Learning and Growing
Today was far less interrupted than yesterday, for which I am grateful. Link came home happy for the first time since school started. His math teacher put some accommodations into place for him and we have a meeting with an administrator on Friday to figure out what else needs to be done. We’ve finally settled into enough of a routine that we can see which troubles were adaptation issues that go away by themselves and which were going to be ongoing challenges.
I also spoke with Patch’s teacher. She taught Gleek two years ago and this fall I told her that Patch was quite different. Today she says she sees more similarities than differences, which makes sense to me. It is like the way that people say all my children look alike, but they look very distinct to me. My eye tunes out the similarities. So the teacher and I are both seeing Patch’s low-level anxiety. We intend to watch it and I need to take some steps at home to help Patch feel in control. I don’t think we’ll see anything like the intensity we saw from Gleek, because: differences. I just have things to keep an eye on.
Gleek read a sad book today, one that affected her mood. It was a literary type book that explores real-world problems and doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending. She says she is glad that she read it. I can see how the sadness in the book reached in and pulled up some of the sadnesses that she has inside, the ones she’s been ignoring because life is pretty easy for her right now. I know we still have things to work on with her. She needs solid skills for managing anxiety and stress. This gives me the first hint of how we’re going to find and address those needs while life is happy. Time for me to find the right books. Ramona the Pest helped her in kindergarten, we’ll find another book for now.
After two weeks of college happiness Kiki hit her first snag. She miscalculated her financial resources and needed to call home for help sorting it out. Truth is that she’d already solved the problem before calling, she just needed someone to double check and make sure her solutions were good. It is the same sort of double-check that Howard and I give to each other all the time. So she’s having fun and she likes having adult freedom, but sometimes adulthood is scary and she misses home. Learning how to be an adult is a large portion of what I expect she’ll learn in college this year.
I managed to end my day with more order than I began it, which is a first for the month of September. Howard spent the day in the land of painful charlie horses, which was not our favorite. Here’s hoping tomorrow can be less charliehorsey and more get stuff done.