more on that

Two responses I wanted to get up, but didn’t get around to, on the defensive-moi post: Amy, you are my homeschooling hero, and if we ever move to Rhode Island, I am totally sending my kids to your house for school (be afraid. Be very afraid). But like First Nations, there is no way I could teach them myself. Partly, but not primarily, because it’s not legal here - Bavaria usually leads the nation in school-test-whatever, so you’ll never, ever convince them that anything could be better for a child than their public schools - but mostly because I. Can’t. Teach. Them. Anything. Firstborn is way too much like me, Secondborn is way too much like his father, I am way too much like Hammy the Squirrel.

Hey, even a Superstar has to know her limitations.

Apropos of limitations, personality deficits and the like, that article, huh? I’m glad the video made Amy teary too, because I thought it was just me.

Nate, it had me thinking more about Evan (whom you know of, though I don’t think you ever met him) and Isaac, whom I know you haven’t met, more than Ignatz, but yes, him too, a little, though the link between ADD and Asperger’s is still fuzzy. There was a quote in there somewhere that I’m too lazy to dig out, the gist of which is “the parents have a few of these genes, and that’s good, but the kids have a lot of these genes, and that’s bad.” You may be familiar with Gardner’s Seven Intelligences; my theory is that people who are linguistic-mathematic smart, but not so socially intelligent, combine to create kids who are even smarter in the one sense, and even less-so in the other, and the article does rather bear this out. There is certainly a lot of evidence that personality is at least partly genetic.

I think this is more or less what we’ve done with Ignatz. We are both a bit smart, and a bit weird, and our son, who is like us only more so, has crossed over into diagnosable territory. And I will freely admit that part of his problem is the time he was born into, rather than the personality he was born with. Forty years ago, he wouldn’t have needed great grades to get a decent job, and we could have let him be himself. But - and how’s this for a metaphor? - every time the key to success becomes widely known, and too widely held, someone changes the locks. Used to be, a high school diploma was the way to a good job. Then you needed some college, then you needed a Master’s, now even that isn’t enough in some fields. We worry about his future, we think his school-smarts are his best chance to get and stay employed, and we’re trying like hell to teach him to use them. It’s uphill work.

Especially for us, because we’re not disordered, but we do um, have a few deficits, attention-wise. DrBob can hide behind his absentminded Professor routine, and my loyal friends and family staunchly insist that I had perfectly legitimate reasons for dropping out of college, all six times, but let’s be honest here. We are not the organized, consistent parents that all those books recommend for ADD kids.

Melanie? Your second paragraph is spot-on for us: if we’d left it to DrBob, Ignatz would’ve been diagnosed a lot earlier, because he spotted the weird when Ig was still a baby. I was the one who made excuses, insisted it was normal child behavior, and kept saying “I did that when I was a kid, it’s fine.” I also put it down to him being a boy, boys are less conforming than girls, etc. It really does seem normal to the family, and what woke me up was his teacher saying “I’ve got 17 boys in my class, and none of the others is like that.”

Oops.

Still, he is doing better, and I’m trying really hard to be less critical and to mention it when I notice how brilliant he is.

Song du jour of the day: We’re Only In It For the Drugs, by Ebba Grön