Two by two and three by three

E. is in the middle of another testing cycle at school.  There are three or four in a year.  I'm going to try to stay off the broader issue of standardized testing in our schools today.  Let's just say that as both an educator and a parent, I feel like there is WAY too much emphasis on test-taking.

Standardized testing does not "count" for E. until third grade.  Nonetheless, he began taking a version of the tests in kindergarten.  My impression is that they do this in part to provide teachers with a relative measure of students' achievement, but largely in order to get them acclimated to the testing process.

Much different than my experience in the days of yore, very few of these tests are done with pencil and paper.  For E. this is a good thing.  His motor skills are such that he might actually miss a number of questions based entirely on inaccurate filling of bubbles.  Instead, he just has to move the mouse and click his answer.  As a child of the computer generation, that is well within his ability.

When the standardized tests are completed on the computer, they tend to be adaptive, meaning that they difficulty of the questions is adjusted to your performance.  Get questions right, and the difficulty increases little by little; miss several and you go the other direction.

E. came home the other day and told us that there had been multiplication on his test.  3 x 100 was the first question.  And so he figured out how to multiply.  As far as I can tell, he surveyed the available answers, considered how one might figure out the question, and moved on from there.  He now knows how to multiply, figured several random facts I gave him--more of the basic-facts variety, but still requiring an understanding of the underlying concept.

I can't say I'm surprised by this.  I remember doing some math problems with him in a year or two ago when it was clear that he was close to using multiplication to figure out answers.  He just didn't realize that was what he was doing, didn't know the term 'multiplication' or its symbols.

Math is a second language for me.  It gives shape to my thoughts.  I love its order and do figures for fun.  When E. would come home last year, complaining about math, saying he hated it, I had to steel myself not to take it personally.  This year has been so much better for him in many ways, helped a lot by the fact that his current teacher is a math-science kind of person.  Even when E. has struggled with the occasional concept, he is much less resistant to working with me and, dare I say, we end up having fun and connecting over the lessons.  And when he tells me that he's figured out an advanced concept on his own, just because it was there in front of him, I can't help but say, "That's my son!"

I could really use a Time-Turner

I doubt it would surprise anybody who knows me that Hermione Granger is the character with whom I most relate.  I was even a bit jealous when she got to take extra classes in The Prisoner of Azkaban, because I would have done that when I was back in school.  (And sort of did since in my junior year I took a 0-hour class--a period that ran before the official day began--followed by a full day of academic courses, ending with  an independent study after school.  Eight courses in a normally six-period day.)

I could use a Time-Turner right about now.  Not for academic over-achievement, but for simple achievement.

I am officially back on the clock for my doctoral program.  I have set up a work area, read some secondary literature, figured out a direction for some immediate writing.  But the time I have set aside on paper has a tendency to shrink and disappear.

Part of it is spent multi-tasking.  Pumping so that J. can have a bottle (that he won't drink) at daycare.  Grabbing some lunch.  Making coffee.  And yes, checking in on Twitter and the like since I have no opportunity to do that until after I finish teaching.

Part of it gets eaten up by the pull of my other identities.  I tutor a couple hours a week--math right now--in my role as public-school teacher and small-town resident.  I've been doing daycare pick-up for J., something that takes about an hour total.  On occasion, I time it so that I can get J. early enough to then pick up E.

I have been trying to figure out how to shift some of my work to the evening, after both boys are in bed.  But J. still sleeps inconsistently.  At bedtime, I never know how long I will have before I'm needed back in the bedroom.  And it takes me a while to get settled back into my planned task, to get my head back into that realm.

I should have done a little work just now.  There's a section of my paper that I can envision and for which I have the foundation laid.  I just need to turn it into academic-speak with appropriate footnotes and formatting.  I have some citations to throw in, marked out in my notes.  I want to do this soon, as a follow up to my latest correspondence with my supervisor, as proof to us both that I can still do this.

I figure just a few turns and I could have those pages in no time.  Those pages and a good nap too!

Resolved, 2011

I'm not even going to look back at what I wrote last year.  That would be one sure way to pop the optimism I've mustered for this new year.

As always, there are plenty of goals I have as we hand a new calendar on the wall.  This year, it's not simply inspired by the Earth's turning.  Instead, we have a few changes here--J. is starting daycare, my grad-school maternity leave is up--which are inspiring some new-leaf-turning.

My goals and their reasons:

Household: 

• We will finish rearranging our house.  We've been moving furniture and going through our things to create space for everybody.  Currently J. and all of his stuff are in our bedroom.  We're about halfway through effecting the following: J.'s stuff into the third bedroom (plus switch some of E.'s furniture to J. and move other things into his room), office furniture (and A.'s workspace) into back of living room, M.'s stuff into corner of sunroom, all toys into boys' bedrooms.  After all that, I hope to get started on the garden.
• We will be more organized during the school week.  Now that all of us will need to get out of the house in the morning, we absolutely must follow through on things like packing lunches the night before and picking out clothes.  I'm also going to return to meal-planning so we don't waste time every night debating what we feel like making or eating.
• I will work on E.'s accepted foods.  We know better than to think this will be easy or quick, but I have a few ideas for this and a few more resources to consult.  The meal-planning and family dinners are part of this.  I will put a little bit of all we're eating on E.'s plate, in addition to his usual chicken nuggets or grilled cheese sandwich, not forcing him to eat any of it, but sort of desensitizing him.  We are also not above bribery.

Work/school:

• I'm getting back on track for my PhD.  I will be taking as much advantage of J.'s time in daycare as I can to make sure I keep things rolling.  I expect to finish my comps in May or June, although the actual date of my exams will depend somewhat on my committee.
• I will do my best to pick up another 1 or 2 sections of teaching for next year (i.e. the 2011-12 school year).  This will get me over the magical number that makes me eligible for insurance through the school district here and help us pump up our savings, all of which will give us some breathing room (and help us prepare for the eventuality in which A. goes down to part-time or returns to contract work).

I'll leave it at that for now.  I have some hopes for exercise, healthy eating, and the like, but I know better than to make the list too long.  If we can get the house in order, get me through comps, and manage to get everybody where they belong on a regular basis, we'll have achieved a real victory.

Santa Claus is coming to town

My parents didn't want me to believe in Santa Claus.  So, of course, I did.

It's not even that they didn't do anything to reinforce the myth.  They straight out told me that Santa didn't exist.  I would argue with them.  Magic explained it all.  It didn't matter that I knew my parents bought the presents and filled the stockings.  Somehow Santa was still a part of it all.

I think I needed that magic in my life.  Still do, although it manifests now as my love of reading science fiction and fantasy.

The year that my parents had nearly convinced me of Santa's non-existence, I received a present with a "From: Santa" gift-tag.  I waved that around as the very proof I had been lacking for so many years.  Even though the gift wrap and handwriting matched the other gifts from a certain aunt.

I suspect that my parents' original decision, not to indulge a belief in Santa, came from my father and matched his decision to raise us knowing about both Christianity and Judaism without encouraging blind belief in either.  It's something I never thought to ask my dad before he died, but I can imagine it as a topic we might have discussed over coffee when E. was a baby.  (My mother is something of an "unreliable narrator," so conversations like this just don't happen very often for us.)

A. and I are letting E. believe in Santa.  The story is everywhere anyway, and E. just loves the various Christmas movies and stories, fed by A.'s love of them and habit of playing them during the fall, starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas shortly before Halloween.  After seeing The Polar Express a few years ago, he found a jingle bell in our house and carried it around with great reverence.

I can reconcile our encouragement of all this with our desire to raise E. to be a critical thinker thanks to an essay written by Dale McGowan.  He's run it during a couple Christmas seasons and it appears in his book Parenting Beyond Belief.  The short version is that Santa provides kids with an opportunity to reason through something that they are originally told just to believe.

E. is not ready to stop believing yet.  He has accepted, without question, Santa's budgetary limits and deadlines for wishlists.  He does not care to notice that the gift-tags are the same as on some of our presents, that the handwriting is mine, that Santa uses different wrapping paper at our house and at his grandparents'.  He does not dwell on the logisitics of Santa making it around the world in one night.  All of it still just is.

And I'm happy for it to stay that way for just a bit longer.

On sneezer and wheezer and cougher and...

Less than a week until Christmas.  This holiday season has been more fraught than others, with E. on a bit of a trigger.  It probably didn't help that we started out December with a rush of presents.  E. has two advent calendars this year: a Lego one, which has become something of a tradition, and the more common chocolate calendar, courtesy of his grandma.  On top of that, Hanukkah began December 1st, so there were gifts associated with that.  The tears began immediately when he had some trouble putting together the Lego Star Wars set on that very first night.

Finally, we realized that he's probably been fighting illness since Thanksgiving.  None of us has been at our best since he came down with some 24-hour bug the night before Thanksgiving.  For the past two weeks, I've had a particularly bad sore throat.  Through several doctors' visits, at least one for each of us, we've determined the following: our household is suffering from a combination of strep throat, stomach flu, and a virus (or 3).  E. stayed home from school on Thursday and Friday, extending his winter break by a couple days, but he's still coughing up a storm.  We should have realized, even before the sore throat and coughing began, that he was not feeling well, as an inexplicable increase in meltdowns is almost always a sign he's ill.  We'd attributed it to the holiday season, but it's been even more intense than usual.

After two days of antibiotics, I'm starting to feel functional again.  For the virus E. has, it's likely to take another 3-5 days for recovery.  Just in time for the Christmas festivities.  I sure hope that works out since I'd rather avoid continuous Lego meltdown next Saturday.

Can I get that in writing?

Back when E. was in kindergarten, A. and I borrowed a DVD from the school district's autism team (not an unusual act).  Three hours of Tony Attwood discussing Asperger's.  Both of us found it riveting.  And one thing I definitely have to give him is that it's possible to listen to him talk about the challenges posed and the work that needs to go into supporting Aspies and still come away feeling optimistic.  He clearly appreciates Aspies' strengths and quirks and is one of the few NTs I've come across who really seems to get it.

A. has read even more of Attwood's work than I have at this point, and getting to hear him talk in person was a definite highlight of the conference we attended this summer.

As I mentioned before, J. was with us for the conference.  A. and I had our spots on the far aisle, just a few tables in from the door.  When he would fuss beyond being hungry, I would take him just out of the auditorium, catching as much as I could from the chairs on the other side of the door.  I had both the stroller and sling, so we walked a lot too.

At one of the breaks, I was back in the auditorium with A.  Attwood was striding out, trying, I'm sure, to get a few minutes downtime before continuing his presentation.  But when he saw us off to the side passing J. back and forth between us, he came over and expressed his surprise to see the baby.  He'd had no idea there was one in the crowd.  I explained that we'd been in and out, depending on J.'s mood (and felt better knowing that he had not been disruptive).  Attwood bent down a little and looked J. in the eyes for a few seconds, taking his measure, smiling, engaging him.  He looked back at us and pronounced, "He's just fine.  No autism here."

Now I get that this is not a formal evaluation and that we will have no recourse should we find ourselves with a diagnosis down the line, but really Attwood was giving weight to an opinion A. and I have already expressed: J. is neurotypical.

Some of our reasons are subtle and hard to pin down.  It's been seven years since E. was this age, so the memories are not fresh.  Yet while we did not have concerns at this point in E.'s life, we were able to recognize some of the earlier signs once we began reading about Asperger's.

It's not that E. did not make eye contact, but it wasn't his focus.  J., on the other hand, craves our attention and draws it out of us by catching our eye.  Whereas E. could spend a long time studying geometric patterns, J. will only look at them as long as there's no face or other interactive opportunity available.

There's a huge difference in how our two boys play(ed) at this age.  E. has always loved toys with wheels.  We would later find out that staring at spinning wheels is a common trait of kids on the spectrum.  J. enjoys his buses, but generally propels them along so that he can pursue.  He varies how he plays with his toys and explores them with all of his senses.  Everything goes into his mouth or is used to bang into something else.  We joke that his use of toys as tools illustrates the human link with the apes.

The differences extend to all of J.'s interactions with the world, his movement, his interests, the way he eats.  I know that this is not a "Get out of jail free" card and that we have a high chance of some sensory issue and/or other quirks, but it's clear to us that J. is on a far different trajectory than E. ever was.  It's not necessarily better--I have moments of wondering, "What am I going to do with an NT?"--just new ground.

What I did on summer vacation

In the middle of a week during the summer, A. and I dropped E. and Z. at the grandparents' and headed one state over to an autism conference.  J. came along with us, mostly because he had no choice.

For two days, we had a chance to listen to some amazing experts in the field of autism.  This was for us, in many ways, our music festival stocked with revered celebrities.  We had watched and/or read presentations by all of the speakers who would be there, but we wanted to see them in person anyway.  Going into the event, we were both excited for the day with Tony Attwood and Temple Grandin.

Since J. was with us, I spent a large part of several sessions outside of the auditorium.  Whenever he started fussing, I headed to the door.  If he wasn't too worked up, I discovered that I could still hear the presenter while sitting in the chairs just outside the doors.  When that would fail, we would walk around the hotel lobby.  We got to know some of the vendors pretty well.  A. took him for one session each day, so I had some uninterrupted time.  And we also received a booklet with many of the slides from the presentations, so I was able to fill in the gaps.

We purchased a few books and a kit, although we haven't done nearly as much with them as I would like.  (Everything's getting pushed to another time.  Lots of "once the baby's sleeping better."  Which still hasn't happened.)  But we walked away with a lot of good material and high spirits. 

A. and I also got to eat out a couple times and stroll around a shopping center (with the all-important stop at the Lego Store).  Sure we had J. with us, but he was mostly content to hang out with us.

I had three interactions with presenters which made the whole trip worthwhile.  Each one deserves its own post; I hope to give them space in the next week or two.