Dumb damage

Two things have been sliding towards ineffibility lately: me injuring myself and me breaking something expensive. One happened Thursday, the other this morning.

I had been on the tail end of the bronchitis when Seamus brought home a headcold that turned to post-nasal drip pretty quickly. Not a problem if I hadn’t already been coughing hard for weeks. On Thursday Seamus and I walked into the cafe I take him to for his post-swimming class hot chocolate. I coughed twice and felt a POP on the left side of my ribcage. I dropped to my knees for a couple of seconds - it hurt that much - and took a couple of breaths trying to figure out what I’d just done. It didn’t hurt to breathe, which reduced the likelihood of a fracture, but pain ran down my ribs from my armpit down to my floating ribs (where I felt the pop), then wrapped around to my back. Given I was in the Alameda Marketplace with my cafe-bound four year old, and that I could breathe and walk, I hit the ATM and got him his chocolate. I told Shay what had happened, told him what we needed to do to get dinner on track for Thursday and Friday, texted Patrick about the injury, then shopped with one hand while Seamus pushed the cart. 

The kid may be a terror, but he is superlative in emergencies.

I got home and got through the evening with half of my torso ignoring the Tylenol and mineral ice I used for the pain. After reading on the Mayo Clinic website that I should lie on the injury if I could, I did, and woke up sore but feeling better until I gingerly attempted to figure out how much mobility I had, felt a weird rubbing sensation, and THEN couldn’t breathe without pain. Enter an advice nurse who thought I was in preterm labor or developing pneumonia, despite my very clear descriptions of what was happening, and for some reason didn’t believe me when I said I’d stopped taking my bronchitis meds because they stopped working. Not quite sure what to do with me, she got me in to see an OB-GYN here on the island my mom came down to drive me there and to help pick up Seamus, which turned out to be a good thing as Patrick got stuck in bridge traffic.

Dr. H checked my lungs and found them to be clear, checked T/M and found him/her active with a good heartbeat, felt my ribcage and said she thought it was a muscular inflammation, and gave me a scrip for Tylenol with codeine. Poor T/M, to be fairly chemical free until the third trimester, and then to get cold meds, steroids, and opiates all in a month. I am grateful to be carrying low and transverse, as 90% of the movement I feel is nowhere near my ribcage. And I’m feeling a LOT of movement. She referred me to the x-ray clinic in Oakland, but said they would call me since they were already closed. Fortunately, I’m feeling a lot better. I’m not lifting anything heavier than the cats, but all I feel is a bit sore when I lie down or get up. 

Good thing, since I dropped and smashed my phone this morning.

Oh look, there's my sense of humor

“I’m going to fire you as my mama!”

“Sorry kiddo, I was elected Mother-for-Life. You may call me ‘Generalissima’.”

“I’ll call you ‘Mama’.”

“That works too.”

I killed Santa

So the behavior has been a slog for most of the last six months. We got a reprieve when Seamus turned four in that he stopped screaming when asked to do a task he could perform, but he still refuses, demands help, and refuses to accept any consequence for his actions. And yeah, I get that cause and effect can be pretty abstract for a kid, I’ve seen in documentaries what kids his age do in other countries as part of the household, and it makes this whole developmental stages thing look pretty damn first world. Add the asking questions then challenging the answers, speaking to us in snotty voices, and I’m wondering if I could send him out to fosterage with Namibian cattleherds, so he has something to actually complain about.

Then the stuff stream ran from his birthday through to New Year’s, and boy, you’d think he’d at least be satisfied with the haul of shit he’s acquired. Oh no. Apparently Santa played rainmaker for all of his friends and he’s completely deprived. Those goddamn Scholastic book catalogs from preschool open evenings of begging for horrible books based on TV show scripts (we’ve gotten a few from other folks, I checked them and confirmed that) with licensed characters. Then he purposely broke the balsa-wood gliders he got as a gift “because I don’t like the ones without rubber bands” without ever opening them - just snapped them in half, rendering them useless for anyone to enjoy. Badgering me for MORE stuff, while not playing with any of his new toys, many or which are open-ended and lovely. And of course, the refusal to take on his role in the household- no dressing himself, no feeding the cats.

Then the last straw: “I’m going to be good…for Santa”.

“For…Santa? You’re going to start making good choices for Santa.”

“Yeah, so he’ll give me LOTS of toys on Christmas.” There may have been some insinuation that he didn’t get enough stuff this year. 

OH HELL NO. We had kept Santa at bay pretty well till last year, when preschool introduced a lot of mainstream stuff we had omitted deliberately. I’ve mentioned St. Nick to Seamus before in the context of giving to others with less than we had, and always pointed out that we had more than enough to amuse and sustain us. But the last half year of tantrums, negotiating and arguing and haggling, always to get his way while he gave nothing in return has worn me down, and the idea that my kid would behave for an imaginary fat guy for an imagined payday is more upsetting than the fact that his classmates’ parents come up to me and tell me how lovely and what a good friend he is to their children while he proclaims to be happy to let our pets starve to death.

“Seamus, Santa isn’t real. He’s a made up story.”

“But he gave me my batteries for my nano-bugs.”

“Nope, that was Dada. We meet all of your needs, kiddo.”

There was some verbiage about how we all do our part to take care of each other and blah blah blah. I’ll be damned if he’s going to keep driving me crazy while thinking some fake dude brought him his toys. Oh no, little man. The pastels you love? and the stuffed tiger? The Babymouse comic? They came from the folks who love and support you and want you to be happy and a fuctional part of our family. Maybe someday you could grok the rest of that memo and join us in making sure we’re all cared for. Start by feeding the goddamn cats.

Screw the goat rodeo, I'm making cabrito

Seamus almost went to school half-naked this morning. I don’t mean in his underpants either, but full-out half naked, as he’d thrown his underpants across the room. He knows how to dress himself, and in fact had been asked several times to dress himself while I made breakfast (smoothies and whole-grain toast with hummus or nut butter, which has improved his mood remarkably over his Trader Joe’s Os, presumably by increasing his fiber and protein intake), but got interrupted several times to “help him”. I reminded him several times that he knew how to dress himself, that I needed to get ready to take him to school, and went back to the kitchen. This was getting irritating - getting him dressed is something I don’t want to do. I know he can dress himself, and he doesn’t have an excuse for not doing it. Patrick dresses him still, but it’s not a fight I’ve been wanting to have. Patrick also endlessly negotiates with him, and it makes my life difficult in a thousand ways.

I finally make breakfast, walk to his room, and he’s locked the door. Which means he knows what he’s doing is unacceptable. I walk around through our room and the bathroom, open the door, and find his clothes flung everywhere, and Seamus hiding in the closet. So now he gets yelled at, clothes thrust in his direction angrily, and late late late I get him to the table, and skip breakfast myself so I can get my own clothes on. All the while he continues to yell out for a sippy cup instead of an open cup, that he’s spilled and I need to clean it (another skill he can actually do), and just general regression of behaviors. I manage to get dressed and my various bronchitis meds in me (I’ve been sick for almost three weeks now) and get him in the car. When I sign him in, we’re twenty minutes late. Not a big deal this year, but worrisome for next year. If we go public, that’s an 8:20 start time. Montessori, an 8:30. And it’s school school, not this play-based, project-oriented pre-K program. 

If it weren’t a school day, I could have waited him out while I did dishes and laundry and fed myself (and because I’m constantly thinking six months out, the baby too), and gotten the at home things done while he ran through his dickery. But getting him anywhere in the mornings is so damn hard. Patrick is always, always much later than I was today. And if it weren’t for the damn morning bell lurking eight months ahead, plus the fact that he hasn’t stopped slamming against boundaries since he started walking, I’d sweat this a lot less. I’d yell less and feel less stressed about either being a shitty parent because of the yelling, or a shitty parent because my kid is constantly late.

For those of you wanting to tell me that he’ll change at five, I tell you now that the only difference between three and four is that I used to have to be two steps ahead of Seamus in order for the day to not involve yelling, and now I have to be five.  The only thing that changes as he gets older is that really basic things keep getting harder as he keeps struggling against them. So fuck off. The only thing that works is to give him no feedback whatsoever, and to wait him out. Which doesn’t work so well when you have to urge a kid through the morning three times a week.

So I’ve made up my mind. Barring some very significant sea change, it’s a gap year at home.

The Kindergarten hunt, part four: transitional Kindergarten?

We had a playdate with two of Shay’s preschool buddies last week. One of the moms teaches third grade in another district, and while we chatted I mentioned the possibility of letting Seamus do a “gap year”. She p’shawed a second, then asked me when his birthday was. I told her (two weeks from the cut-off, which makes him a very young five) and she smiled and said, “hmm, yeah, I can see doing that”. Then she told me that her district is taking part in the transitional kindergarten program passed by the state last year.

The Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2010 set a statewide minimum age for Kindergarten but also created a new grade for kids whose birthdays come a few omnths after the cut-off. Implementation doesn’t appear to be mandatory, and our local district has no mention of it on its website, so I’m guessing it’s not rolling out here. I still need to read the notes of last Fall’s Board of Ed meetings to confirm that, though. Ah well.

I began outlining a slow curriculum for us to follow at home. Right now we’ll review some of the stuff we did over the fall, add a few new things, and continue complementing and expanding what he’s getting at preschool. I’m still thinking of pulling him out after his Pre-K graduation in part to avoid the boredom factor, and we’ll adjust as needed then.