David Weekly, V3 - 26

David's first day of school went really well! I asked him what he ate for lunch, and he says, "well, I thought about eating the green beans, but I just decided to eat the cake..." Naturally, I told him he needs to eat more than just the cake. David has decided this: "I don't like kindergarten food." So now, I'm packing his lunch. Peanut butter and jelly every day, but he never eats the fruit that I send. What has to happen for him to eat more of his lunch? Also, I did take a few pictures of him on his first day of school.

While David was gone to Amanda's, I received very little information regarding him, what he was doing, what his routines were, etc. It was distressing to not really get a lot of information, especially hearing from David long after the fact that he got kicked out of one of the summer camps he seems have been going to. So, I asked for her for information on what they did for 5 weeks, what his routines were, etc. I was not really prepared for the response I got. It bordered on the paranoid, with her accusing me of having some other motive than simple curiosity for asking all the questions I did. So I've struggled over the last few weeks about how to handle this. I need to keep writing the DW, but I realize now that I can no longer share it with her, nor with any of her family. I don't know if they'll miss it, or if they even read it. I will soldier on, and keep writing about David, in all his wonderfulness and challenge.

David had his first swim lesson on Wednesday, September the 8th, at the YMCA. That morning, he was worried that I would forget his swim trunks, so he made sure I had them before we left for school. Then he was asking if we were going to the swim lesson instead of school. He also told me that he had some kind of swimming something at one of his camps, but I wasn't able to make sense out of it. I would ask Amanda, but she refuses to tell me anything about what happened w/ David in Missouri, making some claim to privacy. So I just won't know.

At the swim lesson, we got rained out. We were there for about 15 min, actually, before the rain and thunder and lightning really started. On the way home, it was a vocabulary lesson! "It's raining," David says. We were making distinctions between "hard rain" vs. "light rain" vs. "sprinkling". He was pretty thorough about it, too.

Last Friday (Sept 3), I had an appointment with the guidance counselor, and Ms. Perez, to discuss David's behavior. He got a red one day, and I realized that I need to work with the teacher and the counselor early to figure out his behavior issues. I think part of it is simply delayed adjustment time after having been with his mom. He's been drawing pictures in school, and they have his Sissy in them. He seems to be missing her. We're going to be working on Respect, as Ms. Perez says that's a big thing in her classroom, and I also will be asking Learning Space to be consistent with that message. Naturally, I look to reinforce this at home, too. The GC speculates that some of his behavior issues may be from bullying or teasing (for example, David being told by another boy that he doesn't like dinosaurs, even though he obviously does), and his only way of dealing with it is to smack the other kid. Ms. Nadine says that David will sit in time out, then go hit the other kid after time out is over, if he feels that he hasn't yet settled the score. Ms. Perez says that the behavior she's seen doesn't appear to be malicious. The GC said she may try to spend some time with him after observing him in class, to see what else she might suggest. She's new, and when I asked her if she had any book recommendations, she had none. She did suggest also, that we target specific behaviors, which we're doing now anyway. She was pleased at the calendar system we have to keep track of what's going on.

Meanwhile, Ms Perez's discipline system is: green, no warnings; orange, one or two warnings; yellow, three warnings; red - lots of trouble, serious disrespect. I see every day what his behavior looks like. It is a bit more nuanced that good day/bad day, so I'm having trouble figuring out a "reward" for particular behaviors, if it's not green. The other problem is that he now has two different sources of both good and bad behavior, since, for example, he got a green at kindergarten, and then had a Very Bad Day at Learning Space. How do I handle that? I don't know.

Thursday, David got into a major fight at daycare, so much that he got a scratch on his face, and an incident report to go with it. I don't know what to do about his behavior. Last week I had to get him out of daycare, because Ms. Nadine couldn't handle him. This is the first time that this has happened. She has been so wonderful to be dealing with his major behavior issues. In spite of that, I may have to move him. There's only so much she can tolerate. I may move him anyway, since it may also just be the environment. I ask him why he hits, and he blames it on his brain, or his body, as if they are separate from him...or he just says, "I don't know." I talk to David a lot about his behavior. I really put him through the ringer on the day I had to leave work early to get him. We got home and he stay in his room for a very long time, until he figured out how to answer my questions, about why, why, why...and give me details about it...and then he fell asleep, and slept for 14 hours. At one point, he did wake up for about 30 minutes. I fed him some dinner, and then back to sleep he went.

Another challenge we have is genuine, true to life, homework. He has a list of 15 things, of which he must do 10, during the month of September. They are things like, "Try to write a sentence with the word 'can' in it." Or, "Draw four things that begin with the letter A." David then picked Apple, Allosaurus, Ankylosaurus, and Alligator. He had to write the words, too. I made him get one of his dinosaur books with the dino names, so he could spell them the right way. It was a struggle, though, to get him to attempt to draw anything. But hey, one assignment down, 9 to go, right?

There is so much that's happend in two weeks, and I know I'm missing a lot of it. I guess I should talk about his new routine in the mornings now: either I will awaken him, or he wakes himself up. We change into that day's clothes (these last two weeks we have a list of colors to wear for that day, as part of a lesson in school - we refer to it every day, and occasionally argue about what day it is, since Ms Perez got the days and dates a bit mixed up. David reads the list without letting on that he is, which is part of why we argue), and he tells me what kind of cereal he wants to eat for breakfast. About 20 min later, we're out the door, about 7:45. It's about 10 min from the house to the school. He sometimes tells me he wants me to drop him off, but then at the last minute says "walk me in." So we walk in every day, I leave him at the door. He goes in the room, and POOF! I don't exist.

So that's two weeks, with most of one week missing. I think I've also decided to go back to Fridays as the release date of this, as it seems to make more sense to me, and gives me less of an excuse to put it off.