Best ever!

Hayley brought home her mid-quarter interim grades and it was her best report card EVER. The academic grading scale is 1 (lowest) through 4 (highest), and she got all 3s. The conduct grading scale is 1 (lowest) through 3 (highest) - she got all 3s there too!

I feel like we finally have her where she should be in school and these sort of grades are going to make her confidence soar.

FHEW!

Checking in…

Things have continued on the upswing with behavior. She seems to be getting more and more control over herself - like she is learning she does have those mental brakes to stop.

Her grades are fairly solid. I’d have liked them higher since she is re-doing this year but the reality is I’d be very thrilled with these grades last year. I just need to remember that and not even remember she had a year of this already - plus this teacher is harder than last year and demands more. Most important she is happy and feeling happy there.

Soccer has started and she is loving being pushed hard. She’s made new friends on the team and loves having home/away jerseys, etc. I think she loves the idea of all the trips to play in tournaments most!

Nine days and counting

Nine days with no punches thrown! I’m so proud of her. It is more than the lack of physical aggression, she is really back to being charming and kind much of the time. When she is back to what I feel is her natural disposition she is funny, helpful and willing to be reasonable.

She has a new friend that she plays with as often as humanly possible. The minute they are home from school, the door is knocking or the phone ringing. They are together so often they’ve eaten dinner together, had evening/afternoon snacks together and roam the streets like a crime fighting duo. They are begging for a sleepover. Very nice parents, live just one street over. Super nice kid who listens, cleans up and is polite.

Of course this is pretty normal stuff for kids but the thing here is the friend is a boy! They are inseparable and play together better than she has played with any other kid. Tonight they played here from 5 to 6pm, then I took them to the pool from 6:30 to 8:00, then they came back here for snacks and he went home about 8:30. Not one argument, just tons of laughter and play.

I’m skittish about this spend the night thing with a boy. Their idea was he would sleep in the guest room but I dunno. He is about 18 months younger and honestly they are a great match in maturity levels right now.

She already has two birthday party invites from girls in her class so clearly repeating didn’t do her any real social harm. I suspect she is happier there because she is getting good grades and on a more natural level emotionally as these kids. Most of her homework is done before she even gets home which is a huge change from last year.

Soccer has started and she is doing well! Three practices a week at 90 minutes each is tough but she loves it. Some of these kids are really excellent and I know they are going to make her better. She is thrilled because they’ll travel some around the state (and SC) for festivals and tournaments.

Another tooth down, another $2; Tunes

Well we had another tooth fairy visit, her seventh to the house! After Hayley’s antics over five of the six teeth she lost, this one was a breeze. She told it was loose one day and came home from school having pushing & poked it out. The tooth fairy increased the money from $1 to $2 and was smart enough to know Hayley was in Mom & Dad’s bed not her own. Fhew, smart tooth fairy.

She is back to being gap toothed some which always cracks me up. She’s so cute. She’s got a braid and beads in her hair that she won’t take out, eventho it has been over 10 days. I’m not going to fight her.

Soccer starts this evening and she is all excited, really pumped up. She actually RAN today to get used to the heat. It was her own suggestion. She has been eating so well and being so active, she’s ready for the season.

The big excitement is I’m taking her and a friend to Walnut Creek (the local big amphitheater) for a concert on the 22nd - from High School Musical and star of Jump In Corbin Bleu , Drake Bell from Drake & Josh and Ally & AJ from Disney. If you know young kids, High School Musical is so insanely popular it blows your mind. And they all love Drake and Josh on Nick, the two mismatched step-brothers who get into all sorts of antics. Personally I’m more of a Josh fan but they all love the dreamy musician Drake.

They don’t care much for Ally & AJ so we’ll leave when they go on - it is a school night. But we’ve got premier parking access so we can get in and out quick and her friend is spending the night, so we’ll come right home and put the kids to bed.

I cleared it with her friend’s mom first - I hate to put parents in positions they don’t want to be in and when Hayley called her friend to tell them about it, they were screaming for Corbin and Drake. I love taking her to concerts, this will be her third but the first I’ve been completely sure will be appropriate from the music to the fans (meaning no doobie smokers like at Steely Dan). These acts are good clean Disney/Nickelodeon stars who happen to be pretty good singers and actors. I actually enjoy some of these songs.

Opening the final door

I had good talks with Hayley’s birthmom G and birthgrandmother Nana on Sunday. I wish there were better words then “birth” for that designation. I only use them so people understand what I’m saying but part of me wishes there was a way to do that and make it seem less of a big deal. I know some people use ‘first’ mom and I do sometimes. But Hayley tends towards just calling her birthmom by her given name, Mom or Momma G.

Regardless of all of that, I’ve made the decision to let G see Hayley in the fall. G wanted to do it sooner but I wanted it to be when Hayley is tracked out of school and can really decompress from it all. Hayley usually is fine on the way back from visiting birthfamily but eventually her confusion, anger or whatever seeps out.

G has done all the things I asked of her. She has observed the boundaries, she has communicated regularly along the guidelines I set up and been respectful of our family. I’ve tried to be respectful of her role in Hayley’s life, which is always going to be there. Considering G and I weren’t even talking last year, this has been a really solid development. We can actually have pleasant conversations about the kids and life. This chat she even put her youngest (Hayley’s half-sister F) on the phone with me since I met her on a visit.

I really hope that is how things can be. I know at times G will not agree with how we are raising Hayley and I know she knows I didn’t agree with some things that happened in the past. But since those are both given in the equation, I’m hoping we can just avoid those pitfalls. I think it would benefit Hayley to see both of her moms get along. I’m not looking for a new best pal or anything but I don’t want Hayley to feel any tension.

However I have to admit I’m scared. I’m scared of Hayley feeling cheated, I’m scared of Hayley comparing us and me coming up short. I’m scared of sharing her. Being scared never stopped me from doing anything but I’m not very comfortable admitting vulnerability. After all my solution to that anxiety is to over worry and be a control freak. I suppose this is something like wedding or a college, a tradition that implies the changing of a relationship, the sharing of your child with someone or some thing else.

‘I’m not a playa, I just crush a lot’

One of the things in the reading workbooks that I worked on with Hayley this summer was words with double meanings (examples: book - reading book vs make an appt and present - here vs a gift.)

Well she’s been dying to know the name of her new challenge soccer team and her coach finally told us it was going to be the U10 Crush.

After I told her, she decided that was pretty cool. I mentioned how crush was one of the words with two meanings and did she know both of the definitions. Yes, she told me - one is to like Zac Efron from HSM and one is to crush a bug. Good, you got it I told her.

After a long pause, I hear this little voice say, “So which one is my team named after?”

Jinxed

Well I jinxed myself with that post. We’ve had two combustible days. I am not an unreasonable person and I feel like I have very fair expectations of her but at some point I do have to draw the line. Children need boundaries and boy, this kid hates them.

Today it started with her sassing me repeatedly. We’ve been trying to let some of that go because she is trying so hard not to hit and we definitely had seen progress. May seem silly to just focus on the hitting first but you have to do things in small steps with some kids.

Then it went into homework. I’ll help her with homework but only after she has made a good faith effort to work it out on her own. She did the first part halfway and then just randomly put down the final big answer. She easily could have done it. She asked calmly for help and I gently reminded her some of techniques to decipher math word problems. It went from bad to worse. She was demanding I help her more - which at that point, anymore would have been doing the problem.

Everything in this house has become our fault. It is my fault she didn’t do her homework she would scream. Grabbing, throwing herself across me, smacking my laptop turned into kicking me as hard as she could in the foot, twice in the same spot. It was hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

She called Jeff three times at the office and he told her the same things each time - calm down, stop hitting your mother and you have to take responsibility. She wanted to call my mother to get me in trouble she says but it is sorta funny because when she does that, my mother always gets irked with her. So she called Jeff’s mom and tried to just chat. Of course she ended up telling she got in trouble and Jeff’s mom wasn’t too pleased anyway. Both mothers have seen the terrible emotional toll this can take on us when she gets out of control.

She went upstairs and yelled down she was ready to go to the pool. Of course, you don’t get pool privileges when you kick, curse, scream and don’t do your homework. So she went nuts over that and kept screaming at me that I was breaking a promise, which I make a point to never do and she knows that. Of course, Jeff was in class until 10pm so I took the brunt of her anger while trying to do a redesign for a site.

What do you do? I can’t sit on her. She’s 70 pounds, I can’t pick her up and put her upstairs easily. Even if I could, I can’t make her stay there. I can defend myself from her blows, I can take things away and try to help her use her coping skills to handle the situation. There is just nothing like a child who is mad as a hornet at you but still wants to sit ON YOU and beat you.

We’ve been trying to explain cause and effect to her - because you do this, you don’t get that. Because you act up, we are not inclined to do special fun things. Because you break the rules about playing outside one street over, you can’t play over there. And if you get lightly scratched or your arm hurts when we have to remove or restrain you when you are beating on us, that is your fault. When you are mad and you move towards us aggressively, if you do something you didn’t mean to do it is still your fault because you started the mess. NONE OF THOSE have sunk in her mind.

A few weeks ago when she was mad she walked to me when I was in front of the stove cooking and hit me in the arm with a hard ice pack. She really swung it hard and it made a horrible red mark. I didn’t see it coming because I was cooking and it was really painful. Jeff swooped in, picked her up and took her out of the kitchen. She said he grabbed her arm when he picked her up and was pissed at that. Somehow it is ok to have me crying in the kitchen but she gets indignant that her arm was grabbed - and mind you grabbed didn’t result in any marks. He just picked her up to move her four feet.

Saddest thing is that she is always very remorseful later on and does her best to make it up to us. I have a stack of love notes from her apologizing. So I know she feels bad after but this raging is too much. How the heck to I get her to accept some responsibility and not blame everyone else for the situations she creates?

We have never hit her, we may have to push her off of us when she gets wild but we don’t spank because it will just escalate the violence. However one of my worries is that she is going to run into someone at some point who doesn’t share our philosophy. She’ll mouth off and push them too far and they might just knock her block off.

I love her and we are here for the long haul. I can’t fix everything that is broken in her but I can love her, keep her safe and try help her heal. I pray that all that and treatment is enough.

Once she calmed down, I made her clean up the mess she made downstairs and pick up all her stuff. I had her clean up the floor on her room. I also refused to sign off on her daily homework log for school. She didn’t try enough for me to sign it and the work is still halfway done. She knows she’ll have to lose five more webkinz for another week (so nine are in ‘jail’ until next Thursday evening now). And she has to write an apology essay. But I don’t know what else to do to make an impact. I know some of this is an adjustment to school starting back but beating on me is not acceptable.

It’s 1am and I’m going to bed. I’m hoping to sleep without her tonight, so I can get some really good rest and decompress. I love holding her at night but I’m drained right now. I’m feeling like nothing I do makes much of a difference. That all my time, love and efforts haven’t changed her from being a child that is so angry at the world. In my head, I know that isn’t true but my batteries and faith are running on low right now. Hopefully we’ll all be in a better mood in the morning.

Cautious calm

I don’t want to jinx myself but Hayley has been doing so well. I think the core thing to remember is that her chronological age is not her emotional age. She is nine in terms of birthdays but she is really about eight based on maturity. That’s no crime in any child but when you consider all the chaos it isn’t a big deal.

She has been great about going to school since it started Monday. Very polite and well-spoken - a lot of thank yous these days. Most important only ONE hit in ten days and it was pretty much inadvertent elbow screaming. She may yell and backtalk but we are just focusing on one thing at a time, the hitting. We even praise her for yelling and not hitting. She is soaking in the positive reinforcement and it is really making a difference. Don’t underestimate how hard walking away can be.

Third grade seems a good fit for her emotionally. She is already doing math that they don’t even do in third grade. She got some flak from one kid about repeating the year but this kid has been giving her crap since 1st grade.

She even had a classmate we didn’t know about come down to say hey yesterday. He lives right around the corner basically. So that’s three kids in her class already that are in our neighborhood.