Mothers

WITH ATTITUDE

MARCH 13, 2000

A new study reports that children's brains continue gaining gray matter right up through the teen years. This is news because it had previously been believed that you pretty much had all the brain cells you were going to get by the age of five, and so lack of stimulation during those early years pretty much meant you'd lost your chance. The discovery that the brain keeps growing and changing and developing for so long after that is heartening indeed to those of us who've adopted children outside that magic early-development window. Where it once seemed impossible to ever make up that lost time, it now appears that the brain may still have a few tricks up its sleeve.

We adopted our daughter at age 4.5, and have been attempting to stuff her head full of knowledge ever since. She had some brain damage from birth, and the consensus has always been that even if the impairments could have been remediated in her first few years if she'd been in a stimulating family environment instead of an understimulating orphanage one, by the age of 5 her abilities were pretty much set. Yet she does seem to be making progress, slowly, but surprisingly to many people. Connections are being made that weren't made before. Information is being retained and interpreted in new ways every day. There's some major action going on in those little lobes. And it's nice to have scientific confirmation that anything's possible.

One of the first books I read after bringing our two neurologically challenged children home was Oliver Sacks' "An Anthropologist on Mars," and I remember marveling at the many ways in which the brain could adapt itself to conditions that seemed on the surface to be so entirely unacceptable. It was an encouraging message to receive as I watched my two little organisms adapt to their new environment. This new study seems to be further proof that it's unwise ever to take that organ for granted, or to assume that it can't do anything more. The brain is always working, restructuring, reinventing itself, and I doubt that that really abruptly ends at any age.

Myself, for example, I know that my brain has recently entirely restructured itself in such a way that I can't remember a darn thing, and am in a constant state of panic and confusion. I can only hope that when this phase of construction is done, I will still be a little smarter than my rapidly brain-expanding kids.

MARCH 15, 2000

My 6-year-old eats like a pig. Which is to say, he eats a lot and he eats messy. There are all sorts of good reasons for this--sensory-integration difficulties that cause him not to know how full his mouth is, fine motor weakness that causes wielding a fork to be a major chore--but this does not make watching him any less unappetizing. It's gotten to the point where even the kids at school don't want to watch him eat.

His specialty is cramming his mouth so full of food that he can't chew, and has to sort of wait for everything to dissolve. While doing this, he tends to get up and walk around, shedding bits of rice and corn in his wake. He is a full body eater. He wipes his mouth on his shoulder, touches his hair and gets food in it, gets food tidbits all over the table and his shirt and his pants and his chair and the floor, and has a tendency to go into his hand-flapping habit right after eating with his hands, so that morsels are scattered to the four corners of the kitchen. He also enjoys pulling the fork or spoon (when he actually uses those utensils) out of his mouth with a grand flourish, which usually results in rice being flung in Papa's face. Mealtimes in our house are what you could call stressful.

Now, the only way I know to discipline a child into good table manners is to remove him from the table at the first infraction. Unfortunately, that's not an option with this little guy, simply because he is such a little guy. We're talking 37 pounds at age almost-seven. He's lost the "You can feed this starving child for 5 cents a day" look he had when we brought him home from a Russian orphanage five-and-a-half years ago, but he's still way wiry. His spring jacket is a size 2/3, and though the shortness of the sleeves indicate a new size is called for, there's no strain on the snaps down the front. Finding pants for him is an endless challenge--we need about a size 6 in length and a size 3 in the waist. So in the long run, having him pack in the food is significantly more important than packing it in prettily.

But in the short run--well, yuck. There are only so many times you can see a boy cram food into his mouth with both hands before you start to consider offering a liquid diet and a straw. With sensory-integration therapy, things have gotten slowly better--his days of stuffing an entire Taco Bell soft taco in his mouth at once are happily over. We're now trying doling out a few bites at a time, in a bowl with a rim for his left hand to hold on to, out of the action, while his right hand scoops the food up with a spoon. The theory is that he can push the food against the side of the bowl instead of the side of his hand, and maybe keep his mitts clean. The theory has flaws, but it's holding up. It's either this, or put a trough in the corner of the kitchen and let him just stick his face in and go at it. Honestly, there'd probably be less clean-up with that.

MARCH 17, 2000

MARCH 20, 2000

According to a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO), which clearly does not have enough to do, American schoolchildren rank a shocking fifth in most french fries eaten. Only 30 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds eat fries on a daily basis, earning the country a fat-fried fifth place behind Northern Ireland, Scotland, Israel, and England (though not, interestingly enough, France). Heck, they're probably still frying their chips in lard over there in the U.K., soundly kicking our nutritional butts. And who knew Israel was such a french-fry powerhouse?

Our young people are falling behind in other categories, too. Think we eat more sweets and drink more soda than anyone else? Wrong; we only make the top 3. Worried about teen smoking? A mere 12 percent of 15-year-olds 'fessed up to lighting up 24/7, rating us an ever-so-wispy 24th out of the 28 nations surveyed. Greenlanders blow the most smoke, with 56 percent of 15-year-old boys and 45 percent of 15-year-old girls puffing daily.

The study surveyed 120,000 kids in 28 countries, and found that the Austrians, Germans, and Slovak Republicans did the most exercising--80 percent of students worked out daily--and the Welsh, Greeks, and English did the most drinking--with 53, 52, and 47 percent, respectively, tipping one back at least weekly. Only two-thirds of American students exercise that much, while a measly 23 percent met the drink mark.

Now, this is all going to be a disappointment to those who like to feel that America always leads the way, even if it's to hell in a handbasket. But as a parent, I have to say, I'm relieved. Relieved because our kids aren't the world's worst. And relieved because this study--unlike all those that show American students to be lagging academically--offers parents goals that can realistically be attained. We may not be able to make our kids math whizzes or science savants, but we can sure take them to McDonalds' an extra time or two and knock those English out of the running.

MARCH 22, 2000

You may have heard that the Oscar folks are having a little trouble on the delivery end, too. First, they mailed out the all-important Oscar ballots--the ones that, when filled out, are guarded so zealously by the Price Waterhouse accountants--and the ballots never arrived. Turns out they took a little detour to the bulk-mail bin in the back room of another post office. No harm done! Just extend the voting deadline. It's not like the U.S. Postal Service promises to absolutely, positively get anything anywhere anytime anyway.

But then there was the little incident with the trophies themselves. They disappeared from the warehouse of a Los Angeles-area delivery service (though not, I must report, Fed-Ex. So now that they've been found, I can't assume my package is with them.) It's suspected that one or more of the service's employees lifted the statuettes because--oh, who knows? They thought they'd make great gifts? The wisdom of stealing something so overwhelmingly recognizable is questionable, and the thieves must have questioned it too, because they ended up dumping the golden boys in a trash bin. The treasures were discovered by a salvage man, who stuffed them in his car to keep them safe, then asked his son to find out what the heck 55 Oscars were doing in the garbage.

Perhaps I should give him a call and ask him if he's seen any Fed-Ex envelopes. And perhaps the Academy should review the list of jilted potential nominees and figure out which one put a curse on this year's ceremony. What's next, now? Billy Crystal's limo driver takes a wrong turn and fails to deliver the host to the auditorium? Several female nominees' dresses are never delivered, and the stars are forced to wear something from their own meager closets? The Price Waterhouse accountants turn out to be imposters who deliver the completed ballots to the Wall Street Journal? An award presenter tears open the envelope, and it turns out to be my wayward Fed-Ex delivery?

Waiting for the next shoe to drop is almost as suspenseful as waiting to find out who wins.

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro