William 5.7

Every kid struggles to pay attention and listen and Will is no exception. But lately his listening skills have suddenly and rapidly decreased. I am talking about tuning out the world all day, every day. Like I can be 3 feet from Will, calling his name, progressively louder and louder, until I have shouted his name at the top of my lungs 3x, only then does he deign to look up with a confused expression like, 'why are you yelling mom?' And it manifests in many other ways too, like I will explain something to him, and not more than 2 seconds later, he will request the same explanation. For example, I will tell him that he can't wear his coat before getting into his car seat. Then a second later I will see him putting on the coat I JUST told him not to put on. And it never ends! Finally I told him that hes going to get a consequence (lost tablet time) every time I call his name and he ignores me. That got his attention and after following through several times, I noticed that it got better fast. So maybe thats the answer?

We decided to let him have the chance to earn an allowance this month. We told him that he if emptied out the compost (a daily job) and emptied out all of the trash cans on trash day (a weekly job), then he could earn $5 a week. At first he was not on board and didn't want anything to do with it. Then when we told him that after a month he would have $20, he perked up a little. Then he thought for a minute and told me that after 5 months he would have $100! That got him excited enough to motivate him to do the chores this week. We will see if the motivation lasts and I have to nag him (something I refuse to do. After all, I don't care if he has no money!) to get the job done.  

Hes still a very emotional guy and is easily thrown if his routine or health is off. He had a small cold a couple of weeks ago and still has a small cough thats kept him from sleeping as well as usual at night. I have noticed that his fuse is a lot shorter and he melts down constantly over little things lately. Hes also been lying more. His favorite lie to tell when I ask him why he is crying, is that Nora punched him. The first few times he told me this, I believed him. But then he told it to me a few times when it would have been impossible for her to have done so. Like at night when she was asleep, or when she was outside playing and he was inside. Plus its not something she is likely to do anyway. So now when he tells me that I just flat out tell him that I don't believe him and that if he lies to me I won't believe anything he says. So between the lies and the constant melt downs, its been a tough month! 

Hes been thinking about the future a lot lately and talks about the house he will live in, the kind of car he will drive (an orange race car with a spoiler to make it go extra fast), and what he will do with his kids. Tonight I made him eat one bite of lettuce as part of his dinner, and he informed me that when he is a dad, he will make his kids eat 3 pieces of lettuce! Later on we were playing Monopoly and he told me that we should save this game forever and ever so that he can play it with HIS kids one day! Its pretty cute to see him start thinking about his future like that.  

All of a sudden, a couple of months ago, Will - on his own, without my saying anything - realized that he had been using the women's restroom with me, and it embarrassed him. He started asking me if he could use the men's room. At first it made me a little nervous, but over time I've gotten used to it, and of course we've had talks about strangers and all that jazz. Its just so interesting now that he's reading, he has become SO much more aware of the world around him. Its just one more way that hes growing up before my eyes!