An Early Intervention coordinator came by yesterday for a pre-visit, prior to Aitch’s developmental assessment. I suppose they send the advance team out to assess which assessments should be done at the assessment. I could not have scheduled it at a worse time. The night before, Aitch, Husband and I were on a 7:30 p.m. flight, returning from a long weekend away. We had chosen the flight based on Aitch’s bedtime, thinking he would be asleep before the landing gear was fully retracted. As it happened, we didn’t leave the tarmac until after 9:00, and Aitch was most definitely not asleep. He remained awake through most of the flight and during the entire ride from the airport, although he did go obligingly to sleep once his head hit his own (figurative) pillow. (Don’t flame me…the kid does not have a pillow in his crib.) Needless to say, the next morning we were all crabcakes with tartar sauce.

I briefed the coordinator on Aitch’s lack of sleep so she wouldn’t take any behavior anomalies amiss (ours or his). Luckily, with the arrival of the guest, Aitch switched from hair-trigger tantrum tired mode to practically delirious tired mode. He ran frequently to Husband (calling, “Mommy!”) and buried his face in the chair, the baby sign for “I actually want to go to bed.”

At one point he slid to the floor and began banging his head rhythmically against the bottom of the chair. I’ve taken enough developmental psych to know that this was classic self-stimulating behavior: sometimes harmless, sometimes indicative of a significant developmental disorder. It was the first time I’d ever seen him do it. He does plenty of other strange stuff, like grabbing the dog’s penis, and thrusting his pelvis back and forth when he’s tired, but he’s never banged his head.

“I swear that’s the first time he’s ever done that,” I said. I’m sure that’s the first time she’s ever heard a mother say that.

“Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh,” Aitch sang out about a half a dozen times. His “uh-oh” has improved tremendously; he used to say “uh-UH? uh-UH?” with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Husband dived under the couch to retrieve whatever Aitch had lost.

“I don’t think he will qualify for services,” the coordinator opined.

Husband arose, covered with dust bunnies. We had forgotten to give the housecleaners a key, so they had missed an appointment while we were away.

Maybe we’ll qualify for housekeeping services.

Other than those contretemps, the visit went pretty well. The coordinator was very straightforward and refreshingly non-crunchy. The only thing that put me off my stride a bit was the fact that Aitch had already been assigned a case number for social services, “so we can track him in the computer.” Now, we’re not exactly living off the grid here. We blog. We also make practically all our purchases online, including groceries, and our lives could be entirely reconstructed from our various hard drives. (But there are six of those; it would take them a long time.) Still, it concerned me a bit that Aitch is in “Mitt’s database,” on the radar. The coordinator assured me that the information was entirely confidential, protected by FERPA, an unfortunate acronym referring to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

I was not reassured. We all know how well HIPAA protects our privacy when the government feels like a waltz through our medical records. Sure enough, FERPA has plenty of holes.