Friday, October 3, 2008

Getting beat up

Not in the physical sense but it feels an awful lot like it after awhile. Maybe that's what all those depression hurts ads mean.
The last two months have been a bitch. Between Husband and I going round and round about the money issue, Boy has been not adjusting to his new preschool as quickly as his school would like him to. They had us in about two weeks ago to discuss putting him into an evaluation with Stanford university to find out what his issues are. We know that Boy is a little behind his peer group when it comes to speaking. His vocabulary is behind other kids but it isn't something that actually worries me. Husband yes, me no. But we made the appointment knowing the insurance company covers almost bupkis of it.
The meeting with the psychiatrist wasn't as horrible as I would have thought. She is going to watch Boy at his preschool and then in two 2 hour sessions, evaluated him for a variety of things - IQ, fine and gross motor skills, etc. It will be more to pin point anything that might be amiss in his little head. Based on our just over an hour with her, she has some basic ideas of things that might be going on from what we've told her. She refuses to give us speculation because she wants to see Boy in action.
You can't help as a Mom to wonder what your part in your child's quirks is your doing. Was it the unpasturized brie I had in my second trimester? Did I not exercise too much or too little? Should I have forced him to sit through Baby Einstein though he kept looking at the vids and at me like I was on crack? What did I do wrong?
I've told a few friends what I'm going through and I've gotten pretty good support out of it. It's not like I want to advertise that Boy is being evaluated for possible defects. Even though we all know that if there is something miswired in a kid's head, there are some who will shy away from bringing their kid into your kid's circle lest they catch it. And there is something about having the unsolicited advice of those who feel they are the arbiters of all knowledge on child raising. Ugh.
So you can imagine how I felt bitch slapped by Hollie when she sent me a sharply worded email telling me that I needed to get Boy's hearing tested - that she has told me this a few times and why will I not listen to her? Right now, the last thing I need - and even she has acknowledged this in said email - is to be even more stressed out but there she goes. I politely told her we'd look into it in an email back. Let's just say there will be no return phone calls to Hollie for a few days because I'm just so very hurt by what she wrote.
Is she right? Sure. Boy probably should get a hearing test. Just to rule out the possibility that he's got some hearing issues. My ears are burned out from all the freakin' times I've listened to the Caillou theme song. He's listened to it even more than I have.
But what cheesed me is that she really didn't seem to read the email I sent closely. She seems to think that this is something the preschool is doing rather that an outside agency. That we are paying out of pocket $1500 that we don't have to find out if our son has Asperger's or an IQ of 190 or something. That it is through Stanford University which isn't exactly Beau's College of Yungins and Rubber Goods. I wanted to explain to her in longer sentences that Stanford University is sending a psychiatrist on staff with their childrens' center to the preschool to observe for an hour Boy doing what Boy does. Then we are going for one day over two weeks for two hour sessions to test Boy on various skills to eliminate things to figure out what is going on in Boy's little head.
Why didn't I? Because one, I hate confrontation and two, I'm too damned polite. And three, Hollie is stressed out by having just moved back in with her parents after living on her own for 18 years so she can finish her doctorate dissertation and holding down a part time job in her field that is really new to her. The last thing I want to do is piss her off when she's not thinking straight and lose my other best friend. I'm floundering enough in my life without the easy chat I once had with my other best friend but to lose this one would leave me even more adrift.
What would I have preferred? Just tell me that you're thinking good thoughts and to talk to the pediatrician about possible hearing tests. After I get all the test results back in three weeks from the psychiatrist, then bring up the whole why don't we eliminate the hearing issue thing again. It is really aggrevating to have to deal with this attack when I'm feeling fragile as it is. You want your friends to help but some times, you feel like all you get is needles thrown at you. Or darts. Or worse.

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