Parents, start your worry engines

Before my friends all married and birthed and my son became the center of my world, we lived a relatively Friends-like existence. Sunday nights were for Zzas restaurant, where we'd put our name down as "Next" on the sign-in sheet, much to our amusement and the hostess's annoyance. Saturdays we'd gather at a random high school field or park and play Sports. Sports could be any single or mix of athletic-like or athletic-lite games, since we all carried equipment in our cars. Footballs, frisbees, rock climbing equipment, golf clubs, soccer balls, kid's kick balls, a couple of hula hoops, roller blades and various gloves, mitts and helmets. We had legendary games of ultimate frisbee on rain-soaked fields that left us muddy and bruised and bloody but still able to wobble out a victory lap and incorporate interpretive dance into our victory dance, as was called for sometimes by our ever-changing game rules. Golf games were not always at golf courses, and often involved Happy Gilmore moments and group tee-offs. Our biggest sources of anxiety were either work-related tiffs or having a taqueria close early, requiring another dinner decision.

All of that has changed. As parents, we now all play games that involve chutes and ladders and learning colors. Our sports are limited to those that include lightweight or padded equipment incapable of causing head injuries. And our worries are exponential: organic food vs. "regular", how to help develop self-confidence in children, toilet training, dangers lurking around every sharp corner and low-hanging ledge, which formula, which diapers, what car will protect the back seat best, how to reach a doctor after hours, mapping out the fastest route to the emergency room, learning how to cut wee nails, who will break our child's heart first, will he fit in, will she be liked and loved and appreciated for her differences, how will she survive that first day of school without you, how will YOU survive that first day knowing that she's out of your protective sphere for perhaps the first time in her young life, how much exercise, which television programs if any, how to keep small fingers from creeping over the edge of the stove, keep forks out of sockets and so much more — all those things we do each and every day just to get through the day without heartache or a visit to the emergency room and filled with at least an hour of love and connection and reassurance that yes, you are my child and I love you with all my heart.

But it's not enough.

This weekend I read an article in the Sunday paper entitled "The Test from Hell." Apparently, in addition to getting us all through the day alive and loved, I need to start worrying about the SATs no later than second grade. If at that time I fail to recognize any learning issues for my child and fail to document them from that day forward until the SAT arrives, at best my child will end up in a vocational school learning to make leather wallets or at worst playing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider XVI on my sofa for years after barely graduating from high school. Or incarcerated because his sense of self-worth has been so damaged by failure in high school and at taking the Test from Hell that he was forced to steal the neighbor's car when he went out to buy beer with his fake ID.

According to the author — whose veracity I do not question — it is only because they tested her child in second grade that she had a shot in hell at keeping up with her peers in all the years ahead, and of doing better than squeaking by on the SATs.

"When she was in second grade, we shelled out $2,000-plus to have a private version of the crucial Individual Education Plan (IEP) -- a test of your child's problems, if any, and what interventions might help. It advised us to hire a specialist twice a week to help Dana learn to fare better in the classroom. And so it began: Over the years, private tutors taught her strategies for decoding words and math problems, how to use special computer programs to help her get organized and even how to make her own case with administrators that she needed extra time on a test or the use of a computer. (Back then, such tutoring cost $80 an hour; now that rate would be considered a bargain.)"

I am frightened. It took 12 years of tutoring and a lawsuit against the Educational Testing Service to allow their learning-disabled child a fair swag at the SATs. Like many parents, I can barely make it through a week without anyone mutilated or traumatized, and now I need to look at each badly scrawled sentence or drawing and determine if my son is learning disabled or just messy, or put him through the rigors of the IEP test at the tender age of seven just to figure out if there's a chance that in 10 years he'll be smacked down by the SATs and need proof that way-back-when we started documenting his disability. This would legitimately allow him either additional time or access to a computer during the SATs. We'd need this historical proof because, as icing on the cake, some parents have been accused of "shopping for accommodations" in their child's high school years to ensure that their possibly non-learning disabled child has the letters he or she needs to buy that time or access — and now the ETS is randomly rejecting applications for accommodations.

Isn't it enough that we eat organic, have child-proofed the house down to the basement and garden shed, read for at least an hour each and every day and have never, ever had an action figure in the house? That we show him the benefits of an active lifestyle, teach him his letters in the bathtub by drawing on the tiles with non-toxic paint, sing and read to him in two languages and avoid MSG, weapons in the house and raising our voices?

Forget saving for college. Now we need to save for the IEP and the years of tutors that may follow. If by some chance our perfect, kind, smart little boy turns out to be viewed as perfect in his learning abilities, we'll use that money for either his college tuition or a big ass party with ice cream cake and non-scary clowns to celebrate the day someone other than us affirmed that yes, yes, he's smart as a whip and sees letters and numbers and concepts as he should. Between now and then, I'll add learning disabilities and the IEP to my list of worries, somewhere above "will he learn to walk down the stairs by himself" and way below "will he be happy", my number one concern today and every day in our future.