And Zen What

As I've said before, I am not an expert nor do I play one on the internet. Further, the concept of "parenting expert" boggles my mind. It might even be an oxymoron.

Or maybe that is just something I think I think because it makes me feel better.

The day before yesterday, Five came home with 2 (count 'em, 2!) rubber bands on his sweet little wrist. Oh, what a proud boy he was. And oh, what a proud and relieved Mama he had. Five had a good (almost perfect) day at day camp.

This is important. I don't much mind being the Mom to the resident hellion, but Five has to learn how to be his real self in less carefully monitored groups than his current school offers him. Five is a very smart boy, and once he's fluent in Braille, I want him to go to school in our award-winning school district. (The school district is the reason for the huge mortgage payment.)

He's a very sociable boy, at heart. In China, he chatted up everybody, everywhere--really engaging all kinds of people in conversation, and in more than one dialect, to boot. He was constantly asking questions. Expressing curiosity about things and people. Clearly feeling and expressing empathy for smaller children. Politely offering little girls chairs, crayons, a bite of whatever he was eating.

We had our difficult moments. Lots of them. But exhausting and deflating and embarrassing though those moments were, I wasn't worried about his basic ability to attach, to connect. He loved people. He was open-hearted and adventurous and funny. That he didn't think too much of me right off the bat only testified further to his intelligence. Why the heck should he rank me even in the top 5 of any given group of people? I couldn't talk to him, beyond issuing the occasional order, aka, plea (I knew the Mandarin phrases for "no," "stop!" and "time for sleep" pretty well a couple years ago), and I couldn't laugh at his jokes, which were apparently legion.

So I was so relieved when the rubber band thing worked. And so was Five--he got 2 (count 'em, 2!) half-hour segments of video watching (or video-smushing-your-face-up-to-the-TV-screening, to be precise).

But yesterday.

Can you say "apocalypse"?

Ok, not that bad, but: not only did he lose all 3 rubber bands before mid-morning snack, but he worked his way into a stint in the camp office (another step up, or down, the disciplinary ladder), and then, a phone call to the parent (that'd be me)--the penultimate step down the disciplinary ladder.

We had a good, long talk, the counselor and I. Five now has an "inclusion" counselor, even though I didn't enroll him as an "inclusion" camper. Five is the object of sincere, concerted, and costly (for the camp--they are not charging me extra) support from the day camp administrator and staff; they want him to succeed. They do not view any of this as a "bad behavior" problem, but rather as a challenge that they are determined to overcome, to help him be the best little camper he can be.

So, we will keep working on it. His inclusion counselor noticed, astutely, that certain kinds of conditions set Five off, and I shared with him what we do at home to help Five stay "on track."

Today, he marched off to camp happily (as he always does--he luuuuuuuvs camp) with a zillion-pound backpack which he insisted was "not too hebby for ME, Mom!" It contains books, playdough, a magnifying glass, some letter blocks, a small chalkboard and chalk--activities to help him soothe himself when his inclusion counselor decides he needs to chill out a bit so that he can return to the madcap adventures without having earned his way back to the camp office and another "parental phone call."

He is also wearing 3 rubber bands.

A Mom can dream, can't she?