It’s the nightmare for all parents. You’re somewhere, you turn around, and your child is… gone.
And it happened to us yesterday. Continue reading
behavior
Interruptions Galore
Living in Maryland, the weather is the worst part of the winter.
Certainly, we don’t get it as badly as I did where I grew up, where we got hit with serious snow multiple times a winter. Nor are we getting it even as badly once as Boston has on multiple occasions this winter. But… let’s just say that Maryland is a little nervous when it comes to the white stuff – they seem to close schools at the drop of a hat. (I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.)
So… this week, schools were closed on Monday, and then closed early on Tuesday due to the weather. Continue reading
In Public
My wife’s been preparing for a few weeks to be in a production of Rapunzel in a local community theater, and this weekend, we took the kids to go see her performance. The biggest issue, of course, is preparing for the idea of the kids being out where the Monster’s behaviors can be a problem.
Now, we’ve tackled a movie on the sensory days, and we’ve been to a few things where his being quiet has not been an urgent matter. On this occasion, though, it was more important for him to be quiet, so he wouldn’t disturb the other patrons. Continue reading
His Own Take On It
My company does a lot for Halloween every year. It’s our eVP’s favorite holiday – back when we were more concentrated in one spot, there was massive decorating of our areas, trick-or-treating in the office, things like that. Since we got bigger, the celebration got moved out to a central location (though we’ll still have something in the office tomorrow – pizza and beer, though I’m missing the beer due to scheduling). This year, our party was at The Cloisters, which is really just around the corner from our house.
For Trunk or Treat on Saturday, the Monster was a pirate – today, he was a cowboy to go along with R. (Frankly, it’s an easier costume that has him fidgeting with it a heck of a lot less.) But the fact of the matter is, he still really doesn’t ‘get’ Halloween. Continue reading
Schedule Scatter
This week is spring break at the Baltimore City schools. This means that the Monster’s been home without his regular schedule to give him some sort of regulation.
Now, because I’m hardly cruel, I did take off two days this week, and I’ve been working from home when she has both kids awake. Only seems fair to me, really. So we’ve been trying to find things to do, so that the Monster has other things to fill his time besides those things he’s already perseverating on. Continue reading
Homework
“Together We Grow”, the program that the Monster is enrolled in at school, is a standard kindergarten for the purposes of the school system. They follow the regular curriculum, such as it is, and that includes homework.
Of course, the Monster had homework all last year, but this is different – it’s more in-depth now, longer, and tends to be something that entails more of a fight with him at certain points. Continue reading
Home and Away
As we’re preparing for next week’s assessment meeting, I’m still struck sometimes by the differences between the child we see at home and the one that his professionals see at the school.
Now, I think all kids are different in front of their parents as opposed to the school environment. I was probably more respectful of my teachers than I was of my parents growing up – there was, after all, a limit to what teachers were going to be willing to put up with as opposed to my parents who were kind of stuck with me. Likewise, I was certainly not as diligent about showing off what I knew at home versus at school, since I wasn’t being graded at home… Continue reading
Back to the Grind
So I came home yesterday evening after most of four days away at my bonspiel…
Now, I don’t know that the kids really missed me being gone, but it’s certainly a different vibe when I’m not here, if only because of the differences in how we handle discipline. Continue reading
Bad Days
It’s easy to express, when you’re an adult, that you’re having a bad day.
The Monster, on the other hand, hasn’t quite gotten to that level. While we can infer what’s going on, that he’s having an awful day, we can’t tell what’s wrong or try to talk through what we can do to fix it. Continue reading
Unplanned Downtime
So we’ve been hit by another winter storm, suddenly stretching what was supposed to be a three day weekend into five.
Now, yesterday was not a day to go outside… which meant that the Monster, therefore, wanted to go outside. In the course of the storm, we were deluged with requests from him to ‘go to the playground’, which can either mean going actually to the playground (around the corner) or being allowed to play in the backyard. Continue reading