Fight The Smears: Debunking Taheri on the Obama Troop Withdrawal Hypocrisy Charge

This is going to be kind of a detailed political post. I originally wrote it for a message board. I'm hoping my readers can use it to fight the latest smear against Obama. Please feel free to copy it in its entirety.

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Amir Taheri's article yesterday -- OBAMA TRIED TO STALL GIS' IRAQ WITHDRAWAL -- states that Obama has advocated for a troop withdrawal in public, but in private talks with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, he asked for a delay. The implication is that Obama is a treasonous hypocrite who is playing troop withdrawal for political gain.

First of all, the source is suspicious. Taheri is a known liar who makes up sensationalist stories for gullible neocon audiences to email forward each other. He made up a story about Iran last year that ruined his reputation as any kind of journalist. Wiki or Google his name and you'll find out pretty quickly. The NY Post is also known for sensationalist right-wing stories.

But let's take his charge seriously for a minute. Is it true?

On June 16th, Obama did meet with Foreign Minister Zebari. McCain met with Zebari the very same week. Obama has met with other Iraqi officials since then. So has McCain. These meetings are highly publicized. Obama gave a public press conference immediately after the June 16th meeting, where he went over what was said during the meeting. I repeat, neither the McCain nor Obama meetings have been secret.

Now, I'm going to quote Taheri's article. Pay close attention to the word "agreement", "demand for delay" and "status of troops".

"According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

'He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,' Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its 'state of weakness and political confusion.'

'However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open.' Zebari says."

Did Zebari actually say that? Very likely. But he was talking about something completely different from troop withdrawal. The Status of Forces Agreement is a military legal term. Here's the Wikipedia definition:

"The SOFA is intended to clarify the terms under which the foreign military is allowed to operate. Typically, purely military issues such as the locations of bases and access to facilities are covered by separate agreements. The SOFA is more concerned with the legal issues associated with military individuals and property. This may include issues like entry and exit into the country, tax liabilities, postal services, or employment terms for host-country nationals, but the most contentious issues are civil and criminal jurisdiction over the bases. For civil matters, SOFAs provide for how civil damages caused by the forces will be determined and paid. Criminal issues vary, but the typical provision in U.S. SOFAs is that U.S. courts will have jurisdiction over crimes committed either by a servicemember against another servicemember or by a servicemember as part of his or her military duty, but the host nation retains jurisdiction over other crimes."

We have no Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.

This is understandably quite frustrating for the Iraqis. American citizens are essentially above the law. Those Blackwater contractors who flippantly massacred a bunch of civilians at a traffic stop last year, for example, weren't tried in an Iraqi court. The Abu Ghraib torturers weren't tried in an Iraqi court.

Even in allied countries where we do have a Status of Forces Agreement, it's a very complicated and potentially explosive issue. One example this year is the Michael Brown attempted rape case in Okinawa. It spurred attempts to make major revisions to the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement.

Now let's go back and read the Jebari quote again. This time, watch out for "regulates the activities of foreign troops".

"According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

'He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,' Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its 'state of weakness and political confusion.'

'However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open.' Zebari says."

Obama is simply asking for a delay in the establishment of a Status of Forces Agreement. This is not something that even McCain or Bush would disagree with. Our current policy has been to stall, stall, stall because an SOFA would mean that American troops would no longer be above the law. Cynically, it's in America's best interests not to have an SOFA yet; morally, we really should have one. But then, morally (and practically) we shouldn't have gone there in the first place.

Why is he asking for a delay? Here's a quote from an MSNBC article from June 16th. Keep an eye out for some interesting parallels to the Taheri smear. Watch for the word "weak".

"In response to a question about how much flexibility there would be to withdrawal plans, Obama said he still believed U.S. forces could be out of the country within about 16 months and that 'I've also consistently said that I will consult with military commanders on the ground and that we will always be open to the possibility of tactical adjustments. The important thing is to send a clear signal to the Iraqi people and most importantly to the Iraqi leadership that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is finite, it is gonna be coming to a foreseeable end.'

He said he told Zebari that negotiations for a Status of Forces agreement or strategic framework agreement between the two countries should be done in the open and with Congress's authorization and that it was important that that there be strong bipartisan support for any agreement so that it can be sustained through a future administration. He argued it would make sense to hold off on such negotiations until the next administration.

'My concern is that the Bush administration--in a weakened state politically--ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it was my administration or Sen. McCain's administration,' Obama said. 'The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that's currently made.'"

Wow. Notice that Obama makes his point in an extremely diplomatic and transparent fashion, and even includes the contingency of McCain winning.

But today, true to form, the McCain campaign immediately takes the low road. According to a post at Politico, they're rubbing the Taheri smear all over themselves, hooting, and flinging crap at the press hoping that some of it will stick.

"McCain aide Randy Scheunemann, however, attacked Obama based on the Post column.

'At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power,' he said. 'If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation.'"

Let's wrap it up:

1) Obama has not interfered in diplomatic relations with Iraq anymore than McCain has. Both are U.S. Senators who have involvement with foreign relations. Both have met privately with top Iraqi officials.
2) Taheri pretends that the word "agreement" means "troop withdrawal", when it really means "the legal status of American forces in Iraq".
3) Obama's position on the SOFA is probably not substantially different than McCain or Bush.
4) Taheri's piece is a lie masquerading as a smear masquerading as an opinion piece masquerading as investigative journalism.

Please copy, paste and forward as much as you want.

A Sunny Future

Good news on the pain in my side. I exercised several times last week and did a particularly strenuous class on Saturday. On Sunday I felt like I'd been hit with a baseball bat multiple times in the torso. But today my side feels great! The pain is at the lowest level in months, and I can inhale deeply all I want!

Saturday was also a date night. I think it's only the second date night we've had since becoming parents. We went to to an Ethiopian restaurant then saw Cthulhu. I was quite curious to see it after reading this account of the filming. The movie wasn't bad! Not really great, but not bad either. I recommend reading the article if you've ever been involved with movie production; otherwise, it's probably too long and esoteric.

During our kid-free date night, the topic of conversation was of course... the kid. We came to some really positive conclusions. The goal is to have Sunny working up to his potential in school by the time he becomes a teenager. Six years sounds like enough time.

This is assuming he doesn't have "real" ADHD. On the other hand, he might really have the same kind of genetic ADHD that runs in my family. If that's the case, my expectations are going to be a bit different (though not necessarily lower). But at this point, we think it's most likely that if he can work through emotional and anxiety issues over the next six years -- the ones producing symptoms that mirror ADHD -- he'll be at the point where he doesn't need any drugs or major special accommodations to succeed academically.

Guy remarked on how social he is. When we take him to school he always has a smile or wave for the other kids. They all smile and wave back and call him by name.

It's a contrast to a very recent NY Times Magazine article I read about kids diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It does a good job outlining the conflicting theories about bipolar in children. Pretty terrifying stuff. Most of the parents featured in that article were ridiculously rich, throwing money at their problems and still going through hell. It makes me sad to think about the other kids, the ones who live in low-income neighborhoods in New York. Most of them probably end up in prison, which nowadays is the low-income person's only available mental health facility.

I think there are three systems for psychiatric treatment of children. There's one for parents with money that's described in the article. There's another one for parents without money, where parents don't have the resources to get the right diagnoses, treatments or medications. And then the one for foster care kids, in which they're both underdiagnosed and undertreated AND overdiagnosed and overmedicated. It's the worst of both worlds.

I am so far quite unhappy with the quality of treatment under Medicaid we're getting for Sunny. I have to stick with it. We can compensate for it in other ways... for now.

It all gets back to the election. If Obama doesn't win, we're going to be totally screwed.

36-degree Curve

I received a dispiriting diagnosis today. The pain in my side is related to scoliosis, it's not going to get any better and there's not much I can do about it.

As background, I was diagnosed with scoliosis at a young age. I inherited it from my mother. Her curve is very pronounced. In her 40s, she had an operation that stiffened her back by screwing her spine to three steel rod implants. Until I reached adolescence I wore a special orthopedic brace every night in the hopes of arresting my curve so that it wouldn't get as bad as my mother's.

Scoliosis isn't that bad, as far as congenital deformities go. It's pretty common for women. It never slowed my mother down, before or after her operation. As far as my spine, no one can tell in public; I compensate with posture.

On the other hand, I do hate having it. I'm already tall, but without the scoliosis, I'd be at least an inch taller. The brace I used to have to wear looked horrific. My stepfather called it "The Iron Maiden". It encased my hips and waist in thick, rigid plastic, then steel rods in the front and back connected the hips to a steel core foam-wrapped collar. When it was hot, the plastic was sweaty; when it was cold the exposed steel would give me nasty chills. I stoically climbed into it and strapped it on almost every night for five years. I was very grateful I didn't have to wear it during the day.

I wish we'd thought to save my records and remember my final spinal curve number from when I was a teenager. I think it's gotten worse in the last few years.

In the last six months I've noticed a stabbing pain in my side that comes and goes. It's not like a typical backache. I've just determined it's a scoliosis-related problem. The side-to-side curve of my spine is causing the ribs on the right side to spread apart too much, and the muscle between some of the ribs is complaining.

It also turns out there's nothing I can do about it. It got really bad for a while because of all the coughing I was doing when I had the long cold. Taking a deep breath felt like someone was punching me in the chest. Now it seems to be going away, but if I exercise (a rare occurrence) it comes back.

The doctor did say that exercising more will eventually help. I absolutely need to start doing flexibility training on a regular basis. If that doesn't help things, I can try targeted physical therapy. I'll go back next year and see if my curve gets any worse. If it gets much past 40 degrees, I'll probably need surgery. It's a depressing prospect. I really don't want to live with this pain for the rest of my life. And even though I can do things to manage the pain, there's absolutely nothing that can be done about the curve. Whether it stays the same or gets worse is all encoded in my genes.

On the bright side, I have very good health in other areas. And I can carry Sunny around on piggyback, which my husband can't do! My mother has lived with worse, so I guess I'll just have to learn to have a good attitude about this.

Special Appeal

These last few days have been a wake-up call for me. We can't coast to victory. If anyone who's reading this blog is an Obama supporter, donate, donate, donate, volunteer, get out and register voters.

I don't want to be a doomsayer, but I think the highest thing at stake here is the survival of the human race. McCain with his insane foreign policy is about 1000% more likely to start WWIII than Obama. The many other ways in which an Obama administration will be better... it all kind of pales in comparison.

If you're on the fence, I'm going to enclose some material here about Obama touching on issues faced by parents of children from the foster care system.

Also, here's a link to foster care alumni advocate and blogger Larry Adams (aka PrairieGuy), ex-Republican and Obama supporter.


From the campaign fact sheet:

Barack Obama is a committed advocate for children. He will make sure that every child has health insurance, expand educational opportunities for low-income children, extend resources for low-income families, support and supplement our struggling foster care system, and protect children from violence and neglect.

Health Cover Every Child: Barack Obama is committed to making sure every child has health insurance. Forty-seven million Americans lack health coverage, including nine million children. Obama has a plan to sign legislation providing quality, affordable health care to all Americans by the end of his first term. Obama’s health plan will mandate coverage of children.

A History of Expanding Health Care to Children: As a state senator, Obama sponsored and helped pass legislation that expands Illinois’ KidCare program which provided coverage to 150,000 parents and their children.

Expand Medicaid and SCHIP: Together, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provide health coverage for one in four of our nation’s children. Currently, over 28 million children are enrolled in Medicaid, the nation’s major source of health coverage for low-income people. SCHIP, which targets low-income uninsured children who do not qualify for Medicaid, covers 6 million additional children. Obama will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function.

Promote Healthy Lifestyles: One out of every 3 children and adolescents—25 million—are overweight and obese because of excessive food intake and lack of physical activity. How a community is designed (its roads, buildings and parks) can have a huge impact on the health of residents, especially children. For instance, nearly one-third of Americans live in neighborhoods without sidewalks, and less than half of our country’s children have a playground within walking distance of their homes. This lack of a safe place to walk and play is a major contributor to the growing numbers of overweight children. Obama introduced the Healthy Places Act to help state and local governments assess the health impact of new policies or projects, whether it is a new highway or shopping center. Once the health impact is determined, the bill gives grant funding and technical assistance to help address potential health problems.

Protect Children and Families from Lead Poisoning: Lead is a neurotoxin and especially harmful to developing nervous systems of fetuses and young children. There are currently 400,000 children suffering from lead poisoning in the U.S. Obama has fought to get the Environmental Protection Agency to publish long overdue rules for how contractors involved in the renovation and remodeling of homes should deal with lead paint hazards. He introduced the Lead-Free Toys Act to require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban any children's product containing lead. Obama also introduced legislation that would help protect children from lead poisoning by requiring all non-home-based child care facilities, including Head Start programs and kindergartens, to be lead-safe within five years. The legislation would also establish a $42.6 million grant program to help local communities pay to make these facilities safe.

Help Autistic Americans and their Families: Barack Obama believes that we must do more to help support Americans with ASD, their families, and their communities. Throughout his career, Barack Obama has worked with families affected by ASD to raise awareness and to provide support to parents and families living with ASD. As president, Obama will build on these many years of advocacy and ensure that his administration prioritizes ASD research, public awareness, and lifelong support services. Obama will seek to increase federal ASD funding for research, treatment, screenings, public awareness, and support services to $1 billion annually by the end of his first term in office. Obama will also continue to work with parents, physicians, providers, researchers, and schools to create opportunities and effective solutions for people with ASD.

Education Expand Early Childhood Education: Research shows that half of low-income children start school up to two years behind their peers in preschool skills and that these early achievement gaps continue throughout elementary school. Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council. Obama has introduced a comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan to provide critical supports to young children and their parents by investing $10 billion per year to create: Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state “zero to five” efforts; quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both; work to ensure all children have access to pre-school; provide affordable and highquality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families; and create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.

Expand Summer Learning Opportunities: Differences in learning opportunities during the summer contribute to the achievement gaps that separate minority or low-income students from their white or middle class peers Obama’s “STEP UP” plan addresses the learning and achievement gaps among grade-school children. The “STEP UP” program supports summer learning and enrichment opportunities for disadvantaged children through partnerships between local schools and community organizations.

Expand High-Quality Afterschool Opportunities: Expanding access to high-quality afterschool programs will help children learn and strengthen a broad range of skills and provide relief to working parents who have to juggle child care and work responsibilities. A recent survey found that African American parents have a higher demand for afterschool than other parents and struggle more to find quality afterschool options. Barack Obama will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children. Obama will include measures to maximize performance and effectiveness across grantees nationwide.

Low-Income Families Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: In the Illinois State Senate, Obama led the successful effort to create the $100 million Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As president, Obama will reward work by increasing the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increasing the benefit available to parents who support their children through child support payments, increasing the benefit for families with three or more children and reducing the EITC marriage penalty which hurts low-income families. Under the Obama plan, full-time workers making minimum wage would get an EITC benefit up to $555, more than three times greater than the $175 benefit they get today. If the workers are responsibly supporting their children on child support, the Obama plan would give those workers a benefit of $1,110. The Obama plan would also increase the EITC benefit for those families that are most likely to be in poverty – families with three or more children.

Strengthen Fatherhood and Families: Since 1960, the number of American children without fathers in their lives has quadrupled, from 6 million to more than 24 million. Children without fathers in their lives are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Obama has re-introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, ensure that support payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies, fund support services for fathers and their families, and support domestic violence prevention efforts. As president, Obama will sign this bill into law and continue to implement innovative measures to strengthen families.

Expand the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit: The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit provides too little relief to families that struggle to afford child care expenses. Currently the credit only covers up to 35 percent of the first $3,000 of child care expenses a family incurs for one child and the first $6,000 for a family with two or more children. And the credit is not refundable, which means that upper-income families disproportionately benefit while families who make under $50,000 a year receive less than a third of the tax credit. Barack Obama will reform the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit by making it refundable and allowing low-income families to receive up to a 50 percent credit for their child care expenses.

Support Parents with Young Children: As president, Obama will expand the highly-successful Nurse- Family Partnership to all low-income, first-time mothers. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families. The trained nurses use proven methods to help improve the mental and physical health of the family by providing counseling on substance abuse, creating and achieving personal goals, and effective methods of nurturing children. Proven benefits of these types of programs include improved women’s prenatal health, a reduction in childhood injuries, fewer unintended subsequent pregnancies, increased father involvement and women’s employment, reduced use of welfare and food stamps, and increased children’s school readiness. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis concluded that these programs produced an average of five dollars in savings for every dollar invested and produced more than $28,000 in net savings for every high-risk family enrolled in the program. The Obama plan would assist approximately 570,000 first-time mothers each year.

Expand Paid Sick Days: Half of all private sector workers have no paid sick days and the problem is worse for employees in low-paying jobs, where less than a quarter receive any paid sick days. Barack Obama will require that employers provide seven paid sick days per year.

Support and Supplement Our Struggling Foster Care System: The foster care system is failing children who need help the most. Obama recognizes that part of the solution is to increase the quantity of foster homes, improve training for foster parents and increase coordination between law enforcement and child welfare officials so that abuse can be stopped. Young adults graduating from foster care often have a rough time living independently. One study found that within two to four years only 54% had completed high school, less than half had jobs and 25% had experienced homelessness. Obama will invest in innovative new job training and workforce development programs that will provide those in foster care with the skills necessary to compete in the modern American workforce.

PROTECT WOMEN AND CHILDREN Reduce Domestic Violence: One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Obama will protect women and children from domestic violence. He introduced legislation to combat domestic violence by providing $25 million a year for partnerships between domestic violence prevention organizations and fatherhood or marriage programs to train staff in domestic violence services, provide services to families affected by domestic violence, and to develop best practices in domestic violence prevention.

Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect: There are nearly three million annual reports of child abuse and neglect. The tragedy of child abuse claims thousands of innocent lives each year, while ruining millions more. Moreover, it has been estimated that the direct cost to taxpayers of child protection and foster care is $20 billion, while another $100 billion is spent on issues related to child abuse, including crime, prisons, mental health, special education, medical care, and drug abuse. Obama is committed to preventing child abuse and supports proven and effective means to combat the tragedy of child abuse.

Register and Restrict Sex Offenders: Barack Obama helped create a national sex offender database through his cosponsorship of Dru’s Law. The law was incorporated into the larger Adam Walsh Child Protection Act, a measure Obama also supported. Obama also consponsored the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. The bill is set to bring stiffer penalties to bear against those who commit sex crimes against children under the age of 12. It also creates an online National Sex Offender Public Registry and gives grants to local law enforcement agencies for prevention and investigation. Obama supports the KIDS Act, which requires sex offenders to provide their Internet identifiers (email addresses, instant messaging tags, etc.) for use in the National Sex Offender Public Registry.

Protect Meth’s Youngest Victims: Children living in or visiting methamphetamine labs not only face great physical danger from chemical contamination and fire and explosions, but they are at a heightened risk for abuse, neglect, and continued social and developmental problems. Obama cosponsored legislation providing assistance to the children of methamphetamine abusers in the U.S. Senate, and he will continue to support meth’s youngest victims as president.

One mother's perspective on special education:

Obama and Education
by CatM
Sat Sep 06, 2008 at 03:15:57 PM PDT

We live in NJ, which has the highest per capita rate of autistic disorders in the nation. I have three children, two with Asperger's/ADHD and one ADHD/probable PDD-NOS. For those unfamiliar with such terminology, ADHD = attention deficit disorder and Asperger's is akin to high-functioning autism; PDD-NOS is pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified, meaning someone with autistic traits but insufficient in number to merit a diagnosis.

You might think that McCain's promises of letting us choose our children's schools would hold a lot of appeal for mothers like me. After all, the struggle to obtain the educational considerations my children need is exhausting and often disheartening. The private schools for kids with Asperger's in my area are out of reach, at $35,000 a year. I know McCain's promises are empty, which is why I prefer Obama on education for my special needs children.

I reviewed the education platforms of each candidate. Like McCain's speeches, his is vague, stocked with catchphrases to appeal to his base; these aren't policy ideas--they're platitudes.

Education was never a McCain priority. As states axed programs to finance No Child Left Behind mandates--a policy McCain supports--McCain voted against full funding. His new platform calls for greater funding for NCLB, yet it also expands programs that shift money from public schools to private schools--a program many can't take advantage of; tell me how a $3,000 grant is going to enable me to afford the $35,000 annual tuition (each kid) for the local schools in NJ that teach kids with AS.

The chief focus of McCain's "policy" is giving states money so they can competitively bid against one another for the top graduates in education, once again leaving poorer school districts with the short end of the stick. He plans to offer $4,000 credits to parents who use virtual learning; this includes $4,000 for homeschoolers who provide their children with "virtual learning" opportunities. This smells suspiciously like the Bush plan that funded private organizations who wanted to provide health programs. Conservative and fringe religious groups, eager to get a bite of that pie, sprouted up with programs everywhere that were covert opportunities to sneak religion into our children's curriculum.

In contrast, Obama--with 2 school-aged daughters of his own--recognizes the disaster of NCLB and its negative impact on our kids. As a result of NCLB's reliance on standardized testing, our schools ignore learning and social problems in children, provided they can pass their tests; they can't afford to do otherwise.

As an example, kids with Asperger's (AS) perform well on these tests early on, so the school says academically they don't need assistance. As kids with AS age and classes require more deductive reasoning, their test scores in several areas drop. Only if they drop below average will the school intervene. Meanwhile, years have gone by that could have prevented these kids from ever reaching the point where they struggle hopelessly to answer questions like "What does Susie feel when she loses her ball?" Standardized tests stress all children, but especially those with learning disorders.

NCLB forces schools to consume valuable resources that could have funded programs for kids with autism disorders. Though I live in a state where 1 out of 94 children has an autism disorder, our district funds 0 programs for these kids.

What will Obama do? His plan

...include[s] funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments that can evaluate higher-order skills, including students’ abilities to use technology, conduct research, engage in scientific investigation, solve problems, present and defend their ideas.

This is the key to change in education. Broader assessments are fundamental, because today's narrow tests fail to capture the problems many of these kids have. So many kids with ADHD and/or AS have trouble with higher-order skills, but it may not drag down academic performance notably until high school or college, contributing to high drop out rates. Recognizing and addressing these problems early on, preventing them from becoming a burden, will greatly improve our children's ability to succeed.

Obama also wants to expand summer learning opportunities. My sons' school offers summer learning opportunities--but only for kids who are 'regressing.' They denied funding for my sons to attend a social skills camp for kids with Asperger's this summer because one showed progress compared with last year and the other did not regress on his standardized test (just in every other aspect of school). And any way, the law only requires the school to address academic struggles, not social ones (unless they are disruptive). Obama wants to expand child care credits, too; this will let working parents with lower incomes better afford programs and camps for their special needs kids.

The current system fails because it makes no effort to prevent failure, only to try to reverse it. NCLB forces schools to care more about ensuring kids succeed annually on those tests than ensuring they succeed in life. I am especially impressed with Obama's plan to increase funding that will allow schools to stop using cookie-cutter lesson plans and instead tailor programs to individual student needs.

As always, McCain offers more of the same--tax credits for people who will qualify only if they can afford private schools in the first place. They certainly won't help people like me. McCain's plan will hurt my children by diverting money from their schools that is needed to implement autism and other programs for kids with learning disabilities whose struggles go beyond academic.

Obama places a high value on math and science in his program, two areas where children with Asperger's often excel. He rightly points out that our country lacks qualified workers. Many successful people are theorized to have shown signs of autistic disorders. It could greatly benefit society to help schools find ways to educate children with spectrum disorders rather than letting these kids fall by the wayside, unable to keep up with the struggle of a one-size-fits-all curriculum. I believe Obama recognizes this.

As for McCain? His educational plan is thin, indicating the importance it will have in his administration. As a VP candidate, he picked someone who wants to teach creationism in schools and exclude sex education. This says the most about how much McCain values educating our children.

New Therapist Progress Report

Luckily, I can sneak in non-Medicaid therapy under my own health insurance. We took Sunny to the new therapist today. She's a generalist, like the old therapist, but she strikes me as much more on top of things. The major difference: 1) when she wanted to talk about Sunny, she had him leave the room with Guy or me -- no talking over his head 2) she engaged directly with him. We did a bit of play therapy, discussed a recurring nightmare he's been having and just generally talked.

His nightmare is that a bad man cuts off his foot with a chainsaw. During the session, she coaxed a few more details out of him. Who cut his foot off? One of those bad men with chainsaws that cuts people's feet off. Did he see the bad man in a movie? No, he didn't watch those kinds of movies because they were scary. What happened after that man cut his foot off? Some people took him to the hospital and gave him a new foot. They found the bad man and put him in jail. Then they took Sunny home. And he never ever left home again, so he would stay safe.

As Guy said... heavy stuff.

The fact that Sunny can't play alone, even in the same room as us, is equally irritating to Guy and myself. I can deal with the irritation better than Guy, however. It's also a problem in school, because he shadows the teacher and constantly asks for her attention. I always had a sense that this problem was connected to anxiety. I just don't have high expectations for Sunny being able to play alone for quite a while. But the therapist really explained the link in a way that made sense.

Sunny has experienced a lot of complicated losses. If he sits still and thinks, they'll come to the surface of his mind. So he doesn't want to think about them. If he's distracted, he doesn't think about them. When other people play with him, he's distracted.

Guy mentioned afterwards how Sunny will often talk about things in his past when he's in the car. A faraway look will come over his eyes. In the car, sometimes he has to sit still and think.

So although Sunny is very articulate, confident, social, talkative and empathetic, he doesn't really know how to soothe himself. We have to help him get to the point where he can simply be with himself.

The other major insight is that Sunny doesn't really have a story of himself. The therapist said that most children at the age of six are able to tell a story about themselves. Sunny, despite his intelligence and creativity, has major problems in this area. He understands everything that's happened to him, but he can't put those things together into a narrative. They're like isolated facts. They're beads spilled on the floor, not strung together.

This felt very true, and very sad.

She prescribed more of what we're doing, and more time. Also, trying to get him to have short periods of "quiet time". We'd tried that before, but he absolutely hated it and kept complaining and fidgeting and fussing. She said to try again, even if for a very short period, and use music as an aid. We have another appointment coming up where we'll talk more. Today was only an hour.

I think this information is going to help Guy manage his irritation with some of Sunny's clinginess. It's an eye-opener for both of us, though. Very helpful. Much better than the previous advice, which basically amounted to "You're fine, go away, take two aspirin and call us back if he burns down your house or something".

Television on the Internet Progress Report

We haven't had TV for a month now. At our old house, we had a $65 a month satellite bill. I have my iMac in my bedroom for.com Hulu and iTunes, and we also have a Netflix Roku in the living room. Eventually I want to get a Mac mini and hook it up to the TV in the living room.

Sunny watches a lot less TV than he used to in his foster home, but he really doesn't seem to miss it. This morning I set him up to watch two episodes of Spider-Man on the iMac in my bedroom. I like this set-up because it reduces the amount of commercials he watches. Even with a DVR, I used to have to pay really close attention to edit out the commercials. There are only a few commercials on Hulu and they're geared to adults anyway.

My new favorite TV show is The Riches. It's AWESOME. I love Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver and I love the whole subterranean ethnic minority aspect of the show. The season one finale had me on the edge of my bed! I'm starting to watch Season Two on iTunes, which unfortunately I have to pay for. I have to confess, I have looked into filesharing downloads, but I don't know if I have the time to set it up in a secure way. I'm fine with paying for my favorite shows as long as I'm still paying less than with cable.

Netflix has Weeds on-demand, so we gave that a try. In the first episode, I felt like I was being assaulted. The characters kept gossiping about an Asian woman who was sleeping with someone's husband. References to her exotic sex secrets, the phrases "Oriental p*ssy" and "me love you long time"... my tolerance for racist crap is actually pretty high as long the show or movie is good, but this one wasn't. Guy kept watching a few more episodes, but I went off to make a quiche and just looked in now and then. I perked up when the Asian woman came on-screen. Maybe she'd prove everyone wrong and... and... nope, she's a slutty whore-slut who's not ashamed to be a slutty slut-whore.

The black people on the show were also made out of cardboard. The black woman is sassy! Super sassy! She calls Mary-Louise Parker "snowflake" and insults her a lot, but because the nice white lady gracefully puts up with the sassing, they all totally respect her! The black guy buys expensive rims for his hooptie on eBay... because that's what black people do! Isn't that funny!

It was clear that the white characters were allowed to have unique quirks and flaws, but everyone else just had stupid racist quirks and flaws. I really hate that. Why not have a slutty Asian MAN? Or a depressed, pill-popping, shopaholic black woman? The show would really have been much more watchable if all the characters were white. My husband gave up on it too. It's just not that entertaining.

I watched the Sons of Anarchypremiere last night and actually liked it, even though all the non-white characters were disposable -- literally disposable. It's basically a crime drama, so somehow, that doesn't bother me as much as all the crap in that inexplicably popular Weeds show.

Sunny loves the Walking with Dinosaurs and Chased by Dinosaurs specials. These are kind of a pain because he can't watch them without us, because they're too scary, but he absolutely loves them. I think they're cool too, so I don't mind watching them over and over again as long as it's for short periods. He also likes Spider-Man, Jackie Chan Adventures and Astroboy. Then there's the Scooby Doo cartoon movies. God, I hate those things. I was never a big Scooby Doo fan, but Sunny is nuts over them. He's seen Aloha Scooby Doo about ten times. His favorite phrase, as he's very fond of reminding us, is "you meddling mainlanders!"

We got him the "Happy to be Nappy" DVD which has really nice shorts focusing on respecting difference. Since it doesn't have dinosaurs, exploding robots or surfing monsters, Sunny wasn't too interested, but he did pay attention on and off and I tried to reinforce the messages.

Long Weekend Update

Labor Day weekend was jam-packed full of activities. It was very tiring. I know this may disturb Guy to read this, but part of the stress was having his father visiting from out of state.

My own father has mellowed out quite a bit with old age. The last time he tried to physically discipline his adult child (me, shoving) was more than a decade ago. I have a good relationship with him, and he's also great with Sunny.

Guy's father may have gotten worse. I don't know. Guy remembers him as a really great dad. I know for sure that he successfully imparted the value of hard work and staying out of jail. That seems like kind of a low standard, but way too many parents don't make enough effort in that area.

But my father-in-law is always putting people down. He puts down his ex-wife, his daughter and his son. He builds me up, but I'm sure he's putting me down behind my back. In fact, he sort of does it to my face, with back-handed compliments. He told me, "I have to hand it to you, I didn't think you had a lot of maternal instinct but it turns out you're a great mom." If I had even half an ounce of his regard for his judgment, I'd be insulted, but I had no problem ignoring it.

He's always talking about what a loser his son is, and what a great move Guy made marrying me, because I rescued him from being a loser. After you tell a "joke" like this about fifty times, it stops being funny and turns into an unhealthy obsession. I married my husband because I love and respect him, not because I'm some kind of freaking missionary. Then he'll switch to compliment mode and tell Guy how great and successful he is, not like his sister, who's such a loser, and he's so proud of the way Guy turned out and depressed about the way his sister turned out. You see the pattern? Every compliment is an excuse to tear someone else down. He'll talk about how puzzled he is about why his daughter has such low self-esteem -- oh, was it something he did? -- and I have to bite my lips each time. If he was this way when they were growing up, it's a miracle either of them had any self-esteem at all.

Again, I don't know that. I do know his personality changed a lot around the time he was divorced. I'm hoping it changes again soon, because as he is now, he's pretty hard to put up with. And I don't trust him with Sunny. At one point after an outing, he said, "You've got a lot of patience -- I felt like hitting him with a blunt object". Typical back-handed compliment. It didn't come off as funny a la Bernie Mac (by the way, I really liked his show and was sad to hear about his death). It just came off as mean-spirited. Yes, Sunny's attention-seeking and boundary-testing behavior can get annoying, but there are so many more positive things about him. For the first time he meets his grandson, can't he set aside the negative? It's not like Sunny is having screaming fits or setting fires, he's just abnormally persistent when he wants you to play Uno with him.

Luckily, my mom was around most of the weekend as well, which took some of the weight off my shoulders.

Again, I just have to hope that he starts forming a more stable image of other people (and himself) and stops this wearisome good guy/bad guy game he's always playing.

In non-father-in-law news, Sunny is doing well, but he's been wetting himself more during the day. It's never a lot, so it's probably going undetected at school. He says he does it on the way to the bathroom because he needs to go so bad he can't make it all the way to the bathroom. I've reminded him again and again, don't wait until you really have to go, go before... but I think some of it is due to anxiety and is beyond conscious control.

After school, he's getting reminders every 30-60 minutes to "drain his tank". Even if he says he doesn't need to go, I ask him to just go in the bathroom, assume the position and count to ten. Sometimes I hear a flush, so it works. I'm also buying him a vibrating watch from a bedwetting specialty store. I'm going to set it to off every hour as a silent reminder to excuse himself at school. From Googling around it seems daytime wetting is often associated with ADHD... kids get such a tight focus sometimes they forget about their bladders until it's too late.

His behavior has been mixed at school. I talk to his teacher a lot. He does the same thing to her he does to us: follow us around like a shadow and constantly asks for attention. The short attention span and attention seeking are getting him some bad behavior marks, but I'm confident the teacher is holding him to realistic standards. We're working on a 504 plan. As long as he pays attention, his academics are great. He gets concepts more quickly than most of the other kids, and she has to compensate for the fact that he often finishes his work before everyone else.

She says he's popular with the other kids, which I expected. They get exasperated with him sometimes, but really like him because he's outgoing and always has fun ideas to share.

He got a very good behavior mark yesterday AND had dry underpants! Yay! If he gets at least one other good mark, he gets his usual weekend 30-minute video game allowance.

I'm kicking his swimming lessons up to twice a week. This is more for my benefit: I'm going to do some water aerobics and laps while he's taking his lessons. He can take or leave his lesson: what he really loves is playing in the kiddie pool afterwards.

We had another interesting talk about race in the car. It's a subject that hasn't come up for a couple weeks. He was asking about Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, so they must have been talking about them in school. I told him that Martin Luther King was an important African-American leader, that African-American was kind of like another word for black, and that Sunny was also African-American. He said "No I'm not", but it sounded tentative. I know it's a statement he didn't really believe, he just wanted to hear my reaction. I just said, "Yes you are" and moved on with my explanation.

He wanted to know where they each were killed and why they were killed. I told him that bad people, racists who didn't like black people, killed Martin Luther King. He said, "then I guess they wouldn't like me!" I told him that he didn't have to worry, because we didn't live near any racists, and I'd always keep an eye out for them. If there were racists around us, we'd have to move to get away from them. He asked if we could move back to his home state next to his foster family, because there weren't any racists there either.

I didn't react much to that statement. I know he has a utopian vision of us and his foster family all living together in the same house. Once, they joked about moving to Georgia, and he got very excited and hopeful. He doesn't want to leave us and go back to live with them... he's more ambitious than that! He wants to live with both families at the same time.

And I know saying "there are no racists here" is simplistic, but practically speaking, around where we live, any white people who dislike black people are rather lackadaisical about it. The more energetic ones moved away decades ago.

As I've said before, I don't want to have any long serious talks about race and racism and being multiracial until a) he's familiar with a wide range of African-Americans in real life and has positive images to counteract the negatives b) he feels OK about being black. Not great (that's asking for too much right now) just OK. I think we're progressing fairly well towards both goals.

When we were visiting his foster family after the viewing, one of the older daughters did say one depressing thing, although she told it as kind of a joke. She said that when she was out with Sunny in grocery stores, white people would give her dirty looks and black people would give her the thumbs up.

It's odd for me to put myself in that kind of frame. I'm hyperaware when it comes to race, but I'm also semi-consciously blind to it. If I worried about how people fit me into the racial hierarchy all the time, constantly scanned their faces to see what they thought of me, then I'd go completely nuts. So I really have hardly any conception of how other people view me. I've shut down that part of my social perception. In a crowd, I can't tell when people are staring at me or giving me dirty looks or treating me like the background or viewing me positively, unless they come right up to me and tell me. So I really couldn't tell you what your average Dekalb County-an thinks of me with Sunny. Other than people think he's really cute, of course.

Finally, I'm trying to cut down our grocery bills and cook more often. I already cook a lot, but I buy lunches too much. I signed up for Mealmixer.com and so far it's looking pretty good. With Guy doing shopping and cleaning, I'm spending about 30-40 minutes each morning cooking breakfast for all of us and preparing lunch for Sunny and myself, and then about 30-60 minutes for dinner. It also keeps me on the South Beach diet. This summer I've been eating too many meals at my mother's. She's a ridiculously good cook and makes the most amazing desserts (English style banana custard, French tarte tatins, Indian gulab jaman). I have to cut down on the sugar more and save the desserts for once every few weeks.

Sunny's diet is low-sugar but not low-carb. I cook a regular low-carb meal and give him only a small amount of rice/bread/potatoes. Then when he finishes his meat and veggies, he can eat as much extra rice/bread/potatoes as he wants (which is usually a humongous amount). His special favorite is white rice with soy sauce. And then he gets a dessert of either fruit or plain yogurt with sugarless jam. He eats a bowl of cereal with soy milk for breakfast, plus whatever we eat, plus extra cereal if he's still hungry.

I don't know if this low-sugar diet is really helping with ADHD, but it can't hurt, and I'm sure it's going to help with the dentist bills.

Oh yeah, and politics. I have such a deep lack of interest in hearing about Palin's family. Policy-wise, she's a horrible person. Obama's speech was good, and I need to get back to doing more volunteering and voter registration. That's about it.

Finally, thanks again to all the people who commented and/or offered advice about Sunny's situation and his baby brother. I wish I was better at responding individually to each comment, but I really do appreciate them.

New Info About the Baby

The baby has just been placed with Sunny's foster mom, and is quite healthy and doing great. Sunny's grandmother was the motivation behind this. She trusts the foster mom.

Sunny's foster mom thinks that if everything goes really smoothly, we might be looking at six months to a year before getting placed with Sunny's baby brother. Out-of-state fostering means a lot of paperwork.

And then I also just got secondhand info that the baby's father is not the same as Sunny's! This was contrary to everything I'd been told, and makes the situation a LOT more complicated. The father and his family will have to be tracked down to make sure they can't or won't take custody.

We'll just have to be philosophical and wait it out and work with whatever happens. I'm not going to run out and buy a crib or anything.

Taking Sunny to the Viewing

Ultimately we decided to go to the viewing, but not the funeral. We flew in that morning then flew out the next morning. The travel schedule was grueling, especially since I'm still trying to recover from a nasty cold.

I told Sunny we were going to visit his foster family, see his baby brother, see some of his bio relatives and say goodbye to Mommy ___. "But isn't she dead?" he asked. I told him they were going to have her body in a coffin and it would look like she was sleeping. He could say goodbye to her body if he wanted, or if it was too sad, he didn't have to.

We met his caseworker outside the funeral home. She said she would help us out if there was any tenseness, but she didn't expect there to be any. In fact, everything went well.

However, being a fan of a show like Six Feet Under can give you a warped view of these types of events. I'd forgotten that most embalmings look horrifically unnatural. Mommy ___ looked like she was grimacing in pain, not sleeping. She seemed so much more vibrant and beautiful in the photos.

Sunny circled toward the coffin, looked for a few seconds, then ran back to us. Then he asked us to hold him and walk him to within a few feet of the coffin. He did this a few times, solemnly, then something flipped in his head and he ignored the coffin's existence; from then on, he just interacted with other people and ran around the funeral home laughing and giggling.

There were many of his maternal relatives there. Most of them had taken care of him at some point when he was a baby and a toddler. He remembered them, especially his grandmother, but he didn't go up to them and hug them. He was a bit shy around them and hid behind us until he was used to their presence. He did eventually hug his grandmother. The exception was when he saw his first, original caseworker. As soon as she walked into the door, he yelled her name, ran up to her and flung himself into her arms.

It went a lot better than I expected. I put out of my mind accusing thoughts as to why so many of these relatives hadn't stepped up for him. I just smiled and introduced ourselves. I hugged his grandmother, who was very emotional. She told my husband she wanted us to adopt his baby brother and keep the boys together, and that's what her daughter would have wanted. I got to hold his baby brother. Sunny was very shy around him, but I persuaded him to give his brother a handshake and a delicate baby hug.

We've been telling Sunny that his baby brother might come live with us. We'll know more soon. The baby is staying with maternal relatives for now, but is under state custody.

Sunny asked to leave after about 20 minutes. We stayed just a little longer, some of it outside the funeral home going over stuff with his current caseworker. There's an added layer of complication surrounding his (and his baby brother's) biological father. I can't say anything good about him, so for now I won't say anything at all.

Later on we went to visit his foster family. A non-adopted foster sister that Sunny was very close to had moved on, back to her mother, and his foster mom thinks they'll probably never see or hear from her again. But they had two new placements as well. Sunny had a fantastic time there. For him, it probably felt like the real purpose of the visit.

We went to see our family therapist about all this. I'd liked him on our first visit, but I'm changing my mind after this second time. He doesn't seem to engage with Sunny very much, he spent too much time congratulating us for being smart parents, and he said "kids that age have no concept of death". What? Of course he does! Before this happened Sunny had been asking all kinds of curious questions about death. I think we may need to find a new therapist, even if we have to pay for it.

I'm still recovering, physically and emotionally. I'm starting to look up some stuff about babies. But I don't want to hope for anything and have it fall through. And my feelings about having a baby are complicated. I know a lot of people would be overjoyed at the prospect, but we started off with older child adoption because that's what we really wanted... I don't dislike babies at all, I just find older kids a lot more fun to be around. Plus, they go to school! For his brother, we'd have to work out daycare or a PT nanny or an au pair, and since he isn't qualified as special needs, we wouldn't get any subsidy checks and it would mean a big change for some important financial goals.

I really do hope it happens, though. For both brothers, it would be so good to grow up together. We'll see.

I got about 15 minutes of video footage of the viewing and his foster family visit. I think that's going to be important to Sunny when he gets older, whether or not his brother comes to live with us.

Telling

Sunny's a very talkative kid. Last night we called his foster family. He asked to speak with five or six of the other kids. Each time he said, "Guess what? Mommy ___ died. She was sick then she got better, then she got very sick and then she died." Pause. "So what are you doing?"

I'm pretty sure he's going to say the same thing to his friends in school today. Telling him to be quiet would be going against his nature. I just had a talk with him and reminded him that most other kids only have one mother, so they might get confused when they heard him talk about Mommy ___ dying, so he might want to tell them that his Georgia Mommy is doing fine. If they tell him he can't have more than one mother, they're wrong.

Sunny's stubbornness can be infuriating, but it makes him resistant to peer pressure.
A few days ago Sunny complained about his friend telling him he "was a girl" because he liked Dora the Explorer. And wasn't that crazy? We told him that yes, his friend was definitely wrong. Why, if his friend was right, any girl that liked a boy was a boy, and any boy that liked a girl was a girl, and that would just be completely nuts!

I had to tell his teacher this morning about what happened. I wanted to clear up any potential confusion. I don't want anyone to accuse Sunny of lying or being crazy. As I've mentioned before, people seem to assume I'm Sunny's biological mom... I've never had a single person ask me if he was adopted so far. I told his teacher about Sunny's situation, and said that he might be telling a lot of other kids today that his Mommy ___ died. She asked if the death was expected, and I said, sort of... that she had been very sick.

Right now I'm leaning in the direction of going to visit, but not attending the full funeral.

Sunny's Reaction

After school, my husband took him out for pizza as a special treat. When he got home we had the talk. We all sat down on the floor. I reminded him that he would always have Mommy __ in his heart. I told him a very sad thing just happened. I reminded him she'd been very sick. She got better for a while but then she got sick again, and she died this morning. I said that according to his foster mom, Mommy __ is an angel in Heaven now. It's not my belief, but it's the one he's most familiar with. Then I reminded him that Mommy __ loved him very much.

Sunny hung his head and seemed to just... deflate. He needed a lot of hugging from us but he didn't cry, even though we told him it was okay to. My dad came in, and he told my dad, "Ojiichan, I have some very sad news, Mommy __ just died."

I said again that she was very sick and that there was nothing anyone could do... sometimes people just get sick and they don't get better. Then I said there was some happy news too: he had a little brother. We hope his little brother can come live with us, but whether he does or not, he just gained another person in his family. Sunny asked if his grandmother there was OK (I've read that children that age feel death is contagious). We went through all the people he knew back in his home state and I told him they were OK. We went through all the people he still had, including me and Guy and the dog. He was smiling and laughing at that point. Then he asked to go out and ride his bike with dad.

Still deciding about the funeral.

Does Anyone Have Advice For Me - Sunny's Mother Has Just Passed

I'm a bit numb right now.

About once a week or so, Sunny would say sadly, "I'm never going to see Mommy __ again". I told him it was natural to miss her, then tried to cheer him up by saying that she would always be in his heart. Then I'd ask him if he wanted to write her a card. He usually didn't; the concept was a bit too abstract. I was just about to send her my second packet: a letter describing his back to school experience, some pictures and a signed card from Sunny. I'd planned on writing letters every 2-3 months for a year, then as long as she sounded healthy, having phone calls. And then in the future, maybe when he was ten or so, when we went to visit his foster mom we could visit with her too...

Now I'm quietly mourning a woman I've never met.

I got the news from his ex-worker this morning.

I'm trying to decide whether or not to go to the funeral. It might be something that would be really good for him, in the long run. He could also see his foster mother again. On the other hand, maybe it would traumatize him too much. The funeral would almost certainly be open casket. He's been living with us for less than three months. It also means exposing him to the same relatives that rejected him because of the color of his skin. His foster mom thinks he shouldn't be taken. His ex-worker thinks he should. It's all up to us.

And she'd also just had a baby. Same father as Sunny. The worker asked, and I told her we'd adopt the baby if that's what it came to. I don't look at that as a bad thing or good thing, it's just one of the responsibilities we signed up for when they matched us with Sunny. The worker said that's what the mother would have wanted. As far as I'm concerned, if it happens it happens.

The only decision is the funeral... oh man.

Educational Frustration

I bought some educational games for Sunny, but I've run into some difficulties. He gets frustrated very easily with me.

We were playing a game yesterday where you had to combine a blend and a word ending. Things were going great for a while. Then, he got stuck creating a certain word. Creating a word lets you move ahead one square on the board, and since he's so competitive it's a great motivation. He had to combine SP and AN and then SP and OT. He kept on saying "splan" and "splot". If I tried to help him he got frustrated and if I didn't try to help him he got frustrated. After a couple minutes he started getting too emotionally upset to continue so we had to put the game away and calm down for a bit. He was absolutely fine for the rest of the day. Later that night we all went to a great Ethiopian restaurant and had an excellent meal.

He does much better with his tutor! Ideally, I want to be working on reading stuff at home (games, flashcards) for 15 minutes a day. But I don't know how well that's going to work. We've got two problems: 1) he takes things more personally when he's with me and he gets frustrated. If I push him on something, I'm not just pushing him, I'm "not being nice to him." 2) I'm probably a bad teacher for a six-year-old with a really short attention span. My favorite student group is over the age of 30. I'm confident I'm a good teacher in that range, but otherwise, I'm really just treading water.

I may have to give up. Instead of doing work together, I could increase his tutoring from one hour a week to two. It's expensive, but that's why we get subsidy checks every month. We'll see.

August Update with Special Non-Adoption Family Drama

This is the longest I've ever gone without a post! I think I needed to recharge for a while. Also, a lot of things came up that I want to blog about, but I'm not sure how to.

The main thing is that my cousin is now living with my mother. There's a lot of family drama going on. Here it comes...

My mother and her brother were never very close. My uncle must have had undiagnosed ADHD, but besides that, he's a jerk. My other (male) cousin has ADHD too but has a much, much sweeter personality. In fact, my cousin has decided her dad has ASPD which stands for Anti-Social Personality Disorder. I'm a little skeptical about all these labels, but whether you call it ASPD or a**holism, it sucks for the other people in his family.

My uncle has a lot of money and a high position in what I'll call "The Industry". Since the 1960s, our family has been involved in The Industry, starting with my grandfather. I grew up in The Industry, so I never thought it was anything unusual. But your average American has some negative associations with it. It's supposed to be lower class and a bit shady -- which isn't fair, because without The Industry, our civilization would collapse! Think something like waste management (although it's not waste management).

My grandparents never had a lot of money as adults. They came from the old West Virginia upper class, but their family money ran out before they left West Virginia. My uncle and my mother both went into The Industry and became prominent figures within it. My uncle had a sales position in an existing company, while my mother started her own company out of our house with my grandfather, with me as a little kid stuffing envelopes, built it up into a thriving business, then lost it all in the recession of the 90s.

Shortly after, my grandmother started dying of emphysema. My grandparents had downsized into a tiny apartment. I'd gone off to college but came back to sit by my grandmother's bedside with my mother. Seeing someone die of emphysema is pretty rough. All the energy in your body goes to breathing. You can't get enough calories to replace that energy so you lose weight rapidly. Since the end was so near, my grandmother decided she didn't want to prolong it with feeding tubes. Around the time she died, she probably weighed 50 pounds. My uncle didn't bother to visit her. He showed up a few days after she died and took the nicest heirlooms, since my mother didn't feel like arguing about them. A few years later my grandfather died, and he also didn't visit much either.

According to my mother, he'd always been the golden boy in the family. Not that they neglected her, but they gave him a lot of latitude. My grandparents had lived somewhat according to their old status in West Virginia... they always paid their country club and private school fees, even if the electricity was about to get cut off. My uncle was kicked out of a long succession of private schools and each time they found him a new one. My mother's explanation of her childhood is internally consistent, sociologically appropriate and independently verifiable. My uncle's is something else... apparently my mother ruined his childhood somehow (maybe because she did so well in school) and he had a hardscrabble life growing up on a farm. Instead of moving from higher to lower class, he invented a life where they went from lower to higher: a redneck made good. He developed a strong Southern accent, too, which my grandparents never had. Basically, he flipped the script from William Faulkner to Horatio Alger. According to his new story he made a lot of money in the 1970s as a cattle trader. I happen to know he was a cowboy, alright -- a COCAINE COWBOY. Not only that, he endangered my grandparents with his dealing! My mother was also involved with some common (but very illegal) stuff back in the 70s but she was responsible enough not to involve her parents!

So aside from just generally being a jerk, he's also ungrateful to his parents, refused the duty and privilege of sitting by their deathbeds, a narcissist self-mythologizer, an intermittent alcoholic and a terrible father. His little son, who couldn't help being hyperactive, was constantly yelled at. One day when his son wouldn't sit still during a yelling session, my uncle picked him up and hung him on a coathook from the back of his pajamas so he could yell at him some more. There was a replication of his own childhood: he had a very competent, responsible older daughter and a difficult son with special needs. The son got all the attention. He had the family first name. He was going to be a Big Person in The Industry.

The month before she went off to college his daughter did something unforgivably evil and defiant. She got a nose piercing. He retaliated by handing her a FAFSA. She had to pay for college herself now, and of course, since their family was wealthy she had no hope of a scholarship and had to take out loans for the entire amount. He could have afforded to pay for it all, but spent the money on a boat instead.

His son wasn't ready for college; he gave it a try but after a few months it didn't work out. From what I've read, my cousin's ADHD means his brain is not going to fully mature until he hits his late 20s, so I have every confidence he's going to succeed later in his second try. Anyway, the son got an entry-level, manual labor position at his dad's Industry company. The daughter, after she graduated with honors and a four-year career of leadership, starting working for the company in the highest sales position. It looked like she was going to be the heir. She loved The Industry and worshiped her father. When she graduated, she had "The Industry" Princess written on the back of her cap.

She was a natural salesperson and initially did well at the job. However, the reason I never had the slightest desire for a career in The Industry is that it always seemed like a white man's realm. If you want to get into it otherwise, you have to be tough as nails. I'm not. I don't have the social skills. I don't want to make things hard for myself; I need a more even playing field. Any woman who goes into it has to be twice as strong and tough and smart as a man. I don't hate The Industry, it's not worse than many others, but it's not for me. My cousin thought she could handle it, but it started getting to her. She had to wine and dine clients who talked about shooting interracial couples with a shotgun. Enemies spread rumors she'd made a big sale by sleeping with a client's son. People at the company sucked up to her because she was her father's daughter, then tried to stab her in the back. She started telling us she felt like she was walking into a snakepit. She was transferred to another city, and thought that would help a bit.

She started showing symptoms of a strange illness.

Several months ago, she collapsed. She went home to her mother and father and brother. She couldn't leave the house. After many doctors, she finally got a diagnosis. It's a very rare mental illness. It's nothing like schizophrenia, but it's comparable in terms of the effects on someone's life.

She was in an institution for a while and got a lot of good help there. Now she's living with my mother and I think things are going to turn around. Sunny loves her, and she's teaching him how to play chess! There's some medication that seems to be working. She's on seven prescriptions and one of them is even the same medication Sunny's taking. The most positive development is that she's finally made a break with The Company, The Industry and her father. When they had family therapy, his children honestly told him how he had failed them, and he responded by saying he was never coming back to therapy. He told his daughter that if she didn't come back to The Company (the same place that caused her complete mental breakdown) she would be a failure in life, and even worse, responsible for HIM looking like a failure. What a dick!

It's great having her around. She's like me in many ways, even though she's so white I'm always terrified she'll get sunburn when we go outside. We're both tall and broad-shouldered and throw our bodies around in the same way. We have similar noses. She's honest and straightforward and blunt the same way I am. I always thought that in social skills she was superior to me in that she inherited my grandfather and my mother's amazing social genius, the ability to have conversations with anyone, to be the life of the party... natural extroverts. But now I understand rather sadly that she always had problems that were parallel to mine.

Anyway, that's the story. I'm so glad she's finally cutting some ties to her family. I mean, I'm very close to my family. My life revolves around my family. But when I was in my teens and her age, I was very independent. I'm close because I want to be, not because I need to be. I hope she gets to that stage eventually.

In other family news, my father is visiting from Japan. I knew he would find something to complain about in his new guest bedroom, even though it's the most Japanese room in East Dekalb. It even smells like tatami! The complaint was "It's too big. I can barely see the opposite wall." He's been teaching Sunny to use chopsticks, although he makes everyone call them o-hashi, of course.

We've discontinued TV and are trying to get by just on Netflix DVDs and Roku. It's removed a source of contention. Sunny was always complaining about not being allowed to watch his favorite shows, some of which I thought were horrible. I think The Fairly Oddparents is designed to give adults seizures, it's so loud. When we stopped using the TV, he just totally forgot about his programs. He can still watch the stuff he really wants to watch and specifically asks for.

Sunny went through a week of bad pouty behavior when school started up. He's on the upswing now. He's still especially clingy and attention-seeking. For example, he'll ask me to stand by the door while he's brushing his teeth! We'd gone to a behavior chart system where he would get a star every day for "No Complaining" but that was too challenging. We're starting a new system where every time he doesn't pout when I say "No" he gets a circle, five circles equal a star and seven stars means a Pokemon deck.

Sunny's learning a lot in so many areas. Yesterday he rode his new bike. He'd convinced Guy (the new blog name for my husband) that he already knew how to ride a bike, but he really wasn't that good at it yet. He fell down a lot and scraped his shoulder, but he's getting better. His swimming is also a lot better, and he might graduate from Polliwog to Guppy soon. And he's learning how to play chess! This is another thing he claimed he already knew how to do (by the way, he also says he can play golf at the PGA level... lack of confidence is not a problem for Sunny!). He really didn't know how, but with tutoring from me, my cousin and Ojiichan, he's getting the hang of it. Sunny has a very competitive nature so he loves these games, although he needs a lot of reinforcement that it's OK to lose and you don't have to win to have fun.

He's in tutoring once a week for reading. The tutor is great and has a lot of experience with ADHD kids. She can tell when he's getting frustrated the very second before he actually gets frustrated, and knows how distract and then redirect.

Ojiichan is not giving me as much obnoxious parenting advice as I'd feared. He did once mention at table that he wasn't too tough on me when I didn't eat all my food. Ha ha ha. He also told me I shouldn't be worried that Sunny wasn't reading on his own yet (and I'm not worried, I just want to give him lots of extra support) because he didn't learn how to read until he was at least 10. This is a really weird thing to say, because he's incredibly well-educated and knows perfectly well that reading Japanese with kanji takes much longer than English. A lot of Japanese can't even fully read a newspaper until 9th grade, so his timeline is totally irrelevant.

Otherwise, it's great having him around. He cooks a lot and plays games with Sunny. We all went swimming together once, and Sunny got to practice his cannonball and belly flop dives. The belly flop looks horribly painful, but Sunny loves doing it.

I temporarily discontinued Sunny's gym class for a dance class. He just has too much stuff going on right now to do both at the same time. I told him after he finishes his dance class, he could decide whether he prefers one over the other.

We also went to a nice birthday party this weekend for another agency family. They adopted three siblings earlier this year. Two of them are black/white fraternal twins. There are occasional news articles about these kinds of twins, but apparently it's much, much more common than people think. One twin has brown skin and curly black hair, the other has golden skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

The house is still kind of a mess and we need to do a few more things before we can finally have a housewarming party.

That's it for now. I hope to resume more regular updates and commentary.

Oh My God - Terrorist Attack

This hits close to home for me... what a terrible event.

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- The suspect in a fatal shooting at a Knoxville church Sunday was motivated by frustration over being unable to obtain a job and hatred for the liberal movement, police said Monday.

Authorities recovered a four-page letter in which the suspect, Jim Adkisson, described his feelings and motives, police said.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell, Tennessee, has been charged with one count of first-degree murder in the shootings at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

The gunman killed two adults and wounded seven others before being overpowered by congregants, authorities said.

The case is being investigated as a hate crime, police said.

[...]

Nicknames

I realized, after almost two years of blogging, I badly need a blogname for my husband.

This is a difficult step because I'm allergic to the commonly-used internet acronyms. PAP, POC, WOC, DH, DD, ugh, ugh, ugh.

My dad is now Ojiichan, of course. My mother is Nana. Sunny is Sunny and I'm Atlasien. My husband is... I'm coming up with a blank. I'd like something simple, unpretentious, reminiscent but with no clue as to his real identity. Mildly humorous would be OK, but nothing vaguely insulting, such as Kielbasa.

Quick Notes about the New House

The new house is sooo big to me. I talked about it with my husband recently, and we both realized that it's the first time either of us has lived anywhere with more than one bathroom.

In fact, when I lived in New York City in the 90s, my old apartment had NO bathroom. I had a nook with a sink, a mini-fridge and a hot plate, and then I shared a bathroom with three other apartments. And I considered myself lucky to get that. I had to pay an agency $300 just so I could apply for it.

I've lived in nicer places before and after, but I've always had to share single bathrooms with roommates.

We're starting to meet the new neighbors. Sunny is going to have neighborhood kids to play with here. He's already met a few of them. The subdivision looks like a very typical mix for this area... 1/3 elderly white people, 2/3 middle-aged black people.

It's nice and quiet here too. Our old house was on a busy street. Every few weeks we'd find a hubcap in our front yard because people kept crashing at the intersection around the corner.

The only drawbacks to the new house are 1) lack of sun for gardening due to trees and 2) huge amounts of mosquitos. Later in the year, I'm going to thin out the juvenile trees a bit, then start work on a mostly-native shade garden. The mosquito factor is compensated for by an awesome screened-in porch. Aaah...

Ojiichan has his own room for when he visits. I just found a couple cheap sources for tatami and real futons. Other than a tiny table and some pillows, he won't need anything else. He looks down on furniture. "Furniture is for barbarian Americans".

Crack or Meth / More antisocial kids songs

Moving is about 80% done.

We had an appointment with a psychiatrist recently. The appointment was more of a formality than anything; we just needed a quick examination to get a refill prescription on Sunny's medication.

We went into the small meeting room together. The psychiatrist went over the notes from the therapist. He asked us a few questions about Sunny's background. Sunny was busy looking at some kids books in a basket in the corner. I noticed, nervously, that the questions began to get more personal. At this stage with the therapist, we would usually split up, so that either I or my husband was talking, and Sunny would be in the room next door playing.

But the psychiatrist kept right on going. It looked like he hadn't read the notes too thoroughly. He asked about Sunny's bio mom... "So, was she on crack or meth?"

I suggested that Sunny and my husband go next door at that point.

I think that's extremely rude and disrespectful to talk in front of a 6-year-old child as if they're not even there. He barely even lowered his voice when he asked that question. Sunny is extremely perceptive.

Then, the psychiatrist starting making small talk, and he asked how much Sunny's adoption cost! I don't want to go into detail as to the location, but he should be used to dealing with kids from the foster care system. Of course his adoption is going to be free. Anybody in his position should know that already. What an ignoramus!

I considered making a complaint, but it's not easy finding psychiatrists who take Medicaid and are capable of making appointments less than six months in advance. I'll wait until after we take him off medication at least.

Sunny's foster home was a relatively shielded environment and I want to keep things that way for a while. Not forever, just a while. His understanding is that his bio mother was sick and couldn't take care of him. He doesn't need to know other details yet.

I considered making a long post about cultural views on drug addiction, race and class. No, I don't have any kind of Intervention-type life story, but my family experience is sort of different than the average American's. I decided not to. Even though this blog is anonymous, I just don't feel comfortable talking that much about the subject.

Speaking of trying to shelter Sunny, he picked up the weirdest song from a girl at his day camp. It's about a violent mouse. It goes like this:

Mice-ster Mice-ster bought a car
Mice-ster Mice-ster BLEW UP THE CAR!!!
Mice-ster Mice-ster bought another car
Mice-ster Mice-ster BLEW UP THE CAR!!!
Mice-ster Mice-ster bought another car
Mice-ster Mice-ster BLEW UP THE CAR!!!

After repeating a few lines of this, he's already laughing hysterically. My husband and I play it straight and tell him we hope Micester Micester doesn't live or commute anywhere near us. My husband also said he's heard Sunny say more lines like...

Mice-ster Mice-ster bought a CANNON cake
Mice-ster Mice-ster BLEW UP THE CAKE!!!
Mice-ster Mice-ster bought another cake

And disturbingly...

Mice-ster Mice-ster bought a pet
Mice-ster Mice-ster KILLED HIS PET!
Mice-ster Mice-ster bought another pet

When I was growing up we had "Little Rabbit Frufru". The way I understood it, Little Rabbit Frufru was kind of psychotic and slaughtered field mice for his enjoyment... but he got what he deserved. Micester Micester seems to get away with his reckless, antisocial behavior.

The very worst song I loved singing when I was a kid was a variant of "The Burning of the School" (it's sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic). Here's how I remember the chorus:

Glory Glory Hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind the corner with a loaded .44
And the teacher don't teach no more

A commenter here already mentioned a book that apparently anthologizes a lot of this stuff. I might go and order it. It's amazing how much it spread around solely by word of mouth... this type of song was too gross/violent to ever show up on TV or radio.

Hellboy II Was Awesome!

I really enjoyed it. Many of the visual elements reminded me of Pan's Labyrinth. The scene with the forest elemental also seemed like a homage to the the death scene of the forest kami from Princess Mononoke.

Who to Vote for Tomorrow...

We have an important election tomorrow. The Democratic primary is going to decide a lot of local leaders (there are so few Republicans that the general election isn't meaningful).

Hank Johnson, my rep, doesn't have a challenger this year, since Cynthia McKinney is off running for president. Usually this district is a hot primary contest. On the other hand, John Lewis DOES have a challenger, which is an amazing event. Everyone thought he would die in office without ever having to run for his seat again. He's not going to lose it this time, though.

The most important post for me is Dekalb CEO; this is a powerful position in charge of the populous area of unincorporated Dekalb. Vernon Jones, the misogynist, warmongering backstabbing all-around nasty human being, is leaving this post. I remember when he was first elected and there were high hopes for him. He was known as "an a**hole who got things done". But then he stopped getting things done. Dekalb County is still in a terrible situation as far as crime and school quality.

Vernon Jones is leaving to run for Senate. He's not a good candidate and there were rumors the Republicans were paying him to run. On the other hand, I've heard he might do well in south Georgia, where people don't yet know how much of an a**hole he is.

For Senate, we're trying to defeat Saxby Chambliss, a loathesome Bush puppet. Some people think that because Jones is black, he will be in a good position to take advantage of the new wave of Obama voters that are going to the polls this general election. If I believed that, I'd vote for him in the primary, because even Jones is better than Chambliss. However, he has such an evil reputation, especially among women, that I bet many people will simply not vote for that Senate position, even if they're voting a straight Democratic ticket otherwise.

So for Senate primary, I'm going to vote for Rand Knight. He seems intelligent, likable and has a decent chance. Josh Lanier is admirable but doesn't have the money. Dale Cardwell hates immigrants and is totally nuts. Jim Martin waited too long and is not energetic enough.

For Dekalb County CEO, I'm torn between Stan Watson and Burrell Ellis. I was leaning to Watson, but I have started to hear good things about Ellis. I will probably go for Ellis after doing a bit more research.

More Death, and Colorism

I had some heavy conversations with Sunny today.

He brought up death while we were driving. He said that when you died, you turned into an angel and went up into the clouds.

I told him that's not what I believed. He got a little upset. "You don't believe me!"

"It's not that I don't believe you, I just have a different belief. It's OK to believe different things."

"But that's what my mom in ___ says! And she's always right! If mom is right, then I'm wrong." He'll mix up all three moms in the same conversation sometimes, but I always know who he's talking about.

"When it comes to what happens after we die, a lot of people believe different things, and that's OK. We can respect each other's beliefs even if we don't believe the same thing."

Then we talked about all the different colors in the beautiful sunset. I went fishing a little bit.

"People have all different beautiful skin colors too, you know."
"I know. My skin is lighter than yours."
"Um... no it's not. Your skin is a nice caramel color."
"Caramel is dark. I don't like dark skin."
"But there's nothing wrong with dark skin. Does that mean you don't like all the nice people you know with dark skin?"
"No, I like them. I just don't like dark skin. Light skin is better."

Argh...

"Well, I like dark skin." That's all I had for the moment.

Later that night I took out "Bright Eyes, Brown Skin" again for our bedtime reading. Despite how much I've been complaining about uneventful black-themed children's books, I sure was happy to see that cover again.

It was inscribed as a gift to him from a friend of mine: "To Sunny, who has beautiful bright eyes and brown skin." We read the inscription again.

"You do have beautiful brown skin."
"I know. Hug!"
I gave him a hug.
We read through the book again. He seemed more into it than the first time around. He wanted to try reading some of the words himself.
At the end I said, "It's OK that we have different-colored skin. I like my skin and I like your skin too. I hope you like your skin and my skin too!"

He smiled and seemed a lot happier. Then we read some more pages of Horton Hears a Who, an old favorite which is what he really wanted to read.

He complained a bit that he had bad dreams at night. He had bad dreams about the movie Grinch (thank you Jim Carrey). I told him I had bad dreams about monsters almost every night (this is true). But they didn't bother me, because when the monster got too close, I'd stop running and tell the monster, "I give up. I'm tired of having this bad dream. I'm going to quit this dream and start having a good dream instead, just because I can."

He also tried to persuade me that he spent most of the night awake. I know this is an exaggeration designed to get us to sleep in bed with him. He goes right to sleep after a few minutes. Sunny's like a light switch without a dimmer. When he's on, he's up, and very vocal about being up; when he's off, he's practically comatose. One reason I know is that we made a few attempts last month to wake him at 10pm to go to the bathroom. We abandoned that anti-bedwetting tactic pretty quickly because waking him up was so difficult and he obviously hated it.

The truth is that it's against pre-adoptive placement rules to sleep in the same bed. He could get taken away from us for that. I don't tell him that. I just tell him that we can't sleep together, but maybe in the future, we'll have a sleepover on vacation where we all sleep in the same room.

I wonder if he really has bad dreams all the time too. In the morning, I always ask him what he dreamed, and he always says he can't remember.

I turned off the lights and lay in bed next to him for a few minutes before I left for the night. I think he had a good bedtime, and I really hope he went to bed tonight with just a little less worry on his shoulders.

I told my husband what Sunny had talked about earlier. I told him, "It's tragic and depressing, but I'm not really surprised. Little kids look around and start noticing who's on top in society. If he brings it up again, just try and reinforce positive messages, but don't get upset and raise your voice and give him the message that it's a bad thing to talk about."

Kids, Movies and Death

Ahh... I want to see Hellboy II so bad...

My husband and I have very different movie tastes. I like big sweeping epics with big themes -- the bigger the better. I used to study and work in the fringes of the industry, so I also have a strong appreciation for cinematography and editing. Jodorowsky, Kurosawa, Tsui Hark, Herzog: those are my guys. Most American epics are just too stupid for me to enjoy (e.g. the Matrix with that stupid, stupid human battery idea... wouldn't it be a lot easier to just hook up a bunch of cows?), although I do love John Sayles and his delicate sociological style.

In the absence of intelligent epics, I'll settle for competent ones with lots of blood, explosions and pointy-toothed monsters.

On the other hand, the ideal movie for my husband is shot in black and white with cinema verite style. It's based in either Milwaukee or Lbubljana, Slovenia. It takes place over the span of a few days and follows several quirky characters in their monotonous daily routine as they go through an intensely private dysfunctional moment in a quietly painful sort of way. You might think something is going to happen, but it never does. Maybe someone goes fishing with their dog. The fish aren't biting. They look sadly down at the water. Freeze frame. Credits roll. I don't notice the credits because I fell asleep an hour ago.

But he liked the first Hellboy movie. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was the noir element? Anyway, I LOVE Guillermo del Toro and I'm totally pumped about Hellboy II. Luckily we have Nana to watch Sunny while my husband and I go see it together.

I'm so glad my mom and I live so close. Sunny really loves her too.

Sunny watched the Spiderwick Chronicles recently. I decided it was alright, despite the monster-related violence, because I'd heard it had good themes about family unity and dealing with loss.

He really enjoyed it and says he wants to watch it again. One thing he said sort of bothered me, though. He said that if Arthur Spiderwick turned to dust that would look cool... I told him it's not nice to wish for people to die, and he said that it would be OK because Spiderwick would just come back in the second movie.

It's hard to explain stuff like this to kids in a way they really understand, especially given the bad influence of video games. I did my best. I reminded him that in real life, people don't really come back after they die. Death is forever*.

It's not just kids that have a problem with that fact. We don't want to die, but we're fascinated with representations of death. We're compelled to watch and relive scenes of death over and over again in all aspects of human culture.

The clearest explanation I ever read on the subject was from Aristotle in 335 B.C.

Poetics, IV. The Origin and Development of Poetry

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the colouring, or some such other cause.

Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature.

When I first read that, it was a huge revelation for me. It answered a question I'd never even thought to ask before. Why do humans get such pleasure from representations of death and pain? Why do I love watching movies with exploding vampires and zombies?


* I'm still a Buddhist but reincarnation is a lot more complicated than just "coming back".

Kicked Out of Therapy

The family therapist said we didn't need to come back for a while. We just don't have enough issues.

He was very skeptical about the possible bipolar diagnosis. One piece of evidence is that Sunny's behavior is better (less pouting, more focus) in school than it is at home. His reasoning was that true bipolar disorder doesn't differentiate like that. Acting better at school is just a very common six-year-old trait... my book on six-year-olds says as much.

He thinks that the pathologized behavior in Sunny's paperwork comes from anxiety about identity and stability. Coming from the foster care system, it would be unlikely, and even troubling, if Sunny didn't have that anxiety.

I scheduled another session in a couple of months, on the theory that maybe more issues will come up after school starts. We're also seeing the psychiatrist in a week. Our plan is going to be to start tapering off the medication after a month in school.

This was the first time my husband has ever had therapy.

"That was kind of fun! Maybe I'll do it myself!"
"Sure... just remember, if you do it for yourself, it's not covered by Medicaid."
"Oh..."

Progress

I thought I'd be moved by now. Ha ha ha!

The kitchen needs a bit of work. So far we're within budget.

Sunny's Medicaid finally came through, although we've had some hiccups with his medication. We've had his doctor and dentist appointments already, plus a therapist orientation meeting. Our first family therapy is going to start in a few days.

The therapist asked us if we had noticed anything odd, such as a fixation with guns and knives. We couldn't pick out anything that was really abnormal. I mean, he's kind of fixated on flashlights that he pretends are lightsabers, but I don't think that counts. For now, we're signed up for family therapy. The therapist also recommended keeping him on his medication until a few months of school, then tapering down to half strength for a month, then taking him off.

When Sunny met the therapist, he smiled at her and waved, but stayed close to me and hugged my leg tightly. She said that signified healthy body language in terms of attachment.

Today Sunny had his first dry morning in almost a month. Before he moved in with us, it was about a 50/50 chance each night. His anxiety level went up after transitioning, and might finally be dropping down a bit now. I hope the new house move doesn't raise it up again too much.

We're very very very busy. I hope this move is going to be over soon...

Pout Breakthrough

More and more, Sunny has started doing "funny pouts". When I tell him "no" on something, he'll make a pout-face, then exaggerate the face and add a funny noise. I usually imitate the noise and make a monkey sound "oo oo" or a tiger sound "raar". Then he starts giggling.

I'm happy... it seems like a better way of expressing himself.

Also, I might have to alter my plans for Sunny becoming an engineer or a lawyer. Maybe stand-up comic is more in order. His latest thing is dancing around doing "naked impersonations" after getting out of the shower.

"I'm the naked pizza delivery man!"

"I'm the naked fashion designer!"

That last one really confused us. We kept asking if he was a fashion designer for naked people, or a fashion designer who just happened to design clothes naked, but he wouldn't give us an answer.