Tuesday, January 16, 2007

A Trying Day

Ds has not been getting enough sleep lately. He just wakes up too early and can't get back to sleep. He's getting crabbier and crabbier. He's sitting next to me right now, having just come down from upstairs, where he's been crying about his Lego. See, he bought himself a Lego kit today, but it was a little too challenging for him to do on his own, so the 12yo started helping him. Well, after discovering that half of it was done and the 12yo had made a mistake near the beginning, he went into his 10th fit (crying fit) of the day, the 3rd or 4th with the Lego. I'm not joking. But it's past 4, I can't possibly have him nap at this hour.

I sent him upstairs to calm down and picked up all the pieces and put it back in the box. He came back down and he said he still wanted to play with his Lego. I told him he had to play it away from me; I just can't handle his crying anymore--it's one thing to be in tears about being hurt or something truly sad, but when he's this tired, EVERYTHING is sad for him. He's had his 11th and 12th fits because he thought he'd lost a piece. He came down and started crying again; I told him he needed to go back to his room. He's come back down now and told me he's not sad anymore because he found the piece. But then he started crying because he WAS sad about having lost the piece...

Somebody's going to bed early tonight... ME! ;)

On another note, I just realized I've been a bad girl--I have not been sticking to the Work First Policy with the 12yo. Two days in a row, his reading has NOT gotten done. Yesterday, we'd made a deal that he would read in the van while we went to the park. I agreed, but then we didn't take steps to make sure that it got in the van. Today, by the time we got to the reading, it was 10:20, his blood sugar had gone low and he was a little drained (and yes, this was before the reading was brought up) and so I said we'd do it later, but then we didn't.

I'M SABOTAGING MYSELF AND HIM! He and I need to talk about this tomorrow. He's had 30+ minutes less of reading than he should have had with me.

On a really good note, however, I've started going through this book about writing and found these story planning charts. He was just "on" this morning, quite focused and interested and we started planning out a story together based on the movie and board game "Clue". We got quite a bit of planning done and are enjoying how it's going along. He asked if this was like what people had to do when they wanted to make a movie, and I said it was kind of--they have to figure out their story (who, what, where, when) before they can really do anything else.

He's been talking fearfully about high school this past week and it came up again today. I think he's afraid of being bullied more than anything. But he's such a little squirt right now--only in gr. 7--and does spend time with high schooled kids, so that's got to be a bit intimidating! I've got two years to help him build his confidence. He just has to go to high school, I think. It's only fearful thinking that is stopping him. When he checks out all the stuff available at the school he thinks it's cool and wants to go.

Well, dh is now onto his 15th crying fit. He's lost another piece. Time to intervene.

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