The Wrong Thing

Have you ever had one of those heartbreaking moments? One of those physiological moments where your heart sinks into your chest with a deep thud?

I was cleaning up and came across a notebook. With Moosie's affection for paper, I find notebooks, notepads, and the like all over the place. Today I decided to flip through one of them and found something that Bubba had done awhile ago.

I could tell immediately by a few punctuation marks that it was done either late kindergarten or early first grade. He had independently written something, but not being able to form many words yet, the page was full of random large free-flowing lowercase and uppercase letters.

Paag!

Pooz.

ORZgTCy?

But at the top of the paper were a few things that he must have written so many times that he could duplicate them independently.

[his name]

robo rapTr [what he wanted for Christmas for several years and got last year but never plays with because it "scares" him.]

and finally, what truly broke my heart:

I Will do The rit thag [I will do the right thing]

How many times must they have made him write this in class?

For years we have tried to explain "lack of impulse control" and "doesn't foresee consequences" to Bubba's school. He has a behavior intervention plan that we worked very hard to be a POSITIVE behavior INTERVENTION plan. But really it doesn't matter when people perceive him as always doing things voluntarily for attention or because he is choosing to be bad. Does he do that sometimes? Sure. But many times he is escaping from something he perceives he will fail at. Many times he is escaping from something that bothers him. Many times he can't fight an impulse.

And this is what saddens me because we deal with this every day. It doesn't matter what his IEP says if the people implementing it have a different perception. Bubba has always been treated as "He knows better" "He knows what's expected of him" when in fact, he knows what to write after he gets in trouble but has no idea how to avoid getting in trouble.

As the gap grows bigger between Bubba and his classmates in the areas of self-regulation, problem solving, and social maturity, the school is starting to see where he needs support to avoid behaviors rather than punishment after behaviors. But it is a slow process. "Support = success = willing to take risks = reduction in escape behaviors" is something we've preached for years. But when the school sees a kid as a behavior, it treats him as a behavior irregardless of what is written on paper.

But we persevere. We try to counteract the wrong things (which sometimes backfires). But mostly we try very very hard to do the right thing, even though many times we just don't know what that is anymore.

Short Term Worry?

(from http://www.bizarreprops.com)

I am just under 5 feet tall (according to the doctor, even though I believed until recently that I was 5 feet tall for the past 15 years or so). I have heard the term "short," but never applied to my memory.

I was known for my memory. I never had a "photograph memory" or anything like that, but I could recall every detail of specific situations, each word spoken, each gesture, each scent, each color. I could tell you what I did last Tuesday and what is on schedule for next Tuesday without trying.

At work, I could tell you every problem a specific project had, how it was fixed (or not fixed), who was in charge of each leftover issue, the current state of every element from animations to design.

I could tell you everything my husband did right or wrong since the day we met. I could describe that one look he gave me and exactly what was playing on the radio. That time we were at a Pizza Hut, what we ate, what he sang to me.

I could tell you what Bubba wore the day he lost his first tooth, exactly what happend when he threw a curvy piece of Thomas the train track toward his brother and the exact splatter of blood after it hit him.

I could tell you what someone said 2 minutes earlier.

People would say "Ask Ange. She'll remember."

The truth was, if it was important to me somehow in someway, no matter how insignificant it appeared to others, I remembered it. (Unfortunately I have large splinters missing from my childhood, but my guess is there is a reason. I hope it's not because it isn't important enough. Maybe in fact it is too important?)

Also truth be told, memory is the crux of my anxiety, depression, OCD. Things play over and over in my mind. The slightest trigger--and the details explode like a flash, taking over rational thinking. Each detail then has to be individually tucked back into its box, locked carefully, reshelved purposefully to try and avoid the one little crank of the handle that will again cause the anger, happiness, and desperation to pop out like an evil jack-in-the-box and fill me with confusion.

So now, I recognize my short term memory loss, and it frightens me. Because although in some ways I am happier because my memory skirts around the edges of necessity, but in other ways it feels as if I am losing control. Spurts of forgetting and not being able to recall mean I am not in control all of the time. This also feeds my anxiety.

Two days ago, I was working downstairs. The phone rang. I looked up to see the words "Incoming Call" flash on the small screen. (I am very aware that we are too cheap to pay for caller ID, and even though we have never had the service, it is a strong reflex to look at the screen.) I remember thinking "Hubby will get it."

Less than 20 minutes later, back upstairs, I have a memory jolt. The phone rang. I wonder who it was? Then I recall having the same memory jolt two or more times before, chide myself for not remembering to ask Hubby who it was, and quickly go to ask him before it eludes me again.

He stared at me. "You answered it."

"No I didn't I thought about it. But I didn't." I described in great detail what had happened, what I thought, and why I didn't answer it.

"Yes, when I answered it, you were talking to someone."

"No." I was adamant. There was no recollection. Nothing. I could see myself looking at the phone. Hear mysef thinking that Hubby would get it. I saw the words flash, felt the cozy crevice in the chair, the exact screen of what I was looking at on the monitor. Then nothing. I could retrieve absolutely nothing.

"Maybe they were talking to someone as they were hanging up. I'll do a *69 to see who called."

I picked up the phone, dialed *69, and only heard the area code when the flash exploded, the jack-in-the box claimed its prize.

In 1 second everything rushed in at once and engulfed me. My heart quickened, my face went hot.

Vision therapist thinking I would just go ahead and get it picking up the phone appointment speaking filing away the appointment time 'is that on the calendar?' vision exercises hanging up the phone woman's voice image of the receptionist saturday is coming where is the binder 'is Hubby working this weekend?'

Hubby just laughed. This is his way of life. This is him, has always been him.

But this is not me. I have never had the experience of being told something that happened and not be able to recall any of it--not even a tiny thread that I could pull slowly to unravel the entire memory--until recently.

There was nothing. And then there was everything.

As I hear more stories about bits of my childhood, in some cases, there is nothing to grasp. And it scares me when the "everything" will come.

I don't like not being able to trust myself. Then again I understand why Hubby is always so dang happy. Hard to obsess about something you don't [won't?] remember happening.

During my follow up with the doctor this week, I confessed to my not following the Low Glycemic Index diet recently. I later confided about my short-term memory issues.

"A lot of my patients with ADHD bring up short term memory issues increasing when they eat a high glycemic diet heavy in refined sugar and wheat."

Huh? Was she saying I have ADHD? Not possible. I am OCD thank you very much. Hubby is ADHD. I am not him! Must be just an example of the "what you eat affecting how your brain works" theory.

Of course my eyes were darting from side to side, I only heard part of the sentences she was saying, and I suddenly remembered to ask her about root vegetables, which I forgot again a second later until just now.

What was I talking about again? I guess I won't worry about it.

Pesky Kids

Halloween was a little more interesting this year. Bubba was more agitated then usual and Moosie was tall enough to reach the sweets.

I guess Bubba has watched a few too many Scooby Doo episodes. I love Scooby Doo and saw no harm in sharing my love of TV's finest dog and ingenious animation (How smart for them to always wear the same clothes and always visit similar places? Patch a few clips of film together with a few new scenes and you have a whole new episode!).



Alas, there is a downside. Bubba did not like the masked costumes. He couldn't stand that he didn't know who was behind the mask. And if he didn't recognize the person coming to our house, well then, they must be wearing a mask. Let me clarify. There were more than a few kids who had no masks or the slightest bit of face paint. At one point Bubba surprised us all as he deftly reached up and yanked on a 12-year-old's moppy hair.

"Ow! That's my face dude!"

Apparently he caught some flesh. Bubba was not deterred.

"But who are you?"

He did not recognize this person. Surely he must be wearing a mask. I had to give Bubba an inconspicuous hug and high-tail it outta there. All the while I was laughing inside thinking of the Scooby Doo episodes where the villain is unmasked. And SURPRISE his or her human face is unmasked again to reveal an even more unlikely suspect (even though I knew who it was the whole time of course!).

Moose, on the other hand, decapitated more than his fair share of cupcakes. After calling it a night outside, in a one-hour time frame I found over 5 cupcake stubs littered throughout the house. The delicious sugary icing heads were eaten clean off, leaving only the small but rejected cake stubs behind and a few orange fingerprints. It was clear. Moosie had been there.

We never saw him actually eat the cupcakes. But he is a sneaky little ghoul. According to the wrappers we found stashed around he ate a few packages of skittles, a handful of lollipops (we'll probably find those half-eaten somewhere else later), candy bars, peanut butter cups, and something that wasn't identifiable as edible. But all is OK.

We shipped them off to school. Score one for the public school system!