School's Out For Summer!!!!

And so far, so good! SmallBoy had a rough transition OUT of school, total lack of organization at school due to cleaning out, field trips to the park, assemblies, mass scheduled in, etc....He knew the end of school was drawing near and was already anxious about the lack of organization that comes with summer. He was having to take more time outs at school and would get angered more easily at incorrect answers, etc, much faster - BUT he also was able to tell me about them, tell me about what he did to calm down, tell me how long his time outs lasted, and tell me what he would do to keep that particular thing from happening again. WOW!!!

School ended at 10am on Thursday and by Friday, he was lost. We sat down Friday afternoon and made up a pseudo-schedule for the weekend, stressing which things we knew for certain would happen and when, and which things were still uncertain. That helped tremendously, even if it was just for the weekend, to give him a sense of structure and temporary organization. I've decided that for summer, I'm going to try to give him a schedule of {time} - not necessarily, what he should do during that time - but some suggestions, but more of a block type of schedule - 10-12, outside time (ride your bike, trampoline, roller blade, etc).

Yesterday I gave him two chores in his room: put away the clean laundry in his basket, and then refill it with the dirty clothes that were decorating his floor. I knew, however, that if I put these tasks to him in the form of jobs or chores, that I would be asking for opposition. Instead, I made them into a game. I told him that I had a great game for him to play, but that he would need to use his laundry basket for it, therefore, it needed to be emptied (granted there were only 5 or 6 things IN the basket...). The game - Laundry Basketball, simple in concept, I'm sure that without any explanation, you can visualize exactly what I mean. For SmallBoy, I explained that he would have to grab a piece of dirty laundry off the floor and shoot at the laundry basket from wherever he found the piece of laundry. He was allowed two shots- if he made it in on the first shot, he scored 5pts, the second shot was worth 3pts. If he missed both times and had to walk it into the basket, he scored 1pt. I left him a sheet of paper where he could keep score. I was excited when I talked to PC in the morning and he told me that SmallBoy had gotten up in the morning, taken his allergy medicine (without prompting), ate breakfast (without prompting), AND did his chores WITHOUT PROMPTING - and was excited about it!

I wasn't quite so organized for today, since I crashed out on the living room chair for a good two hours and then all night, heavy ZZZzzzzzz's (I've been quite exhausted - more than usual lately). I talked to Girl this morning, since she is with SmallBoy today to see if we couldn't work out something between she and I, that would keep him organized and not strictly on the computer or outside or in front of a movie all day, but would shorten that into smaller blocks, which would include a chore. She said she would come up with something and let me know. She's very good at these kinds of things!

PC, LargeBoy, ET, & SIL are up in Michigan for the next day or two doing some maintenance work on my in-law's cottage, so SmallBoy, Girl, and I are home alone - we'll have some good bonding time. Tonight starts our summer OT schedule, so I think maybe SmallBoy and I will be bad and stop for ice cream (before dinner - EGADS!) on the way home. Perhaps we'll be really really bad and order Pizza for dinner - I'm not real good at making dinner in a pinch, especially not a healthy one - I'd much prefer to spend hours on a weekend preparing a big yummo meal, but since tonight's a special night without the big guys, I think we'll be bad. Tomorrow, hopefully, haircuts....so much for stucture when I'm playing it all by ear like this, huh?