The evidence of history (successful ttc mentioned)

It is IEP time, Individualized Education Plan time for Scott. Monday we met with his adviser (that's what they call teachers at the charter school) and with his special education teacher.

This is dovetailing nicely with my exploration of a new practitioner to follow Scott's adhd and his medication. Gary and I met with her, just the two of us, 10 or 12 days ago. Friday we took both Scott and Connor so she could observe their interactions (and they obliged by deteriorating in front of her at the end of our hour long session). Last night was a session with just Gary and me.

One of the questions on the blue form--I forget its name, but it's a standard behavioral assessment form which gives indicators of what kinds of behaviors we're dealing with...inattentive, hyperactive, oppositional, defiant, compulsive, anxious--one of the questions was if he was having trouble academically at school. And when did it start?

I realized we're talking about two schools. He started kindergarten in our neighborhood school, and I transferred him to the charter school in January of first grade. I realized I wasn't sure how to answer the questionnaire, because at the neighborhood school his academic problems began in kindergarten...yet, his issues at Trillium were not being described in terms of 'academics'. No one's saying he's 'not at grade level' in reading, math, as if it's a "problem".

The occasion of a new school year, new special ed practitioners, a new teacher and a new classroom (he's 'graduated' from a Kindergarten-through-2nd-grade classroom to a 3,4,5 room) has challenged the part of my brain that wants to describe my intuitions about Scott. This classroom is conducted at a more mature level--it assumes a certain independence and capability of a student. Is this a place where Scott will be able to orient himself and get with the swim, or will he flounder and drown? In three years will he come out hopelessly behind? In other words, should it be a 'problem' that he's not at grade level? Am I being negligent if I'm not worried?

One of the ways I described Scott is that he is someone who is so captivated with the details of the first step, that a 5 mile hike is completely beyond him. This puts him in a totally different context than his peers who may be a mile, or two, into the hike. They may be oriented to a 5 mile hike. Scott is not. His adviser nodded when I made this analogy.

I'm remembering the children's book I used to read to the boys, "Leo the Late Bloomer". Leo's progress was only a problem for people who were waiting for him.

This kid has always kept me waiting. The mornings are an ordeal of our mis-matched paces. I stand, tapping my foot, as he oh-so-slowly puts on his sock. Then---the---other.

I used to joke that going somewhere was nearly impossible because Scott had managed to break getting into the van into a 50-step process that he lingered over --each and every one of those 50 steps. (First he opens the door. Then he gazes into the open door, slowly reaching for and scratching a spot on his leg. Finishes scratching. Oh, wait; it itches again. Scratches some more. Now the knee is lifting, lifting, the foot gliding forward. Wait. There's something on his shoe. He has to bend to examine it. Closely. Touch it. Now that he's down there there's something on the floor of the car he hasn't seen before. He needs to look at that, pick it up, there in the posture of one foot inside the van, the rest of him still planted outside.)

For a long time he was on a car model jag. We couldn't walk through a parking lot or down a street with parked cars without having to stop at each one so I could tell him what kind it was. It got worse when he added to the obsession the question of how much they cost. His preschool teachers described walking a group of twenty of them across a crosswalk on a busy street, cars waiting, and he and two other 3 year olds having to stop in the middle to settle a furious dispute of which of them was going to get to hold the little girl's hand. This is urgent, people.

It occurred to me in a flash yesterday that this kid has kept me waiting for signs of progress since birth. Oh, HELL no, he kept me waiting--for his very conCEPTion.

Connor was conceived on our first try after an early miscarriage (which was conceived on our second cycle of trying) when I was nearly 40. It never occurred to me that when we were ready to try for a second it might not happen so easily. I'd heard a three year spread was ideal and so
didn't even consider the wisdom of waiting. Connor turned two. We moved to St. Louis. We got settled in and started to try.

And nothing happened.

I went to a regular OB with an 'interest' in infertility. Tried two rounds of clomid. Moved on to an RE. Went through the diagnostics, which our insurance would cover; treatment it would not. Went another round of clomid with an IUI. We were living on one income and decided to gamble on one super-cycle--injectable fertility drugs with monitoring, trigger shot, and another IUI. This was one year after we moved to St. Louis. We put the meds and ultra-sounds on a credit card and rolled the dice.

So for a year we lived in limbo: would we be a one-child family, or would we realize our dream for another? I had a resource I hadn't had in 1996 when ttc Connor--the Internet--and it was a 2-edged sword: I'd been blissfully unaware of what an anomaly it was to conceive Connor so easily at 40. Now I realized what I'd been flirting with, and that there was no reason I'd be able to realize my dream when there were so many couples whose dreams were denied. With Scott I was totally in the dark until he was conceived after our one-shot IUI.

He kept me waiting for his birth. His due date coincided with the last of an unseasonably cool early summer in St. Louis, after which it got hellishly hot and humid. It also coincided with the visit of my parents and niece, so crowding a small house (single bathroom) with people waiting, waiting, and watching. At nearly 45 a passed due date was a worry for the OB, and probably for my parents as well. Who knows if all the expectant anxiety around the delay didn't lengthen it? A week passed, and we scheduled the c-section. The OB said, "The signs aren't favorable" (for a vaginal birth after caesarian). Without telling her I slipped in an Evening Primrose suppository and whispered, "Scott, if you want to come in the normal way, you've got to give us a sign."

The thing is, the signs WERE there, they were just too subtle for everyone around him. Part of what had resulted in Connor's c-section was that he was facing ventrally in utero. Scott was positioned just fine, but that fact got lost in the other facts--no progress in dilation, no rupture of amniotic fluid, a week overdue. The fact that I was having miserable diarrhea all day was lost on everyone. The story ended with his vaginal birth that very night, after a two-hour and ten minute labor.

Scott makes his connections in secret, far below the radar of the people who watch, and wait. This is his pattern. One year I worried because he did not seem to be 'getting' the notion of a calendar measuring time passing. It seemed to mean nothing to him. If I had 'tested' him I would have only been more anxious. Then, suddenly, he was meaningfully referencing times of year, and months. I'd had no indication he was putting it together, until I noticed him talking about it. He talked about it so naturally, and so matter-of-factly, that it was as if he'd always known it.

So in talking with his teacher and special ed teacher what was coming through was my anxiety that the classroom might be over his head and he might be drowning. Rob said, "This year I have a lot of third graders, and he's not the only one who is spacey. This is where we can appreciate the luxury of time. I have him for three years. With three years I can say to a child, 'Let's... hang... out. Let me get to know you, and you to know me. You'll figure it out, and take as much time as you need figuring it out.' Some kids spend all of third grade figuring it out. He won't be lost, because there is a certain funneling. Whether he can go somewhere independently or not right now, the current of the class takes him there regardless."

Holy shit, can I really just relax? Perhaps the heavy lifting of my job was to find him a place where he does have the luxury of the time to figure out things on his own, and make his connections in his private, inaccessible places. At the neighborhood school his skills, particularly his math, would be an academic problem, because the window with which he is supposed to demonstrate progress is so short.

And, I see that I have the weight of his history as evidence--he is going to develop in his own time, in his own way, independently of the priorities of others. He's in the right place.

Another facet of Users, Usees, and the Truth

I was looking over the comments that people made on my recent carpool posts. I had to smile at the 'emperor's-new-clothes' congruency: as I tiptoed cautiously around the term, hesitated to apply it, and even blamed myself for it, the commenters pointed out the obvious: "Users!" I was busy examining the DNA of the feathers (so there'd be no mistake) to confirm that it was, indeed, a duck while you were all calling it what it was: "Duck!"

This realization was further confirmed when I was talking with a social worker friend of mine. Here I thought I'd been having this private experience of angst, and it turns out that it's so widespread there's a name for it. Well, I don't remember the name for it, but it falls into a classification of 'personality disorder'; and, one of the signs that I'm dealing with someone with a personality disorder is that very feeling of revulsion (ick) I was feeling.

It's curious to consider that an internal experience I have in response to another person might be a clue about them.

I suppose what felt icky was the fundamental untruth in regards to the nature of the thing. They were treating their request(s) as if it(they) came from a context of us being equal participants in a reciprocal relationship. For me to accede to their expanding requests meant to lie about what was really going on. To be in alignment with Truth, there would have had to have been a mutual acknowledgment, initiated by them, that they were asking me to put my needs and priorities behind theirs. In the absence of such candor I was being asked in effect to lie.

Now what's interesting to me is the anguish this caused me, faced with the prospect of telling the truth and setting the record straight, or going along with the fiction. What on earth was generating that electrical shock feeling that deterred me from seeing the situation as it was--and in fact feeling as if it was a flaw in me that I would have feelings that were telling me I was being used?

Apparently it's been very important to allow myself to be used, and to suppress any contrary feelings that surfaced as a result. It's actually been nearly second nature, as I look back over my life (through my written record of diaries) and find that I was ashamed when I had feelings objecting to contributing to the smooth running of somebody else's world. I truly thought the feelings meant something unworthy about me. Something would have to be wrong with me for accusing a family of using me when the 'evidence' seemed flimsy. I must be imagining it, or projecting something small in myself onto them. Or I must have invited it, somehow--maybe led them to believe that it was ok to ask...Why was it so much easier to blame myself than assign responsibility to the Other?

At any rate, naming reality was as painful, or maybe even a little more painful, than just doing as I was "asked" (in quotes because the implication was that 'No' was not an acceptable answer). It was excruciating to me to be in a situation where lying feels fundamentally wrong , but telling the truth was in effect an accusation. And one of the ways I coped was to be 'confused' about the truth--how can I say for sure that someone is seeing me only as a means to take care of their needs? How can I know that's true about them? And since chances are if it was true they'd never admit it, I never can know. And if I can't know, shouldn't I give them the benefit of the doubt? Maybe it's my feelings that are wrong.

The other day I came around to a way of looking at it that made confronting the truth less frightening for me--if I need to set boundaries it doesn't have to be a reflection of the other person's worth. And this is why it felt so uncomfortable, 'icky' to me to say no to Benjamin and have him protest that he wasn't 'trying to impose.' It was uncomfortable for me because it seemed like it was unacceptable for me to be seen as a person who was accusing him of imposing. It seemed I was impugning his worth.

Now I see that refusing to go along with a loaded situation that threatens feeling bad/icky as a consequence (punishment, deterrent) of refusal is reality clarification. It is saying, excuse me, but I am not an extension of your will. Furthermore it says, You are behaving as if I am an extension of your will and I beg to differ. I guess there's no other conclusion the 'User' can come to than that he/she has imposed.

And, I. Don't. Care.


Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Counterwill

In Scattered a psychological function was introduced that I'd not considered before. Mate´ used it to explain the frequent oppositionality of the ADD child. He quoted a child psychologist in calling it "counterwill". (Gordon Neufeld)

Although ADD children have often been characterized as having strong wills, counterwill is actually a hallmark of a very weak will, weak sense of self. It is a normal developmental function which especially asserts itself in toddler years and teenage years. It serves to protect a child's fragile will behind a scaffolding of 'nos'. It is the psyche's way of protecting a person's Self from being overrun by another. It serves until the person's will does develop into enough Self to freely make choices or refuse options. It is not a reflection of the child's moral character and it is a mistake to treat it as such.

Friday afternoon in Salem, having spent the night with my parents, I prepared to leave. The boys had slept in late and thus had a late breakfast and I was hoping to get away without having to take them out to eat.

Scott was hungry; wanted a hot dog. I resigned myself to feeding them first, even though it was only an hour's drive to get home. I packed up our stuff to load once we got back, then prepared to walk across the parking lot to the restaurant affiliated with the hotel.

Connor got to the elevator first. The hallway was choked with linen carts and cleaning supplies for the vacated rooms. One of the carts appeared to be waiting for the elevator we were going to take. Scott rushed up, but Connor pressed the button just before he could. So Scott pushed it, several times and a contest ensued. It was starting to get physical with pushing away of hands and public with "stop it!" and "you're fat!" and I lost patience with the whole thing and marched them back to the hotel room. I very sharply told them that I couldn't take them into public if they were going to be behaving that way and so we needed to just put our stuff in the car and leave. "Nice going, Scott" said Connor. I said, "You were as much a part of that as he was, Connor. You kept it going by participating, by continuing to press that button! It's just a button! You're older, why did you keep it going?"

Connor glared at me and said that I was part of the problem too. At the time I was inclined to dismiss it as immaturity. He has not yet connected that the reason I am angry with him is his behavior; he is merely angry that I am angry with his behavior.

It did blow over. The boys apologized to each other, and to me, and so we loaded up the car and then went to get something to eat.

Yesterday when I was writing my post and looking through the book, Scattered, for quotes I realized something. Just as I'd written that I'd spent my growing years in service to adjusting the environment to suit the adults around me (that is, modifying behavior of mine that made them anxious), I realized I had just done the same thing with my sons. When I gave them the "That's it!" tone and roughly handled them to steer them back to our room, I had been anxious. I was anxious at their fighting in a public hallway, in front of my parents. I was anxious that this interaction between them would lead to a chain reaction of other escalating interactions. I wasn't sure how to negotiate this in a congested hallway, and then managing in a small elevator with a cleaning cart. I was anxious that it would continue at the restaurant. And I wanted them to change their behavior to turn down the heat for me.

So much for a stable sense of Self inside. In that moment my sense of Self did depend upon their behavior in my environment. There was a way I felt that my sense of Self depended upon them behaving well.

I thought, but, isn't it legitimate to try to contain two boys reacting with hostility to each other? No one wants to listen to them, and listen to the mother remonstrate. Yes, this is reasonable. But was my flare of anger? If my sense of Self really had been stable and strong, I wouldn't have felt a need to save face by treating them punitively, also in public. I could have simply said calmly, "We can't have this in the restaurant. No one wants to listen to it. I guess we need to go back to the room and then leave directly for Portland without eating first."

I had blamed the boys for the ferocity of their contest to be the last to push the button. I thought it was stupid. I think that looking at it through the lens of counterwill helps me to see it differently, though. In the moment that Connor saw Scott heading for that elevator button his counterwill was activated and he was determined to deny Scott the satisfaction of pushing it first. Scott's counterwill flared and he was determined that Connor not have the satisfaction of denying him. Though it seemed stupid to an outside observer (me) to them it was extremely important. It became about Winning and Losing--each child determined that the other not see him as a loser and have bragging rights. Neither of them had enough Self to be able to peacefully surrender and live with the idea that someone thought they'd one-upped them.

And apparently, neither did I.

True Self

Maybe a year ago I had a dream of constructing some sort of flying vehicle. It was very beautiful, with a sort of bubble, like a helicopter cockpit where I sat. Its construction was finished, and I was receiving instruction in flying it. My instructor was not visible to me, but I heard her voice. I think I may have mastered the basics, of moving up and down and sideways. Now I was moving in a slightly more advanced realm. I was feeling how small subtle shifts affected my position, and how I could use those to gain skill. There was a feeling of a barrier that I was crossing, into, and out of, something. It was a boundary of sorts, and I was practicing negotiating it. I had an unease about whether or not I was trespassing, yet I felt that since I was not doing more than crossing the boundary, using it as a training tool, it was ok. I hoped that was true anyway.

Reading Scattered, by Gabor Mate´, I'm reminded of that dream.

He talks about the basic skill of self-regulation. The ability to maintain a stable inner environment despite fluctuations without. This is the foundation for being able to attend, and to learn. Perhaps self-soothing is another skill, which is even more basic than self-regulation. These are the first skills an infant learns, in the presence of an attuned adult. To learn this skill requires a caregiver who is self-regulated to the point where his/her self is stable despite stressors. This is not a person who is free of anxiety, but is able to tolerate his/her own anxiety.

In watching children operate, especially toddlers around desired objects, I've been sensitive to fluctuations of anxiety: the children's, and my own corresponding. Will my child get what his heart is so desiring right now? In the meantime I see the child who is in possession of the toy responding to the anxiety of the other children with anxiety of his own: will it be taken away? It's mine! The anxiety of the other children increases the desirability of the object many-fold. Some children can't tolerate the feeling: they cry, or they hit. Some children are able to relinquish their desire and move on. Others respond to distraction. Some absolutely can not.

The mother can soothe her child to the extent that she is able to maintain her calm center, her inner temperature despite the rising temperature outside. Adding to the heat are the thoughts: will my child get a turn with this toy? Look how many children are clamoring for it. My child wants it so much! Look how sad she is! What will the other moms do? How will they handle it? Are they judging my child for screaming? Are they judging me because he's screaming? What if he hits someone? I feel self-conscious responding when there are other parents around. Will this kid EVER give up the toy? Look at him hoard it. I HATE him! Look, I can see on the faces of the other moms that they're also concerned that THEIR child get a chance. How can I advocate for my child without being overbearing?

This was the kind of scenario I knew came with the parenting territory, knew was coming when I held my infant in my arms, and dreaded. Parenting-In-Public.

Fortunately, I found a group of moms who were able to hold their centers stable while negotiating these rough waters, and I learned from them. I also learned that children's heart's desires are often fickle, and even if they were heartbroken over something one moment, they were indifferent to it the next.

So the point is well taken that parents who can maintain a serene inner temperature when things are turbulent outside can best teach their children the same skill. This is the foundation of the child developing a stable Self, and the ability to regulate It.

From what Mate´writes it appears that this is essential for the child to develop the brain structures that will affect his ability to learn, to attend, to focus and direct that attention at will, in her future. These neural pathways are laid down in the presence of this safe, undisturbed-by-anxiety core. The agent is the attunement of the parent. These are the conditions that are required for optimum development of these structures.

The features of ADD, immaturity, hyperactivity, inattentiveness, are all normal stages of development that a child passes through. In the absence of the optimal conditions for development a normal stage becomes a state.

This resonates with an intuition I've had, that the tension between Gary and I has been counter-productive to the emotional well-being of our sons. I realize that considering this is flirting with a 'blame-the-parent' (particularly the mother) mentality. However, I do not read blame in Mate´'s writing. I don't feel defensive, because I've been feeling this is intuitively true all along. Perhaps also there is hope in Mate´'s message: development is not static. The human brain is always developing, well into old age.

As I read his description of a stable inner Self, and the skill of Self regulation, his analogy of the warm and cold blooded animals broke open a door and light shone in. There are adults in my life who are cold-blooded animals emotionally. It's not that they're cold people, it's that they require others around them to adjust the environment to their comfort level. Their sense of Self and their well-being are dependent on the conditions outside of them, and they can only tolerate a small level of fluctuation. And it seems perfectly natural to them to expect others around them to accommodate them.

My mother is one of these people. To a lesser extent, so is my father. Gary is, and to a much greater extent so is his mother. Their sense of Self is fragile, and vulnerable to collapse in the face of disagreement and disappointment. In fact, there's a way that my life has been in service to people like this, my objections felt like selfishness to me. I wonder if other people have had this experience?

Anyway, reading Scattered, I felt a place inside. Almost a physical place, It was like a space, perhaps a potential space that has always existed, but I didn't know was there. Now I feel a Presence inside there. Unconsciously, I've been breathing into It. I've found myself breathing into It in potential anxiety situations: driving on the freeway: will there be an opening when I need to take my exit?

And then I think of the dream. So perhaps this is my vehicle, my flying vehicle. I've been constructing It with Sharon, my mentor, and I'm learning how to fly. Learning the basics, and now ready to begin acquiring some skill.