The Republic of T.

Your Holiday Personality is Social

For you, the holidays are all about spending time with people you love - and even those you kind of like. Host your own party - maybe even a few. Get people together for baking cookies, watching movies, and playing holiday charades.

Sounds about right. I’m busy making baked good and other stuff to give as gifts. This year it’s either White Chocolate Hazelnut and Cranberry Fudge or Milk Chocolate and Peppermint Fudge Topped with Candy Cane Pieces. In a pinch, I might whip up some Semi-Sweet Chocolate Orange and Hazelnut Fudge. If necessary.

Well, if my own life serves as any indication, the answer to the above question for some kids with ADD/ADHD is no. Some kids won’t outgrow ADHD.

New findings that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder may stem from a developmental delay that children could outgrow, rather than a cognitive deficit, have raised questions for parents of the 4.4 million children diagnosed with the disorder.

The findings from a National Institute of Mental Health study, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared brain scans of 446 children with and without the disorder. The brains of children with ADHD appeared to develop normally but more slowly, lagging on average about three years behind other children.

We spoke with several experts about what the findings might mean for parents.

It means that a certain percentage of their kids will grow up with ADD and that the condition (I so hate the word “disorder” applied here) will persist into adulthood.

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Come the revolution, we will all live in “The Gayborhood.” It’s nothing new. In fact I’ve written about it before, and now the The New York Times has printed yet another article lamenting the loss of “the gayborhood.”

The article opens with the famed Halloween party in San Francisco’s Castro district, which was cancelled this year.

The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.

For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.

…There has been a notable shift of gravity from the Castro, with young gay men and lesbians fanning out into less-expensive neighborhoods like Mission Dolores and the Outer Sunset, and farther away to Marin and Alameda Counties, “mirroring national trends where you are seeing same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer and senior research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations by Dr. Gates for The New York Times. “Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York,” he said. “Now you can just go to Kansas City.”

After taking Parker trick-or-treating in our neighborhood last night, I think what we’re seeing is really a shift, one that reminds me of something I wrote a while back. Neighborhoods just change. And as they change, people change with them. The interesting thing to me is how much that change frightens people at both extremes.

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Chase in linking to my post about Popular Mechanics list of “25 Skills Every Man Should Know”, has come up with his own list of “must have” skills.

Here’s how I did.

1. Know basic nutritional needs & how to plan balanced meals
2. Hone your sense of direction & navigation so you don’t need step-by-step turns to find a location
3. Understand types of health insurance & terminology such as OOP max & co-insurance percentage
4. Maintenance of a personal computer
5. In-depth knowledge of your employment benefits
6. Change a flat tire
7. Wash & iron clothes
8. Balance a checkbook & manage your finances
9. Patch holes in walls
10. Fix a clogged toilet
11. Jump start a car
12. Use public transportation to get around
13. Write an effective resume cover letter
14. Professional oral & written communication
15. Basic math
16. Stay calm in emergencies
17. Know when to ask for help
18. Personal hygiene
19. Do your own taxes
20. Use internet search engines strategically (if you know how to do good searches, you can find any information you need on the web)

Not bad. Better than I did on the Popular Mechanics list.

Technorati Tags: blogs, masculinity, adhd

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You’d think I’d be done with coming out by now, and that on National Coming Out Day, I’d have nothing left to tell anyone. At this point, I think the only person I haven’t told is Oprah. I will if I’m ever on her show for some reason. Somehow I don’t think she’ll be surprised. Somehow nobody’s ever surprised at that revelation. I think I tend to give it way by some of the things I do. Like talking. The “gay accent” is a dead giveaway.

Or, if Parker speaks (and if this kid is awake he’s usually talking) we’re pretty much instantly outed after a barrage of questions and statements directed at Daddy and Papa. It just doesn’t take long for people to do the math.

So, when National Coming Out Day rolls around, I’m left feeling like I have nothing to do. Not that I want to tell that story again. Let’s face it. After a while, coming out stories get old. When I was co-director of the LGBT student group at UGA, anytime someone new came to a meeting, we’d put our chairs in in a circle and tell our coming out stories. After about a year of this we decided en mass to cease that practice, because it had gotten to the point where we could each go around the circle and tell everyone else’s coming out story.

So, no, I’m not going to tell min again. Because I’ve told it before, and thanks to the magic of blog archives, I don’t have to. I can just repost it. You can read it after the jump if our so inclined.

Technorati Tags: coming out, current events, gay, gay rights, homophobia, life, sexuality

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(Ed. Notes: Comments are closed, but you can send emails via the contact page.)

This is without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. We are finally home. We arrived late Thursday night. But we have come home without Lauren. (Which is what we called her.)

We lost her.

At 10:00 a.m. Thursday morning, we received a call from our adoption agency.
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Ramone is asking “When was your first gay kiss?”

The world as I knew it completely changed after my first gay kiss. I mean, I’d kissed girls before, but my first kiss with a guy confirmed all of the feelings I’d had buried inside for so long. It was almost like a fairy tale, especially since the guy was someone I’d had a crush on for a very long time. It was after that special moment with him at 17 that I started to dream of building a life with another man—a home, kids and all kinds of pets.

When was your first kiss?

Does it have to be the first time? Why not the first best time? I guess I ask because I’m one of those people who doesn’t have the fondest memories of the first guy I ever kissed.

Technorati Tags: gay, sex, sexuality

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This isn’t really a Friday Random Ten (which I haven’t done in a while). Tonight is my turn to put Parker to bed, and in the last few months — every since he heard me singing “Route 66″ from his favorite movie, Cars — that means I sing a few songs for him after I tuck him in. I’ve been expanding my repertoire since then, and when I think of a new song that’s appropriate, I surprise him with it.

It’s grown into quite a playlist, actually, and I have to cut it off at a certain point or he’ll never goto sleep. (Once, a medley of “When You’re Smiling,” “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” and “S’Wonderful” extended bedtime into a 20 minute concert.)

Yesterday, I got the idea to create a playlist in iTunes of Parker’s songs. Partly because I like that they’re now “our songs” in a way (and maybe someday he’ll hear one of them and remember that Daddy used to sing them for him), and partly so that I can add new songs and learn them for future “performances.”

Anyway, here’s the list so far. I doubled up some songs, just for thematic purposes when I’m listening to it.

Technorati Tags: family, music, parenting

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I knew it. So, last week I griped about the whole working-at-home-vs.-working-around-people thing. And during my travels in search of wireless internet access and the proximity of other people, I’d started to develop a sneaking suspicion that — with more and more people working from locations other than an office — some institutions that offer the lure of wifi also wield a stick to make sure the “road warriors” among us don’t adopt their space as a semi-permanent office space.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. I mean, there are the obvious, reasonable measures that most places take, like logging you off their wifi after you’ve been there a certain amount of time (that’s if it’s free wifi). I can understand wanting to open up a table for a new paying customer when I finished my latte/frappucino/chai tea a couple of hours ago. But I swear there are some more subtle strategies employed. Like the lack of electrical outlets. And electrical outlet is an invitation for someone like me to sit and stay a while, after all. And if there is an outlet available, more than half the time the seat or table nearest it is occupied by someone who’s not using the outlet.

That’s not a problem. After all, people can sit where they want. But I swear there have been times when I’ve seen people sit by the outlets all day. They’re there when I make my first pass, and they’re still there if I pass by a few hours later. I’d swear that the store owners are paying people to sit those outlets, but I know if doesn’t make much sense. But they are taking out the comfy chairs.

Technorati Tags: books, business, culture, current events, life, work, web

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To borrow a line from Martha Reeves, “Come and get ‘em, come and get ‘em. And take them away.

Seriously though, don’t you have some memories you could do without? C’mon. Something you wish had never happened? Something you’d like to forget? Maybe something you’d erase if you could? What would you erase if you could?

I’ve asked these questions before, back when I reviewed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and I’m still asking them. I guess that’s because of my own ADD-related memory problems, which can be pretty disruptive in terms of working, living my everyday life, etc. Without treatment that is. On the one hand, there are days when I’d give almost anything for something that would improve my memory to the some level of normalcy. (I don’t know what a normal level of functioning is, memory-wise. The treatment I’m using now helps some, but there’s no “curing” ADD. Thus, speaking of memory-related movies, I felt a special affinity with the main character in Memento

.

Ironically, on the other hand, there are some pre-treatment ADD-related memories I wouldn’t mind getting shed of. Humiliations. Dismal failures. Lost jobs. Lost relationships. Depression. That why Spotless Mind appealed to me. And, despite the possibility that losing those memories might mean losing part of myself, the idea of a drug that wipes out bad memories sounds pretty tempting.

Technorati Tags: adhd, current events, life, medicine, science

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I haven’t shared this bit of news on the blog yet, but in the past month I’ve made a transition that I’d been told was the next logical step in my career, but that I’d been resisting for almost a year. I’ve become an independent consultant. That is, I’m self-employed. Aside from farming out myself as a freelance writer, I’m primarily working as a “blogging & social media consultant”; a title I invented and started toying with around the same time.

One of the reasons I took the plunge is because Parker is getting closer to school-age, and eventually he’ll have a sibling who will also go to school. As I’ve been paying attention to the kinds of trouble some young people get themselves into, looking back on my own past, and wondering what kept me out of trouble. I think it made a huge difference that I never came home to an empty house. When I opened the door upon coming home from school, there was almost always someone there. In my case, my mom, who didn’t work outside the home. I’d been thinking about how to structure work so that I can be there most of the time when our kids get home from school. Well, I figured out how.

So far, so good. A number of interesting opportunities have already come my way (but not so many that I’m turning some away, yet) , and it helps that my former employer is one of my first clients and has been hugely helpful in sending other opportunities my way. Things look good and likely to get better. And I’ve enjoyed the independence of begin able to work at home or anywhere else that has wi-fi web access. But there’s just one drawback that’s been bugging me lately.

Technorati Tags: current events, life, work, technology, web

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I’m probably being a little paranoid here. But can you blame me? I’ve written before about being something of an introvert. People are sometimes surprised when I tell them this, because I’m an introvert who’s learned to be — or appear to be — more of an extrovert when I have to be. That’s because when you’re something of a loner, people tend to think you’re troubled or that something’s wrong, as Jonathan Rauch pointed out in his (surprisingly popular) essay “Caring for Your Introvert.”

DO YOU KNOW someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

We’re fine, really. But instead of leaving us be, I’m reading that there’s now some kind of hormone spray to “cure” shyness. (The site where the article lives seems to be down. I’m not sure if that’s because of the “Digg effect” or not.

Technorati Tags: current events, life, introverts, science

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I’ve had solid ground under my feet since about 10:00 am yesterday (if you count the train ride from New York to DC), but I can still feel the boat moving. Having finally gotten my “sea legs” under me, I know find myself getting reacquainted with the rules back on land. In a sense, the physical adjustment after the R Family Vacations cruise is similar to the emotional adjustment. After such a long period of freedom, it’s a matter of getting used to a reality that — however familiar — is even more constricting than it felt before.

I can understand why some people cry when its time to get off the boat. We’re pretty lucky, actually. We were coming back to a relatively progressive community where our family is accepted and welcomed, and where we experience very few problems. Some of the families on the cruise are returning to communities that are a lot more conservative, and a lot less accepting or welcoming. For them, this cruise is the one time each year when they can get away from the anxiety of wondering how people will respond to their families or what their kids might have to face.

And even for me, it was a noticeable change, like suddenly relaxing a muscle that has been tense so long you begin to think that’s its natural state.

You have to understand, it’s like I said in the previous post.

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