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!

Christmas?

Every year, we sing songs about a white Christmas. In Seattle, we even think, “What a nice idea” as we sing it.

This year has the makings to be the worst Christmas ever. We’ve been essentially snowed in for a week. Have you any idea how claustrophobic a home can feel when stranded there with three exuberant children? We have chains for the car, but it’s still not safe to leave.

We missed our church’s birthday party for Jesus (although it’s been rescheduled to next week, it’ll be odd to sing carols the weekend AFTER Christmas). We missed Bake Day and the wonderful family time that goes with it. It looks like we’re going to miss Christmas Eve with family. I can’t remember the last time we’ve missed that. We might miss the candlelight service. We have gifts for the kids stuck on UPS trucks. Our moms might not make it to our home for Christmas day.

I’m trying not to let it get to me. I’m trying to enjoy the beauty of the snow, particularly the 12+ inches still undisturbed on our outdoor furniture out back, because this much is truly rare here. I believe God’s reminding us to be prepared for emergencies (we aren’t). And we’ve taken the opportunity to make cookies here at home, which the kids shared with our neighbors today. (Our budding entrepreneur Middle Child tried to bill me $6 in delivery fees.)

Friday it’s supposed to rain. I’ve vowed to never complain about the rain again. You’re welcome to remind me how sore I am after walking to work yesterday and shoveling snow the day before.

Meanwhile, we’re home, using our last opportunities of the year to threaten that Santa won’t bring gifts if the floor’s a mess, and trying to keep in mind what this holiday is really about.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.

Drama

The drama continues... after several good days (really good days, actually), there's been another bump in the road. I told Oldest he couldn't go out and play with his friends. At first he was ok but once he realized he couldn't go because he'd been accused of cheating on a test today, the anger set in. His anger scares me. He throws things, breaks things, and says some awful things.

Middle child asked why oldest is so mad all the time.

What are the teen years going to be like?

Here's an IM exchange from this afternoon:

Oldest: I wish I was dead!!!

x-(

3:34 PM me: I'm sorry you feel angry, Christian.

3:35 PM Oldest: ya right

3:36 PM bla bla bla

me: There is no excuse for being rude to others.

3:37 PM Oldest: O bo ho

3:38 PM me: If you're going to use the internet to be as rude as you are in person when you're angry, you will lose internet access.

You need do to your homework.

3:39 PM Oldest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0ONgDwNqs

At least he hasn't threatened to run away today. And he seems to be youtube surfing with his siblings (more appropriate content than the last one he sent me).

It's just so hard to understand how he can be sweet, happy, helpful kid one moment and angry, rude kid the next.

A new day!

Praise the Lord! Oldest was an entirely different kid today. He still had some moments of frustration (he wasn't happy to not get a book from the bookfair, and he was frustrated that I insisted he start his WA map project over), but he recovered quickly.

I'm so proud of him. While I ran to the office supply store for 11 x 17 paper, white-out, and crayons, he cut out the 31 landmarks he was supposed to place, figured out where they went on the map, and reviewed it with dh. When I got home, he re-traced our state, and got all of the landmarks glued in. What amazed me the most is that he insisted on coloring it in very carefully. He even made sure his hand-written legend was neat(-er than usual). He spent over 2 full hours at our coffee table working on this.

I don't know if it was solely active-parental involvement, but I don't think so. We've been very involved in his other homework before and encountered only resistence. I think he just really wanted to do this project well, and I'm SO grateful that he stuck with it, listened to parental advice, and finished it. He was really pleased with it and proud of himself too. I'm happy his teachers will finally see he's really capable of doing good work.

Our desperate prayers have been answered with at least a glimmer of hope that we'll get through all of this chaos.