An 18 month gap. Yeah, it's been a while. I haven't felt writing. Dexter had a wonderful year of school for 2nd grade and then last year was terrible. It took an emotional toll. He's older, his emotions are more sophisticated. He went in nervous because he changed to a new campus, but he had a friend who joined him in the move. That eased things at first.
The academics started well, but evolved over the year into things that really disinterested him. Although, they tried to pull him back in using games, he just wasn't engaged in the subject matter. The teachers determined the subjects which were so humanities or philanthropic that it was hard to dig in. The ideas for projects were grandiose and the structure wasn't there to support good output. It was assignments like make a game and we'll show you how to code without ever discussing game mechanics. That ended up with a lot of frustration because how do you make a game out of homelessness that a kid enjoys? It wasn't nearly as child-lead as last year. That combined with the emotional upheaval he was experiencing really didn't make the year successful. We were going to move out of state, and then couldn't because of the timing on our projects at work. We were still going to leave that school no matter where we were. His best friend was mean to him him because he couldn't deal with the fact that Dexter wouldn't be around. It was frenemies at it's finest and Dexter was a mess.
He came out of school convinced he was the trouble-maker. His attention issues became more noticeable. He lashed out at others. He was so challenging at home. Simple requests turned into enraged arguments. I felt like he'd argue even if you asked him if he wanted ice cream. I can't even begin to explain how exhausting it is trying to rationalize nearly every request. We did more testing and more therapy with a therapist that pretty much made us feel like we were the problem. We needed to do this or that and what we were doing was negating his feelings. I mean we were really struggling with nearly daily arguments of an hour or more. Huge blowouts that would last hours and end up with everyone in tears and feeling raw. We couldn't get the help we needed and dealing with a kid that was upending the whole family's life. We couldn't even go out of the house because if we tried to go anywhere, we'd inevitably have to pull the car over because of an argument. Finally, one of the tests came back with very strong indicators that it wasn't us. I felt fucking vindicated… and relieved.
