Reading to my child

I LOVE LOVE reading with and to my child. Each night he is supposed to read me one book and then I read 2 and then Doug reads him to sleep. (No he will not self soothe - that is a whole other topic - suffice it that this works for now).  

Here is the stress that happens....  He gets in bed and then argues & fights with me about reading.  He wants me to read one page, he a page. Then 2 pages. Then he counts words. Then it is a battle over how many words or pages, etc. It frustrates the crap out of me. I know he can do it. The process stresses me out incredibly bad. 

I LOVE the time when we can read. We sit together.  He is snugly when generally he shy's away from much physical contact.  He is generally calm because he likes to hear books.  Making him read to me disrupts that peace and quality time.  We have been doing it since school started.... this battle.  The best solution is not to force him to read to me at night.  Sure, it seems like having this battle after school or before dinner or ANY other time is a good solution.  Yet, he just gets angry about it.  I have calmly and patiently just stuck firm to "You read one book to mom and I will then read to you".  To absolutely no avail.  It has just become a battle royal.  

Tonight so horrible that I walked out. No kisses. No book to him. Just anger & frustration. And it made us both cry.  I never went back in and Doug listened to his book and then read him to sleep.  

And I sit here looking at these 2 bags of books, "dolch list" and the signatures needed on all of it and I am overwhelmed at how I am failing him by not FORCING him to practice at home.  All of this is sent home so we can practice and work with him and right now it is just stressing and overwhelming us.  I am failing to help him advance in language comprehension and ability to read.  Conversely, I am failing to enjoy the moments with him as he just enjoys being read to and not straining his brain to look at the words. 

And honest to goodness at this moment I wonder if maybe, just maybe, he is NOT ready to accept the amount information at the speed it has to be digested and we should somehow slow down and individualize his learning.  I sit here in tears about how we fail to allow him to tackle things when he is ready.  We historically allowed him to get where he needed to be when he was ready for it... school makes that impossible... he has to get where he needs to be when "the system" deems him ready.  And I feel like there is no way I do him justice because we struggle with practicing at home.  

We recognize he works hard all day to hold it together and learn.  His amazing teacher provides a rich and active learning environment and helps all the students to be the best they can and for all of these littles, it is REALLY hard work!!  For Espen, school is hard work ~ just keeping it together!  We have down time and quiet space for him to play, be physically active and use the parts of his body he worked to control all day.  We know he accepts information differently.  But to survive we encourage and force him to still "work" when he is home. He does homework, flashcards and reads.  Often, it does not end well.   

But tonight SUCKED. And that moment I can not get back. That moment when he just wanted to lay next to me and hear the book. That moment is a bitter reminder of how I am failing my child - because we must practice in order to succeed and meet the grade.  We fail him by forcing him to read when reading causes him stress and anxiety.  We fail as parents by taking away that moment he loves and forcing him to read.  We are helping him to hate books.  This .... tonight ... it feels like failure because mommy walked out.... 

hard afternoons

Yesterday was a hard afternoon.  It was as if my child became possessed.  Behaviors I have not seen for a long time surfaced.  It was one of those afternoons when I am not sure how we will make it and terrified at how we can "contain" it.  And yet the freaky things are off set by super amazing things which puts us on a tremendous roller coaster.

When you read that you may think about your worst moment with your "typical" child.  Or you may think I am an exaggerating mom with need for structure and rules. Or you may think you raised your own kids and how hard is it really.  Or you may not have kids and be thinking WOW.  It doesn't matter what you may be thinking, believe me when I say... IT was a HARD afternoon.  And it is not atypical for these types of things to happen but I have had them minimized for quite some time.

A blurry image of a frantic child.

It started as a pleasant walk home on a warm November day.  He found and pocketed an open and unfinished bag of Halloween candy.  The only way to get it from him was to manhandle him and probably chase him on the street so I chose to let him carry it home in his pocket.  Then I traded him a fresh bag for the opened one.  There is not a mom alive that would allow her child to eat something open and found.  But Espen would have defiantly just eaten it while racing away from me had I demanded that little bag.  A trade was wise ~ he received a fresh treat size bag of M&M's. And then all hell really broke loose.

Suddenly he was the greatest child flaring rapidly to the worst beast alive.  He was volatile and explosive.  Safety planning was suddenly out the door.  Screaming and thrashing at me and with a neighbor who was patiently trying to play with him.  It went so wonky that he dug up a worm and ate it in demonstration mode and then tore a fence picket right off the fence.  The brute strength and excitement over the sound and feel of that break lite up his face in a moment of extreme joy.  He was racing with out heed into the street and bouncing from topic to topic at warp speed, allowing no time for anyone to answer or think.  He climbed the tree to the outer most branch and balanced on one foot, swaying precariously in the wind about 40 feet off the ground.

In between those moments of wild he was incredibly talented with bike stunts, jokes and handstands. He was kind and brought the neighbors trash cans to her garage so they did not blow.  He was curious about the neighbors life and skater video.  He was gregarious and charming.  Until suddenly he wasn't.

I finally had to tell the neighbor it was time to go and literally tackle my screaming thrashing child to the ground and hold his little hand to get him inside.  Where he crashed into the couch throwing his shoes straight at me.  After a few moments in the quiet still house, he slowly became calmer and quieter.

He was starving.  He was tired.  He was mindlessly out of control.  And as I sat quietly after bedtime, exhausted I thought there was not much "thought" to him and the impulsiveness was strongly the leader of his mind.  And I thought about how thankful I am that he can maintain some reason of control all through his day because these behaviors are lessened at school.  They are lessened because I give him that tool that helps him succeed ~ the medication.  I thought about that small treat size bag of candy and the amazing colors he consumed and how quickly afterwards he deteriorated. (It is a small theory).  

How hard it must be for my child to be 100% mindful all day, learn, think, control, listen, absorb, remember... it must be terribly difficult.  Hard to maintain with peers bumping, talking, challenging, jostling all day long. Once the medication wears out and he is left to his own natural devices and he is allowed even that one treat bag of delicious colorful candy, the control slips quickly away.  The impulsive, dangerous, frantic mood swings occur leaving everyone in the path pummeled with fright, hysteria and exhaustion.  Typically the meds wear off and we have challenges but not of these magnitudes.

We made it.  We face a new day with new challenges.  We calm down.  We pray.  We pull out the books and talk about the things that can be better, different and helpful.  We choose just one thing we can not do on the new day... today he will not eat worms or bugs or things he finds on the ground.  It is that small thing that we have to work on ~ every single day.