Max has been having a lot of problems and issues lately.  He has been unmanageable, explosive, and angry.  It seems like he has taken major steps backward after improving quite substantially.

It is not that he has been intentionally getting into trouble.  In fact, even though he is 10 years old he has been crying when he finds out that he has been misbehaving.

The crying in itself is unusual because he has never really cried since he was a baby.  I mean he can fall and bang or scrape his knees.  He can bang his thumbs with hammers so badly they swell and throb in pain.  But he will jump up and walk it off while saying:

“I’m okay, I’m okay!”

When he says this we know he really got hurt but he has always tried to hide it.

But in the past few months he has been misbehaving and crying more and more often.  And as I said he is not doing it intentionally.

A lot of things have been happening that have been affecting him badly.  These are some of them:

• His dad (me) came down with pneumonia and it took several months to get well.  As a result I hadn’t been available to play or go different places with him

• A month ago we had a pre-season snowstorm.  We lost power for 24 hours which wasn’t too bad but his grandparents were without it for 3 days.  His granddad is paralyzed from the waist down and his grand mom has slowed down quite a bit; they are both in their 80s.  Since they couldn’t take care of themselves through this it fell to us to make sure they survived.  We ended up taking them to different hotels each night since we could only book one day at a time.

• Two days after the power came on they had to move to a handicap accessible apartment.  And of course, we had to take care of it.

• But with all of the moves and disruptions Max’s grandmother has been terribly disoriented. So as result we have two more children to take care of.  I make breakfast every morning for them and take it to their apartment.  On days when their pcas don’t show up it falls to me to get them up and ready for the day.  My wife makes dinner for them, takes it over to them, and washes their dishes.  Later on she goes back to put them to bed.

• And then there was the big one. I got a call from a close friend of mine a few weeks ago informing me that his oldest boy had committed suicide.  He was 16 years old.  Max and I have been spending as much time as we can with the family.  My friend is a single parent with 3 boys (2 now) and the youngest is a close friend of my son.  And Max looked up to the older boy.

This is not everything that has happened but these are the biggest.

Max has been a trooper.  He has helped my friend and his grandparents whenever asked.

But with all of the stress over these situations and our exhaustion we hadn’t noticed that he was becoming very unhappy….until the bad behavior.  He can’t listen, he does what he wants, and he is very explosive when he doesn’t get his way.

We’ve had to call in child services and it has been recommended that if he breaks anything or hits us to be ready to call the police.

He’s a far cry from where he had been over the summer.  He is basically back to where he was when he was 7 and 8 years old.

We can see now that the stress has been unbearable for him too even though we didn’t notice it for awhile.

He has also told us that he hasn’t been getting enough time with us.  Well he has, a lot, but there haven’t been any close and happy times.  None of us has been in the best shape.  My wife has been exhausted as a result of taking care of the two of us while I was sick which doesn’t help her disability at all.  And now to be her parents’ caregiver is taking a toll as well.

But our priority has to be Max right now.  Yes, her parents need help but he needs more from us.

As I write this I can hear him in his toy room which is right next to my office.  He is working with his advocate cleaning up the thousand different messes.  He is acting calm and collected with her but this is following an explosion he had after his mother requested he turn down his music.

And it’s raining again.

Okay, so today is Monday.  I just got off the phone with Max’s teacher.

We have an issue but the school is trying to downplay it.  It might not sound very major to people but I think it does to a young child.

Basically what happened was that my son brought a box of fish fingers to have for lunch.  He is on a special diet and we had sent them in a gluten free batter.

Now he was only supposed to eat half of them and save the rest in the school refrigerator.

He didn’t understand that so he cooked them and only ate what he could; the rest he through away.

This happened on Thursday last week.  My wife made mention of it in the daily record that gets passed to and from school every day.

Apparently her comment was misunderstood.  Max was grilled about what happened and afterwards they concluded he was lying about the situation.

The result was he was placed on red!!

For those who don’t know what that is about some schools rate behavior with colors:

• green – safe
• yellow - some issues
• red - unsafe behavior

But wait a minute you might ask.  How is lying an unsafe behavior?

Good question.

It seems that unlike some of the other kids my son rarely or never does anything unsafe at school so they treat him differently.  For him, lying puts him in red territory.

To me this is funny…sad.  Max may have a lot of behaviors that aren’t so good but lying isn’t one of them.  It’s not that he doesn’t know what a lie is; he just likes telling the truth about everything.  Even things he shouldn’t.

So he was punished on Friday.

When he got home he was very angry.  Why did that happen?  Why had we called the school and gotten him punished?

He had no idea!

We called the school but it was closed for the weekend.  The teacher called us back this morning.  And oh, she said, it was just a misunderstanding.

“But you know that he had no idea what you were talking about?”  I asked her.

“He must have.  He admitted to lying about it.”

“I’m sorry but when Max is put on the spot and doesn’t even know what you are talking about he will tell you what he thinks you want to hear.”

She said she would talk to him about it and smooth things over.

I mentioned to my wife that he was now out of the running for the monthly prize.  All the kids that are on green for the whole month get to have a private lunch with the principal.  Because he has been on red forget about it.

My wife shrugged.  She said it’s not so bad; he doesn’t even care about the prize.  And he’ll forget about the punishment.

I’m not so sure.

I’ve heard the experts (therapists, doctors, well meaning parents) say things like “he’ll get over it” when something they consider minor happens.

Sometimes maybe and with some children but in a lot of cases I don’t believe it.

When I was growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house.

One time their shower rod fell down and my granddad had to fix it.  I was blamed even though I had not been near it.  They claimed I had been swinging on it and that’s why it broke.

They weren’t generally like this so it was a shock that I was being blamed.  It hurt me very badly.  But guess what, everyone said I’d get over it.

I didn’t.

I ended up cutting back my time with them because it made me feel uncomfortable being there.

Same thing happened with my uncle.  I used to spend a lot of time at his house as well.  But then one day he blamed me for something that I had nothing to do with.  This man that I idolized ignored me for three days.

I was wounded.

I didn’t spend very much time with him after that either.

Well of course a lot of people will say that I was overly sensitive.

Perhaps I was.

But you never know what child is not going to just “get over it”!!

Will Max get over this punishment?

I don’t know.  I do know that there are a lot of things that he is keeping to himself that have hurt him over the years.

Parents, teachers, just well meaning people in general can hurt a child without knowing it.

I am becoming more aware of my actions around my son.  I can even see how other people’s actions can hurt him.

I think some actions may be unintentional and may be ignored by the kids but how you handle fixing these mistakes can affect them.

This was a misunderstood situation for Max.  How the teacher handles it could affect him adversely.

Do you ever wonder if you are raising your kids correctly?

A lot of parents don’t…

I was one of those.

I knew how my parents raised my siblings and me. We all turned out okay.

No we didn’t! We all have problems of one kind or another.

When it comes to raising my kid I had vowed that I wouldn’t raise him the way my parents and my uncle did me.

But this is what I know and I’ve noticed that I am doing the same thing.

I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot about abuse and good parenting.

I’m the first to admit that my skills are certainly not the best. But I started thinking…how bad are they?

So I started researching what is considered abuse, what is good discipline, and what is the difference between them.

It really seemed like a lot of “what one person considers abuse another person sees it is good parenting”.

I used to belong to a church that believes that when disciplining a child you must put a wooden spoon to good use.  In fact, in one family I know just the mention of the spoon causes the children to behave properly.

But I noticed that they get very frightened and begin to tremble at the thought of it.

This church believes that abuse is not using the spoon at all…because your kids won’t grow up to be fine adults.

But what ever your beliefs do you know what abuse is?  Do you really know what good discipline is?

It really opened my eyes to discover that yes I had some good parenting skills but some of the things I was doing can be considered abusive.

Now that I am aware I’m trying to doing things differently.

I decided to take what I learned and put it together in an eBook to help other parents out that are like me.

Where are you at?

• Are you satisfied with your parenting skills?

• Are you, like me, unsure that everything you are doing is “good parenting”?

• Do you know that “something isn’t quite right”?

Where ever you are at with your parenting skills, read my free eBook.  Find out what I have discovered.  For each of your skills you can decide: is it abuse or not.

It was a beautiful summer night last night.

I grabbed Max, my 10 year old, to go out for a walk. He decided to ride his bike instead.

Together we headed up to the school running track. I jogged to keep up with him.

When we got to the parking lot he noticed several boys down on the other side. He decided to check them out while I walked around for a bit to wait for him.

Shortly he came biking fast towards me. “Dad, I know those boys,” he said, out of breath.

“Oh really? Why are you back here? What did they say?”

“Get Lost.”

Max said it simply and with a smile.

I smiled back and responded “well, it’s their loss! The best boy is right here, not over there.”

He said I was right and headed onto the track.

“You know Daddy, I think I’ll sneak up onto the hill behind them and ride my bike down into them to scare them.”

“Don’t bother, they are the losers here!”

We joked about whether I was going to get around the track. I started and he went on ahead.

I made it half way and as I slowed down I noticed that he was gone. I knew where he went.

When I got back to the track entrance my suspicions were confirmed. He was back with the other boys.

I turned and headed around the track again to give him space. But it wasn’t long before he was back.

“The guys left. Do you think they were trying to get away from me?”

“No, it is after 6 o’clock. They probably had to go home for dinner.”

He thought about that for a moment, “Do you think maybe they walked around the school just to hide from me?”

“No, it is late. Their parents probably wanted them home.”

As we left for home I started thinking. I was just reading a book that was mentioning that kids can get very stressed out over things that we least expect. Maybe someone at school says something that bothered them. Or maybe they couldn’t find their favorite pencil.

We, as parents, may think that one of their tests went wrong. Or maybe a teacher was a little strict that day. But we don’t know. If we think back as kids we may have a better understanding what they are going through.

And this can cause a lot of stress for them.

So okay, what can Max’s issue be? I know that he doesn’t have a lot of friends. There are many reasons, for example:

• he wants things his own way a lot
• he has tantrums
• he takes meds
• his actions scare the other kids
• he gets anxious around them

And the poor kid wants friends. He meets others easily but once they get to know him they don’t want to be with him.

So this is what I came up with. Now I have to address it somehow. He is very stressed out about it.

Just because he was smiling and moved on after he was rejected it bothered him. I could see it from the fact that he went back to see them after we left the boys to go to the track. And he kept asking me if they left to get away from him.

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me to help him. He’s too young to figure it out himself.

Rejection is hard enough for an adult but it is so much worse for a kid. Especially ones that don’t know how to react to it.

No one should ever be told:

“Get Lost“

I hit the floor hard! I was lying on my back staring at the ceiling. People came running from all directions. Max was looking down at me with a scared look on his face. He grabbed my hand and tried to pull me up.

“Let go of me and go sit down” I said quietly but with steel in my voice.

The second I said it I regretted it. Max let my hand go and disappeared. I slowly rolled over and got to my feet. I looked around and saw my son sitting curled up on a bench staring at the wall. His face was red and I realized he was trying to hold back his tears. He’s a big boy now, 9 years old! He didn’t want anyone to see him cry.

I immediately went over, sat down, and put my arms around him.

“Max, I’m sorry I reacted that way. Did you get hurt?” He shook his head “no”. “I’m fine too. Nothing bad happened.”

As I comforted him he slowly came back and we continued to play our game. What I didn’t tell him was that after that my back seized up. I have been alternating between wet heat, ice packs, and chiropractic visits to resolve the pain.

This all started a week and a half ago. My son and I went candlepin bowling. For anyone that doesn’t know, this a lot like the bowling most people know. However, instead of large balls and fat pins this game uses small balls and narrow pins.

Max had just finished his first two frames and then it was my turn. My first ball sailed down the alley and took out a few pins. I had just thrown my second ball and had taken a step back when I bumped into something. I knew instantly that my son had been behind me. As I went back I fell over him. When I hit the floor he was underneath me but he rolled out quickly and had turned to help me up.

Had he been sneaking up on me? No, he was just being Max. He was crossing from one side of the alley heading for the ball return. He didn’t even realize that he was so close to me.

He is an aspie kid who also is bipolar with adhd thrown in. He has what one aspie parent calls his “favorite tics”. When we go bowling he has two; both happen when he is waiting for his turn.

• In the first one he stands at the return station waiting for the balls. He will then either line them up or start placing them on the ball rack underneath. Sometimes he is just waiting for the ball he assumes he just threw so he can use it again.

• The second one happens when he is waiting for the balls to be reset. He lies down on the floor and inches along like a worm. He crisscrosses the alley until I let him know either that he can start rolling his next frame or that it is my turn.

People laugh. They think it is funny that a 9 year old boy would be doing these things. When he first started doing them I would get embarrassed and would threaten to leave if he didn’t stop. But he never did and I would just continue on bowling through my damaged ego.

My attitude stopped one day when a buddy of mine and his kids went bowling with us. When Max started sliding across the floor I was embarrassed as usual especially since my friend was watching. As I went to speak to my son my buddy said simply “it’s okay. It’s what he needs right now.”

It dawned on me that he was right. I thought back on other things Max does that people scoff at that he needs. For example, he can sense when he needs deep pressure when he is tensing up. One thing he will do in these instances is pile all of our living room couch cushions (and we have a lot of them) on the floor. He then pushes in underneath them and stays until he settles down.

I realized that doing his “ticks” in public like sliding on the floor or playing with the ball return is fulfilling a need he has at that moment. Now when we go bowling and he starts being a worm I ignore it the best that I can. Sure people laugh. And yes I get embarrassed. But he is not hurting anyone and he is smart enough to be doing something that helps calm him down.

Or perhaps he is just having fun at that moment and isn’t that the point? I think that nowadays parents, especially me, try to mold their kids into something they envision for them instead of letting them be themselves. A lot of times our kids know what keeps them calm or what is fun for them. We should be just making sure they don’t hurt themselves while doing it.

And you know what? That second ball I threw just before I fell finished knocking all the pins down giving me a spare. Even though I couldn’t get back into form again Max and I still had a great night!

‘ve been hearing the expression “mean girls” a lot from my wife lately. I’ve only heard it before from the movie starring Lindsay Lohan.  It is about a girl that joins a clique and is required to do mean, deceitful, and untrustworthy things.

But my wife informed me that it isn’t just a “movie thing”. Teenage girls deal with this every day either by being harassed by mean girls or becoming one themselves. What this means is, they become bullies.

Now I experienced bullies when I was growing up. 48 years ago I was in second grade. My bully sat next to me in class. He was always very polite and did what he was told to do in the room. But when we got outside the trouble would start. He would pick on me mercilessly. He would call me names, push me around, and knock me down. I took it for a long while but then I got fed up…and punched him. For the rest of the year we were friends. But he disappeared before third grade started.

Before you ask, I never mentioned the bullying to my dad so he didn’t recommend that I punch the boy. However, he was always big on standing up for yourself. He also made sure I understood that I should be protecting people that are weaker than I am. Therefore I never became a bully myself.

But you cannot stand up to a bully nowadays. If you do you could be suspended from school or even brought up on charges. Today kids have to tell their parents or their teachers and hope that someone will protect them. I’ve posted about the bullying my son is receiving on his van and what we’ve tried to do about it.

This mean girl thing is something new for me. Yes, in the passed couple of years I have seen videos of girls being beaten by other girls pretty severely. I didn’t know that girls either see it or experience it every day. My wife says there is a “mean girl” phase that they go through.

And it has hit home. The girls on the school van are taller and older than Max. According to my wife they are at that “mean girl” age. Not having other girls to pick on they’ve chosen my son. He knows that boys don’t hit girls but I don’t know what he’ll do if he is pushed far enough.

This is a new arena for him. He has always had issues with other boys. He plays with them. He fights with them. They split up. They become friends again.

But with girls it is different. They have always liked him. From the days when he was two years older and picking flowers for “older” women to today when he has always had a girlfriend, girls want to be with him. He has never fought with them or called them names. But now he has girls that don’t seem to like him at all. And he doesn’t know why. He has lately been feeling that he is worthlessness and this is only increasing his anxiety over it.

We continue to talk to the school and we finally got onto the school bus company. They have decided to install a camera in the van. But here is the problem. The monitor has been reporting Max lately for swearing during the ride to and from school. He believes my son is just being belligerent. He misses the different things the girls are doing to rile him up. It’s the things they quietly say and do to push his buttons. And the camera will miss it too. It will show my son getting angry but since there won’t be any sound no one will see what leads up to it.

This is something I have seen before. A close friend of mine has a daughter with Asperger’s syndrome who is in her late teens. When she was growing up her classmates would whisper hurtful things to her. They liked to see her get upset because then she would lash out at her “assailants”. And then she would be suspended from school. This was happening regularly and her parents could not get the teachers to understand or perhaps believe what was going on. As a result it was a constant battle with the system.

Now it seems the same thing is happening with Max. Even though the school is trying to do something, what can they really accomplish if they can’t see the instigators’ actions? It will be my friend’s daughter’s situation all over again. Max will be punished constantly for trying to defend himself and perhaps even get a suspension or two.

One thing we can look into is getting Max, or the girls, on a different bus. Another option is that I drive him to school and pick him up afterwards. I don’t like this idea but if it needs to be done I will do it.

While reading up on mean girls I came across the book the movie was based on: Queen Bees & Wannabees.  It describes this phenomenon and was written to help young girls understand and survive the “mean girls”. Maybe there is something in it that will help Max too.

November 14-20, 2010 is Bullying Awareness Week. This is a great way to learn how to effectively deal with bullying. Maybe if we all learn the lessons the website teaches then we will be able to protect our kids.

Queen Bees & Wannabees

At the start of the school year I wrote about the new van company that had taken over Max’s route.  As far as the driving is concerned things have been working out pretty well.  But a new concern has arisen that totally eclipses any problems we might have with transportation.

In the passed couple of weeks you may have seen this video on the news.  It concerns a dad, who fed up with his child’s treatment on the school bus, decided to take matters into his own hands:

Whether you agree with how he handled the situation if your child has been bullied you want to applaud him for doing something, anything to resolve the issue.

It has come to our attention that Max has been suffering from this, not by one child, but by all the children on his van.    As a result it has increased his feelings of worthlessness.  And when we discovered what was happening I wanted to react the same way as that dad.  But cooler heads, specifically my wife’s, prevailed.

There are several boys and two girls on his van.  The harassment started with all of the kids razzing him because he didn’t own a DSL game.  That is, my wife and I think this is when it started.  It continued to get worse when the name calling and swearing started.

Now, when he gets home, Max immediately tells us how he hates the van!  This is from a kid that had no problems all last year and through the summer.  When we initially questioned him and found out what was going on we called the school.  This resulted in all of the kids being put on “red” and spending time in the “quiet room”.

Like many schools Max’s is set up on a “green, yellow, red” discipline scheme.  Green means that the child is doing well; yellow means they have broken some of the rules; and red happens when a child is violent, threatens another child, or swears.

Finding out what was happening prompted my wife to immediately call the school.  They promised to look into it and they did it quickly unlike the dad’s school in the video.  His school only responded when the story hit the news.  Regarding his bus however, we understood why the monitor and driver never reported the incidents as is required; neither spoke English.

As I mentioned, Max’s van mates were disciplined.  The next day when my son was getting on the bus one of the students spoke to my wife about what had happened.  The child was angry that the kids had been punished and all of them assumed we were the ones that got them in trouble.  My wife responded that they got themselves in that situation not us.

She again called the school to report what the child had said.  They were surprised; the children had been admonished not to take revenge on Max or his family.  At the end of the day the one that had spoken out brought a letter of apology to us that he had written.  My wife hugged him and thanked him for it but suggested that all the kids start being nice to each other while going to and from the school.

But this didn’t stop the harassment.  Max’s dislike of the van only increased.  One child actually gave him a note that said “F*&k You”.  My wife sealed it in an envelope and sent it back to school.  More consequences.

My feeling is that talking to the school and then the van company should be the first steps we take to combat this kind of bullying.  What the video dad did could only be used as a last resort if nothing else was working. But at the same time he is now facing jail time for his actions so this would have to be thought about long and hard first.

In our case, we ended up getting a new monitor; this one speaks English.  The problem with this is that Max is now required to sit in a corner with the monitor between him and all the other kids.  My first thought was that this would single him out for more torture.  Bullies on the bus don’t give up very easily.

For 3 years we have been seeing family therapists. The goal has always been to help my wife, Max, and me to be a family as we work through his ADHD, Asperger’s, and Bipolar issues.

It hasn’t been easy. This is not because Max has been resisting us; even though he has. And it isn’t because we haven’t been learning anything; because we have.

It is because there hasn’t been any consistency. We have gone through 5 or 6 different therapists. As each one comes in we have to start from the beginning. And they all start with what I call “the happy face” pages. That is, Mom, Dad, and Max are handed our own piece of paper. They have a number of faces drawn on them; each with a different emotion. One is happy; one is sad; one is angry; and so on.

As we go from individual to individual we must choose a face and describe what it means to us. Quite often we pick the one that we are feeling at that moment and talk about it.

The next week there will be another session similar to this. Then the following week we get another variation.

But we never see any changes!!

And Max doesn’t like to sit in these sessions. He is a doer. He doesn’t like just sitting around and talking about his feelings. It is okay if he is working on his bicycle while doing it. But he isn’t going to stare at a piece of paper and chatter on and on.

As usual our current therapist started just like all of the others: with “the happy face”. He soon discovered this wasn’t working for any of us. He changed things up to make sure Max is involved. And now he comes in with a schedule:

• We do 5 minutes of check in. That is, how is each one of us feeling today? Pick out a day since the last meeting that meant a lot to us and talk about it.

• Following that is a formal meeting which lasts about 20 minutes where we now talk about different issues. This is the time that Max hates the most and we generally cannot get him involved.

• Then we continue our conversation for 20 minutes through play. But we don’t do it by sitting on the couch. Recently we all moved out to the driveway and stood in a circle far enough away so that we could toss a ball to each of us. Before throwing it we would specify who was going to get it. That person would then say something nice about us. For example, Max has the ball and he wants to throw it to me. I would say something like “you are a great engineer.” He would then toss the ball to me and it is my turn.

• At the end it is Max time. For the last 15 minutes Max takes the therapist off to see his new project. Mom and Dad retreat back to the house.

This week something different happened. We went through the 5 minute check in and as expected Max would not get involved in the formal session. We continued on without him. The therapist brought out several sheets of paper which contained the following diagram:

As you can see it is a triangle. At the bottom right is the word “Actions”. On the bottom left is “Feelings”. At the top is the word “Beliefs”.

Our first goal was to list some of the actions that Max does that bothers us:

• Swearing

• Yelling and screaming

• Smashing

• Poking

• Inappropriate attention-getting

The words on the diagram are related. What are the feelings that Max has that are causing these actions? We came up with the following:

• Anger

• Anxiety

• Fear

• Sadness

• Insecurity

• Loneliness

Since Max isn’t here we are just guessing that these are what he is feeling. They aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily correspond one on one with his actions. For example “sadness” does not necessarily incur “poking”.

Just like actions are caused by feelings; feelings are a result of the beliefs we have about ourselves. In this case we came up with:

• “Nobody loves me”

• “Nobody understands me”

• “I’m a horrible person”

• “I can’t do anything right”

• “I’m stupid”

These were our best guesses as to how Max feels about himself.

What I have described here is the furthest along we have ever gotten during the last 3 years of therapy. Forget about everything else I’m now seeing something we can work with in helping our family.

But this wasn’t the only surprise for this session. Max joined us once we had gotten this far. He came and sat between his Mother and me and looked at what we came up with. We showed him his actions and we told him how they were connected to his feelings. He looked through the list and pretty much agreed to what we had.

We then explained how beliefs fit into the picture and how they cause the feelings which spark the actions. We told him we didn’t really know what he believed but we had made some guesses. He read the list and nodded but then he said something else:

“I feel worthless.”

He said it very quietly.

We were stunned. We had always thought that we had done our best to build him up: “You did a great job on that project”, “Thank you for cleaning the sink. It looks very nice.”

But now we are seeing that something is being lost in translation. And the worst part is this path feeds on itself. What I mean is:

• Max feels worthless

• It makes him angry, sad, insecure, and lonely.

• So he screams, swears, and smashes things.

• People get angry with him so he feels more worthless and this continues the circle.

We’ve had a break through! Finally after 3 years! This is wonderful!

So now what do we do with this information?

But as the psychologist says to his patient, “Our time is up. We will continue this at our next session.”

So this week we should be discovering the next step.

Could this help in your family situations?

“On your way out will you buy my Dad some chewing tobacco?”

Whenever my wife asks me that it send chills down my spine.

I don’t like doing it.

I don’t want to do it.

She doesn’t understand. She thinks it is because I have to go out of my way to do it.

This isn’t the case. I do a lot for her parents. For example, I’m scheduled to take them both to the doctor next Tuesday. This is certainly out of my way but I do it because they are part of my family. It is also something they need and cannot do for themselves.

It goes deeper than that with the chewing tobacco.

My father-in-law has been chewing for over 70 years. It is a normal part of his life. It can be expensive. He goes through a bag every two days; at seven dollars apiece this can be a very expensive habit especially for someone who receives very little in social security and has no savings.

Whenever I mention the expense to my mother-in-law her response is always the same. It is his only pleasure in life so she doesn’t want to deprive him of it. As a result she lives without things that she needs just so he can be happy.

But this isn’t all of it.

You see, my Dad was a smoker. He would go through two packs a day. After 38 years of smoking he was diagnosed with throat cancer. He had to go through radiation to try to cure it. The first thing they did was embed gold nuggets into his throat as a reference point for the radiation.

The program he went through caused him to lose all of his hair and I watched him go from a strong, robust man to a frail oldster. He was 54. He took to wearing wigs and his teeth started falling out. I remember one day when he said “Watch this” and just pulled a tooth out. It came root and all. He then pushed it back in.

During this time his doctor told him for the treatment to be effective he had to stop smoking. And he tried to. He would go for days without a cigarette but the addiction kept bringing him back. In fact he would ask me to buy him some. I didn’t want to do it but I went for him. And he would always say “I have lived a long life, I don’t want to forego my pleasures.”

Sound familiar?

Fast forward 5 years. He is still smoking but it appeared that his cancer had been cured. That is, until the doctor announced that it had come back and had spread through the rest of his body. They started him on chemotherapy and I watched him deteriorate rapidly.

During that time I got sick. I’m convinced it was walking pneumonia. I coughed constantly. But like a true guy I didn’t bother to see a doctor. I had been looking for a house and I didn’t want to take the time. I remember that I finally found one and I was in the process of signing papers. My Dad went with me to the realtor’s office because he was cosigning for me. I was still coughing constantly.

Inside of a month he wasn’t functioning anymore. He was on oxygen and had to be helped with everything he did. On the last day at home he couldn’t talk and wasn’t even aware of his surrounding. My brother and I took him to the hospital where he died several days later.

He died surrounded by his family except me; I was at work. I left at noon to be with him. I rode the elevator up to his floor only to find them at the door waiting to leave. It was done.

His death certificate says he died of pneumonia.

I have never gotten over the fact that I supplied him with his cigarettes at the end and that I may have given him the pneumonia that killed him. He was my Dad and I idolized him and this is how I repaid him.

Now my wife asks me to buy her Dad chewing tobacco. True, he is in his 80s but I don’t want to be the one to contribute to his death.

But we aren’t supposed to deprive him of his “one pleasure in life”.

“Mrs Corr? This is Max’s van company. School starts tomorrow and we wanted to let you know that we will be picking him up at quarter of 8 in the morning.

“That won’t be enough time. School starts at 8:20 and it takes an hour to get there.”

“It will work. We’ve done an assessment and we know how long it will take.”

Funny, after 3 years of sending our kid to school on a van they still don’t believe we know what we are talking about. After 7:30 in the morning the traffic gets so bad that there is no way they can do it in less time. Hey, as it is when we drive down during a non-traffic time of day it will take us 40 minutes.

So on Max’s first day of school we were waiting at 7:30. He was so excited; he really missed being there.

At 7:35 it was: “Where’s the van?” “It’s on its way. It will be here in 10 minutes.”

At 7:40 it was: “Where’s the van?” “It’s on its way. It will be here in 5 minutes.”

At 7:45 it was the same thing.

At 7:50 it was the parents’ turn to ask: “Where’s the van?”

It actually showed at 8:00. Now we know that it isn’t going to get the kids to school on time that day. We talked to the driver and told her that just maybe she may want to pick them up a little earlier the next day. She agreed and informed us she still had 2 more to pick up before she headed off to school.

We got a call from the school at 9 o’clock to inform us the kids arrived safely…at 8:50; a half hour late.

True to her word though the driver showed up earlier the next day. She was out front at 7:30. We don’t know yet what time they got to school.

Max’s school started on September 1. Public schools don’t start until September 8. Traffic always becomes quite heavy after that. I can’t wait to see what time Max will be getting there then.

As my wife said the vans are required to get the kids there on time so this is their problem not ours.

But it bothers me too. I mean, as I mentioned earlier we have been doing this for 3 years. Every year we go through the same thing. A new van company gets the town contract and they have to be trained all over again by the parents.

We tell them one thing and they insist they know better than we do. They always try to do it differently. But in the end they find out we were right and they conform. Of course they don’t admit that we know what we are talking about. They call it their “learning process”.

It’s always the same. They don’t seem to understand that we parents are always thinking about our kids. And we have been doing it longer than the van companies.

I shouldn’t really complain. They are getting my son to school. Not only that, most, if not all, parents with special needs kids go through this. And it’s not just with the van companies. Every year a friend of mine ends up suing the town he lives in because they aren’t providing the services required by law to his daughter.

But really it is all a result of these different organizations trying to keep costs down while providing the best services they can. Add to that the dire straits our economy is in right now. I can really understand where they are coming from but even so it’s my kids or it’s your kid and we always want the best for them…don’t we?

So maybe the ride wasn’t that great but on the first and second day of school Max came home excited! Things are going great; he’s happy; he even has a new girlfriend.

So welcome back to school and no worries with the van company…