<p>G-mom, I read “The Shipping News” ages ago, (the year it came out, I think) and loved it. I remember telling people about it and they would look at me funny. “Newfies? What’s that?” I also read her “Accordion Crimes”, which is more of a series of short stories all about the same accordion (even stranger than Newfies). I’m always looking for a happy ending from her, or even just a resolution that isn’t entirely heartbreaking. It’s there sometimes. I love all her Wyoming short story books - “Close Range” (which includes Brokeback Mountain) and “Bad Dirt” - I haven’t gotten to “Fine Just the Way it Is” yet. They’re all excellent and short stories can be just the right length to read before bed.</p>
<p>I had “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara” by Ben Fountain out from the library but had to return it before I had finished it. It is short stories too, and while I only read two of them, I think that first one burned it’s image in my brain. </p>
<p>I’m also reading “London” by Edward Rutherford. Very slowly. It’s huge and heavy and more (like Accordion crimes) a series of short stories, in historical order, about London. Fascinating stuff but too heavy for me to hold over my head as I read in bed. Yes, it’s fallen on my face! Loveblue, you should try it before you go to London, but find the paperback version!</p>
<p>G-mom, do you know of a book called “There are No Words” by Mary Calhoun Brown? It’s for ages 9 - 12 and the main character is a girl with autism who doesn’t speak but is quite attuned to her environment and to how she is treated differently.</p>
<p>Oh please don’t put a lock on the door, that is just such a horrific idea, I know you won’t do it from your postings, does your sister (or was it sister-in-law) have children?</p>
<p>It’s my sister. No, she doesn’t have kids. I find that what the author says in ‘No Two Alike’ is so true. No matter what, society at large holds the parents responsible for what becomes of their kids. If the kids have issues, it must be the parents’ fault. I homeschooled my kids and got SO much flak from relatives while I was doing that – as though conventional schooling is so great and no conventional schooled kids ever have problems? Maybe my problems would be much worse if the kids had gone to conventional school earlier. Maybe they’re right, the youngest one is the ‘most normal’ because she has been in the conventional school system the longest. In the end, it comes down to risk vs. benefit. When D1 was Kindergarten age and it was time to send her to school, I couldn’t come up with anything on the ‘benefits’ side and there was a really long list of risks. We did what we thought was best. I truly enjoyed those early years together. I think, looking back, that my girls will too. But currently, they have issues. We just have to figure out how to get through them. D1 needs a massive infusion of confidence and backbone. I don’t know where she will find it. But I do know that it’s something she has to find for herself, I cannot give it to her, no matter how much I wish I could. If D1 asked me if she could turn the mother in law unit into her own place and live there kind of independently, I would support her in that. I’m not altogether sure how it would work, but if she came to me and asked if we could do that, we would. But I will not unilaterally lock her out of our lives. She needs us more than ever right now, even if she doesn’t show it or express it very well.</p>
<p>Gmom
in the “nurture assumption” toward the end, there is a chapter named tongue in cheek-sh
“what parents can do”
it is bit too late for that since Judith is talking about parents of younger kids, maybe help in hindsight which could be turned into foward-sight.
I trusted her after I wrote to her publisher and she replied to me and explained what I did not understand step by step by step by step. mind you, this was before e-mails, and barely-able-to-write-sentence-in-English me. her patience and OCD brain power totally knocked me out.
this is really something great about USA. Authors want to hear from readers. do write, they might answer you. thou she did say my writing was too bad to ignore, or something like that, LOL.</p>
<p>so I did “what parents can do” and some worked some didn’t
he is comfortable socially wherever he goes: to upper east mansions or ghetto projects’ friend’s house. able to charm interviewers looking in the eye, I mean not in the eye but collarbones (no, this one is not one on Judith’s tip)
but academics aptitude, work ethics and habit in general, there are dark shadow of unbeatable nature.
would I traded those two and wanted to have hi achieving super organized unpopular unattractive (I know don’t beat me up moms, but it is true and you know it) kid?
big NO.
I would loved him no matter what but no, I am basically thankful the way he turned out do far.
thanks Judith.</p>
<p>To Bears and GMom</p>
<p>Excellent, both of you are excellent.</p>
<p>^ see that? folks
when I said the same thing in parents’ forum I was beaten up by tsunami of right minded moms and eventually resulted in muzzle and bear cage.
how about that?</p>
<p>Shame on them for the muzzle and bear cage! I think we all have more in common over here than in parents’ forum. I’m glad that I can freely talk about issues with my kids here and not feel like somehow I’m at fault and that we must be terribly people because we have the issues we have. When I had to go get D1 from school and bring her home, I was only a little apprehensive about posting here in the launch thread… but I knew that there would be no gloating or finger pointing here and that there would be sound advice and sympathy. So thank you all again!</p>
<p>I’ve never been to the parent’s format, maybe I should check it out for fun. Maybe it’s that we know we’re responsible and there’s nothing we can do about it, it a psych thing (speaking for myself).</p>
<p>I remember years ago taking my kid for a test, I think it was called the IRB or some such thing, that they give for private schools in NYC. The entire waiting room was just brimming over with anxiety and tension, some from kids, mostly from parents who were having their kids take the test for private school admission. You know the drill Bears, if they don’t get into such and such private school God knows they won’t be on track for Haaaaarvard.</p>
<p>I had read a book that said it was statistically better if you didn’t know the answer to just pick A, B C or D and put that down whenever you didn’t know. You were penalized more for leaving a blank. So we decided the letter of the day would be B. That was the extent of our test prep and here we were in a room full of kids who had probably been studying for this test for years. </p>
<p>So at the half-time break my kid comes out, stands in the middle of the room and says very loudly “Wow that last section was hard. I just had to put down B on almost all the answers because I didn’t know the real answer.” </p>
<p>It was hysterical, you could actually hear an audible collective sigh from all the private school parents. Thank goodness, one kid less for theirs to compete with. It was hysterically funny.</p>
<p>smarty you will find friends there you can talk to: who never utter f word (all of them) or s or n or anything never ever.
no it ain’t our thing, we did only brief stint @ Rudolf Steiner and Bank street’s door steps, no uppy tighty kind. are you talking about lower school or upper?
for wee kids, there was a funny bit in Tiger mom book.
Her rebellious younger D intentionally but consistently answered wrong on purpose and gotten in wee school anyways.
if said school is loaded ( money, manpower, everything) and give enuff room for every parents and kids instead of those cattle herding, things are better at any schools. only in dream or at Tigermom land =30 K/year dayschool sure why not.</p>
<p>yeah, people
read “Tiger mom” but don’t you buy it.
it is very entertaining if anything.
is it selling still? I haven’t checked stats lately.
which Ivy is Tiger cub1 piano girl would ended up, eh?</p>
<p>Oh, I really liked his first book, I’ll have to get this one.<br>
Today I had to drive Aspie-girl to school and I said “Did you look at the SAT Essay practice book?” Naturally, she replies “Yes I did.” Because she did ‘look’ at it. I have to remember to be more precise and say what I mean with her. What I should have said was “Did you open up the SAT Essay practice book and read it and understand what they are trying to tell you about SAT writing tests? Did you do any of the practice exercises?” Then I would have gotten a more worthwhile answer. Life with her is interesting. On top of the Asperger’s, she has a neurological problem that affects the right side of her brain, it’s called Nonverbal Learning Disability. So she doesn’t learn well from ‘showing’ her how to do things, you have to provide a very detailed verbal description of what you want her to do or where you want her to go. This can be exhausting at times, remembering to do all this detailed verbal explaining. It’s one of the reasons I dread trying to teach her how to drive a car. A couple of years ago she came to me in private and told me that she wanted to know ‘how to shave her legs’. I didn’t dare give her a regular safety razor (she doesn’t have good fine motor control) so I bought her an electric shaver and handed it to her. A couple of days later she came to me again and asked me to teach her how to shave her legs. So I sat on my bed and ‘showed’ her what to do – but I didn’t accompany it with much of a verbal explanation (I mean, how much can you say???). She still didn’t understand. She came to me a third time… would I please ‘EXPLAIN’ to her what to do to shave her legs… so then the lightbulb (mine) goes on and I realize that she didn’t absorb most of what I’d ‘shown’ her and that she needed the verbal description of each step of the process.
She loves horseback riding. It took her ages to learn how to saddle a horse (and she’s still really bad at visually discriminating between horses) because I would ‘show’ her what to do, or her instructor would ‘show’ her what to do – and what she needed was the verbal description of what to do in order to actually learn to do it herself. It’s kind of like living with a blind person, except that she CAN see.
When she was much younger I remember her coming home from school in tears because she is so literal that when her teacher joked with her that she wasn’t going to get an A, Aspie girl couldn’t understand that it was a joke and thought the teacher was serious – so she was upset that she wasn’t going to get an A in the class and there was no good reason for it. In 5th grade she was in the DARE program and I remember her coming home and telling me that she couldn’t receive the wine at communion anymore because there was alcohol in it and the policeman told her she couldn’t have any alcohol. Poor kid.<br>
She has a gentle, kind and generous heart, though, even though it is tough to live with her.</p>
<p>I thought I’d add a little more. In the same way that she has trouble visually discriminating between horses (especially if they’re the same general color and size) she has trouble with faces. It’s called ‘face blindness’. She can walk by somebody she knows and not notice them – and then she doesn’t understand why they think that she’s stuck up or aloof when she’s not trying to be – all because she didn’t see them in the first place. When we had her last round of testing done last year (we were trying to get the school district to change her 501 plan to an IEP) her visual processing speed was 0.3 percentile. So she tends to freak out in places she’s not familiar with or in places where there’s crowds – like the mall or Disneyland or the city. It is so much work for her to keep track of us that she just doesn’t enjoy herself at all. I’ve taken to always holding her hand or taking her by the arm when we go someplace crowded so that she’ll feel more secure. Her slow visual processing impacts things like pouring a liquid into a cup (she doesn’t stop pouring when the cup is full) or reacting to a situation. On horseback, we can rely on the horse having more sense or more ability to deal with a situation than she does. But I remember seeing her lose control of the horse and then waiting for what seems like forever for her to gain enough control and ‘catchup’ in order to respond and do what she needed to do to regain control of the horse. In a car, I worry that that gap in her reaction time is too dangerous. Funny thing is that she could go to the DMV and apply for a license and they’d never be any the wiser.
She hates to use the phone. We got her a cell phone because she gets lost so easily – but she mostly forgets to keep it charged. When she started high school she really wanted to try out for the cross country team – and she scared all of us to death (the cross country coach was actually the art teacher for D1 and manga girl --Sr. Janet) including the coach because she’d run off into the woods and we were never too certain that she was going to stay on the path and run back out of the woods. Cross country didn’t work out though because she could not get to a meet because every time she tried to go she had a panic attack and couldn’t get out of bed.</p>
<p>Like I said, I have an interesting life. Don’t know anybody that would trade with me, lol.</p>
<p>D A M N its not good to have the Nook with me here at work AND have wifi access and then I can instantly download the book… and then, when I’m not careful, another and another…Don’t even have to get the credit card out…
guilty pleasures…
hehe</p>
<p>I guess I’ll be unemployed soon enough and will have plenty of summer reading to while away the hours…</p>
<p>Had to do some digging to revive the book thread! Just started the tiger mom book, very interesting so far - I’m already feeling sorry for LuLu especially!</p>
<p>Just finished a book called “Without Keys” , written by a woman who found herself homeless for 3 months of the winter on the streets on Minneapolis. A total eye opener!</p>
<p>redbug
thanks for digging (dance)
I am in this “don’t wanna do brain” mode (ref. to film thread)
took out from the library
i sold Andy Warhol. (too soon)
[Amazon.com:</a> I Sold Andy, Warhol (Too Soon) (9781590514566): Richard Polsky: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Andy-Warhol-Too-Soon/dp/1590514564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308263530&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Andy-Warhol-Too-Soon/dp/1590514564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308263530&sr=1-1)
so nice to not have to look up any words in the book.
The author is a bay area art consultant/dealer.
sold his own Warhol to feed then wife’s expensive life style only to witness crazy boom that followed, up to 2007-sh that he could have made millions if he’d kept that tiny picture.</p>
<p>what concerns me is real life people- other dealers, girlfriends, artists still alive and in business’ names are named, conversation repeated with never officially thanking them or sorry-ing them in acknowledgment except for few that close to him (and those he did not bad mouthed about)
I guess he and his circle must have being in agreement that he will write whatever he wants, good or bad about that person. This makes everything they did or said is true to the facts, or might have staged, overly edited out, like reality show.
boy the guy must have had a blast and sure made some enemies.
or maybe being badmouthed would give the other party bragging rights, since non-art public is not aware of what and who they are. you get to be in the book! name’s named!! publicity!! could help selling art!!
^now THAT is creepy.</p>
<p>what I like about is his love of art, esp paintings are genuine. sure he wants to make money always all the time but him well knowing big bad ugly side of artworld and goes into the game armed with sense of (cheap side of self deprecating)humor.
that’s my kind of view.</p>
<p>I returned the book and got “Nanny Returns”
sequel to the Nanny Diaries.
^That was back then I could only able to follow chick-lits. look how we grew!
they are all same, Candace Bushenell, Lauren what her name, Emily what her name…
read 14 pages in the subway to my stop and I am introduced to Nanny’s now husband (then BF) dog (then puppy) what and where about all other people was in first book and what she have been doing with bit each of career, sex, food, culture sprinkled on it.
amazing. If life could be this easy, 10 plus years in 14 pages.
Thing is, it is. In the world of chicklits. I adore adore and loath loath them.
can’t wait reading tonight (and don’t I know what might happen next!!!)</p>
<p>Bears, I can do you one better. A school around here has an enormous used book sale every April and D1 happened to be home that weekend. Sunday was half-price day and we filled boxes and boxes with books. She aimed high, with titles like “Real Women eat Meat”, “I brake for Cowboys”, and “Unwrapped” (one word but you should SEE the cover). There was even one called “Under the Kilt”. No, I made that one up but there should have been one. Truth in advertising! D1 certainly enjoys her reading.</p>
<p>I also found at least half a dozen “Pride and Prejudice” fan fiction sequels (for D2) and D1 scooped up armloads of old record albums. And I mean old - things like Jeannette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, Doris Day, etc. It was great fun.</p>
<p>Before you think it was TOO much fun, I did also go on the opening day and fought the crowds for art books, good short story collections, and the Norton Anthology of Women’s fiction amongst other things. They all go on the shelf and hopefully I’ll read at least half of them before next year’s sale.</p>
<p>To find used book sales in your neighborhood, try this site: [Book</a> Sale Finder](<a href=“http://www.booksalefinder.com%5DBook”>http://www.booksalefinder.com)</p>
<p>Green - nothing I like better than a book sale! Everytime I go to the library to check out the free books, I end up buying at least one from their sale carts. last time I was there I took out 3 CD’s for free, then bought 4 books.</p>
<p>Altho I’ve only been once, my favorite book sale is Lit Fest held in Chicago every year where they close several streets in the south downtown are known as Printer’s Row. I was smart and brought sturdy shopping bags with me. D and her friend got books too, as well as beautiful handmade leather backpacks from a vendor. It is in June every year, and is past, but here’s the review so you can plan for next year.</p>
<p>[Printers</a> Row Lit Fest - South Loop - Chicago, IL](<a href=“http://www.yelp.com/biz/printers-row-lit-fest-chicago]Printers”>http://www.yelp.com/biz/printers-row-lit-fest-chicago)</p>