Welcome to the Drew Roller Coaster! This week has been full of ups and
downs!!
I wanted to post on Tuesday because I didn’t want to leave
the blog on a negative note. But obviously
that didn’t happen. This week has kicked
my butt! I had to take my van to the
shop on Monday and they had to keep it overnight. When I picked Drew up from school on Tuesday
I still didn’t have my van. He asked me “Did
you find mommy’s car?” I told him no but
we were going to find it right now. When
we got to Honda and walked into the service bay he announces “I’m here!” I think that’s his new thing because he did
it again when we went to CarMax on Thursday.
I wish you could hear him say that in his sweet little voice…so stinkin’
cute! He had a much better day at school
on Tuesday. Tuesday’s screen time was 30 minutes.
He was in a good mood again Wednesday morning. I walk him to his classroom every morning and
hang out until the announcements are over.
He was sitting in the floor reading his Transformers book and asked
Smurfann “Is today Mr. Townley?” Mr.
Townley is the sassy gym teacher from Australia and the kids love him! He is a great tool to get Drew to do what you
want. It was gym day and I’m not sure if
he knew that or it was a coincidence. A
little later that morning, I got a text from his teacher, Ms. Gooch, that said “I
just got schooled by your son. It’s a
hoot…as always”. She called me a little
later to tell me what happened. The unit
they are reading this week is about animals in the ocean. She wanted them to pick an animal they liked
and give her 3 facts about it. He picked
the Whale Shark. She said “Drew there is
no such thing as a whale shark. It’s
either a Whale or a Shark. You need to
pick one.” He said “Whale Shark”. She said this went on a couple of times. She went to the board to write it down and
she said “Drew which one do you pick?”
He answered “Whale”. So she
started to write Whale on the board and about the time she was finished writing
Whale he said “And Shark”. She said “Ok,
if you can tell me one fact about the Whale Shark you can pick that. He said “It is gentle”. So one of the other sweet aide’s in the class
said “We should probably look this up”.
So she looked up Whale Shark on the internet. She said “This says the Whale Shark is the gentlest
shark in the ocean.” So needless to say
he got to pick the Whale Shark. He
learned that from watching The Octonauts on Disney. At least he’s getting something from screen
time.
Matt will sometimes take Drew and Abby with him to feed our
horses that are in the field at Mr. Farmer’s house up the road. When I was getting him dressed for school one
morning he looks at me and says “Can we go see Mr. Farmer?” That same morning I went outside to start to
the car and when I came back in I said “It’s cold outside”. I went to get him dressed and my hands were
cold and he says “Mommy’s cold.”
When we got home from church on Wednesday, I had Drew do his
Interactive Metronome exercises and then he went off to play with his toys. About 8:35 he started to head upstairs. I assumed he was going to my room for his 30
minutes of screen time before bed. I
leave the TV unplugged during the day so a few minutes later I went upstairs to
plug it in for him. I found him in his
room with the door shut in his bed all tucked in with his big headphones on and
reading his Transformers book. So he had
NO screen time on Wednesday.
Thursday was more of the same in the morning. I even told his teacher and aides that I felt
like he had come back better than before.
Well, I jinxed that! Later that
morning I got a call from Ms. Gooch. I
could tell by the tone in her voice that it wasn’t going to be a funny story
like the day before. Drew had scratched
another little boy’s face with his pencil for no apparent reason. Not that any reason is acceptable for that,
but it made it even more confusing as to why he did it. I think he was ok the rest of the day at
school. But that night he started to get
really grumpy. He wouldn’t eat anything
but pasta and lately he hasn’t been doing that.
He wanted to be outside on the trampoline and I couldn’t blame him but I
needed to fix dinner and couldn’t go out with him and Abby was at volleyball
practice. So, I’m trying to keep him in
the house every 10 seconds while trying to cook dinner at the same time. Then a little while later my neighbor calls
and tells me my dogs are out and down the road.
Ugh! I piled the kids up in the
car and went looking for them. We didn’t
find them so I just had to hope they came back.
We were out front on the trampoline when the dogs come running up and
Drew says “They came back.” That shows
that he understood they were missing in the first place.
This morning he woke up on the wrong side of the bed! He didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want
to get dressed. He wanted to go to
school in his Bumblebee costume and mask.
The compromise was that he could wear the mask and carry the costume in
the car but they had to stay in the car when we got to school. I'm shocked that he didn't pitch a fit when
we got there. I sure hope he had a good
day at school. No texts or phone calls
so that’s a good sign.
He has gotten used to his new exercise routine and does them
with little to no complaining.
I wanted to end this post with an email I received from his
coach at Brain Balance to show you how supportive and encouraging she is!
“Don't beat yourself up about the screen time. It happens
and it hasn't "undone" anything we have done. It just goes to show you how quickly his left
brain can be influenced and take control. Through Brain Balance we are constantly trying
to level the playing field for the hemispheres. That doesn't mean that once we are balanced we
can neglect our right brain again, but it will be much harder for the left
brain to be the boss because the two brains will be a constant team.”
And again, I want to thank everyone who reads this blog and
sends words of encouragement. They mean
the world to us!
Until next time…
