Saturday 28 July 2012

A Major Breakthrough......and homemade cookies!

I'm finally getting to the bottom of all thats wrong between Alex and Jamie.

It all came to a head(literally) this evening when Jamie got so angry with Alex that she threw a light saber at Alex, it hit him on the head and cut him, bleeding into his hair. I heard what what going on too, Alex had obviously said something horrible to her, I could hear her saying - not shouting - how much of a horrible little boy he was, how selfish he was, and I could hear Alex giggling away......and then she just threw it.

I got Jamie to go to her room, I was making pizzas at the time, it was getting late, I was angry with her and I just needed to be away from her so I could think it through. I made her eat her dinner in her room....I was still trying to think, but also it worked out really well because usually I confront her when she is still angry, and all I get out of her is some kind of Veruca Salt type person shouting back at me. This time, because I'd left it longer maybe, when she spoke to me, it was from her heart this time. It was all about how frustrated Alex makes her feel. Earlier or yesterday, she'd got so angry at Alex because twice he'd walked away from her while she was talking to him, she got so angry he'd hit him, then hit him on the neck with a stick!
During our conversation I realised it's because of the way Alex is, he IS very difficult to live with, he's only EVER interested in what he's interested in, and nothing else, I explained to Jamie that when he walked away while she was talking, Alex was probably a million miles away in his own head, and was so not interested in what Jamie was saying that he didn't even hear her, he does that to me all the time! except I've learnt to see the signs, I can tell when he's not interested and I don't bother continuing, but Jamie didn't understand this.
Also, Alex is never interested in how anybody else feels, he doesn't really realise that other people have their own thoughts sometimes, and it's really difficult to have a normal, two way conversation with him, unless you're talking about something that is of particular interest to him.
He also sounds rude quite often, but he doesn't mean to be. When Jamie plays with him, he usually gets over-excited and he takes it too far and that always causes a fight, this is why when I play chase, or tickle fights with him, I have to stop when I see him going over-the-edge, but Jamie doesn't know how to spot the signs.

All of the problems Jamie has with Alex, I've been through, and I've learned (and still learning) through research and talking to others who have been through it, to understand why he's the way he is, and I've learnt to accept him, or learned ways to deal with him, but Jamie is still at the beginning really.

So I explained as much as I could, and I offered some ideas on what to do when he makes her so mad that she just wants to lash out through frustration, and I've told her to take a deep breath and just try to observe Alex, to see if she has his attention, or if he's gone over-excited. It's been difficult for me to figure him out, it must be even harder for a seven year old girl!

All this week they've been playing, playing and more playing, with more and more arguments, which although has been quite stressful at times, I knew they needed to do it, and to just get on with it, and although I've been thinking that they've not done any structured learning, I think Jamie has learnt something even more important, and now we can start to make it better, with more understanding.

Back to the usual stuff, I gave them both the opportunity to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, Alex wasn't in the slightest bit interested, Jamie watched about 15 minutes of it and could not stop moaning about it then went to bed! Nevermind.

Alex has been asking lots of questions about death again. How old are we when we are dead? where do we go when we die? are there any plants there? will we go back to our house when it was first built??? All very tricky to answer, all I could do was offer all the different theories out there along with my own. He also asked me "How does time move along?" I mean seriously, can you get a harder question?! I just had to say " I really don't know!" that's something he's learning too, that sometimes we just don't know the answers.

Hopefully-(if the video works), here is a little bit of spontaneous learning that happens all the time, I just happened to capture it on video the other day! (you have to listen quite closely to hear Alex)


There's been loads of stuff happening but as usual, I can never think of it when I'm doing the blog!! I do know that we made some really nice cookies today -

mmmm......

Alex experimented with freezing his changing colour hotwheels car - 
 
And Alex's swimfin came yesterday!



Alex was smiling until our dog Lulu came up to sniff the swimfin just as I took the picture
and Jamie just had to get the last laugh!
 
 
 
 

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