Tag Archives: #school

Mrs. Home “not” fooling anyone!

I would like to introduce you to Mrs. I have No Bloody Idea, a shit show of an educator, a human thrust in to the limelight to teach her children for the foreseeable future.

Her skills lie in baking, science, writing amusing self depreciation blogs, headstands and running long distances. She knows her multiplication facts and is pretty good at percentages. Her laundry skills are shite, but her cooking is pretty good.oh and she knows all the words to the opening scene in Macbeth and all of the Sound of Music.

Which is pretty apt in the current climate

“When shall we three meet again?

In thunder lightening or in rain?

When the hurly burleys done,

When the battles lost and won, that ere will be the set of sun…….. ”

From this very small base she now has to teach a 5 / 8 and 10 year old (who is already way smarter than she)

I would like to apologize to all my children’s teachers for the fuck ups I will make. But know they are loved, safe, brushing their teeth and can cook a mean banana bread 😂

Summer, break every part of me.

Let me start with a very honest caveat to this article. I Kelly Krystina love my children with every fiber in my body. Yet, that does not mean I always like them. Truth.

As Philip Larkin rightly said :-

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”

So clearly there is no hope that I will actually create a better, kinder version of myself. I may as well stop beating myself up, when my kid farts at the dinner table and laughs and I crack up in hysterics internally under my stern facade and, ” please do not be so rude, young man”.

I was not born to be a mother, it is not my forte or natural talent. Yes, I work damn hard at being the best version of a mother I can be, but no I am not the “chosen” one, it was never on my list of career paths. Fashion Buyer, yes, Travel Writer, yes, Architect, yes, Mother – um nope. My forte of dreams are international travel, coffee drinking, running and people watching. For example, right now I would particularly like to spend 3 days in the snow tipped mountains of Colorado, trail running every day, interspersed with fine wine drinking in exclusive vineyards and floating in natural pools totally alone.

As a family we bob alone on the sea that is school, work and after school activities and then out of no where along comes summer break. Fist pump, yes, no schedules, no early mornings, no packing lunches… WHOOP, here we come fun adventures and vacations to strange places. I dream of idling on the beach watching my beautiful boys build elaborate sandcastles and splashing in the sea.

UM NO F ING way, are you delusional? BOOM, lets start with ocean water drownings, sand rammed into eyes and rugby tackling into the surf is what I contend with, snacks dropped in to the water, (clearly all my fault as I am now their resident snack bitch). Heart broken tears when they do not get the (insert beach toy description or brightly coloured confectionery snack here). Therefore, summer has me like – shit I have birthed three, mini, ungrateful ass holes. At least one of them is my mini me GULP. Summer is grinding me down to the point, where I don’t want to parent the crying, the fights (I am really a referee and not a parent) the eternal eye rolling, continue with the constant food prep, the tidying, the keeping them entertained, safe, off electronics. I do, just want to close my eyes for a few seconds, hopefully no one will die and wish for a small moment that they may disappear for an hour or two and I can lie down with a book or take a pee and not have to break mid stream, pull up my knickers and bolt towards the blood curdling scream emitting from a child being pummeled by his sibling or the fact he cannot find (insert random toy here). I mean WTF – you mean that broken plastic toy you have not touched for months.

I don’t want to deal with their ass holeness, when I need to work on my inner ass hole and man she looms large some days, Yes I have walked silently behind my wonderful  small child flicking the double V sign and no it is not for peace, maybe peace out, as he berates me, with his smart talking mouth of how unfair I am and life is, that he cannot have a play date this second with his friend I have never met, let alone the parents. I just do not have the capacity to deal with a double dosage of the ass… At that point it is all about survival until 7.30pm and I can put them to bed. Or myself 🙂

Older people say let them get bored oh and I do, but unless my three boys are given a constructive physical activity, they will just run wild around the house like Genghis Khan heading into battle or they wrestle over every item of furniture they can find, imagine the noise and destruction, please imagine that. Mind Blown BOOM. Each day is a re enactment of “Lord of the Flies” and each day I wonder so who will be Piggie today?Occasionally, they play quietly, but they are boys they need to move and letting them run out and play in the streets on the afternoon of a 95F Florida summers day, well that lasts all of 5 minutes and they can only be in the pool for so long before someone attempts a back flip in the shallow end. NOT COOL – I scream in horror as I pour myself a large drink and turn on another kid friendly movie. PEACE.

Yes I agree Summer, is fun and truly it is, but oh its distressingly hard, to the point where I cannot decide if I love or dislike those hot summer days of supposed freedom and carefree fun?

I’ll let you know once these 10 weeks are up, probably from a padded cell in the local mental asylum. 🙂

Highly Functioning Autistic Kid

Let me begin by re iterating that I do not write for sympathy or help, but to provide clarity and space for my tumultuous mind. Its a wild, frenetic land in the recesses of my medulla.

This week has been a mountain of a climb, “no rest for the wicked”, so they say and as a child I was pretty wicked, to all who cared for me, from parents, family and hospital staff. But I digress, remember its a frenetic place I am reaching out from to even verbalize the shit that goes on in my head.

I write today from my perspective, my families perspective and the perspective of Kid 1 (K1). K1 as you may remember or not even care, was diagnosed a year ago with high functioning autism or Asperger’s. Although he is not severely affected, he definitely has traits and tendencies that smack him on that imaginary line of whatever it is..

Sometimes I wonder whether its a good thing we know or not? Yet, it is a very bumpy road, one I often want to get off, to take a smoother path and I am sure he does also. A path where he does his homework without screaming daily (he is now 8),  a path where he does not constantly harass his brothers and scream at them, a path that is not always black and white, a path that is not literal but has some bend, a place where he can sit still, or make wild noise, where he can cope with activities, changes in routine, school parties and holidays without imploding and losing all control of his behavior and screaming he hates us.

It is because he gets over stimulated and I have learnt his brain scrambles and he cannot calm it down. Life would be calmer, less noisy and explosive, I would not internally dread every time we go out, or go places as I am never sure which kid I will have? The sullen monotone, willful, stubborn, unresponsive child, or the wild hyperactive kid who bounces all over the place shouting in faces and using baby voices, or I may get K1 where I can see him through the forest of his mind, that amazingly brave, strong, powerful kid who really will take over the world.

My greatest fear is that I parent him incorrectly, as my strategies to help him are very different to K2 and K3. Sometimes I cannot even get to parenting the other two as I am spending all my time managing and helping my eldest. Am I failing, I feel like I am , but I remember that I love them so much and I too am a mentally flawed human, who too deals with her own issues on a daily basis, so I am truly doing the very best I can , all the time. Yes I openly cry a lot, but I think its good for them to understand emotion and that I too need help and love. I have always tried to parent with love, transparency, kindness and honesty.

The hardest thing we deal with as a family is the fact that K1 does not seem different or have this alternative way of learning, unless you are with him 24/7. It is like being beaten over the head with a sledgehammer, it never leaves or goes away it is always there to be dealt with. Learning that people do not want to be touched in the face and that homework needs to be done, that running around at school, because you feel like it, is not what the teacher requires. That he forgets his work every day and we have to drive back to school everyday to get it. Yes he genuinely does not remember, repeatedly, its traits of his HFA. People think he is naughty, insolent, he is always at the Principals office, I get letters home, phone calls about behavior, (its him coping with the demands of his day, its busy and loud and full of stimulus, of course he implodes).

This week, we have had one meeting with the school, I have driven back 3 times to school to get home work, he actually forgot it a total of 4 times, he decided that he would not do hockey (there is never any convincing) he got out of the pool during his swimming lesson as he had had enough, he lost recess for two days at school for something that was not his fault , as the school seems to like to jump to the conclusion, that it must be he who is responsible, he was banned from the school garden because he decided that running and jumping over a bench was a far more exciting thing to do rather than listen to the teacher ( I may have to mildly agree with him here). This has all happened in a mere 5 days and this does not include all the little things that happen. Thank Fuck for the weekend ..

The thing is I totally understand everything he does, yes homework sucks and I forget things, listening to a teacher is not the most exciting thing about a day, yes a kid is a “ass hole” if they trip you over and sometimes you really do not want to play games or swim, so why should you? As adults we do not?!

I am not articulate enough to fully describe what our home life is like, its explosive, we wade through parent hood rather than skip. The little two are frequently waiting for their turn to be seen or heard. It is tough and wondrous and I will not lie, sometimes I do wish he were different and easier, but that is my selfishness and desire for a calmer life. Truly, though I am in awe of him, his drive, passion and ability, he is 100 x smarter than I could ever dream to be. I am exhausted by him and I am scared I will never be the parent he needs me to be. I am reaching out for guidance and help and reading as much as I can. We are looking for groups of parents for support. Its harder because he is high functioning, we are not given help or advice, because he is gifted the school fail to recognize his Asperger traits and coping mechanisms, our medical insurance will not pay for therapy, because he is not fully autistic, but he still needs some degree of Applied Behavior Analysis therapy, to help him cope with the demands, routines and sociability of life.

It saddens me, that with the rigorous, normalcy of life, that is peddled to our kids, we fail to see the wondrous differences. K1 is a beautiful artist, a natural with music, his physicality for sport is limitless, he can add huge numbers in his head and he sees beyond the regular. He is quick to see the beauty in nature and to care for the weakness in others. He is articulate and dexterous, he can build Lego like no other, with patience and tenacity. But school fails to see the way we can use these skills in a multitude of arenas and to nurture them. They see him as a thorn in their side, he slows them down. Maybe I should move him to a smaller, private school, but he loves his school and his friends and he knows the routine.

I am not really sure what I am trying to share here, and I am sure no one really gives a shit. But we do, I do, if any part of this helps another realize,  others struggle too, that we all need help and no one is perfect, but what the fuck is perfect? who wrote that manual ? Clearly not me and my family. But if you need to share anything I am here. I am also looking for help and advice if you have any to share?

I will continue to love and learn from my son, I clearly will fuck him up, as I feel all of us were a little fucked up by our parents and in the words of Dr House ” No parent is perfect, we all, ultimately fuck our children up “. Me, I just started early with my genetics.

 

School Mania

I cannot keep up with the shit I have to do for my kids schools, snack days, projects, PTO, providing supplies, presentations, school trips, book fairs, Christmas fairs, walk a thons, fund raising did I mention projects oh and projects and homework, homework and more fucking homework. Have you ever tried to coax a screaming, mid melt down 7 yr old to do a scrap of homework after a full day at school? Where my kid has to work extra hard, just to sit still in his seat and try very hard not build Lego in place of listening to his teacher, after only a max of 40 mins recess ALL DAY… I mean, just shoot me now, before he eats me during his crazy tirade of “I HATE HOMEWORK, ALL WE DO IS WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, I HATE WRITING” ARRGGHHHHHHH (I’m cowering under the table, with kid 2 and 3, who weirdly also need my attention, funny that?!?!?!?!?) I am very sure he would whip out the F word if it was acceptable to do so. Bloody give it here kid, I’ll do the damn math, science, writing, spelling for you…..

Really, there should be a sliding scale of school demands put upon parents relative to, if you have a full time job plus the number of dependents you care for, that includes grandparents, who I know for some people are as needy if not more so than their 4 yr old.

I would happily donate $250 at the beginning of the year towards all class activities and projects and sign a waiver that they will just leave me well alone. I have enough in my day just trying to get all children to the correct schools and activities on  time (invariably, I forget those also), let alone buying and lugging pieces of card, bigger than my body from “Michael’s” for my kids next assignment.