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The paper thing is wrong and needs to be addressed by "upper management". That teacher has poor impulse control. I mean I am not an observer but if she keeps that up she's going to get some observers sitting in on many classes. Or should. Honestly it sounds like she's venting on Q and taking out a lot of her classroom management style out on her instead of learning new techniques. As a new teacher I reached out to a ton of people hoping for help with classroom management because they didn't teach that to me in school and suddenly you've got 22+ kids and you worked really hard on a lesson and they are not having it and you're seeing it slip out of your control. It's young people as they don't have the experience like maybe a Mom might have or natural instinct to get it back on task (that's the jargon they used back in my moms day. You have to find ways to get them on task, Susan). Cheating is a big sign because other kids are seeing that maybe there's a place to get away with that and that age group Q is in is a big tester of boundaries as they become more of themselves and their personalities are developing and some parents are slow to catch on to that change at home so there's no warning to a teacher. There's probably a lot of kids who secretly (or didn't) laughed when Q got her paper torn up because it was a spectacle. 

Honestly schools can be a lot like other jobs. They say "we love diversity and aim to be a good school" but the implementation is often not the reality. It comes from "Upper management" though. They say well we'll do these things but provide no tools for that or instruction or teachers feel overwhelmed by ALL the crap that's laid on them for the day. I've seen that in my previous middle school. I quit and went to work for Cici's Pizza because it was easier working in the food business than dealing with tests, papers and dictates without support.

Hiring the right people is often the best way to help and provide support. But like in other jobs we get a lot of people that simply don't belong and only see it as a paycheck and the pool to draw from is BAD.

 

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Found out thie week that the principal is retiring. He's not gonna do squat. He's coasting. I reached out to him about how things are continuing to go and he glossed over all of it and then when I said look I am really not happy about the paper, he admitted that was "not her best moment".

I met another mom at lacrosse practice who is a former teacher who volunteers in there regularly and within 5 minutes she was going off about the teacher, and I didn't say a thing to get her going. It sounds like they put all the kids who are behind in that class (and I'm assuming Q got dumped in there because I was upfront with her needing a 504). There's 30 kids, and they are super behind. Finished unit 2 in math and they are supposed to be on unit 6. So Q is bored and not learning anything new. They also have too much free time in class and not a lot of whole group instruction like Q is used to. The mom said Q is wiggly but nowhere near the worst. She said she is a good kid and she is really sorry the teacher is picking on her so much. I'm glad someone else sees it, and that we aren't the only one having issues and going to the useless principal. It's going to be a sucky year, folks.

Q thinks she did well on the gifted assessment. I'm not sure about E. If I had to pick, I'd pick Q for it because E has a lot to work on with handwriting and following directions. If he doesn't get in, we will probably hold off until he is in middle school (and then it's really just math and everyone tests in to see where you are).

E also finished vision therapy. He stopped making progress, so the optometrist said there wasn't much else he could do for him. That was kind of sad but I also don't miss 2 hours of driving for a 30 minute appointment every week. Nice to have my Thursday evenings back. Just in time to start lacrosse with 2 hour practices and an hour of driving back and forth. Yeeeyyyy.

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Ha, I love it. Picking based on who's making what.

Sounds like you and the ex live reasonably close together that it's not hard for him to pop in, though? If so that will make this easier. And worst case, could he crash on the couch for a night? I get it, it's not a private space but it's a way of letting him know he's always welcome.

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Yeah, she's literally just a mile away, he has his own car, he has keys, he's usually off with friends anyway. It's all very normal for his age, and he and I have a great relationship... but it still makes me sad that I'm not giving him a dedicated space. It's probably cause I never felt like I belonged at my dad's place once I moved out when I was 12. I always had to sleep on a couch or sofa and wasn't very welcome.

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It’s so strange for me now hearing about your son being at this stage with my own being just 4 months old. I can’t imagine kids growing up now anymore hahaha.

Also, it seems like we just hit the 4 month sleep regression.  I was expecting it to be just him waking up more often again, not him gettting super fussy and angry in the evening and through the night each time.

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  • 3 weeks later...

We got hit with our son’s first illness on Wednesday. He brought home a stomach virus that got spread to the rest of us over the past few days.  He’s also often resisting going to bed at night now, which have me almost no sleep before the illness hit me today. He’s feeling much better at least and my wife is at least on the mend from it seemingly.

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Thanks for asking. My wife and our baby are. Her father didn’t seem to really get it fortunately. The ill east and stresses involved seem to have caused diverticulitis to flare up again, but this time with some complications. I’m in the hospital waiting to see if it will heal up still or if I will need to have urgent surgery.:(

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In good news, we has conferences last week and both kids are doing well. Q is settled in and in a groove (although I've noticed she's a little grumpy in the evenings so she might just be keeping her shit together at school). She has made friends with a couple of girls who the teacher and counselor have both told me they are nice girls and I should encourage those friendships.

E is also doing well. The teacher said she has never seen a rewards program work for more than 2 weeks before and E still exclaims, "Thank you!" in his adorable little voice every single time he gets a ticket. The biggest concern is that his avoidance for writing is starting to catch up with him in math because he is starting to make mistakes in multi-step problems because he won't write anything down and he can't keep it all straight in his head (that's a working memory deficit if I've ever seen one).

Q is back to lacrosse next week and then soccer tryouts start soon after. I think she will realize how much she has missed sports and maybe she will be less grumpy at night.

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So I am back in the hospital for diverticulitis. Ugh.  I developed a big abscess. Hopefully they will be able to drain it and avoid emergency surgery again, but the surgery is still on the table, too.

In principle, my wife and I are fine with either in terms of helping me get healthy again.  However, if I have the surgery, I will have around 6 weeks where I won’t be able to pick up our son because of heavy lifting restrictions. Unfortunately, the family that has been staying with us up to now needs to go home, so they can’t help us with this anymore, unfortunately.

We have our son in daycare and have some extra help for now anyway in the evenings each night and weekend mornings to help, but my wife is very nervous about night time and her ability to take care of our 5-month old on her own during the night.

We have no other family nearby and my parents likely can’t get out to us for a few weeks, at least, due to their own health issues they need to take care of.

Is it reasonable to reach out to friends to help at all during nighttime hours? We have room if they need to sleep at our house.  I also don’t know how realistic overnight-sitters/nannies are here.

I need to think up solutions. Any thoughts?

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They have to be pretty close friends. Is your wife breastfeeding or formula feeding? If formula, I think its easier to have someone to help out overnights unless she's got a serious freezer stash of breastmilk. Is baby sleeping through the nights or not really?

I don't want to downplay your concerns, I get it that she is concerned about you not being able to pick up the baby for 6 weeks. Is it really just nights that she's worried about? Do you do most of the night care, usually? Is she worried about also caring for you? Would it be easier to get a nurse for you for the first week or so? Is there a lot of dressing changes? 

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Thanks for the thoughts, Destiny!

Fortunately, I think my wife has calmed down about this some, at least for now.  The concerns about the night have largely been about uncertainty about our baby sleeping well at night. We unfortunately got pulled into a routine where her dad helped us get the baby to sleep at night because he suddenly didn’t want to sleep in the crib in our room, but would fall asleep in our guest room very easily. I carefully studied how her dad did it and could get our son down, too, but I’m not sure that my wife replicated it yet. That’s what I think mainly worries her.  We have some ideas to get him to sleep still, but we just have to see whether they will work. At the moment, he got through the 4 month sleep regression, so he is back to waking up usually once or twice at night, which is far better than it had been for a few weeks.

Our baby is breastfed still, only using a bottle at daycare most of the time now. We have a lot of frozen milk, but we want to save that for daycare since my wife would still need to get up to pump anyway.

We normally have shared nighttime duties, with her feeding him and me changing his diapers and calming him down to get him ready to feed, and taking turns trying to get him back to sleep if he is fussy.  I think the last part is the other big concern at night because I know feeding takes a lot out of my wife.

I suspect she is also worried about caring for me. It would be nice to get a nurse for me at first since I imagine that will be the hardest part.  We don’t know how the recovery will go yet and I guess a lot of the need for dressing changes will depend on whether it can be done laparoscopically or not, which ties into it being emergency or elective, I think.  My parents may be able to come out for that part, too, though, but they can’t stay for 6 weeks unfortunately.

Now, though, we had everything lined up nicely for help to make the transition with her dad leaving easier, but it looks like our son picked up hand foot and mouth at daycare, so he can’t go back for at least the next two days while I am still in the hospital.  Fortunately, we found a friend from work who is willing to help and come over to our house to stay and help my wife since I can’t be there.  I was so relieved when I got this lined up.  We just h have way too many changes to our situation happening at once right now otherwise.

Hopefully, we will get through these changes alright.

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So from what I remember from the surgery as I had it back before the pandemic or Tina came to live with me. I have to look up the date HA but it was more than five years ago. It was just hard picking up heavy things. I don't really feel much after a week or so but that fools you into thinking it's fully healed. You want it to heal good because it's internal and some things can't be seen because if it scars up hard you're going to have more frequent colonoscopies to make sure it's not causing issues in your system. My doctor said in the long run it will be better to do it because then I don't have to worry about constant issues rearing up. But he also told me lifestyle changes maybe in order such as eating less fatty fried foods and exercise and losing some weight - the surgery is worse on fatties because all that fat around the tummy area makes the surgery take longer to heal from. The things he told me to scare me still give me the willies. HA! Colostomy bags! I see lots of fiber (I hate metamucil) in your future and liquid diets.

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My mom put off a colostomy for probably 15 years. It was so freeing once she did it, I think she regretted not doing it earlier. If you frequently find yourself in embarrassing situations that you need to escape from, I'd recommend it if you start to find yourself in that situation.

We checked out a new Cub Scout pack for E last night and it was so much better. The den leader was organized and hands on, and also didn't get annoyed with wiggly little boys (they all were). They have a good mix of fun and getting requirements done. I think we are going to switch, at least for the rest of the year. I also signed E up for a Camp Fire membership because they have a local camp that is supposed to be very good and they are (supposedly) very good at inclusion. There is now a club in our neighborhood, so we are going to check that out as an option, as well, and then we can decide which is a better fit for next year.

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