How do you say “Torture fun for the whole family!” in French? I do worship French things so I think that would be a sophisticated euphemism for describing the social skills therapy we’ve been going to.
I had planned to share our experience on a week-by-week basis, embracing my philosophy of psychological nudity here on my blog. Being a Light-Bearer and all, I want other mothers like me to know all sides of this 18+ year path of raising a Way-Shower. But that weekly synopsis hasn’t happened for two reasons.
#1 We get home from therapy and I just want to drink. At 10:30 in the fucking morning.
#2 I haven’t been drinking lately (I do recognize the point where I could possibly rely on it too much) so instead I come home and promptly fall into a comatose state until selective amnesia takes affect and I forget the entire 45-minute session.
Since I’m 4 sessions behind, let me give you a sort of Cliff Notes version to my memoir, working title – Self-Imposed Sobriety When I Really Deserve To Be Drunk.
Session 1: Info gathering session. Internally grin as if eating Whole Foods-quality shit when son tells SLP how bored he is at school. SLP looks at me and responds, “This is where his teachers should be challenging him.” I hastily don my choir robes and await the preaching. Internally break apart as son sobs and sobs when they talk about how he’s been teased at P.E.
Session 2: Spend entire 45 minutes trying to convince son to even step into SLP room while he says he can’t take the stress of talking about being teased, stays in the hall and then runs away if we try to approach him. SLP suggests I motivate him with a prize, as if we’re dealing with a true eight-year-old and not a 30-year-old trapped in an 8-year-old body. Play along with her idea, shout treat offer down the hall to him only to have son reply, “I know you’re trying to trick me, Mom!” SLP looks to me for an answer to the unanswerable question, “What motivates him?” What motivates a mule bent on non-cooperation? A cattle prod?
Session 3: Son actually steps into room (yay!) but tells me I’m wasting my money. SLP tries to keep things light by discussing making friends instead of the trauma of being repeatedly teased. This works for 15 minutes before son breaks down again crying, because he’s doing the things she is saying he should do and the kids are still mean to him, he doesn’t understand why. I manage to swallow huge lump in my throat as I hear this through the door.
(In between session 3 and 4: Witness son meeting a middle-school age boy at neighbor’s house where he initiates a typical social conversation, if typical means 8-year-old discusses ideas on same intellectual level as a middle school student. Okay, not exactly on the same intellectual level. A middle-schooler knows almost as much as son, but not quite.)
Session 4: Two words become one – CLUSTERFUCK. See also words: SNAFU, FUBAR, and BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again).
And that concludes the Cliff Notes of my memoir, new working title – Can I Buy Xanax in Bulk?
Is Payton right that I’m wasting our money? I’m beginning to think so. The trauma of the playground teasing is too close to the surface for him. Even I wasn’t aware of the extent of the gaping wound left on him by the taunts, the name-calling, the rejection.
I knew he had been hurt by it. Who wouldn’t be? But these invisible wounds, how do you know how deep they go? Why didn’t he tell me sooner? How did this happen on my watch – me, the vigilant, protective mother.
I try not to should on myself but it’s hard. I should have been more vigilant. I knew the teasing had been an issue. I should have made SURE it ended.
But I asked him. Many times! Specifically about how P.E. was going. He didn’t tell me. I should have a better relationship with him. I should be the type of mother he would tell.
I should. I should. I should.
I still don’t know how deep this invisible hurt goes. I do know he’s not ready to talk about and relive this.
When he is, we’ll go from there. Until then, it’s summer and, my god, the kid deserves to relax.
This is your lucky week! I went through my drafts folder and found a ton of stuff I wrote but promptly forgot due to syphilis and never published. Or maybe I did publish it then took it down in a fit of paranoia, which is why it pays to subscribe to my blog. So I’m publishing (or republishing) this one, even though school is out and it isn’t exactly applicable. However, simply exchange “school” for “social skills therapy” and it becomes 100% relevant again.
What does this photo say to you?
Does it say….
A) Jesus, help me!
B) Are you the crazy one? Or am I? I’m just not sure!
C) Give me a drink!
D) What the fuck?
E) I’m about to eat my weight in cheese-powdered snack mix.
If you guessed all of the above, you’re a winner!
You know how we parents joke about the mistakes we make with our kids and how they can send us the therapy bill when their older?
Pardon me, but I have some very French thoughts on that idea.
FUCK THAT SHIT.
You want to know who should be paying for whose future therapy bills? Payton should pay for mine.
When I picked him up from school last week, there was yet another note from his teacher. I began to feel guilty for the destruction of all the rain forests, what with all of the notes Payton gets home from school. That alone is probably responsible for the loss of 5 acres of rain forest somewhere in South America.
But don’t worry! I believe in going green so I’ll be repurposing these notes to use as wallpaper in MY PADDED CELL!
The note said Payton didn’t do much of any of his work. Of course that’s what it said. That’s what almost all of them say.
Payton usually tells on himself before I get the note. His method of confession is, like himself, very unique. His method is to run bat shit crazy, like a boy being chased by a pack of rabid hyenas, at the sight of me. That’s how I know he’s gotten in trouble that day. He comes out of the school doors, sees me waiting with his brother, and there he goes! Bat shit crazy run.
If they had an elementary track team, Payton would be their #1 star because all they’d have to do to get him to run fast as hell is to tell him he’s getting a note sent home from school and then point to me in the stands.
Honest to God, the people at school must think I beat him at home when he does things like this. Except he’s been known to run bat shit crazy from teachers like that too, so yay! I’m not the only child abuser.
As we were driving home, we were talking about the note and Payton was very mad. He flipped his lid that the teacher wrote he didn’t do much of any of his schoolwork. He said he did some and he wanted to know why he wasn’t getting credit for the work he did do.
“Payton, teachers expect students to do all of their school work, not just some. That’s their expectation.”
“What about Japanese?” he asked, as if we were discussing what to have for dinner.
Wait for it…
What the hell? What does Japanese have to do with not completing his work?
I saw the mountain of school work that came home incomplete, and I tried to talk to him about what was going on, but then he spoke in what I swear is Tongues because his sentences made absolutely no sense to me.
This boy doesn’t come and say, “Mom, I’m hungry. Can I have a snack?”
He blasts into the room, acting as if he’s dying and says, “I HAVE LOW BLOOD SUGAR!” Because, stupid me, I took the time to explain to him how food converts to sugar in our blood and if we get too hungry, blood sugar gets too low it can cause headaches, stress, etc. And, oh my god, once you give that kid a scientific explanation you can forget ever hearing laymen terms again.
When he’s around my mind is in constant interpretation mode, trying to fit pieces of a Japanese puzzle together, rearranging his sentences so they make sense in the English structure of speech, and deciphering his scientific meaning.
And this is where the payment owed for Weight Watchers comes in. I’m an emotional eater. I get stressed or upset and, goddamn it,I need chocolate! And wine! And salty stuff! And anything with cheese powdered coating should legally be considered crack. Doritos, cheese Pringles, cheese Chex mix. It’s all crack and I eat it like a crack whore in rehab.
And now the Wii Fit is going to give me hell about it tomorrow morning. I’m adding that to my list of things to discuss with my future therapist.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if Albert Einstein’s mom had a blog way back then? Because people may think raising the next generation’s mastermind is like all fucking awesome and people trip over themselves as they fight to be the one to throw rose petals upon your red carpet and place you on the same alter as the Virgin Mary, but they would be wrong.
The truth is there isn’t much in the way of accolades from others (except for you dear, dear blog readers and close friends, and really, you’ve been my salvation many times over. I thank you.). It’s more in the way of stink eyes and the polite, sympathetic nods people give the mentally deranged.
(Speaking of Mary, don’t tell me people didn’t think she was mentally deranged. Can you imagine the looks she got when she went around telling people her son was the Messiah? I think I have it rough when my 8-year-old is teaching tangible marine facts to 12th graders and yet adults still question his abilities. At least I don’t run the risk of getting stoned. Well, at least not with rocks.)
Sometimes little geniuses can be total assholes, though. I pride myself on raising non-asshole children, and it seems like there’s something about pride and sin or the like, but I don’t subscribe to that creed. Instead, I subscribe to the eat crow and like it creed.
Today Payton came home with an F on his daily conduct.
Despite the kick-ass stories I may tell you on this blog about Payton and his awesomeness, he’s sometimes such an ass that I can’t believe I actually have a part in raising him.
Today he thumped a classmate on the head with a marker, refused to do his reading work, was disrespectful to the teacher, and spit on the floor.
When I asked why he spit on the floor, he was very specific and said he wasn’t spitting, but drooling out of boredom.
How in the hell am I supposed to keep a straight face to that answer? Honestly.
Then I grilled him about hitting the classmate on the head.
Payton’s reasoning for thumping him on the head was because the boy called him a name, so then I lit into a high-volume lecture of ignoring other people, who cares what they say, I HAVE 26.5 YEARS EXPERIENCE ON YOU AND FORGET THAT at 35, EVEN I’D HAVE A HARD TIME BEING CALLED A NAME, THIS IS WHAT GOOD PARENTS LECTURE ABOUT!
And then? Payton broke down, sobbing gut-wrenching tears, telling me he can’t take it anymore.
“You can’t take what?” I asked.
“Being called names!”
“When are you being called names?”
“At P.E.!”
Payton tells me all the names he’s being called, and at this point, I’m all fuck what good parents are supposed to lecture about. Who has time to worry what “good” parents do when your child is sobbing his heart out on your shoulder, asking you, “Why do I keep getting picked on when I try to stay away from them?” and then you have to deal with your own water works because JUST RIP MY HEART OUT, DANCE THE CHA-CHA ALL OVER IT, THEN PUT IT THROUGH A MEAT GRINDER AND SERVE IT UP AS STEAK TARTAR, OH MY GOD!
I can’t even see straight.
Tomorrow morning, Mama and Papa Bear are on a mission. I have a hankering to roast me up some turdlet stew. I don’t really care whose ass gets swept up in my turdlet hunt.
I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I’m becoming a suburban hippie. It started off with these horrible bumps under my armpit, which I finally deduced were caused by a new bra. In order to remedy these bumps, I decided to go braless for a bit, and everything went downhill (har!) from there.
Everything is all healed up and I’m back to being fully supported and uplifted. But while going through this hippy transformation, I decided to plant some vegetables. If the White House can do it, why can’t I? Sure, I don’t have professional gardeners and shit, but that only makes me more awesome since I have to do my own gardening on top of everything else.
I’m growing two tomatoes and two peppers so far, but I didn’t just stick them in the ground. Oh no, I went all NASA astronaut on their green ass and I’m growing them upside down. In the Topsy Turvy bag. It was Payton’s idea, using the Topsy Turvy bags.
I was outside watering the plants when I noticed how they were already growing, curving themselves upwards towards the sunlight in just a matter of days.
How very much like our children.
Children grow towards the light we shine on them.
I’m sitting here in my kitchen as I write this, watching Payton play outside on the swing, alone; a state of being he prefers 8 times out of 10. Not that he doesn’t enjoy other kids, he does. But he truly enjoys playing alone, free to imagine whatever it is he’s imaging.
He jumps out of the swing and begins an imaginary fight with something yet again. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched him play this way. Thousands, I suppose. I have no idea what he sees when he has these one-sided battles with odd body movements and noises. He refuses to tell me.
I see him stop and pat his forehead repeatedly, hand arched, fingers splayed. This may look weird to some, seeing a kid stop these strange body movements to bang on his forehead, but I know it’s simply how he thinks; a physical manifestation of him jumpstarting his mind.
As an adult, Einstein would pace and twirl his hair while he thought out a math problem, so clearly this is a sign of a genius mind. (Because who can say it isn’t?) Seems like Niels Bohr had some kind of thinking “tic” too, but I can’t remember. Payton stops patting his forehead and immediately launches into another battle. In between the pat and the launch, I see the flash of “Aha!” in his eyes.
And let’s not forget the small, odd bits of plastic, metal, screws or acorns he holds while he does this, or his emotional attachment to them. Payton’s desk drawer is a treasure chest full of them. I can’t see an aluminum Pringle top without thinking of Payton and the hundreds of shapes he’s molded them into.
As he’s gotten older, he’s learned to handle the disappointment when he loses his current favorite. No more RABID TASMANIAN DEVIL HELL BENT ON A TORNADIC DESTRUCTION OF THE ENTIRE WORLD UNTIL SOMEONE, ANYONE, FINDS HIS GODDAMN TINY PIECE OF PLASTIC!
Now he handles the loss just fine, and thank god I didn’t listen to the specialists, books, internet, interwebs when they said this was abnormal behavior in need of intervention. I never understood why it mattered any way.
It’s not that I didn’t listen to what they had to say. I heard them and their long list of possible disorders. But as long as I stayed out of their fear, (which is usually based on some unknowable future consequence if I didn’t act now) I knew it was not the way to see my son.
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.” Anne Frank
Children grow towards the light.
I choose to shine a different light on my son.
How delightful it is to watch him grow towards it.
I have a serious question to ask you from the deep recesses of my mother’s heart.
Does your child ever strikingly remind you of Rainman, Forest Gump, and Steve Irwin, all within a span of 15.8 minutes?
I remember the second time I watched Rainman. It was years after its original release, but before Tom Cruise started jumping on celebrity couches, which means it’s safe to actually admit you enjoyed a Tom Cruise film. Anything after the whole Oprah couch debacle/Brooke Shields PPD conflict and you must scorn his talent and hate every movie he is in or lose face with all your friends.
At the time of my 2nd viewing of Rainman, I had a preschool-aged son I didn’t know what the hell to do with. I bawled and bawled during that movie because I could see my son in so many of Rainman’s behaviors.
The freaking the fuck out over loud noises, the insistence on certain clothing, but the uncanny ability to recall certain information. The meltdowns if we missed The Crocodile Hunter, the withdrawal from my touch. And when I say withdrawal, know I mean my attempts to comfort him with a hug when he was upset sent him into a SHIT-THROWING, SCREAMING CHIMPANZEE FIT OF RAGE.
(By the way, I also bawled during the scene in that Ya-Ya movie where Ashley Judd is in her room, losing her shit because she can’t take her kids for one more second and she up and leaves them. After having chimpanzee shit thrown at you for a few years, you’d relate to that scene a little too much, too.)
But thankfully, Payton has outgrown all of those behaviors. Well, mostly. They aren’t completely gone, but they are much more in the oh, this is just quirky! range. Except for one, and thank god it isn’t the chimpanzee shit-throwing one.
You know when Tom Cruise would ask Raymond a question and Raymond would answer “yeah” but without ever looking Tom in the eye? Do you remember the way Raymond would say “yeah”?
Payton does the exact same thing. I mean he sounds exactly like Raymond, the same tone, same pitch, and he’s never looking at me when he does that. Now don’t go putting your armchair diagnostic panties on because A) you’ll be wasting your breath on me and if I haven’t run off all of the armchair diagnosticians from my blog yet then SHOO! and B) it isn’t often he does this. It’s pretty darn rare that he does, but when he does, my god, the boy sounds just like Dustin Hoffman!
Does that happen to anyone else?
And then there’s Forest Gump, another idiot savant character who reminds me of my son. Remember the way Forest sits on a bench, with his back ramrod straight, hands on his knees? Payton does the same thing. The only thing missing from an exact reenactment is the tilting of his head to the left. Instead, Payton will sometimes lift his left butt cheek to fart, and, my god, the boy looks just like his mother!
There’s also another resemblance between Payton and Forest – the blank look Forest would get on his face when someone tried to explain why he couldn’t do one socially odd thing or another. Payton nails it too. Let me tell you, it takes real talent to plaster your face with a WHAT THE FUCK? look while maintaining a complete air of innocence. I don’t know how he and Tom Hanks figured out to do it, but daaammmn, TALENT! I could fool so damn many people if I could hide my snarkiness like that.
Looking back, I now understand that the toddler meltdowns he had if we missed The Crocodile Hunter were not because of some inability to cope with schedule changes. Oh no. It’s because I was interfering with THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS ART, GODDAMN IT, WOMAN!
We took a trip to New Orleans today where we spent most of the afternoon at The Audobon Zoo. We happened to arrive when they were doing an elephant show and taking questions from the visitors. Of course, Payton’s hand shot up in the air in a nanosecond.
I cringed because Payton has a tendency to ask questions regarding animal sex and gender. In fact, he thinks he’s a damn expert on the subject. And of course, Payton wanted to know how you tell a female elephant from a male elephant, even to the point of asking a follow-up question of how the gender difference applied to Asian vs. African elephants.
(Frankly, I can’t even remember there are the two different types.)
After all of the elephant gender is cleared up, we head down to the tiger and lion exhibits. While viewing the lions, another family with young children approach the viewing area. I could read Payton’s mind….YOUNG, IGNORANT CHILRENZ I CAN IMPRESS WITH MY MAD ANIMAL GENDER DIFFERENTIATING SKILLS!
And so Professor Payton launches into a lecture of how you can tell a female lion from the male…
“That lion right there,” he said as he points to the lion, “is the female lion. ‘Female’ is another word for woman. Female lions do all the grocery shopping.”
No kidding, it’s like a comedy act and sex education class all rolled into one. It’s quite brilliant, actually, the way Payton, who is only eight, figured out how to explain to a 4-5 year old that the female lion does all the hunting. He’s breaking it down to their level. What do preschoolers know of hunting for prey? Moms provide food from the grocery store!
And by the way, the entire time he’s telling this, he in no way looks un-animated like Forest Gump (though he insists on buttoning the nerdy top button of his polo no matter how I beg and plead), and in no way sounds monotonic like Raymond.
In fact, he sounds and acts exactly like Steve Irwin, only replace the Australian accent with a Southern one. If you ever get a chance to hear Payton’s organic declaration of “what a beauty!” when he sees an animal he loves, or tries to calm a frightened animal with “I’m not gonna hurtcha,” or yells “woohoo!” out of sheer exhilaration with an animal, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I’m not sure what you get when you subtract the idiot from the savant and add a handsome, talented conservationist with a knack for showmanship, but damned if I can’t wait to find out in 20 years.
I highly suspect I’ll get few comments on this post because when you make people turn green with envy, they sorta don’t like you. It’s like when people are more beautiful than you – you don’t exactly appreciate it and a part of you doesn’t like them for it, even if you deny it.
But I’ll risk it anyway. I really can’t keep this to myself any longer. I must share with you my exciting adventures this past weekend, even though you’ll probably be super jealous and delete me from you reader.
I knew the weekend was going to be one excitement after another just by the way Saturday morning started.
I woke up at 6:30 am and (are you sitting down for this?) went to the grocery store. You’re jealous already, aren’t you?
Just this week, the grocery store put mayonnaise on sale. It was reduced by something like a whole dollar, and in this current economy, that’s nothing to sneeze at. It might buy me a pack of gum!
But the store didn’t have the price marked on the shelf, so when an employee two aisles down asked me if I needed any help, I immediately snatched my jar of mayo from the cart and shoved it in his face, wanting to know why they advertised a sale price and it wasn’t marked.
The employee was kind enough to hand me a tissue to wipe the spittle off of my chin and explained it was probably in the system, but the shelf just wasn’t marked.
Needless to say, I felt my foaming of the mouth was perhaps an overreaction. But when I scanned over my receipt once I was home, I was justified since they charged me the full damn price for that mayo.
Fast times, y’all, fast times.
Then I spent my morning on what’ll probably turn out to be an insurmountable task for me.
I sat in front of my computer, rewriting a humorous 1200 words WITHOUT THE FIRST CUSS WORD.
That right there? Is the first biblical sign of the apocalypse.
This project, which is (you really should sit down for this one) a spotlight in a magazine written for a society of intellectuals, is a huge test for my brain. Really, my entire body is in jeopardy.
I discovered in the first edit I can’t say “BS” and that’s when I ruptured my spleen. A few sections down, I was told to rewrite a section because I said “crap” and that’s when my kidneys began to fail.
Fucking hell, this may very well be the death of me, but at least I’m having fun.
And so is the editor! I think he may be a sadist who enjoys the knowledge I’m about to crawl out of my skin from the lack of cursing. He’s been reading my blog and knows how often I drop the F bomb. Do you hear his maniacal laughter right now? Wait, that may be the voices in my head. Or my ghost child. It’s hard to differentiate.
Then there was the thrilling trip to Sam’s Club. (I really should shut up already about my great life before someone wants to lynch me) And no, no, it wasn’t because they were serving teriyaki-lime chicken wings and cream puffs that made it thrilling, though that certainly enhanced the experience.
I had a cart full of items, so I’d earned the right to eat the free food without being obligated to lie and pretend I want to buy it. Afterward, we didn’t even need to take the boys to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, so I guess that makes up for the mayo overcharge.
The real excitement at Sam’s was over a new shipment of blueberry plants. While I knew rabbit eye blueberries are what I need for our area, I’d never heard of the other two; Jubilee and Misty highbush berries.
It was such a dramatic dilemma – do I spend $15 on the four-pack, not knowing a thing about two of the bushes? Gack! If I buy them and they aren’t good for the South, that would cancel out the free chicken wings!
What is an adventure without nail-biting drama and suspense?
Later that afternoon, Payton and I worked at the Sea Lab. When Payton realized he finally had his own docent name tag to wear, it was as if I told him I just learned how to shit diamonds and we were now rich beyond imagination. He was that excited.
“Hi! I’m Payton,” he would say, as he pointed to the name tag on his shirt. “I’m a docent here,” again, pointing to the word ‘docent’ under his name, making damn sure the people saw his name tag. “If you have any questions, you can just ask me. I’ll be right over there.
And then a customer asked me what a purple-ish fish was, and I had no idea, but then Payton piped up and said it was a juvenile black grouper. Um, black groupers aren’t purple. Duh. When the aquarist came over, I asked her, just knowing I was going to be right that it wasn’t a black grouper.
I was wrong, Payton was right. Of course.
Then, as I told a little boy and his mom that the bright pink and yellow fish was a Cuban hogfish, Payton jumped in again, looked at me and said…
“No, mom, it’s a CUBA hogfish, not Cuban. Cuba – it’s an island,” as if I’m stupid and he’s teaching me.
Who the hell is being spotlighted in a magazine for smart people?!
I don’t know who that kid thinks he is. You’d think he’s the next Steve Irwin or Jeff Corwin or something.
On top of the name tag, the Sea Lab had in our copy of the plankton curriculum we’d been wanting. Woohoo! Dinoflagellates, here we come!
Saturday night, I spent 30 minutes plucking gray hairs.
And that pretty much sums up my exciting, celebrity-like Saturday. Please don’t let your envy get the better of you. Take the high road.
Speaking of high roads, I now have to go write more without cursing, so this may be my only post this week.
I know I haven’t written many stories about Payton lately. It’s not that things haven’t happened. Believe me, they have and I’ve been writing them down. Just not here.
Apparently literary agents and publishers are funny about something called new content. It sounds picky to me, but what do you do? You play along. So I’ve been writing, but not publishing here on my blog.
(by the way, if you think I’m writing this particular post as a procrastination tool to keep from finally putting all my writings together into some cohesive form like, I dunno, chapters, you’d be right.)
This kinda sucks because there have been some great stories to tell, but I can’t immediately publish it and have all of you be my cheerleaders, telling me to kick the school’s ass, overthrow the government, or encourage me to start a revolution against conventional society.
What also sucks is that something happened with Payton that completely rocked my foundation and I can’t even tell you yet! If I do, I’ll ruin the ending of my book.
Also? I hate it when people allude to secrety secret shit and drop attention-seeking hints on their blog and/or twitter. But I just did it, so here I am, hating myself and generally finding Heather to be annoying with her secrety attention-seeking shit. Feel free to join me in irritation.
(I apologize to you and myself.)
But I do have something I think I can share without harming my “book” (haha!) one way or another.
It’s about Payton’s grades in 2nd grade. They’ve not exactly been something to write blogs about, if you know what I mean. And while they aren’t BAD, they’re not what I expect a gifted child to make.
Case in point, Payton’s recent reading tests. Even though he could read a marine science encyclopedia if he wanted, his tests certainly don’t reflect that ability.
When I get his test folder, I go through it with a fine-tooth comb because I’m perplexed as to why a kid so smart is making mediocre grades.
(I still have stuck in my head that school grades are somehow a measure of true intelligence, even though I intellectually know better. Intellect has little power over feelings, though.)
I’m looking through his recent predictive reading tests and every time Payton answered the question “What do you think would happen next in the story?” he got a big, fat red X.
He’s getting these red X’s because, instead of telling the predictable (and boring) ending the author wants you to think will happen, Payton does something frowned up by the institution.
He thinks independently. He makes up fun and creative endings to the story. He tells how he would make it end instead of how everyone else would obviously end the story.
But anyway. The kid who can read and explain words like “bioluminescence” and “symbiotic relationships” is less than one perfect test grade shy of a C average in reading.
My logic and creative side sees why he barely has a B. He thinks outside the box, that’s why! I tells myself it’s okay. It’s fine. Who cares! It’s just elementary school and what the hell does predicting the end of a story have to do with being a successful adult??!!
But.
Did you know I have an anal-retentive, overachieving side? I do. And it’s the Psi Chi, Deans List, Phi Kappa Phi, magna cum laude graduate side of me that GOES FREAKING INSANE at mediocre grades and tells me a C is not acceptable.
Because busting my ass for four years through college to make exemplary grades has gotten me so far in life. Just think, if I didn’t make such outstanding grades, then my hemorrhoids may not have made it in Glamour.com.
Meanwhile, Wally, who made mediocre grades all through college, sometimes passing only because he knew he’d lose face with me if he actually failed a class, is the breadwinner and riding on the wings of success in his career.
Clearly my top grades paid off.
I’m trying to overcome my overachieving tendencies, though I’ll be honest – IT ISN’T EASY! It’s hard as a parent, separating the expectations you hold for yourself from what you hold for your child. I guess it’s part of that repetitive lesson that your child is not an extension of you, but their own person.
I really am trying hard to keep this in perspective and hush down my own and societal expectations of what gifted children should and shouldn’t do. After all, Albert Einstein wasn’t known for stellar grades either, and Thomas Edison had to be pulled out of school he was performing so poorly.
If there is one thing I’ve learned on this path of raising a quirky kid without a label, it’s that perspective is everything.
Only no one tells you restructuring your perspective is damn hard work.
“Mom, who is Beethoven?” Payton asks. He’s recently begun a Charlie Brown phase and is intrigued by the character Schroeder.
“He’s a very famous classical composer who wrote symphonies, which is a type of music, in the 1800s,” I answer.
“What did the music sound like?”
“I have a cd of his music. We’ll listen to it in the car when we go pick up your brother.”
True to my word, I pop in a Beethoven cd later that afternoon. I didn’t look at the cd, I simply put it in the player and let it begin playing the first song.
The first song is Beethoven’s 6th symphony, which is titled Pastoral.
Payton and I listen to a couple of minutes of the symphony, and I then ask him what he thinks of Beethoven’s music.
“I didn’t know he wrote summer music!” he says.
“Summer music?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
“That song is about summer. It’s in the medium notes,” he explains. “Can you hear it?”
“Medium notes, huh? Is that something Ms. C (school music teacher) taught you?”
“No, I just know it.”
“You just know it?”
“Yeah, I just know it. In the medium notes. I can feel summer. Can’t you feel it, mom?”
“Feel it where?”
“In your ears. I can feel the summer inside my ears.”
No, I don’t feel summer in my ears. Beethoven’s 6th symphony is just a song to my ears, albeit a beautiful one, of course.
Of all the possible therapies and diagnoses we’ve rejected and ignored, Payton’s hypersensitive hearing is one I catch a good bit of flack for. It’s one of the big bell ringers of autism.
On the other hand, it’s also a bell ringer for gifted children, though we hear little of that in the news.
But in all my human faultiness, and probably because of current socialization, it’s one thing about Payton that often leaves me questioning the wisdom of our decisions.
When a six year old is happily swinging outside and the next thing you know, he screams as if the Hound of Baskerville is eating his leg for lunch, you kinda wonder. You see him writhing on the ground with his ears covered, screaming over and over, you find no blood or bee stings, and you’re looking and looking for WHAT ATTACKED YOUR KID!, and you finally realize a jet flew way overhead, a jet you heard but didn’t notice because it wasn’t that loud and you’re used to tuning it out.
You can’t help but wonder sometimes if you’re crazy to sit back and let nature take its course with this.
Whereas social nonconformity can be open to subjective interpretation, his hearing has a measurable side effect given he can have severe headaches when his sensitive ears are bombarded with too much noise. It’s right there, and the headaches aren’t really open for interpretation other than a) this is a tylenol controllable headache or b) this is a dark, silent room and a two hour nap controllable headache.
Thankfully, interpretation B is very rare these days.
People want to know, respectfully so far, why we won’t do any type of auditory therapies for Payton since this obviously can affect his day-to-day life.
I could debate the validity of such therapies since none are statistically proven to make a difference. I could, and sometimes do, raise the question of who is really causing Payton pain: us, the parents who won’t do therapy or people who insist he stay in a loud environment.
Usually I don’t go into that. My usual response is my fundamental belief that Payton was not born with highly-attuned hearing to be disabled by it, but instead was born with a gift.
I have no earthly idea how his exceptional hearing will serve him in the future, but my heart tells me there is higher purpose.
Will he finally discover the meaning of whale songs because he not only hears but feels notes others can’t?
I don’t know, but I believe in the possibility.
And why should I not?
After I told my boss what Payton said about this particular Beethoven composition incident, we did a little research on Beethoven’s sixth composition and discovered this…
In the program for its premiere, Beethoven famously noted that the “Pastoral” contained “more an expression of feeling than painting.”
…it unquestionably offers eloquent testimony to the importance and power of nature in Beethoven’s life. The composer reveled in walking in the environs of Vienna and spent nearly every summer in the country.
Did the hairs rise on the back of your neck? Because mine totally did.
The connection of the importance and power of nature, and the summers he spent in Vienna’s countryside. How did Payton know? How did an eight-year-old feel with his ears the nature in a 200 year old song?
In the middle of August, I was on an emotional high. It was the best start of a school year ever. Payton started the year like every other kid and, my god, I felt a physical weight off of my shoulders, a weight I’d carried for years without realizing.
See! My child is normal and can start school just like everyone else. Whew!
Somewhere in the dark places of my mind, I must covet this state of being – of being normal. I talk a good talk of disdain, but I wonder if I talk it because on some level I want it. Do I secretly wish, so secretly I can’t even admit to myself, that I had two Parkers? Two little boys who go to school just like your average kid where my biggest worry is that they’ll eat their boogers in front of someone or repeat one of my cuss words where a teacher will hear. Do I really wish for that?
Sometimes his un-normalness shines through. No, it doesn’t shine. It bursts out of him so glaringly bright in the way of love for the ocean and his un-normalness is not scary. It’s the stuff legends are made of. It’s a radiating force of energy and this un-normalness hits me not as fear, but as awe at the utter uniqueness of soul that is Payton. Everything great about him is so clear that I can’t believe I’m so blessed to be raising such an un-normal kid. During those times, I swear my love and pride of him will consume me.
Other times his un-normalness drags me down to the depths of despair. I can’t reach him, can’t understand him and people look to me, expecting me to do those things. Here Heather, what are we suppose to do with him? Like I know. Fear takes hold, but fear of what exactly, I don’t know. That he’ll never be normal? No matter what I try, no matter what psychological trick I pull out of my ass, there’s never going to be a lightbulb moment where it comes together and I can relax. During those times, I swear my fear for him and frustration will consume me. What did I do to deserve the hell of raising this kid? Why can’t he just be normal?
I’ve gotten two phone calls from his teacher this year. The latest one was today. Payton was upset with his tests and wasn’t completing them. He was melting down that there were too many. She put Payton on the phone and I can feel his distress through the phone. Three tests that morning, plus a math test left over from yesterday that he didn’t complete. I don’t know what to say to get through to him or calm him down.
After Payton comes home from school, we talk about what happened with his tests. He gets upset again, telling me his head hurt from tests, tests, tests! So he had a headache? No, it just made his head hurt because he couldn’t get a break from all of the tests.
He didn’t complete his math test because he didn’t know how to spell out twelve and he wouldn’t guess. This is a recurring battle between him and his teacher, this refusal to move forward with work because he doesn’t want to misspell a word and she won’t spell it for him. I don’t know if he’s using it as an excuse for…whatever. Or is this intense perfectionism? Sheer jack assness? He won’t lose points for spelling. Why won’t he do like the other kids and freaking guess how to spell it and move on?
Three tests in one morning, on top of the two tests the day before, well, that does seem like a LOT of tests for 2nd graders. Add in they never have time for art projects, at least not that I’ve seen, and it seems it is work, work, work. My gut tells me it’s too much to expect out of eight-year-olds. Who are we to keep their nose to the grindstone at such a young age and expect it to work?
But am I sure it’s my gut telling me that? Maybe I’m justifying. Other kids adapt to it each year. Maybe I’m one of those mothers who refuse to see things like they really are. It’ll be one reason after another why Payton isn’t fitting in with the system, but the reason is never because there’s something wrong with Payton.
Maybe there is something wrong with him. Maybe he does have ADHD. But I’m not even sure what that means anymore. I see the word ADHD and somewhere in my mind I know what that means, but the idea of ADHD as an entity literally feels like a ruse. A trick of the mind.
Payton brings home a math worksheet he didn’t complete in class. This is also a recurring event, that and not paying attention in class. It’s a worksheet on tens and ones, something they covered in first grade. I have no idea why they are covering it again. I ask him why he didn’t finish it in class, I admit with a tone of frustration. He knows this stuff, why won’t he just do it? He thinks he’s in trouble from the tone of my voice, and maybe he should be. He tells me he didn’t finish it because he was trying to think of a way to make it harder and ran out of time.
I look at him, not knowing what to say or do with that. I get up and go to his room, pull out his leftover math workbook from first grade that I stored in his bookcase. I flip to the back of the book and to the sections they didn’t cover in first grade. I pull out a worksheet of adding double digits, like 52 + 24, something they have yet to cover so far in second grade. I put the worksheet in front of Payton and tell him to show me if he can do this. I walk away. No instructions or explanations. Set it down, walk away. Four minutes later he brings it back to me. Every single problem is correct, front and back.
What am I suppose to do with that? Payton makes up negative equations on his math homework if he can, just to make it harder. And he gets so pissed off at me if I try to interfere by telling him to do it easier. If there’s a way he can write a word problem in an utterly complex and confusing way, he’ll do it. He’ll throw in useless information, negative numbers, etc. He did one so long and complicated, I didn’t think he even knew the answer to it, it was that convoluted. I handed it back to him and told him to write the answer, thinking he’d confused himself and didn’t know it. Lickety-split, he wrote the answer.
But this kid melts down over back-to-back tests? What am I suppose to think? How am I suppose to know what to do, what to tell the school? If he were consistently brilliant, they might would do something about it, have him work above his grade level or something. But he isn’t consistent about it and then throws in crazy shit too.
I don’t know where else to go with this post. I got up an hour ago because I couldn’t sleep with these thoughts running through my head and had to get them out. And now I just want to go sleep.
I'm Heather, and I'm both politically and grammatically incorrect. This blog kicks ass because I write only the truth. And the truth is always funnier than fiction.
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