The move to a new school for Dexter has continued to be a good one. the first week was amazing. He feels challenged and has made really good friends with a 3rd grader. They seem to be best buddies and today spent their entire day making comics about "Chicken Mayhem" with Captain Coop! The school lets the kids take the lead on certain things which is why they were able to spend all day making up characters, drawing and writing comics. How awesome is that? He said he didn't even touch the computer today because he was so busy working on the comics.
Some of the things he said were disturbing though. He repeatedly said that he likes his new school because his teachers "pay attention to him and help him". The teacher last year ignored him because he was working at or above the grade level, so she left him to his own devices. I didn't realize how bad it was. I wish I would've known. It makes me angry that a teacher would be so callous as to just ignore a child in her class. He was starting to feel like he didn't deserve to be paid attention to or get help to learn. I'm glad that year is behind us and we can start again with a clean slate.
The school is great, but the transition has made home life challenging. We are facing daily tantrums again. The intensity is through the roof. He did fine over the summer with frequent changes in schedules and socializing with new kids. He was a little bit on the edge sometimes, but now that school is in full swing, he's been having big tantrums. Luckily they aren't the 2 hour long ones of a couple years ago. Now it's just an hour or so, but he just loses his ability to control himself. He argues and hits things (thankfully not us), refuses to follow, yells, screams, kicks, and does everything the opposite of what he is told. Today, he even gave me a warning the he was going to bite me on the count of 5. He did it too, but I pushed his face off my arm before he could dig in.
It's just so embarrassing to have a 7 year old act like a child half their age. It is a quintessential look at asynchronous development. He can read several grade levels above, do complicated math, and yet when it comes to emotional IQ, he's probably a year or two behind. We call it "hijacking" because whenever it happens, everything that everyone is doing becomes about managing him. His little sister gets ignored and sometimes is put into dangerous situations because he loses his temper. Often this happens without much warning, 0-60 in a few seconds.
We've been trying to avoid sugar as that appears to be a trigger for him. That's great, except he reads the labels of everything now to see how much sugar is in something. Over the weekend, we went to a restaurant and we refused to get him a lemonade. This triggered a 40 minute long tirade with him kicking the table, hitting the seat, and doing everything he could to argue and show his displeasure. He didn't get that lemonade and the only reason we didn't get kicked out is because there was a live band to take the edge off of his piercing voice. I hope we don't end up needing therapy again. I don't know how much more of this I can take.
