Carpe Datum

"Sleep" Over

Cody had a friend over for a sleepover on Saturday night. It's tough for the boys to be quiet because they share a room. Add another 11-year-old to the mix, and it's bedlam. When Michelle and I went to bed at 11 or so, I told them it would be nice if they could plan to getting to sleep sometime around 1 or 2am, maybe after they watch another movie or play another round of "Soopahsmashbruhs".

You can imagine how that went over.

So at 1:30am, after being awakened briefly a few times over the previous couple of hours by loud bangs and yells, I finally had enough. I have a hell of a time getting back to sleep if I'm awakened within an hour or two of going to sleep in the first place (my body treats it as a "nap", and I normally don't take naps even in the middle of the day because I can't fall asleep later that night), so I was pissed. And I was right to be pissed, because I didn't get back to sleep until 2 hours and about 200 pages of Piers Anthony later. ("Well, there's your problem! Fucking Piers Anthony!" Yeah, yeah, shut up, I know.) Still, you've got to be nice to company, and I know I was a hellion during those all-night slumber party Ping Pong tournaments when I was Cody's age (my mom was *such* a trooper, I have to say).

So I walked to the boys' room and opened the door. As angry as I was, my first reaction was genuine "What-The-Fuck?". Remember "Lord of the Flies"? The movie where all the kids get stranded on a tropical island and eventually revert to savages due to a lack of parental supervision? I frequently reference this movie to the kids. For example, "No, you all have to go into the store with me. If I leave you all out here in the van for five minutes, it'll be 'Lord of the Flies' in here when I get back."

At the end of the movie, a tribe of murderously savage spear-carrying boys is chasing our young hero through the jungle. The young boy stumbles and collapses on the beach, right at the feet of a very bemused marine, whose outfit has just landed for some sort of operation there without knowing the kids' predicament. The marine watches in amazement as the scene unfolds. First the kid stumbles at his feet, then the screaming and yelling and more and more painted freaky kids come running up carrying spears.

I felt like that marine when I opened the door to the boys' room last night and got blasted in the face with Three-Sweaty-Boys Odor and a hurricaned room, and I gave them shit for it. Justin (15), as usual, reverted back to Cody's age (10) for the evening, so I had to remove him from the situation and put him in the office. He enjoyed our little female pug jumping all over him at 8am Sunday morning when we let her out of her crate. Cody and his friend got the Stern no-more-sleepovers-if-this-keeps-up Warning, and that seemed to work. Hell, they were so tired, all they needed to do was sit still for five minutes and they'd pass out.

It was a total coincidence, but "Lord of the Flies" was showing on TV on Sunday, and Cody caught the last half of it. Justin caught the last half-hour. "Oh my God, they killed him with a rock!" and other assorted expostulations were coming out of the living room, much to my amusement. And now both the boys know what I mean when I say "Lord of the Flies".

While I'm thinking about it, most of you already know the backstory of the kids and our family pretty well. After Michelle and the three older kids moved down to here from Canada 3+ years ago, Justin was pretty quickly diagnosed by our school district with Asperger's (mild form of autism). Oh, and it wasn't that they're all wonderful ... it's just one of those things that school districts are often looking to weed people out of their formal lists of test-takers so that their percentage of passing scores will improve. Often there are beneficial side-effects of such behavior, and I can really appreciate that now.

We've been dealing with it with some success, and Justin is making great progress on his education (especially reading, where he is pretty much caught up with his peers after getting here 2-3 years behind at least). Still working on the social skills. He seems to get on fine with his teammates on track/cross country, but he doesn't have any close friends that he invites over or goes to the game with, etc. Sarah also has had issues, and we finally got some professionals to look at all the data. Michelle has the details, if you are interested (motor and speech dyspraxia is the best four word summary I can give).

Oh, and little Daniel probably has an ear infection. Michelle is probably taking him in this morning to get it checked out if he's still feeling bad. We've been super lucky. I think this will be only the third one for him. Other kids his age and a little older in our extended family seem to never be well, but they're in day care a lot more (with more kids), I guess.

Posted by Observer at February 14, 2005 07:09 AM