I Don’t Know How You Do It…
I don’t know if any of you have really noticed but I have actually been on vacation this past week.
Ah, vacation.
I creatively posted all of my work before I left so that no one would know that I was gone (and so that I could maintain the facade of the organized mom). In reality I was either driving through the breathtaking Georgia mountains or sitting by our friend’s swimming pool watching AJ splash around.
Happy Hours came too soon every day and the Olympics ended way past my bedtime but my husband, bless his heart, let me sleep in every morning. We visited with my husband’s 94 year old grandfather, his brother and his family, and simply relaxed for a week.
Now, back at home in Chicago (after a brief stop north of Detroit to pick up a dear friend) we are getting back into the swing of things…laundry, discipline, schedules. AJ is back to his crazy self because we ran out of yeast medicine, because we have a visitor for the week, and because there is no real strict schedule until school starts next week.
At dinner this evening our visitor, a 16-year-old who I taught back when she was in 7th grade, told me she didn’t know how we did it (put up with him, she meant). She, of course, didn’t mean it in any derogatory way but it had been a trying two days for us and her.
He had just finished dinner with us, screaming all the while to try to gain back the attention we were paying to her. He had continuously splashed her while she tried playing in the pool with him, he had poked her in the eye, had dug his nails into her arm several times, and had hit her. Yes, a normal day for us.
For her? She had lost her patience and gone to hide. We could not hide so we took turns dealing with him (and called the pharmacy to refill the medication because we know that is one reason for his behavior).
She saw me lose my patience several times. He went into time out more than several times. I went to take a nap while my husband watched the Olympics with him.
It is hard dealing with him some days, especially when he is hyper and noncompliant. He throws things into the air, runs away when you ask him to come to you, giggles when you ask him to listen, screams and talks back, etc. A lot of it is little boy stuff but a lot of it he can’t control and does not understand that it is not acceptable. He simply does not understand that running into the parking lot without an adult is not safe. However, when he has his yeast medication he is totally in control.
