Griffin and the end of schools.

He loves school. He calls it "schools", and every night, he asks to go there. "Schools?" he says sleepily, "kids?". He's desperate to play with other children, and it breaks my heart to see him sometimes trying to play with older children who ignore him. Since he started 'schools' a few months ago, he's changed dramatically. He knows how to share. He knows how to play with other children. He can control himself and not take a toy out of another child's hands. His vocabulary has jumped a mile, and he's trying very hard to communicate using words.

I think we made the best decision to put him there, despite their insistence that he get tested for everything under the sun. He will be evaluated, but all the troublesome behaviour that they set before us in great solemnity is now changed to something else. No one listens to parents, I guess. We told them that he had never been in a real social situation, and that we thought it would change a lot in him, but .. we just live here, and they see him for 3 hours, 4 days a week. They have degrees, you see, and degrees impart weight to words.

We did not want to get him evaluated, but they refuse to let him join the summer session without it, so we will get him evaluated. I think it would be a severe blow to Griffin's newfound sense of community to wait until Fall for him to have school again. I fear what the evaluators will say. With the prevalence of ADD&ADHD, and its use as the 'child does not sit perfectly still, we are at wits end' diagnoses, we worry about fighting with educators forever once we get him evaluated and this is on his permanent record.

There is only one thing I really want help with.. the screaming. He screams when there are things happening he dislikes, or when we are about to do something he won't like, or we change from an activity he loves, to something he doesn't want. He screams when he's afraid, he screams when he's frustrated. The noise is this horrible high pitched shriek that pierces the soul. I'd love to be able to have a way to get him to stop. He doesn't seem to comprehend it when we tell him to stop. Either that, or he's ignoring us.. and ignoring us is the new thing with him.

All in all though, I am happy with how he is growing, though I wish he would use the pedals on his bike. He apparently does this at school... but not here. Here he hunches over the top of the bike, and scoots along using his feet. He can get up a surprising speed this way.... but it's so silly. He actively resists learning how to use the pedals.. or simply using them here. It's very frustrating, and I should let it go, but I'm now fixating on it. I should probably not wish for him to pedal.. he could go so fast that I lose him in the maze of parking lots that make up the apartment complex.

This session is ending soon, and then there is a month or so until summer session.. if they let him into summer session (which I believe they will, as we are now submissive to their whims), and I dread a month of his being bored, sad, and asking plaintively for 'schools'.