My difficult child has been coping fairly well with school not starting yet due to a teacher's strike. However he is showing signs of stress - we had an hour meltdown on Friday morning but he was able to turn it around when the neighbors came over for the day (I agreed to watch them for the day due to the strike). difficult child did a good job dealing with his frustration when the neighbors wanted to play something different than what he wanted.
But there's other cracks showing up now that difficult child's been home from summer visitation with his father for three weeks - the honeymoon's definitely over! Had a three hour meltdown on Saturday evening over being told to pick up the toys on his bedroom floor, which escalated into him throwing objects at me and SO while we ate dinner (he was in timeout on the other side of the room) and resulted in breakage of glassware and candles. We had to restrain him for over 45 minutes to calm him down after that point. SO and I talked about doing a stop the world on him, but opted to confiscate difficult child's 5 most favorite toy collections (one for each time he threw items at us, e.g. Bakugon, Pokemon, Thomas the Tank engine). difficult child is going to have to pay to replace what was broken, so he won't have allowance for quite some time now. And SO and I had to pick up items in difficult child's room in order to find the 5 categories of toys to confiscate, after I cleaned up all the broken glass.
One issue that arouse while difficult child was being restrained was he started screaming that his father had taught him karate moves and he knew where to hit us to hurt us. And he tried to kick me in the belly (last thing I need being over 7 months pregnant) to prove his point. Today, after we've had some time to calm down and process from a distance difficult child did acknowledge that his father started teaching him some moves but didn't go into why and when you use karate. <sigh> Just freakin' great. Not only does ex fill difficult child's head that difficult child doesn't have AD/HD and doesn't need medications, now he's teaching an anxious and at times physically aggressive kid how to hurt someone without teaching the more important parts of the philosophy.
And today, finally got a chance to go through Saturday's mail and state academic test scores are in. difficult child, who has a non verbal IQ of 127 and a verbal IQ of 117 managed to fail his state reading exams. And passed math with only 7 points to spare. But his school insists that he doesn't require any specially designed instruction to provide FAPE. <sigh> In what universe is it okay for a kid with an above average to superior IQ to fail state standards? Wasn't planning on taking on the fight with difficult child's school regarding Special Education services this year (too much stress with the pregnancy and then newborn) but with these results I may have to do that battle this fall instead of next school year.
Anyone have super Calgon that can take me away for a while? Dang all I want tonight to chill out is chocolate and red wine, two things I can't have right now...
But there's other cracks showing up now that difficult child's been home from summer visitation with his father for three weeks - the honeymoon's definitely over! Had a three hour meltdown on Saturday evening over being told to pick up the toys on his bedroom floor, which escalated into him throwing objects at me and SO while we ate dinner (he was in timeout on the other side of the room) and resulted in breakage of glassware and candles. We had to restrain him for over 45 minutes to calm him down after that point. SO and I talked about doing a stop the world on him, but opted to confiscate difficult child's 5 most favorite toy collections (one for each time he threw items at us, e.g. Bakugon, Pokemon, Thomas the Tank engine). difficult child is going to have to pay to replace what was broken, so he won't have allowance for quite some time now. And SO and I had to pick up items in difficult child's room in order to find the 5 categories of toys to confiscate, after I cleaned up all the broken glass.
One issue that arouse while difficult child was being restrained was he started screaming that his father had taught him karate moves and he knew where to hit us to hurt us. And he tried to kick me in the belly (last thing I need being over 7 months pregnant) to prove his point. Today, after we've had some time to calm down and process from a distance difficult child did acknowledge that his father started teaching him some moves but didn't go into why and when you use karate. <sigh> Just freakin' great. Not only does ex fill difficult child's head that difficult child doesn't have AD/HD and doesn't need medications, now he's teaching an anxious and at times physically aggressive kid how to hurt someone without teaching the more important parts of the philosophy.
And today, finally got a chance to go through Saturday's mail and state academic test scores are in. difficult child, who has a non verbal IQ of 127 and a verbal IQ of 117 managed to fail his state reading exams. And passed math with only 7 points to spare. But his school insists that he doesn't require any specially designed instruction to provide FAPE. <sigh> In what universe is it okay for a kid with an above average to superior IQ to fail state standards? Wasn't planning on taking on the fight with difficult child's school regarding Special Education services this year (too much stress with the pregnancy and then newborn) but with these results I may have to do that battle this fall instead of next school year.
Anyone have super Calgon that can take me away for a while? Dang all I want tonight to chill out is chocolate and red wine, two things I can't have right now...