Thursday evening

I determined that, no matter how he had done in school today, I was going to give Ezra* a nice afternoon. So much of what we do in the evening depends on how he did at school, but Jason* and I are beginning to see how futile reward systems like that are for him. Ezra needs instant gratification of a really strange kind. Example this morning: for every subtraction question you get right, you get to have a sip of vanilla soy milk. Example from Jason: help me pick up these legos and we can jump up and down like crazies. This is the type of motivation that works for Ezra--- so I decided that I wouldn't even ask him about his school day or how many dried beans were in his jar (he's supposed to get five per day; a last-ditch effort on the part of his teacher to get him to behave, which worked okay for the first two weeks and was rendered pointless by Ezra's simply not caring about beans in general).

I picked up Isis* from her preschool after reading a story to her class (and as an aside, found out that the two teachers I liked best at that facility are more than likely leaving before August classes begin... which just really makes me wish I had enough money to hire a nanny and keep them both at home) and we drove the two miles to the Day School to get Ezra. As usual, it took forever for him to come out the door to where I was waiting in the carpool line. I found out a couple weeks ago that it's because he has this system for organizing his backpack, a sort of vital after-school ritual that involves an almost militaristic folding of his sweater and positioning of his lunchbox inside the backpack. As much as I don't relish entertaining Isis in a waiting car for fifteen or twenty minutes, it is nice to know that Ezra enjoys a sense of order when it comes to his personal belongings--- unlike the rest of the apartment, which he would happily wreck in a quest to design a couch that can blast into space.

Ezra hopped in the car, ignoring me as I buckled him in and asking his sister about the red cardboard Dr. Seuss hat she had assembled that morning. They then had a lengthy and heated discussion about who would hold Foxie and who would hold Forcie (i.e. Horsey, i.e. Isis' stuffed zebra). "Well," Ezra finally volunteered, "I can't play my DS tonight." (Part of the original plan was that four or five beans would earn him a 30-minute cartoon or some time with the hand-held hell machine.... I won't even start on how low I've sunk as a parent that I'm using television and video games as a reward for doing what any other kid is supposed to be doing in the first place.)

I understood him to mean that he hadn't reached the desired amount of beans. "No problem, Ez," I told him, with what I hoped was warm sincerity. "It doesn't matter to me. We'll still have a good time today."

"Yeah..." he looked out the window as we drove away from his school. "It's hot. We should get ice cream."

"No way am I letting you guys eat ice cream unless we go to the playground first and get all hot and sweaty," I counter, watching in the rearview as his grin erupted.

"Let's go to that one place where they give dogs ice cream!" (Brewster's)

"No, that place is too far---"

"Let's go where they have ALL THOSE FLAVORS!" (Baskin Robbins)

At this point, Isis weighs in. "DOG ICE CREAM!" she cackles.

"C'mon mom, let's go where we USUALLY go," Ezra insists excitedly. I have no idea what he's talking about. Eating dairy, much less non-organic dairy, much less sugar-filled antibiotic-laden dairy, is pretty rare for us. Our usual ice cream consists of Tofutti Cuties on the porch steps, but I'd had mind the small cartoon of mint chocolate in the freezer. Ezra clearly thinks this should be an outing. I agree to take them to the Marble Slab at the mall close by, but only after they've suitably worn themselves out on our apartment's playground.

I chat with my sister Hazel* on the phone while the kids race across the lawn toward the swings. I tell her what the psychologist said. She offers me the benefit of both her intuition as an astrologer and her advice as the stepmother of an autistic daughter. We kvetch about the lack of non-traditional schools available (I include in the term "traditional schools" state-sponsored public schools as well as church-affiliated private schools that teach a version of public school curriculum), to the tune that in most cities your options are either homeschooling and Montessori (if you're particularly lucky, you might get a Reggio or a Waldorf thrown in).

What if, I'd asked Ezra's teachers, Montessori is just not the right environment for him?

We thought about that, they told me.

I watched Ezra help his little sister clamber up onto the slide equipment. He was very attentive, very excited. Telling her exactly where to put each of her feet and hands. Offering her options and critiquing her form.

I gave them each pushes on the swing and couldn't resist playfully patting their bottoms as the swings came back toward me. Isis pushed hers out every time the swing came toward me. Ezra whined and twisted away. "Now you've messed up my swing path!" he sulked. For the record, I had done no such thing.

An older kid, a tall chubby dark-haired boy, Brian* ten years, sauntered over. He had an incredible speech impediment and otherwise seemed sort of dazed, but extremely kind. He asked Ezra and Isis their names and ages, told them that he was going to a birthday party of another kid in the apartment complex, and offered to give Ezra a big push.  Brian and I pushed the children in silence for a few minutes and then Brian asked if he could have a turn. Sure. I scooped Isis up and we sat on the sidelines. Ezra hummed softly to himself, intent on keeping his stuffed fox wedged between his knees as he pumped his legs. Isis copied the way I sat, arranging her skirt over her knees.

Other kids wandered up--- the kind of older, rougher children you know are going to accidentally-on-purpose knock your little precious clementine off the monkey bars. I started feeling that itchy let's-go-now restlessness, but I'd promised a playground visit. To get Isis and Ezra on their own, I quietly suggest we go play a game. "You mean the jumping jacks game?" Ezra seems interested, but declines. He has to finish swinging.

Isis and I begin the game. It involves a sequence of gross motor activities that increase in difficulty and number as the game wears on. First one. Run to the tree, touch it, and run back. Second one. Run to the tree, put a piece of mulch behind it, and run back. Third one. Run to the tree, run around it twice, reach for the sky, then run back. Once Ezra joins us the two of them are racing each other, Ezra easily outstripping his three-year-old sister, but it soon becomes apparent to the older kids that Ezra and Isis are having way more fun than they are having, slouched on the playground equipment and throwing jabs at each other.

I try to include the other children, assuming my teacher voice. It becomes obvious that Brian has no sense of personal space. He is crowding and touching the other children, leaning in uncomfortably close to their faces to talk to them. He's obviously such a good-natured, amiable kid that it's just pathetic how the other children react to him. But then again, I feel a bit of their revulsion when he bends toward me to talk.

I'm trying to steel myself to set a good example, represent Switzerland on the UN of the playground. Brian is not a "normal" child. He has two parents, presumably, who cope with his needs, his speech problems, his strange behavior. He has a sister---who I saw---who ridicules him every chance she gets. We're with this child for twenty or thirty minutes, and he makes the strongest impression on me.

Why this afternoon, after Jason and I had spent two hours talking to a school psychologist about Ezra's atypicality? The whole thing made me very uncomfortable. I made the children say goodbye to Brian, ignored the gang of urchins throwing basketballs at each other's heads on the slides, and herded my two away.

"You guys didn't do anything wrong," I told them as I buckled them in the car for the ride to the mall. "We didn't leave early because you misbehaved or couldn't find your listening ears." I drew a breath, about to explain, but Ezra finished it for me.

"It's because of those bad older kids who are mean and not safe," he said, more to Isis than me. I stared at him briefly. To my knowledge, he hadn't once talked to any of those children, let alone observe them while they were rattling their sabers on the playground equipment. His brief encounter with them when a few had come over to play racing games with us was limited to what he could glean of their personalities while he was running beside them. I want to just grin at him, cover him in kisses--- my beautiful, perceptive little serpent. Instead, I just nodded, now anxious that Ezra not form an elitist opinion of those children for eternity, conscious that I have a tendency to over-isolate my own.

"Sometimes kids have a bad day," I explained, "and that makes them act that way. It happens to everybody. It doesn't make you bad."

Isis doesn't care. She is fiddling with her Forcie.  Ezra says, in a voice that also sounds like he doesn't care, "Yeah, except those bad kids.  Can I have strawberry ice cream?"

*Names are changed.