Our Island Family Life

Kids came home yesterday. Sofie was a real mess. Hair all knotted up, pants that were too short, a shirt that was picked out by a crazed hippie and shoes covered in mud. Her knee hurt and she was exhausted. Cade was ok, but he had a real hissy fit later. sean again didn't walk them off the boat. I don't know what he is thinking. I changed Sofie into her jammies, got her some medicine and the warm bear for her knee and settled her in bed with her blanky, some juice and a movie. I gave her a bath later after she was feeling a little better. Cade had homework to do and used it as excuse to freak out about all the other stuff stressing him out. He threw his pencil and pulled his hair and growled and cried. His face was all red. Not coping well at all. I had to spend most of my time with him. Will cooked dinner and Connor took out the trash and got things for Sofie and for Cade which was a big help. Connor also finished off his homework by getting everything organized and writing a 27 page essay. He worked all afternoon and was very proud at the amount of stuff he did. It really is so much better when they do things on their own and feel that sense of accomplishment instead of what Sean was doing to him. On the other end of the spectrum was Cade who still does need some hovering. What I am trying to do for him now is just show him the importance of being organized and to deal with things one step at a time. He was going on and on about how hard his homework was and I had to point out he was a step ahead. How does he know how hard it is when he doesn't even know what he has to do? His agenda was blank. He of course tried to argue about everything and make excuses. So told him he could make excuses and choose to fail or when he calmed down he could ask me for help in a respectful way. I want to help him but I am not going to argue with him or be treated badly by him just because he is angry. He knows where I will be and I walked off. It took him and hour and a half of mumbling and struggling before he came to me telling me he was taking a break. I told him no. He had too much to do and he already had a break. He freaked out again and I gave him his choices again and again walked away. He came to me again and cried how he hasn't had any fun since Thursday. I told him I was sorry for that and there was going to be a lot of opportunities to have fun this week but he had already made an agreement with me last Wednesday he would be doing this homework when he got home in Sunday and I would clean out his backpack for him and organize it to make things a little easier for him. I held up my end of the bargain and now he had to do his part. Besides the amount of homework he had to do wasn't because he didn't understand it or because he hadn't passed stuff in because he was lazy but because he was so disorganized he didn't know he even had homework half the time. That is what he needs to focus on. That is step one for school success for him. He then said he was overwhelmed. I agreed he probably was but did he ask me for help? He said no of course and made excuses as to why I wouldn't help him. I pointed out I had already told him I would several times but he never came to me. Plus, he never really asked. Instead he made assumptions and excuses. That is his responsibility not mine. So he gathered his stuff and we went through it piece by piece. He was so close to having a lot of pages done but didn't even realize it. We broke it down and even though by 8pm he wasn't completely done he had about 80% of it finished. He has until Friday to get everything accomplished. I wasn't going to make him stay up past his bedtime to complete it. He saw what he had done and how easy it had been to do and felt good and a bit silly for his behavior. I told him if he hadn't behaved so poorly in the first place he could have done it all. He is staying after school today to do more work. Will and Connor both offered to help him on the boat this morning so I will find out tonight how things went. It was real nice to see the boys all work together helping each other and me. Connor even offered to talk to Cade about school and letting Cade vent his frustrations with him. Will and Connor too have been joking and talking to each other all week. It's nice to see. Connor is finally beginning to find common ground with Will and recognizing it is ok for them to not like all of the same things and enjoy the things they do without making fun of the other person for their differences. Will thank goodness is not being a smart mouth with Connor. I swear it is a big brother syndrome.