Special Needs

 At times, with the special needs counselor, my spouse and I just want to rend garments and gnash our teeth. Yes, we *know* there are steps to take to limit a child's physical aggression. But we don't always need to hear the steps. Sometimes, it's useful just to shout to the heavens.

"If you tell a child to stop, that's provocative. The end result is that the child will continue to do the obnoxious thing, and will just *amplify* the intensity of the obnoxious thing."

No shit. But here's a question. Sometimes, physical proximity is not a reasonable choice. Let's say you're at a hotel, and your children have raced away--so that there are several football fields between the kids and the adults. You see your kids, but they are just little stick figures against a sea of beige carpeting. One child puts an arm in the air--violence is on the agenda. If you were Mary Poppins, you might hurl yourself down the length of the hallway; you might intercede. You might activate your magic umbrella--no hurling would then be required.

But if you're a tubby middle-aged man, the only real option is to shout, in a half-hearted way, "Stop!"

On Memorial Day, I am thinking about Rob Reiner and Paul Auster; both had extremely challenging children. I'm not saying I'm anything like either one of these two men. But I imagine--if you were Rob Reiner--it occasionally became tiresome to hear well-intentioned advice. I have just a slight half-formed idea of what that must have felt like.