Meltdowns of various flavors
I signed Patch up for level three swim lessons. Unfortunately his skill level is only at level two. The disparity is because I had to register for lessons six weeks ago and I made a best guess that turned out to be wrong. Today Patch did not get in the water for swim lessons. This is because yesterday his teacher dunked him and now Patch is scared that the teacher will do it again. I’ve spoken with the staff and they’re going to see if they can shuffle him into a level two class, but the level two is already very full. We’ll see what tomorrow’s lesson will bring.
At dinner Gleek sobbed because I had sent back two movies to netflix before she’d watched them. I sent them back because the movies had sat around for over a week and every time I suggested watching them the kids begged for a third movie instead. So I sent them back and got the third movie. But Gleek had watched the third movie and sobbed with offended tears that I had sent those other ones back without telling her. The upset continued until I required her to either eat dinner or go lay down in bed. Amazing thing, once the food was gone, the movies did not matter anymore.
Kiki called me from Space Camp. She was tired and over stimulated. All she wanted was to curl up in her own bed away from everybody. I know how she feels. I get the same way at conventions. I reach a point where it all feels horrible and I wonder why I bothered to go, but then I get through it and things are okay again. So I talked her through how to survive the next thing. I told her she could call me again if she needs to. Then I’ll talk her through that too. If I go retrieve her, then Space Camp will forever remain a failure for her. She can do it.
(Edited to add: Kiki called back 90 minutes later. She was calm and rational. She had a solid plan where she came home to sleep and will go back to finish camp first thing tomorrow morning. I am so impressed with her ability to calm down and solve her problems. More importantly she feels mature and able rather than feeling like a failure.)
To my knowledge, Link has not melted down today. If he has, it was at camp and I’ll only hear about it later. Howard and I are likely to have melty days tomorrow. The first day of pre-orders is always full of stress and high emotion.
I guess we all have our turn.