Vacation photos: The twins' parasailing adventure

My plan was to take Leah parasailing during our Outer Banks vacation. She has never been a particularly fearful kid, and she loves wind, so I thought cruising above the beaches would be fifteen minutes of sensory bliss. I also imagined the twins, who have fairly active imaginations, would want nothing to do with it.

And of course, the opposite happened: Leah nixed parasailing (I'm still convinced she would have loved it once she'd gotten up there, but I had no desire to argue with her on the deck of a moving boat) and the twins were all over the idea. So their Uncle Kevin and I took them instead.

Ready for takeoff. Strapping into the harness got Maddie a little nervous.

Up she goes: Once she was airborne, Maddie's fear was replaced by excitement. She gave us a big "Oh, YEAH!" as soon as we left the deck. Lauren wore a 'What have I done?' expression for the first five minutes or so, but once she realized the harnesses were going to hold us, she relaxed and enjoyed the views.


The optional 'toe dip' dipped a little more than our feet. It's an inexact science.

You can't see her behind the harness, but Lauren's smile was definitely back. The $40 photo package was worth it, I think, since we already lost one camera this year on a rollercoaster at Hershey Park.

Triumphant landing. Good time was had by all. The twins are still enjoying telling everyone on the birthday party circuit that they went parasailing this summer.

We ♥ Smartasses

Many of you know that our Lauren has selective mutism. Thanks mostly to an amazing therapist, the verb may be close to becoming "had" as she talked almost completely freely to everybody on our recent vacation with Alison's family.

The whole odyssey started three years ago, when Lauren seldom spoke to us from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Somehow, we got on the subject of that summer at dinner tonight. Just having Lauren be able to talk about this was unthinkable until recently. Everybody shared their memories, and I wrapped it up by saying "and Lauren hasn't had any problems talking to us since then."

Then she got that sparkle in her eyes and said, with flawless timing, "Until now."

And she shut up for about three seconds. Never has a laugh felt so good.

Why I love Craigslist

Every so often, I advertise for home program therapists on Craigslist. I've found some very good people through my Craigslist ad, which very clearly states (this will be important later) that I'm looking for someone to work with my autistic daughter and gives a brief summary of our program and the hours needed.

I'm usually able to triage my respondents pretty quickly -- the ones who look great on paper; the ones who look okay, which means they may be great in person or total duds; and the ones who should not have bothered to reply to the ad. Sometimes I'm wrong -- crappy applicants can come in some very good disguises. In the past, I've had one show up an hour late for an interview, and a few not show up at all. Another one had great credentials on paper, but virtually no personality when she arrived. She cut the interview off early, citing a family situation, said she'd follow up with me, and I never heard from her again. Which was fine, since our conversation would have revolved around me telling her I'd hired someone else.

This go-round has been notable for a few hilariously bad initial responses:

Hi.. So i was looking around and i saw your ad, I was curious if this was still for sale? Let me know! Thanks

Although I freely acknowledge I have occasionally been tempted to sell all three of my children to the highest bidder, I assure you I have never acted on that impulse.

Hi, Your ad is just want i wanted, but does this work 100% properly? Please contact me soon! Thank You

I checked, and I did not inadvertently substitute the words "refrigerator we just replaced" for "home therapists."

Dear Hiring Manager:

I am actively seeking a job as an Instruction Designer. I am an accomplished and quality-focused individual with years of experience and strong track record as a professional. Throughout my career I consistently establish integrity, quality and professionalism to provide organizations with broad array of services.

Although economical and environmental factors have not provided the job security I seek, it has provided me with a well-rounded history of organization, management, and solid knowledge base within my employment history.

Through a balanced combination of know-howe, I offer a demonstrated ability to exceed expectations from business and quality service perspectives. I believe my solid experience, expertise, education and character will make me a very suitable candidate for the Instructional Designer position.

My resume can only go so far in detailing what I can bring to your organization. This is why I believe it would serve us best to meet personally, in an interview, to discuss your needs and to demonstrate how I can add to your bottom line through my skills, expertise and experience.

Again thank you for your time and attention. Thank you in advance for considering my value offer. I look forward to our conversation.

Insert jokes about our bottom line here. I was curious, so I opened the resume attachment. Here's the summary:

Perceptive, creative, and disciplined business leader, expert in tackling the complex challenges of driving continuous improvement. Has an outstanding track record in identifying and analyzing uncertainties, risks, and opportunities that generate future growth, and tailoring business solutions through traditional and innovative avenues. A change agent, resourceful and inventive, acknowledged for elevating revenues, boosting team performances, and creating an environment of achievement for management and staff.

I wouldn't mind elevating my revenues, but at this point I was wondering what was up on Craigslist -- a server snafu, or an unusual number of people who can't read? I did receive a good number of responses from people who actually seemed to know what the ad said.

This one was my favorite:

Sup?

I got your ad on Craigslist
I am going make this message

short and sweet.
If you're interested to make a 'lil bit money on the internet,
then look at this page called: XXX

I am not going to bore you with a bunch of facts...
But, I will tell you that it will help.
Pretty much you bid on things,
and then resell it for more. The website is cool!
You can get a iPad there for like 1 to 2 dollars.

I'm bringing in around an extra $250 a day
just by selling the items I get on the
website and putting it on e-Bay.

Tell me how it goes!

Right in the trash, my friend.

I am interested in your ad. I am preschool teacher with Bachelors Degree in Elemntary Education. I have no previous expereince working with autistic children but it sounds interesting andc after I checked bfiefly the progam you mentioned you are using I think it would be great learning axperience.

I live in XXX. If you are still in search of a person to work with your girl please feel free to contact me with some more details as how namy hours a week/ month would you need and the kind of activities expected, is there a set curriculum or you just work on skills needed at the moment?

Spelling. Lots of spelling.

The last one could be a candidate for Teacher of the Year, but I allow one typo before I stop reading. If I were a career counselor, I would nag all of my clients to write their cover letters as though they were corresponding with someone with a nasty copy-editing habit. I would also advise them to read the ads they're answering.

Holland Schmolland

Flying under the radar is not always a Hamilton family forte. Particularly not when we arrive at the community pool only to be informed on no uncertain terms that Leah does not want to be there. At that point, we're left with a couple of unappealing choices: Public misbehavior by a 9-year-old who is acting like her shoe size, or rewarding bad behavior (as well as holding other family members hostage to it) by turning tail and leaving.

We've been doing this long enough to know that there are bigger problems than a few looks and the occasional comment, and one of those would be a child who believes she has something to gain by throwing a fit. For us this was a no-brainer: We stayed, and we put up with the shouting and the crying until Mike, with some well-timed roughhousing, was able to remind Leah why she loves to swim. A rocky start was transformed into a normal (for us) outing.

It made me think of a line from "Holland Schmolland," a wonderful essay about living with autism: " ... we ignore these looks and focus on the exit sign because we are a proud people." I have no doubt that some people at the pool could not understand why we kept her there. I can't worry about that. We'd make the same choice again.

If you haven't seen this before, it's worth the read. If you have, enjoy it again. It speaks to me every time I read it.

Holland Schmolland
by Laura Krueger Crawford

If you have a special needs child, which I do, and if you troll the Internet for information, which I have done, you will come across a certain inspirational analogy. It goes like this:

Imagine that you are planning a trip to Italy. You read all the latest travel books, you consult with friends about what to pack, and you develop an elaborate itinerary for your glorious trip. The day arrives.

You board the plane and settle in with your in-flight magazine, dreaming of trattorias, gondola rides, and gelato. However when the plane lands you discover, much to your surprise, you are not in Italy -- you are in Holland. You are greatly dismayed at this abrupt and unexpected change in plans.

You rant and rave to the travel agency, but it does no good. You are stuck. After awhile, you tire of fighting and begin to look at what Holland has to offer. You notice the beautiful tulips, the kindly people in the wooden shoes, the french fries with mayonnaise, and you think, "This isn't exactly what I had planned, but it's not so bad. It's just different."

Having a child with special needs is supposed to be like this -- not any worse than having a typical child -- just different.

When I read this my son was almost 3, completely non-verbal and was hitting me over 100 times a day. While I appreciated the intention of the story, I couldn't help but think, "Are they kidding? We're not in some peaceful country dotted with windmills. We are in a country under siege -- dodging bombs, boarding overloaded helicopters, bribing officials -- all the while thinking, "What happened to our beautiful life?"

That was five years ago.

My son is now 8 and though we have come to accept that he will always have autism, we no longer feel like citizens of a battle-torn nation. With the help of countless dedicated therapists and teachers, biological interventions, and an enormously supportive family, my son has become a fun-loving, affectionate boy with many endearing qualities and skills. In the process we've created . . . well . . . our own country, with its own unique traditions and customs.

It's not a war zone, but it's still not Holland. Let's call it Schmolland. In Schmolland, it's perfectly customary to lick walls, rub cold pieces of metal across your mouth and line up all your toys end-to-end. You can show affection by giving a "pointy chin." A "pointy chin" is when you act like you are going to hug someone and just when you are really close, you jam your chin into the other person's shoulder. For the person giving the "pointy chin" this feels really good, for the receiver, not so much -- but you get used to it.

For citizens of Schmolland, it is quite normal to repeat lines from videos to express emotion. If you are sad, you can look downcast and say, "Oh, Pongo." When mad or anxious, you might shout, "Snow can't stop me!" or "Duchess, kittens, come on!" Sometimes, "And now our feature presentation" says it all.

In Schmolland, there's not a lot to do, so our citizens find amusement wherever they can. Bouncing on the couch for hours, methodically pulling feathers out of down pillows, and laughing hysterically in bed at 4:00 a.m. are all traditional Schmutch pastimes.

The hard part of living in our country is dealing with people from other countries. We try to assimilate ourselves and mimic their customs, but we aren't always successful. It's perfectly understandable that an 8 year-old from Schmolland would steal a train from a toddler at the Thomas the Tank Engine Train Table at Barnes and Noble. But this is clearly not understandable or acceptable in other countries, and so we must drag our 8 year-old out of the store kicking and screaming, all the customers looking on with stark, pitying stares. But we ignore these looks and focus on the exit sign because we are a proud people.

Where we live it is not surprising when an 8 year-old boy reaches for the fleshy part of a woman's upper torso and says, "Do we touch boodoo?" We simply say, "No, we do not touch boodoo," and go on about our business. It's a bit more startling in other countries, however, and can cause all sorts of cross-cultural misunderstandings.

And, though most foreigners can get a drop of water on their pants and still carry on, this is intolerable to certain citizens in Schmolland, who insist that the pants must come off no matter where they are and regardless of whether another pair of pants is present.

Other families who have special needs children are familiar and comforting to us, yet are still separate entities. Together we make up a federation of countries, kind of like Scandinavia. Like a person from Denmark talking to a person from Norway (or in our case, someone from Schmenmark talking to someone from Schmorway), we share enough similarities in our language and customs to understand each other, but conversations inevitably highlight the diversity of our traditions. "My child eats paper. Yesterday he ate a whole video box." "My daughter only eats four foods, all of them white." "We finally had to lock up the VCR because my child was obsessed with the rewind button." "My son wants to blow on everyone."

There is one thing we all agree on. We are a growing population. Ten years ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism. Today the rate is approximately 1 in 250 (sic). Something is dreadfully wrong. Though the causes of the increase are still being hotly debated, a number of parents and professionals believe genetic predisposition has collided with too many environmental insults -- toxins, chemicals, antibiotics, vaccines -- to create immunological chaos in the nervous system of developing children. One medical journalist speculated these children are the proverbial "canary in the coal mine", here to alert us to the growing dangers in our environment.

While this is certainly not a view shared by all in the autism community, it feels true to me.

I hope that researchers discover the magic bullet we all so desperately crave. And I will never stop investigating new treatments and therapies that might help my son. But more and more my priorities are shifting from what "could be" to "what is." I look around this country my family has created, with all its unique customs, and it feels like home. For us, any time spent "nation building" is time well spent.