The Candy Cane Debacle Part 2

Boy this story just keeps getting more interesting! After the horrible afternoon and night we had yesterday, Hannah had an AWESOME morning. I had high hopes for her day at school. I thought she would be in the right frame of mind to speak with the teacher and the principal about what had happened. I also thought she'd be able to handle the consequences of her action (from mom and dad: no sweets for the rest of the week, from school: no candy cane from the tree when it was her turn and no sweets if there were any offered at school to reinforce the no sweets rule from home). Well. . . . . not so much. Mrs. A reported that Hannah would not focus on their talk at all. Instead she kept blurting out that she had a great morning (which she had). She didn't seem to acknowledge a thing Mrs. A said. When informed she would need to go to the Principal's office she adopted an attitude of uncaring and was completely nonplussed when the visit happened during one of her recesses. She was however irritated about the no sweets rule and put up a bit of a fuss. THEN the doozy hit. She went to the resource room and was offered a treat for a personal best on her weekly math quiz. She gladly took it and ate it and then immediately told the Mrs. D that she would have to tell Mrs. A about it because she wasn't supposed to have sweets. She then walked back to her classroom and told Mrs. A that Mrs. D was going to give her a treat for her math quiz. When Mrs. A informed her that she would have to save it until next week she told Mrs. A that it didn't matter because she already ate it! The little sneak. She KNEW she wasn't allowed and waited until she had already ate it to inform the teacher about it. There were apparently other behavior issues during the day too.

Then when I picked Hannah up she was wound up, but behaving ok. She did her chores, finished her homework, and got ready for swimming without complaint. Then at swimming she actually listened to her teachers and had her best lesson so far! She swam the entire length of the pool on her back without any help and without stopping since she was in the deep and couldn't ever touch. I was so proud of her. Then she showered, had dinner, and got ready for bed peacefully and without incident. It was the easiest night we've had in weeks, maybe months! I think it is so interesting that when Hannah has rough days with us at home she seems to do okay at school and when she has good days with us she has a hard time at school. It's like she only has a limited capacity for behaving and she can either use it one place or the other and then it's gone and anything leftover gets bad behavior. Usually Kyle and I get the bad behavior and though it's rough I'm glad for her to save it for us instead of it impacting her schooling significantly. However, every once in awhile it's nice to get the good stuff and to have others see what we go through daily and have that validation that I'm not a crazy mom and WE aren't the cause of all the bad behavior. Does that make sense? So many times we've been told we are imagining things and that they "just don't see that with Hannah." I feel like a broken record trying to explain that she's better with others usually, but these are her normal behaviors. So, it's nice to be validated every now and then and have Hannah "share the love" so to speak!

Photo Note: Pictures are from Thanksgiving Day. Kyle, Hannah, and I spent the day hanging out together. Hannah helped me decorate the house for Christmas and helped Kyle make cranberry bread.