Let's go get a Barney tattoo!

School starts on Friday. You would think that such an innocent statement would not make much of an impact on anyone other than the student affected by the event. Not even close to being true. In fact, teachers are scrambling to get themselves, their classrooms, and desk plans ready. School administrators are juggling classroom assignments, class schedules, bus itineraries, and many other last minute fine tuning adjustments to every bit of complication that arrives on their desk. Students are trying to squeeze the last few days of freedom and recreational liberty before the weight of school work and getting up early in the morning again comes back into their lives. Finally, there is the guardians or parents responsible for the students. These are the unsung heroes that day in and out have to juggle their entire lives around every minute detail, request, and event that is shot in their direction from all of the above teachers, administrators, and students. Even those without children might be re-thinking their drive to work route now that suddenly traffic in some school zones will be jammed with parents taking their not so eager beavers to their cages for the training process. I can also imagine some cops rearranging their routes to accommodate for the endless duty of enforcing traffic rules around the morning and afternoon circus of vehicles in school zones.

School starts on Friday. There must be a reason for which this particular date was selected instead of next Monday, but to us parents it will probably never be revealed. New clothes, shoes, backpacks, lunchboxes, notebooks, pencils, colored pencils, mechanical pencils, supply pouches, college rule paper, wide rule paper, construction paper, pens, colored pens, markers, highlighters, pencil sharpeners, crayons, rulers, erasers, protractors, compass, scientific calculator, clue sticks, and the never able to find and elusive three inch binder are just some of the paraphernalia that a parent will purchase throughout the child's life on that first week of school.

School starts on Friday. What time does the sweetheart about to turn Carrie start school in the morning and get out in the afternoon? OK, dig through the papers that were sent a month ago to get the bell schedule. Who is getting the knowledge sponge there and back? OK, coordinate and negotiate with your spouse, ex-spouse, friends, other family members. Where is the bus stop and at what time do they have to be there in order not to miss the big yellow carriage? OK, dig again and see if this information was sent in the school package or do you have to make some phone calls or search the Internet to find out. How safe is the bus stop? OK, take a drive at that time in the morning and afternoon to see what the location looks like. What will happen when it is raining or snowing? OK, add an umbrella, raincoat, warm coat, scarf, gloves, and special shoes to the list of essentials that might never, ever, be used. What about extracurricular activities, sports, and more? OK, take a deep breath, and please don't forget to exhale!

As you can see, school starts on Friday is not really just a statement, it is a reminder that life as we've known it during summer vacation is over. To most, the above is probably pretty close to their reality, add or subtract based on parent's and student's ages, gender, financial situation, marital status, geographic location, and in some cases special needs too. Special needs can mean a lot of different things, from physical and mental disabilities to a gifted child or some illness in the family. It is in these special situations that the school system finds itself many times lacking in its ability to accommodate or be effective at its responsibility to educate our kids. Parents are many times left to find solutions on their own and deal with their special circumstances with limited resources and very little help from the system. In fact, one of the things that I have learned is that if you are rich, then you can throw some money at the problem and find places that are willing and wanting to help. If you are poor, the government has several programs in place that might be of use. However, if you are middle class, you are stuck as the term implies right in the middle and not being able to afford high end professional help, and not qualifying for government funded support either.

For some of you this post is more of a historical description of what you have already been through during many years past. For others, this might serve as a crystal ball of things that will come to pass sooner or later. For a few others, all of the above is actually just a reminder of what a typical and probably normal life is like if we did not have complications. Already several of you have shared with me via emails how difficult your own situations have been while raising some of your own children. I owe you a great debt of gratitude because until recently I naively felt that the situation I am constantly dealing with my oldest son was more unique than you have opened my eyes to see. Thank you for sharing, you have all made an impact on my ability to see the future a lot less dimmer. Of course, I have also learned that no one's particular life is the same as the other, but many of us share many of the same experiences to different levels and degrees. According to many of you, light seems to start creeping into the end of our tunnel somewhere when the child's age is in the range of 24 and 26 years of age. My son is currently about to celebrate his 17 years of age in October. This means that I might be writing here on this blog for a very long time before I can bring you good news. Recently a friend just wrote to me telling me that she was "cautiously" saying that her now 24 year old son was doing much, much better. Her "cautiously" inferring that it was still a bit too soon to tell. By the way, thank you for sharing your real life stories with me, believe it or not, it is of much use to me. I feel much less lonely and with much more hope about my personal situation with my son.

Before I end this post it is only fair that I leave you with something to think about on a personal note. The next time you find yourself wondering what to tell your child when they ask to permanently alter their appearance consider this...

For many years my oldest son as most typical children would wear whatever clothing I would buy for him. As long as the shirts were of a material that did not aggravate his Sensory Integration Disorder, I usually could not go wrong. His eyeglasses were fit in looks for his age, as was his haircut. I would of never been so naive to think that this would be the case forever, and in fact I have always been pretty much OK with him changing his appearance allowing himself to fit in with whatever temporary style of life he chose throughout time. One place I have tried very hard to draw the line is on any sort of permanent disfiguring requests. What seems cool today might just be very uncool in just a year or two. For this reason, even though I am not opposed to adults getting tattoos, I am most definitely not in agreement with kids doing so. Every once in a while my oldest son gets it into his head that he wants to have a tattoo done, so in search for some clever way of convincing him to back off on his request, I enlisted the wisdom of a very good friend of mine. Mind you, my son is not asking for the little sun on the side of his arm or something that could be easily concealed when the time to go job hunting arrives. Of course not, what he has always wanted is some horrendously looking "tree man" that would absorb about 95% of the skin between his shoulder and elbow. When I asked my dear friend what he would do, he immediately told me that when one of his sons came home with this same request of having a tattoo done, his very clever response was "Yes, but I get to pick the tattoo image." He said that child listened attentively while he offered to have an image of Barney, the purple childhood dinosaur, tattooed on his son's arm. "Barney?" asked the confused child. My friend simply replied, "Well, it was only six years ago when you thought that Barney was very cool and you were completely into him, so it seems fit. In six years, anything that you permanently engrave into your skin today will probably seem just as dumb as tattooing Barney on your arm right now." I tried this on my son and even though he immediately came up with some clever counter argument, I still think I might of won this round. YES!!!

Dad