This past week everyone was off. All three of the kids were having their moments. Normally Ariel is quite calm, and able to get upset, stomp off to her room for a little quiet reading time, and relax. It normally works for her. It did work for the most part this week, but her temper was flaring. She got very upset at how Joshua spoke to her, and had random and sudden mood swings. Joshua was exhausted all week. I am not sure why. He was tired, cranky, speaking aggressively, not speaking and thinking that he had. He was then getting upset with all of us because we didn’t do what he wanted or answer him. Many times he did not tell us what he wanted. He got frustrated with Daniel and yelled at him on several occasions. He yelled at me. Then would shutdown completely. However, his spurt of anger would lead Daniel into a spurt of anger because Daniel was confused.

It didn’t help that I was confused too.

Joshua will usually go to his room on his own when he is like this. He knows that he needs to calm down. He did not this week, I had to tell him to go to his room on several occasions so he could calm down and we could talk. In the meantime I was trying to stop a complete meltdown from Daniel, or right in the middle of a wrestling match with him. And also trying to save his favorite toys because for some reason he wants to destroy the things he loves when he is angry. Then, thinks we should replace it after all has settled. Anyway… This was all out of the norm to have it happen every single morning this week with Joshua. He is normally a calm little guy, he is loud, authoritative speaking, and “right” all the time, but he is a gentle, sensitive, compassionate, and loving little guy. It was very much out of character. It was for Ariel too, she does correct the boys a lot, but this week it was off the charts and felt dictatorial though she did not mean it that way at all.

Everyone was confused by the others words and actions.

When Daniel is confused about social dynamics it is very hard to get him back to a calm state. He thinks that he has done something wrong, but he does not know what or why. He gets very upset because he feels like he hurt someone, or they hurt him on purpose. So familiar…I think helping him has helped me a great deal to see and understand this in myself. I just want to add how funny I think it is that every time I am learning a lesson about myself it seems to come in many different scenarios, for social confusion this week FB helped give me a nice dose, then it gave resources to clear it up.  I had people in real life confuse me completely with their words, and had to work through that. I had the kids go through it this week everyday. AND I found out that the autism symposium I have gone to for the past couple of years is all devoted to ASD and social vulnerabilities, effective ways to help with social skills, and research, those are a few.

I will be going by myself, and I am feeling pretty good about it. (For now, anxiety will come later.)

How was I able to bounce back and actually accomplish school this week? The grace of God. I tend to shutdown after mornings filled with meltdowns. I allowed myself a little downtime, and then went back to it. No one wanted to do school this week. We were all spent after the mornings, but we had to do school. I decided to do school after lunch instead of the mornings. Some days we didn’t start until 2 pm. We managed to pack full school days into a couple of hours. Why? Because that is how we work. I do this a lot, I have days when I can consume large amounts of information and apply it rapidly. Other days I consume the information and it takes days, weeks, months, even years for me to see a connection, or apply it. It all clicked for me this week and it clicked for the kids. How did I win them over?

A mechanical bird and clocks!

We went over the story The Nightingale and we learned all about clocks. The idea came to me because we are using a book that goes through composers for each era. You read about them and it has a CD with a song from them so you listen to the music as well. (I use much more than the one song.) One composer we learned about was (Franz) Joseph Haydn when I saw the title “The Clock” (shortened) I thought that was it we will learn all about clocks, time, and some math concept. I decided to teach on symmetry because I could use a clock to show symmetry. It worked! Everyone got involved and we had a great time listening to music, writing poems, talking about how clocks work and learning how to tell time. I have been working on telling time with them for a while it finally clicked. They know how to tell time on a digital clock, but it didn’t make sense on an analog. I still have a hard time with that at times, I don’t know why.

Every day after meltdown madness, I reminded them that we were talking about clocks.

I would tell them about a cool new video I found, or a clock craft, or music, or an opera about The Nightingale, or poems that had clocks. Hickory Dickory Dock was able to deter a miscommunication meltdown one day. I felt like I had not really accomplished a lot because the days were shorter.  However, after I wrote down some of the things we did and put up the links on my home school blog I realized that we accomplished a lot. We had a large amount of multisensory learning going on. I tend to forget that we all learn better using multisensory when I take a look at assessments, or typical school schedules. My guys do not thrive in that type of environment. A really great thing was that the kids did get along better after school. They have continued to have their moments, but overall it has been much better after school. I think all of this may be delayed responses to the full social week we had during the week of Valentines Day.

Now that I write all of this I think it may be why I am feeling a little down.

Could be that I am tired and I haven’t even realized it. Lol! I have a mind block to all of the things I do. It never feels like I have done enough or accomplished enough in a day. Why do I have to sleep? I got a lot of things to do! Like come up with another plan to take over the world. Oh, wait. I am the other one “I think so, Brain, but this time *you* put the trousers on the chimp.” Seriously,  I am able to notice all that the kids accomplish, but I tend to think they achieved it all on their own. OH! And guess what? Daniel is completely potty trained! In the past month he has worn big boy undies all day and all night. He has done such a great job and didn’t get discouraged when he had an accident one night. That could have started us back to the beginning of potty training, thankfully it did not. (I am still a booty wiper for all three of my sensory sensitive kiddies though.) So now I will brag a little because they are my rock stars.

Here are some of their awesome accomplishments on our Home School Journal.

I have discovered that we learn very quickly, with more comprehension, and ability to apply things when it is all connected somehow. It’s the way I learn, and it’s my teaching style it works for us. When I separate subjects it doesn’t flow. I guess my guys learn the same way I do. Regular school was never for me and caused me constant meltdowns/shutdowns. If only someone knew this about me back then…at least I know this for my kids.  I failed to mention that none of them wanted to do school until I came up with fun ideas and visuals for the topics. Here are few videos that helped pull us into a school focus.

A Clock Story

The Clock

Poetry in Motion • The Clock of Life

Yea! We had a productive week even though it didn’t feel like it.

P.S. My last FB post really released from my issues. I decided that I do not need to be affected by other people’s issues on social networks. I will use it happily for my purposes and let them happily use it for theirs. Yea! I finally get FB…How old am I? Ha ha ha

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