He got up at 6:40. Carly was still here but I met him on the stairs. He gave me a “You? Again?” Which was at least better than yesterday. They cuddled on th couch and she did more of the massage/pressure she’s been trying with him. She headed to work just before 7. He watched something on YouTube (Berenstain Bears, I think it was), then had oatmeal. He didn’t eat much, and I’m thinking he might be getting tired of it. We then read part of Hilda and the Black Hound before he got down to take apart more of the calculator. He said that he would give the parts that he is collecting in bags to Andrea to use at preschool.
I went up for my shower. He watched Shaun the Sheep. He yelled up in the middle, as he had run out of time. When I came down he finished that episode, then had us do an imagining game where I was relaxing in a blowup pool and he was a porcupine with a blue belt who calmed and popped my pool. Clearly must have come from the show.
He dressed himself entirely again. Pants on backwards again, and he needed help getting the shirt in the right shape, but we’re making progress. He then had another imagining game, of a girl who had boogers over her stomach, dried lips and legs, and never drinks water or ate fruit with water in it dehydrated. This was based on a Story Pirates story we heard. I turned it into a story where her family went to a lotion factory for a tour and she fell ina vat of lotion.
We left, and parked down by Tiv Taam at 10:40. He told me that, “When you’re sleeping…I’m in a nighttime event…treats, flowers, people dancing to electronic music…but to get into the event you need the ticket…I set up the event.” We went into Tiv Taam and got ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. He’s in a strong “I want that” mode, but we did pretty well working through the different shops we went through. We did decide to not go to the Apple store (I wanted to get another high speed charger) because he remembered the drones and when I asked if he could just look t them he knew he’d get upset. In Tiv Taam I let him get a big chocolate egg as long as it was a Valentine’s present for Carly.
We went back to the car, and I spotted the new Max store, that Heather had told me about, up the street. We then walked up there to get cookie cutters, which he’s been wanting for cookies and playdough. Another tough store. He had fun looking at and pretending to fight the superhero costumes, then really wanted things like a kitchen timer that ticks. We got out with just the cookie cutters and no tears.
From there we drove up to Ace and parked up on the roof for the first time. We found a screwdriver set with the star bits that we need, and got out even though he wanted saws, a sander, a drill. As I waited for the slow checkout line, he saw the drinks cooler and wanted a flavored water. Since he’d done so well I let him choose one.
Out in the car we tried that, then he requested “The Robots” in the car. And then fell asleep. Apparently that’s his sleepy song. He fell asleep at 12:10 and we were home about 12:25. At the house though our neighbor talked to me about a friend who is trying to rent out a house and she was wondering if I could share it with the school community. We also exchanged phone numbers. Took quite some time though and August kept sleeping in the car.
I finally carried him in and he lay on the couch and fell back to sleep. He really seemed to need the sleep as I couldn’t wake him up. He woke up enough once to blow a little raspberry at me and went back to sleep. I got ingredients ready for cookies and made a salmon sandwich, then woke him up by pulling him on my lap and starting the second episode of Hilda. He slowly woke up, around 1:20.
When that was over we went and made cookies. He wanted half of them white and half milk chocolate, so we divided the batch before adding chocolate chips. We got those baking, then he went and started taking apart more of the printer with the new bit. He ate an okay amount of his sandwich, then chose the biggest white chocolate chip cookie to eat. He told me, “Dada, sometimes I drink ankethol in my laboratory…Oh, And sneakily I put ankethol in the cookies.” He went back to the printer and realized he could undo a bunch of screws that had been under the buttons of the printer. He then made a connection to the calculator, which had also had a lot of screws securing the board holding the keys, and remembered my hypothesis that it was because all the pressure would crack the board if it was only held on in a couple places.
We got ready to go, taking a container of cookies, and left in the car at 3. As we walked down to his meeting with Vicky, Andrea, and Marion, he said something negative and I taught him the word ‘pessimistic’ as the word of the day.
The meeting went really well though. He and I were the first ones in there, and he showed me the container of candies that is the treats for when the adults have meetings. Vicky was the first in and he sat under the table and told her everything about making the cookies. The teachers came in, and he sat next to me, before switching by crawling under the table to Carly, as Vicky had him draw himself, then did a big thought bubble in which we listed his ideas on how to use his words, hands, and feet in good ways. One of the things he said for hands was “to do useful things.” Basically, after that Vicky then introduced the daily sticker chart. we list the day’s treat at the bottom, and he gets green stickers for using his words, hands, and feet for the positive reasons, and red for negative. As long as he gets less than two red in a day he gets the treat. Also, he’ll have a half day tomorrow, then on Friday (the whole school does), then we’ll plan for a full day on Wednesday (there’s no school on Monday/Tuesday).
I dropped them off at home, then drove to meet with Dr. Aviv. This was…less effective. Basically, I had thought we would talk about emotional development and strategies of a gifted child, how to identify stressors before they turned into fits, etc. But it was all about setting boundaries as parents and literally how we need to not engage with him when he has a bad day at school. There was more, but not much productive. It didn’t hurt to reflect on our own parenting, and how there may have been signs we could have caught sooner (when he started hitting at home over winter break, we could have communicated with the school in advance to let him know his behavior had changed), but that literally could have been the first 10 minutes as good parenting reminders and we could have gotten into the specialty stuff after that. Ugh.
While I was gone they did some wrestling and he had oatmeal. I think they also did some reading, and Carly talked to him about using the term ‘dizzy’ for when he starts to feel stressed out. That’s from the Emotional Intensity in Students book that I found and that we’re both reading.
I got home at 6:30. We spent more time taking apart the printer together. He had me do the ‘The girl who was afraid of water’, another variation of the Story Pirates story I mentioned earlier. read the Elephant and Pig book We’re in a Book!, then he read A Big Guy Took My Ball. We then read the poetry book about inventions that I checked out (Here’s What You Do When You Can’t Find Your Shoe).
I took him up and gave him a bath. He set up a soap factory in our house and explained to me how it works. I brushed his teeth and Carly came in. I left them at 8:55. I was afraid he was going to have difficulty going to sleep given his long nap, but it sounded like it didn’t take too long.
He told me today that Carly could do the massage/pressure thing on him to make him feel better, but that my way of making him feel better is telling jokes.
Talking to the superhero costumes:
Spatula and yummy noises:
Working on the printer:
Humming Hey Man:
Telling Ms. Vicky about the cookies:
Our soap factory:
