god, my life is a weird soap opera

Child was picked up today about twenty minutes after I got to work, as he claimed he was having problems taking deep breaths. He'd complained about it the night before. So arranged the committee stuff for the Thanksgiving luncheon, grabbed my stuff, and ran off to fetch him and take him to the doctor to find out what was wrong.

He and I described as best we could what the sensation was (tightness in chest, trouble taking deep breaths, in what I think might be called episodes), so the doctor ran some tests. His lungs are clear, his oxygen is fine, he's not feverish or anything else, so he gave me a script for an inhaler and said for him to use it when necessary. He didn't say asthma, but there's a fair history of it in our family. I'm not worried really so much as--wary. This is new.

Hmm. I'm torn on causation. I just dont' think it's asthma, not without more evidence. I'm actually leaning toward psychological--Child, and for that matter, me, tend to loop our psychological into our physical fairly regularly. When I'm stressed, I lose my appetite and increase my caffeine limits, hence my second semseter in college going down to a weight that still kind of awes me in that I didnt simply collapse. When he gets stressed, he throws up and now (possibly) has trouble catching his breath. It's still very real, just treatment is going to be different. But what it is may be the problem--there's a chance he doesn't even know that himself.

Hmm. It could be the school--a glance at his homework is kind of aweing in what's required. OTOH, his last school sucked beyond measure, so honestly, I cant' be sure. I'd be more sympathetic to him feeling stressed over school if he was trying--but before now, he's never *had to*. He skated by on charm and doing his homework five minutes before class. Like me. *g* And that's not good enough. I mean, yes, I got away with it pretty much all my educational life, but he's *bad* at it. He gets caught without his assigments too often, and if he's not intersted in the subject, he tunes out. It's frustrating. And for the first time, he's in a school with a fairly strict discipline system that does punish for things like forgetting homework and not having your materials. It *sucks* for him, and I get that, but he's basically stressing himself. I've nailed down homework time to be as soon as I get home from work, he's on three weeks grounding and early bedtimes for the next two weeks at least from what I saw in the last discipline reports, which are every one of them homework and assignment related.

Plus the motherlode of general parental notices like for Halloween, and for Picture Day, and for PTA that he freaking *hoardes* in his room or in his backpack and never tells me about.

So it's kind of trapping. I have to be harder on him than the school just to make sure my well-behaved kid doesn't get detention for not bothering to do the work. Or escalate to ISS, to regular suspension, to expulsion, and with teh regular suspension, he loses his slot in the school for next year And he *can* do the work--when he bothers, it's good. He understands what's being taught. He just doesn't want to do it. So. Hmm. There's a fairly good afterschool program that three days a week has a strict study hall until five, when I get off work, and two days of clubs and enrichment activities. I didn't want his afternoons structured like this, to be honest--I don't want a nine year old already on a tight academic schedule. Afterschool should be *playtime* and cartoons and snacks and screwing around in the backyard digging holes convinced there are dinosaur bones or fossils or what have you. I believe in unstructured time. But again. SUSPENSION.

I think at least for a few months, it may be the only way I'm going to be able to snap him into at least some kind of academic discipline. If he genuinely couldn't do the work or needed assistance, that would be one thing. This just isnt' it.

I'm taking a nap and finding zen. Zen in this case will likely be coffee and self-pity. Or maybe porn. Seriously. Where the hell is the porn?