Workarounds

Kiddo is fine, except when he isn't. That is, he's fine until something upsets him, and then he says mean things and is generally unpleasant to be around. That's the pattern these days.

DH and I have figured out that if he's having a meltdown, he's either tired or hungry or both. So we don't react when he yells "I hate you! I hate everyone in this house!" or when he runs away instead of helping to clean up. Getting upset adds fuel to the fire, so to speak, and yelling solves nothing. I've tried it. Doesn't work.

Instead, we wait for him to calm down, or encourage him to breathe, or give him some space, or suggest a snack and/or nap. These are the workarounds. They take a lot more thought and careful planning, but they do seem to help.

Sometimes I resort to sneakiness. He was heading toward meltdown status because I was feeling off and didn't want to take him to the park. I lay down on the couch and pretended to doze. A few minutes later, he crawled onto the couch to join me, and promptly fell asleep. For about two hours.

You can't just tell him to take a nap. You have to make the nap look inviting.

Sometimes I set the rules in advance. I gave the kids a strict edict on Monday that we would not visit the ice cream truck more than once a week. They nodded "sure, sure" as they ate their ice cream sandwiches. Today, they asked for ice cream. I reminded them of the rule, and after only a tiny bit of grumbling, they stopped.

I warned kiddo in advance that he would not be playing with the computers in the children's section of the library, and he listened, although I did have to nudge him away from the screen. But I always have to nudge him away from screens. Because ADHD.

I used to just get upset whenever he had a meltdown, or whenever he whined and complained and seemed overly negative about things. But I know the real kiddo is not that kid. The real kiddo is the little sweetie who likes to play peek-a-boo with babies and who always opens doors for me, declaring, "Ladies first!" That kid deserves the extra care and consideration if he's having trouble managing his emotions. Fortunately, now we have the time to give him that extra care, and I think that'll make a difference in the long term.

An interesting side note: Kiddette has decided she needs fidget toys for camp. This may be her way of sneaking toys to camp. Or her way of getting some of kiddo's attention for herself. Or maybe she just thinks, as she says, that if you get too happy, you need a fidget toy to calm down. But she's designated a tiny Elmo doll as her main fidget toy, and has been bringing him along to camp.

I figure it can't hurt. Kiddette just has a workaround of her own. 

The tadpole saga

Our neighbors were traveling abroad. I volunteered to babysit their tadpole.

It was a symbolic tadpole. The kids were supposed to release them once they became frogs. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. I was also fuzzy on the calendar, because I'd forgotten we were also going away for a few days.

Our neighbors didn't mind. We'd be in a hotel room. The tadpole could come with us.

So I packed up the little tank and moved the tadpole into a smaller container, and we drove off. The tadpole - who was pretty big for a baby frog - sat between my feet. He looked displeased.

Our room wasn't ready yet when we got there, but the front desk staff offered to watch the tadpole for us while we went to lunch. So to recap: Other people babysat the tadpole we were babysitting. We outsourced.

When I came back for the tadpole, though, I could see staff members clustered in the back, looking at me and whispering, and I thought, Oh no. Sure enough, the tadpole was no longer with us. "We're so sorry," they said. "We don't know what happened. We were all watching him swim around."

I assured them it wasn't their fault. Because really, second-degree babysitting a guest's tadpole is going above and beyond. They did suggest catching a new one from the lake, which was a nice thought, but only because they don't know me. I was not the sort of kid who was an expert at catching tadpoles. I had no ingrained knowledge to guide me. If I tried to catch a tadpole I'd probably wind up submerging myself.

We didn't exactly inform the kids right away. It wasn't the happiest way to begin our vacation. So the tadpole, officially, was taking a nap for a little while. The kids are not dumb, though, and they've gone through a few dead fish already. They knew the signs. They were sad for a few seconds, and then they wanted to go to the bumper cars. Like I said: They've gone through a few dead fish already.

The only decent thing to do was to replace the tadpole. You'd be surprised how many pet stores don't sell tadpoles. Also, the ones that do frequently sell bullfrogs, which eat other frogs, and a lot of websites discourage releasing them into the wild. Now I had an ethical dilemma. Or, an even more ethical dilemma.

Happily, I found an aquatic pet store that 1. sells tadpoles and 2. only sells species that can be released into the wild. The owner said he will never, never, never pet-sit for someone, because so much can go wrong, and he gets a lot of people coming in to replace goldfish or betta fish before, I presume, the rightful owners return. This was his first replacement tadpole, though. It's so nice to be a trailblazer.

Tadpole #2 is livelier than the first one, in that he seems to think he can make his pond expand just by butting his head against the wall. He occasionally leaps out of the water entirely, so as we sit in the family room, we hear sploosh sploosh from the kitchen. It takes some getting used to.

Our neighbors returned from their trip, and it's a good thing I had no intention of lying, because as soon as his friend asked about the tadpole, kiddo said, "Well, he died. But we got a new one!"

Excellent bedside manner, kiddo. Definitely become a doctor.

His friend was upset for about .5 seconds, until he found out that #2 has legs coming, and the coolness factor override any lingering grief.

So I expect our neighbors will come to collect #2, and once again we will be petless. That's fine. I'm starting to feel like creatures that live in water should run from our house.

Cute tadpole, though. 

Last day countdown

Today is the last day of school. Today was also kiddette's class writing presentation. I thought it started at 9:30. It started at 9. So after showing up a half-hour late, kiddette dissolved into tears when I tried to leave. That's been my day so far. It's a bit symbolic of how awful this school year has been.

I don't know if other (read: non-special needs) parents say this, but I just cannot wait for the year to be over. I don't even know how I'm keeping kiddo occupied all summer and I don't care. I want two months of not being judged on my parenting/organizing/class-attendance skills by other parents/educators/random people in public. I want two months of NOT getting calls from the school: "Your son did XXXX," "Your son did YYYY," "Come get your son." Two whole months of not caring about homework or monitoring whether they're written enough book reports. Two whole months of not having to resent school officials.

Forget the kids. I need a break.

By the way? I was an honors student, gifted child, AP classes when I was in school. I was Hermione Granger. How bad does kiddo's school year have to be to completely sour me on the whole school experience? This bad.

I will say that he's adapted pretty well to the new program, and that the folks on the all-new IEP team seem nice and really dedicated to working with him -- as in, not even concerned that he's been throwing pencils at them or trying to escape the classroom. That sort of thing is apparently usual for newbies. They're confident that he'll continue to improve, and they said he's a happy kid who responds well to praise.

That's a nice change from "Your son did this and this and this and he's doing this deliberately and he knows better but he's making bad choices."

Anyway. The kids are home now, and everyone seems happy, especially since I promised them ice cream tonight. So we'll take summer one relaxing-ish day at a time. 

The changeling

It's hard to know how to handle a kid who changes all the time.

Sometimes he's a sweetie who likes to give hugs. Sometimes he's the kid who cheerfully went along with me to the farm for CSA pickup last week, helped me pick out the veggies on our list, and ran along the ground to marvel at the rows of potatoes he helped plant.

And then sometimes he's the kid who kicks his teacher, throws things, and runs out of the room so he doesn't have to do his classwork.

We're not entirely sure which kid we're going to get on which day. Sometimes he gets dressed without a problem. Sometimes he crouches over a Lego instead and says he doesn't care if he misses breakfast or the bus. Sometimes he does his chores, and sometimes he huddles on the couch and refuses. Sometimes he kicks.

"Changeling" means, according to legend, a baby who was secretly taken from his parents by fairies, and a fairy substitute left in his place. It's not an exact comparison here. Sometimes we have our kiddo, and sometimes we don't. But that's how it feels: Like our real kiddo has been stolen from us, but sometimes he's still here. And sometimes he isn't.

I don't think he can really control these moods. He's always sorry afterward. But it's hard to know what to do to get him through the day. It's hard to know how to help him. And it's hard not to get upset.

I've become reluctant to bring him places, like a supermarket or a festival, where I know he'll have problems. When people ask "how are the kids?" I honestly don't know how to answer. Do they want the honest answer?

I'm hoping things will settle down after the school year is over. Maybe this past year was so bad he just needs the break. Maybe we all need the break.

But right now, he's refusing to get dressed again, so the changeling is back.

Slightly better?

So far so good, anyway. I'm not sure kiddo is any different, but the setting is different, and I think that's what he needed most -- to be in a room where there's always someone to help him, and he isn't automatically the bad kid, and the other kids are more or less like him anyway. Arguably he needed that at least a year ago. But he's got it now, and he's had some good days -- and he's actually doing his homework instead of, say, hiding it under a floor mat at school and then coming home and telling us he didn't have any.

We had one awful day last week, where he switched into some other, meaner kid and was kicking and punching so he wouldn't have to do homework, but we're hoping that was him transitioning into the new situation; we haven't seen the other kid since, at least not to that level.

We spent the entire week alternately meeting with and yelling at various school officials over the way we thought the whole situation had been handled, and to everyone's credit, they were helpful and did not yell back. So we will try not to dwell.

Everyone we speak to has a different theory, a different concern about kiddo. He's OCD. He's not OCD. He's got social communication disorder. Well, now we're not sure about that. He's got pieces of autism. Hmm, sort of. He needs speech-language pathology testing. Nope, no disability there.

Let him indulge in the baby talk. No, tell him to stop. Use a behavior chart. Don't use a chart. Use THIS chart. Get him into Boy Scouts. He might not do well in Boy Scouts.

Is your head spinning yet? Imagine mine.

So he's got ADHD, and some form of Who Knows What Else.

The one thing every single doctor, therapist, educator and otherwise observant adult is happy to agree on is that kiddo is smart. Which is great. But we jump off from there into a minefield of "This-No-This-No-This-No-Try-This."

There is something that stuck with me, from the school's OT, who wanted to pass on her observations about him: She said that because kiddo doesn't understand emotional communication, he just doesn't speak that language, he spent most of school in this "fight or flight" state, not understanding what was happening around him, not sure what to do about anything, and thus constantly trying to protect himself by lashing out, acting silly or running off. She thinks some of his behaviors, sometimes aggressive, seemingly out of nowhere, were defense mechanisms. It makes sense to me. (It may also describe some other people I know.)

I'm not sure yet what to do with that insight. I'm not sure what to do about a lot of things. But it's nice not to be getting calls from the school every day -- seriously, I was starting to cringe every time the phone rang -- and it's nice to see his daily chart saying positive things. I'm hoping it can continue.

He came home today and, after some protest, did his homework. Then he sat next to me on the couch and waited for me to finish something so he could use my computer. Then he fell asleep on my shoulder. I finished my work that way, with him sleeping on me, and it was such a peaceful little moment. We don't always get those, so I'm glad I got that one.

And then it all went bad

And I'm still not sure why or how. He was great for a week and a half, then he started chasing kids around the classroom with a stapler. And scribbling potty words all over the walls of the room with a pink highlighter. And grabbing scissors off his teacher's desk. And trying to run out of the school. And pushing his teacher. And throwing things at me.

Repeatedly his special ed. teacher has had to pull the other kids out of the room while he acts out. And then no classwork gets done. Which, apparently, is what he wants.

Honestly I feel like I have whiplash. Within the space of several weeks -- granted not helped by spring break, or by kiddo's doctor-enforced ban on gym and recess while the cut on his forehead heals (four weeks, the plastic surgeon said, and HAHAHAHAHA YOU'RE KIDDING, I thought) -- his IEP team went from "we're going to try a new behavioral plan, it'll totally work!" to "the behavioral plan is totally working!" to "we can't handle him anymore and here is where you should send him instead."

Seems there's a self-contained program at one of the other schools in the district, more therapeutic, with a counselor on hand all day, smaller classes and extra aides in the room. More individualized academic goals. A separate room right nearby for decompressing and, as the terminology goes, "de-escalating." On paper it sounds promising. In person -- we've toured it twice, once with kiddo -- it also seems promising. In the IEP meeting, it sounded like "we give up and we're offloading him so he's someone else's problem." It's hard to know which impression to rely on.

I'm so unbelievably frustrated. Four years we've been working on this whole ADHD thing, four years of occupational therapy and behavioral therapy and classroom accommodations and fighting with the insurance company and tensing up every single time he has to be brought out in public, and we have gotten precisely nowhere. We might as well have been the crappy parents people clearly think we are, and ignored every single little thing he was doing instead of trying to help him. This is where my head is at.

I know, intellectually, that we're doing the best we can and we've worked really hard, and probably this program will help him, and eventually things will probably get better. But right now I'm thinking about how the other kids at the bus stop are going to ask why he isn't in class with them anymore, and I don't know how I'm supposed to answer that.

All I know is, if anyone wants to know what I want for Mother's Day, it's to be left alone. In bed. And to go at least one day without any reports on my kid's bad behavior.

I mean, an all-expenses-paid spa vacation would be nice too. But I'd like to keep my wish list in the realm of reality.

Our ER day

So the kids were helping Daddy clean the garage. And then kiddette started -- I'm told -- swinging a broom around for fun. And then -- I'm told -- the broom connected hard with kiddo's forehead. Blood everywhere.

I was at a meeting for my writers' group. As it turned out, this would be somewhat convenient, because I was only a few minutes away from the hospital. I rushed over there to meet DH and the kids. Kiddo had been upset at first, thinking 1. he was bleeding to death and 2. I was going to be really mad at him over all the blood on the kitchen floor. I'm not sure how I feel about that. At any rate, by the time they pulled up outside the pediatric ER entrance, he was more or less calm.

The first nurse praised him for doing such a good job keeping pressure on the wound. Then he chattered to her all about the pain scale chart she had and how his school nurse has one too but the words are different, and also about his fish that died but we're going to get a cat instead, and I'm pretty sure about a dozen other things but at that point I was trying to get the blood off his glasses. She was trying not to smile and failing.

The second nurse made his day joyous by turning the TV on in our room. Which is a good thing, because we sat there for hours waiting for the plastic surgeon. Did he need stitches? Silly mommy. He totally needs stitches, said everyone. So we watched "Clarence," which was funny in a cracked way, "The Amazing World of Gumball," which was funnier in a thanks-for-all-the-'80s-references way, and "Teen Titans Go!" which is the loopiest superhero sitcom on the planet. I haven't watched so much Cartoon Network since I was secretly obsessed with "Home Movies."

What delighted me was how seriously the nurse took kiddo's ADHD. Is there any way to keep his hands at his sides during the procedure, she asked, maybe a squishy ball? I suggested a blanket, she countered with a weighted blanket, which is ten times better. He ended up with two squishy balls and the blanket. And then the surgeon came in, took one look at the mesmerized child watching "Teen Titans Go!" and suggested we just let him watch TV the entire time. Which was practically better than anesthetics. Seriously, as much as I restrict screen time at home, I think hospitals are about the perfect place for TVs.

Watching the gaping wound on your child's forehead get sewn up is ... interesting. And squirm-inducing. But kiddo, aside from a few early squawks, took it like a champ. Because, again, TV. (I don't know how many stitches. I wasn't counting. There were three layers of stitches.)

In fact he was so mesmerized that he didn't want to leave when we were discharged, because "Adventure Time" was on. "I don't care that it just started," I said. "We have to go home."

Even better, the nurse gave him a Lego set. I mean, a full-on, mid-size Lego set. I don't remember getting cool toys when I went to the hospital as a kid. When did this start? Can I demand a retroactive My Little Pony or something?

By the time he was all set, and we'd gotten our discharge instructions -- which included "let his hair grow over his forehead to hide the scar from the sun," so I guess we'll be modifying his hairstyle -- it was 9:30 and we hadn't eaten dinner. And I was so tired I walked us right past the elevator. I had no idea how I was going to get us to a restaurant, or even what restaurant was open. I have never been so grateful to see an in-hospital Starbucks. Snobby? Elitist? Whatever. I had a fruit and cheese platter, he had yogurt, and we probably both ate healthier than we would've anyplace else at that point. (Not counting the giant cookie and the chocolate croissant.) Also, kiddo's shirt was bloody. Not the best dining-out look.

He's been home since, awaiting the follow-up visit to the plastic surgeon, and aside from intensely disliking when we change the bandage, he's been fine. Because he's gotten to build Legos, watch TV and play video games all day. He's going to have a scar for about a year and a half, but at least he's already found the upside.