TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 181

Fri Mar 16 07:51:09 PDT 2007

March 16, 200000007

Dear Well Wishers,

	I thank you all for your letters 
excoriating villainman for his ideas and actions. 
It was a balm.  Now, I turn my attentions toward 
Meyshe's upcoming IEP (Individual Educational 
Program) meeting.  This will be his last IEP, 
because after he graduates from high school, the 
district will not be required to provide him 
services.  The meeting will be about transition 
to adult life after school, about college, and 
about the progress he's made with the goals and 
objectives decided upon at the last IEP.  At an 
IEP, all the experts, therapists, teachers, 
directors, caseworkers, district representatives, 
parents and school personnel come to discuss the 
student and come up with detailed plans.  The 
last one was over a year ago, which means the 
district is out of compliance.  Here's the rub. 
Meyshe, being old enough to take part in his own 
IEP is invited to be there.  Also, villainman is 
going to attend.  Why he feels he is a legitimate 
participant at the IEP is beyond me, since he 
hasn't had any contact with Meyshe since June of 
2004.  And especially in light of recent 
revelations about his opinions on the direction 
of Meyshe's future.  I don't want him there.  I 
don't want to breathe the same air.  And what if 
he's disruptive, proposing his, "put the kid in 
the slammer", idea at the meeting?  We could 
waste a lot of time.  The important thing is that 
Meyshe doesn't want him there.  I wonder whether 
Meyshe's desires can trump villainman's plan to 
participate.

	I hope so.

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Active Children

	The three of us, Dana, Daniel and I were 
what you would call active children.  Others 
would have called us hyper-active.  But that 
would be only if we were to be labelled recently. 
When we were kids, there were no fancy pedigrees 
like ADD, ADHD, OCD. OBD, bi-polar, tri-polar or 
quadri-polar disorder.  There was no word for 
dyslexia.  Those kids were just called, "Stupid", 
and everyone went on with their lives, unanswered 
questions in tact, the mysteries of the organism 
still mysteries.  If you made it in school, well 
fine then.  If you couldn't keep up, you were 
slow or worse yet, retarded.  Kids who would be 
diagnosed today with oppositional behaviour would 
have been regarded as delinquent, troublemakers, 
or just bad.  The teacher would send Michael or 
Linda home from school for talking back, 
resisting directions, running off, or just plain 
fucking up.  The parents would wonder what they 
had done wrong that produced this chid who was 
always in trouble, always being sent to the 
principal's office, or always behind all the 
others in the class.  It was the parents' fault, 
plain, simple.  The pendulum had swung all the 
way to the nurture side of the world view, and 
the nature viewpoint barely existed.  Now, of 
course, it is the opposite.  Everything is 
chemical, hormonal, inherited.  There is no room 
for responsibility for one's behaviour.  It is 
the fault of an ineradicable chromosome.  The 
chromosomes made me do it.

	All of us Shapiros would have been 
labelled as hyperactive, and we'd all have been 
on medication to take us down a notch.  Would 
that have been a good idea?  Or do we do these 
things, ply our children with sedatives and 
stimulants to regulate behaviour, so the children 
fit into the class's schedule and the teacher's 
tolerance level, so things will go smoothly and 
not require too much of Miss Pennycamp?  We will 
dispense Ritalin twice a day.  It moves through 
the bloodstream quickly and exits your body 
within hours.  No harm done.

	I have seen the miracles that Ritalin can 
work when it's given to the needy child.  And 
I've seen the drug dispensed to children who are 
just who they are, active, fidgety, edgy little 
beasts who require a lot of attention.  It's just 
that no one can spare the time and energy to 
lavish that attention on any student.  They want 
them to behave.  Sit perfectly still for six 
hours and learn at your desk.  So they drug them.

	Without pharmaceutical intervention, we 
had our way with the world.  Going out to dinner 
with us was a major undertaking.  My mother would 
wind up frazzled and anxious, nervously looking 
over at us as we conquered the world around us. 
Unruly, undisciplined, loud, obstreperous, 
impossible.  And since we were impossible, there 
was something healthy about throwing up one's 
hands and saying, "So be it".

	My parents took Dana and me to a 
restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland.  I must have 
been three, Dana five.  I remember this place. 
We ate our dinners and couldn't sit still any 
more.  Dana ran off to the bathroom with me in 
tow.  I watched what she did and tried to learn 
from her example.  First, she showed me how to 
crawl under the stall doors and surprise the 
patrons using the equipment.  There was a lot of, 
"EEEEK!" and, "AAAAUGH!"  Then she showed me how 
to go into a stall, lock the door and crawl back 
under the door so the stall was empty but locked. 
Out of commission.  She also taught me how very 
long toilet paper rolls can be.  After using the 
toilet, she grabbed the end of a roll of paper 
and unfurled it, running from one end of the 
bathroom to the other, under stalls ("EEEEK!" 
"AAAAUGH!") around the room and out the door to 
the dining area, the toilet paper streamer waving 
in the air behind her.  "Wipe me!" she yelled as 
she approached the table where my parents would 
have preferred not to be recognized.  "Wipe me!" 
I was caught up in the adventure of it all, 
running beside or behind her, taking my part in 
the high drama.  From the table, Dana ran back 
into the bathroom where she accosted the recently 
dethroned human beings who'd gone and let their 
guard down since we'd been in there before.

	Crawling under the stalls, locking the 
doors, careening through the dining room with 
toilet paper unwinding behind her, the management 
took my parents aside and asked them decently 
never to come back.  This was an humiliation for 
my mother, but it was  all lost on us.  We were 
just behaving.  Not misbehaving, just behaving. 
Funny thing was that when I followed my sister's 
lead, we were kicked out of restaurants, stores, 
movie theaters, meetings.  We chalked it up as 
another instance of being able to take the reins 
away from the adults.  She was masterful.  I was 
a pipsqueak.  My mother tells the story about 
being instructed never to come back as long as 
they lived.  She winces even now.  And no one 
reached for the Ritalin, or the mood elevators, 
or even the electro-shock treatments.  I hear 
they can work wonders!

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-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net