Early Intervention - Is it necessary?

Caution: What I'm about to write will probably upset you.

Today's post was inspired by a thread on Facebook. One of my friends (a relative in fact) posted that their 3 (almost 4) year old child was approved for additional social services. She attends a speech class and will now be going to occupational therapy twice weekly as well. She'll be taking the bus and going to school for the services.

A little bit of background here. The parents are considered low-income and as a result, their kids and family situation is more closely monitored than those who don't participate in any social programs. Their children probably see the doctor more frequently than mine do and they are "assessed" more frequently as well. They also live in another state, so that could be the reason for the difference, but I doubt it.

Anyway, part of the reason the therapy was recommended was because the 3, almost 4 year old was having a tough time using scissors. I'll give you a moment to go get a towel to wipe up the coffee you probably spit out when you read that sentence.

All better? Great. I wish I could say I was joking here, but I'm not. I'm a parent of a 3 year old and I have no idea how her scissor skills are. I don't give her scissors to play with and I don't intend to do that until she goes to school. End of story. Small children and sharp objects don't mix in my household. Anyone that tells me that my daughter is somehow lacking or behind in development because she can't wield a pair of scissors with any degree of precision is going to need a ride to the ER to get my foot taken out of their ass.

So anyway, I commented on the post and with my usual flair for inciting controversy by being something less than sensitive, I mentioned that it's a wee-bit ridiculous how so many kids are being labeled these days as autistic, socially delayed, developmentally delayed, frustrated, etc. and they are being sent to early intervention programs. I'd say the vast majority of mom-friends that I have send their kids to these programs. If the majority of children need extra assistance, how can they be behind? Perhaps the "standards" are what's wrong and not the children.

I went on to say that these programs that are designed to help kids become more independent are really just creating a culture of dependency. They can't function without big brother holding their hand and telling them they're doing a good job. We hand out participation ribbons to every kid because every child needs to feel special. Nobody is allowed to fail. Nobody is allowed to win. Then when reality bites these kids in the butt and they realize that they aren't geniuses, they aren't special and they aren't farting out rainbows and unicorns, they go ballistic and shoot up their classmates -- and of course their aim is amazing because of all the extra attention they got in practicing their scissor skills as children.  That last part is sarcasm, but you see where I'm going with this.

These programs don't work. Instead of taking your kids to every type of evaluation and intervention program you can find, why not let them be kids? Run in the fresh air. Fall down and get backup without any help. Try to climb a ladder that's too high and get frustrated. Learn to work through the frustration and overcome your own limitations to achieve something, then savor the reward. If your son has an imaginary friend, he's probably not autistic, he's probably just a kid. If your child is shy, it's not because they are autistic, it's because being shy is a trait that some people have. Stop reading into things too much and enjoy your kids instead of worrying that they aren't mentally grown by the age of 3.

Of course my helpful insights got quite a few comments to the nature of, "... stupid people don't know what they're talking about." or, "don't comment if you don't understand.". These were typically preceded by, "I'm not attacking you, but...".  Yes, you are attacking me for my opinions. That's okay though because my mom gave me the skills I needed to cope with that sort of thing. I'm not going to run off into a corner and rock myself silly because someone disagreed with me. I wasn't told that I'm perfect and special my whole life. Coping is a skill I learned as a child... and it wasn't in an early intervention setting. Imagine that.

Another individual tried to use a more logical approach and suggest that perhaps it was that medicine has gotten better at diagnosing problems early. I would disagree. Look at your local town and its building code. 100 years ago, people build their own houses with very little help or guidance from their local government. As time went on, isolated incidents inspired the creation of building departments and inspectors. These inspectors were intended to make sure that dwellings were safe and habitable and in agreement with the local laws. An inspector can't justify their job if they never find anything wrong with the dwellings they inspect, so sometimes they need to stretch their authority. They look for problems, however small, so they can hold that problem up and say look here, I found that - I am important and my job is justified. As time goes on, more items are added to the code to give inspectors more things to look for to continue to justify their positions. The inspection department grows and grows until there are so many pages of laws and regulations that almost any house at any point in time is in violation of one or more points. Depending on the inspector you get, they may or may not find a problem. It's become a highly subjective business.

The same thing is true for diagnosing problems with children. Pediatricians and people that evaluate kids for autism or developmental delays HAVE to find something wrong with a certain number of children to be able to justify their jobs and show that the service is needed. The range of markers for a developmental problem expands and before you know it, any child can qualify as having autism or a developmental delay. The supplemental services business grows by leaps and bounds and soon being something is the new "normal". Not having anything wrong with you at all means your parent or your pediatrician was somehow slacking in their job and their duty to you. It's ridiculous. Then, to top it off, our state and federal governments are furthering the problem by giving grants and extra money to needy communities with a higher number of kids that are in need of services. So now it's a race to see which community can label the highest number of kids as in need of help so their schools and their town can get the extra money for programs.


The system is broken, not the children.

Irritated

I'm feeling a bit irritated, so I thought I'd just post an open letter to my town that I will never get around to sending, though I wish I would send it and that someone would actually read it and pay attention to what I have to say.

Dear Town,

I opened my tax bill from you the other day and I thought you should be informed that there has been a mistake. It seems that my taxes have gone up dramatically despite the ridiculously low value you have assigned to my home. You may not understand economics, but typically when the value of something goes down, the taxes on it also decrease. Surely this was just an oversight on your part.

By the way, what exactly are these increased taxes paying for? I went to the town hall meeting and the only expenses I remember being discussed were the improvements to the water system, a few new vehicles, some bulletproof vests for our police force (not sure why we need that one since we live in the country and not too much happens here), and a ridiculously expensive $1.5M artificial turf for the high school that we were promised would not increase our taxes.

Sure, water improvements are expensive, but my water and sewer rates also increased. I saw a flat charge for water system improvements and my sewer rate went up about $2.50 per thousand gallons to pay for sewer system improvements. So neither of those things came from my property taxes. I also don't think that a few new vehicles warrants the hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra revenues being generated by these increased taxes and I'm fairly certain bullet proof vests don't cost that much either. If they do, you're getting screwed. Maybe you should shop around?

In any event, we're in a recession. Instead of trying to outspend the federal or state governments, why not try a new approach and cut spending? Stop creating rules, regulations, red tape, departments and inspectors that simply sit around collecting money. Instead, do your jobs, cut the BS and tighten your belts. You can't spend your way out of debt and you can only tax the people so much before they simply run out of money too. Soon, this town will die out the way others around us already have and you will not nobody to blame, but yourselves.

Sincerely,
One of the last remaining taxpayers.

Potty Training Update

So... Potty training is still pretty much a no-go. My oldest had her 3-year old checkup today and I spoke with the doctor about my concerns. Apparently there's a trick.

Don't do it. Just simply don't do it. Don't force, coerce, shame or trick the child into going on the potty. If she doesn't want to do it, don't do it. Stop talking about. Ignore it. Pretend like it never happened. In time, she'll supposedly want to do it to get the attention she was getting from me asking if she had to go ever 30 minutes.

This is probably the most counter-intuitive piece of advise I have ever heard. I gave the pediatrician the stare-down with my, "if-you-are-lying-to-me-I-will-hunt-you-to-the-ends-of-the-Earth-and-you-will-never-experience-peace-again" look.  She seemed mildly afraid. That didn't inspire confidence.

So, we'll see how it goes. My youngest is completely taken with the potty and loves everything about it, so I'll focus my energies on her for the time being. We'll start with learning how to say potty and go from there. Maybe the oldest will get jealous of the attention and come back to the potty team.  We'll see.

Potty Training

I am a mother to a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Neither one is potty trained. I wanted to have my oldest done by the time she was 2, but her stubborn personality made that a pipe dream. Then I wanted to have her trained by the time she was 3. The date came and went. So now, she has just turned 3 and she is still going in a diaper/pullup/panties -- basically whatever she's wearing she will use. She doesn't seem to mind the sensation one bit and when I ask her if she needs to go potty or wants to be a big girl, her answer is no.

I've tried bribing her, begging her, guilting her, shaming her and even punishing her. Nothing works. She is determined to wear diapers to college. My mom friends seem to have similar luck with their children, but at least their kids don't just scream no and run away when asked if they need to go potty. We've tried different potty seats as well, and nothing works. I'm almost to my wits end. Everyone says she will train when she's ready, but at this point I'm thinking it's never going to happen.

Oh the joys of being mom to a toddler.  At least my 1 year old enjoys the potty.

Inspections

So I have no idea if I've posted about the ongoing house addition project before or not, but I have some big news.  We FINALLY passed our electrical inspection!!

Woo hoo!  We have been trying to pass this since April and our electrical inspector has been finding reasons to fail. First it was the TR outlets. We had no idea he would count our addition as new construction and that he wouldn't let us match outlets the ones in the rest of our house.  So 72 outlets later, we have changed them all over.

Then he didn't like the direction that the cover to our outdoor plug opened.  Fixed that.  He didn't check it.  That figures.

Up next was a squabble over the location of the outlets in our hallway.  He wanted us to add one.  He didn't mention this during the rough inspection, rather he waited until the sheet rock and insulation were all in place.  Wonderful.  We (grudgingly) fixed that... he didn't comment on it/check it.

Last, but certainly not least from a financial standpoint, he wanted our breakers to be of the arc fault variety.  Now, again, that law is for new construction and ours was an addition. We wound up shopping on eBay for the breakers to save some money because those things are crazy expensive!!  $46 EACH!  The weird part is that he didn't give a flying rats behind that the old breakers were just regular ones - he wanted arc faults for the NEW outlets only.  So now there are 2 types of breakers in my circuit box and I'm pretty sure that violates the warranty and at least 1 electrical law. Just sayin'.

Anyway, ole cranky pants came out again and checked everything out and said it was fine!  Finally!  No more electrical inspector!  Any further electrical work will be done sans permit because I am not dealing with that man again!  lol - Just kidding, I don't plan on doing anything else with wires or wiring or any of that good stuff.

On a side note, one thing he wanted done is in direct conflict with something the fire department wanted done.  He thinks the smokes should be on their own line while the fire department says they need to be attached to an overhead light.  Guess we'll be changing that before our fire inspection this afternoon. lol  Wish us luck!!