I can remember being a kid, being in school, and always looking forward to the weekends.
Hell, let’s be honest – I scheduled my classes in such a way in college, when I could, to ensure I had four day weekends.
Now that the Monster’s in school, it’s quieter around here during the week. Sure, we do get reports from the teacher and there’s that whole pain-in-the-butt issue with the bussing (which seems to have resolved itself for the moment, after enough angry emails). But he’s out of the house almost as much as I am, and it’s definitely a big difference in the routine around here.
And then comes the weekend.
It’s funny that four/five days in a row of school makes you forget somewhat how intensive it is, having the Monster around all the time. We’re trying to stick to the hourly bathroom trips without much success, and it’s a matter of planning everything else around that… We’ve had very minor success with getting him on the schedule here, to be honest. (Making matters worse was that we found a kitchen timer to try to do things the way his teacher’s doing them at school, and he proceeded to break it. *sigh*) It’s more miss than hit on the potty training.
Discipline’s been a minor issue, but that’s not abnormal – his schedule’s in flux when it comes to the weekend, so I think that affects him in bad ways. Still, we’ve had to throw him into time-out a few times already. Monday can’t come soon enough.
I have to imagine that this isn’t too far off from how my parents felt when we were growing up, since there were four of us running around like little crazy people. And for us, two (especially one with ASD) is more than a handful.
On the other hand, we’ve discovered that our ‘fooling’ him into drinking milk was really more of a phase – yesterday, while I was in the kitchen, he brought me the stainless-steel cup that we give him “chocolate drink” in, and asked for milk. Straight up, straight out, asking for milk again. He did that a few times so far this weekend, so I’m thinking we’re past the “I’m not drinking milk” bit for now.