Hijacked Appointment

Today Frankie had his appointment to get "fitted for contacts." Poor thing almost came to tears trying to put them in. Putting in contacts requires fine motor skills he doesn't really have AND preventing your body from behaving in a sensible way. At one point he turned to the woman who, with infinite patience, was trying to teach him and said, "It's just that this is like totally contrary to my instincts."

Yep. My instincts would be to blink if uncoordinated fingers were coming at my eye too. But he got them in and didn't actually cry. We all pretended that the watering eyes and dripping nose were purely physical responses to the experience. Actually, I was really proud of him. I have never seen him deal with that much frustration without melting down.

I found out this afternoon that he also had a med check appointment tonight, which gave me the excuse to hijack his counseling appointment. It was a fun-filled family outing. The five of us piled into the van, Hubby dropped me off at the counselor's, and drove off to take Frankie to the psychiatrist who decided not to make any significant changes to his meds, at least not until after the neuropsych evaluation.

I told Frankie in advance that I was going to talk to his counselor. He asked why and I told him that I was worried about how much World of Warcraft seemed to have sucked out his brain and that I wanted help figuring out what to do about it. I told him that it had occurred to me that cutting off his access altogether might be a good idea, but that I thought that would be too hard for him. And I told him that other people had suggested that I put him on a high-protein diet free from all sugar, yeast, artificial dyes and flavorings (I'm exaggerating, but it was fun) but that was too difficult for me. He claimed that neither option was acceptable for true Americans and indicated that he trusted his counselor to guide me through these murky waters.

I had a good long talk talk with counselor. I told him that I suck at behavior mod, learned all my best parenting techniques in Alanon, and was interested in some advice. He got some more information out of me about my family, remarked on how well Frankie has settled seeing as he has only been with us for six or seven weeks (amazing isn't it?) and then made two entirely reasonable suggestions. First we should come up with an agreed upon signal to indicate we no longer wanted to talk or hear about WoW. Second, I'm to attempt to sign Frankie up for one or two classes or activities to give him something else to think about. He also said, "I don't want to recommend anything more specific until after we get the results from the neuropsych evaluation." (Anyone sensing a theme?) We threw around possible diagnoses, agreed that he had a whole lot of Asperger's-y characteristics, except for being good at reading emotions, including sarcasm which seemed pretty basic to the diagnosis.

Anyway, I agreed that even someone as bad as I am at behavior mod can manage to sign up a kid for a class at the Y, and saying something like "Dude, I don't want to listen to anything more about WoW" is right up Alanon-road.

After the appointment the five of us went out to dinner at one of the finer fast food joints. Frankie was clearly prepared for me when I said, "We need to come up with a signal for when we need you to talk about something other than WoW."

He said, "Why don't you call me by my full name?"

"But that will sound like you did something bad. Wouldn't you prefer for us to say something like, 'now entering WoW-free zone'?"

"Naw. Why don't you just say 'Heh. Lastname' (giving his step-father's last name).

"You're certain."

"Sure."

Brian said, "I'm sure going to be saying that a lot."

I picked up my folk, took a bite of the salad I like to pretend is low-calorie, and said, "You counselor also thinks we should sign you up for an activity. What would you like to do?"

"Can I learn rock climbing?"

"Sure, they have a class for that at the Y." I say, continuing to munch.

"Cool. Someday I want to climb Mt. Everest." He precedes to give us copious amounts of information about the mountain, the equipment one needs, and low chances of survival if you don't do it right. "Did you know that are lots of dead bodies just lying around at Base Camp 4?"

"No, I didn't, but please allow me to express my pleasure that you brought that up while I am eating my dinner."

He giggled and choked on a french fry.

Definitely a satisfactory evening for all.