Hate Speech is Alive and Well on Twitter

This blog is almost entirely written about my family and specifically focuses on Lily and special needs.  So today I'm directing you someplace less Jim's-family-centric and a little more. . . general.

Ann Coulter posted something last night on twitter that I found offensive, and I wanted to write about it, but I felt like I needed that general forum to attempt to get folks who are not so focused on special needs kids/families/politics, so I've posted on SprocketInk.com and would really appreciate you swinging by and giving it a look.

Here's the tweet:

Maybe you still think that 'retard' is okay.  Maybe you don't get "all the hubbub".  Maybe you don't understand how folks in the special needs community view that word.  I encourage you to visit the Sprocket site and see.

Here's the Sprocket Ink link:  Acceptable Speech?

Visit Jillsmo's blogpost if you would like to link up your own article/opinion regarding this here:  This is Who You Insult With Your Words

Thanks all,
Jim

Zombie Bath Salt Epidemic Hits Home

     Yeah, yeah, another bath salt blog post.  I've seen a whole mess of them today.  Jillsmo and Amy both blogged about it, and Sprocket is ALL over the Zombie Apocalypse tie-in.  I was actually saving this post for Halloween, since it's Halloween-centric (shut up, it's a word), but with all the Zombie Apocalypse face-eating craziness of the bath salt generation (I totally coined that just now and expect credit if I see it later), I figured I'd throw in my two cents and/or strike while the bath salt iron was hot.  
     If you've been living in a barn, or are forced to take your news solely from Nick, or Disney because your children completely dictate what's on television (honey, I'm talking to you, but I promise not to mention you by name, LOVE YOU!) 'bath salts', "not to be confused with cleansing products, are an inexpensive, synthetic, super-charged form of speed. The drug consists of a potpourri of constantly changing chemicals, three of which -- mephedrone, MDPV and methylone -- were banned last year by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency."
     They've been linked to the "Crazy Case of the Guy Who Ate the Other Guy's Face Off", and touched off a tongue-in-cheek (oh my god, I totally didn't even do that on purpose!!! Tongue-in-cheek?  Whew. . . you, know, cause he ate his face off, did I mention??) Zombie Apocalypse scare that's trending across the Interwebz (shut up, spell-check, Interwebz is cool-guy talk for "internet").

Emma, about to eat my delicious brains.

     But my daughter Emma may have started the whole thing without even knowing it.  Emma was ingesting bath products before it was "cool", because she's a gangsta, yo.  
---
2009:
     I watched my daughter as she peered into the black felt bag filled with Halloween candy. She held the bag by the straps with one hand and stirred it with some difficulty with her other, searching for that one special treat.

     "Daddy, can you help me find my Sweet-tarts?" she asked.

     "Sure, sweetie, let me see your treat bag."

     She dutifully handed the bag to me and I took the heavy, black felt bag and, unable to resist, pushed the small blister in the lower corner that made the skeleton on the side of the bag light up colorfully. I then held it by the base and opened the bag, spilling the candy out onto the bedspread.

     I sifted through the sweet spoils of her Halloween campaign and swiftly uncovered the "large" packet of Sweet-tarts amid the rubble. THIS packet was desired because it was an actual BAG of Sweet-tarts as opposed to the two-tart packages MOST people handed out on Halloween.

     I handed her the bag and said, "Here sweetie."

     She took it and thanked me politely as I scooped the candy into a pile and attempted to 'rake' it back into the bag. As I did so I found a clear package shaped like a ghost. Inside were white wafers so thin they almost looked like paper. I scowled slightly and picked up the package to examine it. THIS candy had to suck.

     My daughter looked up from her package-opening and confirmed, "I tried those. They aren't very good."

     I turned the package over, examining the back. "Honey?" I said.

     "Yeah, daddy?"

     "You know why this doesn't taste good?"

     "Why, daddy?"

     "Because it's soap. You add it to your bath to make it smell like vanilla. You ate soap. I can't get you to try tacos, but you'll eat SOAP?"

     She giggled.

---

     It was cute and funny. . . but:

     The neighbor had asked her to take some with her when she'd left the Halloween party the previous night. I had been through her Halloween candy, and hadn't seen it, so I was confused when I looked through her candy the following day and spotted it. I want to say that if she'd have gotten it Halloween night I'd have noticed it and pulled it out of the bag, but I'm not completely sure. That scared me a little. Or at least served as a wakeup call.

     When the neighbor told her to go ahead and take it, Emma didn't ask what it was, and either the neighbor failed to mention it, or Emma forgot. Probably Emma spotted it in the house, asked about it and was told. . . "oh go ahead and take some home with you".

     Even the pickiest of eaters will try just about anything that they think is candy, so I've tried to be a little more vigilant when vetting her treat bag now. Not that this was IN her treat bag that Halloween night. . . but it just served to warn me that it probably COULD have been in there, and I'd never have known the difference. This time it was bath soap. . . next time? Who knows?

     And THAT is how Emma turned into a Zombie.  Alright. . . fine, it wasn't "bath salts" it was "bath soap" and she's not a zombie.


Or IS she. . . 

Ack! Guest Post!

I wrote a post for Jillsmo's "All Kids Do That" Series. 


I remember when Jillsmo first started taking volunteers to write a series of posts about "things that all kids do".  The premise (as *I* recall it) was the well-worn path to pissing off a parent of an autistic child, namely, marginalizing the behaviors by invoking the phrase, "all kids do that".


I remember thinking at the time that I didn't find that phrase as triggering as many parents seem to, probably because my oldest daughter, Emma, despite not being on the spectrum, *HAS* done some of the things that Lily does. 


I remember thinking how picky an eater Emma is, or her spitting incidents at school, or even some of her really brief phases with "no!" or potty accidents or whatever.  


I remember feeling like I really didn't have anything to contribute to the discussion because I've read a lot of autistic parent/autistic adult blogs and sometimes feel like our struggles raising Lily are mild by comparison.


I wasn't sure I was really "feeling" the subject matter.  


And then the first post arrived, and I dutifully read it, because I dutifully read anything Jillsmo sees fit to post on her blog since it's invariably either funny or heartwarming or informative, or some combination of the three.  And it was a post about picky eating by Sunday, at Adventures in Extreme Parenting.  Here's the post:  http://yeahgoodtimes.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-kids-do-that-part-1-picky-eating.html. 


In a nutshell, on advice from her pediatrician, she implemented the (parents of picky eaters will know this strategy) "When he gets hungry enough he'll eat" strategy.  It's what parents of NT (neurotypical/typically developing) kids do when they're at their wit's end.  It's what pediatricians say will always work.  It's what grandparents shake their heads and say to their children as they watch them struggle to feed their grandkids.  


And five days later he still had not eaten.  Anything.  It's NOT the same.  


And I found myself standing in the kitchen last week, irrationally irritated with my mother as she responded to a tidbit I'd mentioned about how autistic kids generally tend to have niche foods that they don't stray too far from with, "all kids do that", or some variation of that theme.  And I remember responding tersely and irritatedly, thinking of Sunday's post, "It's NOT the same."  


And I realized that she was just voicing something I had myself thought even a few months prior. . . it's variations on a theme. . . some kids ARE picky eaters.  But then I thought of my OTHER picky eater.  Emma hates new foods.  She'll cry if she has to try something when she's not given enough time to come to terms with it.  She once threw up when I forced her (I learned not to do this) to take a bite of roast chicken.  But we talked it out.  We can get her to eat.  Lily pretty much eats on her terms.  It IS different.


Sorry mom, I guess "all kids do that" DOES bother me now.  Thanks for helping with my self-realization.  I know you how much stress we go through making sure Lily gets enough to eat.  You just sorta got blind-sided by the reaction.


Anyway, back when I really felt like I couldn't contribute to the series, Jillsmo suggested "spitting".  I mulled it over and agreed, but didn't really have a timetable in mind, and sort of blew it off altogether until she dropped a quasi-reminder-guilt trip at my doorstep on twitter.  


So I wrote the attached installment for Jillsmo's series, "All Kids Do That":

Go >>HERE!!<<

Big Timin' It - Deux

"Personal matters to attend to"

When Jillsmo approached the entire internet me personally about writing a blog posting for her wildly popular blog page, I was on the crapper honored.  I copied and pasted some piece of shit I had written as a journal entry sat down and put together something that I hoped would not cause her current fan base to abandon her on the spot would satisfy her that she'd made the right choice in bestowing the honor on me, a complete and total relative parent blog ignoramus newcomer.

Until Jillsmo returns from her 'personal matters', please read my blog posting on her website:  Yeah.  Good Times.