Cody

After posting the last post I ran into Cody's teacher at school in the hallway.  I asked her how he does while he is in class.  She informed me that he is fine.  He gets to class and he has no problems at all.  So the problem lies with me.  His teacher really wants me to send him on the bus.  I don't see how that would make things better when he doesn't even want to ride the bus.  I think it would be more difficult to get him on the bus than it is to leave him at school.  I am going to attempt to have him ride the bus home, this way he is excited about riding the bus because he gets to come home.  Hopefully after a doing that a few times he will learn to like the bus and want to ride it in the mornings as well.  I know I didn't have to ride the bus until I was in 4th grade.  I dreaded it but I was also old enough to know I had to.  I was just terrified of not knowing when to get off the bus.  I can remedy that by being at the bus stop when he gets there, at least for the first few times anyway.Well, anyway, I had a talk with Cody about how much he hurts me by behaving so badly in the mornings.  Seriously, Wednesday, I had a horrible stomach ache.  It wasn't good.  I also told him that if he is going to continue to behave that way then he WILL ride the bus in the morning on Thursday.Now, I got in trouble for not mentioning this in an email so I will be sure to mention it here...Jason also had a long (and I mean long) talk with Cody after putting him to bed.  I think Jason was in Cody's room for more than 20 mins.  Cody was telling him stories (which he apparently loves to do) and Jason told him about how he needs to behave if he wants to go hunting with Jason, get a DS, and his own hunting clothes and rifle to go hunting with.  I am sure there were a few things I missed but that pretty much sums it up.I guess all that talking helped Cody.  Although I had to do some coaxing and prodding to get Cody in the car and into the school.  He went, no crying, no fighting, nothing but a bit of wimpering.  It was amazing.  I still sat with him, per his request, until the bell rang.  When it did he got a bit upset but gave me a hug, Garrett a hug and thanks to a friend who walked him to class it was magnificent.  I was so proud of him that I wanted to cry happy tears finally.  I kept praising him and telling him how happy and proud I was and thanking him for doing so well.  He even asked again about a new backpack.  I told him if he did this well on Thursday and Friday we can get him a backpack when we go out on Saturday.Then we had another set back.  Wednesday night Cody woke Jason up crying.  He said his ears hurt.  Jason told me Cody woke Jason up pretty much every hour.  I knew that he wasn't faking this.  What kid fakes his ears hurting and crying in the middle of the night?  So first thing Thursday I called the clinic to get him in to the doctor.  We had to wait until 10am (which was torture for the both of us).  It turns out that the cold he has had turned into an ear infection, a bad one in his right ear.  So definitely no school Thursday and debated about school on Friday.  After all we finally made some headway about him going to school I didn't want to set that back again with another 4 day weekend.So, all day yesterday he was like this: 

(photo courtesy of a bing search)but slowly got better as the day went on.  Still pretty upset but better.  He was terrified about going to bed last night though.  He was afraid of his ears hurting like they did the night before.  Thankfully he slept like a rock and I thought he would be good to go to school.That is until we woke up this morning and Jason looked out the window and saw this: 

(a couple more inches of snow and some blowing snow)

 I knew that the cold and snow would not help his ears so I decided to leave him home again today.  Of course that lasted for about an hour and now I wish I had sent him to school.  Now I still can but the time off and out of the cold is still better for him than being at school and exposed to the cold weather. My prayer now is that the good attitude about school will continue on Monday.  I think we just need to continue to tell him what he can get if he behaves and what he is going to have taken away when he doesn't.