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Special Needs

 "You're worried there are too many cooks in your kitchen?"


"Well, yes."

"In this case, there can never be too many cooks. Hire all the cooks. Then delegate, delegate, delegate. This is your work. You need to learn to give orders."

Certainly, if there is someone in this conversation who needs to learn to give orders, it's *not* the family counselor. She knows how to give orders.

"I'm sorry, your concern is that you'll bond with the at-home therapist--and then he'll leave? So what? Who gives a fuck? Let there be a revolving door. If you have a reasonably well-trained human--with a pulse--who is providing respite care, then you should count your lucky stars."

This is sensible. So often I'm on the other end of the equation; I'm the one steering the ship, and I'm telling a student to do SAT practice for homework. As a tutor, I get addled when a student doesn't listen. But--as a "student"--I see that listening is hard. I know that the family counselor is offering good counsel--which isn't the same as deciding...Yes....I'm going to follow this counsel right away....

The counselor has a sentence she'd like me to use with the public school system: "I'm taking notes, and we'll see what my lawyer has to say about this." Whenever a school official fails to do his or her job. You keep it calm and collected; you use your Joan Didion voice. "I'm just going to share this with my lawyer...."

I don't even have a lawyer. But I suppose there's always room....in the "kitchen".....
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