School

When you have a 2, then 3 and now nearly 4 year old who does not talk you can get some crazy ideas. I’ve said more than once over the last few years that if he dropped the “F” bomb as his first word, I’d throw a damn party.

Now, that didn’t happen. He’s picked up some other more socially acceptable words along the way fortunately. This move from “non-verbal” to “verbal” is so slow and painstaking though that I sort of haven’t been giving much thought to my tendency to use, shall we say, “colorful*,” language.

Friday, we were in the truck headed toward school (and the marvelous triumph I posted about below) and I saw one of my neighbors. My neighborhood is filled with odd ducks but this man stands out. He is bat shiznit crazy. He thinks people are picking on him when they let their dogs poop in the (city owned) strip of grass in front of his house…even though they PICK IT UP. (There’s lots more but he rants about this one frequently.)

Anyway, I see crazy neighbor numero uno walking down the street, headed for work looking like…well…like hell. Unshaven, jeans, old flannel shirt, dirty vest. Now, this guy works in commercial real estate, so this is not exactly his typical “uniform.” So, I said to my darling husband.

“Oh, man, he looks like hell!” and the conversation immediately turns to another subject until…30 seconds later…we hear our darling Monkey pipe up in the back seat.

“Hell!”

My response? Naturally, I say “Oh, shit!” Fortunately, he’s not making the “S” sound yet so that one is a ways off.

*OK, fine, I swear like a sailor, happy? I’m screwed.

For the first time in SEVEN long months….

MONKEY WALKED IN TO HIS CLASSROOM!!!!

I’m so dang excited that I’m blogging from the T. I just couldn’t wait!

****Edited to add****

Duhdee, after wiping away the tears of joy, went home and e-mailed the lovely, life saving Dr. G to inform her of our triumph and we received this response (names have been changed, duh):

HOORAY!!!! That is wonderful! Just one example of the many things Monkey will accomplish. Duhdee, you Umma and Monkey have done a fantastic job working together to help Monkey accomplish a goal. Keep up the good work!! Relish the victory this weekend!

She also cc’d the entire team at Children’s Hospital so we also received this from the program coordinator:

Congratulations! That is wonderful news! And a nice early Mother’s Day present too!

We are so lucky to have such awesome and supportive people cheering us all on.

If you want to read the background story try here:

https://www.basicallyfx.com/?p=6

and here:

https://www.basicallyfx.com/?p=4

We’ve seen some really nice improvements with Monkey lately.  He’s becoming really vocal and attempting more and more to repeat words when asked.   He has also spontaneously used a couple of new words this week (water and Tigger.)  Typically, we will see the improvements weeks before the teacher and the assistants do but they’re hearing all the same words and sounds from him at school.  It’s nice that he’s comfortable enough to “show off” for them.

Another area of improvement is sleeping.  Out of the last 9 nights he has slept straight through for 6 or 7 of them.  He slept straight through 6 nights in a ROW at one point.  Bliss!  He’s still sleeping on the floor and we have eliminated the melatonin.  He’s getting about 10 hours of sleep each night now which is just so nice.  I’d love more but, after the awful stretches we’ve had, I’ll take what I can get!

I think we may have also turned a corner on the school drop offs but it’s a little soon to know for sure.  I thought that Friday might have been a fluke but he has done really well this week too. 

Monday morning we used a combination of tickles and M&Ms as rewards and he walked to within 6 feet of the classroom door fairly happily.  Once Duhdee removed his coat, Monkey skipped the water play and took Duhdee straight to the swing room where all the other kids were.  Once in the swing room he let go of Duhdee’s hand and ran and jumped into one of the large puffy cushions and promptly forgot all about us.  He was still rolling around on the cushion when we left.

Tuesday we repeated the tickles and M&Ms system and he reached the same location outside the classroom door before he refused to walk further.  He was a bit whiney as Duhdee was removing his coat but nothing too awful.  Duhdee set him up at the sink to do his morning water play and walked away.  The assistant who was going to take over was still engaged in another activity so we stayed to keep an eye on him but from a distance and he never looked for us.  Once she was clear to join him we left and he was still happily filling and emptying his cups and toys.

So, I suppose, if McWhinerpants comes along with all these really cool improvements, maybe he can stay a little while longer.

Duhdee is snowmobiling in Maine this weekend.  Monkey and I dropped him off at the train station last night which means Umma got to do the morning drop-off solo.  To quote Great Grampy, “Ohhh, boy!”

Our morning drop-offs have been improving, it is true, but they’re still not what anyone would call fun.  It takes BOTH of us to get him in the door, down the ramp and to his classroom.  I walk ahead with bribes (M&Ms) and coax him to walk to me.  Duhdee walks with him and peels him off the floor whenever Monkey does his “Look Ma, no bones!” trick.

Once we are within 6 feet of the classroom door, Duhdee has to drag/carry him into the room.  He used to carry him ALL the way into the school but then Monkey started hitting Duhdee in the face trying to get put down (it was a brilliant delay tactic but we saw through it) so now he has to use his OWN feet and walk like a big boy.

You can imagine how excited I was about this morning.  How was I going to both walk ahead to coax him *AND* keep him on his feet?  I improvised.  I would aim him in the right direction and only get a few steps in front.  I promised M’s at all the normal spots.  It worked pretty well too!  He only flopped to the ground 3 times and the last time was when we were right outside the door like every morning.   So not too bad.

Once we were in the classroom one of his lovelies came to see him.  He sat on the floor and let me take his coat off with minimal fuss.  THEN instead of going to the sink for his morning bubble play he signed “Baby Fish” and pointed.  He wanted to show me the fish tank!  After we took a peek he went to the reading nook to visit with the HUGE stuffed bear and his friend joined him again for a bit of tickling.  I said good-bye as he grabbed his friends hand and brought it to his belly to ask for more, lol.

The teacher wanted to share a cute story as I walked out so I lingered just long enough to see his friend bring him by the hand to the “swing room” (the OT room which is connected to the classroom.)  They were redirected by one of the aides because it is NOT swing room day and they took off, hand in hand, to find something else to play.  Just so sweet.  He’s going to miss “his” girls next year.  They will be old enough to move up to Jr. K next fall and Monkey will most likely be staying in the same classroom for another year.  He may catch up to one or more of them again in Kindergarten but we have school choice options so they could end up anywhere in the city.  We’re not yet certain which school we will be requesting for Monkey.

After school Duhdee learned that Monkey’s teacher left during the day for an appointment and a substitute was called in.  A man. 

Now, Monkey is very attached to his Duhdee but he has very little use for other men.  In fact, he has very little use for anyone who isn’t female and a brunette.  He knows what he likes and he has a way of letting you, and anyone within earshot, know if he doesn’t like you much.

So here we have an unexpected change in routine (teacher leaving) and a strange man added to the mix and you have a recipe for….

An awesome day?  He didn’t actively try to escape from the classroom and the stranger’s presence, he didn’t just tolerate the poor guy’s existance (which is generally the best case scenario in my experience)…he PLAYED with him.  He sat on the floor with this strange man and engaged him.  Color me thouroughly confused. 

This boy really likes to keep us completely off balance, I guess, because I can’t think of any other man he’s done this with other than Duhdee in almost 4 years of life.  What happened?

There is just so much paperwork that one family can take and we’re only dealing with one kid here!  I can’t imagine what parents of multiple kids deal with.

Right now we have a spreadsheet in the hall outside Monkey’s door tracking his sleep habits.  What time he goes to bed, what time(s) he wakes up during the night and what time he gets up for the day.  We have a place for notes as well to include information like “no melatonin” or “had to be woken up”, etc. 

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You KNOW there was another word I wanted to use in that title.

I’m so beyond frustrated with school now. I just don’t think the teacher gets it. We’ve been trying to power our way through the morning routine for over a month now and it’s not getting better. The kid is still in tears every damn morning. When I kiss him good-bye he’s grabbing onto me and holding on for dear life and I have to pull away. It breaks my heart and I just can’t do this forever…and it feels like it’s already been forever.

He has been doing this thing where he kicks his shoes off repeatedly in the morning and then freaking out because his shoes are off. Today he apparently continued to do this throughout the day. The teacher suggested changing to shoes that he can’t remove. Yeah. No. When he can’t get them off he freaks out even worse.

I really don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that the shoes are not the issue. There is something else going on here and until they figure it out and fix it we’re all going to be going through hell on a daily basis.

Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s WORTH this amount of stress for him or for us. He’s only 3.

This morning Monkey did not start whining until we were in the building and did not escalate to tears until we were in the classroom. We set Monkey up at the sink with some water and bubbles and we left him, still crying, with his teacher and his friend R. By the time we walked up the ramp and got to the vehicle one of the aides came out to let us know that he had stopped crying and was fine. That is a very good sign. Yesterday he cried for about 10 minutes after we left.

Hopefully he has a better day today and we can regroup over the weekend.