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Thursday 17 May 2012

Stress?

The game on the way to school this Thursday morning involved rescuing Jesus from Darth Vader who wanted to kill him. "and we can't have that because Jesus saves our lives doesn't he?" To achieve this they seemed to need to keep running races, leaping in and out of Octopods and had to try not to fall into molten lava - which was colder than liquid nitrogen. There was also a lot of waving of light sabers.

Confused? I am.

And other peoples kids just WALK to school. I'm tired.
We've had a difficult couple of days.
Tigs behaviour at his new gym session on Tuesday was NOT quite what I hoped. On the other hand is it reasonable to expect a hyperactive and very agile 5 year old to queue nicely for his turn on each activity when there is a whole gym full of fascinating equipment to try out?
Well he DIDN'T. He climbed on the asymmetric bars, played with the mats, did forward rolls, wriggled, giggled, and distracted every other child in the place. If I heard his name shouted once to get off   stop that   sit nicely... I heard it a hundred times. But it was good natured this time. I just hope it stays that way if he can't settle down. The good bit is that he loved it, despite the queueing, and he wants to keep going. I think he may be quite good if he has the self discipline to learn and if he can get over being one of the very few boys in the group. It is also a long day for the boys, we go straight from school and don't get home until 5.30. Also Pup has to sit and wait with me, and it isn't much fun for him.  However we have discovered a nearby play area that we might explore once Tigs gets settled in. I am finding it quite tiring getting used to all the activities the boys do now. We will have to be very disicplined about how many we allow.
 Yesterday was not our best day.
Pup was in pieces first thing because he'd broken one of Tigs 'Camberwick Green' figures given to him by his foster carers.  Mop up tears (bilateral , both boys devastated.) Get them to school.
Later  I brought Mum home for a few hours; always hard work. She is very unsteady on her feet and getting her into the house is challenging these days and quite scary. She is also getting very institutionalised. Example: she wouldn't make a decision about what time she wanted to go home, although I gave her several options and tried to make it clear that I didn't mind. In the end we chose that we pick the boys up from school in the car and drive her straight home from there, rather than her staying any later. It was a good thing we did. She was exhausted, too tired to interact with the boys at all. So we dropped her  in her room and headed home.
It was at just after 5 that Pup came running downstairs screaming. To my horror I realised that he had blood streaming from his hand. He'd cut his thumb with a penknife that Himself had rather foolishly given him the other day (don't blame him,  he is already beating himself up about it!) It seemed to be a deep long cut in need of professional attention.  Himself was due home at 5.30, so we mopped up, bandaged up and waited. Himself was 15 minutes late, and not too pleased to be greeted at the door by a stressed wife who insisted he come in and take over while she took Pup to Minor Injuries clinic. We then realised that Tigs was howling in distress because he thought that Pup was going to be staying in hospital again.
We got it sorted. Pup and I had to wait an hour and a half to be seen, but the clinic is a reasonably pleasant place as hospitals go, with toys and books, and another child in his year at school was there too, which helped to distract him (and her!) from the wait. He had his finger steristripped up (no stitches, thankfully!), and we got home  just before Tigs went to bed, so he could see for himself that Pup was NOT staying in the hospital. Himself had kept him happy and distracted while we were away, thankfully.
Pup was shattered. I'm just glad that day is over.
 

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had a really stressful couple of days Megs?

    Your poor other half must have been mortified. Glad that it wasn't too serious, though of course for Tigs it could have been serious and he was concerned about his brother. Your hubby did well to keep him happy when he must have been anxious.

    For the record, Mini is OK walking to school but a lot of his play involves baddies, prisons, fighting and rescuing. Apparently it's quite a common trait in kids with early trauma...

    Hope the next few days are calmer x

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  2. Interesting. My boys have always been hot on playing rescuing games - saving people from fires etc. The fighting stuff is fairly recent, since Tigs started school and them watching one of the Star Wars videos. Until recently Tigs would not watch any TV programs with even the mildest fighting, it really upset him.
    It is all fantasy though, thankfully they don't fight in earnest even when mad at each other. Tigs enjoys 'play wrestling' with his best mate, but again they don't hurt each other.

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