Down and Up and Down and Up

On Friday night he had another violent fit, this time upon refusing to go to bed at 9PM.

We took him out to the car again. He tried to hit us. When he did that, I sat next to him, holding his hands, and told him we were not going to let him hurt people. Unfortunately, Guy happened to turn his head around from the front seat at the exact wrong moment and got a nice punch in the nose.

This one didn't last as long as the others. Within 45 minutes, he had apologized, and said he was ready to leave the car and brush his teeth and put on his pajamas and go to bed. And he did, peacefully.

The next three days were pretty good. He's earned three stickers so far, for Saturday, Sunday and Monday. He needs to earn seven to get a drawer of his toys back. He'd still lost all his video game time for the weekend without hope of redemption. On Monday he did ten workbook sheets with me without any crying or complaining. Later that day, I took him out for ice cream as a reward for his good behavior so far (he's out of school all this week and I was out of work on Monday).

This morning he woke us up at 4:30 again.

It's hard to explain how incredibly irritating this is. One of us goes to lie next to him for a bit to get him back to sleep, but he doesn't want to do that... he wants attention. So when Guy left to go back to our bed, he started yelling "GOODNIGHT" at the top of his lungs at us, every minute.

We both got up and gave him a choice. He could stay at the dinner table doing workbook sheets, or we could go to the car. He wouldn't choose, so I picked him up and we took him to the car. He didn't kick and fight, didn't call us poopooheads, and he got in the car by himself. There, we were faced with another problem. He wasn't raging violently. If you're a sleepy kid and you're in the backseat of a car, that's not a punishment at all... so I had to keep waking him up every few minutes by shifting his blanket (we couldn't let him be in a cold car in his pajamas with no blanket).

Whereas before, we had bad behavior plus violent raging, the two problems are now split apart. That's good, but it means we have to change tactics yet again.

He eventually decided to go inside, where he did workbook sheets. He complained a lot, but he didn't scream. This was the worst of it:

Sunny: "When I get older I'm not going to live with you anymore."
Mom: "Well, most kids don't live with their parents anymore after they get older and turn into adults."
Sunny: "I was planning on staying with you anyway. But you give me too many time-outs, so I'm going to move out when I get older."

We told him we were not happy about his bad behavior, but we were glad he didn't make his bad behavior worse by hitting and name-calling.

We meant it. The highlight of my morning is the fact that I was not called a poopoohead. The exhilaration almost compensates for the grinding fatigue.

He's lost all his TV time for the day, but Guy is giving him a chance to earn it back later by doing more workbook sheets.

Also, Guy just told me Sunny has been complaining about a pain in his chest when he breathes deeply, so he's going to take him to our pediatrician in an hour, as long as Sunny says his chest is still bothering him. We both panicked a little and thought about telling our agency worker. Then I went over the events of this morning and realized that since Sunny got in the car by himself, there is no way we could have caused it. It's probably a bruise he got by falling asleep, on his stomach, on top of one of the seatbelts. Sunny always complains very dramatically about minor scrapes and bruises but then forgets about them quickly once he's distracted. We'll see if he still wants to go to the pediatrician in an hour, and then see what she says.

I can't wait for the adoption to be finalized. Until then, we're always going to be panicked about even the most remote possibility he could be taken away from us.

I still plan on following almost all the same rules after finalization. No locking in or out, no physical discipline. I agree with their spirit. It's just that we won't have to worry about every single scratch and bruise so much.