IS DEVELOPING THIS SKILL: BALANCE(S) EDITION

Dear Persons,

The fall semester brings my favorite season and also, this year, an unexpected bout of teaching Intro Phil, which class only enrolled after registration closed so I was rather unprepared, the class that is by far the hardest class I teach because there’s no room whatsoever for winging it and I have to think “deep thoughts” and understand them, at least momentarily, so it takes a ton of prep, which is hard since I did not think I was teaching and took on other work, and even I don’t know where this sentence is going.

Frankly – and perhaps the above is indicative of this, hmm? -- my life generally feels out of balance, especially because of the difficulty of earning a living in a rural area while raising two high-needs kids. I’ve taken some steps to try to remedy this, but the biggest one was going to be firmly establishing a new, wildly lucrative line of work (Ramp up the editing? Finish book proposal and become publishing sensation? Teacher coaching???) this semester while I wasn’t teaching.

Oh well.

My Laotong (old same, best friend) recently shared some thoughts on balance. She said one of her wise teachers once told her that stable, even balance is a myth. That to really accomplish something you need to pour everything into that bucket, rather than trying to just dribble a little so your other bucket(s) stay(s) evenly filled. Except. If I pour any more energy into my career there just won’t be anything left for my family...and meanwhile my career is a hodgepodge that’s confusing even to me.

It’s also time for G’s three year evaluation. At times like this -- with multiple daily emails, calls, written correspondences, meetings... -- parenting my older child alone feels like another full-time job. Our last three-year eval was a Battle Royale about which I wrote in PROCESS, REPRESENT, TOOT, so grueling I am loathe to even recall it. But recall – and strategize - I must. His current school is proposing more testing, including adding testing for ADHD, which I thought was ruled out by/folded into his autism diagnosis years ago. Their explanation is that with more results they will be able to develop more tools for helping G succeed as he heads into high school next year.*

But I have to balance the school’s need for testing, documentation, and tools with how much G hates testing, how vulnerable he is to feeling singled-out, how much time this barrage of testing will take away from his much-needed academics. And we also must, at the same time, make sure their assessments reflect how G really behaves in real life contexts (he’s great at social skills in a two or three person small group environment, for example; outside of that, not so much; there’s a similar disparity for academics).

I need to try to get the right balance between the labels/tools/testing bucket and the acceptance bucket. And it’s hard to even know how to find that balance when I am facing piles like that in Figure I in addition to my work piles (not pictured).

Figure I -

The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning

The Social and Atypical Behavior Questionnaire

The NICHQ Vanderbilt Assessment Scale

The Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition

Figure II –

Closeup, Random

When you see such a plethora of tests you cannot help but think as to how this is your child's LIFE! The answers to these questions will be used to evaluate a human being, your beloved child.

You want them to be accepted and celebrated as they are, as well as situated in school so as to best Learn. You wonder how the oversimplifications of what feels like millions of multiple choice or scaled (always-often-sometimes-never, and so on, see Figure II) questions  can possibly reflect your child, and pray the testing will somehow be helpful.

You never, ever, ever want your child to read these generalized forms that aim to identify, problematize (so as to receive services), and label (ditto) and feel bad about him or herself, or judged, or reduced to a standardized series of questions and answers.

You have to go to the bathroom many times while filling them out.

Or maybe that’s just me?

Consider that while I try to find balance in testing and school in general for my son, the time this effort takes shifts the aforementioned balance I am trying to find in work...and the balance I am trying to find with my zooming into teen-land-three-years-early (she just turned 10!) daughter...

I need less in the bucket that holds stuff like me crying in the bathroom for an hour because I suddenly find out there’s a random, last-minute half-day and my schedule is so precariously micro-scheduled that this puts me over the edge. That’s a balance that’s too delicate!

When I look around me, I see that I am not alone in feeling unbalanced. Perhaps that’s because I now know – thankfully! – a lot of other families and people who fill a Full Spectrum of their own. But it’s not just them. As my fall 2015 Intro Phil students say, this system is hard.  It’s impossible for most of us to do as Aristotle advised and become a “happy philosopher,” spending your time reasoning and pondering...

But we get up every day and go after that elusive balance, don’t we? Perhaps that’s what balance is in the real world? 

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

*What?

LEARNING TO “FLY” – A NEURO-MOMENT

An October 8^th NEW YORK TIMES “Profiles in Science” piece on Michael Dickinson and fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) completely (technical term alert) blew my mind. Although fruit flies, obviously, have very small brains, the flexibility and mutability of their neurons result in a per-neuron superior functionality than is found in humans. Because “the presence of different chemicals called neuromodulators in the fly brain can change how a given group of neurons acts at different times” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/science/focusing-on-fruit-flies-curiosity-takes-flight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), fruit flies have an astounding capacity for (relatively speaking, of course) adaptation and development.

I was inspired by this article to do a little research on neuromodulators in humans and it turns out this is a pretty new concept in neuroscience, one which looks very promising for human development in the long term.  Neuromodulators include serotonin and dopamine, with which scientists have been experimenting for decades with somewhat limited success; however, our knowledge of how neuromodulators influence and transform brain activity is now expanding exponentially.

Dickinson’s work will contribute to this understanding, as well as to our respect for the complexity and genius of the lowly creatures he studies. The wonders of flying, he suggests, rest chiefly in the brain. Just as the brain flexibility of fruit flies enables flight in an ever-changing variety of circumstances, so might the relatively less-flexible human brain be influenced to adapt and develop -- if we can more effectively identify and utilize neuromodulatory mechanisms. 

There’s a lot of talk about neuroplasticity around autism, hinting at enhanced brain-healing capacity in spectrum-y brains, but I am encouraged by the potential for healing, among other things, brain traumas (such as are found in attachment disorders and PTSD) as well. These neurological differences – autism, attachment disorders and PTSD - are all significant factors in our Full Spectrum household. (Please stay tuned for an upcoming post on HEALING in a Full Spectrum!)

Apart from the NEW YORK TIMES’ “Science” section, just a quick dabble shows the world of neuroscience is all abuzz (and awiggle) in popular culture.

In VOGUE, Rebecca Johnson’s “New Frontier” (October 2013) profiles the neuroscientist Cori Bargmann and her work with a tiny worm (the nemotode C. elegans) that has 302 neurons (humans have 10 billion). Bargmann’s work sketches filaments of hope for brain-science progress between increasing computer capacities, advances in electrodes for the measurement of nerve cells, and improved microfabrication…She sees psychiatric medicine as just one of the more promising subfields among the many in which neuroscientific developments will benefit humanity.

“Now,” Bargmann marvels in VOGUE, “we are not just watching the flow of information [via neurons] but trying to change it.”

One part scary, one part breathtakingly hopeful, eh?

THE NEW YORKER recently published “Mindless: The new neuro-skeptics,” by Adam Gopnik, about the mind-brain divisions and debunkings posited in some circles (September 9, 2013). Gopnik likens the “brain” camp, with its currently culturally dominant emphasis on neuroscience, to Mr. Spock (now you know I love a good Star Trek reference, plus Spock was my pretend-fiancé when I was little). The “mind” camp, which sometimes compares neuroscience to the now thoroughly discredited early-nineteenth-century “science” of phrenology (or mapping the mind through the shape of the skull), he frames as akin to Captain Kirk. He points to the rich literature and inquiry on both “teams” and concludes that both responsibility and possibility lie in the whole package – mind-plus-brain (plus environment), all working together in a way so “complex and contingent” as to boggle the, ahem, mind.

Complexity notwithstanding, evolution of many sorts is ongoing, whether scientific, philosophical, even personal: “We learn and shape our neurology as much as we inherit it,” says Gopnik. ”Our selves shape our brains at least as much as our brains our selves.”

What he said.

More neuroscience-boom proof: the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2013 went to some neuroscience dudes…And Obama recently launched the BRAIN (Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) project, an unprecedented neuroscience initiative (in fact, Cori Bargmann will co-chair this endeavor).

But then, working on the mind is nothing new.

From ancient philosophers to contemporary mystics, wise people have always known it is possible to train (ideally) and re-train (less-ideally, but more commonly) the mind. From Plato’s (and his student, Aristotle’s) thoughts on ideal environments and habits for exercising the virtues, to the Buddha’s writings on practices to calm and discipline the mind and actions; from Confucius on good habits and self-discipline in harmony (the Tao), to Teresa of Avila on practicing devotions of imagination and contemplation; from Thomas Merton on spiritual disciplines as the way to liberation,* to Starhawk on “psychological techniques and personal disciplines” as tools for transformation;** and on and on (I’ve left so many out in the interest of brevity!!)…all the great traditions offer tools for behavioral, mental, emotional, and – sometimes – spiritual development of the mind.

Now we are just beginning to enter this heretofore sci-fi realm of attaining real knowledge about the brain itself. It’s exciting.

Disclaimer: Full Spectrum Mama loves her children and self just as they are, and is NOT looking for a “cure” for Asperger’s!!!! ***

But wouldn’t it be great to have the option of tweaking our own neurology in positive ways? Even if we have no desire whatsoever to change, this knowledge itself will be awe-inspiring: we have the potential to understand, if not emulate, what Dickinson calls the “great success stories” borne of adaptable, flexible (fruitfly) neurology.

Full Spectrum Mama is certainly gung ho about adding new tools to our quests for health and healing, especially in terms of reducing suffering.  To wit, my neurology has always been sensitive and prone to migraines, but with age and/or a major concussion a few years back and/or something else (?) my migraines and PTSD triggers have increased dramatically over the years. I’d try just about anything – meditation to neuromodulation - to soothe these neurological responses. Just – don’t you touch my Special Interests!

I guess that last is the key, though.

 Bargmann bemoans the “dismal state” of today’s psychiatric medicines, and the field of neuromodulators remains in its infancy. All the beautiful possibilities mentioned in these articles are still just ideas. Early on, would tweaking my neurology result in unintended consequences such as losing my precious Special Interests or other things about me that I treasure or see as integral to who I am? Furthermore, the idea of such tools being used against our will or unbeknownst to us is unsettling, at best. “Neuromodulism” (I just made that up) could become “the new eugenics.” Ew.

 With all these caveats, I am still intrigued by the potential for human beings to develop and adapt more effectively. Reducing certain kinds of obstacles to flourishing, such as unwanted manifestations of mental illness, physiological trauma and physical pain, will help us “fly” higher – and with more flexibility.

Now come on, Homo sapiens! If D. melanogaster can do it, we can too!

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

* Admittedly, Merton’s deeply entwined Catholicism and Zen Buddhism were somewhat controversial, but FSM always errs on the side of acceptance.

** http://www.starhawk.org/activism/trainer-resources/nonviolencework.html

*** Speaking of Asperger’s: between you and me and the fencepost, take a look at the picture of Dickinson and then read his words and ask yourself who’s got Asperger’s all up in that article.