New School Year Anxiety

On the home front, we have a very nervous Movie Man entering middle school.  So nervous, in fact, we took another trip to his pediatric psych.  Hopefully we have the right solutions and we will avoid what we have gone through for many years.


Anxiety is a brutal condition and it effects so many of our students.  It can look like conduct disorder, opposition, ADHD, under achiever.  When we treat it as anything but anxiety we make things worse for our students.  As teachers, we can destroy them and make taking learning risks impossible for them.


Superman keeps telling me he is a "home kid" meaning he would rather be at home than anywhere else.  In his pajamas.  I see his point.  He is worried about 5th grade.  He is already convinced it will be very hard.  And it will be.  As the kids get older there is more sit and get, more listening, more verbiage.  Kids with Autism don't learn as effectively as they could in this sort of environment.  And what that looks like is a kiddo who is below average and oppositional and maybe ADHD.   Sensory issues are exacerbated when they have to attend to verbiage for too long. Superman is also on the throes of a worry perseveration about weather.  And of course, stormy rains are expected for the next few days.  


So, to all the teachers out there... I know you all have butterflies just like your students.  Be mindful of what feelings behaviors are masking and that most often they are simply a way of coping.  


School has become less therapeutic, less child centered.  And it is not because teachers are less caring.  It is because all the suits in the world are misguided and since they have all the power, THEY are the reason so many kids are experiencing more and more stress in school.


I love teachers.  May you all have a wonderful start to this new school year.  Use compassion, have fun, and enjoy the kids parents turn over to your care.  

On The Home Front

Summer is here.  The kitchen is open 24/7.  Soggy pool towels and swimming trunks litter the kitchen and bedroom floors.  The dog is smellier.   New reasons to loathe my body as more parts are exposed because wearing a wool sweater to the pool doesn't work.  The noise level is much increased as the boys are annoying each other for sport.  


Movie Man hit a wall when summer school started.  It was ugly.  His anxiety is debilitating and as his mother it is time to find more aggressive and therapeutic approaches to relieve his pain.  I signed him up for two summer school classes at the middle school he will attending next fall.  The thought was that time spent this summer in his new school would help alleviate some anxiety in the fall.  I carefully chose nonacademic classes so he could find ways to shine and demonstrate his love and knowledge of things he has skills.  So Movie Man is taking Leadership in Film and Digital Editing.  Perfect for him, right?


Nope.  Hub and I have had to literally pull him out of bed, carry him to the shower, put him in the shower and dress him more than once.  Movie Man gets so irrational he is unable to even express his worries.  It is all just a bundle of intensely uncomfortable feelings he has no language for, no maturity to understand.  All he knows is that he has to fly.  Adapt, move on or die.  Flight or fight.  Hide under your bed, make outrageous emotionally charged statements in hopes your parents will feel so sorry for you they will let you quit or run away.  


Well, none of it worked.  While my heart broke for him, I knew I had to see him through it to the the other side.  I had to show him I believed he would be OK.  I had to show him he could do it.  


So after days of very troubled and upsetting mornings, he now goes off to summer school barely on time, but anxiety free.  With patient persistence and acute observation and quick calls to his teachers to check in so we could correct Movie Man's perceptions of what was going on, we were able to learn more about Movie Man.  His learning disability and processing speed make him feel he is going to miss important information.  And he does miss important information.  But once he has the information he needs, he is very capable, insightful and a wonderful contributor to his classes.  It is that space between what the teacher says and when Movie Man is supposed to respond or perform that he gets lost in the abyss of anxiety.  The anxiety then makes it impossible to listen and understand.  The cycle is relentless.  It is debilitating.  It is paralyzing.


Add to the summer to do list.... get a good cognitive behavioral therapist for Movie Man and a good pediatric psych for a medication consultation.


Superman is now taking piano lessons from a lady in the neighborhood.  He looks so absolutely autistic when taking his piano lessons.  Parent Smackdown!  All that autism affect kicks in when he is in a new place and it is not pleasant to watch.  But, I am learning how to help him.  I sit next to him in his lessons and the teacher is a dear.  She is willing to stick with it, wants to learn how to help him, and is very flexible.  I love the methods she uses and we are sticking with it.  30 minutes is too long.  So I take the visual timer with us to the lessons and set it for 20 minutes and put it on the piano.  We practice in bits and pieces throughout the day in short little blips.  I have learned that once Superman is shown what to do, he does it flawlessly.  It will be slow going.  It will be challenging. We will all benefit.


And best of all... Movie Man and Superman can be left alone for up to 2 hours!!!!!  Oh the freedom!  


I am off to lunch with my best friend.  The boys are engrossed in making a movie.  I know they will call me a hundred times while I am away.  That's OK.  We are clearly moving forward and that is cause for real celebration.

Anxiety Prevails and The Lines Blur

Yikes.  Went to an after school theater activity with my kids.  Movie Man tried to skate past me to get out of attending.  He went last week and participated only after I caught him trying to leave the building without attending. So what's the big deal?  Why not let him skip out?  What is my problem? Well, I paid 85 bucks per kid to do this for a semester, and Movie Man begged me repeatedly to sign him up.  By early December, they put on a production.  He wanted to be on stage. Now, a handful of schools are included and my guess is a total of about 125 kids are involved.  Obviously the prime parts are out of reach for my two kiddies.  Thank God.  We don't need any more stress from having to MEMORIZE! lines.  


Anyway, as the rapidly paced activities were taking place, I glanced up from my ed leadership text to see how my kids were doing.  I really wish I had not.  It was this large circle activity where the kids take turns running up to another kiddo and say their name, that kid says their name back, then runs across the circle to say their name to another kid.  Guess whose kids NEVER got approached?  I watched them get smaller and smaller and could read their faces quite clearly.  They were hurt and they were withdrawing.


OK.  My kids are introverts, but they are not what other kids would identify as weird by appearance.  They dress hip, have hip hair cuts, but they exude introvertism.  They  are not jump- into- the- crowd- and- make- it- work kind of kids.  Even after that, Superman got up and auditioned!  My props to Superman!  


However, Movie Man told me on the walk home he almost threw up while we were there and he really does not want to go back.  He was miserable.  Really miserable.  So, even though he raised a HUGE stink and insisted I sign him up, and even though I paid, I am going to let him out of it.  He has an anxiety disorder and this serves no purpose.


Parenting with grace means I need to truly embrace all that my children are and are not.  They don't like sports, but they kick ass in Beatles Rock Band.  They don't invite friends over and friends don't invite them over, but they are good and caring little men.  They like their time at home left to their own devices.  This is hard in our society; having this kind of kid.  So, that excruciatingly painful hour of watching my kids in activities that others thrive in was yet another parent smack down.


Now about school...or continuing the sage.  RT (replacement teacher) has done more dirty dog things to younger teachers and I now see that my administrator is between a rock and hard place.  RT is evil.  My parapros are afraid of her, my old students are afraid of her. This not good.  My principal sent a message to me through one of my dearest friends who still works at my school.  The message was that she adored me and wanted me back next year.


I guess that you don't need to be an administrator to be on The Dark Side. Maybe, just maybe, some of the teachers are on a dark side of sorts and put the administrators in really difficult positions that require certain action and that can interpreted as Dark Side moves.


Oh dear, the lines are starting to blur already and I am only in this admin program 5 weeks.