Dear Noah....trying to decide about the after school group program....

and whether it is right for you. The best fit. I don't think so. You seem to get more upset by it than are happy about it. You continue to go every week holding out faith that maybe this will be the week you will be allowed to do something "fun" as you say...rather than just mostly sitting at the table and listening to a discussion about things.....(feelings, problems, child abuse, anger management...etc.). ALL those things are important...but you are craving actual SOCIAL time meaning hands-on fun with other kids. You said so far this quarter you have only gotten to do that one time in group...the time you all worked together to make some sort of food in the meeting.

I said maybe you should not go there any more but we should try to find you another place to go instead. You cried because you said you would then be leaving all your friends. This was news to me. I asked you if you had friends there? and you said yes.....and that there was one girl who had been there before but was gone for a long time...but came back last week. You especially like her and also told me she is a lot younger than you. You seem to think she is around 4 or 5 years old....which I doubt as I think most of the kids in your group are all around your age.......8, 9, 10.

I talked about just having you go to THE ZONE next door instead of the meetings....but again you wanted to be with your friends in the meeting.

I asked you what you did not think was "fun" during the meeting time and you said that the staff was more rude and mean than the school you were in last. I asked you in what way and you said any time you tried to talk about something "off topic" they immediately told you to be quiet they did not want to hear about it now...but would later.....and then you said but later never happens as they did not want to hear about it later either.

That broke my heart..as you crave someone to LISTEN to your interests and things you would like to share. AND at this so-called social group meeting every week...you are never given the chance to do this.

NOT sure what I can do about this.....but I will try. I could email the leader and ask if she could give you at least a few minutes at the end of the meeting to talk about something that interests you. I really just want to yank you from the program and find something else....but want you to continue at the same time. I am hopeful you and the little girl can go next door together AFTER your meeting on Wednesdays.....and you two can play video games or something together. That would be a good thing. I will email the leader and ask her if she can make sure to go over with you today after group.

Your OHVA learning/science fair was fun to attend on Monday afternoon. You got to meet up with some other kids who do homeschooling via OHVA. You also got to meet one of your teachers which is great!

Meanwhile you had a very moody attitude day yesterday and did not want to do much of anything as far as school went.....you did not want to go to speech therapy. YOU did not want to do anything, but stay in your room with the computer. This time I pretty much told you we were doing speech therapy regardless.....and to deal with it....that unless you were really sick.....even school was something you would have to do. You keep saying you are bored.....and yet a lot of the work in school you act like you are having problems with. It was super difficult yesterday to get you to sit still and focus on anything. I told you that you had mentioned to me you would like to be an "inspector" of elevators or escalators or toilets/plumbing....etc one day......along with a few other things. SO I told you in order to one day get a good job and be out on your own you needed to have an education. You would need to be good in math and science and other subjects.

You did slightly better after that. NOT great...but lately everything seems to overwhelm you. I mean you cry at the drop of a hat.....big crocodile tears.

sigh........

I love you Noah.....we will figure out something.

Mommy
XOXOXO

OH....you were making one of your hundreds of action figure movies in the other room when I was in the kitchen and I heard you shout out "I am going to rape you! I am going to rape you!" and I went in the room and asked you what you said. You repeated it.....but more slowly as you finally realized you must be saying something inappropriate. I asked you if you knew what that meant and you of course said NO. I asked you where you heard it and guess where??? On YOU TUBE on a SONIC cartoon some sick adult put sound bites over.....

I told you this was why I monitor what you watch on You Tube and to always ASK what something meant before you just assumed it was meant something else. I then had to explain to you....not the average 10-year-old boy..what RAPE meant and why it was totally inappropriate to ever say you were going to rape anyone to anyone.....and to never do it and what happens to people who do!

YOU TUBE unfortunately has many young adults and adults alike who take common kid's shows and cartoons and transform them into perversion. Then our kids have no clue (AND neither do we until we catch it)...that something they might click on will be anything but the cartoon or show they click on. Noah is so naive about all this stuff.....and has no clue what all these words or terms mean.

Technology can be good......but as usual..there is always someone out there who will trash it with perversion.