Is time an illusion?

Sheesh! I think it may very well be. It doesn't feel like it's been 7 days since I last posted, yet here we are 7 days later. I suck at consistency.

Insomnia. I've always considered myself a night owl. I like staying up late. This past year, though, it has been insane!! The last few months of the school year, I was resorting to staying up all night (for real!) and taking a nap after the kids were safe at school. The kids are out now & I can't do that, so much. I can sleep in a little, get up, nap a little & then dinner, kids stuff, TW demos, whatev. It feels like I'm losing my mind.

Yet, every night (even after a glass of wine & a half) I lie down in bed, tired as all hell and my mind will. not. shut. down. It's like the energizer brain. It keeps going & going & going...and it's LATE! I tried to rest my head at 3:45 in the am. I was up at 11, after settling down at 5:30am. How do I shut it down? I just want normal sleep.

I have tried to stay up all night & day, several times. I usually can't make it cause I'm not 16 anymore. BUT - the nap I take on the days I try is maybe 2 hours. You'd think that I'd be so wiped out, I couldn't stay up late at all. & I don't, then I wake up after a couple of hours & wham-o - I can't go back to sleep. Hate it! Hate it! Hate it!

Field day was cancelled because of torrential down pours. They spent the day inside the school just saying their good byes. My speech was fruitless. I told them winning wasn't everything, but knowing that you gave it all you had is! I'll try again next year.

I was at an all important business meeting tonight (well, really, a demo from a master with dinner - yahoo!) and one of my fellow consultants & I were chatting about the kids (why is it that we get away from them for a couple of hours & they are all we can talk about???). She gave me, maybe, insight into my Andewd's issue. Maybe, just maybe, he has slight problems with impulse control. It doesn't really fit him well. Then I look it up & a big fat wham-o again - me, it fits ME! Yeah, I won't get into that. Mine's a tad bit more personal than I'd like to share on this public a level. It's a shameful thing for me. He, however, doesn't exhibit the full spectrum of an actual disorder, just maybe the onset (that's a very leery maybe). I want to scrub it out before it becomes a thing. He just doesn't have control over his emotions & he gets angry at the drop of a hat, cries, yells, screeches & squeals. He's acting more like a 4 or 5 year old than his age of 10. These past few weeks, I've given him a little for the good, taken a lot for the bad. This is working for the time being. The fact that he responds almost immediately to the thought of having things taken from him, because now he knows I really mean it (DUH!) is awesome to me. I've told him how proud I am to see him controlling himself better. I give him his figurative pats on the back when he's having a good day. I'll keep the blog posted!

I didn't fully get away from the kiddos, I took Maia with me. I got the best compliment from someone of an earlier, stricter, more composed generation. She said - "Is that your daughter? ... My how well behaved she is! ... I saw her when I came in & then I didn't even know she was here. She's so very sweet, too." Then I heard it from 2 other people. My girl! I luff her to bits! I know it will all change when she gets older, but I can really enjoy it now. She's amazing!

The birds are chirping and, quickly, before I (hopefully) fade away, there was an injured young birdie in our front yard the other day. Our neighbor almost ran it over with his mower (it fell out of a tree). My kids were worried about it getting eaten by the local cats. We put it in a box and I called a friend of mine who does a lot for injured animals. She suggested we put it out of it's misery (there is now way I could...ever!) because, it's not demonstrative with pain issues, the poor little thing had its eye & part of its beak & tail taken out by the mower. She told me it would probably die anyway. Well, this evening, I felt so bad for it. It was no longer standing & we could see it was struggling. I let the kids say good-bye (the Princess was absolutely heart broken) and explained it was a part of nature. Today was a long day. Chirping birds, maybe I can sleep now.

Trial and error

As I've mentioned, I've tried several things to help Dew understand his responsibility in his behavior. He's getting better & some days are fabulous & some are not. We've been trying a new thing & for the first few days it was holding up pretty well. The last 2 days were a testament to needing to change our strategy, constantly. As with every other thing we've tried, this one fell to the way side early. Incentive doesn't work; charting doesn't work; praise doesn't work; restriction doesn't work. All of those things have been tried, some several times. They all only work for a short while. As I write this, I'm thinking, maybe I didn't give them enough time to fully play themselves out. Some of them I did give several months to. I still practice praise today.

While we all know all kids benefit from consistency, I've confessed my inability (or laziness, it depends on who you ask) to remain consistent. I've never been, with anything except inconsistency. & I have to say the Dew is my one child with whom I've been most consistent.

Sometimes I feel like he gets the brunt of my parental frustration. To be honest, he's probably right in feeling that. Whenever we hear anything going on with him when we're not in the room - it's his name we call out. Once in a while it's Kyle's name. If I ask myself why, it's because his behavior is so frustrating and a lot of the time he is the instigator. How do we get it across to him that he will NOT always get his way & that as a kid, he'll get his way a lot less. When he's an adult, he can get his way if he works for it. And that's his biggest deal. He wants his way ALL the time! I know - like every other kid on the planet. Thing is, every other kid on the planet doesn't cry, whine, squeal, stomp every single time they don't get their way. He's been doing it since he was 3 - he's 10 now.

My other kids didn't & don't do this.

The Princess (and I LOVE calling her that because she has been one - in a positive way. And she is a fluffy fart - the most gassy baby I've ever known, grown into a gassy little girl who is now modest, so the gas can upset her sometimes...) is an over achiever so far. She has so many more good days than bad & usually, it isn't a bad day, it's a bad few minutes. I can see how the positive feedback she gets so much more often will weigh on the Dewd. How do you explain to a kid that "she's not better than you, she just acts better than you"? I've never tried because I don't want him to feel like he is just bad. I do tell him he likes to make trouble, though. It really seems that way.

So, today I asked him to list (like pros & cons) his positive & negative behaviors. He could only think of negatives. That tells me that's what he has on his mind - most of the time. The negative. I had to help him with the positive. As we were listing those positives, his mood did lighten. I do praise him nearly every time he does something I ask without a fight. I praise him when he listens the first time & when he's very helpful. I praise him when the kids play well together. I always hope that the positive will make him feel so good, he'll want it more.

We're going to put up Dew's affirmations around the house. I don't know if that will work, but we are going to try. Affirmations & messages to "stop & think".

*sigh*