Earlier this week, D.C. Pubic Schools revealed that more parents than ever before applied for admission in the pre-school, pre-k and out-of-boundary lottery.

The crush of applications to fill seats at the most coveted schools suggests a growing confidence in city schools. Well, certain city schools. The flipside of the lottery numbers is that it also suggests that all those parents who applied for an out-of-boundary slot do not want their child to attend the neighborhood school.
(Jupiterimages - GETTY IMAGES/BRAND X)

The lottery, in theory, is supposed to give those families who don’t highly regard their local school some options. But, the landscape is changing. More families in-boundary for the better schools are taking up the seats, and overall, more families want to stay in the city and also have the option of a good school. (That shouldn’t be too much to ask, but for many it still is.)

The decreasing number of seats available at the “best” schools and the increasing number of families who want them has created a welling anger and what’s been called an illusion of choice.

Today, the story of a Washington family’s journey through the special-needs world and the difficult navigation of the “aging out” years, will be published as the memoir “Next Stop,” (Amy Einhorn Books).

The book, which is receiving a good amount of buzz already, began as a Washington Post Magazine piece, “Doors Opening,” in 2009.

The author, Glen Finland, will field questions at noon today through an online chat. Before that, I asked her a few of my own questions about her book and her family.
(Amy Einhorn Books)

Here are excerpts from our Q&A:

How has your family reacted to the book?

Autism is never a story about one person; it is the story of an entire family. There was no road map to follow on raising David, and the truth is we’re still winging it everyday. So before I began the book I asked my husband and each of my three sons for their permission to write about us.

Skeptical at first, my oldest son shrugged and eventually said, “Cool.” My middle son said yes on the condition that I not embarrass David or “make his life any harder than it already is.” My husband agreed only if I promised to highlight David’s strong points along with his cognitive disabilities. Interestingly, his insightful directive opened up the whole story for me because David’s strength lies in his long distance running, which became the real-life metaphor for his moving forward into independent adulthood. As for David, his response was vintage David. He said, “I don’t care.” That left me with the daunting task of how to be an honest steward of my family’s story.

Putting a 7-year-old on a year-long diet? Not a great idea to begin with.

Recounting that diet and the questionable tactics of the parent during that year in a fashion magazine — in a spread that includes self-congratulatory “after” pictures? Really not a good idea.

This week, there’s been an online uproar over Dara-Lynn Weiss’s essay in the April issue of Vogue about the diet to which she subjected her daughter, Bea.

Weiss discusses how, after her daughter’s weight was becoming a health problem, she set out to police the child’s consumption.
When should this be off-limits to a child? (The Washington Post)

She then goes on to complain about how difficult it was to monitor the eating of an unwilling child and admits to publicly snatching snacks from her daughter, depriving her of dinner and launching into tirades when the girl wanted to have both cookies and cake at a party.

The piece was first publicly eviscerated on Jezebel by writer Katie J.M. Baker (“Mom Puts 7-Year-Old on a Diet in Worst Vogue Article Ever”). It soon became fodder for other writers who lashed into Weiss.

Weiss’s essay has gotten so much attention this week that she reportedly has now received a book contract to defend herself.

The episode, as controversial as it is, is bigger than Weiss and her detractors. It gets at cultural notions of health, beauty and self-esteem and at how to parent around those issues.

I asked for a response from Karen Schachter, a Washington nutritionist who specializes in helping parents walk the fine line between preserving a child’s health and her self-esteem. She runs a program for mothers and daughters called “Dishing With Your Daughter.” Here are her thoughts on the story.

Stacey Ferguson, a Silver Spring mother, blogger and event planner, recently began coordinating an event she calls a working mother’s retreat. To be held at a resort, in return for a fee and two days, it will offer sessions on relaxation, achieving balance, cooking and time management.

The point of the event is for harried working moms to get a little break and figure out how to find more “me” time in their lives.
(bigstock)

When Ferguson, who is a mother of three (and goes by the name Justice Fergie online), polled her friends and acquaintances , she received a rush of “Oh, that sounds fabulous!” She expected to fill up her 50 slots within days of announcing it.

Nope. Three weeks out and she’s still looking to fill half the slots.

“I am no stranger to planning events, so I can account for the usual reasons for slow registrations, but this was different,” Ferguson told me.

She talked it over with a friend who mentioned that the event sounded great, but also guilt inducing.

“Finally, it hit me: while I was seeing this event as a necessity for busy moms, others were seeing it as a luxury — and one that couldn’t necessarily be justified amidst the real time and financial crunches of a family.”

Ferguson’s experience comes just as the magazine Real Simple has gone to press with a new survey of more than 3,000 women aged 25 to 54 conducted in conjunction with the Families and Work Institute that examines how American women spend their time.

It’s not at retreats, that’s for sure.

Joe Yonan writes of the aching and lingering grief of a pet’s death in today’s Post. He describes both the mourning process that many pet owners know well and also the disbelief that a pet’s death can bring so much pain.

“It’s been four months, and yet if somebody asks me about that day, my voice will crack. By ‘that day,’ I mean the day I came home from work to find my Doberman, Red, splayed out on my bedroom floor, his head to one side, his body lifeless but still warm. It’s an image I can’t seem t
(ANDREW YATES - AFP/GETTY IMAGES) o shake, as much as I try,” Yonan begins his story.

As a former owner of two of the most angelic little dogs, I read Yonan’s piece with a tear welled in my eye. It’s been 15 years since Lady died and four since Penelope passed away. Memories of them remain tangible.

Our second dog died on our daughter’s first birthday, the very day, and she was too young to understand much of what was happening. If Penelope’s cancer had not spread as quickly, my husband and I would have faced the double burden of grieving and helping our daughter work through the complicated emotions.

Dealing with the death of a family pet is a difficult and common experience, but one that isn’t discussed much because pet deaths, from the outside, can seem trivial. It’s not.

Yonan cites a study that had subjects rank their own connections to family members and to pets. The subjects frequently ranked their pets as closer than family members — 38 percent ranked their pets as closest of all.

For a child, the connection may be especially strong.