School is not one of J’s favorite activities.
In fact, he hates it.
And it turns out that his decision to come here was largely motivated by a promise someone made him that if he stayed in China, he’d have to go to a harder school, but if he came with us to America, he wouldn’t have to go to school at all.
So, as we’ve started up homeschooling, there’s been a lot of resistance–some of it active resistance. We’re trying to make it as fun as we can (I’ll try to insert zoo trip photos here when I can), but as his parents, we’re both legally and morally obligated to ensure that a certain amount of learning happens each day. And in a home schooling environment, we’re uniquely positioned to do that.
Tuesday was a particularly bad day. Since the first two days of schooling (last week) had not gone well, I enlisted the help of a CCAI translator to talk about what needed to happen, and that conversation got J. worked up enough that he spiraled out of control. It wasn’t as bad as the time a couple of weeks ago that he spun out, however. (And it was the first time since the tablet incident that he hadn’t been able to calm himself either with or without our help.) Fortunately, we saw our counselor on Wednesday, and things have gone a bit better since.
Even so, The strain is showing with B and K–and the adults in the house (including my mom), and we need to figure out how to get everybody some extra love and attention.
We seem to be doing a bit better, but we still have a long ways to go.