Refocus and redirect

My post on scheduling seems to have attracted attention mostly for the scheduled to the breaking point middle class versus abandoned lower class, which is a topic worthy of investigation, but not what I was going for. Luckily, I've thought of a better anecdote to illustrate it.

My mom signed me up for swim classes when I was fairly young- 6, maybe? Our immediate neighborhood (say, four blocks worth) was middle class but the surrounding area was not, and the YMCA drew heavily from the poor/wc group. The first day of swim class, I had the following conversation with my instructor.

instructor (angry): YOU DID THAT WRONG. DO IT THIS WAY.
me: okay.
instructor (even angrier): DO NOT TALK BACK TO ME.

I don't even think I complained, my mom saw it and switched me to a different class. But from the fact that that guy was employed, I assume someone was letting him teach their kids. By moving me solely because the the instructor was mean to me, my mom taught me that my feelings are important and needed to be respected, even by adults, things I generally think are good, although g-d knows some parents go overboard with it. Obviously this isn't the only way to teach kids that lesson, but it's part of a larger package where middle class kids grow up in a world where their words are magic and poor kids don't.

Itchiness is a bad side effect for someone with a bed bug phobia

My doctor has agreed that I should try lowering my hydorcortisone dosage. It's
not definitely going to stay lower, but it turns out that having too much feels
a lot like having too little, and the extra I took when I was sick demonstrated
that I definitely should not be taking more, so it's worth seeing if I can get
the same or better results with a lower dosage, especially since hydrocortisone
is a Not Kidding Around drug. The timing isn't fantastic- she just adjusted my
vitamins two weeks ago, and while overall it's been helpful, the switch included
two things in the "this will get worse before it gets better" category, which
could screw up my assessment of the lowered dosage. Neither should effect the
biggest potential negative side effect from the cortisol- trouble getting to
sleep. So today I'm going to do my usual symptoms check in:

• I am itchy. My skin is dry and I have developed a mild sensitivity to my
  laundry detergent. It looks like I'm developing new moles, but that could be my
  imagination. Doctor says that can be a side effect of either of the "worse
  before it gets better" things. Actually, she's pretty sure she knows which one
  it is, but it's the more important one, so she wants me to give up the other
  (which is definitely temporary) first. I've decided to compromise on "neither"
  
• I am much more energetic during the day. Not at super-power levels, but
  better than I was a month ago.
  
• I think I'm sleeping better at night. I'm also sleeping a lot- 9 hours,
  plus maybe 15 minutes of reading my RSS feed in bed before I get up. Okay 30.
  And it's fifteen minutes between consciousness and phone. I blame the cats for
  that, but the truth is, I do it even when they're not there.
  
• I am having some trouble getting to sleep. This is either or symptom of too
  little cortisol (giving me the hypoadrenic "second wind" right when I should be
  going to sleep) or too much (for obvious reasons). Or it could be something
  entirely unrelated. Definitely one of those three.
  
• The one rolfing session I had was super amazing effective.
  
• It's hard evaluating the emotional side effects. I have no problem
  acknowledging the vitamins for giving me energy or reducing inflammation, and
  it's easy to see that hydrocortisone makes me cope with stress better, but
  beyond that, I feel like I'm a calmer, more mature, less-high strung person
  because I've experienced emotional growth, not because of some stupid pills.
  And I have the perfectly reasonable argument that there's very obvious emotional
  growth that I can point to, and that I was doing a lot of that before I started
  any of these vitamins and we lack the technology to chart maturity
  quantitatively enough to look for an inflection point.
  
  
• Inflammation- down from the worst, but not actually improving. Again
  suspect "worse before better" meds.
  
• My focus isn't great at work, but that's to be expected after two weeks
  off. As you can tell, my focus when writing is astonishing, and I've lost quite
  a lot of my ability to multitask when watching even stupid TV. It's not that I
  couldn't write e-mail while watching Hoarders if I really wanted to, it's that
  doing so annoys me
  
• I'm back to mostly not wanting simple carbs. Not as extreme as during the
  superpowers phase, but reasonable.
  
  
• My body is at the point where it will actively ask for meat, but only if
  it's one of the kinds I ate as a child. Next step is to convince it that
  breaded chicken tenders are literally the exact same thing as chicken nuggets,
  except bigger. There's a delicate balance here where I'm more inclined to try
  new things when I'm hungry or craving a particular nutrient, but if I go even a
  smidge beyond that my stomach goes into protective mode and has to be
  willpowered into eating anything.
  
  
• This combines really well with my body neglecting to tell me it's hungry
  until I'm near starving. I am still relearning how to listen for hunger
  signals, and to start preparing food before I actively crave it. Get it
  together, stomach.
  
  
• I'm experiencing much less body odor than I used to. For a while I worried that it was in fact my sense of smell that was going, but I confirmed at martial arts today that it was not.
  
  
• My motion sickness is getting better, although that could be because I'm better about taking the magnesium now.
  
  
• My neuralgia got worse for a few days. I did not like this at all.
  

The law of unintended consequences

Case worker offices were faced with a population that frequently missed appointments, so they switched to a queue system. Buildings the case workers worked in were faced with bathrooms that were abused past the point of usability, or just didn't want to bother refilling the toilet paper, so they closed them. Either of these on their own are almost justifiable, but together are horrific.

The lower class elementary school outlined in Unequal Childhood wanted to make sure a teacher explored all the in-classroom options before offering a kid special services, so they require a formal recommendation, followed by a formal plan to try something. If that doesn't work, they have to implement a new plan. Only if that fails can they test the kid to see what services she might need. Again, you can sort of see why they did this- you don't want teachers just giving up the first time a kid doesn't get something. But each plan must be tried for 60 days, which seems low until you realize they mean school days, not calendar days, and the school year only has 180 days. And testing and developing a plan based on that test takes time. And their procedure for continuity between school years is less than ironclad. So they've essentially ensured that you only get services if you're unbelievably disabled, or you have an advocate with the knowledge and resources to work the system. I'd love to hear what percentage of those in-class plans genuinely fix the problem.

It's not just the poor school though. A black parent at the middle/upper class school heard her kids complaining the bus driver was racist. Not wanting teach her kids that every bad thing that happened to them was racially motivated, and not wanting to get a reputation at the school as someone who did such, she waited until she'd amassed a lot of evidence. This takes a while when the discrimination is subtle. When she went to the principal, the first thing he said was "I wish you'd come to us earlier, we could have put a camera on the bus." Because all the reports she'd collected from the kids (not just hers)? Worthless. So this guy gets another year of literally pushing black kids to the back of the bus.

There's a common thread here that I almost but don't quite have. I think it's that we make these things so difficult and time consuming because we're afraid of frivolous accusations/referrals. But we didn't make the social cost of making these accusations any less. And authority types generally won't accept evidence gathered outside the Process*. If there was a step between "ignore" and "report for child molestation, triggering a life breaking investigation", we'd catch more child molesters.


*Although those of us with lawyers in our social network learn how to collect data that stands a much better chance of being accepted.