Drama, drama, drama

It's been another dramatic week in our household.

Oldest is fully immersed in baseball season and having a blast. Of course, he's getting worse about bringing home anything resembling school work. We got an email the other day saying, "Please check his planner. He's behind again." Have yet to see said planner this week. *sigh* I must say, though, I'm grateful the teachers have started (occasionally) posting a list of the day's homework to their website. The school year will be over shortly.

He did write me a lovely poetry book for Mother's Day. I wish I could read more of it. Some of his insights were surprising. Here's what I can decipher from his "I am" autobiographical poem (spelling left unedited):

I am a cry for help
I am a shark
I am #1
I am a glass flor
I am apple saws
I am a roken eletrik gutter (ed: guitar)
I am a battel arena
I am the thundring hale
I am a strong oak
I am afrade of nothing

The major drama this week was with Middle Child. A fifth grader grabbed him by the neck on the bus, slammed him into the window, and choked him. He was still gasping and crying when he got home. Middle Child is a FIRST grader. From what I understand, the only thing he did to provoke it was to ask the bigger kid to stop picking on everyone. We've always known MC's mouth would get him in trouble, but this is downright silly.

Youngest is home tonight with a fever, sadly. I'm hoping desperately she'll be feeling better in the morning. A friend and I are supposed to put together some freezer meals and we have all of the ingredients ready to go.

That's it for an update on our little corner of the world. I hope everyone has a lovely, restful Mother's Day!

Teeny tiny rant

Having Oldest in a class with two teachers is a struggle in itself. I think they're both probably great teachers. They both seem enthusiastic about teaching. But when they only work every-other day, I'm not sure they really get the full picture of what's going on with each child. Mine, for one. They both have said they'd keep us informed. I could count on one hand the number of times they've contacted us. Once when he'd gotten in trouble for stealing from the bookfair (gotta love peer-pressure). Twice when he was vastly behind in turning in assignments.

The latest and greatest is this quote from a (parent-initiated) email from the teacher:

"I want to start by letting you know we really enjoy having him in our class. He has a great attitude and is a great kid... [He] is easily distracted in class and his attention span seems limited at times. He is quick to refocus with reminders."

Yeah. Do you think perhaps that limited attention span could have to do with his ADHD diagnosis? Maybe? Breathe in. Breathe out. Let go of the snarky attitude. Moving on :)

Split personalities

I think the hardest thing to deal with in the realm of Oldest's ADHD is his split personalities.

He came home from school perfectly fine.
It was a beautiful day, so I sent them all outside to play with friends.
He came home happy and just fine.
I called him downstairs to do homework while I made dinner. He hasn't turned in many math assignments.

What followed was nearly 2 hours of sulking, swearing (spelled and whispered, by him, not me), and many many "I am stupid!" exclamations. He was in one of his classic funks, that thankfully have been rare recently. He turns from sulky to angry to destructive.

He starting tearing apart a wooden model he received and made for Christmas. I made a mistake here and stopped him. He fought and I ended up pinning him to the floor again. I hate doing that, and I usually end up doing it if I'm worried about him hurting himself. He wasn't hurting himself in this case. I was wrong. After he chose to return to his seat at the table, I didn't stop him from destroying the model again (and he did totally dismantle it). We had a very long discussion (mostly of him yelling "I'm stupid" and "I'm a waste of space!" and us presenting every line of encouragement and argument we could come up with.

Eventually, he left the table and went to the bathroom. When he came back, he was himself again. I could here it in his voice immediately. Gone was the sulky angry attitude. Suddenly he was cooperative, apologetic, and finished off his homework fine.

I just have to keep asking myself Why? Why on earth did we react? I know perfectly well that he'll come back to himself eventually and that he'll fight endlessly until that little switch flips in his head.

I guess on the bright side, we did discover that he does much better on story problems when he can talk through them. He's reading them just fine, he just doesn't process the information very well in his head. As soon as he says the problem out loud and talks through what it's asking, he does just fine.

Just another day in our lives...

Whew, the white stuff's gone!

I'm so grateful the snow is gone and the flooding seems to have subsided in neighboring towns. We're finally settling back in to a school routine (although it doesn't help that next week the kids have Monday and Friday off, and a half day Thursday!).

I'm on a mission this year to improve our family's eating habits. I've heard and read that making nutritional changes can improve ADHD behavior (in addition to just plain being the right thing to do). I have a referral to a RN/dietitian and I'm looking forward to meeting her (if only I could get my thoughts together about what I'd like to ask her).

Of course, making sweeping changes in January is difficult... I'm an accountant and crazy busy for the next few months... but I'm working on it :)

Happy New Year!