Tales from the Steppes

2003-11-26

12:23 p.m.
St. Slothful's Day

I think we should start a movement for a new holiday. I'm not certain what to call it. Maybe St. Slothful's Day. I just want a _real_ holiday where one lies about and reads, listens to music, and has Chinese food delivered. Or, if you prefer, you could sit around in your underwear and watch football. But this slacking would be socially sanctioned and marketing tie-ins would be for things like snack food, DVDs, and satin lounging pants. I am even willing to worship a deity or venerate a saint if this were to happen. And for me, that is really saying a lot.

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EM is being evaluated by an educational psychologist today. Seems like my daughter prefers to read instead of paying attention in class and dances while on field trips instead of listening to the docent. And her desk is a mess, she stares off into space, loses her homework, forgets to put her name on everything, blah, blah, blah. It's not that I'm not sympathetic with the teachers. He may have her for 30 hours, but I deal with it for the rest. It's just that I know that these problems will not cripple her for life and she will eventually outgrow or learn to control some of them.

Strangely enough, she isn't stressed out about talking to this guy. I mean yesterday she was worrying about people trying to put poison in her food, which seems completely foolish to me. Completely incomprehensible. I always want to know why she stresses about specific things, and this time it was because some people "just don't like children." I have to be very careful because my natural inclination is to point out the holes in the logic. But since there is no logic actually involved, this would be a wasted effort. The best I can do is try to be sypathetic and reassure her, but I am not sure just how convincing I am when we are talking about fears like this. I know I'm not very convinced. I just have to hope her standards for acting are lower.

I am hopeful that if I am armed with testimony from experts and data to back me up, I won't have to here the words "Ritalin" and "ADD" for a long time. At least not until YM is in school. Fortunately (I guess) MM is mentally configured to meet and exceed the school's expectations. I went through this same process when I was a kid, with exactly the same "symptoms" and it got me booted into a center-based program for the obnoxiously precocious. I am hopeful that her results will help her in whatever way she needs help as well as mine did for me.