Daddy’s Little Girl

On the post about my mother’s happiness, one of the comments got me thinking. Why don’t I write about my dad? Why do I only analyze my mother? The truth is, I’ve only lately begun to analyze my father as well.

For much of my life, I’ve been daddy’s little girl. I never questioned his love for me the way I did my mother’s. My mother was moody, unpredictable, easily angered. On the other hand, my father was stable, calm, and rational. His love for me was always transparently unconditional. As they have aged, and since I’ve become an adult and a mother, those labels have shifted, at least from my point of view. For example my mother now is pretty predictable and doesn’t get angry at me much anymore (she still gets angry at my dad a lot, though). On the other hand, my dad is growing more cantankerous as he gets older.

It’s hard to read my dad. We don’t talk. I think that’s the saddest thing about our relationship. Oh, we talk about very shallow things: how is work? how are the kids? how are your finances? But we don’t actually have conversations. I am not exactly sure why, because he converses just fine with friends and coworkers and even my cousins. When my cousin (around my age) moved here from Taiwan during college, she lived with us for a few months before finding her own apartment. She and my dad talked all the time about her day, about her friends, about her classes, while I writhed with jealousy.

When I try to talk to him, the conversation dies before it even begins. He’s just not very receptive. Also, I have no clue what to talk about that would hold his interest. Sometimes he will leave the room while I am talking. I always thought it was because he was absent minded. Now, I don’t know.

Despite us not really talking, he seems to know me very well. There have been rare moments when he catches a snippet of conversation between me and my mother, and says something that tells me that he knows exactly who I am and what drives me. Or maybe it is because he knows himself. A few years ago, I made everyone in my family take one of those personality tests. It was a lengthy one with more than 100 questions. My dad and I got exactly the same score in every section. It was eye-opening, because I always thought I was more like my mother. (Interestingly, AJ and my mom got very similar scores. So…I guess I married my mother?)

This past New Year’s Eve, AJ and I went to a Colombian party. One of our friends, Eduardo, brought his college-aged children to the party. At one point during the night, I heard loud laughter, and turned around to see Eduardo, his son and daughter, and a few other people laughing together. Eduardo’s daughter was laughing so hard that she was leaning against her father and clutching his arm. I couldn’t stop staring, I was so in awe. I could never in a million years picture my father and I in such a situation. Not so much the touching, because we’re Asian, but just being in a social setting and laughing so hard together.

I have no conclusion because I’ve only just started thinking about the relationship between my dad and I. Perhaps I’ll write more about it if I figure it out.

End of a looong week

It’s been a long week. I’m beat! Gege started his new school this week, and I had the run-in with the principal of Gege’s old preschool, work has been crazy busy… I need a break!

Thanks for everyone’s responses to my last post. I took everyone’s advice into consideration and sent the email. The version I sent was stripped of emotion and only talked about how I had not given her permission to speak to anyone about my son’s issues, that I would have preferred that she talk to me first, and that we, along with Gege’s current special ed teacher, could have met with the child care teacher together as a team. I left in the part about how Gege’s aggression didn’t appear until he attended her school, but took out the part about me being angry. I put my phone number in the email and cc’ed the superintendent, the special ed director, and two of the special ed coordinators. If I’d had Gege’s current special ed teacher’s email address, I would have cc’ed her as well.

Later I talked to a friend who is a principal in a different district, and she said that actually, the principal did have the right to talk to another person within the district about a child’s issues if she felt it was relevant to that person’s job, but conceded that what happened was in very poor taste. Oh well, we shall see what the response is. None so far – they probably need to get together to meet and discuss what to say to me.

Yesterday was Gege’s first day at the after school care. I called the child care leader in the morning, and she knew exactly who I was and was overly enthusiastic. She also claimed that the principal didn’t get a chance to tell her too much about Gege. Right.

Then later, when I was picking him up, she said he had an OK first day, but as I was walking out, she added, “And you might want to tell him that we don’t hit teachers or other children.”

WTF? He hasn’t done that in AGES. And when he used to do it, it was because he was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do. We’ve been working intensely on this and he hasn’t resorted to hitting in a long time. As far as I can tell, the child care center just lets the kids play the whole time and don’t force the kids to participate in activities. What would be the reason for Gege to hit anyone? I should have turned around and asked her what she meant, but Gege was really antsy and wanted to leave. So I’ll ask her today.

This has all left a bad taste in my mouth regarding the after school program. AJ has even suggested we hire an after-school nanny instead.

This morning, Gege’s special ed teacher was also surprised that the child care leader claimed that he hit someone, and said she would talk to her. It really should have been her talking to the child care leader to begin with – the principal of the other school didn’t need to stick her fat ass in. The other child in Gege’s class was exactly the same way when he first started at the after school program, so the teacher gave the child care staff a list of “if he does this, then do this” suggestions, and they were fine and he was fine. She’ll provide them a similar list for Gege, so we’ll see how it goes.

What. The. Fuck.

Gege started his new school yesterday, and so far things have been good. The teacher reported that he did show some defiance a few times, but in the end she was able to get him to cooperate. So far he seems to like all the teachers and students in the class, and they in turn all seem to like him. I really hope this works out for him. I was relieved to hear he isn’t the “worst” in the class. He’s always been the most difficult child in every class he’s been in, so it’s nice to hear that that for once he isn’t.

Because kindergarten ends so early, we decided to send him to the on-site after school child care. It’s inexpensive and convenient. Initially I was hesitant, because I wasn’t sure how he would handle it, but I found out that one of his classmates in the behavioral program also goes to the after school care. If he can handle it, then Gege can too. I went to look at it today, and he’ll start going there after school tomorrow.

I would like to write more about Gege’s class and how much I like his teacher so far, but I really need to get something off my chest. This will make more sense if you read the last couple of posts, particularly this one.

Today I got a phone call from the principal at Amazing Preschool. Apparently she also runs the after school programs for all the schools in the district. She started telling me about how she had a talk with the after school child care leader at Gege’s new school about Gege’s “issues” – and I had to cut her off. First of all, I was immediately furious, and secondly, I was in the middle of a doctor’s appointment. I told her to call me back.

A couple of hours later, I got a voice message from her where she went on at some length. I couldn’t listen to the whole thing. I was beyond livid. Where the fuck does she get off? Her whole tone was sugary sweet, like she’s just trying to do her best to help Gege. She’s not.

So I drafted a letter to her, but I don’t know if I should send it. Would you?

C_____,

I got your message.

I want to make it very clear that Gege’s aggressiveness did not appear until he attended Amazing*, and that after he went to Oak Hills, almost all the aggressive behaviors went away.

I strongly believe that, because of the way Gege left Matador Elementary, the staff at Amazing were predisposed to think of Gege as a “problem child” and treated him accordingly – instead of treating him like they would any other child.

I understand that the staff at Amazing does not have experience with special needs children, but I also know that NO OTHER school has had such a hard time with him. Amazing is the ONLY school that Gege has attended where I do not feel he was treated with love and respect. I still feel very angry about this.

I did not appreciate how you went about talking to the child care leader about Gege. You have not seen him for 2 months, you don’t know what progress he’s made, you don’t know anything about him. We have seen how the practice of “warning” teachers before meeting a child doesn’t work. Yet it is happening again, and it’s worse this time, because you have no clue what Gege is like now. Have you talked to Gege’s teachers at Oak Hills? Have you talked to his teacher in the special ed program?

One of Gege’s classmates in the special ed program attends after school care as well. I went to see it today, and from what I can tell, that boy is not treated any differently by the staff at the child care center. There is no need for Gege to be treated differently, either.

An

* all names have been changed

This is a woman who has had very little interaction with Gege. And I highly doubt that she bothered to talk to his current special ed teacher, or the district special ed coordinator, or even read his IEP.

I understand that she is concerned about Gege hitting or kicking the other students. I get that. I don’t want my son to hurt other kids either. That’s why we have been working on this with him, that’s why his teachers at Oak Hills worked with him on this, that’s why he’s now in a special program for kids with behavioral issues. I feel like asking if she also had “concerns” when the other kid, Gege’s classmate in the program, started going to after school care. Somehow, I don’t think so.

And speaking of how the teachers at Matador “warned” Amazing Preschool about Gege before he went there… that really still pisses me off. These people knew Gege for 5 days. And I fucking let them talk me into seeing Gege as a problem kid. I let them intimidate me into pulling Gege out of kindergarten because I thought they knew what the fuck they were doing. I thought they knew better than me.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I talked to the director of Gege’s old preschool. She told me that she was so relieved that Gege is back in kindergarten. I knew she didn’t think putting him back in preschool was a good idea. She also told me that her friend, who is a special ed teacher at one of the schools in our district, is ashamed of how the school district handled the whole thing. When I look back, I am ashamed of myself for not sticking up for Gege more.

Soon after Gege started at Oak Hills, I realized Gege was going to be fine. Seriously, back when he was at Amazing, in my darkest hours I had visions of Gege being like my brother Chris. But now I see how wrong I was. He’s improved so much and is talking so much now. When I see the kids in his special program, they are all like him. They all have problems with self-regulation. And from what the special ed coordinator told me, they’ve all come a long way. I have hope for Gege.

IEP Update, Part 2 of 2

Continued from Part 1. The IEP meeting was scheduled for mid-December. I was expecting it to take half an hour like the ones in the Bay area, but I ended up being in there for 2 hours and it made me very, very happy that we moved to this school district.

The attendees were: Gege’s speech therapist, an occupational therapist, the school psychologist, a special education teacher, a general ed teacher, and the special ed coordinator. All except the general ed teacher and the coordinator had evaluated Gege, both by observing him in his class at Amazing Preschool, and by taking him out for one-on-one evaluations. Each of the evaluators discussed what they wrote on their reports. This took up most of the 2 hours. The condensed version:

• He has autistic-like behaviors, but they are not consistent and seem to be under his control. They do not feel Gege is autistic because if he were, he would not be able to control it and they would occur all the time.
• Gege has social-emotional issues that could be due to living in an orphanage during his first year of life.
• His newly acquired aggressive behavior is preventing additional development.
• He does seem to have some sensory issues.

Towards the end, the school psychologist mentioned that Gege “seems to have made himself OK with being alone.” I almost started crying at that point, because I knew what she meant. In fact, I was pushing hard against the tears the whole time, and was mostly successful. But basically, Gege can be quite social, and loves other kids, but they tend to reject him because they can’t understand what he is saying. Eventually, he stops trying to talk to them and will just go off and play by himself, but in a way like he doesn’t care and it is his choice to play alone.

After that, the coordinator discussed their recommendations and what Gege qualifies for. Firstly, they felt he did not belong in pre-K where he is almost 1.5 years older than everyone else. Instead, the team recommended that he return to kindergarten, but in a special ed program. There are two programs that they think he qualifies for: one for kids with speech/language delay, and one for kids with behavioral issues. Unfortunately, there isn’t a program that does both. The team recommended the latter program, because they feel that his behavioral issues are getting in the way of his speech and language development. In the end, this is what we as a team agreed to:

• Speech therapy will increase from 60 to 90 minutes per week
• Gege will get an OT consultation
• We will enroll him in the program for students with behavioral issues. This is a program where there is one teacher assigned per kid, and there is currently only 4 kids. The program is for K-2 and at this time Gege will be the only kindergartner. The others are 1st and 2nd graders. The idea is to eventually move the kids to general ed classes. They will assign Gege to one of the general ed kindergarten classes, and he’ll spend an increasingly longer time each week with that class (the special ed teacher assigned to him will be with him the whole time).
• We will apply for him to get ISES (Intensive Social-Emotional Services) – the coordinator was confident that Gege will be accepted. This is a therapist who meets with the children one-on-one several times a week.

All of the above will be provided by the district (i.e., free). At the time, I felt relieved and that the behavioral program was the best thing for him. But that was in mid-December, and since then the aggressiveness has decreased dramatically. I have not heard him say “shut up” or “stupid” in a long time and his teachers have not reported it either. Ever since we came back from holiday break, his teacher has been telling me how well he has been doing and what an improvement he’s made.

I started to feel doubts about sending him to a behavioral program and that maybe he should be going to the program for kids with speech and language delay. I mean, the behavior is probably due to frustration at not being able to communicate. So why not work on that, instead? And he’s been moved around so much in the last few months…what if we send him to the behavioral program, realize it’s not right for him, and then have to move him AGAIN?

So I went to Newton Preschool and talked to the director, because she knows Gege really well, and this is her field of expertise. She said that it might be good to send him to the behavioral program for now, where they can teach him ways to cope with his frustration rather than lashing out, and have him finish out the kindergarten year there, which is still a good 5 months of being in one place. And then for 1st grade, maybe he can move over to the speech and language program. In the meantime, he will still be getting speech therapy 3 times a week. Talking to her made me feel a lot better.

So Gege is scheduled to start the new program next Tuesday, after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

IEP Update, Part 1 of 2

OK, I’ve been putting it off long enough. I have a tendency, when I am stressed about something, to try to pretend it doesn’t exist. Plus, I am lazy. But I wanted to talk through what is going on, and maybe it will help me feel better.

First, some history:

• Age 2: During Gege’s evaluation at the regional center, it was determined that he needed speech therapy, occupational therapy, and early intervention classes. He made a lot of progress during this time.
• Age 3: Services switched to the school district in the Bay area where we lived. Their evaluation determined that Gege is not autistic, does not need OT, but still needed speech therapy, and that he only has speech delay. Progress was slow, I think because his speech therapist was awful. We supplemented with private therapy for a while, but it got expensive.
• Age 4 1/2: We moved down to southern California, and the school district here basically just used the IEP from the Bay area. I was too stupid to know I could request a new assessment. During this time, he attended Newton Preschool (I’m using fake names for all the schools) , a private preschool that really cared about him and tried to do their best to help his development.
• September 2011 (age 5): Gege started kindergarten at Matador Elementary. After 5 days, the school basically said that while Gege was academically ready, he was not emotionally mature enough for kindergarten. They said it was our choice whether or not to leave him there, but we could tell that it wasn’t right for him. Unfortunately, at the time, we didn’t know what would be right for him, so we sent him back to preschool. At this time, the director at Newton Preschool recommended that we request a new assessment, so we did.
• October-November 2011: Gege went to Amazing Preschool, which was affiliated with the school district and shared a campus with the special education department. I thought that would help him, but it didn’t. The director/teachers were useless and were predisposed to seeing him as a problem child because of him being “kicked out”of kindergarten, and treated him accordingly. It still angers me when I think about him being there for 2 months. Didi stayed at Newton during this time.
• December 2011: We switched Gege to Oak Hills, a private preschool. By the end of Day 1 we could tell that it was a VASTLY better place for Gege and made plans to switch Didi over as well. We loved Newton Preschool, but it was a pain taking them to two different schools, and Oak Hills is a lot closer to our new house. Gege’s new teacher is awesome and spends a lot of time during pick-up telling us about his day and what she observed about him, and giving us advice on how to handle his behavior. Both boys love the new school.

I need to add that while at Amazing Preschool, Gege developed a lot of negative, aggressive behaviors. I don’t know why, perhaps he was frustrated at the way he was being treated, or frustrated with not being able to communicate in general. These included:

• Throwing/breaking toys
• Hitting the other kids, throwing toys at other kids
• Kicking the teachers – he did this 3-4 times towards the end of his stay at Amazing Preschool. Each time, I was asked to pick him up, which I felt reinforced the behavior.
• Yelling/Tantrums
• General disobedience/rebelliousness
• Saying “shut up” and “stupid”

Each time Amazing Preschool reported something to us, we would talk to Gege about it, but it continued. The behavior was carrying over at home as well. When I told the director at Newton, she was surprised because while he did sometimes throw tantrums while he was at her school, he was never aggressive. So it was definitely something about the environment at Amazing Preschool. After he started at Oak Hills, he tried kicking the teacher once, got reprimanded (and didn’t get sent home), and never did it again. The other behaviors also slowly began to decrease.

Damn this is getting long. To be continued tomorrow…

Office Space

Our current office situation is totally not working out. AJ and I are sharing a very small space using non-matching Ikea desks, as shown below.

I'm using the corner desk, AJ's using the white one.

As you can see, there is no drawer storage. So everything that one would normally throw into drawers is currently in boxes in the closet. It’s very inconvenient.

I originally designed our office space to look like this:

But I didn’t like how the desk is right up against the closet opening. So I tried to come up with alternate designs, but since the room has to also function as a guest room, this is really the only configuration possible. And then it hit me – close up part of the closet opening, so the desk can extend to the wall!

Although, I have no clue how difficult or expensive it would be to do that.

Here is the new design:

My Google Sketchup skillz have greatly improved.

Since I now sit in the room where I was designing this, I was able to take accurate measurements of everything this time. AJ (who insists that I come up with another fake name because “AJ” makes him picture a white dude with dreadlocks and low hanging pants) doesn’t like the overhead cabinets because it makes the small room look even smaller, but I need to have lots of storage for all our office supplies. If I can get all the office-y stuff out of the closet, then I can use that closet purely for sewing (screw the guests needing to hang up their clothes).

So I closed up about 24″ from the width of the closet opening so the desk can sit against the new wall. I put a built-in desk for sewing and shelves in the closet. The sliding closet doors would be replaced by a pocket door or curtain panels.

Sigh…I love it.

Anyone have any idea how much something like this costs?

My mother’s happiness

It is so hard for me to understand why my mother, a college-educated person, can believe the things that she does. Recently she sent me an email linking to an obviously fake article about a work-at-home opportunity that would pay you up to $10,000 a month. She tried to sign up for it, but luckily the website wasn’t working. How can she believe that someone would really pay her $10,000 a month for very little work?

It is like how she believes that there is a miracle cure for my brother. If only she would use the time she spends looking for this “miracle cure” in a more constructive manner.

The other day I was talking to a friend about my worries about Gege regarding his developmental delays, and how difficult it is dealing with the school district. She asked, “Why don’t you ask your mother? She has an autistic son and has had to deal with this stuff. She’d be the best person to tell you what to do.”

So why don’t I? Because when I tell her things about Gege and my worries and fears for him, she sighs and says mournfully, “If only you were a believer, you could pray for him.”

Yeah, that’s why I don’t ask my mother for advice. And it is no use turning things around on her. Like, “so why isn’t Christopher normal now, if you’re such a believer?” I used to do this in my teens and 20s. Her answer, every time: “Because your/your father’s disbelief ruined the cure.”

Sometimes when talking to my mother, she completely misunderstands what we say. AJ says it is because she is a “lazy listener.” For example, let’s just say she and I were talking about the weather, and I said something like, “It’s so nice when it’s sunny.” She’d go, “Yeah, I like fruit, too.” Or something equally random. This past weekend it happened again. When we called her out on it, she started to blame her bad English, but I said, “It’s not your English, Mom, because you understood every word when we said it again.” So then she started to blame her schooling in Taiwan, and how it caused her brain functions to be faulty. I said, “It can’t be the school system in Taiwan either, because then every single person in Taiwan would have this problem and I don’t think that is the case.” Without acting as if she heard me, she continued to blame the school system in Taiwan for all her failures in life. At least it was better than when she blames my grandmother for everything.

This is basically my mom’s biggest shortcoming in a nutshell: Everything happens to her. She blames everyone and everything outside of herself for her problems, and she wants someone or something outside of herself to fix it. It is not something I can change in her but it is something I try to recognize and prevent in myself.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother is great in a lot of ways: she is super kind, she can be really funny, and she is incredibly supportive. This is the one thing that really bothers me because I feel it prevents her from enjoying life. I feel like I spend a lot of brain power thinking about my mom and her happiness. I wish that alone would make her happy.

The bookshelves are up!

The new house is almost ready for our holiday guests (who arrive in 2 days)! I finally got all the bookcases up and all my books out of boxes. See?

Ignore the mess on the right bottom part.

The baskets hide my embarrassing books. No, not porn, not cheesy Harlequins, but…every Christopher Pike book ever published. Even the out of print ones. Yeah, you don’t have to say anything.

So, because plantation shutters took up almost our entire budget for remodelling, we decided to get Ikea bookcases instead of custom built-ins. AJ consoled me by saying that it would be temporary…as in, maybe 3-4 years? And then I can get built-ins.

I haven’t seen the majority of these books since we moved from Pasadena 4 years ago. They look so enticing, but I need to stay focused on getting the house ready for our guests.

Oh and I made all 9 stockings, aren’t those pretty? They were actually easy to make. I forced myself to finish them before the move because I knew I wouldn’t have time after.

In other news, I went to Gege’s IEP meeting last week. There’s a lot I want to say about it, but I don’t feel like talking about it yet.

Since I probably won’t see you all until the new year, I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday season!

The Death of Cecil the Cat

We’ve finally moved! Yay! I thought we would never close escrow. But we finally did last week, and have been moving little by little since then. One more round trip and we’ll be done! Now I have to unpack and organize…before AJ’s sister and family arrive in less than 2 weeks.

So, I really should be working on that right now instead of reading through my old journals and English assignments. Actually, I skimmed the journals because teenage me is really quite embarrassing and I can’t read them without cringing.

But I had fun reading my creative writing assignments, and I thought I would share one with you all. This was written at the age of 12, and the assignment was to write a poem in the style of The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (It’s funnier if you are familiar with this poem.) Everyone had to read their poems out loud. The class then voted on a winner, and I won. Here it is in all its glory (re-reading it today, that “the” in the last stanza was bothering me so I crossed it out):

I was a morbid kid.

Room Layouts

This will probably expose me as a big fat geek, but I’ve been creating some of the rooms in Google Sketchup to see how we should remodel the new house once we’ve moved in. Yes, this is how I spend my free time.

So first up we have this awkward area next to the breakfast nook. There’s a fireplace but it’s not really centered in the room. The area isn’t big enough to use as a living room or TV room. It would have been perfect as a playroom if it wasn’t the first thing you saw when you entered the house. So we had the idea (OK, it was AJ’s idea) to make it into a library.

In our old house in Pasadena, we had a wall of books and I really miss having all my books out in the open – right now they’re in boxes in my closet. This is what it looked like (yay Ikea bookshelves):

I loved this room.

In the new house, we’re going to have built-in bookshelves put in. This is what I am envisioning:

Click on image to enlarge

There is only enough room for two small armchairs and a small ottoman/coffee table. I’m thinking this chair from Urban Outfitters:

I'm obsessed with turquoise right now. AJ is not sold yet, but he will be. HE WILL BE.

So yeah, as you can see, it’s sort of an odd little area. I think using it as a library will make it really nice (and my books will finally have a home again). Because of the carpet to tile transition between the library and the breakfast nook, I decided to have floating bookshelves rather than having them sit on the floor.

In the breakfast nook, there is currently no island – we are planning to have one built in to match the current counter and cabinets, with the counter extended so the boys can sit and do their homework while I cook. Plus it’ll give me more storage as the kitchen is a bit small. It’ll be my bar cabinet.

Click on image to enlarge

Anyways. Moving on…

We also want to have the office furniture custom built. This might be later down the line when we have money again.

The office is TINY (Click on image to enlarge)

The office, which is the smallest bedroom in the house, needs to serve as an office, guest room, and sewing room. But it’s the only room that can be the office because it is set away from the other bedrooms and faces the street in front of the house. AJ rents office space outside of the house, but he needs a place to pay bills and file documents and to work if he needs to be at home for some reason. So that’s his Mac on the right next to the window. I’m on the left with my nice big screen personal computer (so I can IM and read blogs all day) and my work laptop.

I really would have preferred to have the desk unit along the wall of the window, but there would have been no room for the sofa bed. In the image above, the closet is to the left, and the door is on the wall closest to you,which I’ve made transparent.

I was planning to put my sewing area inside of the closet (which is why my desk is on the left), but seeing how the room is so small, it might look too cramped (even though I’d have a curtain covering the sewing area when not in use). I’m not sure yet what I am going to do but I really do need a sewing area, and there’s no other place for it.

My idea for the sewing closet:

Click on image to enlarge

I designed this before I actually saw the house so it’s the only design that doesn’t take into account the actual dimensions of the space. Plus, given that my desk will be right up against the closet in the office, we’ll have to put the clothes rod (for when we have guests) on the right side rather than the left as in the image above.

So, what do you think? Any advice/words of wisdom? Other than “get a life”?