Kiki is just a few weeks away from her high school graduation, but her brain is ready to run off to college. As she described it to me, she’ll walk into the front room and sit on the couch. Then her head fills up with thoughts like: I wonder what the couches will be like at college. Will I be the girl who is always sitting on the lobby couches and doing art? I wonder if there will be friends to sit on the couches with me. I hope those friends are nice. Then to escape the couch thoughts Kiki will step into the kitchen and be confronted with a new barrage: There are kitchens on each floor of the dorm. I wonder if we’ll have floor parties where everyone pitches together and there is yummy food. How will that work? Will other college kids no how to cook. Maybe I should learn to cook more. I don’t have any dishes, maybe I should bring some dishes. Pretty much everywhere she goes, her brain tries to jump ahead to college. This frustrates Kiki, who would like to be able to focus on finishing high school and let college get closer without constantly thinking about it. At least Kiki is self aware enough to see what is going rather than just getting quarrelsome about high school things.
Patch would also like to jump ahead to the end of school, only he is less self aware. His teacher is expressing concern that he is tuning out in class and thus missing important information he needs, like assignment details. Both the teacher and I have talked with Patch, mostly we need to corner him and require the work instead of letting him get away with sliding by. Unfortunately this means that homework times are unpleasant because Patch pulls out all the stops trying to avoid the work even though logically he knows he can’t and shouldn’t. This evening we had an extended negotiate about which work is actually due to see if some could be pushed off to a different day. Then there were tears because it was all too hard, after which he plowed through half of it with no trouble at all. Finally he manifested with a headache and general malaise which required flopping. When I did not excuse him from the work, he sat down and got rolling, cheerfully plowing through the rest of it. I find it fascinating to watch Patch’s avoidance techniques, because I see so many of them in myself when I have work I don’t want to do.
Thus far Gleek has responded toward the oncoming end of the year with a more relaxed attitude. This is good news in comparison with the stress she was carrying before. Link has exhibited renewed vigor in pursuing good grades as a result of an agreed upon incentive program.
I’m trying to take each day as it comes and make sure to notice the flowers so that they don’t bloom and vanish while I’m busy.