Well, now that we finally went to our appointment at the prestigious neuro-developmental center in Baltimore and endured the two-hour analysis of our son, we learn that he suffers from.....nothing. Difficult Child Syndrome. Parenting Effectiveness Deficit Disorder. Something along those lines.
They say he's normal. So, why do I still feel that nagging concern at the back of my mind like you get when you're on a flight to Orlando and can't remember if you unplugged the iron before you left? I just don't think I managed to communicate my concerns. At one point, the psychologist (or whatever her title actually is) asked how I would discipline him if he kicked someone. I didn't answer that effectively, mostly because he doesn't go around kicking people. I think when I said, "I'm not really sure
what I would do...", she figured she had arrived at the problem. Just teach these people how to manage a 3-year-old and everything will be fine.
I knew it was going wrong when she was describing a Time-Out method and stated that, "Struggling against a time-out shouldn't continue beyond about three times with this method." HAAAAAA! If Mason's behavior shaped up in ANY respect after the third time of managing the problem, it would be a miracle! That was the whole point of why I think there's a problem!
I was also disquieted when I read the report, which states, "Mason's parents feel that he is a much more difficult child to raise than their other two children." This is true, but is not the point! A more accurate statement would have been, "Mason's parents feel that he is a much more difficult child to raise THAN MOST."
Her phone number is on the bottom of the report, along with an invitation to contact her "anytime". I'm tempted. But I also just want to forget about it for now.
I feel like I wasted time off on rabbit trails about time-outs and how to do them effectively when I should have been telling her every single wacky thing he does that I can think of. Why do I still have to heed the "Choking Hazard: Not for Children Under 3 Years of Age" warning? Can't give Mason small pieces! Why can't he play with toys that have more than, say, six pieces? In 3 minutes or less, he will throw them pointlessly all over the place. Why do I still give him mostly board books? Because he destroys books with paper pages! Why does he shout out for no apparent reason? Sometimes "obscenely"; i.e., 'Poopies!' Why does he relish the dog food? Why does he draw on his face? Why does he eat crayons? Why did I find him with pushpins in his mouth a week ago? Why does he cry about the same things a zillion times, even though he knows it will change nothing? Why does he binge or starve like Ashley Olsen, rather than just eat a little food at each meal?
I feel quite lost about the whole thing. I'm glad he's not considered on the autism spectrum. I'm pretty amazed they didn't pin him with ADHD. I'm relieved they didn't have their prescription pad handy. But I'm frustrated to have no explanation for Mason's behavior. I'm left again to gritting through it, waiting for him to grow out of it and a improving my discipline technique, as if I haven't been disciplining him all along.
Two good things that came out of the appointment: 1) I know he is intellectually normal; and 2) I discovered how much he likes to have a useful job. She encouraged me to give him work to do. This is most definitely good for him. If he puts all the napkins in the hamper after dinner and I tell him what a good helper he is, he is radiant. Pity I can't do that ten hours a day.
He is so blessed cute with those blue eyes like early April mornings. But, God is he exhausting! This is my one, rare admission about something with homeschooling being hard. It is hard to occupy him in a meaningful way while we're doing schoolwork, because he has the attention span of a gnat. I could spend 17 minutes getting him set up to paint the next poster paint masterpiece, but it's only buying me three minutes of actual freedom. And then I have to clean up. Except that today, I was doing this "give him a job" strategy, so I let him waste a load of paper towels cleaning up his spilled murky water himself.
It makes me burn with curiosity about the Duggars, or other families even a mere half the size at eight homeschooling kids. Yeah, I know they have the whole "buddy system" and that Maxwell Chart from Hell hanging on the wall that tells everybody what they are supposed to be doing at a given time. But, honestly, out of 17 kids, didn't they get a hard one along the line? I only have two other children to help and they mostly do their main work independently. But still. Kyla needs me sitting right with her for math at the moment. And Collin needs that for English. And Mason needs some sort of intervention every blessed nanosecond. How do the Duggars do it? Maybe when the last kid is up and out, if they can still write, they will explain it all. But by then it will be moot for me, darn it.
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