Doin' the Math

So I know this is not a personal blog though, as I write a lot about my son Charlie and have been going on and on a bit about the warrior mom thing, there's something of a personal hue over whatever I write here. Advocacy is inevitably a very personal act for me; it's often not about making signs or addressing crowds through megaphones on the steps of Important Government Buildings. It's often about just going out and being with Charlie, whose disability is simultaneously invisible and yet, from the way people sometimes respond to him after a glance, all too obvious.

Occasionally though one has to let the lines of private and more "pro"-style blogging converge and put a very personal stamp on what gets written here.

So, behold. This is a math worksheet, fully completed---twenty subtraction problems. Charlie punches in the numbers using a $1 "big keys" calculator from Target and then reads out the answers after leaning forward over the little screen. I write the answers down, and it's onto the next problem. (Charlie's control of the pencil is yet imprecise.) Usually we just do three or maybe even five and Charlie's asking for a break. On Monday night, though, he did the first five and then the next and the next and the next and the next, until the whole sheet was finished.

Charlie just really started to do worksheets with addition and subtraction and a calculator this school year. As I've been noting since starting to write this blog, the past few months haven't been the easiest. When Charlie was younger, more than a few parents told me that their children (boys in particular) had been "okay, and then they hit 13"---became adolescents---and something went tough. More than a few of those boys are now in residential placements. It's a simple fact that Charlie is simply a bigger boy with a tremendous amount of energy in him; this winter has not helped. Charlie's a bike-riding, ocean-faring kind of kid and ice and snow render those activities, well, at least bit chilly and just not possible.

It was in the 50s this past weekend and you can be sure Jim dragged out the bikes and, needing only a sweatshirt (no parka), Charlie sailed forth after Jim for an almost 12 mile bike ride. Charlie does best with daily aerobic exercise but he often seems most in his element when the exercise is of a more intense nature, somewhat like the skiing lessons for kids on the spectrum given by the co-founder of the Extreme Sports Camp, as described in yesterday's Aspen Times. Yoga's great (Charlie's been doing it on and off in Adapted Physical Ed for the past few years) but a real work out best engages him. Gotta sweat, gotta go places, gotta build up endurance.

They say life's not a sprint but a marathon. Seems to me we're starting spring training here.