« Help me civilize my son and I'll let you ride in the front | Main | The secret ingredient is pectin »
09/02/2009
2300 words in search of a theme
Hey, a lot's been going on since I last posted nine years ago. Last in, first out, okay?
First up: the latest Duggar pregnancy, with child #19. Okay! People! We get it! Point taken! You're fecund! Duly noted! Beyond that, I have nothing to say on the matter. Oh, but Josh, the eldest Duggar child and incipient paterfamilias himself, did: “Children are a blessing and a gift if you raise them right."
Emphasis mine. Egad.
Next, we went to the fair. If you ever want to see id and superego square off and try to kick the shit out of each other, take a kid to the fair and cheerfully inform him that he needs to be on his very best behavior. (Leave the "or," the threat, whatever it is, implied. It's so much more ominous that way.) Charlie would ask in his sweetest, most pleasing tone for five dollars to spend trying to shoot a clown in the head so he could win a toy, eleven cents' worth of plastic so toxic you could practically hear his chromosomes scrambling to reconfigure themselves as he neared the booth. Now, I know shooting a clown in the head sounds like ten kinds of good clean fun, but I disapprove of canned hunts, so would rather Charlie learn to plug them in the wild. It's more sporting that way. No, I would tell him, firmly but regretfully, and watch his every base impulse claw its way to the surface, only to be decisively vanquished by his better nature. The devil on one shoulder was obviously instructing him to protest the injustice in the most obnoxious manner possible, but the angel on the other was frantically urging him to reconsider. Dude, it was hissing all seraphically, your immortal soul AND FUNNEL CAKES hang in the balance.
So intense was the conflict that I'm honestly surprised his head didn't explode. But Charlie was really great, whether hollering, "Mama! I'm a latte! Look! I'm in a mug!" or being taught by Pfc. Two-Headed Earnhardt Awesome to scale a portable climbing wall.
Hey! Speaking of awesome, Ben came, too.
Ben did not, however, accompany Charlie and me on our recent trip in a U-Haul. It was not my first time driving a 14' truck. That memorable journey occurred when I moved from the Washington, D.C. area to New York to live with Paul. I'd rented a truck and hired some movers to load it. The night before the move, I looked around my half-packed apartment and knew I was totally fucked, that I'd have to work all night to get everything boxed and ready. So I did what anyone who managed to graduate from college without developing any study skills whatsoever would do: I took some NoDoz — since this is America, where more is better, twice the recommended dose. And spent the next several hours lying on my sofa, heart racing, nerves jangling, pretty sure I was going to die as I obviously, stupidly deserved. My apartment did not get packed.
When the movers arrived in the morning, two young men and a pleasant but brisk middle-aged woman, I managed to drag myself cautiously off the sofa and throw stuff into other stuff: dishes into a laundry basket, clothing into the microwave, cast iron skillet into the tape slot on the VCR. I was busily cramming three cats into a lampshade when the movers began to slide the sofa away from the wall. And we all heard the same rubbery clunk.
A fleshy-pink bullet-shaped vibrator, and I am not saying whose, hit the floor and rolled, slowly, to the middle of the living room and stopped.
The subsequent drive up 95, with my muscles still taut from overcaffeination and my head feeling like it had been split with an axe — no, wait, a poison-coated axe. A poison-coated flaming axe — was harrowing, especially the last rainy hour in Manhattan traffic, and I remember it with a shudder. But that shudder rocks me only half so hard as the memory of what I said as we all stood there in my apartment, two strong men with, one assumes, the normal appetites and a woman who could have been my mother, staring at I am not saying whose vibrator. "Oh," I said, nerves stretched to the breaking point, "I've been wondering where I'd left that."
So my trip with Charlie could not help but feel uneventful. He and I flew to Ohio to pick up some furniture that had been in my parents' house, driving it back over the course of a couple of days. I dreaded the trip, 750 miles in an unwieldy vehicle with a kid who is, and as I say this I glory in it, hiiiiighly interactive. And I have to say that in my apprehension I did Charlie a disservice, because, again, he was great. He worked industriously on some puzzle books, used his snack bag carte blanche responsibly, and obediently stopped asking troublesome questions about the NPR news report — Mama, what's sexual violence in the Congo? — when I was trying to back the truck up without crushing its many inferiors.
You know, as an aside, I think I got pretty good at driving that U-Haul. I would like to thank the truckers of America on that long stretch of the New York Turnpike for making me feel so welcome. It was kind of you to recognize me as one of your own, one of the elite brotherhood of the road. Your organization's many secret finger gestures spoke with eloquence of the warm embrace you offer to the amateur camioniste who doesn't know exactly, or even approximately, what all those other gears besides D and R are for, but, hey, let's try 'em out! Right here! In the work zone!
The highlight of our trip was our stop in Niagara Falls. I'd wanted to surprise Charlie with something fun on each day of our trip, and that is how we spontaneously ended up at Niagara Falls. Twenty miles out of Buffalo I called T., who'd grown up there, to ask her how far off the beaten path the Falls were. And an hour later, there was Charlie on the Maid of the Mist, digging a double rainbow. (Not pictured: Charlie trying to asphyxiate himself by pulling his souvenir raincoat, a glorified dry cleaning bag, up over his face and molding it to his nostrils, and Julie practically wrestling him to the deck to stop him. Note to Niagara Falls State Park: Blue's a really bad color for those things if you're keeping a tally of who's actually going cyanotic and who's merely trying to freak his mother the fuck out.) Once I'd finished tearing the raincoat from his oxygen-deprived body and flinging it into the river, we had a pretty great time, and Charlie pinked up nicely as soon as we were back in the truck for the next 62 interminable hours of the trip.
Finally, just before we left, I'd asked your advice. Thank you for all the ideas and commiseration. There was a lot of helpful stuff there, and I'm still working through it. (1-2-3 Magic: read and implemented to reasonably good effect quite some time ago. Positive rewards for incremental good behavior: star chart fully deployed and moderately successful. Role-playing: useful and ass-hilarious. More books to request from the library. Aluminum foil to be crumpled! Angry dances [YouTube] to be choreographed! On down the line. There's so much good insight there. And I am totally going to try powdered detergent.) But more than almost anything else, I'm thrilled to know that Charlie is not alone, that among my friends inside the computer we have enough junior miscreants to form our own little posse of half-scale thugs. Who wants to carpool for their first arraignment?
I didn't have time before our trip to tell you that we had a really helpful meeting with D., the head teacher in Charlie's room. As we talked, so many seemingly unrelated pieces of information came together into a coherent picture. If you haven't already clicked away in horror at my trivializing civilian-on-clown violence, or my wanton abuse of over-the-counter stimulants, or my failure to store my I mean someone's and I'm not saying whose marital aid hygienically and modestly, or my admission to endangering hundreds of innocent motorists with my clumsy white-knuckled maneuvering, or my admitting to manhandling my matchless treasure of a child to get that fucking raincoat off him, or making light of the menace to our youth that gang violence presents — well, Jesus, turn off the lights when you leave, because I'm pretty sure you're all by your lonesome. But first let me bore you with some details!
Charlie's best friend for some time had been Henry. But lately Charlie's been expressing a certain admiration for another kid in class, whose identity I shall protect by calling him, oh, say, Dick Cheney.
Dick Cheney seems kind of...wayward. He's a shouter, an agressive kid, a kid with ideas, most of which trend toward mayhem. Much of Charlie's rotten behavior lately has been inspired by him; Charlie's said as much, with the guilelessness of a kid who doesn't yet know how to pass the buck and therefore speaks sincerely. "Dick Cheney said we should attack D.!" he reported with relish one afternoon, seeming to forget that when you're gloating about the beauty of your evil scheme, your parents are probably the last people who'll applaud you for it. ("You foiled me!" Charlie has been heard to complain. Damn skippy. Foiling's what I do, and, oh, how I love my work.) Now and again Paul and I have been nonplussed by what Charlie's reported about Dick Cheney, but didn't rank it high on the list of problems, and I spent a fair amount of time roleplaying with Charlie, coaching him in how to respond should Dick Cheney attempt to incite him to action again. "Charlie, I'll be Dick Cheney, and you be you. Charlie! Let's go bundle D. into the trunk of a car and drive over a reeeeally bumpy road!" "No, no, Dick Cheney! We shouldn't! I don't want to do that. [Pause.] I'm not allowed to drive a car!"
It was a start, anyway.
Turns out that according to D. and corroborated by Charlie, Henry and Dick Cheney are now best friends, which leaves Charlie somewhere out in the cold. My theory is that Charlie has been trying to emulate Dick Cheney in hope of regaining some of his lost luster in Henry's eyes. (Or possibly it's because Dick Cheney is inarguably a badass, and who wouldn't want to be allies with a kid who has the tiny cast-iron balls to walk up to a kid who is accompanied by his parents and say, "Charlie! Let's go attack D.!"? Child, I am standing right here.)
Having a theory about where the behavior might be coming from isn't much practical good because it doesn't necessarily suggest a workable course of action, but it does help me understand my son a bit better, which is a relief. D. has agreed that when they match the kids up for activities she'll do so with an eye to cultivating different, more positive relationships, which is a nice way of saying Keep that monstrous whelp away from my spotless angel, and that when Charlie and Dick Cheney are together they'll be more actively supervised.
And I have to be careful here because I don't want to give the impression that I think Charlie is a spotless angel. I do think he's being influenced by another kid, but I also think we haven't yet given him sufficient tools to refute that influence, so we've been working on that. I know that Charlie himself will corrupt some other mother's irreplaceable snowflake sooner or later, if he hasn't already. And I feel a certain compassion for poor Dick Cheney and his parents. Some of what Charlie's been saying at home — I don't love you anymore, I don't think Ben is special — is apparently an echo of what Dick Cheney's been saying at school. Dick Cheney, you see, has a new baby at home, and tells the teachers, My parents don't love me anymore. They don't think I'm special.
Christ, I'd want to whale on someone, too. And maybe Charlie's not getting any more empathetic just yet, but maybe, just possibly, I am.
Until we met with Charlie's teacher, I hadn't really understood how much might be going on with Charlie. I certainly hadn't thought of how much might be going on with other kids, and how that might trickle down. My interrogation technique needs work, because although I often ask Charlie about what's going on, he usually doesn't answer in any useful way. I see now how important it is to have that information, even if I can't immediately shape it into a response.
So the upshot of all this is that I think we've all learned an important lesson about respecting those who worship a lesser god than ours. Wait, no. We've all realized that deep down inside, even when they're drunk, our parents really want what's best for us. Huh, let me try again. People in wheelchairs are every bit as good as people with crutches. No, no, wait. Something about Christmas. No, recycling. Crap, I don't know. Is it enough to say that I am aware, thanks to your comments and the last few weeks, that not only is Charlie a work in progress, so am I as a parent?
Comments (47)
Verify your Comment
Previewing your Comment
This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.
As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.
Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.
In addition to making me snort with laughter several times, this entry has reminded me that parenthood, like childhood, is a process rather than a static state. We try something, it doesn't work, we try something else, we mess up, we do better next time. My kid is a work in progress, and so am I as a parent. I should embroider that on a pillow. You know, if I had time. And a pillow.
First, is the real title of the post, 2300 words in search of a vibrator, cause it's staring at me from the url bar and I'm kind of laughing and kind of gobsmacked!
Anyway, yes, teachers can be an excellent source of spy material. Glad yours illuminated things. Going forward, you never know, maybe Charlie will get a new friend after the teacher pairs him up with someone else. Hoping...
AND, as you (and I) become so much less complex, now that we've figured it out mostly, those little 'eat, play, shit' critters we rear are becoming far more complex. They do so daily.
But what you didn't explain is whether I can apply the term monstrous whelp to my 9-year-old. Are they whelps until about age 15? What's the cutoff?
That kind of reminds me of when we were moving into our current house and our movers came. I heard laughter from our bedroom and the movers walked out with J's dresser, snickering loudly. I hauled my almost-7-months-pregnant-ass (trust me, it looked like it was pregnant by then also) into the bedroom to find that moving the dresser had revealed the fuzzy handcuffs.
I don't believe I looked at them the rest of the day.
Parenting is SUCH a work in progress. Way to say it.
I am not a parent, but my brother was a follower in his youth. The object of his affection was a little weasel named Russell, whose word was absolute. My mother had a hell of a time trying to explain that Russell's father was not the musical genius behind Silent Night, but a carpenter that we later discovered was a borderline alcoholic. My brother would have none of it.
I think that is very, very stated. Anyone who realizes that children (and therefore, themselves as parents) are not static in behavior has a one-up on the rest of the party.
I'm weeks away from beginning my own parental journey, and I am looking forward to seeing your blog in a different light :)
... "very, very well stated."
I return you to your regularly spell-checked posts.
Just so you know you're not alone:
Remember the little summer house we rented in the Berkshires? Ok, so my mom (MY! MOM!) was there, helping me pack it up to return to the City. We opened a big black duffel bag to stuff it full of clothes and there, on the bottom, was the vibrator that I'd carelessly tossed in way back in June, trying to hide it from the prying eyes of the subletters. Knowing full well that we'd both seen the thing, I tossed some t-shirts on top of it and pretended nothing was there.
To this day, i don't think I've ever been more embarrassed.
Well, maybe I was over the weekend, when I texted my friend Karen to tell her that the Bar Mitzvah I was at was so boring that I was thinking about blowing Andrew in the coat closet just to burn up 15 minutes and, as it turned out, she was driving, and her 15 year old son who babysits for Jonah read the text.
But maybe not.
You know, the post title that showed up in my RSS reader is "2300 words in search of a theme." I like the one I saw when I got here better!
What an awesome post, Julie -- you are an amazing writer! I laughed! I cried! it was better than CATS!
Oh Julie, I cannot tell you how much I needed that hysterical wet-my-pants laugh this morning! I woke up wishing I was single and living in the tropics somewhere, was cruelly yanked back to reality by a little girl screaming "kaka" from the bathroom (mommy's cue to due her wipely duties), and then was literally saved from the madness by your REALLY funny post. Thank you.
Lol... OMG I was laughing so hard over the vibrator... also loved the URL for the title. Aurelia is right, the URL does say 2300-words-in-search-of-a-vibrator.
You are a better woman than I. A trip that long, while driving a large u-haul with small child, who loves to ask questions. I'd need to be drunk or high, and well, who would drive?
Love it. And love the people that pointed out the URL.
When I was 8 or 10 or someplace in there, I befriended the neighborhood bully. My poor mother had to deal with all sort of interesting and unapologetic choices, including throwing mud-covered pine cones at my (older) brother as he walked home from school, and harassing the younger kids at the bus stop. I grew out of the friendship when I realized myself he was a bit of an unsavory creep, much to my mother's relief.
I'm sure your spotless angel will come out the other end of this just fine, albeit perhaps tarnished in a way that will ramp up that empathy... I know that's happened for me.
I'm heading to Niagara this Sunday!
I only discovered you recently--sadly, because oh, how I could have used this blog when I was still in the midst of the infertility thing! So I want to say first, thanks! I love reading it. but much more importantly, I want to tell you that my own Ben (14 months) has the very same super cute robeez. What a cutie!
My senior year of college, I shared a house with three other girls. For one of their birthdays, a friend had given her a stack of condoms. Since we were 22 but acted as if we were 12, we threw them around the living room.
Flash forward to the end of the year. Move out day, one of the girl's father and uncle, both quiet farmers, lift the entertainment center up and out of the living room, only to displace about 5 condoms that had been stuck in the piece of furniture. I briskly walked across the room, bent down, swooped the condoms up, and walked out of the room without breaking stride. I do believe that those two kind men were mortified at the idea that a house filled with women would even NEED condoms, but we simply chose to not address the issue.
Oh, and one more thing--your boys are gorgeous. Truly beautiful.
Ooooh! Was it the Champlain Valley Fair? I grew up in Essex and still miss the fair after moving away over a decade ago.
I want to sign up for the arraignment car pool now, if you please.
I was wondering if some of Charlie's behavior may be due to some outside influences. My brother was exactly the same. He was pretty much a spotless angel, unless he fell into the wrong crowd. He didn't (doesn't) have very good impulse control so he would be one to clock a teacher if his friend said he should. A word of warning, 4 year olds are smaller versions of their teenage selves. My brother was the same exact way in high school as he was in pre school, and my mother had to watch him like a hawk so he didn't fall in with bad kids. The bad judgment goes doubly for the girls..the troublesome ones can spot a good guy from a mile away. So, you know, watch out and stuff.
Who are those gorgeous young men with you? They can't possibly be Ben and Charlie. Even Ben looks like a little boy already. How is that possible? Can't you give them some caffeine and slow down their growth or something?
My standard parenting mantra.
Being a parent is like trying to learn a fun and frustrating new dance. Every time you think you have the steps down, the music changes.
I too have been working on my information pulling techniques. Because as you note, each little piece is so key to understanding the whole.
I just had to pretend to a co-worker that I was having an allergy attack to explain away the tears of laughter rolling down my face!
I'm so glad you had a good meeting and got some insight into Charlie's motivation. The moving target analogy is quite apt. He is a great kid who has great parents that are avoiding defensiveness and denial and instead focusing on fixing the problem. I'm picking up Good Vibrations and I'm sure things will get better soon.
My Irreplaceable Snowflake/Monstrous Whelp had to be put in his crib for time out yesterday for poking the smaller babies in the eyes. They told me he was doing it out of curiosity...sigh.
And don't get me started about how he almost fell out of the shopping cart b/c he was ogling a nineteen-year-old hot girl. His first birthday is tomorrow and we quake in fear of what we have in store.
They are discussing this at www.bratfree.com
I'm not unaware. I'm just ignoring you.
Beware of what happens when your toddler starts exploring the "special" drawer, and in your zeal to find a new hiding place under the bed, you forget about the thoroughness of the housekeeper... who kindly leaves it on top of your night stand for easy access.
She is so thorough, that I can't help but wonder if she cleaned it.
Julie, you are so freaking hilarious. Please post more often. Like every day would be great. :)
Tears are rolling down my face and I'm having coworkers ask me where stuff is and I'm having to search through moving boxes (!) with misty eyes and trying not to giggle meanwhile.... ahhhhh..... Thank you for the hilarious post Julie! And you've also made me very glad we didn't have to use Uhaul to move our stuff to our new office.
Your boys are gorgeous! They look a lot alike!
Oh, God. It's nice to know this has happened to someone else. Several years ago I shared an apartment with my then-boyfriend, which was the top floor of a somewhat ramshackle old house. The landlord's primary job was working in the salt mines (I shit you not) but he had a couple of houses he rented out but didn't maintain very well. Anyway, there was water damage and the bedroom ceiling fell down one day and we had to move all our furniture out so it could be repaired. He and his 16-year-old son came to help us move.
Our landlord started removing dresser drawers to carry them out and of course the 1st thing he pulled out was my underwear drawer. "Oh," he says, slamming it shut, "It's a lady drawer!" I grabbed it and headed out. When I got back to the bedroom, the son (16, you will recall) was hauling the much larger and heavier bottom drawer out of the dresser--wherein reposed my bright red vibrator, smack in the middle of my sweaters. Neither of us said anything as we carried it out together (it was a two-person job). I felt a little bit like I had contributed to the delinquency of a minor.
My parents once helped me move, and when I ran out to do some house set-up errands, they unpacked my books. ALL my books. My MOM and DAD.
My daughter turns 1 next week, and I'm dreading being a failure at guiding her down the right path. I will have to keep in mind that she and I are both works in progress. Thanks for that.
Re: finding things that you wish weren't found.... After my daughter was born, I used the Nuva Ring for birth control. At the appointed time of the month, I removed it and tossed it in the trash can. I came home the next day, after our cleaning crew had been at the house, to find it oh-so-gently placed on my nightstand, where I could find it easily. I wonder what, exactly, they thought it was. And I don't know if it made me appreciate their thorough job or if it really creeped me out....
my own charlie is now 9 and each day is a new adventure. thanks for keeping it in perspective!
Liz: "It's a Lady drawer!" has me laughing almost as hard as Julie's post.
I haven't had anything similar happen to me (or at least have blocked it from my memory), but when I moved continents recently I did throw out ALL of my toys after a friend told me customs guys at the airport made her empty her entire goody bag, just to embarrass her.
Fertility problems are often approached with noninvasive procedures, such as Clomid treatments, fertility treatment drugs designed to help stimulate and induce ovulation. Clomiphene titrate is successful in about 80% of women who experienced ovulation difficulties, although it may be less effective in older or heavy women.
Women who suffer from fertility problemsduring the ovulation process or during follicle development and ovulation are often good candidates for Ovulation Induction (OI). In this treatment, follicle-stimulating hormones are prescribed that help to stimulate follicle development and eggs within the ovary.
Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is more commonly known as Artificial Insemination. Medication is given to a woman at a fertility treatment center to stimulate multiple egg development. Insemination, or insertion of sperm from the male partner, into the uterus usually increases chances of fertilization.
In vitro fertilization is a method that assists reproduction through the union of a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory dish. After fertilization has occurred, the embryo is transferred to the woman’s uterus for implantation and development of a normal pregnancy process.
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is a fertility treatment that has been used since the early 1990s, most often with couples where male factors such as low sperm count or poor sperm quality. The process involves the injection of a sperm directly into a mature egg.
Global fertility treatment center facilities such as Dr. Rama’s Institute for Fertility in India, or Superior A.R.T. in Bangkok, Thailand, are popular. In addition to opportunities for exotic travel, state-of-the-art facilities, expertly trained staff offer compassionate, knowledable and experienced care for couples around the world.
I was going to relate the time that a flatmate of mine complained that her room had this infernal noise, stopping her from sleeping.
We couldn't work out what it was, and I even trudged up one flight and knocked on the door of the people upstairs to ask if it was them, and THEY all came down to look and found her vibrator on, agaist the wall. Humming.
But then you'd think I might be talking about me, and this time, I'm not.
g
I'm in for the carpool.
We had the exact same situation with our son in preschool last year. My son somehow beat out the Henry boy to become BF with the Dick, excluding Henry, since that's what the little monsters do at this age. Then they would target all of the other kids on the playground.
The best thing you can do is set up as many playdates as possible with other -nice- kids outside of class time. This did help give our son some perspective, & he did realize the Dick was mean to him, too. Good luck!
Good god, I'm a cliche: this had me HAing and sniffling, all in one post.
But you're totally fucking with me, Julie -- making me tear up at the thought of Dick Cheney as a sad and vulnerable four year old. This calls everything (everything! The entire order of the universe!) into question.
Bravo. That was an excellent read.
Managed to keep my kid engrossed in tractors, animals and giant pumpkins at the same fair. Because I KNEW if he got into one of those pick-up trucks and it went up into the air, he would lose his tiny mind and jump to freedom. Maybe next year.
What is it about moving that brings out the vibrator mishaps. I know of at least two other women besides myself that have had a similar scene.
Mine - pack "toys" with batteries in them, deep in back pack. Movers come take things and back pack away. When unloading my back pack, as I am standing on my balcony watching, the huge smelly mover throws the bag over his shoulder and suddenly gets a funny look on his face, and yells up, smirking, "what do you have in this one?!!" and I realize all at once what has happened! One of them damn things turned on in there. I wildly take the stairs down and snatch the huge bag back, and snootily say "I am a modern woman - what of it!" and run away in deep purple embarrassment. Most awesome....I am turning red just typing this and it was 8 years ago!
Hi Julie,
I've just discovered and devoured your entire blog. I've neglected my family, hygiene and sleep in the process; damn you for being so interesting, funny and spot on. You asshole. And where's your book? Everyone else has one.
Thank you so much for your candid and brutal exploration of the special hell that is infertility, let me just say, yeah. Yeah. (Sigh.)
And, I totally lurve you and you are awesome and cool, and you know Venture Brothers! And xkcd! I want to be your shiny new stalker.
Love forever (FOREVER!!),
Jana.
anon for this, but I've never been able to um, derive any benefit from a vibrator. Which is the only reason I can't tell a similar embarassing story, because I am supremely idiotic and do hideously embarassing stuff on a regular basis.
My oldest is 13 and I never have much luck with direct interrogation. What seems to be magic are car rides. Just bring the subject up casually, and next thing you know the kid's spilling his guts. Maybe s/he doesn't think you're really listening.
Please take this internet comic with a HUGE grain of salt: http://www.shortpacked.com/index.html
I haven't read Born Gay by Glenn Wilson and I'm sure it's a load of hooey. But oh my god, could you imagine?
I mainly like it because of the "I can't even *imagine* pushin' that many doodles out of my poodle" in reference to the Duggar brood/matriarchal...poodle.
Because Charlie's ability to take on emotions of other children around him reminds me of my son and because it reminds me of, well, me, I am going to offer a book suggestion - "The Highly Sensitive Child" by Elaine Aron. Turns out us sensitives have, yes, some hurdles to jump over but we have just as many gifts that are necessary to the world. The concept of what a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) is has helped me as well as my son. There's a couple of quizzes on the book's website here: http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test_child.htm
and somewhere there's a quiz for us grown-ups as well. I have no affilation with the book at all...just passing on some information that may (or may not) be helpful.
I saw someone make a comment about the Duggars and all the kids. It went something like this
"It must be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway"
I am a 36 year old Mother who laughs hysterically everytime I think of it. I will say it to my husband and the most unexpected and inappropriate times causing him to lose his shit too!!
Ugh, that oldest Duggar boy really rubs me the wrong way! I've been trying to think of a word to describe him--the best I can come up with is smarmy, but that's not quite it...
This is SO not the turn I wanted the Duggar saga to take:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20326804,00.html