Day: August 3, 2005

About a month ago we had a series of thunderstorms roll through. One storm hit with a bang while the kids were out in the backyard. Or maybe I should say BOOOOM, because it rattled the house. I was in the kitchen and it made me jump. Then I heard the sound of Patches terrified screams dopplering toward me as he fled for the safety of his mommy. This event made a deep impression in his mind. We have frequent conversations about Thunder Monsters even on sunny days.

We live close enough to Hill Air Force Base that we get fairly frequent fly overs by military aircraft. One thing about military craft is that you don’t hear them coming. In fact they deliberately design them so that people won’t hear them coming, but you always hear them leaving. I don’t know what it was that flew over our house this evening. It was really high, and really loud for a very long time. The rumble hit suddenly and slowly tapered away over the course of several minutes. Patches was outside when the first wave of sound rolled over. Again I heard the terrified screams dopplering to the house. He was so scared that he tripped on the deck thus acquiring a scrape and splinters.

Patches is extremely verbal and he always has to talk through an upsetting event. It seems to be part of the way he sorts his experiences and makes sense of them. He had this to say: “The funder monster came and pooped on me! Maked me splinter! Funder monster in sky! And airplane was loud. Funder monster is scawy.” Our conversation reiterated all these points several times, but most upsetting to him was his complete conviction that the thunder monsters pooped on him. My best guess is that there was a physical sensation associated with the onset of the airplane noise, possibly a sonic boom.

At least he knows where to run when he’s scared.

Back in April I wrote about Kiki and Gleek. (Here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2005/04/10/)

The measures did a really good job of improving their relationship. Things were better for almost two months. Then school got out and I stopped working so hard at helping them like each other. Gradually incidents and resentments have piled up until yesterday when I realized that I really need to be paying attention to this again.

The measure that worked best last time around was #3, requiring Kiki to write down 50 things she likes about Gleek. She just has to come up with one thing per day until she has 50. If she can come up with more, great, but she has to find at least one thing. This means that Kiki has to pay attention to the positive aspects of Gleek’s personality. I re-instituted this requirement. I’ll also work some with all the other measures that I listed, particularly making sure that Kiki gets Gleek-free time.

In addition to the things I did last time around I’ve realized that I need to change the way I talk about Gleek to Kiki. Instead of saying “I have trouble with her too.” I need to say “I love it when Gleek…” Thinking positively about people always improves relationships.

School starts in just over two weeks. That is going to shift life around here significantly and I think I can make sure that the shifts are positive. At least I hope to.