Thursday: nap, walk, too much homework and a recurring character … recurs

I took a long morning nap.

I walked with M.

A. had a lot of homework — some from all four core classes, and it was a struggle to get her to focus on it, and she keeps forgetting (and so do we!) to use the accommodations / mitigating strategies completely. Like, we tell her to turn her screen brightness up so we can see it … but forget to remind her to get her migraine glasses out and put them on. She’s allowed to use a calculator … but doesn’t want to, and we forget that the alexa devices work great for this purpose. Etc.

On top of that, the student whose behavior caused us to pull A. out of district summer programs permanently is back in her life in PE class and literally hassling her from day 1 (today was day 2). The behavior _seemed_ innocuous while actually being really awful back then — saying her name repeatedly to get her attention; seems fine? Try at a volume that can be heard two rooms down with the doors closed, and where repeatedly is at short intervals for hours. I had independent confirmation from uninvolved special ed aides in the same building — this is not reported to me by A.

Anyway, that was then, this is now. Wednesday it was incessant apologies for singing Rhymeswithhername Hername Back in the Day, which was NOT what happened at all, but which if a kid were sensitive (fortunately, none of us are. LOL) would be upsetting to hear apologize for … dozens of times. At volume. She handled it _great_: I accept your apology. You can apologize to yourself. Focusing on the past only makes you less productive. Etc. Could not possibly do better myself. Today, there was that and an escalation. Pressure to agree that A. was his friend (never good!) followed up rapidly with:

Tell MaleNamedStudentADoesNotKnow that other, FemaleNamedStudentThatAAlsoDoesNotKnow is Not For Him.

Wut.

Fucking junior high school mafia drama.

We wrote it up and sent it in to A.’s special ed liaison, and I told her, and had her rehearse: if he approaches you (they have PE and PE preview together), go to your aide (if your aide is not available, his aide, if neither is available the teacher, if the teacher is not available, if no adult is in the room with you, _run_ _immediately_ out of the room and to the office) and say to the adult, “I don’t want to talk to so-and-so. Can you help me?” And then stand there with the adult. The kid has already lied to his aide about what he was talking about with A., so I’m reasonably certain that this will stymie him, however, I’m concerned he’s going to escalate to out-of-class encounters; hopefully, he’s supervised enough that that won’t happen. We pick her up and drop her off (walking), but I’ve been trying to move in a direction of more independence for her. I’m going to be very annoyed if I have to go back to meeting her at the exit door again.

If you are reading this and thinking of sending me a nastygram because you’ve identified your own child in this description, you might want to think several more times about that before proceeding. I haven’t even used an initial to identify the child in question. Also, lawyers.

Friday: a hole in the wall, a new door, and a frightening culture

There is currently a large hole in the wall of our house, awaiting the placement of the new door, which when last I checked was lying on the front lawn.

As a result of this, when M. and I walked this morning, we briefly stopped to get snack, and then went upstairs to my office to hang out for a bit, where it was quieter and less cold. It was fun — she’s seen the office before, but not for a while, and it has evolved a lot during the last year and a half and has many fun things to look at in it.

I’ve been doing some deep cleaning in the kitchen lately, and today, I looked at the bottom of the sourdough starter crock. Yeah, that was terrifying. Something was growing on the underside that was highly undesirable. I cleaned most of it off carefully, but then finally just emptied the sourdough into a clean bowl, thoroughly cleaned and rinsed the crock, and then returned the sourdough and fed it again, just to make sure it was happy. There had been an on again off again mystery smell in that area of the kitchen that I had been unable to identify — the sourdough sits on the counter, and there is a sink on one side, the stove on the other, and the pullout trash and recyclables beneath, so there are a lot of potential places to reduce smell. So far, all the other things, once addressed, left me with things smelling fine so I hadn’t pursued the ammonia smell. Which was from whatever the hell fuzzy thing was growing underneath. Somewhat terrifying. I’ll add swipe the bottom of the crock with a clean cloth and then toss the cloth in the laundry to the daily routine. I mean, it sort of makes sense this happened. The crock gets moved around, and there is grease from the stove, and I’m not super careful when I dump the freshly ground flour in, so there’s some scary stuff to grow down in the dark and under, especially because there is also water from the sink that splashes. *Sigh* Science in the kitchen, I guess.

ETA:

Recurring character update. The vp for my daughter's grade called me back while I was at the post office sending out the holiday mailer. Good news: we are all in agreement that the two are NOT to be interacting. A. knows to head to an adult if the other kid approaches, and the other adults are informed that they are not to allow approach and if the other kid tries it twice in one class session they (OtherKid and aide) leave the class and go back to their main placement. I know the woman who runs that room, and she was able to significantly improve my son's perspective so I feel pretty optimistic about that.

The vp, however, shared with me the thought process behind the puzzling and disturbing instruction of "Tell MaleNamedStudentADoesNotKnow that other, FemaleNamedStudentThatAAlsoDoesNotKnow is Not For Him." The vp, mind you, thinks that this thought process makes the whole thing better. Here it is:

OtherKid is interested in FemaleNamedStudentThatAAlsoDoesNotKnow. OtherKid wants my daughter to "be with", whatever that means in 7th hopefully no one is fucking grade, MaleNamedStudentADoesNotKnow, so that FemaleNamedStudentThatAAlsoDoesNotKnow will be "available" to OtherKid.

I. Just. Cannot. Even. This actually is about as transactional as it gets. Why why why would anyone think this is better? The only "better" would have been if some PreviouslyUninvolvedPerson was discovered to have put OtherKid up to this whole thing, but, no, OtherKid cooked this up on his own, displaying clearly his willingness to make someone he supposedly cares about very sad for his own benefit, and also his own unwillingness to compete without basically cheating in the dating "marketplace" (come on this is 7th grade what even is this all about). Finally, OtherKid has displayed a commitment to control of the social environment of his target. None. Of. This. Is. Better. Honestly, if it was straightforward bullying, it would feel less repulsive. This is gross.

I'm actually in a pretty good position to sit and say, hey, keep those two apart, and honestly, keep a sharp eye on that one and make sure they don't pull any nonsense with anyone else. That's been my life since my first kid was born. Things have gotten better over time, but not without effort, and I still worry every time he's out of my sight that he's doing something to someone else that he really should not be doing. But as worried as I get about what he might be up to, he has never (nor has my daughter) ever displayed any kind of thought process even remotely as transactional as what is at play here. R. called it French sex farce. It reminds me forcibly of the kind of romance novel I hate, with Big Misunderstandings, and manipulation. It also reminds me of those comic books that dig way deep into weird social dynamics of who gets to date who. Or, you know, "Heathers".

I don't know what this is, but I don't feel like it's autism.