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Lots of driving today. We drove A. to school, then we went to Connecticut to look at pools. The pools are lovely and we have selected pavers for the coping, tile for below the coping, and the surface of the pool itself. Very lovely! Also, J. has identified multiple possible suppliers for a Not Super Hard pool deck, and the most recent one is not from the original list but basically exactly like the stuff on the original list. And it comes in a variety of colors, altho I think we’re going with a grey for that. We then had lunch at a Burton’s Grill, and drove back to pick up A., and then return home for the piano lesson.
Not son has departed; T. took him to the airport and dropped him off. He was one of the most pleasant houseguests we have ever had, which is saying something because he was sleeping on our living room couch for a week — not the easiest of situations for anyone, but he was entirely non-disruptive and a really enjoyable addition to our family for a week. I hope he returns soon and often!
The weird phone call was when not son’s father called wanting to know why he wasn’t answering his texts and when his flight was and so forth. To be clear, not son is the age that his father was when his mother was pregnant with him. Not son is absolutely an adult, and all of our interactions with him indicate that while he is for sure not neurotypical, it would be weird to categorize him as disabled. He has a bachelor’s in math, was able to get himself from a condo on cap hill to light rail to the airport, check a bag, get on the plane, arrive in an unfamiliar airport in a city he’s never been in before, meet up with someone he hadn’t seen in years, stay in an unfamiliar house for a week and go engage in various outings with different members of the family. HE BROUGHT SMALL GIFTS. He brought a card. He cleaned up after himself. He asked permission to use the shower, and asked if there was workout equipment. While he does not (yet) have a driver’s license, in a bunch of enumerable ways he’s more mature than I was at the same age. The plan was to reverse the way the trip started, spending the night at the condo and getting a ride home to BF nowhere tomorrow. This is why the phone call was weird — first off, pickup isn’t until tomorrow, so what’s the panic about non-response to texts? Second, there had been a previous call about R. scraping off T. while out on the bike ride, but rather than the expected/sensible response (wtf, R., take better care of my son), we’ve instead each been treated to doses of Not Son Has Problems. I made it extremely clear to Not Son’s father that R. has a bad habit along these lines and Not Son handled it perfectly. The conversation evolved from there, because I took issue with the various efforts to conversationally refer to Not Son in what I felt was an inappropriate and probably very derogatory manner and spoke back against them. Eventually, I just sat and listened to both the parents go on at length.
I think the most irritating part, was that Not Son said they did not teach him how to ride a bike, meaning, “to ride a bike safely on the road in traffic”, and he eventually taught himself on his dad’s bike. They responded with a list of bikes Not Son had as a child, and rides he took with a friend (presumably on sidewalks, altho I am not sure) to a nearby store. Not Son also said he didn’t have his own bike, and they responded with a list of bikes he had, the first of which was his older sibling’s previous bike, and a later one was Not Son’s mother’s bike. It was repeatedly described in the conversation as the mother’s bike, and Not Son is not neurotypical — he’s literal minded, so if people call it his older sibling’s bike meaning previous, he won’t hear the previous, he’ll hear that it isn’t his bike. But any possibility of explaining any of this was completely lost in the earnest efforts of the parents to explain to me all the things that were wrong with their son.
And I’m just thinking, you know, you’d think that after chasing off their first kid, for exactly this type of confusion over language and different ways of describing past events, that they’d draw back at chasing off the second kid. But I’m thinking they are so committed to being right, that they’re gonna chase away both kids, and possibly me, along with them, because if there’s a Team I’m on, it’s Team Kid.
I’m a little bummed about the situation, and hoping that they draw back and at least allow for the possibility that their understanding is not the only possible way to make sense of the events they shared with their son. I let them talk themselves out and then excused myself from the call. They were apologizing, but I doubt they have any idea what just happened. It was a lot like some unfortunate conversations I had with my sister, tho, and things eventually turned a corner there, so you just never know.
The _weirdest_ part is that they are so completely sure that they are the sensible ones, when everyone is 100% in agreement that the only effort to teach Not Son to drive involved NOT having him read the driver’s manual, NOT having him get a learner’s permit, NOT take lessons from a professional, NOT be oriented on all the elements of the car, NOT go to a electric go-kart place to practice, NOT use a driving simulator, NOT sit in a car when another student driver is driving …
Nope. Just stick him behind the wheel, turn the car on, put it in drive and let it roll and tell him to hit the brake. And then be surprised when the super-gentle, extremely cautious young man doesn’t push hard enough on the pedal to stop it as quickly as you expected, while you tell him not to hit the tree. I mean, if parenting has taught me anything, it’s to give specific, positive instructions, and to make sure that I control the environment fully. All parties are basically telling really detailed, really compatible stories. But the perspectives informing those stories is really different.
Anyway. I’m sure Not Son got on the plane, turned his phone off, and then settled in to read the driver’s manual that we printed out for him. Or, possibly, one of the paper books he had with him. He prefers reading on paper (which is fine, even if that’s not my preference), and may or may not be aware of the option to connect to plane wifi (and to be fair, it doesn’t always work), or have any desire to make use of it. In any event, freaking out because someone takes four and a half hours to respond to a text feels more than a little extra. I noted that I often fail to notice a text and thus don’t respond for a day or more. (I _just_ had my weekly Thursday interaction with my sister S., and we always have massive lapses in response time and it’s really just no big deal. It’s life. And I missed last night’s text from K. for over 12 hours. Those are just the delayed responses within the last 24 hours.) And that fool said, none of my friends would fail to respond within four hours. Well, I _just said_ … you know what, fair. I must not be one of your friends, then. _That_ I did say, and I don’t think he even heard me, but I’m not likely to forget.
I’m sure I’m gonna eventually be old enough that I think it’s more important to be right than to listen to my kids and my friends’ kids and my cousins’ kids and just all of future generations. But I’m not that old yet.
Also, I’ve really been forcibly reminded of so many of the techniques and principles involved in supporting growth in independence. And _also_ forcibly reminded of what happens when you assume someone will magically learn something and then conclude that if they didn’t learn it, they can’t. It’s all so sad and unnecessary. The world is full of really helpful people, so most of these problems decompose nicely into iterative matchmaking efforts. What do you need to learn. Who is good at teaching it. Oh, you’re incompatible? Okay, who _else_ is good at teaching it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Not son has departed; T. took him to the airport and dropped him off. He was one of the most pleasant houseguests we have ever had, which is saying something because he was sleeping on our living room couch for a week — not the easiest of situations for anyone, but he was entirely non-disruptive and a really enjoyable addition to our family for a week. I hope he returns soon and often!
The weird phone call was when not son’s father called wanting to know why he wasn’t answering his texts and when his flight was and so forth. To be clear, not son is the age that his father was when his mother was pregnant with him. Not son is absolutely an adult, and all of our interactions with him indicate that while he is for sure not neurotypical, it would be weird to categorize him as disabled. He has a bachelor’s in math, was able to get himself from a condo on cap hill to light rail to the airport, check a bag, get on the plane, arrive in an unfamiliar airport in a city he’s never been in before, meet up with someone he hadn’t seen in years, stay in an unfamiliar house for a week and go engage in various outings with different members of the family. HE BROUGHT SMALL GIFTS. He brought a card. He cleaned up after himself. He asked permission to use the shower, and asked if there was workout equipment. While he does not (yet) have a driver’s license, in a bunch of enumerable ways he’s more mature than I was at the same age. The plan was to reverse the way the trip started, spending the night at the condo and getting a ride home to BF nowhere tomorrow. This is why the phone call was weird — first off, pickup isn’t until tomorrow, so what’s the panic about non-response to texts? Second, there had been a previous call about R. scraping off T. while out on the bike ride, but rather than the expected/sensible response (wtf, R., take better care of my son), we’ve instead each been treated to doses of Not Son Has Problems. I made it extremely clear to Not Son’s father that R. has a bad habit along these lines and Not Son handled it perfectly. The conversation evolved from there, because I took issue with the various efforts to conversationally refer to Not Son in what I felt was an inappropriate and probably very derogatory manner and spoke back against them. Eventually, I just sat and listened to both the parents go on at length.
I think the most irritating part, was that Not Son said they did not teach him how to ride a bike, meaning, “to ride a bike safely on the road in traffic”, and he eventually taught himself on his dad’s bike. They responded with a list of bikes Not Son had as a child, and rides he took with a friend (presumably on sidewalks, altho I am not sure) to a nearby store. Not Son also said he didn’t have his own bike, and they responded with a list of bikes he had, the first of which was his older sibling’s previous bike, and a later one was Not Son’s mother’s bike. It was repeatedly described in the conversation as the mother’s bike, and Not Son is not neurotypical — he’s literal minded, so if people call it his older sibling’s bike meaning previous, he won’t hear the previous, he’ll hear that it isn’t his bike. But any possibility of explaining any of this was completely lost in the earnest efforts of the parents to explain to me all the things that were wrong with their son.
And I’m just thinking, you know, you’d think that after chasing off their first kid, for exactly this type of confusion over language and different ways of describing past events, that they’d draw back at chasing off the second kid. But I’m thinking they are so committed to being right, that they’re gonna chase away both kids, and possibly me, along with them, because if there’s a Team I’m on, it’s Team Kid.
I’m a little bummed about the situation, and hoping that they draw back and at least allow for the possibility that their understanding is not the only possible way to make sense of the events they shared with their son. I let them talk themselves out and then excused myself from the call. They were apologizing, but I doubt they have any idea what just happened. It was a lot like some unfortunate conversations I had with my sister, tho, and things eventually turned a corner there, so you just never know.
The _weirdest_ part is that they are so completely sure that they are the sensible ones, when everyone is 100% in agreement that the only effort to teach Not Son to drive involved NOT having him read the driver’s manual, NOT having him get a learner’s permit, NOT take lessons from a professional, NOT be oriented on all the elements of the car, NOT go to a electric go-kart place to practice, NOT use a driving simulator, NOT sit in a car when another student driver is driving …
Nope. Just stick him behind the wheel, turn the car on, put it in drive and let it roll and tell him to hit the brake. And then be surprised when the super-gentle, extremely cautious young man doesn’t push hard enough on the pedal to stop it as quickly as you expected, while you tell him not to hit the tree. I mean, if parenting has taught me anything, it’s to give specific, positive instructions, and to make sure that I control the environment fully. All parties are basically telling really detailed, really compatible stories. But the perspectives informing those stories is really different.
Anyway. I’m sure Not Son got on the plane, turned his phone off, and then settled in to read the driver’s manual that we printed out for him. Or, possibly, one of the paper books he had with him. He prefers reading on paper (which is fine, even if that’s not my preference), and may or may not be aware of the option to connect to plane wifi (and to be fair, it doesn’t always work), or have any desire to make use of it. In any event, freaking out because someone takes four and a half hours to respond to a text feels more than a little extra. I noted that I often fail to notice a text and thus don’t respond for a day or more. (I _just_ had my weekly Thursday interaction with my sister S., and we always have massive lapses in response time and it’s really just no big deal. It’s life. And I missed last night’s text from K. for over 12 hours. Those are just the delayed responses within the last 24 hours.) And that fool said, none of my friends would fail to respond within four hours. Well, I _just said_ … you know what, fair. I must not be one of your friends, then. _That_ I did say, and I don’t think he even heard me, but I’m not likely to forget.
I’m sure I’m gonna eventually be old enough that I think it’s more important to be right than to listen to my kids and my friends’ kids and my cousins’ kids and just all of future generations. But I’m not that old yet.
Also, I’ve really been forcibly reminded of so many of the techniques and principles involved in supporting growth in independence. And _also_ forcibly reminded of what happens when you assume someone will magically learn something and then conclude that if they didn’t learn it, they can’t. It’s all so sad and unnecessary. The world is full of really helpful people, so most of these problems decompose nicely into iterative matchmaking efforts. What do you need to learn. Who is good at teaching it. Oh, you’re incompatible? Okay, who _else_ is good at teaching it. Lather, rinse, repeat.