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Shrinking the problem
Life is definitely different with a twelver around. It is more different when the child in question has had more trauma in his short life than many ever experience. For that, we make allowances. That said, he does still need to work through his damage to find a good way of living. To that end, our two prong approach began yesterday.
I took our boy ( Read more... ) -
Damage Control
After the last post, a whole lot of things happened. It seemed as if we would not be able to give our son what he needed to become himself, that hope was lost. We were at the lowest point imaginable as a protofamily. There was even talk of finding a new place for our boy. Clearly, something had to give.
Yesterday was a very eventful day. It ( Read more... ) -
Kiddo Kaboom
There was an amazing show back in the last millennium called Animaniacs. They had the Warner Brothers (and the Warner Sister), you had Slappy Squirrel, Rita and Runt, Mindy and Buttons, and of course Pinky and the Brain. They also had a recurring teenage character, Katie Kaboom. When something totally normal and mundane got under her skin, she ( Read more... ) -
School Daze
Our little one decided to play hooky again yesterday. I was not in the least amused by this, but to be honest I wasn't horribly surprised. We had brought down some truth Tuesday night, making him fully aware of how much we expected of him. That's a lot for kid who had never really been driven to succeed before to process.
I tried to get him ( Read more... ) -
Curriculum Night
I had never heard of such a thing as Curriculum Night, so I had no idea what to expect. Well, to be honest, I inferred that it would involve walking in the kiddo's shoes and meeting his teachers, but I wasn't really prepared for the experience. It isn't easy being a middle school kid these days, it seems; perhaps this was in part to get that point ( Read more... ) -
Care Packages R Us
It turns out that the stuff our boy had left in his safe, secure locker at school was displaced. I got a frantic text and then call from the lad about 20 minutes after I dropped him off asking me to come get him, he didn't have his stuff and couldn't participate. I told him to hang tough; I had his back.
More to the point, I had his backPACK. We ( Read more... ) -
Success!
Dropped the kiddo off at school fed, washed, and on time. A day late, but I'll take the win.
Yesterday was a long day for him; having no access to his games and videos made (redacted) a sad boy. He tantrumed a lot until mid day, and then became almost too docile. I think he realized the tantrums weren't going to accomplish anything.
It feels like ( Read more... ) -
The hatches have blown
Having a very challenging day with our truant son. Things are about to change around here in a very big way after his behavior this morning; there is no alternative but to stop being mostly Nurture and become Disciplinarian ( Read more... ) -
Adaptation
I picked our kiddo up from school today at about 12:45. Well, not really: I picked him up from the Starbucks a short scoot away from school. To borrow a phrase from Pushing Daisies, the facts are these ( Read more... ) -
Is this what breathing feels like?
I've been remiss in posting for the last few weeks; I've generally been too exhausted to form coherent paragraphs, so I decided to step back and focus on the important part: parenting.
It has been a challenging month. Our son is testing every possible limit he can test, he has been rude and disrespectful to pretty much everyone, and will find any ( Read more... )