off day

Ethan has been doing really well all week in school. It is the first week that they have started mainstreaming him, and it is going really well. It might not seem like it to anyone but me, but this really is a HUGE deal, and I am so proud of him that he is doing well enough that we can start this. Yay for Ethan! Anyway, each day Ethan's teacher sends home a note book where she tells me what happened that day, and I send notes back about what we did at home, how he slept, anything that might make the day different for him etc. This notebook also has an area where she lists each thing they do, and then gives a grade of how he did in areas such as following directions, peer interaction, etc on each subject. 1 is the worst score, and 6 is the best. We like anything 4 or above. Today Ethan got a couple fours, mostly fives, and even a couple of sixes! I was thrilled, until I got to the "Library" section. At this point he got all twos-not good at all. I sat him down and we talked about all of the good scores and he told me about various activities throughout the day, and then we got to the twos and started talking about what happened. Ethan has a habit of, when confronted about mistakes, or things he made wrong choices about, he changes the subject to the things that he did right. It is as though if we don't ever get around to talking about it, it didn't really happen. After about fifteen minutes of talking around the subject and me trying to get him to tell me, and asking directly what he did to earn twos, and him avoiding the questions, I'd had enough. I put the "blinders" on him so he had to focus on me and said "Ethan, focus and tell me about Library!" I didn't yell or anything, I just made him know that I meant business. Well, usually that does the trick, but today, not so much. He threw himself backwards and away from me, jumped off the seat, stomped across the living room, grumbling about being tired of "staying focused", and "stop asking about things I don't want to talk about!" He made it to the stairway where his backpack and lunch box were sitting. He kicked the lunchbox down the stairs. It caught air, then smashed against the wall, spilling the left-overs out onto the floor. He then picked up his backpack and threw it in the same general direction. He stomped down the stairs, and when he got to the bottom he kicked the poor defenseless backpack out of the way again, yelled at the top of his lungs "Why don't you just call my teacher and tell her not to let me go to that stupid (Cuss word in our house) library ever again forever for the whole rest of my life!!!" Then he stomped into his bedroom, slamming the door after him. Then, as if an after thought he opened the door and yelled "How do you feel about THAT?!?" and slammed the door to once again prove his point. I stood at the top of the stairs wondering how I did feel about that. Mostly I was thinking What The...? Where did that come from? That is totally out of character for Ethan. Especially when he wasn't really in trouble, and we weren't fighting or anything. I was a little concerned with how HE was feeling, and I was a little annoyed that he had kicked things down the stairs, and slammed the door-twice, and cussed. But at the same time, a little part of me was thinking Hooray for Ethan! He expressed how he was feeling using words and actions instead of throwing himself on the ground and screaming. He had focused his emotions into an expression instead of just melting down into a puddle of ugly. Granted it wasn't super productive, and there were several aspects of inappropriate behavior, but considering where we came from, that was a pretty good job of owning his emotions, and taking responsibility for expressing his feelings. He is growing up, and improving a lot (I know, only a mother of a FAS kid would think this is a moment of progress, but I do.) I also wanted to giggle a little about the words he chose to express himself. A little bit, I didn't know what to do, so I went down stairs and asked if he wanted to talk about it. He didn't, so I went back upstairs and within minutes, he was sound asleep. After his nap we talked about it and things seemed back to normal. I guess it was just an off day...