Back to School

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Chef is in a much more relaxed frame of mind than he had been, and the school is operating as though they are receiving the additional funding from the division. I'm pretty tuckered out and very thankful to be part of such a wonderful team.

Chef was dressed before the bus arrived this morning! He had some focus blips, needed many many verbal prompts, was still dressing as he ran to the door, and he put his pyjamas on the front step instead of in the hamper - but he dressed inside today! Always a good thing.

(Chef has had visual aids over the years but has always rejected them. He recently did up a notebook of checklists for himself but doesn't use it. I'm going to see if it works to put a visual up on the fridge again for mornings).

I discovered this morning, however, that he'd indeed washed his load of laundry on the weekend, but had only dried half of it. I discovered this when I realized that he has enough shirts for the week (now very wrinkly because he'd folded them rather than hanging them because he's broken all his hangers between camping week and school-start) but only one pair of pants (the ones with tons and tons of pockets!) and a pair of shorts. I always check his laundry to make sure he hasn't stashed something from downstairs, but Chef has otherwise been doing his laundry (well, bedding aside, but that's a whole other story!) independently for quite some time. Another Mom-Dilemma: Break the laundry rule and let him have an extra day for laundry? No, we've done that in the past and it always snowballs. Let him wear the multi-pocketed pants that he wore yesterday and got dirty? Hmmm, well, that's not supporting the "we wear clean clothes" plan and also has the potential to increase the likelihood that he will do whatever he can in upcoming weeks to ensure that he only has his multi-pocketed pants to wear. The shorts? Well, that's not a comfortable idea for me as his Mom. It's starting to get chilly out. But he's not outside for any length of time during the day and that's what he has available to wear based on the choices he made regarding getting his laundry done. Shorts it is then. And back to wearing my "Laundry-Checker" hat!