I can hardly believe it has been five months since my last update!  I had made one attempt at summer’s end, but the site was giving me trouble and I never got back to it.  We had a busy summer with the boys – lots of swimming and outdoor stuff (when weather permitted – some days were just too darned hot!).  We also sent them to a day camp three days a week for the month of July.  While terribly expensive for us, it proved to be well worth every penny!  They had a BLAST!  It was reminiscent of the day camps I went to as a kid.  Rick never got to do that sort of stuff so didn’t understand the great outlet it provides for kids.  They got to ride horses, learn about archery, swim, climb rock walls, and create crafts (they still do lanyards – remember those?), ride go-carts, even experience a zip line.  It was GREAT for them!

We’d also had some growing pains as Zack has been more of a challenge to parent.  On the days the boys were home he was often bored.  With my work schedule I come home exhausted and don’t have much energy to play or keep them occupied.  It was tough.  One evening, with school looming on the horizon, we told the boys it was bed time.  Zack made a fuss and said he hated being a kid and wished he was an adult so he didn’t have to be told when to go to sleep.  We thought that was very telling.  He wants to be one of the adults. 

We’ve found our patience to be rather short with him even now, but we are also starting to see him understand that we take our job of teaching him very seriously, and that our love for him is solid.  We’ve had a lot of chats about respecting others, keeping his voice down, doing as we say even if he doesn’t want to.  It has just felt like one battle after another – exhausting.  Alek, on the other hand, has been observing what works and what doesn’t, and we’ve been amazed at how he’s picked up on the cues and sees the positive and negative responses Zack had experienced based on his behavior.

However as the school year has progressed new challenges have come up.  Zack was invited again to participate in ‘Homework club’ twice a week after school.  It is an opportunity for him to get is work done at school and come home with some free time. He is also learning to play the Clarinet as he has joined the school Orchestra this year.  He doesn’t practice as much as I would like but he’s learning his parts rather quickly.  I’ll stay on him, and he’s starting to appreciate the lessons in music.  However he has had two incidents during homework club that have created some commotion.  First, I should mention that he expressed exasperation at being put back into homework club (generally kids who could benefit from a smidge of additional support are put in there – while he is doing tremendously in school, his ELL status (English Language Learner) provides him the opportunity to participate in programs such as this – we jump at any opportunity presented) and said he did not want to do it.  So, during one afternoon he and another kid went to the bathroom together.  The kid was joking around in his stall and said he wasn’t really going to the bathroom.  Zack decided to check, stood up on the toilet in his own stall, and peered over the top to the other kid’s stall.  Naturally the principal walked in at precisely that moment.  As there is no tolerance for such things at the school Zack got in big trouble.  But some great stuff came out of it:

First, the kid understood it was harmless and told the principal as such. 

Second, Zack came clean as soon as he got in the car.

Finally, it opened a dialogue to discuss proper behavior, boundaries, and respect for the privacy of others.

He could have gotten expelled.  He was lucky.  The other incident occurred just last week when he decided to be a jokester and disrupted everyone in Homework Club by acting silly and misbehaving.  I think he thought he was being funny.  The instructor clearly did not agree, and this time he didn’t tell anyone.  I got a call from him the following day when his teacher was made aware of his antics.  Rick and I saw this as an opportunity.  We decided rather than take away his soccer (check the next entry about soccer) or computer or other privileges, we would make the punishment fit the crime.  With the fall dance just a couple of days away, we decided since he could not behave during the work time at school, he couldn’t enjoy the rewards of the fun times scheduled for school.  In addition to being benched for the week (no recess) he missed the dance.  That really hit home.  It’s all a learning process. 

But besides the discipline, Zack is growing in leaps and bounds.  We are seeing him understand little by little what it means to be compassionate to others, and how important it is to be responsible and accountable.  He is getting to be a big kid inside and out and we are proud of his progress and accomplishments.

Alek has since developed quite a mouth on him.  As this post is getting quite lengthy, I’ll talk about Alek in more detail in my next entry.

Thanks for checking back.  Sorry to have been away so long.  Life got real crazy there for a while.

Hope all is well,

B.J.