Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 01, 2019

You’re going to have handle this on your own, Mike. The experience will be helpful in the future.

Mike, it’s what being a parent is.

You have to take the bad and try to make it better as well as enjoy the good. My boys are generally good and thankfully very healthy but it’s not all puppies and kittens frolicking in the rose petals. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

“Honey, that’s not true! I love you with my whole heart and will always be there for you. Now run to the store and pick me up a 6-pack, will you?”

How about, "No, you aren’t, Sweetheart, you’re the smartest kid in the whole school. Don’t let anyone put you down because you’re a girl "

It looks serious, Mike. You may have to step up your game a couple of notches. Man up, to coin a phrase.

So here’s the fun part of parenting… not!

to make it betta… betta, betta, betta, betta BETTAA Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!

Just say she’s doing fine and give her a hug. Don’t get complicated.

Gawd, I hated that stage of life. Now that I’m older, I finally realize it WAS everybody else, not me. . .

Just quote Alex that infamous line… “Girls rule – boys drool.”

Mike, if she ever needed a sensitive, loving daddy, it’s NOW. Don’t blow it.

The commonality of that problem was the inspiration for the fairy tale ‘The Ugly Duckling’. Yes, there was a whole world here before you came along.

Boy do I know how you feel! I was an Military Brat and it was very hard to make friends then you had to move.

This reminds me of the day my daughter, who is Downs and autistic, came home from the elementary school in which she was “mainstreamed.” This normally happy, well-behaved and unflappable girl was just disconsolate, sobbing uncontrollably and “heeping” the way kids do when they can’t stop crying. I had never seen her like that even once in her life.

She is verbal but does not respond intelligibly to questions. I asked her over and over what was wrong. After many repetitions she said, “You LIED to me, Daddy!”

I NEVER lie to my good girl, not EVER! For one thing, she is a human lie detector and if I ever tried to lie to her it would hurt her feelings. After a lot more repetition and back-and-forth of trying to ask her what lie I had told she finally blurted out my lie: “You said I was special.”

After I had calmed her down I finally in dribs and drabs, got out of her that her class had taken a field trip to a swimming pool and someone decided it would be too dangerous for her, so they left her behind. Some of the other children taunted her out the bus windows as the bus drove away, calling her names like “retard” and stuff, leaving her alone with a teacher’s aide and feeling uniquely un-special.

Now, she swims considerably better than I do and absolutely LOVES swimming, whether in a pool or in the ocean. I was so angry at this I could have torn the school down brick by brick with my bare hands. I kept her out the following Monday and went down to the administrative offices of the school system and demanded her immediate transfer to a facility better suited to her special needs. The county complied and she has thrived ever since. It’s now 25 years later, and she is able to read and write, has a job helping children and adults far more severely disabled than she is, and she is the happiest girl in the world.

Sometimes I think “mainstreaming” is just a way to save money by eliminating programs designed to accommodate special needs children like my daughter.

Oh, Alex, Alex. You’re not the dumbest kid in school, sweetie. The dumbest kid wouldn’t even notice such a thing. They’d be too happy eating their paste and making gurgling noises to realize their own stupidity.

At worst, you’re just painfully average.

I love that she got the last laugh. Wonder who else in her class got a Ph.D (and went into labor with twins during commencement!).

Somewhere out there is Leo DeLuca. And he’s going to think you’re the smartest, most beautiful person in the entire world.

Is Mommy off on a date with Uncle Stupid-Head?