And Zen What

I have become that mom. More specifically, I am the mom of that kid.

Mr. Wonderful, Five, is that kid. The one whose behavior the child care worker speaks about in, you know, that language.

"Five had some problems making good choices today. There were some issues with his decisions about how to use his hands. His friends felt that their boundaries were not being respected."

Translation: he acted like a little pig on the field trip, persisted in whacking the other kids across the back as a way to greet them, and didn't listen to them when they yelled at him to stop it.

The kicker here is that Five had a wonderful time. He did know that continuing to bang on the glass cases and lean on the fossils at the T-Rex museum after being told not to was not a good choice, of course, but he couldn't see the stuff and hey, a kid's gotta have some fun. And he did hear the other kids tell him to knock it off, but he can't see their facial expressions for the most part, and that's also what kids say when they are horsing around so it's not a surprise that he made the choice to disrespect their boundaries.

The nice young woman in charge of School Days Out was very very sweet. She didn't know what to do with him. She didn't know how to tell what behavior was due to his disability and what was just, you know, bad choices. I like her a lot, and trust her with my kid--there aren't too many people in the world I can say that about--and am sure she is not only good at her job but also quite smart.

I tell her: "Not minding the adult in charge gets no slack; don't worry about the eye thing. He doesn't behave, he gets consequences."

But I can tell that she's anxious about the next day; she'll be alone most of the day with the kids. She's afraid he'll fall in the splash park, which is the next day's field trip. My assurances that he needs the same kind of discipline the other kids get, that he probably won't fall (he's been to the splash park and ran around like the rest of the little maniacs with no accidents), that if he does fall it won't be the end of the world since he'll just get up and start running again--these assurances are sweetly and intelligently acknowledged. But I can tell they are not sinking in.

Five's visual impairment is very visible. His eyes are cloudy and misaligned. He holds books up to and sometimes pressing on his nose. He has to smush his face almost through the computer screen. Oh, I forgot to mention that his other issue was randomly locating a porn site during computer time--he couldn't have made out what was on the screen, of course, with his face that close but it certainly unnerved everybody else.

She agreed with me that Five should have to obey the rules like the other kids. But I could tell--her eyes were a dead giveaway--that she was still in the "poor little blind kid" stage of her relationship to Five, and his being the major pain in her behind that day was seriously messing her up. Pity gets in the way of equity every time.

So Five got his consequence from me, not her, and I got another lesson in parenting, advocating, educating, and all that.

I also got a wave of serious pride--yes, pride. For Five to be that kid, the wild one, the irrepressible one, the "don't make me tell you again young man" one, the daredevil boundary pushing one--what an incredible, amazing, downright wonderful accomplishment.

That's my boy!