how I spent my summer vacation...
The boys left early this morning to go fishing. I got to sleep until 8:30, and then rolled out of bed into a quiet house.
Thankfully, I found fires to put out in my email inbox (hippy drama llamas at it again), so I didn't have to think what to do with alllll this peace and free time on my hands - goodness, however would I function without something clamoring for my attention!?!?
(I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning, don't you?)
I have to go to work now, shortly, but I want to take this time to update on the Kinglet's Quest, since I have a moment to think about it without the Kinglet aka Energizer Bunny buzzing around.
We just got through our first week of "Home School", which is the best term I can think of for what we are doing. Homeschooling is the last thing that *I* would want to do because I am not that kind of Mom (not that there's anything with it, per se, it's just not my box of cereal). HOWEVER, since the Kinglet has had such a hard time dealing with the structure and transition and self-control necessary for school, I can't think of anything to do BUT to structure his world until he adjusts. So. Home School.
By that I mean, we have our days divided up into little boxes. We have "lesson" times and free time and lunch time and chore time, and this is how we will spend our day, every day, until the School Fairy comes and frees me from this gawd-awful repetition.
*cough*'
I mean Gee, this is fun.
Actually, both are lies. It's not bad. I believe it's the right thing, the therapists agree, and the Kinglet is doing okay with it. In fact, in some ways I think he's improving. For example, he fought tooth and nail when he had to get dressed and brush his teeth and 9AM on Monday, but by Friday he barely offered up a dissenting word. So that's something, right?
Not that we aren't having snags. Chore Time, for example, is a battle. It's not like he has serious work to do - we're talking pick up toys or sort laundry on the bed - but he's five and he hates it and resists it with ferocity.
More often than not he ends up spending his afternoon in Time Out. It's miserable for everyone, and in the end it hurts me more than it hurts him because the longer he takes to give in and do his chores, the more time gets whittled off of the end of our schedule, and guess what happens at the end? Independent Time, aka Mommy's Writing Hour. So guess who has two thumbs and hasn't written a stitch all freakin' week? This girl!
But the point is not to force him into slave laundry labor or to give Mommy writing time, the point is to get the Kinglet used to doing things he doesn't want to do. Because that is what school AKA life is all about. And we're trying to build in incentives, like a daily allowance and labeled praise and ladeela, but boy, this is no fun at all.
But anyway.
We spoke about this quite a bit in our family therapy session last night, which was one just between the (new, lady) therapist, the God-King and I. We are bandying about some ideas for modifications on our Structured Summer, like maybe dividing the hours up into smaller segments and letting the Kinglet have some choice in where stuff goes. We're going to have to let it play out to see what works. But overall, this is our Best Laid Plan for now.
The therapist has suggested that on our end we focus on helping Kinglet develop flexibility, as that is what half of his issues really boil down to - the other half being the oppositional defiance, which is what we are focusing on with PCIT*. So when we bring the Kinglet back to the next session (scheduled for my birthday! YAAAY!), we are going to start trying to set him up for rewarding flexibility: ie, guess what, Kinglet, you're about to lose this board game that you have been playing with Daddy, BUT, if you can keep your cool there will be a really awesome prize (psych speak= incentive) in it for you.
So we like this idea, and we like the therapist. She's spunky and informed and gives good advice and vibes well with the Kinglet and has a philosophy that jives well with ours. So we'll see.
*The other part that I mentioned, the PCIT, is the program we have started at the University. Parent-Child-Interaction-Therapy is conducted in multiple sessions that go on for something like 8 to 12 weeks, more or less, depending on how quickly you progress through the skills that they teach.
The first part of the sessions focus on "bonding". They set you in an observation room with your child and coach you, through headphones, on what to say and how to react to your child's behavior. The techniques that they teach you are based around some reasonable principles which I suspect a lot of parents already use, like "ignore and redirect" - when your kid is acting out, don't reward the bad behavior by giving them attention, even negative attention. Instead you should ignore bad behavior and reward good behavior. Like I said, I think that's something in every good parent's arsenal, but the way it is applied in PCIT is really intense and, at times, counter-intuitive.
For example, we watched the instructor (a grad student) apply these techniques after one of our sessions when the Kinglet, who had been ramped up by the intensity and attention from the last hour, talked loudly and made crazy noises over top of what she was trying to say to us. She completely ignored his noise until the split second that he stopped (even to take a breath). In that (however brief) moment of silence, she turned and praised him for being quiet.
My first impression of this was that it was completely false praise, because he wasn't being quiet at all. However, the instructor compared it to the process of training a dog to sit (which is not a flattering analogy, but a useful one). When you begin the process of training a dog to sit, you praise approximations of the right behavior. Eventually, as the dog begins to get the idea, you don't praise approximations any more, you praise compliance.
So our impression at this stage is that PCIT is mix of common sense and counter-intuitive techniques that make sense if you think about them... maybe.... shoved into your ear at an impossible rate while trying to parent a child who drives you crazy to begin with and even more so because you are in a strange environment doing what they perceive as really weird stuff.
Thing is, it does. Seem. to. Work. The God-King saw hints of change while he observed my session with the Kinglet (we take turns, each watching the other through the one-way glass. we have a competition going, and he is winning, damn him). Then this week during our at-home practice ("special play time") I actually got the Kinglet to switch from destructive aggressive mode to happy cooperative play using the PCIT techniques. So... omg yay, right?
Still, we are not going to get ahead of ourselves with excitement. From what we gathered from the therapist last night, the second part of PCIT, which focuses on discipline, teaches techniques we are already doing and have been doing. So it's possible we'll get to the end of all this and not really be all that better off. But, it's also possible that this will bring about a total revolution in our family dynamic and I will send off a happy, well-adjusted little Kinglet to kindergarten in the fall.
Let's hope, right?
Thankfully, I found fires to put out in my email inbox (hippy drama llamas at it again), so I didn't have to think what to do with alllll this peace and free time on my hands - goodness, however would I function without something clamoring for my attention!?!?
(I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning, don't you?)
I have to go to work now, shortly, but I want to take this time to update on the Kinglet's Quest, since I have a moment to think about it without the Kinglet aka Energizer Bunny buzzing around.
We just got through our first week of "Home School", which is the best term I can think of for what we are doing. Homeschooling is the last thing that *I* would want to do because I am not that kind of Mom (not that there's anything with it, per se, it's just not my box of cereal). HOWEVER, since the Kinglet has had such a hard time dealing with the structure and transition and self-control necessary for school, I can't think of anything to do BUT to structure his world until he adjusts. So. Home School.
By that I mean, we have our days divided up into little boxes. We have "lesson" times and free time and lunch time and chore time, and this is how we will spend our day, every day, until the School Fairy comes and frees me from this gawd-awful repetition.
*cough*'
I mean Gee, this is fun.
Actually, both are lies. It's not bad. I believe it's the right thing, the therapists agree, and the Kinglet is doing okay with it. In fact, in some ways I think he's improving. For example, he fought tooth and nail when he had to get dressed and brush his teeth and 9AM on Monday, but by Friday he barely offered up a dissenting word. So that's something, right?
Not that we aren't having snags. Chore Time, for example, is a battle. It's not like he has serious work to do - we're talking pick up toys or sort laundry on the bed - but he's five and he hates it and resists it with ferocity.
More often than not he ends up spending his afternoon in Time Out. It's miserable for everyone, and in the end it hurts me more than it hurts him because the longer he takes to give in and do his chores, the more time gets whittled off of the end of our schedule, and guess what happens at the end? Independent Time, aka Mommy's Writing Hour. So guess who has two thumbs and hasn't written a stitch all freakin' week? This girl!
But the point is not to force him into slave laundry labor or to give Mommy writing time, the point is to get the Kinglet used to doing things he doesn't want to do. Because that is what school AKA life is all about. And we're trying to build in incentives, like a daily allowance and labeled praise and ladeela, but boy, this is no fun at all.
But anyway.
We spoke about this quite a bit in our family therapy session last night, which was one just between the (new, lady) therapist, the God-King and I. We are bandying about some ideas for modifications on our Structured Summer, like maybe dividing the hours up into smaller segments and letting the Kinglet have some choice in where stuff goes. We're going to have to let it play out to see what works. But overall, this is our Best Laid Plan for now.
The therapist has suggested that on our end we focus on helping Kinglet develop flexibility, as that is what half of his issues really boil down to - the other half being the oppositional defiance, which is what we are focusing on with PCIT*. So when we bring the Kinglet back to the next session (scheduled for my birthday! YAAAY!), we are going to start trying to set him up for rewarding flexibility: ie, guess what, Kinglet, you're about to lose this board game that you have been playing with Daddy, BUT, if you can keep your cool there will be a really awesome prize (psych speak= incentive) in it for you.
So we like this idea, and we like the therapist. She's spunky and informed and gives good advice and vibes well with the Kinglet and has a philosophy that jives well with ours. So we'll see.
*The other part that I mentioned, the PCIT, is the program we have started at the University. Parent-Child-Interaction-Therapy is conducted in multiple sessions that go on for something like 8 to 12 weeks, more or less, depending on how quickly you progress through the skills that they teach.
The first part of the sessions focus on "bonding". They set you in an observation room with your child and coach you, through headphones, on what to say and how to react to your child's behavior. The techniques that they teach you are based around some reasonable principles which I suspect a lot of parents already use, like "ignore and redirect" - when your kid is acting out, don't reward the bad behavior by giving them attention, even negative attention. Instead you should ignore bad behavior and reward good behavior. Like I said, I think that's something in every good parent's arsenal, but the way it is applied in PCIT is really intense and, at times, counter-intuitive.
For example, we watched the instructor (a grad student) apply these techniques after one of our sessions when the Kinglet, who had been ramped up by the intensity and attention from the last hour, talked loudly and made crazy noises over top of what she was trying to say to us. She completely ignored his noise until the split second that he stopped (even to take a breath). In that (however brief) moment of silence, she turned and praised him for being quiet.
My first impression of this was that it was completely false praise, because he wasn't being quiet at all. However, the instructor compared it to the process of training a dog to sit (which is not a flattering analogy, but a useful one). When you begin the process of training a dog to sit, you praise approximations of the right behavior. Eventually, as the dog begins to get the idea, you don't praise approximations any more, you praise compliance.
So our impression at this stage is that PCIT is mix of common sense and counter-intuitive techniques that make sense if you think about them... maybe.... shoved into your ear at an impossible rate while trying to parent a child who drives you crazy to begin with and even more so because you are in a strange environment doing what they perceive as really weird stuff.
Thing is, it does. Seem. to. Work. The God-King saw hints of change while he observed my session with the Kinglet (we take turns, each watching the other through the one-way glass. we have a competition going, and he is winning, damn him). Then this week during our at-home practice ("special play time") I actually got the Kinglet to switch from destructive aggressive mode to happy cooperative play using the PCIT techniques. So... omg yay, right?
Still, we are not going to get ahead of ourselves with excitement. From what we gathered from the therapist last night, the second part of PCIT, which focuses on discipline, teaches techniques we are already doing and have been doing. So it's possible we'll get to the end of all this and not really be all that better off. But, it's also possible that this will bring about a total revolution in our family dynamic and I will send off a happy, well-adjusted little Kinglet to kindergarten in the fall.
Let's hope, right?