Jerry's Place

[caption id="attachment_2105" align="alignleft" width="225"] A life of sundaes[/caption]

Last week marked the launch of my 21 year-old son’s entrance of adulthood. It didn’t all happen last week. It just seems that way this week.

This deeply symbolic passage comes in the form of a one fire escape walk-up efficiency that is nearly equidistant between his childhood home and the two part-time jobs that gave Jerry the confidence and capitalization to move into his own place.

It’s not just Jerry that’s feeling his way around this dramatic shift in roles and perceptions. Even his landlord who fills ten other units at the same address appeared stumped when asked where Jerry should park his commuter mountain bike. His folks were equally challenged to navigate the rules of engagement when it comes to the necessary hands-off, hands-on adjustments to this heady transition.

One potential path to success here is to follow the roadmap that brought Jerry to the doors of his newfound independence. That means being given an arduous series of tasks that don’t change much from day-to-day. While Jerry didn’t master his dual roles of food portioning and custodial work off the bat, he did come to master those jobs during his trial period. Both his supervisors probably get the sincerity and genuine appreciation that Jerry derives from this honest, repetitive work. I say probably because providing more certainty is not my role here.

It’s Jerry who found these jobs. It’s Jerry who did the interviews and the call-backs. It’s Jerry who arrives on-time and prepared for work at hours many of us can scarcely function.

When Jerry tells his boss that he loves his job, it’s not that he has any fanciful relationship to cleaning floors or waking up before dawn to have them done before the first customer arrives. It’s that he’s been given the chance to succeed on terms he understands and in tasks he’s come to master. It’s on the strength of his rote memorization that this mastery can free his mind to escape to the world of superheroes, YouTube videos, and Facebook pages where Jerry is free to hit his personal play and record buttons while mopping up messes and counting out chicken fingers.

But while Jerry’s memory can cycle through those repetitions, he’s unfamiliar with the hard and fast rules of online banking, advocating for himself in the workplace, or reflecting those needs in the form of a schedule; for instance, more predictable hours on the time clock to go with his weekly routines.

That’s not to say that Jerry can’t make up his mind or lacks the willpower and motivation to develop these skills. Jerry’s emancipation wasn’t based on any grand design, parental prodding, or peer models (although I was immensely proud of him for placing independent living at the top of his agenda nearly two years ago and sticking to it). That’s also not to say that the executive function required prioritizing, negotiating, and self-manage are challenges for most 21 year-olds -- regardless of how one’s brain works or their prospects pan out.

It’s my hope for Jerry that a year from now he’ll look back on all the hard knocks, confusing signals, hidden surprises and unscripted disruptions, and he’ll out-surprise all of us (as his priest foretold when Jerry received a scholarship from his parish). His responses will be more surprising than the unplanned learning that springs from all these tuition-free lessons. He’ll be better equipped to absorb them and turn these challenges into his own precisely because he didn’t read the correct book, go to the right school, kiss the right ass, or pass the right test with the highest score. Jerry’s ticket to success will not be punched in some gold-plated diploma mill. His past achievements and future horizons are uniquely his.

He’s grown up in a time where the role of parenting has expanded from providing a “roof over your head” to a dome clear over your future. Sometimes … okay … more than sometimes … it’s hard to know when to let go and when to rush in: call the meetings, neutralize the likeliest risks, or organize the new nest. But before I rush in to save the day, I need to ask: whose day am I saving? Am I sparing Jerry from the jaws of calamity or am I serving at the foot of expediency so that I can vanish as swiftly as I swooped in?

There are many executive level decisions I’ve spared Jerry in the past. Either he was going to encounter it later under some trained supervisor in some accredited program or some other as-yet unnamed responsible member of another social circle and scheduling orbit was going to fill Jerry’s shopping cart of independent living with the tools and the mental models needed to bring a sense of order and priority. Like all false hopes that day never arrived. What was there all along was Jerry’s resolve. His sense that if it was part of his experience, it was part of his own self-paced curriculum; that he could learn and even master the finer and rougher points of this unprotected world.

I’m going over to Jerry’s place tomorrow to help simplify the paperwork needed to apply for health insurance. Later in the afternoon his mom will be helping him with budgeting. I will not be organizing his books. I will not be washing the splatters of sauce that gather on his stove. But I will be thinking of the day I’m no longer required to sign Jerry up for vital services.

When that day comes there will be some other complication. I’m confident that when this new difficulty arises Jerry will rise up to meet it. He will learn the problem’s name and maybe even turned an initial drawback into a more neutral puzzle that he can solve – nor not? Perhaps he’ll dismiss it as so much background noise – not worthy of his attention or energy, like the 97% of the BS that will land in the mail deliveries to come. Those are the lesson plans on which a graying father supports an adult son to live his own rich life – not on the father’s terms, or on those of these future challenges, but on Jerry’s own.

The Better and the Worse of the Most of Us

[caption id="attachment_2031" align="alignleft" width="249"] 15 year-old David Oats speaks as the Westinghouse Time Capsule is lowered into the former ash heap that bore two World's Fairs.[/caption]

Jerry, my soon to be 21-year-old son recently found his inner blogging voice. He's come to channel his love of myth and legend into literal interpretations from comic books to the episodic depictions of super and sub-heroic versions of Hollywood films.

The strictest of his guidelines is that the antagonist should cause pain, suffering, and hold no redemptive qualities (other than serving as the vanquished prey of the superhero). To Jerry, if they're not 100% certifiably devil-made, it's not just the good guys who are threatened:

• It toys with the plausibility of the characters.


• It messes with the plot twists.


• How can good triumph over evil when we have to continually reassess who has which power and in what supply?

Remembering the Good
That same purity restriction is rarely lifted for the non-fiction twists of the life narratives we eulogize for absent family and friends. Their departure is enough of a presence to strike even the suggestion of disrespect from any eulogy. It's etiquette the living rarely need to remind us to practice. It's a simple grace. It's a lowering of the guard in the intimidating face of the eternal. Death strips the adornments we carry as standard-bearers and role models. That naked soul we praise at the memorial service will favor the way our loved ones wanted to be remembered -- even when we have no memory of their instructions. But the best remembrances leave open the unfiltered sincerities of the people they were, not the stations they rose to, not the positions they held.

If anyone in my life is up for challenging my son's purified formulations, that person is David Oats (1950-2008). A recent Internet search casually slipped in a series of his obituaries. That buffer of time provides a rare opportunity to remember David as an extreme example of heart-melting communion and shadowy behavior. I remember David as being better and worse than the most of us.

I knew him for a short, intense period nearly 30 years ago when I was transitioning from the Neverland of a self-designed college curriculum to the externally imposed demands of adulthood. The turbulence of that transition was spiced by his capacity for open-ended generosity and stone-faced obstruction. The fact that I stumbled into his passing obliges me to put his influence into perspective without confusing wholesale rewrites for an undignified burial.

Political and Guileless

David's irrepressible charm was his most glaring foible. He was willing to tell you not only what you wanted to hear. He had an uncanny knack of convincing you he'd held the same wish -- even the same belief system. For a 22 year-old college grad this was shear intoxication: not just the chance for a pay check, or even meaningful work, but a dream job of working for David. Simple naiveté can't explain away that wide a gap between a life imagined and the one being lived. But when you and David shared a core belief, that was no self-delusion. That was a plan of action!

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="410"] Hillary Clinton and David Oats at a press reception in the early 2000s.[/caption]

One of those plans vice-gripped my imagination for the better half of the two formative years between when I started my Div. III (a.k.a. senior thesis) and when I moved out of David's apartment. The theme of my academic studies (the history of the New York World's Fairs) was the proverbial message in the bottle. In those days the bottle was addressed to the President of the 1989 New York World's Fair to be.

Camera Ready

My final project with Andrew Morris-Friedman was a video documentary starring David Oats as the community-organizer, consensus-building answer to the impervious kingpin, power-brokering Robert Moses who ordained the '39 and '64 Fairs as a means to secure his park legacy.

David's legacy consisted of trespassing through a construction site fence. And like some page out of Mayberry RFD the apprehended junior citizen punk was brought before Emperor Moses himself. After making some gruff noises about neighborhood safety, Moses assures young Oats that his park will be returned to his community with amenities 'o plenty once the fair ended. The fact this account of their unlikely meeting ran in David's New York Times obit says more about the journalism instincts of a future and failed promoter than the actual guest list for calendaring in a visit to meet that day with Bob "Fair Chairman" Moses.

To Andy and me, the exploratory nature of staging a third New York Fair wasn't a tribute to David's powers of self-invention. It was the generational realization that ginormous spectacles spoiling for sponsorships found their way to Flushing Meadows. We were just lucky enough to hitch a ride on the next repeating cycle.

And Forgive Us My Trespasses

On a more grounded note, I had no job lined up, or plan B, or even a post Hampshire place to crash. The notion of "home" was a waning option. I couldn't go home for as many reasons as there were no home feelings lost in that acknowledgement. After a prolonged viewing session of David's political video catalog I asked what the prospects were to continue in both video consuming and producing roles while figuring out how to land on my untested feet. My wish was granted.

In retrospect that's where I should have stopped taking wishes come true for granted. This is an arrangement that exceeded the imaginings, let alone the realities of the move-onto-anyplace-but-where-I-came from post liberal arts degree crowd. I should have seen this simple kindness for what it was -- a temporary respite from the workplace pressures to come.

But the trance-induced allure of the future-leaning '89 Fair is where I dwelled. That fixation held my unwavering focus through the tentative first steps into a dead-end internship at a media journal and onto a wedding / Bar Mitzvah video gopher at the Film Center on 9th and 45th -- shouting distance from the sound stage run by Liz Dubelman, my first fiancé.

The Uncollected Rent

My daily presence in David's inventive and unpublished life came with its own set of constraints and expectations. My guesswork is based on what he must have anticipated on the day I moved in. Over those summer weekends Liz would drive in from Jersey on the weekends. Just the simple arranging of it prompted a reshuffling in his shadowy preferences for floating out of range and below the radar. For instance, delivering dial-tone to his Kissena Boulevard kitchen only occurred after Liz voiced her concern that phone service was not an opt-outable preference in pre-cellphone society. David's penchant for cash-only transactions suggested a level of privacy that regarded the mundane transactions of the market as outside and unwelcome intrusions. His unwillingness to give references or open his networking doors for Andy and me meant three things to Liz:

• The 1989 New York World's Fair was a no-go


• David would never admit so much, and


• His intransigence hinted at a fundamental truth about a President of an Enterprise that was not to be: he was a fake -- not a con artist per se, but a serial bluffer nonetheless.

I'm not sure history would be as reproachful as a future spouse crashing a cloistered bachelor pad, glass-enclosed floor models of former fair pavilions, and VHS-enabled broadcast archive. One need not peer too closely into David's fantasy constructions to find only facades behind the blueprints and fabrications acting as placeholders for actual ground-breakings.

The real history lesson here is not that the sunny disposition David carried was concealing a diabolical nature. It's that his personal nature of "taking me in" was a selfless act, not some kind of an investment or quid pro quo. My being "taken in" was a reflection of my inexperience and compromised living situation. What made this so difficult to accept was the stiff exit price he exacted when Liz and I moved to our first Manhattan studio the following spring. That move precluded my own smaller scale alternative universe -- one that I'd cultivated, leveraged, cataloged, and squirreled away since the age of 5. Unlike most lost childhood collections, this one was repossessed by a rent-free landlord.

That remittance transpired without threats, confessions, or basic forms of cooperation. From one obfuscation to the next busted plan, my lost collection represented the same control fantasy that filled David's postwar garden apartment stocked with television histories, one-of-a-kind recordings, and Fair memorabilia. The aftertaste of his deception took as long for me to cycle through as a whole drumbeat of shoulda coulda woulda charades: the fate of the '89 Fair, the run of an '88 Cuomo for President campaign, the vagabond fairground buildings fallen into decay, and all those lost NYC Olympic bids to come.

It sounds juvenile, I know. But it runs a course deeper (than I imagine) when your mom's the culprit for tossing your cards out (along with your comic books and matchbox cars). I wouldn't know. I never collected matchboxes or comics.

[caption id="attachment_2033" align="alignleft" width="250"] Robert Moses and David Oats outside the Chairman's office in the Administration Building (now the Queens Museum).[/caption]

Post Scripts

About six months after my cards were banished to memory, I got in touch with his former partner at the Queens Tribune and local Congressman (until this year) Gary Ackerman. After I shared some of my gratitude and misgivings I asked for some insight about David -- a perspective I couldn't possibly gain from such a shielded and specific view of his old friend -- distorted by the short, intense time we had shared together.

With hints of frustration, admiration, and humility, Ackerman said a curious thing: "It's a good thing David wasn't born a girl, because he'd never stop being pregnant."

I should have realized that this observation from a well-regarded politician was about as sincere a rationale I was likely to receive for closing the books on David as my adopted and short-term older brother figure.

I suppose in the movie version, David Oats would be the hero and villain. He would be played by the same character. Which side of him wins out, I cannot say. But if the movie were true to the person the audience would forgive him for putting the world he wanted to believe in ahead of the one we live in. Maybe if we understand that about David, we can free up our own narratives where our real world superpowers can do the most good.

On Living Solitary and Small

Here's what it's like to move into a new and empty home by yourself when just the idea of it delivers a serious buzz:

* I can walk the boat to the pond or run the fan or fan the incense or un-run a color choice or the number of napkin boxes I opportune. And that's not even messing with the cabin zoning as the AC can be as noisy or as borderline lukewarm as I want.

* I can bump into bumpable unpacked boxes and not have to explain the noise or wonder if I'm bumped up to noisy neighbor status.

* I can agonize over a soap dish at Cedar Chest. I can play out the cleaning habits of the three women I've co-starred in the preening of house. These three women will have agreed on little except that Alan Rickman is the pinnacle of sexy and that their co-star was raised by wolves.

So which civilizing influence will tilt the battle to burnish my OCD credentials in the cracks of my early post polyurethane floors? Is it the Dust Vac or the Swiffer? Am I persuaded to visit the Murphy's Soap upon the soft, placid cork in the kitchen? Do I Lemon Pledge the electronics? Where will an all-purpose generic suffice? Do I suck down moths in mid-flight or wait for the dust-up in the morning glare? When are spiders the enemies of my enemies and when do I have to vanquish the suspect in a potential spider bite case? When is it time to dispense with dry mops and play whack-a-mole in the stubble of the backyard? I turn my ADD shopping list to the insidious weeds that require my train wreck brand of root canal and trunk piles.

I'm beginning to understand why I revel in these minutiae flare-ups. This house was built by men. However unlike in most cases, a woman's hand is not present in the expression of the home. I'm free to second-guess my own interior decoration in the privacy of this creation. I have amnesty blankets of permission to make up my mind. This act holds certain unintended consequences. Sometimes this contains savage consequences in my marriages -- especially when I saw the choices as two avoidable extremes:

(A) Making a fuss about it or,

(B) Complete suppression.

Talk about no one being vested in a sunk cost situation.

Playing out scenarios like juggling calendars is one such hazard. I’m traveling too far over too few hours and I misplaced a few priorities along the way: Especially when my sense of obligation and devotion are locked in private competition.

This sounds like a simple case of arguing over control. But to be more concrete here, the conflict is fundamental. It’s the appointment-cancelling version of a gagging reflex. That’s a reference to our impulsive aversion for event planning – namely who’s the sponsor and what are the attendance requirements:

• What do I say to whom?


• How do I listen in a sincere, attentive way?


• Where does non-verbal dialog outflank both of these channels?

Another is my mastery of the self-limiting nature of failed relationships that go on for too long. Show me a reason to avoid an argument and I'll show you another expectation that I could learn to live without.

In place of this master miscasting I have an open and not so fragile invitation to live in a state of generous communication. Anyone who opens the bulkhead to the basement of their brains has free and welcome access to my attic whenever the sump pump forgets to take its allergy meds. I really mean that.

Yes, I am both the kind and queen of my castle. And that's just the warm-up for the ultimate victory here. I attain the unnatural born rite to exercise a woman and Governor Romney's prerogative -- the right to change my bleeping mind.

Two Diplomas

[caption id="attachment_713" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Not like father..."][/caption]

Two diplomas collided with my in-box on an early fall in late summer Friday afternoon. The first was inspired by a background checking third-party.

Actually "third" is probably too intimate a term for the degrees separating the four alien parties who picked up my case and blindly resubmitted the same craven information collection request:

“Despite many attempts, we have not been able to verify your degree/attendance at George Washington University.  We are contacting you to ask that you send support documentation such as a transcript or copy of your diploma to verify your education there.”

In round one I responded with a 2002 email request for my Graduate School to produce an academic transcript when I flirted with a library of science degree. The punch-line that year was that the school had lost a good chunk of its earliest academic histories when the files were U-Hauled from East 18th Street in lower Manhattan. That was in 1991 when the school relocated from CUNY ("City University of New York")  to George Washington University. Librarian degree or no degree, no sane archivist is going to hang onto 9 year-old memoranda detailed a lost transcript.

But Friday after I got the second boilerplate of verify emptor I shifted out of email search and broke my nine-year silence with the school. After all, the 4th party background checkers didn't need my GPA -- they just wanted to know that I wasn't inventing a graduate degree in electing people to office. Could the aggravation be worth the excavation? Imagine what I learned in a class room impacting what I do for a living? "Nothing farfetched about that" I can almost fathom Neil Fabricant saying.

Fabricant was the school's founder. In 1986 he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to drum up interest in a graduate program for political consultants -- the equivalent to the MBA for management consultants. He framed his pitch with a tag line I'll never forget:

"Politics is a good thing."

Fabricant was channeling Center of Politics Director Larry Sabato. He was trying to say that the art of the deal deserved a Master of Deal Arts. Hard to believe but it sounded as unfashionable in 1987 in the era of Lee Atwater as it does in the post debt ceiling recriminations of today. Then again who would start a political consulting school in NYC instead of DC? Maybe those obliterated records were supposed to remove any hint of this fundamental miscue. Back then the Shuttle was $49 so flying Mark Mellman, Doug Bailey, Celinda Lake et al. in weekly might have been plausible for one or two board meetings at best.

I remember another memorable tagline made by the school's first head of admissions, financial aid, and registrar named Christine Solomon who told me the school wanted its students to be "needs blind." This meant that we could gather up the courage to be the inaugural lab rats. Such gumption would release us from fretting over trivialities like student loans. At the time I was confused. Was she was trying to outfit my billfold with a blindfold or hold my blindside with a jello mold?

To others in the program this loan is blind first impression was prescient and they refused to pay their balances without qualifying first for the Neil Fabri-card. Years later something preordained in the unhappiness of those first class campers rubbed off on the crates of records in the U-HAUL on moving day. Since then, we specimens have been chasing down a credential I stopped using long before the age of the permanent campaign arrived.

On Friday the curse of the Fabricard, the jello mold, and Lee Atwater's tormented spirit all lifted. I reached three GSPM employees in a row who were all patient, resourceful, and ultimately effective in helping me produce the long delayed official degree conferred through the dazzle of scanned diplomas basking eternal in PDF splendor. The bureaucracy of the background checkers could now recede into a dormant state of permanent dimmer.

One Diploma, Two Graduations

No sooner had I thrown down the lights on my career in political degree recapture I got an attached PDF of my son's high school degree from the Seton Home Study program. Jerry finished his studies a month or two ago but the big momentous certificate arrived last week. He wasn't shouting or jumping up and down but "was very happy to have it" as is his accustomed state of graduated adulation. His mom held back the tears -- most of them anyhow.

But like son...

I'm glad that mom stayed on top of the situation. I'm grateful for her sacrifices as a home school educator. I'm glad that she stayed on top of the paperwork. I'm glad that our son won't be asking Seton administrators in 2034 to search on all the Jerry Solomons in their “early two thousands” archives. I can’t possibly know what it’s like to bring that diploma to life.

But I am perhaps most ultimately grateful that Jerry knows what it’s like to don the graduation gown and hat and walk with the Greenfield High School class of 2011 – something no virtual degree will ever confer. The fact his high school experience bears the certifiable and the ceremonious is a tribute to Jerry.

Loud and clear.

When the interim director of student affairs ran my name against her screen records last Friday, there were three Marc Solomons who appeared -- none of them related to Christine Solomon or myself.

Living Outside the Discomfort Zone

At my son's last IEP meeting the district SPED director threw out one of those warm, fuzzy compliments that could penetrate the battle armor of the most game-faced, contrarian parent. For the parent of a special needs kid this is not about making the honor role or the JV squad or the likeliest to become whatever classified aspirations define success in 2010 America. She applauded him for his courage and open-mindedness for trying new challenges.

He, his mom, and me all nodded with the understanding that no new road is traveled on at all without a sense of boldness no matter how pedestrian that adventure may seem -- even if the exploration is testing out his fondness for opening new chapters that are closely affiliated with his core interests. But the explorer role comes with its own set of boundaries and limits. Some are nature, some nurture -- none of them are open to negotiation either in an organized school meeting or in other tests of will and a willingness to grow:

* He can't attempt more than a single test at one time. The inability to tackle multiple steps impairs all follow-up actions before any momentum for change can build, e.g. learning how to drive while simultaneously holding a job in order to save up for a car.

* He will not advance to a next level or willingly expand a commitment. To take a liking to something is to fortify all boundaries with comfort and compliance. Once the comfort zone is set in place, it will not stretch -- no matter how much he enjoys the activity.

* He will not coordinate his own program because that's messing with "the schedule." The schedule refers to the third rail that lies between "the pull" of the status quo and the "push"of his unexplored potential.

The stronger the push, the more resistant the pull has become. It will endure until the day he concludes that passive acceptance is a choice -- not a disability -- and that there is much to make of himself in ways he can't possibly know now. Until that day he will continue to call on girls who string him along because they don't have the gumption to break someone whose heart is as pure as his senses are dull to the slights of nonverbal cues.

That same reluctance to turn him down for a date may well be the same reason the SPED director's praises carry a patronizing ring and the same reason that after a few hours on the road he is confident of passing his road test. That's because he's used to being told that any mental sparks beyond retardation levels are crowning achievements. The truth is that his intelligence is as vast as it is undeveloped. That would not fit within the schedule, comfort zone, or the number of steps it would take to address. In addition to his kindness and expressive self he is also handsome and could be quite a catch -- once the girl catching him is free to be his companion and not his surrogate mother.

It is always going to be easier to step in and save the day than it is to let events running their own course to teach the next class. You don't have to be a helicopter parent to be deaf to the most debilitating phrase we clueless parents ever taught our special needs kids:

"Here. Let me try that..."

That doesn't mean we do it all while they sit idly by. But if we plan their next driving lesson, floor the gas, point the wheel, and fill the tank, it's important that our student drivers assume more of the responsibilities the next cycle through. Completing a task that's 90% pre-finished means beginning the next time at 80% complete, and so on.

Another well-intended but self-defeating lesson is to script them when petitioning on our own behalf. For instance a state agency we've been working with encourages potential employers to take on disabled workers with cash incentives to train and pay them while still pocketing a meaningful margin for their efforts.

Now try putting that into some persuasive talking points as my son re-approaches the dozen or more rejections he got from employers when he inquired about summer jobs back in June. Not only does that mean going off-script the moment a question arises but he is unclear how to propose, advance, or close a deal that would include something as complex and threatening as a 3 or 4 way negotiation that crosses over into each of his discomfort zones.

A simpler more tangible way to focus on an achievable goal is to teach him how to ride mass transit so that getting on by himself on the city bus to community college becomes less an adventure and more one of those things he does. Once we achieve second nature status all those formula-rattling multistep problems can be addressed -- in one less step.

Living Outside the Discomfort Zone

At my son's last IEP meeting the district SPED director threw out one of those warm, fuzzy compliments that could penetrate the battle armor of the most game-faced, contrarian parent. For the parent of a special needs kid this is not about making the honor role or the JV squad or the likeliest to become whatever classified aspirations define success in 2010 America. She applauded him for his courage and open-mindedness for trying new challenges.

He, his mom, and me all nodded with the understanding that no new road is traveled on at all without a sense of boldness no matter how pedestrian that adventure may seem -- even if the exploration is testing out his fondness for opening new chapters that are closely affiliated with his core interests. But the explorer role comes with its own set of boundaries and limits. Some are nature, some nurture -- none of them are open to negotiation either in an organized school meeting or in other tests of will and a willingness to grow:

* He can't attempt more than a single test at one time. The inability to tackle multiple steps impairs all follow-up actions before any momentum for change can build, e.g. learning how to drive while simultaneously holding a job in order to save up for a car.

* He will not advance to a next level or willingly expand a commitment. To take a liking to something is to fortify all boundaries with comfort and compliance. Once the comfort zone is set in place, it will not stretch -- no matter how much he enjoys the activity.

* He will not coordinate his own program because that's messing with "the schedule." The schedule refers to the third rail that lies between "the pull" of the status quo and the "push"of his unexplored potential.

The stronger the push, the more resistant the pull has become. It will endure until the day he concludes that passive acceptance is a choice -- not a disability -- and that there is much to make of himself in ways he can't possibly know now. Until that day he will continue to call on girls who string him along because they don't have the gumption to break someone whose heart is as pure as his senses are dull to the slights of nonverbal cues.

That same reluctance to turn him down for a date may well be the same reason the SPED director's praises carry a patronizing ring and the same reason that after a few hours on the road he is confident of passing his road test. That's because he's used to being told that any mental sparks beyond retardation levels are crowning achievements. The truth is that his intelligence is as vast as it is undeveloped. That would not fit within the schedule, comfort zone, or the number of steps it would take to address. In addition to his kindness and expressive self he is also handsome and could be quite a catch -- once the girl catching him is free to be his companion and not his surrogate mother.

It is always going to be easier to step in and save the day than it is to let events running their own course to teach the next class. You don't have to be a helicopter parent to be deaf to the most debilitating phrase we clueless parents ever taught our special needs kids:

"Here. Let me try that..."

That doesn't mean we do it all while they sit idly by. But if we plan their next driving lesson, floor the gas, point the wheel, and fill the tank, it's important that our student drivers assume more of the responsibilities the next cycle through. Completing a task that's 90% pre-finished means beginning the next time at 80% complete, and so on.

Another well-intended but self-defeating lesson is to script them when petitioning on our own behalf. For instance a state agency we've been working with encourages potential employers to take on disabled workers with cash incentives to train and pay them while still pocketing a meaningful margin for their efforts.

Now try putting that into some persuasive talking points as my son re-approaches the dozen or more rejections he got from employers when he inquired about summer jobs back in June. Not only does that mean going off-script the moment a question arises but he is unclear how to propose, advance, or close a deal that would include something as complex and threatening as a 3 or 4 way negotiation that crosses over into each of his discomfort zones.

A simpler more tangible way to focus on an achievable goal is to teach him how to ride mass transit so that getting on by himself on the city bus to community college becomes less an adventure and more one of those things he does. Once we achieve second nature status all those formula-rattling multistep problems can be addressed -- in one less step.

Time and SPED Continuum

My son recently completed a vocational assessment that includes (among a myriad of metrics and clusters) a series of IEP ("individualized learning plan") templates for transitioning to adulthood.

The templates form the basis of goals, outcomes, and the actors and actions that bridge them together. The "actor" factoring is a goal in itself -- an elusive one at that. Why is this?

Other than the as-needed conferral no formal roles or responsibilities have been tasked to his high school. As a result my son is as far along in his transition plan as the school is in figuring out how to offer one.

The biggest obstacle to his ultimate goal -- living independently -- is not that he's incapable of achieving it, he can't learn how, or refuses any help. It's that his brain is a sieve. His powers of retention on matters of real world practicality are a great challenge to him. He operates under the use-it (or lose-it) dictum. A week of driver's ed could be undone by the following week of not driving.

The other (and more daunting) challenge is that he can't generalize what he learns, a.k.a. sensory integration. This is the whatever-happens-in-Vegas rule of learning disabilities. What he learns in one place remains tethered to the place in which he learns it. For example, he's a gifted writer. He's in touch with his feelings and his writing ability gives him an extraordinary command of expression.

So what would I or any proud parent wish from this -- that he brings home a Pulitzer? No, it's much simpler than that. I just want to see a sample or two of the writing from his Journalism Two class. However, it would never occur to him to use his Yahoo account to email me the files from the school computer. Absolutely no pathways between these two black holes in space.

The other roadblock around sensory integration is that the repetition becomes its own reward. For example, he attended Tae Kwon Do classes twice a week for over three years and advanced one belt. He tried out for the high school play in ninth grade. The cycle has repeated without any new skills or challenges to augment his experience or test his potential for drama, music, dance, etc. He is justifiably proud of his work with the school but is either too afraid or oblivious to take the next steps.

He tried a week of musical theater summer camp and loved it. Then he insisted on going to the same camp, attending the same program, and the same weekly session the following summer. Any guesses what he's decided the highlight of this year's summer will be? Ironically, he was given the chance to go for two weeks. That offer was not greeted with double the pleasure but triple the trauma. The formula had been messed with. There were no lines to remember. We had gone off script. It was worse than not going at all.

When someone instinctively sees two possibilities and creates two separate piles, how do you teach them to put two and two together? It's counter-intuitive (and frankly, infuriating) that this vocational assessment recommended picking between academics and vocations. This fork in the road wasn't determined by scope of need but by scarcity of time.

I reject this. He doesn't have all the time in the world. But he shall have all the time he needs -- and that vacuum will be filled by projects that address the three major pathways where all transition plans converge:

- academics
- social skills
- vocational plans

In each of the three templates we will begin in one and bridge over to the others -- not because he needs support in all three (he does) but because the crossing over these arbitrary boundaries is the key. That's how we push beyond brute force repetition so that he can rely on more than memorization for leaving his comfort zone -- his ticket to independence.

#1 Developing his story: Origination -- Academics

My son will take a high school English class. The literature will include stories where the main characters struggle with transitions to adulthood. He will be challenged to debate and discuss the motivations and frameworks referenced by each character in their relationships with adults and their peers. In terms of social skills he will use his PDA to schedule non-class time to discuss these works (or other coming-of-age concerns) with his peers. Vocationally he will script and tell "his" story to potential employers through the counseling he receives from Mass Rehab and the Franklin Hampshire Career Center.

#2 Producing his story: Origination -- Vocational Plans

My son will volunteer to do storytelling and character readings at local libraries, nursing homes, and other community gatherings. In terms of life skills he will plan his route to these venues via mass transit, car, or both. He will buy appropriate dress for these appearances. Academically he will work on augmenting his theatricality with dance or video production courses at school. He will use these new skills to showcase his talents through choreography and/or shooting/editing a production of his performance.

#3 Working in a group: Origination -- Life Skill

The life skill here is practical number-crunching or what the IEP calls "consumer math." This is not about the hypothetical word problems that seem to end in the number of miles a car travels based on the size of its gas tank. This is about "his" money and where it travels in transactions and how to plan these travels, a.k.a. budgeting. Fundraising is where my son meets the financial road. It's not only problem-solving. It's social. It's academic -- certainly in terms of keeping school programs afloat. It's something he cares about.

Once he's introduced to fiscal spreadsheet logic he will need to plan an event around raising money for a school-related cause; let's say a dance to raise money for the theater program. The vocational piece is to create a web page on Face Book that drums up awareness of the $ need and creates buzz around the dance: who's going, what the deejay will be spinning, dancing-with-the-stars prizes, etc.

The academic part of this comparing the initial fundraising goal with how well the event plays out. What adjustments will he make for next time? How does this help him to plan his own financial goals or career assets -- especially if he decides to work in social services where funding and fundraising go hand in hand.

* * *

The IEP meeting is next week. Let's hope that a little cross-over thinking will help learners like my son to learn both on the job and integrate the learning that lies ahead.

I know it sounds like I'm pushing my son and pushy parents are reprehensible. But I don't wish him to become anything other than a soul who finds his own way while he's here. Perhaps I'm trying to pull him. That may well be true. Either way I'm certainly not the only one pulling for my son.

Time and SPED Continuum

My son recently completed a vocational assessment that includes (among a myriad of metrics and clusters) a series of IEP ("individualized learning plan") templates for transitioning to adulthood.

The templates form the basis of goals, outcomes, and the actors and actions that bridge them together. The "actor" factoring is a goal in itself -- an elusive one at that. Why is this?

Other than the as-needed conferral no formal roles or responsibilities have been tasked to his high school. As a result my son is as far along in his transition plan as the school is in figuring out how to offer one.

The biggest obstacle to his ultimate goal -- living independently -- is not that he's incapable of achieving it, he can't learn how, or refuses any help. It's that his brain is a sieve. His powers of retention on matters of real world practicality are a great challenge to him. He operates under the use-it (or lose-it) dictum. A week of driver's ed could be undone by the following week of not driving.

The other (and more daunting) challenge is that he can't generalize what he learns, a.k.a. sensory integration. This is the whatever-happens-in-Vegas rule of learning disabilities. What he learns in one place remains tethered to the place in which he learns it. For example, he's a gifted writer. He's in touch with his feelings and his writing ability gives him an extraordinary command of expression.

So what would I or any proud parent wish from this -- that he brings home a Pulitzer? No, it's much simpler than that. I just want to see a sample or two of the writing from his Journalism Two class. However, it would never occur to him to use his Yahoo account to email me the files from the school computer. Absolutely no pathways between these two black holes in space.

The other roadblock around sensory integration is that the repetition becomes its own reward. For example, he attended Tae Kwon Do classes twice a week for over three years and advanced one belt. He tried out for the high school play in ninth grade. The cycle has repeated without any new skills or challenges to augment his experience or test his potential for drama, music, dance, etc. He is justifiably proud of his work with the school but is either too afraid or oblivious to take the next steps.

He tried a week of musical theater summer camp and loved it. Then he insisted on going to the same camp, attending the same program, and the same weekly session the following summer. Any guesses what he's decided the highlight of this year's summer will be? Ironically, he was given the chance to go for two weeks. That offer was not greeted with double the pleasure but triple the trauma. The formula had been messed with. There were no lines to remember. We had gone off script. It was worse than not going at all.

When someone instinctively sees two possibilities and creates two separate piles, how do you teach them to put two and two together? It's counter-intuitive (and frankly, infuriating) that this vocational assessment recommended picking between academics and vocations. This fork in the road wasn't determined by scope of need but by scarcity of time.

I reject this. He doesn't have all the time in the world. But he shall have all the time he needs -- and that vacuum will be filled by projects that address the three major pathways where all transition plans converge:

- academics
- social skills
- vocational plans

In each of the three templates we will begin in one and bridge over to the others -- not because he needs support in all three (he does) but because the crossing over these arbitrary boundaries is the key. That's how we push beyond brute force repetition so that he can rely on more than memorization for leaving his comfort zone -- his ticket to independence.

#1 Developing his story: Origination -- Academics

My son will take a high school English class. The literature will include stories where the main characters struggle with transitions to adulthood. He will be challenged to debate and discuss the motivations and frameworks referenced by each character in their relationships with adults and their peers. In terms of social skills he will use his PDA to schedule non-class time to discuss these works (or other coming-of-age concerns) with his peers. Vocationally he will script and tell "his" story to potential employers through the counseling he receives from Mass Rehab and the Franklin Hampshire Career Center.

#2 Producing his story: Origination -- Vocational Plans

My son will volunteer to do storytelling and character readings at local libraries, nursing homes, and other community gatherings. In terms of life skills he will plan his route to these venues via mass transit, car, or both. He will buy appropriate dress for these appearances. Academically he will work on augmenting his theatricality with dance or video production courses at school. He will use these new skills to showcase his talents through choreography and/or shooting/editing a production of his performance.

#3 Working in a group: Origination -- Life Skill

The life skill here is practical number-crunching or what the IEP calls "consumer math." This is not about the hypothetical word problems that seem to end in the number of miles a car travels based on the size of its gas tank. This is about "his" money and where it travels in transactions and how to plan these travels, a.k.a. budgeting. Fundraising is where my son meets the financial road. It's not only problem-solving. It's social. It's academic -- certainly in terms of keeping school programs afloat. It's something he cares about.

Once he's introduced to fiscal spreadsheet logic he will need to plan an event around raising money for a school-related cause; let's say a dance to raise money for the theater program. The vocational piece is to create a web page on Face Book that drums up awareness of the $ need and creates buzz around the dance: who's going, what the deejay will be spinning, dancing-with-the-stars prizes, etc.

The academic part of this comparing the initial fundraising goal with how well the event plays out. What adjustments will he make for next time? How does this help him to plan his own financial goals or career assets -- especially if he decides to work in social services where funding and fundraising go hand in hand.

* * *

The IEP meeting is next week. Let's hope that a little cross-over thinking will help learners like my son to learn both on the job and integrate the learning that lies ahead.

I know it sounds like I'm pushing my son and pushy parents are reprehensible. But I don't wish him to become anything other than a soul who finds his own way while he's here. Perhaps I'm trying to pull him. That may well be true. Either way I'm certainly not the only one pulling for my son.

In Search of Marriage

I've been searching for a more perfect union since the day my stepfather "needed the house to himself" and I realized I had no home to go home to. This joining of dreams and fortunes was the ticket out in the ghetto called my childhood. In this togetherness a new family would rise. The core solid; the conviction unshakable, and the path directed by a shared purpose. The road would commence in romance, progress to parenthood, and build on a shared identity held resolutely by two spouses. This is the patience, the trust, and ultimately courage which the bond of dream matrimony harbors and sanctifies through the daily renewal of ritual and gratitude.

It is no secret that these paths have been scarred by realities which no marriage of mine has ever endured. Each time they have diverged. Each time they have faltered on the premise that a rightful balance had been displaced by an unshared sacrifice or a sense of isolation. It's a stretch to suggest that anything extraordinary happened to ambush or sabotage the three vows I have taken. In each case the absorptions of work and self-pity sprung from solitary trials displaced the commitment to our common purpose. It is an unintended irony that: (a) over the last 24 years marriage is the steady operational state of my adulthood, and (b) none hold the lasting power of the original bargain -- this special attraction that marriage holds for me but not my actual marriages.

The cliches work from tired scripts of infidelity, the sudden loss of income, substance abuses, and wayward children. But these plot devices are not party to any regrets to find voice in my own failures. I don't stray. I'm gainfully (and gratefully) employed. More than one beer gives me a headache. My son is the kindest person I know. If the elites had a trace of his humility all stigmas about his cognitive challenges would disappate.

The one thing I can say about failed marriages is that ommissions count as much as commissions. It's one thing to resist temptation. It's quite another to embrace the fears and uncertainties of my dearest beloved.

I can only imagine that keeping a marriage afloat requires more than two souls that have lost their individual way with each other. And that sharing cannot be recovered or sustained without a higher purpose of family, community, and spiritual renewal.

In Search of Marriage

I've been searching for a more perfect union since the day my stepfather "needed the house to himself" and I realized I had no home to go home to. This joining of dreams and fortunes was the ticket out in the ghetto called my childhood. In this togetherness a new family would rise. The core solid; the conviction unshakable, and the path directed by a shared purpose. The road would commence in romance, progress to parenthood, and build on a shared identity held resolutely by two spouses. This is the patience, the trust, and ultimately courage which the bond of dream matrimony harbors and sanctifies through the daily renewal of ritual and gratitude.

It is no secret that these paths have been scarred by realities which no marriage of mine has ever endured. Each time they have diverged. Each time they have faltered on the premise that a rightful balance had been displaced by an unshared sacrifice or a sense of isolation. It's a stretch to suggest that anything extraordinary happened to ambush or sabotage the three vows I have taken. In each case the absorptions of work and self-pity sprung from solitary trials displaced the commitment to our common purpose. It is an unintended irony that: (a) over the last 24 years marriage is the steady operational state of my adulthood, and (b) none hold the lasting power of the original bargain -- this special attraction that marriage holds for me but not my actual marriages.

The cliches work from tired scripts of infidelity, the sudden loss of income, substance abuses, and wayward children. But these plot devices are not party to any regrets to find voice in my own failures. I don't stray. I'm gainfully (and gratefully) employed. More than one beer gives me a headache. My son is the kindest person I know. If the elites had a trace of his humility all stigmas about his cognitive challenges would disappate.

The one thing I can say about failed marriages is that ommissions count as much as commissions. It's one thing to resist temptation. It's quite another to embrace the fears and uncertainties of my dearest beloved.

I can only imagine that keeping a marriage afloat requires more than two souls that have lost their individual way with each other. And that sharing cannot be recovered or sustained without a higher purpose of family, community, and spiritual renewal.

KM is a Process and Not a Destination

I was visiting with Michael Mufson, a fellow Hampshire College grad who I haven't been in close touch with but always thought of as close-by in terms of cultural artifacts, life views, moral compass, etc. He mentioned how a former Hampshire Drama Professor (and marginal mentor) of his had thrown cold water on the idea that theater students receive any strong vocational backing for their tuition investments. Her point was a numbers game: how many theater majors become full-time actors. Now scale that argument to any creative profession in the age of cost-free content and we know where we stand. All the pithy patter in the world won't keep the lights on without the rationale that we leave more value than we take away.

On one hand it's an open-shut argument and it's a closed loop that predates starving artists. There are word people and numbers people and it's the liberal arts folks who put all their marbles on those graduate programs for crawling back into the job market. The engineers and the number-crunchers? They speak the language of cause-and-effect. Communications schmoomications -- the numbers tell the story.

But not all learning answers to the lessons of self preservation -- regardless of our personal economics. My son, for instance, just completed his second summer of theater camp with the US Performing Arts group out of San Francisco. He spent the entire year in between sessions reliving what a great first experience he had with an eye towards going back. The verdict? The second year eclipsed the first. It's not about boosting his professional prospects for acting. It's not even about the 5:1 girl to guy ratio, proving that the age of alpha males has passed for basking in a harem of girl power. It's not even about the breath of independence he takes in when needing to make spot decisions on his own.

The real power of his theatrical experience is about his belief in himself. His theater experience has combined with his own interests, passions and experiences to form his speaking voice, vocal tenor, dance steps, and non-verbal gestures -- that decoding instrument that gets left out of the receptor kits of so many Aspergers students. The point I was trying to make is that theatrical success is not limited to filling up auditoriums or credits in an actor's casting card. It's about finding the balance between a considered pose and an emotionally-charged script with the structure-resistant transitions we all make to adulthood.

In that version Michael Mufson gets to portray the brilliant director he had the confidence in becoming when I first met him. My son too will now have that chance in large part because of his theatrical training -- regardless of whether he ever "works" in the theater or not.

The same could be said for settling my piece with what Andy Partridge calls "rehearsing for the big, square world." I work as a word guy in an office park cube with the knowledge that my brain is calibrated to a song that few can hear and even fewer can monetize -- hence the cube! However for anyone who hates to search the pattern matching prowess of a solid KM guy delivers immediate payback. That benefit is part of a learning process -- not part of a final outcome, i.e. new customer -- I win! My new boss refers to KM as "a channel." This is enlightened leadership tag for functional support two or more steps removed from closing the next deal that we'll still be needing in the deal after that.

I've noticed that process-centric view of knowledge propagation in some recent SIKM discussions where practitioners were bolting their prior KM successes with more fashionable and established corridors of commerce. Carl Frapaolo and Dan Keldsen of Architected are now fusing their domain expertise with workshops targeted to innovation management. Kate Pugh is leveraging her expertise at knowledge harvesting to the legal community as a dispute mediator.

The central theme from all these examples is this -- us word people should take our natural talents to the next level. That's where theater majors, budding novelists, and knowledge expressionists of all abstractions and stripes can paint the big, square world into a corner we can all meet on.

KM is a Process and Not a Destination

I was visiting with Michael Mufson, a fellow Hampshire College grad who I haven't been in close touch with but always thought of as close-by in terms of cultural artifacts, life views, moral compass, etc. He mentioned how a former Hampshire Drama Professor (and marginal mentor) of his had thrown cold water on the idea that theater students receive any strong vocational backing for their tuition investments. Her point was a numbers game: how many theater majors become full-time actors. Now scale that argument to any creative profession in the age of cost-free content and we know where we stand. All the pithy patter in the world won't keep the lights on without the rationale that we leave more value than we take away.

On one hand it's an open-shut argument and it's a closed loop that predates starving artists. There are word people and numbers people and it's the liberal arts folks who put all their marbles on those graduate programs for crawling back into the job market. The engineers and the number-crunchers? They speak the language of cause-and-effect. Communications schmoomications -- the numbers tell the story.

But not all learning answers to the lessons of self preservation -- regardless of our personal economics. My son, for instance, just completed his second summer of theater camp with the US Performing Arts group out of San Francisco. He spent the entire year in between sessions reliving what a great first experience he had with an eye towards going back. The verdict? The second year eclipsed the first. It's not about boosting his professional prospects for acting. It's not even about the 5:1 girl to guy ratio, proving that the age of alpha males has passed for basking in a harem of girl power. It's not even about the breath of independence he takes in when needing to make spot decisions on his own.

The real power of his theatrical experience is about his belief in himself. His theater experience has combined with his own interests, passions and experiences to form his speaking voice, vocal tenor, dance steps, and non-verbal gestures -- that decoding instrument that gets left out of the receptor kits of so many Aspergers students. The point I was trying to make is that theatrical success is not limited to filling up auditoriums or credits in an actor's casting card. It's about finding the balance between a considered pose and an emotionally-charged script with the structure-resistant transitions we all make to adulthood.

In that version Michael Mufson gets to portray the brilliant director he had the confidence in becoming when I first met him. My son too will now have that chance in large part because of his theatrical training -- regardless of whether he ever "works" in the theater or not.

The same could be said for settling my piece with what Andy Partridge calls "rehearsing for the big, square world." I work as a word guy in an office park cube with the knowledge that my brain is calibrated to a song that few can hear and even fewer can monetize -- hence the cube! However for anyone who hates to search the pattern matching prowess of a solid KM guy delivers immediate payback. That benefit is part of a learning process -- not part of a final outcome, i.e. new customer -- I win! My new boss refers to KM as "a channel." This is enlightened leadership tag for functional support two or more steps removed from closing the next deal that we'll still be needing in the deal after that.

I've noticed that process-centric view of knowledge propagation in some recent SIKM discussions where practitioners were bolting their prior KM successes with more fashionable and established corridors of commerce. Carl Frapaolo and Dan Keldsen of Architected are now fusing their domain expertise with workshops targeted to innovation management. Kate Pugh is leveraging her expertise at knowledge harvesting to the legal community as a dispute mediator.

The central theme from all these examples is this -- us word people should take our natural talents to the next level. That's where theater majors, budding novelists, and knowledge expressionists of all abstractions and stripes can paint the big, square world into a corner we can all meet on.

The Splurge

Insofar as theirs is a generation that we've had trouble just saying no to, does it follow that the absurd degree to which we live beyond our means reflects not so much our rapacity, but our unwillingness to stem it in our children?

This thought byte comes from a recent email thread between me and some dearest cronies who besides a lifelong friendship have the common bond of belonging to no groups that would have us as members.

From a mass scale telescopic view I can see how we as a generation have utterly failed the next one in the same way we've tried so hard to succeed: we've done what our parents didn't dream possible. We've become friends of our children. The hierarchy has collapsed. No more man's-home-as-castle or spare-rods-and-spoiling-progeny. We monitor their Facebook sessions. Then we skulk because they haven't friended us.

Part of our buddy play may well be to buy-off our childrens' gratifications through gadgets and junkets. We had one year of "the surge" but are now going on 30 years of splurge -- soon be etched in history as the run-up to the end of self-correcting capitalism.

However, peel away the macro perspective and my own micro perspective is out of step in the big splurge picture. I have a non neuro-typical son with an Asperger's diagnosis who I have a difficult time saying no to. This is because he has such a difficult time asking for things. I know that because he longs to be on his own. Unlike his dad he neither:

1. has the precedent to show himself the door from childhood nor,
2. the cognitive workings to figure out what it means to survive in the world.

Still he gets a seat at the table as his IEP team assembles. He is lobbied intensively by his divorced parents who are on opposite sides of whether to continue speech and language sessions at the high school. In the end he casts the deciding vote. He sides with mom -- as does the under-resourced school. In fact the school and she are in lockstep as documented by her response to my concern about ending special needs services and the official Refusal of Services letter I received the next day:

MOTHER: "[B]ecause the meeting concluded with the determination that, at his age, life experience (such as volunteering, community activities, etc.) is more appropriate than an artificial setting for gaining social skills, there is nothing I am seeking from the school system."

SCHOOL: "It is likely he will derive more benefit from real life interactions, and their natural consequences, through real life interactions as opposed to instructional practice with contrived and artificial situations."

My son does not understand this is a false choice. He does not see the connection between learning pragmatics and his leading an independent life. He doesn't connect all his confusions and anxieties about nonverbal language, contextual cues, inferential logic to basic social problem-solving 101. That's the program where life creates the problems and the course to address them is through the special needs services required by the many high-functioning and non-verbal learning disabled children that came of age in his generation.

He is not proficient in using his hands or working in the physical environment. He is not naturally gifted at math or science or other disciplines where he can lead a hermetic existence. He needs to live within the world of human contact. He has to be taught to process and handle intricacies he neither understands nor sees as important to his own growth and discovery.

So now that I've established what he doesn't want -- artificial and contrived situations perhaps? Here's what he is getting: He's in his second year of algebra and he still can’t figure out how to convert hours worked into dollars earned. He completes workbook upon workbook in his solitary home school setting filled with multiple choice trivia that relies on his one indomitable scholastic survival skill -- rote memorization. It is a curriculum that does nothing to help him in his deficit areas. I draw that conclusion from a succession of outside speech and language evaluations. Ironically the last one was completed the same week the most recent therapy ended at the school.

It's equally frustrating that he really knows what he wants to communicate. It's the how part he needs help with. He's a terrific writer. He's written funny sketches. He enjoys acting, dance, and chorus. But when rehearsals end he's totally out of the loop. He didn't know what a text message was until one was demonstrated on an episode of Heroes we watched together. He looks at his watch incessantly without realizing the signal it gives to others. Does he even feel a tinge of doubt or sadness that at 16 he's told to watch his younger siblings but that he’s ill-equipped to babysit-for-hire? No, because then he might enroll in social problem-solving 101 -- probably retake it several times at least. No time for it? Too much homeschool memorization? Too bad.

His trouble with abstractions holds real -- not abstract -- consequences. It's hard to live up to one's potential when not even knowing what it means. He can't even define the term "potential." Never heard of it. He can pretend though. He feigns understanding. When I applauded him this past weekend for admitting to not “getting it” he said that he just has to wait for his birthday and then he’ll get “it” – whatever it is.

Someone much brighter than me once said it's not fair to ask a child with a disability what they want. My birthday wish for my son is that he can put aside his doubts and anger and embrace the support that will move him past the blank stares, IEP meetings, feckless administrators, and his parents' bickering. He is the most genuine and kind soul I've ever met. That would be true if I wasn't his parent.

The Splurge

Insofar as theirs is a generation that we've had trouble just saying no to, does it follow that the absurd degree to which we live beyond our means reflects not so much our rapacity, but our unwillingness to stem it in our children?

This thought byte comes from a recent email thread between me and some dearest cronies who besides a lifelong friendship have the common bond of belonging to no groups that would have us as members.

From a mass scale telescopic view I can see how we as a generation have utterly failed the next one in the same way we've tried so hard to succeed: we've done what our parents didn't dream possible. We've become friends of our children. The hierarchy has collapsed. No more man's-home-as-castle or spare-rods-and-spoiling-progeny. We monitor their Facebook sessions. Then we skulk because they haven't friended us.

Part of our buddy play may well be to buy-off our childrens' gratifications through gadgets and junkets. We had one year of "the surge" but are now going on 30 years of splurge -- soon be etched in history as the run-up to the end of self-correcting capitalism.

However, peel away the macro perspective and my own micro perspective is out of step in the big splurge picture. I have a non neuro-typical son with an Asperger's diagnosis who I have a difficult time saying no to. This is because he has such a difficult time asking for things. I know that because he longs to be on his own. Unlike his dad he neither:

1. has the precedent to show himself the door from childhood nor,
2. the cognitive workings to figure out what it means to survive in the world.

Still he gets a seat at the table as his IEP team assembles. He is lobbied intensively by his divorced parents who are on opposite sides of whether to continue speech and language sessions at the high school. In the end he casts the deciding vote. He sides with mom -- as does the under-resourced school. In fact the school and she are in lockstep as documented by her response to my concern about ending special needs services and the official Refusal of Services letter I received the next day:

MOTHER: "[B]ecause the meeting concluded with the determination that, at his age, life experience (such as volunteering, community activities, etc.) is more appropriate than an artificial setting for gaining social skills, there is nothing I am seeking from the school system."

SCHOOL: "It is likely he will derive more benefit from real life interactions, and their natural consequences, through real life interactions as opposed to instructional practice with contrived and artificial situations."

My son does not understand this is a false choice. He does not see the connection between learning pragmatics and his leading an independent life. He doesn't connect all his confusions and anxieties about nonverbal language, contextual cues, inferential logic to basic social problem-solving 101. That's the program where life creates the problems and the course to address them is through the special needs services required by the many high-functioning and non-verbal learning disabled children that came of age in his generation.

He is not proficient in using his hands or working in the physical environment. He is not naturally gifted at math or science or other disciplines where he can lead a hermetic existence. He needs to live within the world of human contact. He has to be taught to process and handle intricacies he neither understands nor sees as important to his own growth and discovery.

So now that I've established what he doesn't want -- artificial and contrived situations perhaps? Here's what he is getting: He's in his second year of algebra and he still can’t figure out how to convert hours worked into dollars earned. He completes workbook upon workbook in his solitary home school setting filled with multiple choice trivia that relies on his one indomitable scholastic survival skill -- rote memorization. It is a curriculum that does nothing to help him in his deficit areas. I draw that conclusion from a succession of outside speech and language evaluations. Ironically the last one was completed the same week the most recent therapy ended at the school.

It's equally frustrating that he really knows what he wants to communicate. It's the how part he needs help with. He's a terrific writer. He's written funny sketches. He enjoys acting, dance, and chorus. But when rehearsals end he's totally out of the loop. He didn't know what a text message was until one was demonstrated on an episode of Heroes we watched together. He looks at his watch incessantly without realizing the signal it gives to others. Does he even feel a tinge of doubt or sadness that at 16 he's told to watch his younger siblings but that he’s ill-equipped to babysit-for-hire? No, because then he might enroll in social problem-solving 101 -- probably retake it several times at least. No time for it? Too much homeschool memorization? Too bad.

His trouble with abstractions holds real -- not abstract -- consequences. It's hard to live up to one's potential when not even knowing what it means. He can't even define the term "potential." Never heard of it. He can pretend though. He feigns understanding. When I applauded him this past weekend for admitting to not “getting it” he said that he just has to wait for his birthday and then he’ll get “it” – whatever it is.

Someone much brighter than me once said it's not fair to ask a child with a disability what they want. My birthday wish for my son is that he can put aside his doubts and anger and embrace the support that will move him past the blank stares, IEP meetings, feckless administrators, and his parents' bickering. He is the most genuine and kind soul I've ever met. That would be true if I wasn't his parent.

Intergenerational Letter to My Nephew

Harry,

I'm writing a guide book about how to use information for some pretty common reasons: finding a person you need to meet, getting to know a subject pretty quickly (also known as appearing smart when we know next to nothing), and comparing different threats or opportunities so we can make an informed guess about what to do next. Everyone does this every day. But not too many folks talk about how they do it cause they're either too secretive, busy and distracted, or insecure that someone may think less of them because all they did was put a few keywords into Google.

There have also been quite a few books on the information that's out there -- even how to find it. But websites come and go. People can only retain so much and even less if they're not actively putting it to use. And that's the inspiration for the book. There aren't very many of them about how "to use" information.

When you decide what books to read what's your main source of inspiration? You already know the author? Someone in school recommends it? You find out something about it on the web? I'm curious.

One of the things that used to set me off when I was your age was when someone who's now my age would talk about how bad things are now and how great they used to be. The word for this is nostalgia. It sounds like a category you click on when you're bidding on eBay for a distant board game you used to play as a kid. Certainly you came upon this word in a similar way I did -- through sports memorabilia -- baseball cards in particular. What it really is, Harry, is an illness. It actually comes from homesick pioneers who miss the stability and comfort of the towns and lands they left to go settle somewhere new.

Anyway I don't believe that things were so great when your dad and I were growing up. I mean that in terms of the house we grew up in but I also mean that in terms of the times we grew up in too. Take music for instance. The radio had a few stations that would play the same 6 songs over and over until you wanted to puke all over your Keds or Buster Browns. Not pretty and very repetitious. Take movies. We actually thought it was a big deal when major movie releases made their way to TV and we got to watch half of it (minus the scenes that got canned by the network) before we had to go to bed. I guess you could say we were easily entertained.

The one good thing about this was that we had to entertain ourselves a good deal of the time. Our days were not programmed so that every hour got filled with some place we needed to be. It forced us to invent games. Just ask your dad. We devised many novel torturing rituals. The ones I remember were about who could watch what show and when. What if we were in a TV trance and had to change the channel? We had to get up. The idea of TIVO or DVRs were too remote for us to imagine, even we geeks of the tall, strong radar antennas.

It also forced us to master the fine art of "hanging out." To the passing stranger hanging out always looked like nothing was going on. It was just a flock of teenagers outside some stores at the Whitman Mall or some fast food place on Route 110. But we were actually sharing in and learning from each other's pet peeves, crushes, tyrannical stepparents, and forces of nature we had to overcome (bad teachers, menacing bullies, girls out of our league, etc.) Best of all it was up to us to do the overcoming. Our parents weren't that interested. I mean they cared about our grades and who we brought home with us. Families are families and some things never change. But in those days parents sat with parents and kids sat at the kids table. We loved each other but ... If you asked your friend who their other buddies were and he said his mom or dad? Not much chance we'd be hanging with that bud again soon.

That reminds me. Your aunt had a job interview recently at her University where she would be working with undergrads instead of the graduate students she works with now. The hiring manager told her that there was now a special office set up to work with Millennials and their parents. Did you know you were a Millennial? That's because your generation has been so scheduled that when they hit an unclaimed time slot they panic. They don't know where to go next. My theory is that their parents (people like me and your dad) have been so involved with their kids that your generation never learned how to properly hang out. There are some real upsides to being ignored by your parents. Some are obvious:

* Make your own fun
* Not have to be anywhere anytime soon
* Get away with murder

It's easy to make fun of my generation and I'll do everything in my powers of memory to aid in the pile-on effort. We were so easily impressed that a camera where a picture appeared 60 seconds after snapping it was "revolutionary" -- even if there was nothing else you could do to it. "Delete" meant you threw the Polaroid in the garbage. "Options" meant that you could go to Beefsteak Charlies salad bar and pop all the shrimp you could stand. This is actually a true Solomon story.

Nowadays you wip out your iPhone and you get Zagat ratings for all the noveau Thai restaurants within a 4 block region of the street your GPS is directing you to turn on. Terms like ADD, Asperger's, and lactose intolerance had not been invented. The working definition for hyper disorder was troublemaker and kids were treated with disdain instead of meds. Kids with dormant peanut allergies scarfed their PB&Js and then went into shock. We didn't know why. We didn't wear seat belts. Some of us passengers didn't wear seats. How pathetic is that? Parents tried to quit but most of them kept on smoking. Boom boxes ruled the beach. Carrying them around built upper body mass -- those suckers took 12 DD batteries. Kids only stayed after school when they were bad. Daycare was called going to grandma's house. Those were the good old days.

But here's the thing, Harry. Along with these pathetic older ways came some real benefits from parents letting kids venture out on their own. The biggest pay-off I think was in hanging out and grasping how other people operate in a real, immediate way -- how they flinch, rub their eye sockets, tense their shoulders, laugh at funny things, laugh at serious things. Basically everything they communicate without actually talking. Texting was not an option back then and doesn't come into play. However the amount of looking down everyone does with their own devices causes a whole host of issues (in addition to traffic accidents). Questions like where am I and what's going on around me are having less and less meaning for people when that question relates to a virtual place and a social network like Facebook. It used to mean a street corner, phone booth, or some other hangout that's no longer a popular meeting place.

I notice this with Jeremiah and his Asperger's, Harry. He has a hard time picking up on nonverbal cues. He needs to be taught what people say with their eyes and bodies because he doesn't pick up on it. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that we now have names for things that need to be diagnosed and treated. This is especially true as the lines between being gifted and being handicapped start to blurr. The same mind can be both brilliant and feeble. It's becoming more common to recognize honor students with special needs. It's not like the world is divided between bright and stupid like we were taught to believe.

All I'm saying is that sometimes us adults intervene a bit much. Instead of letting a kid navigate the lunch room we create special therapies that role play around lunch room simulations. It makes the most basic social setting into a laboratory. Too much fuss.

The other benefit of growing up in the older days is a little harder to describe. It's not so much relating to others as it is about dealing with uncertainty. We as parents have done everything possible to eliminate this from your life, Harry. Our intentions are good and pure. That doesn't mean we really thought through all the other nonsense baggage that comes with it. We want to protect you from illness. We want to expose you to great ideas. Nothing new about that. Some day if you want your own, you too will want the best for your kids.

The difference between now and then is that we never knew what was coming next. It wasn't programmed. It wasn't scripted. A lot of it was improvised or made up as we went along. It's hard for parents to admit this anymore. But sometimes the fixes that kids find themselves in are far better teachers than any classes, books or games.

I remember shoplifting a bunch of records from a department store -- that's kind of like Wal-Mart but with more formal displays of the merchandise, not just some towering piles of cartons. It was so out of the question that an honors student like me would try to steal stuff from a store that when the security guard called my house, our stepfather hung up the phone on him. He actually thought it was a crank phone call. When I was in high school a group of us would pile into a Volkswagen Van and take far off field trips to look at colleges without credit cards or cell phones or the slightest idea of where we'd end up.

I'm not saying that flirting with danger builds character or that you need to pull senseless, stupid stunts to learn right from wrong. I'm just saying that direct experience is often more instructive than taking someone else's word for things. I think we as parents discourage our children from doing things on their own because we want to protect you. When the danger outweighs the adventure of it that's a smart move. But when the danger is that we're going to freak out just because you're on your own and learning how to work things out without us? That's not right. It's as if some parents have completely forgotten the greatest certainty of all -- not just what it was like growing up but just how hard that is -- even for someone as smart, mindful, and adjusted as you, Harry.

And there's plenty of adjusting to be done. You are entering a world of knowing every genetic twist of fate from cancer risks, to baldness, to the traits we pass down. I don't find that kind of knowledge to be liberating. Having foresight actually makes me feel less in control of something I never expected to control in the first place. Stumbling through the blindness of uncertainty can be a blessing. Just ask someone older than you.

So hindsight is 20:20. Teddy Ballgame's is 20:10. Either way the best way to deal with uncertainty is to get some experience figuring out how to make things work for you. Thanks for indulging me in a look back. Time to start looking forward to your Torah reading.

Lotsa love,

Uncle Marc

Intergenerational Letter to My Nephew

Harry,

I'm writing a guide book about how to use information for some pretty common reasons: finding a person you need to meet, getting to know a subject pretty quickly (also known as appearing smart when we know next to nothing), and comparing different threats or opportunities so we can make an informed guess about what to do next. Everyone does this every day. But not too many folks talk about how they do it cause they're either too secretive, busy and distracted, or insecure that someone may think less of them because all they did was put a few keywords into Google.

There have also been quite a few books on the information that's out there -- even how to find it. But websites come and go. People can only retain so much and even less if they're not actively putting it to use. And that's the inspiration for the book. There aren't very many of them about how "to use" information.

When you decide what books to read what's your main source of inspiration? You already know the author? Someone in school recommends it? You find out something about it on the web? I'm curious.

One of the things that used to set me off when I was your age was when someone who's now my age would talk about how bad things are now and how great they used to be. The word for this is nostalgia. It sounds like a category you click on when you're bidding on eBay for a distant board game you used to play as a kid. Certainly you came upon this word in a similar way I did -- through sports memorabilia -- baseball cards in particular. What it really is, Harry, is an illness. It actually comes from homesick pioneers who miss the stability and comfort of the towns and lands they left to go settle somewhere new.

Anyway I don't believe that things were so great when your dad and I were growing up. I mean that in terms of the house we grew up in but I also mean that in terms of the times we grew up in too. Take music for instance. The radio had a few stations that would play the same 6 songs over and over until you wanted to puke all over your Keds or Buster Browns. Not pretty and very repetitious. Take movies. We actually thought it was a big deal when major movie releases made their way to TV and we got to watch half of it (minus the scenes that got canned by the network) before we had to go to bed. I guess you could say we were easily entertained.

The one good thing about this was that we had to entertain ourselves a good deal of the time. Our days were not programmed so that every hour got filled with some place we needed to be. It forced us to invent games. Just ask your dad. We devised many novel torturing rituals. The ones I remember were about who could watch what show and when. What if we were in a TV trance and had to change the channel? We had to get up. The idea of TIVO or DVRs were too remote for us to imagine, even we geeks of the tall, strong radar antennas.

It also forced us to master the fine art of "hanging out." To the passing stranger hanging out always looked like nothing was going on. It was just a flock of teenagers outside some stores at the Whitman Mall or some fast food place on Route 110. But we were actually sharing in and learning from each other's pet peeves, crushes, tyrannical stepparents, and forces of nature we had to overcome (bad teachers, menacing bullies, girls out of our league, etc.) Best of all it was up to us to do the overcoming. Our parents weren't that interested. I mean they cared about our grades and who we brought home with us. Families are families and some things never change. But in those days parents sat with parents and kids sat at the kids table. We loved each other but ... If you asked your friend who their other buddies were and he said his mom or dad? Not much chance we'd be hanging with that bud again soon.

That reminds me. Your aunt had a job interview recently at her University where she would be working with undergrads instead of the graduate students she works with now. The hiring manager told her that there was now a special office set up to work with Millennials and their parents. Did you know you were a Millennial? That's because your generation has been so scheduled that when they hit an unclaimed time slot they panic. They don't know where to go next. My theory is that their parents (people like me and your dad) have been so involved with their kids that your generation never learned how to properly hang out. There are some real upsides to being ignored by your parents. Some are obvious:

* Make your own fun
* Not have to be anywhere anytime soon
* Get away with murder

It's easy to make fun of my generation and I'll do everything in my powers of memory to aid in the pile-on effort. We were so easily impressed that a camera where a picture appeared 60 seconds after snapping it was "revolutionary" -- even if there was nothing else you could do to it. "Delete" meant you threw the Polaroid in the garbage. "Options" meant that you could go to Beefsteak Charlies salad bar and pop all the shrimp you could stand. This is actually a true Solomon story.

Nowadays you wip out your iPhone and you get Zagat ratings for all the noveau Thai restaurants within a 4 block region of the street your GPS is directing you to turn on. Terms like ADD, Asperger's, and lactose intolerance had not been invented. The working definition for hyper disorder was troublemaker and kids were treated with disdain instead of meds. Kids with dormant peanut allergies scarfed their PB&Js and then went into shock. We didn't know why. We didn't wear seat belts. Some of us passengers didn't wear seats. How pathetic is that? Parents tried to quit but most of them kept on smoking. Boom boxes ruled the beach. Carrying them around built upper body mass -- those suckers took 12 DD batteries. Kids only stayed after school when they were bad. Daycare was called going to grandma's house. Those were the good old days.

But here's the thing, Harry. Along with these pathetic older ways came some real benefits from parents letting kids venture out on their own. The biggest pay-off I think was in hanging out and grasping how other people operate in a real, immediate way -- how they flinch, rub their eye sockets, tense their shoulders, laugh at funny things, laugh at serious things. Basically everything they communicate without actually talking. Texting was not an option back then and doesn't come into play. However the amount of looking down everyone does with their own devices causes a whole host of issues (in addition to traffic accidents). Questions like where am I and what's going on around me are having less and less meaning for people when that question relates to a virtual place and a social network like Facebook. It used to mean a street corner, phone booth, or some other hangout that's no longer a popular meeting place.

I notice this with Jeremiah and his Asperger's, Harry. He has a hard time picking up on nonverbal cues. He needs to be taught what people say with their eyes and bodies because he doesn't pick up on it. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that we now have names for things that need to be diagnosed and treated. This is especially true as the lines between being gifted and being handicapped start to blurr. The same mind can be both brilliant and feeble. It's becoming more common to recognize honor students with special needs. It's not like the world is divided between bright and stupid like we were taught to believe.

All I'm saying is that sometimes us adults intervene a bit much. Instead of letting a kid navigate the lunch room we create special therapies that role play around lunch room simulations. It makes the most basic social setting into a laboratory. Too much fuss.

The other benefit of growing up in the older days is a little harder to describe. It's not so much relating to others as it is about dealing with uncertainty. We as parents have done everything possible to eliminate this from your life, Harry. Our intentions are good and pure. That doesn't mean we really thought through all the other nonsense baggage that comes with it. We want to protect you from illness. We want to expose you to great ideas. Nothing new about that. Some day if you want your own, you too will want the best for your kids.

The difference between now and then is that we never knew what was coming next. It wasn't programmed. It wasn't scripted. A lot of it was improvised or made up as we went along. It's hard for parents to admit this anymore. But sometimes the fixes that kids find themselves in are far better teachers than any classes, books or games.

I remember shoplifting a bunch of records from a department store -- that's kind of like Wal-Mart but with more formal displays of the merchandise, not just some towering piles of cartons. It was so out of the question that an honors student like me would try to steal stuff from a store that when the security guard called my house, our stepfather hung up the phone on him. He actually thought it was a crank phone call. When I was in high school a group of us would pile into a Volkswagen Van and take far off field trips to look at colleges without credit cards or cell phones or the slightest idea of where we'd end up.

I'm not saying that flirting with danger builds character or that you need to pull senseless, stupid stunts to learn right from wrong. I'm just saying that direct experience is often more instructive than taking someone else's word for things. I think we as parents discourage our children from doing things on their own because we want to protect you. When the danger outweighs the adventure of it that's a smart move. But when the danger is that we're going to freak out just because you're on your own and learning how to work things out without us? That's not right. It's as if some parents have completely forgotten the greatest certainty of all -- not just what it was like growing up but just how hard that is -- even for someone as smart, mindful, and adjusted as you, Harry.

And there's plenty of adjusting to be done. You are entering a world of knowing every genetic twist of fate from cancer risks, to baldness, to the traits we pass down. I don't find that kind of knowledge to be liberating. Having foresight actually makes me feel less in control of something I never expected to control in the first place. Stumbling through the blindness of uncertainty can be a blessing. Just ask someone older than you.

So hindsight is 20:20. Teddy Ballgame's is 20:10. Either way the best way to deal with uncertainty is to get some experience figuring out how to make things work for you. Thanks for indulging me in a look back. Time to start looking forward to your Torah reading.

Lotsa love,

Uncle Marc