Willa-dog is having surgery today. A very expensive surgery to repair a torn cruciate ligament in her left hind leg. We have no idea how it happened. She'd been to the vet only two week ago for her "senior wellness exam" (she's ten years old) and the vet told us she was overweight. She also ended up on a stronger medication to help her arthritis. Scott and I think that she was feeling more energetic and mobile on the arthritis medication and maybe took a set of stairs too enthusiastically. Her excess weight, coupled with her build--broad body and short legs--probably caused her knee to blow out.

There's no avoiding the surgery; believe me, if there were, we would have found it. Pets can be expensive, there's no question about it. But what you get in exchange for opening you home and heart to them is just immeasurable, I think. They give so much and ask so very little in return. Pets teach children compassion, empathy, and responsibility. They can also provide sad but important lessons on the life and death cycle, and on the grief and healing process as well. Adopting a pet from an animal shelter (the only way to go, in my opinion), can teach children about the power of altruism and provide you as parent with the opportunity to teach your children valuable lessons about responsibility pet-ownership and commitment. You can start small, too--no need to jump right into bringing a puppy home, if you're not equipped as a family for that level of commitment. But even owning a single fish can help children learn about the natural world, and teach them early lessons on being responsible for another creature.

A friend of mine is trying to practice mindfulness--that is, the practice of stopping and reflecting on the moment, what you are feeling now as separate from what came before, and what might come after. You focus on physical and emotional sensations, and on your body's needs and reactions, in order to try and achieve a greater understanding of how to reach a calmer, more peaceful state. This is a Buddhist practice, but more therapists and psychologists are incorporating mindfulness training into their work with their patients. It occurred to me, while I was listening to my friend, that mindfulness could help L. a great deal, if only we could get him to try a more mindful approach when life spins out of control. But getting him to apply these types of strategies when he's anxious, or during those awful, bottom-dropping-out spiraling meltdown moments, just hasn't worked. I think mindfulness requires a great amount of mental discipline, and we adults have a hard enough time practicing disciplined mindfulness as it is.

As it turned out L. did not, in the end, want to go to the middle school dance. He opted for a night home with Clone Wars, instead, and seemed content with that choice. I'm happy that he thought about going to the dance, though, even if just for a short time. Maybe when the next one comes around the wish to go will take root in his mind and grow into action and I'll swallow that excited-happy-melancholy-worried lump in my throat and watch him head off into a sea of kids.

A year ago even imagining L. at a dance would have seemed impossible. Now, I dare myself to wonder when it will happen, not if. And just thinking in terms of when is so new and exciting that I don't  need anything more--not now, at least.

Everywhere I go, it seems, people ask me how L. is doing. Even if they don't know our story, or how difficult elementary school was, they still ask because the words "middle school" always make people wonder how it's turning out. Parents of younger kids ask me and hold their breath, hoping for some reassurance from me that it will all be okay. A friend e-mailed me last week, worried that things weren't going well because I've been so "quiet" about L. and school on this site, and on my Facebook page. But the truth of the matter is that things are going so well, I haven't even wanted to write about it, or talk much about it, because I'm superstitiously afraid I'll jinx it all. We are so used to riding such a crazy roller-coaster, of being lulled into a false sense of everything-is-okay only to have the ground pulled from under us.

At our monthly parent-support group meeting the other night I listened while the mother of a newly-diagnosed three-year old shared her fears about her son's diagnosis. I have never been in her shoes--L. was almost seven before he was diagnosed with AS, an autism-spectrum disorder. I felt a little out-of-place at the support group meeting, facilitating a discussion between a small handful of parents still reeling from the newness of their children's diagnoses.That time in my life feels so faraway to me now, yet if I sit and think about it long enough it comes back to me without too much effort. Sometimes, though, I am surprised to find myself so far from there. This is the way it is with all journeys: you can easily recall the starting point, and you're pretty sure you'll know what the finish line looks like, but it's difficult sometimes to see how far you've come.

Surely it was just last fall I sat at the same table, clutching my son's new diagnosis to my heart, feeling bruised and battered and, yes, even relieved to be there. And yet now, four years later, here were people asking me for advice.

What would you do next? the mother of her newly diagnosed child asked me.What would be your next step?

Here's what I shared:

Reach out and connect with other parents--virtually, or in real time. I can't even describe what a lifeline this was to me, as we emerged from a very dark and difficult time.

Link into area resources. This might mean getting your name on a waiting list for services such as parent-information sessions, or parent-training sessions. It's easy to feel impatient and frustrated when you receive a diagnosis and then have to wait a few months before you can "take action" but remember that you'll be helping your child for all of his life.

My classes started this week. This is the part of going back I truly love--once the meetings and workshops are over and done with it's so rewarding to step into the classroom and see the new faces waiting. Back when I first started teaching, some fourteen years ago, I'd feel a bundle of nerves on the first day. I still remember my first day ever of teaching--my hands shook as I walked into the classroom and I'm sure the whole room could tell I was a nervous wreck, and fighting for composure. I still feel a flutter of nerves right before class time, but my hands don't shake anymore. Instead I have learned to quickly gauge the class, to read the energy. Is it low? Too high? Just right? Who are the students who sit in the front (always a sign of the eager learner) and who sits in the back? Who is likely to doze off, and who will I need to work harder to engage? I always say that teaching is more about being sensitive and responsive to the students in the room than it is about training. Of course you need both, but all the training in the world won't do you any good if you don't know how to respond effectively to your students.

This semester I teach two classes for developmental writers. I will spend a good two weeks helping them feel comfortable in the college classroom. Some of them have learning disabilities, some of them have poor self-esteem, many of them haven't been given the chance to feel good about themselves in any classroom. I find these students the most challenging to teach, but the most rewarding, too. I see their histories in front of me, because I have also seen how quickly a child can backslide, into that trap of feeling inferior, and inadequate in the classroom. I see how quickly they can learn to hate school, and hate themselves, too.

At the denitist's office the other day, L. peeked over my shoulder at the magazine I was reading and caught sight of the photo accompanying a recipe for spoonbread. 

"Yuck!" he exclaimed very loudly. "I wouldn't eat THAT in a million years, so don't even think about it!"

"That never stopped me before," I replied jokingly.

There are, as L. glumly pointed out last night, eleven days left until school starts. I didn't think he was counting, or was aware of how many days were left, but clearly he's given this some thought. My heart went out to him at once. We know he's been worried, because he's kicked obsessing about his current interest (a computer game) into high gear--it's all he thinks about and talks about and we know this is so he can blot out all the other worries. I sympathize and empathize with him, except I tend to do the opposite: I place my worries front and center and gnaw at them until they go away. 

As we draw closer to The Day--that first day of middle school, we've been strategically taking steps to make sure the transition is as smooth as it can be for a kid like L.--and for his parents, too. Here are some of the "action items" on our preparation plan as we help our anxious child with Asperger's cope with the transition to middle school:

Practice "dry runs" of school pick-ups and drop-offs. We did this for the first time this past weekend. We loaded up the kids and drove the route from home to L.'s new school, through the carpool drop-off line, and then off to T.'s school. I'm not sure the dry run helped L. any, but it helped me.

Don't forget to draft that teacher letter! I almost forgot about this--it's been such a staple of L.'s elementary school years, but Scott reminded me the other night that we need to get one written and printed out for his new middle school teachers. In this letter, be sure to not only continue to include your child's strengths and challenges, but also tips on how your child learns best.

I'm back at work today. As usual, I'm kind of happy, kind of sad, kind of excited, kind of melancholy. Summer is the big pay-off time for us all; it's the time of the year when we truly appreciate the rewards of being teachers. We may not have much money; we may not be able to afford big vacations or new things for our house or expensive camps and schools for our kids, but we do have two months of pure family time each year and I wouldn't trade that for anything. But all that family time does make it very hard to say good-bye to the summer and almost painful to think about how in three short weeks everyone will be back at school and work and our lives will take off in the usual hectic, chaotic, often difficult ways that always usher in the new school year. Having two months together as a family also gives us invaluable time to help both kids prepare for the upcoming school year, and to prepare ourselves mentally for the challenges that a new school year always brings.

Most summers I head back to work feeling a little frustrated that we didn't accomplish as much as we wanted to with the summer family time--especially when it comes to working with L. on some recurring specific issues and the handful of new ones that always seem to crop up. But this summer we've been spending a lot of time preparing L. for the transition to middle school. With help from L.'s new therapist, we're working hard on a new positive behavior system (more on that later)  and on establishing good routines for him now to help ease the transition. For the first time in a few summer, I feel we are finally making some headway and producing some positive changes to L.'s routine. Here's what we've (and by "we've" I'm including L. of course) accomplished so far:

L.'s been seeing a new therapist for a few months now. We've been waiting to get on her appointment list since last fall, when his developmental pediatrician first told us she was joining the team. L.'s opinions of her vary, according to his mood. But as is the case with his feelings about everyone who tries to "force" him to change his ways, even if just a little, he mostly "hates" her.

Yesterday we had an appointment. When I told him that morning he threw down his book. "I HATE THAT WOMAN!" he declared and stomped off. But when it was time to go he put on his shoes and was ready to head out the door pretty quickly, all things considered.

"Are you going to tell her what I said?" L. asked me, as we got into the van.

"No, of course not."

"Why?" 

"Well, because it might hurt her feelings."

He was quiet for a minute or two. "I really wish I could take that back. What I said. Do you think I could?"

"Of course," I said. Years ago, early on in this business of parenting L., I clung to the belief that words are heavy, valuable things, not to be bartered casually or used lightly. Words carry weight and importance and they hurt, sometimes more than a physical blow. I've had to modify these thoughts a little, with L. I struggle with figuring out a way to walk that line: to teach him that my words to him are important, that while my I love yous and I'm proud of yous mean something I understand that his I hate yous and I wish you were deads are not truly how he feels. 

"Good," he said. "Because 'hate' was too strong a word."

Progress, I thought, is such a sweet, sweet thing.

***************

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which isn't something that normally happens to me. Usually I'm so tired that I nod off around the end of whatever 10:00-11:00 show on television we happen to be watching; or I find myself reading the same line in a student's paper over and over and over again until my eyes blur. By then I'm usually so sleepy that I'm out by the time my head hits the pillow. But it's summer now. We've been staying up later, and enjoying the extra sleep-in time in the morning. I'm just not tired the way I usually am at the end of the day. The news lately hasn't made sleep any easier to get, either. This is what I tell myself during the day. But at night. in that vulnerable window of time when I lie there in the dark, laid open and made bare to the darker parts of my world, that's when worry finds me. It seeps into my mind, and finds its way through the cracks.

I worry about harm coming to my children

I worry about the news, and the unfathomable things happening near and far

I worry about the future and the world we live in and the how my children will make their way through it

I worry about my job

I worry about family members far away

I worry about the start of the new school year

I worry about the fragile, precious, vulnerable parts of my children

I worry about how I can't protect those parts, not really, certainly not all of the time

I worry about L., and his future

I worry about that alter-future of L.'s that is out there; the one we don't want to look at face-on. It's dark and frightening and may not even exist. Or it might

I worry about middle school, and will he make it?

Will it be break him? Will it be a turning point?

Will T. adjust to her new school? Will she make friends?