Start of the School Year
So, holidays are over and we're into a new school year. Kind of. Term started with Monday and Tuesday pupil free, and Friday was is a public holiday. So, two days. Not so much of a first week, but still.
Eldest is having the expected anxiety spasms over the whole thing. We had a special meet and greet with the teacher the day before, just him and another boy in his class who also tends to be anxious, and that all went extremely well. It was nice to see him make a connection with the teacher, and for her to meet him in the context of understanding how driven he is by that anxiety that rarely breaks the surface blankness. I tried to hug him goodbye on his first day and he headbutted me in the midst of an anxious don't-touch-me freakout. But I think he's still been... if not less volatile, then at least more able to calm himself down from it after five or ten minutes, rather than writing off the rest of the day. He seems to be able to separate himself more easily from negative thoughts that used to get stuck in his head for days and weeks. When I talk to him in a calm moment about what might have been a better way to manage a situation, he can actually discuss it with me rationally rather than going straight back into that hours-of-tantrum headspace. He's not been eating at school, this week, which is not unexpected. He's always been too distracted by the chaos around him during breaks to eat--and now, a side-effect of his medication is appetite suppression. I know my sister sends along cakes and treats, anything she can, with her son to get him to eat something in the middle of the day... we will have to see how it goes. Given how psycho he is by the afternoon when I pick him up (I literally approach him by holding a snack out at the end of a carefully extended arm and refuse to respond to any attempts to start an argument until he's eaten it) it will be a continuing mission to get something into him.
Mr Five is taking to school like a duck to water. Sat down at his desk and read through all the parents' instructions on how to manage the drop-off. His teacher (who'd previously taught Eldest) drew me aside after the first day. "Oh my stars!" she said. "He's so clever! His vocabulary! His reading!!! Give me a couple of weeks to get everyone settled, and we'll have to see what we can organise for him." And I'm like, "I know, right?" (Secretly thinking: you just wait until you work out how nice he is, too: how empathetic and creative and thoughtful, how genuinely delighted to help others and to work hard on improving himself. You just wait till you really see what he's capable of. This boy is going to shine.)
I am getting ORGANISED. Mr Three is our last child, and I have sorted through all our baby clothes and sent the ones that were not actively held together by the mould stains on to people who can use them. I have plans for the toys. The books. The cupboards. The back of the grown-ups' wardrobe. I've been working my way around the flat surfaces in the house which have accumulated drifts of things which don't have an obvious place to live, and I've been sorting through them. Latest casualty is a menu plan. I have broken down all my faithful recipes into how long I have to put them on before they are ready, so that I can refer to the list when I am in the supermarket looking at this week's specials and increase the variety of my idea cycle, as well as getting an appropriate balance to (depending on after school sport) slot them in on the weekly whiteboard calendar. Of course my menu book also has school lunch and snack ideas and plans to put them in place, so hopefully that will help with getting Eldest some appetising variety at school as well as getting me some nutritionally-rich shields to thrust at him in the afternoon.
Probably the most important thing I've been getting organised is the boys' responsibilities. They've always had things they are meant to do, but it's been more ad-hoc than consistent, which is NEVER going to be very effective. With Eldest's executive function, organisational, and transition difficulties, it's been too easy to let things fall by the wayside--but it's in fact one of the most important things for us to practice, appropriately scaffolded so he can succeed. Since the turn of the new year, they now have a checklist chart of tasks that are their responsibility to take care of, assigned across three categories, mostly under 'looking after myself'. Things like, being responsible for finding and bringing their own shoes and bags when they go out to the car. Taking their plates to the sink, not just every now and then but every meal. Putting their dirty clothes in the laundry. Staying in their own bedroom until it is wakeup time. They have a morning routine list pinned on the whiteboard.
Then each afternoon, at 4:45 (if they haven't done it already) it is time for 'helping our family' and 'skills', while I am putting dinner on and tidying up. Which means each of the boys gets assigned a common area to tidy up, and also does work on a couple their identified self-improvement areas. Like, doing the therapy exercises they've been assigned. Or homework. Or instrument practice. Over the holidays, it was writing a sentence, touch-typing lessons, and penguin walking. If they get done early enough (and without my physical help, because my hands are self-evidently super busy doing my own work), we can all go down to the pool for a swim before dinner. They want that swim, and so the big boys even help Mr Three with cleaning his area. We are still working on our positive thinking and speaking nicely during this time--but I only really mind the moaning if it stops them from actually doing the job--or in as much as it rubs off on Mr Five who is so naturally positive, and it hurts to see him copying that negative language and negative approaches. But we have management strategies in place, both for guiding the kids and for managing my emotional reactions to their negativity, and it is fundamentally working.
So here's the really great thing: I sneakily got the homework routine in place BEFORE the start of the school term, and it has passed into school night routine with nary a murmur. (Well, nary a murmur MORE than the background level.) I am motivated to keep this thing going: it's not just an esoteric goal to have a tidy, responsible household at some point, it is a concrete necessity for Eldest's development to practice both the explicit tasks he finds difficult and the organisational structure necessary to make them happen. I hope I do not speak too soon, but I am stoked at how well it's been going.
And speaking of speaking too soon--my mum's just had a fall and broken her arm. She's got bruising on her face from where her head hit the ground, but apparently that's not serious. The arm is: both the radius and the ulnar snapped right through and displaced, overlapping by an inch. She's in hospital, slated for orthopedic surgery next Friday. She may come to live with me briefly while she's awaiting surgery, but I suspect probably not. They're understandably reluctant to discharge fall-prone, more than half-blind people with brittle bones, low-blood pressure and dizzy spells, not to mention a disturbing-looking tremor. I expect we're probably looking at at least two weeks in hospital, possibly three to five--and the most irritating thing about that is that her appointment to discuss the cataract surgery is in two weeks, so it'll probably delay that, when she'd already delayed to the point where it is absolutely critical. This will be the third serious surgery she's had in three years, and we haven't even reached the cataracts yet. She's getting old, and fragile, which is really hard to see because Mum's such a superhero. :(
On the plus side, it's a fairly convenient time for her to live with me for a while, given I'm already pretty organised... and maybe A Study in Rehabilitation will wind up getting a sequel. :P Comments welcome on the original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
Eldest is having the expected anxiety spasms over the whole thing. We had a special meet and greet with the teacher the day before, just him and another boy in his class who also tends to be anxious, and that all went extremely well. It was nice to see him make a connection with the teacher, and for her to meet him in the context of understanding how driven he is by that anxiety that rarely breaks the surface blankness. I tried to hug him goodbye on his first day and he headbutted me in the midst of an anxious don't-touch-me freakout. But I think he's still been... if not less volatile, then at least more able to calm himself down from it after five or ten minutes, rather than writing off the rest of the day. He seems to be able to separate himself more easily from negative thoughts that used to get stuck in his head for days and weeks. When I talk to him in a calm moment about what might have been a better way to manage a situation, he can actually discuss it with me rationally rather than going straight back into that hours-of-tantrum headspace. He's not been eating at school, this week, which is not unexpected. He's always been too distracted by the chaos around him during breaks to eat--and now, a side-effect of his medication is appetite suppression. I know my sister sends along cakes and treats, anything she can, with her son to get him to eat something in the middle of the day... we will have to see how it goes. Given how psycho he is by the afternoon when I pick him up (I literally approach him by holding a snack out at the end of a carefully extended arm and refuse to respond to any attempts to start an argument until he's eaten it) it will be a continuing mission to get something into him.
Mr Five is taking to school like a duck to water. Sat down at his desk and read through all the parents' instructions on how to manage the drop-off. His teacher (who'd previously taught Eldest) drew me aside after the first day. "Oh my stars!" she said. "He's so clever! His vocabulary! His reading!!! Give me a couple of weeks to get everyone settled, and we'll have to see what we can organise for him." And I'm like, "I know, right?" (Secretly thinking: you just wait until you work out how nice he is, too: how empathetic and creative and thoughtful, how genuinely delighted to help others and to work hard on improving himself. You just wait till you really see what he's capable of. This boy is going to shine.)
I am getting ORGANISED. Mr Three is our last child, and I have sorted through all our baby clothes and sent the ones that were not actively held together by the mould stains on to people who can use them. I have plans for the toys. The books. The cupboards. The back of the grown-ups' wardrobe. I've been working my way around the flat surfaces in the house which have accumulated drifts of things which don't have an obvious place to live, and I've been sorting through them. Latest casualty is a menu plan. I have broken down all my faithful recipes into how long I have to put them on before they are ready, so that I can refer to the list when I am in the supermarket looking at this week's specials and increase the variety of my idea cycle, as well as getting an appropriate balance to (depending on after school sport) slot them in on the weekly whiteboard calendar. Of course my menu book also has school lunch and snack ideas and plans to put them in place, so hopefully that will help with getting Eldest some appetising variety at school as well as getting me some nutritionally-rich shields to thrust at him in the afternoon.
Probably the most important thing I've been getting organised is the boys' responsibilities. They've always had things they are meant to do, but it's been more ad-hoc than consistent, which is NEVER going to be very effective. With Eldest's executive function, organisational, and transition difficulties, it's been too easy to let things fall by the wayside--but it's in fact one of the most important things for us to practice, appropriately scaffolded so he can succeed. Since the turn of the new year, they now have a checklist chart of tasks that are their responsibility to take care of, assigned across three categories, mostly under 'looking after myself'. Things like, being responsible for finding and bringing their own shoes and bags when they go out to the car. Taking their plates to the sink, not just every now and then but every meal. Putting their dirty clothes in the laundry. Staying in their own bedroom until it is wakeup time. They have a morning routine list pinned on the whiteboard.
Then each afternoon, at 4:45 (if they haven't done it already) it is time for 'helping our family' and 'skills', while I am putting dinner on and tidying up. Which means each of the boys gets assigned a common area to tidy up, and also does work on a couple their identified self-improvement areas. Like, doing the therapy exercises they've been assigned. Or homework. Or instrument practice. Over the holidays, it was writing a sentence, touch-typing lessons, and penguin walking. If they get done early enough (and without my physical help, because my hands are self-evidently super busy doing my own work), we can all go down to the pool for a swim before dinner. They want that swim, and so the big boys even help Mr Three with cleaning his area. We are still working on our positive thinking and speaking nicely during this time--but I only really mind the moaning if it stops them from actually doing the job--or in as much as it rubs off on Mr Five who is so naturally positive, and it hurts to see him copying that negative language and negative approaches. But we have management strategies in place, both for guiding the kids and for managing my emotional reactions to their negativity, and it is fundamentally working.
So here's the really great thing: I sneakily got the homework routine in place BEFORE the start of the school term, and it has passed into school night routine with nary a murmur. (Well, nary a murmur MORE than the background level.) I am motivated to keep this thing going: it's not just an esoteric goal to have a tidy, responsible household at some point, it is a concrete necessity for Eldest's development to practice both the explicit tasks he finds difficult and the organisational structure necessary to make them happen. I hope I do not speak too soon, but I am stoked at how well it's been going.
And speaking of speaking too soon--my mum's just had a fall and broken her arm. She's got bruising on her face from where her head hit the ground, but apparently that's not serious. The arm is: both the radius and the ulnar snapped right through and displaced, overlapping by an inch. She's in hospital, slated for orthopedic surgery next Friday. She may come to live with me briefly while she's awaiting surgery, but I suspect probably not. They're understandably reluctant to discharge fall-prone, more than half-blind people with brittle bones, low-blood pressure and dizzy spells, not to mention a disturbing-looking tremor. I expect we're probably looking at at least two weeks in hospital, possibly three to five--and the most irritating thing about that is that her appointment to discuss the cataract surgery is in two weeks, so it'll probably delay that, when she'd already delayed to the point where it is absolutely critical. This will be the third serious surgery she's had in three years, and we haven't even reached the cataracts yet. She's getting old, and fragile, which is really hard to see because Mum's such a superhero. :(
On the plus side, it's a fairly convenient time for her to live with me for a while, given I'm already pretty organised... and maybe A Study in Rehabilitation will wind up getting a sequel. :P Comments welcome on the original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.