, nope. The reigning philosophy at our house long preceded Tim Gunn: Make it work. Do with what you have. You can do it because you just have to. That’s what a strong person does.

So here I am. I’m a grown woman. I not only don’t mow a lawn, I don’t even have a lawn. We have a gardener who comes twice a month for some basic yard clean up. I knew by the time I was seven that sewing machines and I were destined to be enemies. (In fact, at some point my mom put my sister and I to work simply cutting out the patterns pinned to the fabric, and I was so bad at that, she told me to forget it). We have a weekly house cleaner who does all the really big stuff (although I certainly spend a ridiculous amount of time doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen and generally trying to keep my house from being a pig-sty, emphasis on the word “trying”). For years, though, I felt so weird about it that I would help our house cleaner when she was here. I still do a little bit, telling her to forget this room or that, or don’t worry about the floors she didn’t get to today, or here let me play with your kid while you’re working.

In comparison to my mom, my workload is pathetically easy. And yet still I am overwhelmed to the point of occasionally falling apart in a big way. And I still won’t get help. There is just something inside me that expects that I can do all the parenting because that is how it’s done. I should be able to handle everything with my kid. That’s my job! And if I can’t, perhaps that means I’m not good enough. I would never think that about anybody else. In fact, I’ll be your biggest cheerleader if you say to me, “Ya know, this is too hard for me. I’m getting help.”

“Good for you!” I would say. “We all need help!” And I would mean it.

Perhaps even more of a roadblock in getting help for Maddie has simply been a lack of knowledge of what in the hell to ask for. I add those words quite intentionally because it’s the most humbling, frustrating, regrettable thing to find out, after years of struggling, there was help available that I could have asked for if only I had known about it. And that happened to me recently.

In preparing to move Maddie from her public high school to a home school environment, I sought out the professional experience of my friend “Carol.” She is an experienced behavioral therapist and business owner who works closely with schools to provide support and interventions for kids like Maddie. She is a not only a terrific person but also a great resource that I should have hired the minute I met her. (Quick advice for parents of special needs kids: Get yourself a professional advocate!)

Shortly before winter break, I received an email from Maddie’s teacher/case manager suggesting that I immediately un-enroll her from school so that she would receive Incompletes rather than F’s on her report card. Okay, I thought, I’d better do that because that’s what I was told to do. A week went by and I hadn’t made the official declaration because I hadn’t yet put an alternative education plan in place. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it yet, but after another reminder email from that teacher, I set about writing a long letter explaining why we were taking her out of school. I wanted the teachers and staff to know I appreciated everything they had done, but that, due to Maddie’s difficulties getting to school and because of the recommendation from the teacher that we officially un-enroll her, we were going to educate her at home.

Still somewhat apprehensive about making it official, I forwarded the draft of my letter to my professional friend Carol. I wanted her feedback on the letter, particularly since we had discussed hiring her to create a home school program (even though I kept thinking I could do it myself because I ought to be able to do it myself).

“Whoa!” she said. “Because of her IEP she should absolutely not be getting Fs.” She was a little bit angry, I sensed, because she believed Maddie’s case wasn’t being handled properly. She also wanted to know why more interventions hadn’t been attempted at the source; why hadn’t they sent somebody to our home to motivate Maddie to get to school? Why hadn’t she met with a counselor or psychologist to get at the core reason for her attendance problems? Why hadn’t there been a plan in place to address these issues?

Crap. I could have asked for all that? Those are things they can do? 

I know there are other parents out there who raise their voices and demand what their kid needs. I honestly don’t know how to do that. So feeling ineffectual in that way, I asked Carol to add to my letter wording that would properly and very specifically address what she thought I should ask for now: a specific plan to address the core issue of attendance and a clearly delineated academic program that would allow Maddie to graduate. I tried to write it myself, but the words just didn’t seem right and I felt as though I wasn’t even sure I knew what I was requesting.

So Carol, my friend and fierce advocate, using the voice she knows how to use working with schools and insurance companies to get what her clients need, was clear and unapologetic in her requests. I edited it all a little bit, softening the edges to better suit my own style, and sent it off with my fingers crossed.

And shortly after that I received a response. I had clearly offended her teacher, who seemed to take a rather defensive tone. And I immediately regretted my letter. I really hate offending people, for one thing (which is part of my problem, I guess). And I felt shitty because it seems that somebody else can acceptably use a more powerful voice because it belongs to them, but when I adopted this more demanding demeanor, it somehow came across as ungrateful and perhaps inauthentic. I fear I set this whole thing up by always being so undemanding and flexible, and then when I suddenly get all fierce, people don’t know what to make of it.

So I turned around with a sort-of apology, saying I hadn’t meant to be confrontational but instead I was trying to figure out what to do with Maddie and that I have always found it hard to know what to ask for and how to ask for it. (As of now, she is not un-enrolled and we are supposed to meet in January. Also I now have a clearer idea of what we’re working toward.)

And that made me feel better in a way (I nipped the conflict in the bud! Phew!) but worse in another. Here I was simply asking for something very specific for my child and pointing out that despite repeated requests for help I still hadn’t gotten her what she needs, and it was as if I was trying to pick a fight. And the last thing I wanted to do was start a fight. On the other hand, maybe that’s what I ought to do sometimes. Sometimes, it turns out, you really do have to be the squeaky wheel. Or the bitch. Or whatever.

So here it is, 2017, the year I will turn 50 (!), and I still struggle with asking for what I need. I even found the courage to ask for it and I ended up apologizing. One thing has become clearer as I write this: the ability to ask for what you want and to demand what you deserve is a strength, not a weakness.

Perhaps I think I need to write this on a some post-it note and stick it on my bathroom mirror:

“Use your voice and don’t apologize for it.”

And, perhaps:

“Be kind to yourself.”

How to Be Awesome

Chris Irvine, Parent Coach3 Comments

Yesterday I picked Maddie up from the camp bus. She has gone to winter camp for three years, and as you may know, the planning for winter camp begins the moment she leaves summer camp. Summer camp ends with a rest and then plans for winter camp. Basically this kid lives for camp. If she could do anything full time, it would be camp. Camp, camp and more camp. Thank goodness for camp! Have I mentioned she likes camp?

The first time she went to sleep-away camp, I was a nervous wreck the entire week. Instead of relaxing and enjoying having only one kid for a few days (it is SO MUCH EASIER), I lay awake in bed chewing my nails wondering if she was she ok emotionally without her mom. Would she be lonely, could she make friends? Would the kids be nice to her?  Did she need to call home? What if she got sick? Can she eat the food? What if she’s sad???

And then on pickup day I discovered what a magical place this camp was, and the only time I worried again was her first winter camp when it very suddenly became freezing for exactly the days she was there. I ordered wool socks from Amazon and overnighted them to camp. She thought it was weird. But I was glad I did it.

This session, though, I was a tiny bit worried. She had put so much effort into preparing something and I was afraid her heart would be broken.

Maddie’s current obsession (and I do not use that term lightly) is a video game called Assassin’s Creed. I don’t play video games at all, but I have seen enough of this game to understand its appeal. It takes place in various historical periods, and the visuals and costumes (HELLO COSTUMES!) are magnificent. She and my husband have declared Assassin’s Creed “their” game recently, and that’s how they connect. And his big gift to her this Christmas was an elaborate costume of the hero from the middle ages.

A few months ago, Maddie had an idea for camp. (Hey, thinking ahead!) Each cabin is charged with naming itself and creating a cheer. This is a creative bunch, given that it’s a performing and visual arts camp, so they always come up with something inspired. And inspired Maddie was. She wanted to name her cabin after one group in the video game and hope that the cabin of one of her guy friends would be their foe. In preparation, she bought 20 tee shirts, 10 black and 10 white. She made out of paper and duct tape (surprise!) emblems matching the groups and attached them with velcro. She made two incredible flags as well, again with the duct tape.

It was great to watch her pour her passion and creativity and time and effort into a project. I had nothing to do with it other than the requisite trip to Party City to get supplies. But all the while in the back of my head, I kept thinking this might not go as she planned. I didn’t want to dampen her spirits, but I also felt the need to prepare her for the possibility that the other kids aren’t so enthusiastic about Assassin’s Creed.

“I just don’t want it to ruin your camp experience if the kids don’t go for it,” I said. It hurt my heart to say it, but it was necessary.

“It won’t,” she replied. “I’ve gotten better at that.”

Well, indeed she has. And her self-awareness was startling and a bit of a relief.

All week I kept wondering how it was going. Perhaps her preparation would have been met with such appreciation that people would feel obligated to participate Or maybe there’s a whole teen cult of Assassin’s Creed among the drama set that I don’t know about.

Yesterday she arrived across the bay on the camp’s bus. When I drove up to retrieve her, she was already off the bus and waved me down. She looked great. Relatively clean, in her nice warm coat, hair in a pony tail, happy and relaxed.

After we threw our arms around each other for a long hug, a young lady introduced herself to me. “I’m Otter, Maddie’s counselor.” (All the counselors have nicknames, like Awkward and Sparkle and Tiny.) “We had a great week!” she said.

“Well, Maddie LIVES for camp,” I said.

“We know!” she said. Of course they know!

“She did a lot of preparation,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Yes, she did!” said Otter.

I turned to Maddie. “How did it go?”

“Well, it didn’t go like I expected. It turned out even better!”

I had been so afraid to ask her about the Assassin’s Creed thing, thinking perhaps if it had been a huge disappointment, that might not be her most desired topic of conversation. But now I had the opening to ask.

And this is how it went: The kids didn’t want to adopt her cabin themes. I didn’t ask for the details because it didn’t seem to matter. But what did matter is what came next. Instead of feeling rejected and disappointed, she decided to put all of her work to use in a different manner: She approached the camp director and suggested some LARPing (live action role playing). LARPing does involve costumes but it mostly involves particular types of battles and games. So she helped organize the whole thing and they rounded up pool noodles for weapons. There was a huge themed battle with those tee shirts and a big game of capture the flag with those great flags she made, and she got to not only enjoy all the fun but experience the rewards of her flexibility, creativity and leadership. I believe she felt positively heroic at that point. Apparently the LARPing was a huge success, and they all had Maddie to thank.

So she will begin preparing for next summer’s sessions. We’ll wash the shirts and she’ll make some more (a few kids kept theirs). And I suspect she’ll have some other ideas, as well, to help enhance the LARPing experience.

These moments are the glimmers—no, flashes!—of hope for the future. I don’t know what exactly Maddie will do, but what I do know is this: She is passionate and creative and flexible and she’s growing up and changing in all the best ways.

Finding My Voice

Chris Irvine, Parent CoachLeave a comment

Recently I wrote about what’s been keeping me from writing. A few personal distractions have factored in to be sure.

Now I have realized there has been another big distraction from my Asperger’s parenting blog. And that is the current election.

I won’t go into my opinions here. Suffice it to say they are strong. They are burning. They are becoming increasingly consuming of my mental energy. I have always had opinions about these things. I have some very firm beliefs, which have developed over the years as I have grown and matured and become more open-minded and more worldly. I would say they are mostly fully formed.

But like many of us, I have refrained from engaging in discourse about those taboo subjects: religion and politics. I think money is one too. I still don’t really want to discuss religion. That’s personal. Another person’s religious beliefs are their own. I respect them and value our differences. I am certainly curious to learn about various religions, but I don’t feel the need to convince anybody one way or the other or to be converted, either. And money is just not that interesting to discuss.

But politics has become something else for me all of a sudden. I am so fired up I feel like I might explode. And guess what? Sometime over the last year, I have found my voice. Partly it’s probably due to my age. I turned 49 last month. I still feel 25. I’m still goofy and silly and jokey and dancey and sing-y and face-makey and all that good stuff. One of my purposes in life is to have fun with my people. I want us all to enjoy ourselves. I put a lot of myself into that mission on a daily basis, particularly with my family. We dance with the dogs, and say “That’s what she said” as often as possible. I crack myself up, to be honest. Seriously, I am HI.LAR.I.OUS.

But this 49 thing has given me something very powerful. Maybe it’s courage. Maybe it’s kind of the old-lady-who-doesn’t-care-what-anybody-thinks attitude, even though I don’t exactly feel old. Maybe those are one in the same.

Or maybe writing 100 blog posts about my life, letting down my guard to expose my fears and failures and weaknesses and hopes, has given me the courage to speak my mind about other things.

Or maybe it’s because things are falling into place with my kids, which have been the consuming force in my life.  I’m learning to accept the challenges of my 16-year-old daughter, and my nearly 14-year-old son is becoming more independent. So I have this freed up energy, energy that is searching for a purpose. And I’m finding that purpose.

Whatever precipitated this development, here it is. I have found my voice. And I really do mean found. I have had this voice my whole life, but I’ve kept it quiet. I’ve been polite and diplomatic and quiet. I have sat around a table full of people who shared a singular viewpoint while I most vehemently but also silently disagreed. I didn’t want to stir up trouble. Oh, the fire burned in me, but my desire to be polite and maybe, I hate to admit, to be liked, has suppressed my voice.

I wish I had found it sooner. It seems like I wasted so much time being afraid to speak up. I was a painfully shy child, fearful of adults in general, even the lady at the Taco Bell window waiting to take my order. Or my neighbor’s grandma, who insisted she pull that sort-of loose tooth out of my five-year-old mouth. I was too timid and shy to stop her. Or my teachers, who just might call on me to speak. Even though I knew the answer or had something important or meaningful or even brilliant to say, the fear of having to open my mouth and expose myself was overwhelming. So first, I had to overcome my shyness, and that has been a lifelong journey.

But there is a lot of room between not being shy and being bold. I think I just figured that out.

So now, finally, as 50 looms, I have decided it’s time to be bold and use my voice for good. Do I still want people to like me? Well, sure, I suppose everybody does. But I want to be liked for what’s truly inside, and that’s coming out, people! It’s coming out! 

I want my kids to see me this way. I want them to see a fearless woman who speaks her mind, who stands by what she believes in. A person with a passion and a voice and the courage of her convictions. A person whose words can make a difference. Because words are my medium.

This particular blog will continue to focus mostly on parenting. No politics here, unless they involve autism or special needs or kids. I have decided, after 100 entries, that this blog is really about my journey as a mother more than Maddie’s journey as a teen, and this newfound courage is part of that journey. It’s my coming out, as they say. My declaration of strength and power and intention. My declaration of purpose. And it feels good.