Road Map to Holland, by Jennifer Graf Groneberg.

I didn't expect this book to resonate with me as deeply as it did. I was interested in her story, intellectually - it is why I wanted to read and review it, but I didn't know whether or not I would find common experience with Jennifer. SPD is sort of its own thing, as is Down Syndrome. Mothering of all sorts has its challenges, of course, but in my every day life I find the things that LP deals with to be so unique & unlike anything I expected that I am accustomed to feeling isolated from other mothers.
I didn't expect her honesty to resonate so loud in my heart - the anger & frustration I'm feeling now all rose up as she recounted her own journey into mothering Avery. The shifting of expectations - not wanting to expect too much, nor too little - having no guarantees of future success - living with all the uncertainty and yet doing everything you can for your kid, because that's what mothering is - all this left me feeling breathless, realizing my own anger at our situation, anger at the disability. A part of me is still waiting for life to return to normal, a part of me still denies this SPD will control us - though it is clear from the rate at which I painstakingly cut tags out of %100 percent organic cotton clothes that it really does and will for the foreseeable future - I often plan my days as if SPD is not an agenda item - it is on Mondays menu for therapy, the weekends for writing about & every other day on an as needed basis. I'm just not being realistic. Did you read my post at needs new batteries today? This thing is kicking my ass at the moment.
I saw it clearly in Jennifer in her first days and weeks after the diagnosis & today I see it clearly in me, the denial, the fear, the coping, the taking back lost ground, the scrambling look for successes. SPD is an every day agenda item.
It defines us and controls us & yet it does not and will not. Just as Avery shoots himself down the water slide, so did LP run skipping right through the line of the leaf blower today! He melted down upon leaving the toy store (sad goodbye, probably aggravated by fluorescent lighting, which seems to set him off), but also has incredible success on the potty (kind of huge news as his concepts of in/out/on were still developing late & also just plain on regular poor body sense that comes along with SPD).

He is much bigger than this & so are we. Of course, I seemed to know that about every other family that I've known with children with special needs, it just took me a while to feel bigger than it & also know sometimes, I won't feel bigger than it. I'll feel fenced in, but I'm not. He's not.

My secret fears teased out in vivid detail and organized by chapter

This book is not about fear. At least it shouldn't be. It's just that there are a few issues in the world of all things green and greener that I am handling (like cleaning), a few I feel I can't afford to handle (like organic free range, pure food) and a few more that I have really not handled at all (like what's in the baby soap?)

Nevertheless, overall this book is an encouraging resource for parents and really for anyone who spends time around kids and/or the environment. In fact, it inspired me to make the following specific changes:
Today we bought indoor house plants as part of an overall plan to improve indoor air quality.
Today I ordered 100% cotton organic pajamas for LP & underwear as well - more on that later!
I am currently researching all our body products (soaps, shampoos, sunscreens) on a pretty great resource I found in the book. It's called Skin Deep. Healthy Child Healthy World - the website- also has some pretty great resources, but want I want to share here is the impact this book is having on my treatment of LP's sensory disorder. LP has SPD, sensory processing disorder. He is also a highly sensitive person, born to two HSP in a family full of them (some of them may not know that, but that's really okay!) But there is more. He has what the specialists are calling an interesting profile. I'm pretty sure they mean he is not yet autistic. And they are right. He has currently "passed" two autism screenings, but he has all sorts of small developmental delays and rigid behaviors that make professionals keep shaking their head in wonder.

I think our beloved speech therapist is right. It doesn't matter what you call it, as long as you treat it. You can call LP an elephant, PPD autistic, SPD or a small bunny, but he needs Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and probably some form of special education to help his play develop to the next level. As long as he is getting these, we are fine. I've been fighting the school front battle for a while now, but Healthy Child, Healthy World has given me a little pause as to whether there is another front to be fighting this stuff on.

There are lots of things running in our blood streams, most of which we can't control: flame retardants, pesticides, chemicals and air pollutants, fumes from perfumes, cleaners and off-gassing of carpets and plastics. This is where the indoor plants came in, literally, into my home from Lowe's today: ivy & palms to help clean things up around here. This is where the flame-retardant free pajamas also came in - though ordered from the overly pricey Hannah Anderson catalog - and the underwear too - but I can see his skin reacting to things. It is sensitive in the extreme. I wonder if the reason our specialists see autism is because LP engages in some of the behaviors that they usually see before they end up diagnosing a kid with autism. The truth is we don't really know what is causing it, nor what is causing ADHD, SPD and a host of other developmental delays. LP is currently delayed in at least three areas: receptive speech, fine motor and social/emotional. Why? Who knows? Can I make it better? Who knows, but it seems clear that some things can make it worse - or have the potential to make it worse. The reality is that lots of chemicals have not been tested for safety yet, really most of them haven't.

Reading this book has really motivated me to reduce LP's burden of what we are asking his body to process, how many chemicals, how often - cleaner air & cleaner jammies are our first step in this area.

There are still a few places I could be doing more, more for our health, more for the environment. I'm sure this will continue to be so. What I like about this book is that the full spectrum of participation, engagement and education about these issues is expected and welcomed. I can' t tell you how bad the taste in my mouth was when upon meeting a local environmental activist she informed me that she and her family would be prepared for peak oil, but other people would not be. I am actually totally comfortable with whatever level of disaster preparedness people want to have, she just seemed smugly superior about all the people who she felt were about to suffer, while she ate out of her solar oven in years to come.
This book isn't like that - my one critique is that it seems directed solely at middle class & up parents - which is fine, every book needs an audience - but I'd like to see the folks at Healthy Child, Healthy World tackle a range of issues that would impact kids whose parents aren't even close to being in a financial position to pick organic grapes over conventional, let alone an organic crib mattress over a conventional one.
I lay that challenge though for all of us, myself included. This is one area of clean-up that I could really work on in my own life. May my next drop-off at a local food bank be a bag of organic brown rice, not a canned soup. When I want better school lunches, let it be for kids all over my state, not just my wealthier town.

Clorox goes greenish

Well it is March. My yard is in a sad, sad state. The days are warmish and sunny and this mother of three boys is naturally spending a lot of time in the muck that is the New England outdoors in this month that is its own season.

The weather this week is warmer and sunnier than we are bound to have the rest of the month - this month has entered like and lamb, which means it will be blizzardy by Easter. None of this can make my restless soul resist spring cleaning.

Cleaning always makes me feel productive, but I've mentioned before my slow but steady march to greener ways of being. Cleaning up my cleaning up has been way at the top of my priority list. One of the first things I did was ditch the toxic cleaners. I've been cleaning with vinegar, baking soda, borex and well, elbow grease for a while now. I like it fine, but it is not as convenient as having a little spray bottle of something sudsy to spritz on the booster seat.

As part of a MomCentral tour for Clorox Greenworks, I was sent some of their new enviro-friendly products - the glass cleaner and the all purpose cleaner. For more thorough testing I bought the toilet bowl cleaner myself. You can read the fact sheet on their webpage. Here's the short version: there are 99% natural (defined as plant or mineral based or derived) and have a petrochemical content of less than 1%. The list all the ingredients, not just the active ingredients as on typical cleaners. I was pretty happy with their performance. The toilet bowl cleaner worked easily - and kept the bowl clean for several days. The glass cleaner was a bit of a revelation. I have a pretty toxic reaction to windex so it has been a while since I've spritzed mirrors or glass cabinets with anything at all. I've just come to like with splashes, streaks and spots, but everything came out shiny. The all purpose cleaner was not too sudsy, handy out booster seats, the floor and the fixtures of the sink.
Happiest of all - the smell - soapy, florally, but nothing to make my eyes water for days on end and my skin break out in hives - nor did my husband turn up his nose at it. He has a hatred of the vinegar smell and struggles on a deep level to clean with it.
The second happiest of all? Convenience. It is nice when cleaners come in spritz bottles that work perfectly. I seem to not be able to find an inexpensive spritz bottle than doesn't get busted within 6 weeks. It was nice not to have to mix a concoction of vinegar, water and borax, so my usually cleaning took a bit less time.
Overall, I think we'll hang on to these. I'm not giving up my vinegar, borax, baking powder routine. I think green-wise, they are the big win, b/c I buy big and so there is a lot less packaging involved. I probably just need to invest in a few more expensive spray bottles. I'd love to try Clorox Greenworks concentrated cleaner. I think it may turn into his and her cleaning products- Matt gets the Greenworks and I get my quirky borax stuff. That's okay, if he picks up a few more bathroom cleanings, I can work on on making my own laundry soap, or something.