Water Bottles and Substitute Teachers

Today Daddy B was home early enough that we could have gone to spend lunch with T.

Lord, I wish we had. Next time Lord, could you please smack me over the head with a big fat "woman, GO TO THE SCHOOL!"??

T did great the first half of the day. Then lunch, that dreaded time when everything goes to shit, rolled around.

The thing about T's school is that the yard duty people are volunteers. They are very nice, but they are inadequate. Not to mention, T does not do well with unstructured time. He loses his mind. I am actually surprised that he doesn't more often lose his mind. And he's not the only one, mind you. I would say that out of the whole class, he is behaviorally somewhere on the lower-mid range. He has more good days than the little turds, but more bad days than all of the girls and half of the boys. Oh right, there are 7 girls and 14 boys in his class, did I mention that? And one of the boys is severely mentally handicapped WITH violent, physical behaviors.

After lunch, T was beyond calming himself down. He says he tried, but it's hard to calm down on the Friday before a three day weekend with Joe's Crab Shack on the horizon.

When I picked him up, he of course denied knowledge of the offense. After some time, I realized that the REASON he didn't want to tell me was because he did not do his prescribed punishment. Instead, he...

Oh ok, back up. What he did was the following: First of all, at lunch recess, he did not listen to the teacher trying to get him back to class. He ran around the playground instead. Then, when it was time for writing, he went outside and made the teacher chase him back inside. THEN, when he still didn't get his way, he threw water bottles at the sub. All of this after lunch. Lunch is at noon, and they get out at 3:35pm. In about 3 hours he threw an entire week's worth of good behavior into the garbage.

Right, so he didn't want to tell me. We found his sub and "reminded" him of the issues. We apologized to her and took him very coldly to the car. There was no cuddling, no happy chitter, none of that. We got in the car and I laid in on him. I scolded him up and down and left and right. I ripped him a new one (verbally kids, don't freak out) and very clearly told him what his consequences would be at home. Obviously he didn't get his special Friday treat. Obviously, Joe's Crab Shack wouldn't happen. And I am seriously considering canceling Saturday's activities.

In our conversation, I realized that he got way too excited about the weekend. After discussing further, T actually SAID that his brain got away from him from pure excitement, and when he was told to do something he didn't want to do, his excitement switched to anger.

I actually had a conversation about this with Mommy A earlier this week. I mentioned to her that I thought T had a spigot problem. Basically, T gets on the road of emotion, whether positive, negative, or otherwise.

I imagine that most people can open and close this spigot, turning it off when the spigot switches temperatures. Let's say that cold is good and hot is bad. When the water starts to get hot, generally someone can turn it off, or switch it back to cold. Of course, some people blow up. The boiler explodes. But then the pressure is released. I am one of THOSE people. T is one of the people who starts off with cold water, and as the water turns hot, he doesn't realize it. Well, I can't say that actually. He may actually know it's happening. He cannot OR will not switch the faucet.

The thing I haven't figured out is how it EVENTUALLY turns back to cold, because it's not like I show up and he's flinging pencils at the ceiling at the end of the day. He seems fairly complacent. Perhaps it's fear. I'd be scared of me, let me tell you what. When I'm mad, I am not a nice person. And I am not shy AT ALL of taking privileges from T.

T did not want to do his writing, because writing would bring him down from the high of Joe's Crab Shack. So he refused. When the sub insisted, T decided throwing water bottles at her was the best response.

In the car, T came up with the best idea. After talking me through the fact that he gets too excited to function when he knows a treat is coming up, he asked me to not tell him about fun things. He asked me, from his little snotty mouth, to keep those kinds of things a surprise so he doesn't lose control.

That really took me aback. I think usually we consider incentives to be a good thing. They are motivational. For T, they are a source of anxiety. He likes the incentives, of course. But knowing that it's coming, that if he makes a mistake it will be taken away, that's too much pressure for him. And there's too much at stake.

To help me out, I asked him not to ASK me if something is coming up. I am not going to LIE to the little bastard. What kind of example would that be? So we made that deal. Surprises are good. Pressure is bad. We need to learn to switch the water from warm to cold without switching to hot.