Currently NOT "Enjoying Life as it Comes"
February 7, 2007
Wow.
So I go through the trouble of redoing the site and my banner. I decide to look positively and instead of cracking my usual snark, I say something simple, like “enjoying life as it comes”. I do this because lately my life has been Crazee (with a capital C), and I think I’m hoping by making that my new mantra, I’ll live it, breathe it, and everything will be better.
Boy, what a load of sh*t.
- I have a pile of laundry on my sofa that if given much longer, will grow legs and begin foraging for food. It’s only saving grace is that it is clean, so at least while it is foraging, it will smell like a field of lavender and vanilla (thank you, Tide.)
- I’m secretly hoping that once it is full, it will jump on hangers and hang itself up in the closet. Preferably the one it’s supposed to go into, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. Just so long as it gets hung up, right?
- We’ve just started FCAT testing, and I can’t WAIT for it to be over. But NO! This will be drawn out over many weeks. Smart planning, Florida. Well done. It’s not like the kids aren’t stressed out about this enough as it is or anything….
- My son keeps forgetting to lock the front door in the morning, and today I came home to it wide open. Thank goodness nothing was taken, and my cat didn’t decide to relocate. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had, but I’m glad she didn’t.
- This was the third time he has forgotten to lock the door. Yeah, we have trust issues about this now.
I know that other kids do this too, but I have to say this is more difficult with a child that has Asperger’s Syndrome. He doesn’t understand the consequences of this, and that was even after I “staged” the house to look like someone did take things. I wanted him to see with his own eyes what the consequences of him forgetting to lock the door would bring, but while he was upset, he thought it was a dream and that the people who took our stuff would “bring it back”. When I finally let him in on the “secret”, he was mostly mad at me for lying to him. I just don’t know what to do about this anymore, except that I now have to go into work every day late for awhile, because I have to wait for his bus to come since I can’t trust that he will lock the door in the morning.
I hate this. I don’t know what to do.
When I was Spiff’s age, I was a “latch key” child, and I was at home alone for a LOT longer each day than he is. My mom wasn’t there to greet me when I got home, she came home, usually with dinner because she was that late. I’m home every day to greet him when he gets home, and he is usually only home in the morning for 30 minutes until his bus comes to pick him up right in front of our house. I’ve tried to drill into him the importance of remembering to lock the door each morning; even going so far as to walk him through locking the door. I remind him several times to lock the door before I leave. Nothing seems to stick. I thought if maybe, maybe if things he loved disappeared he would remember the visual of that and not make the same mistake ever again (once I trusted him, of course).
I wish I could say I think he got the gist. I wish I could say he took from the lesson that locking the door is the most important thing to learn from this whole scenario.
I don’t think he got it. And I don’t know what to do.
Sigh.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Have you considered getting a doorknob that you can stay locked but can still be opened from the inside. My mom’s doors are like that. You can open the door, but unless you specificially turn the lock to unlock it, when you close the door it’s automatically locked. The only disadvantage is that you’ll have to train yourself not to forget about that and accidentally lock yourself out sometime!
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