The kid's gonna be alright

After much thought, debate and worry, we have made the decision to have Ben skip second grade and go to third next year. We could not have asked for better support from Ben's school. The principal and team of teachers who helped us gave us excellent insight and advice throughout.

The decision-making process was tough for me. My honest inclination had been to have Ben proceed to second grade. It certainly would have been the safe choice, and the safe choice usually is the one I go with. I grappled with lots of what-ifs. What if: leaving his first-grade friends behind makes him really sad, he finds third grade too challenging, it all turns out terribly and Ben ends up hating us and we ruin his whole life? Yeah, I can be a little melodramatic. Of course, there were just as many what-ifs about having him stay on his current path. Obviously I didn't have a crystal ball to allow me to look into the future and get answers to all my what-ifs. However, when I looked at the situation with a clear head, I knew that odds were that Ben would do fine either way. Finally, I (and Mark, of course) decided: why not give him the chance? What if it turns out great?

At our final meeting with school staff, the principal imparted a last bit of wisdom: whatever you decide, don't play the what-if game, just get behind your decision and be confident in it. Clearly Mr. Dahm doesn't know me very well if he thinks I can avoid that game. Nevertheless, it's good advice, and I'm trying to follow it.

When we broke the news to Ben, he responded with a positive sounding, "OK." I suppose that's the best I could hope for. We are, after all, asking him to make a pretty big change. Now that we have made the decision, Ben has been doing some transitioning to get used to his new classmates. That included going to watch the all-city track meet with the second-graders, a privilege the first-graders don't get. I had the opportunity to go along. I sat a couple rows behind and watched my boy. He sat next to a girl from his math class. They bent their heads close and talked and giggled. When the class lined up to walk back to school, Ben fit right in. Sometimes I watch him and he seems so grown up it takes my breath away. I knew it watching Ben then. The kid's gonna be alright.

Never thought I'd be the early bird

For as long as I can remember, I have loved sleep. I lived for lingering in bed a few extra hours on the weekend, not that I got to do that too often after having kids. That all changed when I began to have occasional bouts with insomnia two months ago. One random night, I lay in bed not able to sleep, more and more worried about the next day as the hours ticked past. Not a big deal, right? Surely you can survive a sleepless night or two? Leave it to me and my anxious mind to turn it into a big deal. Turns out self-fulfilling prophecy is real. I worried and worried about sleeplessness becoming a pattern, and lo and behold it did. There's nothing like lying in bed fretting about falling asleep to stop you from doing just that.

My little problem became a big deal (at least in my neurotic mind) for a few weeks. At least one or two nights a week, I would wake up wide awake after maybe an hour of sleep. I'd lie there tossing and turning, shooting daggers at Mark for being able to sleep so easily when I was struggling so much. I had read that you aren't supposed to lie awake frustrated in bed, so I would get up and stalk through the house like a prowler, looking for some activity that would tire me out or bore me to sleep. Inevitably, the entire time I was up, I would feel agitated about not sleeping, again, not a sleep-promoting feeling. It was beginning to take a toll. Some nights I might only net about four hours of sleep, and I would be drowsy and crabby by 10 a.m. the next day.

I did what most people do when faced with a problem: searched the internet for a solution. I learned a lot. Insomnia affects women more than men (poor women, we get everything). Keeping a sleep schedule is important - going to sleep and waking up at roughly the same time every day. And I learned that I definitely didn't want to take sleeping pills or herbal remedies, as they don't work long-term. I needed a sustainable solution.

Finally I came across an article in Good Housekeeping suggesting a website called CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) for Insomnia. A renowned sleep expert created the program, available for purchase for the low, low price of $29.95. I was in. For my money, I got a program to follow, and each week I was to submit a sleep diary. I would then receive interactive sleep tips and sleep schedule recommendations from the doctor. I'm happy to say that the "positive self talk" and "sleep-promoting ideas" that I was supposed to hold in my head worked for me. I was beginning to have better nights.

Then I received my first sleep schedule from the doctor, and I balked. He wanted me to go to bed no earlier than 10:30 p.m. and wake up at 6 a.m. I didn't want to stay up until 10:30. I'm usually dead on my feet by 9 p.m. And waking up at 6 a.m.? On a Saturday? I got over it and decided I would try to follow it. I did my best but deviated some. As I submitted more diaries, the recommendations changed, and I found schedules that worked better for me. That brings me to now, when I'm aiming to go to sleep no earlier than 9:30 p.m. and up by 5:30 a.m., an hour that not so long ago I would have found depressingly early.

The amazing thing is that I've grown to actually like the early rising. It gives me a little kid-free time, and some mornings I even haul it over to the Y first thing to swim laps. So I'm no longer getting the eight or nine hours of sleep I used to crave. Most days it's more like seven and a half, but I'll take it. Being a parent is all about adapting, so I was well-prepared to do it yet again.

Fostering friendship

This phrasing surely will make me sound old and parental, but in my day, friendships came easily. You would find kids your age in your neighborhood, and by default, you simply hung out with them. They were your friends. When I was Ben's age, my brothers and I spent every day after school and all summer playing with friends. Ben, on the other hand, was spending almost all of his free time with me and his brothers. I don't know if it's just my family, or if things have changed, but making friends doesn't seem so easy anymore. It seems like rather than kids just approaching one another and asking to play, moms and dads set up play dates.

Yes, I'm shy and Ben's shy. It doesn't come naturally for me to say to the neighbor mom, "Hey, let's get the kids together to play!" And Ben approaching the kids across the street to see if he could have in on their outdoor game? That wasn't happening. It was getting to the point that I was starting to worry. Ben never asked to have kids from his class over to the house. I had encouraged Ben many times to see if the boy and two girls across the street wanted to play, knowing full well that he would never do it.

Finally, two weeks ago when the weather was nice, I saw Ben staring longingly at the kids playing in their driveway. I could tell that he so badly wanted to play with them. I decided then that I would have to facilitate the friendship, but before I could do it, my husband stepped in and invited the kids to come play with Ben and Paul. Much to my delight, I looked out the window one afternoon to find my boys playing baseball with Ben, Sophie and Lilly. That was all it took. Ben no longer is afraid to approach the neighbor kids, and he and his brother often spend many hours across the street or at our house playing with their friends. Now if only someone could facilitate some mom friendships for me ...

To skip or not to skip

Allow me to begin with a disclaimer. I find parents who brag about their kids' intellect completely irritating. Junior scored a 32 on his ACTs? Jen got straight A's on her report card again? Don't crow about it to me. I think sharing in the delight of that achievement is best saved for a conversation between spouses or maybe, at the farthest reaches, proud grandparents. If you ask me, sharing specifics about your children's academic achievements with anyone and everyone who will listen is in poor taste.

That sense of annoyance I've had with those prideful parents in the past combined with my fear of sounding boastful about my own kids has made it hard for me to talk with anyone about Ben's abilities. But here I go, and I hope I don't come off as the insufferable sort of parent. The kid is smart. Scary smart. Looking back, I suppose we saw it first when he was about 3. Soon after Ben's third birthday, we thought he might like to try his hand at playing games. He took to it immediately, staying focused, learning the rules, always wanting to learn new, more challenging games.

When he hit 4, he began to read, just taught himself to read, really. Like all parents, Mark and I had read to him, and I had worked with him a little on phonics, but for the most part, he just picked it up on his own. When he was 5, we had gotten Chinese takeout one night. On the back of the fortune cookie slip, he read off his list of lucky numbers and then said he wanted to figure out his "big lucky number." He added the list of five two digit-numbers in his head and announced the answer. I whipped out the calculator to check his work, and sure enough, he was right. (I must say as someone who's completely math deficient, it's his arithmetic abilities that mystify me the most.) I suppose what is there really to brag about? Ben was born brainy, just as one might be born with green eyes or curly hair.

When kindergarten came around, Ben's teachers simply adapted. The wonderful Ms. Lawson gave him special reading assignments and tried to challenge him. Ben was never unhappy or complained about being bored. From a maturity standpoint, he was very much on par with his peers.

We have gotten lucky again in first grade, with Ben ending up in the hands of a great teacher who's always stepped up to meet his needs. He has been going to a second-grade classroom for math, and twice a week he gets pulled with a second-grade group for time with a gifted-talented teacher.

The idea had occurred to me that sometime someone might suggest Ben skip a grade. Honestly, I have always been very resistant to the idea. I was surprised, then, at conferences a few weeks ago when my husband asked his teacher the question: how long is it practical for Ben to keep getting pulled out of his grade-level activities? At what point does it make more sense for him to move to a higher grade?

Thinking about what to do these last few weeks often has left me feeling overwhelmed and emotional. It's a huge decision. It's his future. Mark's right. There are a lot of reasons skipping second grade could be a good idea. Already there are logistical issues this year with pulling Ben out, and those will only continue. Plus, as Mark pointed out, if we're ever going to do it, we should do it sooner than later. We talked to the gifted-talented specialist last week to get her insights. She thinks having him make the jump could be beneficial. Ben's got an early birthday. If he'd been born just 35 days earlier, he would, theoretically, be a second-grader now.

I guess I'm thinking about it like a mother. Having Ben skip a grade would mean losing a year with him at home, an idea that fills me with sadness. He would never go to high school with Paul. In fact, he'd be in fourth grade by the time Paul gets to kindergarten. Then there's a never-ending list of possible social and emotional issues. Would he get teased? He's on the smallish side (sorry, Ben!), and that could be a problem for sports. He'd hit milestones later than his peers. And on and on.

We've decided to meet with a team of teachers and the principal closer to the end of the school year. This decision won't come easy for us. All I can say for now is to be continued ...

Copycat!

Growing up, one of the worst offenses in the Ceman household was copying a sibling. The punishment for copycatting in the first degree? Wrath, and a lot of it. The worst kind of copying involved food. Say, for example, I fixed myself an after-school snack of potato chips with French onion dip. If Mike thought that looked pretty tasty and made himself the same, I would immediately become filled with intense petty rage. "You're a copycat!" I would hurl at him with a level of scorn and vitriol that a typical, non-10-year-old person normally would reserve for, say, perpetrators of genocide.

Twenty-some years later, I hear that same level of contempt in Ben's voice when Paul copies him. Last night, I asked Ben and Paul if they wanted a hot dog or hamburger for supper. Paul: "What are you going to have, Ben?" Ben: "A hot dog." Paul: "I'll have a hot dog." Ben: "You're copying me! Next time I'm going to lie so you can't have what I'm having!" It's funny to observe this as an adult. Though I would no longer feel that stab of irritation if one of my brothers saw me eat my ice cream and decided they would like to put chocolate chips on top of theirs too, I somehow can recall the intensity of annoyance it caused back then. So, yeah, I can sympathize with Ben a little bit. More than anything, though, I can see the situation for what it really is. In Paul's eyes, Ben is the alpha and the omega of cool. Of course, I don't expect Ben to understand that, not for many years. For now, imitation is the sincerest form of annoyance.

Getting used to my new ride will take some time

We got the news from the mechanic last week: our minivan needed several costly repairs. That, along with the fact that our old girl was nine years old and inching toward the 100,000-mile mark, helped us make the decision. It was time for a new van. Mark and I spent the afternoon Saturday looking at Toyota Siennas. Boy was I glad to have Mark there. I hate to be a female cliche, but I would not be good at purchasing a vehicle. When we zeroed in one we liked, to my amusement, the salesman actually said, "What would it take to have you drive home in this today?" Well-played, sir. Mark haggled while I sat there placidly, and finally they reached a deal.

We picked up our new (used) van on Monday. It's a pale blue Sienna and probably the nicest car I've ever driven. The biggest bonus: one of the side doors has the power sliding feature. When I'd first heard of these, I thought, come on, who really needs that? Now that I have three kids, I see: me. It's a beautiful thing.

In fact, I have loved everything about the new van. Except for one thing. One of my least favorite things in the world is looking like an idiot in front of other people. The people in question here are the nice ladies who help the kids out of the car at Ben's school. The van has some new features that are taking me a while to learn. My fear of looking stupid and my desire to get Ben out of the car quickly so as not to clog the drop-off lane has led to some major performance anxiety for me. As soon as you begin to drive, the van automatically locks and stays locked until you put it in park. I'm not used to that, so when I dropped Ben off the first day, it took a lot of fumbling in order to unlock the van.

So, yeah, it's taken me a couple days to remember all the steps I need to follow to get my son freed from the van. Yesterday, after trying to open the locked door yet again, one of the drop-off ladies told me, a little peevishly, "You've got to remember to put it in gear first!" Today I was determined to do it right. I pulled up to the same lady. I reminded myself that I must put the car in park in order to unlock the doors. I was ready. I reached for the gear shift - in the place where it was in the old van. And turned on the windshield wipers. I frantically reached for the gear shift and put it in park. I couldn't even make eye contact with the woman. Today she must have felt sorry for me. "Don't you just love getting a new vehicle - all this new stuff to figure out?" she said. Indeed.

Off we go like a herd of worms

That was the saying a certain celebrity said his mom always used when his family was going on any outing, I read recently. I think it sums up perfectly the pace at which my family moves, too. I remember being stunned at how long it took to get out the door when Ben was a newborn. Change diaper, nurse, poop, change diaper, check diaper bag, get Ben in car seat ... Sometimes it took easily 45 minutes to make it into the car.

I'm no longer parenting any newborns, but things haven't improved much. Of course, now I have three younguns to try to herd out the door. And it doesn't help that kids are natural dawdlers. You would think that by now I would have getting Ben to school down to a science, but no. I never know what particular challenge I'll face on any given morning: having to ask Ben three or four times to start putting on his snow pants, boots and jacket; Gus taking off the socks I just put on and having to search for them; remembering at the last minute that I haven't yet signed Ben's reading sheet. At least one day each week is bound to find me hollering at the boys and panicking that we're going to be late.

The other day I decided I would let Paul and Gus play outside. It took 20 minutes to make it outside. 20 minutes. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for one of Gus's boots. This was the second time in two weeks a boot had gone missing. This time I found it; the last I didn't and had to resort to putting Gus in shoes instead. That didn't work so well. The fact that it's winter certainly doesn't help matters, but no matter the time of year, it's always something. Think slathering three squirmy boys with sunscreen before we can play outside in the summer.

I don't hold out much hope that things will improve within the next, say, five to 10 years. I will just have to do my best to pad our departures with plenty of extra time, travelling with my little herd of worms.