Thank You, Pikachu

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About a month ago Liz remarked to me that Buddy Boy wanted to get a Pokemon game cartridge for his Nintendo DS. He wanted it because two kids he sometimes ate lunch with talked about Pokemon all the time. She was worried that Pokemon was too violent. All she knew was that they "fought" each other. While I don't know a whole lot about the intricacies of the game, I knew it was animated and that there really wasn't any violence to it. I quickly convinced her that it was basically harmless, and might lead to some spontaneous social interaction.

Well, we got him the cartridge for his 9th birthday last month, and he's been playing it ever since.

This afternoon, as I was getting ready to go pick up Sweet Pea from her third birthday party in as many weeks, Liz informed me that a boy from Buddy Boy's class was coming over to play. She also told me that

THE OTHER BOY HAD ASKED BUDDY BOY IF HE COULD COME OVER!!!

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Evidently this other boy has always been interested in, and nice to, Buddy Boy since he transferred to this school two years ago, and inserting Pikachu and his friends into the mix provided enough commonality that this other boy wanted to spend more time with Buddy Boy. While Buddy Boy has had a few parent instigated play dates in the past (none in the last 3 years or so), he's never had a "kid instigated" play date. This was HUGE.

The kids seemed to get along relatively well. They played together for a while, then I took them to the park, where Buddy Boy tended to want to dig holes with a stick rather than playing tag, but once they got back home they got back to playing together again. I think both of them had a good time, which counts as a raving success in my book.

Thanks again, Pikachu.

Hope They Can Believe In

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So Tuesday afternoon (the day of Obama's inauguration) Sweet Pea comes home from school and says to Liz,

"I know this is a little bit mean, but I wish my daddy were Barack Obama."

As Liz relates this to me when I come home, I imagine that my daughter is finally getting some racial identity with the African-American side of her heritage. Perhaps she'll identify more with her black dolls, and less with the blond Barbie?

Liz continues that she responded,

"Oh really, sweety? Why do you say that?"

"Because then we could have a puppy."

"Couldn't you just wish that your dad wasn't allergic to dogs?"


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Last year, Buddy Boy suggested we could get a dog, and "Don't worry, Dad. You could live in the basement." (The unfinished, unheated basement of our 125 year old house).

It's good to know that, given a choice between a real living dad and a hypothetical dog, the dog will always win.

What Happened??!! Jett Travolta dies

My wife tells me not to jump to conclusions, but I'm very suspicious right now.

John Travolta's 16 year old son, Jett, has died while on vacation with his family in the
Bahamas.

According to TMZcom:

... Jett was last seen going into the bathroom at their private suite at the Old Bahama Bay Resort sometime yesterday. The body was discovered by the caretaker, Jeff Michael Kathrein (pictured bottom right with Travolta in 2006), at 10:00 AM today. The report says Jett suffered from seizures. ...

Jett was widely rumored to be autistic, though the Travolta's denied this, and said instead that he had Kawasaki syndrome (an autoimmune disease that can lead to heart disease). Being autistic is something that is seen as a defect by Scientologists, which is the "religion" that the Travoltas belong to.

My immediate questions are:

1) Why was a 16 year old unaccounted for from yesterday evening to 10:00 am this morning? What adult was responsible for him?

2) Did Jett have a documented seizure disorder?

3) What medicine was he on, and who gave it to him (i.e., did he have proper blood levels of the drug)?

4) Was Jett undergoing any "detoxifying" treatments while he was in the Bahamas? Could chelation leading to a chemical inbalance have caused the seizure?

I'm not jumping to conclusions. But I hope that this unfortunate death is fully investigated, and the truth is made public.

Janus

photo credit-Matthew Oliphant
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The traditional New Year's song, Auld Lang Syne begins,

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?

One might think, from the scarcity of my posts these last few months, that I had forgotten all of my blogging friends and acquaintances. You have all remained in my thoughts (and sometimes in my prayers), but I am certainly guilty of letting this blog lay fallow like a field in winter. So in the tradition of the season, I'll recap a little of what's been happening this past year.

I'll start with last December. Remember the Ransom Notes campaign? I thought this campaign (actually the response to it) marked a significant moment in autism advocacy. Ari Ne'eman and ASAN coordinated a successful effort by a wide spectrum of groups and individuals to quash an ad campaign in New York City that demeaned autistics and others. Online advocacy successfully crossed over to "real world" results, which totally rocked!

January was a quiet and happy time for us. Buddy Boy had a family John Deere themed party, followed by a successful "Mad Science" party with kids from school. It was a great start to the year.

March was when the Poling case entered the news. I was mightily disappointed by the verbal musings of the father in this case, Jon Poling. As a physician (and a neurologist) he could have taken the opportunity to point out that his daughter's case of being "vaccine injured" was a rare anomaly, instead of spouting off with unproved suppositions that there were thousands of cases like her out there. Perhaps his comments were only rehashing ones made by his lawyer, Clifford Shoemaker, who was at the Poling's side at their press conference.

Speaking of Shoemaker, in April he served a ridiculous subpoena against Kathleen Seidel, who fought back with all the force and tenacity of a superhero librarian. Shoemaker eventually was disciplined for this with a slap on the wrist. Still, it was good to see the "good guys" win.

The mind is a funny thing. Before going thru my old posts to put this together, I had completely forgotten the trouble Buddy Boy had in school last Spring. Reading my post brought all of my feelings from the time bubbling back to the surface. Last year was the first year that Buddy Boy was pretty much fully included in a regular classroom. It started off great, but deteriorated in the Spring to a combination of chaos and mayhem. If not for the understanding and forbearance of his teachers and the administration at his school (as well as Liz's immediate support when necessary), Buddy Boy might have been forced to leave his school. I'm not sure where we would be this year if they hadn't stuck with him when the going got tough last year.

This year has again started out great, and continues so thus far, with Buddy Boy in a class where a regular ed and special ed teacher are "co-teaching" this year. Only a few minor speed bumps have been encountered. After looking back at what happened last Spring, we'll be ready (or as ready as we can be) for any recurrences this year.

April is also when I attended a talk by the "philosopher" Peter Singer, who advocates that parents should be able to dispose of (kill) any child they don't want, especially defective ones, until they are several months old (or older, if they are disabled). Eugenics has never really died out in the world. Advances in genetics and prenatal testing are just allowing it to be practiced largely out of public view nowadays, as prospective parents of children with Down Syndrome are encouraged to abort their children before they are born. Unfortunately, we can expect the same response when prenatal tests for other conditions, such as autism, become available. I credit attending this lecture as one of my prime motivators for returning to school this year. I just completed my first two courses in bioethics (did I mention that I got "A's" in both classes?). Evil (especially polite, well-spoken evil) should never be left to stand unopposed.

The mentioning of Singer reminds me that one of his most erudite opponents, Harriet McBryde Johnson, died this year. Although I never met her, her loss is one that was a great one to the disability rights community, and one that I felt deeply. If we all became half as good an advocate as she was, the world would be a better place.

May also found the Judge Rotenberg Center in the news again, as revelations of repetitive electric shocks to "students" triggered by prank phone calls proved outlandish enough to get the media's attention (all of the repetitive shocks to students for minor infractions such as talking back or not being neat evidently aren't enough to stir a media response any more). Supposedly the JRC is having its practices reviewed by the state of Massachusetts thru this December, but I haven't seen any official site saying this, and haven't heard any other recent actions taken against the JRC. Perhaps 2009 will finally be the year that the general public pays attention to the atrocities that routinely take place at the JRC, and close the place down.

Summer was great for us. Buddy Boy continued to make strides in conversing with, as well as socializing with, other people. He even showed the first inklings of becoming his own advocate at one point. Sweet Pea got her first taste of freedom as she lost her training wheels this year.

Summer also found us getting physical, as we cleared and planted a garden, and later reaped what we had sown (the parts that the moles hadn't cleared out, anyway). Our final harvest was a pumpkin for Halloween.

The political scene in the U.S. was certainly an exciting one this year. It was at least somewhat ironic that the majority of the disability community did not support a ticket that had a physically disabled person on the top of the ticket, as well as the mother of a developmentally disabled person as the VP. Barack Obama has promised a lot to the disability community. I hope that he can deliver on half of what he has promised, and wish him well.

This holiday season finds me thankful for all the people that made it down to our house for Christmas this year. We got a call on the 23rd from an ER nurse two states away from us. "I'm xxx, and I'm calling on behalf of (my sister), who just wants you to know that she's all right after the accident".

Accident???!!!

A semi-truck had swerved a bit on some ice in front of her, and she had swerved a bit reflexively to try and avoid hitting the truck. She avoided the truck, but lost control of her own vehicle, and ended up going into the ravine between the highway lanes, up the other side, flying (literally) for 30 feet in the air, and ending up in the opposite ditch. Other than being banged up and looking like a cross between a raccoon and a Klingon (black eyes and a big hematoma in the middle of her forehead extending down into her nasal region) she was fine. Needless to say, her vehicle was totaled.

I drove down (thru blinding sheets of freezing rain) to make sure she was OK, spent the night there, and drove back with her up to our place the next day. Having that happen sure makes you appreciate the mundane things in life, and keep you from lamenting the things you might have gotten from Santa.

So that's about all that's been happening from the Club 166 point of view this year. I've signed up for two more courses this coming semester (Law and Bioethics and Justice in Health Care). I'm sure that once classes start up, I'll be mostly absent again.

Happy New Year to one and all!

Clean Sweep

There are many more important things that I could (and should) be blogging about, but this amazed me so much I just had to write about it. My sister came to stay with us from out of state for the Thanksgiving holiday. While we were preparing our back room upstairs for her to stay in, Liz noticed that the walls had some "stuff" on them.

"What is that?", she said. Sweet Pea, ever the helpful one, said "Looks like poop!" "What is it?" Liz says again, a bit more stridently. "It's smeared all over the place."

Buddy Boy chimes in "That's from the fly paper."

My heart sinks a little. The fly paper.

A couple of weeks ago we had thousands of flies swarming outside of our house for a couple of days. We called an exterminator, who assured us that this was common this time of year, and that they would go away with the first frost. Needless to say, a couple dozen made their way into the house. Buddy Boy insists that any insect must be returned to it's environment if we won't let him keep it as a pet (Andrea would love this kid), and Sweet Pea seems to think that any insect has the power to kill her instantly, and is thus terrified of them.

Faced with the prospect of dealing with both of them, I looked for a way to eliminate the problem. I looked thru our pantry and found a couple of rolls of flypaper. Thinking this might work, I put one up in the back room. Liz had me take it down a couple of days later after it became apparent that the unique sticky surface attracted curious kids more than it did flies. I didn't notice at the time that they had managed to smear some of the sticky stuff on the cream colored walls (which we don't have matching paint for).

Now, with 24 hours before my sister shows up, I was tasked to "Take care of that!"

Realizing that I didn't want to make a bad situation worse, I resolved to get the icky brownish yellowish stuff off the wall without destroying the paint (I did not want to have to paint a wall before she arrived). So I proceeded carefully.

First, I started with a rag with dishsoap on it. I scrubbed carefully and increasingly harder for over 20 minutes. I got some of it off, but most of it stayed where it was.

Like a philosopher progressing steadily up thru Maslow's pyramid of human needs, I tried what I viewed as successively more potent materials on the wall. The next material I tried was a floor and tile cleaner. I tried it carefully on an out of the way spot to make sure it wouldn't ruin the paint, then had at it again for another 20 minutes. Again, it left most of it where it was, only it turned what remained a darker shade of gray. Getting exasperated, I retreated to the mud room and tried some pine based floor cleaner, again to no avail. This was starting to get to me. I finally decided to go for the big guns-a scouring pad and kitchen cleanser-realizing that I would have to be very careful and would still probably remove some paint.

Luckily Liz saw me at that point and asked what I was doing. Fortunately it had been long enough that she had lost most of the fire out of her eye, and recommended the Mr. Clean magic sponges kept under the kitchen sink.

With little hope for successful resolution of the problem at this point, I took the sponges to task. I moistened one and started scrubbing lightly. And after spending more than an hour trying to get the stuff off, it started lifting off immediately. What's more, the paint underneath seemed totally unharmed. In five minutes I was done with those spots, and gleefully going after other spots (finger prints, putty, crayon marks, etc.).

"There's some rockin' chemist out there that hit one out of the park with this!", I said. Life is full of small miracles, and I experienced one this week.

Being Thankful

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Thursday is American Thanksgiving Day. It's one of my favorite holidays, because it remains one of the holidays that is least tainted by commercialism. We get to sit down, have a good meal with family and/or friends, and reflect a bit on all that we are thankful for (it doesn't hurt that I LOVE turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie).

We're now far enough into the school year for me to say that Buddy Boy's teachers, indeed his whole school, are bigs thing I'm thankful for. This year has been going GREAT! Buddy Boy's school instituted a model of teaching this year called "co-teaching". I'm not sure if it's the model or the individuals involved (or both), but it has been working out very well.

Basically, co-teaching is when a heterogeneous class of students is taught by both a gen ed teacher and a special ed teacher. One usually takes on the role of being the "content" specialist, while the other becomes the "process" specialist. Like all new things, we were a little anxious regarding how this would work out for Buddy Boy, but it has succeeded grandly.

Both of Buddy Boy's teachers volunteered to co-teach. One of them is a special ed teacher, and the gen ed teacher is actually currently pursuing her master's in special ed, so is open to doing things in non-conventional ways. The model seems to work for a number of reasons:

-the presence of two certified teachers decreases the student-teacher ratio

-rather than teaching of kids with special needs devolving down to the para-professionals during busy times during the day, there is a certified teacher to actually teach the kids.

-special ed kids are more likely to stay in their home classroom for larger portions of the day, rather than being parceled out to other venues.

-because it is voluntary, both teachers are enthusiastic about the model.

-even the kids that aren't identified as special ed get extra help when they need it.

The principal of the school also has a special ed background, and welcomed us with open arms when we transferred to this school two years ago. Everyone in the place knows Buddy Boy, and he is well liked by the teachers and staff.

I know that Buddy Boy is maturing, and in doing so is able to go with the flow more than he used to. Though this is a big part of his success, I'm equally convinced that it has been due in large part to the attitudes that are prevalent in the school and in his classroom in particular. He still has little incidents (like a couple of weeks ago when he followed another group of kids outside of the school when he was on the way back to his classroom from the school nurse). But these things are seen (and managed) as little speed bumps along the way, nothing to be concerned about, just things to be dealt with. His teachers celebrate his successes, instead of his shortcomings.

I'm a real thankful guy.

A Question As To Her Judgement

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Remember Wendy Portillo, the teacher in Port St. Lucie Florida who back in May this year allegedly had her students publicly humiliate and belittle a 5 year old student, Alex, then vote him out of the class? Well, the Port St. Lucie school district finally made a decision on Wendy. According to the TC Palm:

While school district internal investigators said there's no evidence Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo meant to cause harm or embarrassment to Alex Barton, they said in a report released Thursday there is a question as to her judgment.

Additionally, the article noted:

The St. Lucie County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to suspend Portillo without pay for one year. Her attorney notified the School Board in a letter that Portillo intends to contest Lannon's recommendation with the state's Division of Administrative Hearings.

So after 6 months of investigating, this is what they came up with. It's certainly less than I would want for someone who psychologically traumatized a 5 year old child, but if she moves on and gets a job somewhere else it will be worth it.

The report by the school also said:

The incident could cause Portillo to lose the respect and confidence of her colleagues, students, parents and the public, the report said, citing the extensive national and local coverage of the incident.

I don't think Portillo could lose much more respect in the public eye, though in checking the comments on that story 2 out of 6 still support her.

There are a lot of great teachers out there. Buddy Boy has two of them this year in his class. But when anyone abuses 5 year olds, (especially when they are in a position of authority and trust) then that person needs to be called out.

Here's hoping other potential offenders take notice of what happened to Wendy.