I was woken up twice before my book group meeting by the dog out in the yard across the street. The second time was about 1:05, so I got up and started a movie before my book group meeting. My meeting was good, and long, and ran until about 3:30.
August got up about 7. He did some watching, had some oatmeal, and earned a couple red stickers. Not an auspicious start. One was for blowing a raspberry at Carly as they were negotiating what the reward would be today. He wanted to go to a toy store and buy something. I had also heard them doing some reading. It’s a very rainy day outside (there had been a lot of thunder and rain during my meeting), so they hadn’t gone out at all.
I came down just before 9. He watched a video about building dominoes out of LEGO bricks. When I told him he needed to skip a commercial that was a video game involving fighting, he hit me, and Carly took him up for a timeout.
When he came down he apologized, then sat on the floor looking at the poetry book about inventions on his own for several minutes. He asked what we should do, and I suggested we read The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin. He said he had already read it with Mama earlier and he didn’t like it because it was a little kid book. It looked like they had also read some more of The Wild Robot.
We read a few chapters of The Magic Tree House #50. We then made things from Legos. He told me everything he has learned from Simone about making weapons out of Legos. He made a “model” of a fighting car that won the “Great War of 1868…it killed everybody else…” “This part can pew, and this can pew…”
Out of nowhere he said, “Remember when I told you that robot babies is babies for a real long time? That’s because they live longer than humans.” I actually don’t remember him telling me this. At one point he went to the bathroom and just kept talking, ostensibly to me at first, about his car ane everything else. And he asked, “Employs…is that a good word?” We discussed what ‘employs’ means (as in ‘uses’) and that was a word of the day. I made a vehicle he liked and he asked, “How did you manage to make that one?…Did you make a lot at your home with Gramma and Grampa…So that’s how you did it?…Ha. Funny.”
I sliced some apple but didn’t peel it. He told me I had to peel it. I said he’d eaten one with the peel on it with Mama. He said, she “got lucky” because he’d forgotten he preferred the peel off. We played catch with his bag of seeds for a few minutes. He’s getting better. He wanted to make a concoction, but then decided to make me something in the french press. He made coffee with some chai tea in it, which wasn’t too bad. He then made a nice concoction in the little pot. Found a ketchup packet and he included that.
We then read all of Freckle Juice. Well, all except the last three pages, as Carly came in the room and he got distracted. I had to read it myself. I really remember having this book when I was a kid. He helped Carly make Swedish pancakes by shredding the carrot and I went up to take a shower. When I came down he was finishing a pancake. I had one and then made the last one. He shaped it using the spatula in the pan.
Carly threw away the printer parts and he helped. He unintentionally scared her like I do, standing in a place she didn’t expect him to be. He was hyper, and Carly was trying to get him to put his clothes on so they could go out in the little sun we might have today.
They headed out for a walk a little before 2 and were back at 2:35. He was being pretty grumpy on the walk. He got totally upset over a wrapper or something. Not sure I heard the whole story. Carly told me that they had talked about (earlier today or yesterday) about how he blames other people when he makes a mistake (like tripping or something) because it makes him feel better and it is hard for him to admit he made a mistake.
Carly wanted to keep walking. He did something to her or me right before she left, and I took him for a timeout. She went for a walk. He wouldn’t calm down, and wouldn’t let me help him calm down with the rocking. A couple times he would start to calm down, but it was clear he was still upset. He would then strike out at me again. I called Carly and asked her to come back. This was the first time we’ve experienced what Marion must have experienced at school. By the time she got back he had actually calmed down, and he let me rock him and I had the idea of asking him about how calm/upset he was on a scale of 10. He’s been really good with using such scales for things like pain and sleepiness. He liked the idea, and we started to work out what each number meant, with 1 being so calm he’s about to fall asleep and 10 being he’s lost control.
I made notes, and took it downstairs and Carly started making it into a chart with pictures and colors, and a column for what we do at each level.
He and I used tape to attach a 9V batter to a motor from the printer and it worked. He showed her, and with our permission used it to do art, scraping one of the plastic boxes. He said he was drawing a model of a fish.
He had a timeout with her. She came back down and I took over. He and I did the rocking thing, and discussed what it feels like when he’s lost control. He described it as being in his tummy. He then made some connection to how he can see pictures in his mind. I didn’t understand, and I started recording after that, but unfortunately he didn’t explain the connection again. But he went on and on about how he can see memories and pictures in his head (which he’s said in the past) and that he can see two things at once, what’s happening right now, and what he’s picturing in his memory. Not clear at all, but it sounds like maybe he sees his memories really vividly, and bad memories give him the same sort of feeling in his stomach. Just a guess though.
He as much better now, and was hyper. Carly was going to go get food at Sushi Ishimoto. He said he wanted to go see the new location, so he and I were going to go instead and give Carly some quiet. He was very excited, and I had to tell him to put on his shoes. Startled, he said, “Oh, I never thought of that.”
As we left he said that our next house needs to have a keypad on the gate like the house across the street. We parked in the dirt lot in town and went up to the new Sushi Ishimoto location on the second floor of the mall. He liked it, and said it was nicer than the last location. He really liked their plants. We ordered the regular noodles with tofu, the pad thai with shrimp, the shiitake sushi rolls, and the veggie tempura rolls. While we waited we looked around some more and he spotted the same baskets that he has for his treasures, and we read some of the Magic Tree House book. He asked what was in the middle of the table, and it was the wine list. He asked when he could drink wine, so we talked about drinking ages and how coffee and tea were different.
We left at 6. He saw the moon and stars. In the car we discussed brightness again and why only the sun and then really bright things very close to you can damage your eyes.
We got home and he went to smothering Carly. We ate. The pad thai was unfortunately spicy, but he liked the other one, and the sushi. He was excited that one of them looked like the “Korean sushi” because the seaweed was on the outside. There were seven pieces of sushi left, and he asked, “Since no one is eating that, should I finish it?”
He went to the bathroom and had his pants down for a long time. He then found the water hose from our backpack and played with it and the laundry rack. He got a tub for water, taped the tube to the rack, and drank on the other side. I think it was supposed to be a spring coming out of the rock. We turned the laundry rack into a full cave with pillows.
He went to Carly in the kitchen and fell down. He handled it well and let her comfort him. Got a green sticker. I took him upstairs and he had a good bath and let me wash his hair. While I was looking for his toothpaste, he told me, “Forgetting about something is the start of losing it.” He told me about an electric cactus, then told me, “I don’t really need a lollipop anymore when you wash my hair cuz I’m doing a good job.”
Carly came in to put him to sleep. He told her she was the best mama ever, better than Oma. “You told me you’re really good, so I think you’re better than Oma.” I left them at 8:15 and went for a walk, listening to the Harari book.
At 9:15 we had a Skype consultation with Dr. Postma, the director of SEN Gifted. That went really well, and he basically told us to categorically ignore everything that Dr. Aviv had told us. For one, he told us the sticker charts were going to do more harm than good, as they would just make everything more dramatic. Indeed, this is what we had seen in the past 3 days: Thursday was great while he thought he was getting the treat, then the rest of the day was hard once he found out he wasn’t. He had a good day on Friday so was great through the day. This morning he woke up and got two red stickers before I had woken up, and it had made a mess of his whole day. Later, I realized the flaw with the system was what would happen at school when he got two red stickers early in the day: that would be a guaranteed falling apart, which they’d have to deal with. Before, he was calmly telling me about his bad incidents at school, and accepting the consequences of it. Also, the best thing to do is more of what they’ve been doing: using each incident as a teachable moment, making the drawings and words. Thursday they didn’t do that at all with the Simone incident.
The weapon car:
Weapon car 2:
The motor and battery:
Making a fish with the motor:
