In the past, we have had the most success with Akila when she is working towards a reward. I have found if we are always doing this though, it loses it's effectiveness. I use to do it with her if she did not steal for an entire week, we would do a make up party at the end of the week. Now, I don't even care about the stealing, it is the least of my worries.
Well, I shouldn't really say that I don't care about the stealing. I have just learned that it is pretty hard to stop, and that I now just deal with it differently. I say this as I just found a 5th tube of mascara tonight that she must have stolen at the dance show a few weeks ago- at least I think it is the 5th tube, I have lost count.
Anyway, earlier this week, I made a deal with her that if she was good in school, took her meds without fighting, and was fairly nice at home, that I would get her some fake fingernails on Friday afterschool. Well, she was highly motivated. She has had some fake fingernails in the past, and I hate them for so many reasons. As a matter of fact, some time ago, I banned them. She has not been allowed to have them. She will spend Christmas money on them, or chore money on them if she is allowed.
Well, the long absence of these lovely nails has obviously worked as she must have wanted them terribly bad. She was great and she got them on Friday. The plan is to take them off tomorrow night as I think they will be too distracting at school on Tuesday. She is a bit obsessed with them. We'll see, I might let her try them for one day and check in with the aide to see if she was obsessed. I just hate them though, so it is pretty hard.
She woke me up yesterday morning out of a deep sleep, and wanted me to get her some cereal which she is capable of doing herself. I was telling her to go get it, when she yelled "I can't have dad do it because he is sleeping, so you need to". Did I say that she had just woken me from a deep sleep. First of all, I didn't tell her to have dad get it. Second of all, I was sleeping. Drives me nuts.
The week at Children's Hospital and Clinics finished up really well. We made several concrete changes to the communication process for families during a child's surgery, including creating a communication board to be posted in the pre and post op. rooms for families to write questions down on, and a note pad to write answers down on. We created a system where families will get pagers during the surgery and a process for families to consult with the surgeon after a surgery in a private room. Sounds obvious, but right now, the waiting room during surgery is about the size of a bedroom, seriously, and most surgeons walk in to the room, right up to a family, and update them in the midst of everyone. Space is a major issue, but it won't be after construction.
It was a well organized process and one that did not feel like a waste of an entire week. Although my house is in really rough shape and kids were having a hard time finding clean clothes this morning. I have one week to recover and then next week, I will be spending two full days in the same type of process with our school, only they are calling it a "charrette".
I had to look up what a "charrette" is, here is the definition:
char⋅rette
–noun a final, intensive effort to finish a project, esp. an architectural design project, before a deadline.We received a letter a few weeks ago from our Superintendent inviting us to request to participate in this process, and it was a very wordy and complicated letter, which used this term without a good explanation of what a charrette is. I find it interesting that an inner city school which wants to involve more diverse parents, would send out an invite letter to parents which is so hoity toity sounding that it makes no sense. And then we wonder why we only have the same type of parent involved in some of these projects.
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