The "Too Much" Problem

Last Friday, X-man had a hard OT appointment. He couldn't be motivated to do anything. He got up and left the table. He whined. He bitched. He was an all over hot mess. I know that our OT has worked with many, many kids with different learning disabilities and developmental disabilities, so she's worked with all kinds of kids. But my kid was stubborn and rude and really, it was all I could do not to blow up at him. She was calm and encouraging but firm. But it was frustrating for everyone.

After she left, I was ready to take everything in the world away from him for being so awful. I sent him to his room so that I could sit down and think about how to get through to him that we all understand that fine motor skills are hard for him. But being an obstinate jackass just makes things worse.

MacTroll and I called him down and we talked to him about his behavior. Of course, there were lots of promises not to be disrespectful and about how sorry he was and about how he just got so angry about having to constantly be reminded to start his letters from the top and to bump lines and that he hates that  he never seems to naturally do it right.

And then instead of hearing that we were taking electronics away, he heard me say, "Well, now you get to do more fine motor skills every day."

This was not what he had thought was going to happen. If it's too hard to sit in a chair after school and do one more hour of pretty fun stuff (she has games and sensory items and made-for-X-man writing sheets) to work on something he needs help with, then apparently, we need to do more, so that it comes easier to him when he's doing it with her on Fridays.

We're on day 3 of that plan, and so far it's going okay. MacTroll and I made a list of two weeks of fine motor activities for him. And then, depending what kind of homework he's doing, we grab something off the list that is different.

For example, yesterday he came home and had to cut triangles for homework and do some math facts with them. Then he had to write his spelling words. So it would have been too much to give him more writing or cutting to do. So instead, I pulled out a 211 piece Star Wars puzzle and sat with him and talked Star Wars with him. This was more like playing with Mom than doing fine motor skills (Ms. K has her own Star Wars puzzle that she brought for him to play with once).

Today, we'll do his spelling words using Bananagram letter pieces, he'll write his math homework and then we're going to cut out pictures in magazines for a collage project. I bought 7 10x10" canvases for us to use. He's got stacks of children's magazines, so I thought we'd collage a bit to take art to the new house whenever we move. And then we could recycle the rest of the magazines.

There's a fine line that we're walking here about how to get him the services he needs without overwhelming him and making him happy. At the same time, I'm hoping that he's understanding that we're not doing all of this to torture him, but how important being able to do things like twist open a cap on a water bottle (without using your teeth) and tie your shoes and those kinds of things are. I think he's afraid he'll never be able to do them. And sometimes, in our rush to get from place to place, he hands me the bottle and uses "Please" and I instantly do it for him. It's easier. It doesn't start any fights or whining. But then on the other hand, it helps continue a problem.

Sometimes you just have to pick your battles.

This Boot Is Made for Walking!

I got the blessing today to submerge my foot in water and to WALK in my boot. These are two very good things. I have to work on standing on my barefoot, but as soon as I feel comfortable with it I can transition to a lace up brace and a tennis shoe and drive short distances. So it's looking like I'll be driving by the end of the weekend, if it all goes okay.

But I don't get to start PT until after Thanksgiving. My foot needs to be comfortable walking in a shoe before I can do strength exercises. But I walked to school with MacTroll today to pick up the boys and it felt GREAT. I was 1/2 block behind them watching them play tag down the road with MacTroll, and I felt happy.

I was also happy because I finished the poster board for the science night tomorrow. X-man was really nervous about his handwriting, so he started typing some of the labels for his layers of Earth drawing. It took him 35 minutes to type 9 words. So, you know, I had him paint his volcano for the main part while I typed up the info on the two experiments, the recipes we used, the vocabulary we learned and a chart I found online of the scientific method, which was really the point of the project for us. We had a lot of fun doing science as a family, and X-man can't wait to have another science night. (I don't think he remembers that he's doing a special "Sloppy Science" program next Friday at the Urbana Rec Center from 6-7:30 p.m.)

I attended the Tolono Public Library District Board meeting last night. I came away with two cool things about the library. 1) That our subscription to Zinio, an online magazine database where you read current magazines for free, (which is free to all Tolono Library Card holders) is awesome and I can't wait to have more titles. I've been reading Consumer Reports there, which is a magazine I could never bring myself to pay for, but one that I find uber useful from time to time. There are many other titles to read, so if you live in Savoy, Tolono or Sadorus and have a library card, you should totally check it out (or get thee to Tolono for a card). If you don't, you could totally advocate for your library to subscribe to the service.

And 2) Our library is having a fundraiser at Barnes and Noble on Dec. 1 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We'll be at the door handing little slips of paper out that indicate you'd like a percentage of your purchase to be donated to the library (you can also download and print your own flyer from the library web site). You DO NOT have to be a library card member to help us out. If you're buying things from Barnes and Noble for the holidays, you just hand them the slip at check out, and they take care of it. It costs you NOTHING. But it can earn the library up to 20 percent on all purchases that day!

I'll be volunteering to hand them out after I help out my Rotary Club. This year we're hosting our first ever Breakfast with Santa at the Savoy United Methodist Church (corner of Old Church Rd. and Duncan) from 9-10:30 a.m. There will be a light breakfast (fruit, yogurt, muffins, juice) and games and activities for children. Tickets are $5 per person, but children under 18 months old are free. If you think you'd like to buy tickets, please leave a comment with how to contact you, and I can get them to you, soon. The money raised will help the Rotary fund community and humanitarian projects locally and around the world.

X-man had his OT evaluation today. He did AWESOME on the Visual Motor Integration part. She thinks he's just devised a "drawing" method of making the letter shapes rather than having actually been taught the appropriate ways to make the letters. This is probably true given the improvement in writing from his first spelling test and the one we got back 4 weeks later after we'd been doing Handwriting Without Tears. So, she'll be coming over once a week to work with him, and he's meeting with her at school for 30 minutes every Monday but with a small group of two or three other students.