Eureka!!!

So round about 5 pm the boys morph into crazed little wrestling monsters. They are always too rough, someone gets hurt, and then there is yelling involved (from me). Telling them to stop hasn't helped. Doesn't matter if they are or are not watching TV-and we are talking PBS, Dora, or Go Deigo, Go, relativity good TV.  The last 2 nights I have imposed "homework". I have required both boys to come into the "den" (I need a good name for this new room. It was a family room, but we moved the TV out and the computer in, and purchased a new 2 person desk. It is also open to the kitchen. But I digress...) I have given them each some theraputty to work with where the 3 year old has the easiest one and the 6 year old gets one of the harder ones (not black-blue or green). I have hidden some beads or beans in each that they get to find (and work on small motor strength) and then they do paper pencil things. The big one works with his Handwriting Without Tears book and the small one does things out of my preschool teacher books. They LOVE it, and they are much calmer when they are done. Sometimes I can cook/clean the kitchen while they are working, sometimes I can't. But it's a short time to use to get them calm. So, this will now be standard practice...and I hope to keep my sanity through the "witching hours" of 4:30-6:30....

A Bouncy House

I do hate the weeks "off" of OT, while it is much easier on the pocketbook; it makes for a child who bounces all over my furniture...not that we have the nicest of things, but still. And while I can deal with it most days, it also makes for a child who bounces off other people's furniture.  And a child who manages to hurt himself because with that SPD diagnosis is also a lack of  'grace', otherwise known as clumsiness. 

Now the good SPD momma would set up some sort of OT like things at home, and most days I do-but sometimes I get tired of doing it, and there is a mini trampoline in the basement-he didn't want to use today :(  Some days I want to sit on the couch when it snows and read a book, or take a nap. Of course those are the days I pay for it, in the form of a hyper sensory seeking child who ends up breaking something or hurting himself and me grumpy :( I also don't like rigid schedules, but thinking I need to get better about one for the time that he is home. Which is yet another reason that homeschooling doesn't appeal to me at this point. Let someone else set the schedule for him.

Torn

Deviating a bit from the norm. This post is about the younger one. The one who has no diagnosis, but has his own quirks.....The boy who will be 4 in 3 months and up until 4 days ago required a pacifier to fall asleep. Well, I guess I should say that he got a pacifier to fall asleep. I'm not quite sure he is doing okay without it. 

The part that has be so torn is that yes he is almost 4 and still uses a paci-aka a "sucky". I know that it may alter his bite in the orthodontia way. Yes, to my very well meaning family, I know that he needs to learn to self-soothe. I appreciate your concern, I really do. However, you aren't helping us, his parents, when your statements sound judgmental. 

He needs melatonin to fall asleep on a good night. Why are we taking away his other "crutch"? He has never been a good sleeper. He has a VERY hard time calming himself down when he gets upset. He's not likely going to go to Kindergarten with it so what is the big deal if he has it?  If he sucked his thumb he would do more damage, and it would be harder to break. We limit his time to just nap and bedtime.

And honestly, I am not looking for an answer here. I am not looking for people to tell me that I should give it to him until he's 23, or that I am a horrible mother who should have taken it away before he was a year old.  I guess I just need to get it all out to see where I stand. It isn't easy being his mom. And when you combine all of the different needs in my family is this something that really needs to be dealt with now?

I think that if he has another hard time without it, and asks for it. He will get it back and we will try again in a few months. He isn't hurting anyone else by having it and when I told him the paci-fairy could come and bring him a gift. He said that he would rather have the paci back.