Random Thoughts, December 2022

A bitmoji cartoon of me, a fair-skinned,
 green-eyed, brunette-with-grey person,
looking thoughtful, in a blue sweater and a
black cap with a blue flower. There is also
a thoughtful emoji in a thought bubble.

Random Thoughts, personal, professional, political, emotional, mental, social, you name it, there's probably a thought about it here.

• I am proud of my kids.

• People need to find something else to do with their lives besides defaming other folks on the internet.

• I wonder if some of those very people will be annoyed at my use of the gender-neutral term "folks" since my blog posts almost always go public instead of friends-only.

• I really adore some of my students this year. All so different, and awesome in their own ways.

• Lizzy is making a birthday card for her sister (Abby was 20 yesterday), as well as giving her three presents and cooking her favorite meal. 

• When Lizzy is invested in something, she does not fool around.

• That reminds me; I need to help Lizzy with her google search terms for a Biology project.

• I was pretty down this fall. And then it rained and I suddenly felt fine. Rain represents normalcy in my area in November and December.

• Had a lovely time yesterday; Dad took the whole fam (except those unable to make it) on a Christmas Cruise and then out to dinner. Lots of masks in evidence, which made me feel safer.

• Pouring down rain, though.

• I did not know that my brother is prone to motion sickness until yesterday.

• Twenty, for crying out loud.

• Not feeling icky anymore, as stated above. But I do still want to hibernate. I mean, fish, berries, honey, sleep. Sounds pretty good, actually. Soy una osa.

• Thank goodness school is out at the end of this week.

• Is it wrong of me to be happy that one of my students isn't going to school on the last day before break, just because I want to sleep in?

• I broke out the socialist snowplow meme again a couple weeks ago. I'll probably need it again in February or so.

• Hoo boy, some of my workmates love their soccer.

• Must put "buy gift wrap" on my to-do list. 

• Must write said to-do list for the week.

<wanders off to google "bone marrow" and to write to-do list>

I Don't Understand

I mean, I get that LGBTQ+ people are under attack, always, by people who think it's wrong. And generally, people who assume that it's All About Sex™, never mind that LGBTQ+ people are just going about their daily lives. These kinds of assumptions say more about the person doing the assuming, and they think a lot more about sex itself (especially other people's sex and gender and presentation) than anyone I know.

What I don't understand is why.

Just for existing, even in their own spaces?

Yet another shooting, this time in a Colorado gay bar. Of people who are just there in their own space, doing their own thing, and not bothering you. 

Except for their very existence, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, bible-murica-muh-guns-alpha-male, whatever.

I've read the Bible cover to cover (twice, two different versions), I've lived in the US my whole life, I've handled guns, and I'm mentally ill (GAD and SAD). And white and fat and female. Oh, yes, and ASD/ADHD, since people usually pull that one out as either a defense (couldn't help it) or as another disenfranchised group to vilify as "part of the problem." 

They are not the problem, you hypocrites. You are. 

You can't say "God is Love" and "God hates [f-slur]" in the same breath. 

That's bullshit.

It's just hatred of stuff you don't understand, you don't try to understand, but really you just can't be bothered to understand anyone who isn't a straight white male "Christian."

And that's what I don't understand.

An Air and a Spare…

I thought about calling it “back on the road again“ but I figured that one has been done to death. And since the only thing in my news feed besides politics and/or billionaires imploding is Prince Harry and Company, the title seemed apt. 

So anyone who has seen me in person or a few people who have not but who know me pretty well are aware that my car, a Honda Odyssey 2002 minivan, is getting old and decrepit and tired. It started life as my dad’s car, was Laston’s car while he was sick, and then it was bequearhed to me and also Abby learns to drive in it. It’s just tired and rode hard and put away wet.

So yesterday I got a flat tire. Not a huge deal but also kind of urgent because I have to get back to work. One of my coworkers came to pick me up and all was well for the time being. But the tire was still flat and I couldn’t change it where I had pulled it over to the side of the road and evidently AT&T’s roadside assistance is either having a busy week or just Having Issues. This may have something to do with their roadside assist people being in Tennessee when I am in Seattle. A little far for things like landmarks and how to get from point a to point b for dispatching purposes.

But I digress. I took mom‘s car to work this morning (all my coworkers thought it was great, by the way, because it’s a cute little purple Honda Fit and they thought I had gotten a new car) and then Abby took it to school while I waited for the guy to come change my tire to my spare.

My mom is very generous with the use of her car, especially since covid started.

Anyway the guy came and changed my tire to the spare (we’ve never had so use the spare before so it needed air, which he had) and I took it to the tire place down by my work, about a half mile away. I checked my car in (two new tires and new wiper blades) and they said they’ll try to have it done by the time I get off work at five but they can’t promise it’ll be done before six. Good enough.

For me this is a fairly long walk to work, but I’ve built in plenty of time so I can chill out in my work building before I clock in and catch my breath. It’s an issue with those of us who are less active in our daily lives, but I think I’m going to get a lot of extra steps today. 

I also think it sounds like a (healthyish) comfort food via take out kind of evening after work today. When Abby picks Lizzy up from the school bus stop, I will suggest our local sushi place. https://sushihana5.com/ (I would have invented that but I can’t figure out the control for it on my phone, where I am writing this post)

Mistaken Assumptions (Learning Aids part two)

Today I would like to talk about assumptions… especially assumptions about stereotypes in education.

Similarly to women being assertive and called “aggressive,” or women being ambitious and called “bitchy,” we have a similar issue with neurodivergence. 

An example of this is me and often other adults thinking that any undesirable behavior on Lizzy‘s part is because of ASD, ADHD, or both. It came up because her math teacher noted that she was slow to start her in class work one day last week, and called her IEP coordinator in to assist. In and of itself, this is great because it shows that the teacher understands the supports outlined in the IEP and gets Lizzy the support she may need without calling all sorts of attention to it and/or pissing Lizzy off because she’s being condescended to.

The thing is though, that Lizzy was in fact doing the work, she was just slow to start it because she already knows this lesson and she knew she could finish it by the end of the class period even if she started late. She just hadn’t gotten started yet… which means that the teacher jumped the gun.

This is, of course, very common. And it is especially common among those teachers who read and understand the IEP. But it was absolutely unnecessary in this case and I think that’s a matter of societal expectations and assumptions based on stereotypes.

The stereotype here is that if your autistic or ADHD student is not working right away, it’s because they’re struggling with the material or the situation or some sort of sensory issue or whatever. Great, that means you understood the IEP! But, as in this case, there can be plenty of other reasons.

Reasons like, say, not wanting to jump right in and do an assignment that you already know the material for, because you’ve taken the first quarter of algebra one at least twice before this. Or, as is sometimes the case but not here, Lizzy is just being 15, or feeling tired, or simply in a bad mood, or distracted by something but able to finish the work.

I feel like we tend to assume that if anything does not go to our (usually) neurotypical expectations, it is because of the neurodivergence. 

But sometimes it’s not.

Or it’s more than one thing.

In our hyper-capitalist, rugged-individualist society, we seem to want to place blame rather than our go-to being supportive. Lizzy can’t concentrate? It must be the ADHD. Couldn’t be, say, that she was coming down with a cold. Or that she was just not into it that day. Or PMS or problems with her friends or worrying about her next therapy appointment or whatever.

People who are perceived as “not normal” are often assumed that every single thing is about their differences. It’s similar to LGBTQIA+ people perceived as having no identity other than their sexuality or gender.

And frankly, this sucks. In the case above it wasn’t a terribly big deal. In some cases it’s much much worse. Neruodivergent people or LGBT people or disabled people or people of color or whomever… They - WE -have a lot more going on than whatever it is that makes us different from the person doing the perceiving.

A long time ago, over 10 years, I wrote a paper for my communications degree on the topic of whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt (I’m for it). I’m going to quote my paper here rather than making you read the whole thing again, and hope that you understand the analogy I’m making:

There are countless examples in the world all around that homosexuals have the same parenting skills and talents (and faults) as any other adult human being. They are doctors, soldiers, lawyers, line cooks, retail clerks, artists, software programmers, engineers, musicians, taxpayers, and most importantly people… just like everyone else. Defining them solely by whether they sleep with people with the same sexual equipment as they have – this does everyone a disservice – parents, children, teachers, world leaders. Would the world judge a heterosexual white married lady as a bad parent simply because of her straight status? No. So why does the world judge a gay white married lady as a bad parent simply because her spouse is also a woman?

Learning Aids

Good news! Lizzy likes high school more than she did middle school. Or, at least, she hates it less. It helps that our IEP coordinator is just as awesome as the one we had in middle school, and that we are not starting with a deficit due to the crapshoot that was 2020 and all that entailed. 

There are still some issues of course. She’s struggling a bit with topics she finds boring or teachers she perceives as “having bad vibes.” The weird little quirky things that are part of her autism/ADHD are still in play (wooden pencils feel wrong and notebook paper must have 32 lines for math homework, for example), but we have methods in place to assist with those. These are the learning aids of which I speak in the title.

The first of these is people; she has a counselor/therapist who has experience with ADHD, teenagers, and just about everything else on Lizzy‘s list except the autism itself. And the therapist is willing to learn about the autism from Lizzy herself which is super helpful in making a connection between the two of them. And her IEP coordinator is also her academic lab (study hall with extra social/emotional supports) teacher; she’s awesome!

The second is ADHD medication. I have a number of people in my circle who think that medicating for mental health or educational reasons is the wrong thing to do regardless of context. So I tend to put it this way: the ADHD medication does the same thing for her brain that reading glasses do for my eyes. 

Example: I can keep my eyes from crossing, or I can focus on things that are close up. I can’t do both without getting a headache. The reading glasses take over one of those tasks for me. Similarly, Lizzy can focus on schoolwork, or she can focus on socially acceptable behavior/controlling impulsivity, but she can’t do both (for long) without having a meltdown. Her ADHD medication makes it easier to do these other two tasks so she doesn’t have to have the meltdown by the end of the day/week/month/whatever.

It really is that simple.

The Dichotomy of Fifteen

I've said it before, regarding Abby's bathroom counter, as a weird-but-fun mixture of naked Barbie dolls and stage makeup, LEGO bricks and pantyhose, and strange little combinations like those.

And now Lizzy is there as well.

For her birthday weekend, I took her and a friend to the mall. Build-a-Bear was their first stop, so that's comfortably childlike. They also went to Claire's, Tokyo Japanese Lifestyle, Hot Topic, and Spencers (where they giggled at people buying things too adult for the kids).

That's quite a combination of Kid Stuff and Adult Stuff.

I've warned her, now that she's fifteen, that she is not to go all Anime-Protagonist. That seems to be a very common trope, most of them starting their Epic Quest at 15 and growing up as they go along. Some of them start older (Monkey D. Luffy, Edward Elric, Allen Walker), some younger (Ash Ketchum, Gon Freecs, Sakura Kinomoto), but most of them are 15 or 16, at least to begin with. 

She even has the brightly-colored puff of hair on her head to fit the trope!

And she has just escaped the 13-to-14-yeard old mess that's another stock trope. 

It's such a transitory thing, this mix. And the transition between middle school and high school, "young teen" and "teen," unicorn tees and hot pink hair she does herself, Minecraft minifigs and writing her own fanfic,.etc. 

I kind of love it.