Weekends...

Weekends are welcome breaks for our family in many ways. First, William is really struggling at school with his behavior (although in the last two weeks he has strung together two good days in a row each week and has had good days five out of the ten days). When I say good days I'm talking about his daily point sheets, which are out of 15 points. A good day is anything that is ten or better. But even a good day at school doesn't always translate to a good day at home. It often seems that when he has a good day at school that he struggles with his behavior at home and vice versa. It is as if he can only hold it together for a fraction of each day. Bed times are particularly rough some nights. Last Wednesday William woke up in the morning and the first thing he said to me was "I didn't sleep well last night." I think he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and struggles to fall back asleep. So I knew right away that his day might be rough. And it was...

He was really mean and crabby to his peers and teachers and then at his after school program he attempted to choke a little girl. His teacher also called us to let us know that William had gotten a bus write up on the ride home from school on Tuesday (which may be why he didn't sleep well- he was sweating whether we were going to find out he got written up). And what did he do on the bus? Well, he called the bus monitor a mean, ugly, fa***t. Wednesday night we tried to keep everything really low key because he was so tired he had rings under his eyes. We did have a discussion about his use of that word which actually went really well. We asked him if he knew what it meant and he said it meant "mean" or "nasty." So we explained that he shouldn't use any cuss words, but that there are some cuss words that have extra meaning that is really hurtful and negative. We talked about the n-word and William said- "I would never use that word." So we explained that the f-word he used was similar except that it was a horrible word targeted at gay people. We made the whole conversation about the words and not about him being in trouble. Lawrence actually read him the definition from the dictionary. =) He seemed to really get how hurtful words can be and hopefully we won't hear that word or any other word like it again. So we felt good about turning around a rough day.

We got him showered and in PJs by 7:40pm and talked to him about an early bedtime because he was so tired. We even showed him the rings under his eyes in the mirror. However, when the time came to crawl in bed and read books he just refused. After trying to convince him, and him escalating, we told him he needed to stay in his room if he wasn't going to go to bed. He then proceeded to throw everything in his room on the floor. And when we didn't react to that (other than telling him that he was going to have to clean his room) he climbed up in the window sill, opened the window, and yelled "Help me! Help me! Call the police!" I can sort of laugh now, but at that point it wasn't funny at all. What do you say at that point? We told him that was unacceptable and he backed down. He stayed in his room for half an hour before he came and apologized. So it was 8:45 before he got to bed. And then he was so wound up he didn't fall asleep til 9:30. As I said, weekdays can be tough...

I think William is really struggling with being at a school for kids with behavior problems and being smart enough to realize that it isn't a typical school. Even though he is academically successful, he is really emotionally underdeveloped. He has been through so much in the last year and a half and has so much anger and frustration that he doesn't know how to express appropriately, that it comes out in these really inappropriate ways.

But weekends are usually a much less stressful time. On weekends he is just a kid, having fun and being silly with his uncles. William has been learning about gardening at school (they have a school garden) and both Lawrence and I love to work out in the yard. It is a great bonding time to all be out there together, planting, weeding, cleaning the fish pond, etc. Just being a family. The three of us have been working really hard on our gardens the last month of weekends and we are finally to the "maintenance" phase versus the "planting/starting" phase of the season. Over the years we have completely gotten rid of the grass in our yard (both front and back) and have a yard that is like an oasis in the urban jungle. We love it!