Don't really know if it's ADD or ADHD or he's an Aspie or what at this point. I also hate getting all hung up on labels with kids with borderline issues. If it was something big that would be different, but the main issues he has is that he has been raised by my ex for too long with no discipline or rules about much of anything and spoiled. Breaking him away from that is going to take time and effort. Today he got up a little before me, when I walked in the livingroom I asked him if he was working on schoolwork, he says yes history. I say ok and go into the kitchen. I come back out and check on the progress report on my computer and it showed he completed the history assignment, great I think. My girl gets home and checks through the reports on the computer and finds out that he was playing games until I walked in and only logged into history briefly to rush through the assignment. When confronted about it he then lies to us and denies playing the games - and we even told him we knew because the computer reports it to us. It took 20 minutes of making our point before he caved and said he lied about it. My ex would never have checked any of it and never called him out on it. My daughter would try to call him out on it, but then my ex would step in and tell her to mind her own business and baby him again. I can't imagine what would happen if it had continued like this and with my daughter away at school nobody would have been on him about anything. He is very smart, the reason he could rush through history today and get it right is because he was in the same class in fall at his old school - why he just doesn't do the work quickly and get it done and then play the games is what I don't get. Last week we were doing so well again and he was blowing through his work in 4 hours on Friday, and then Monday he's dragging along and doesn't finish for 9 hours again. One benefit is he can flex the schedule a bit, but at this point I'm trying to establish more routines for him than let him flex everything because he wants to. While my daughter always looked at school as something that would give her a benefit in life and did well, he has struggled for awhile with it after falling behind with some things years ago. My mother was a teacher and taught me, and I was teaching my daughter from the time she was a baby. Even my mom knew she was quick to learn and she was doing kindergarten things at age 2 and 3. She tested out of kindergarten at 4 and was placed in the gifted programs from then on in school so she was in high school courses in grade school and college courses in high school. She would get mad if she got a C and push herself, I didn't worry about her and me ex didn't have anything to do with her in school. My son on the other hand was doing good at a normal pace until he was about 3 when my ex and I split, after that had weekends at most to see him. We have been talking with him about things a lot going back through the years and finding things my ex never told me about other than to say everything was fine or good. Last night when we were doing schoolwork I noticed he writes letters and numbers in an odd way and he told me he taught himself how to write by copying how it looks in print. So his a's look like they do on a computer screen instead of the typical 'a' you print. We had him reading out loud today and found out he doesn't pause at a comma or stop a sentence at a period - it becomes a long run on mess that sounds lifeless like a robot saying words. There may be a learning issue under all of this in the end, but lack of educating is the main thing we see right now and we see improvements so we know things sink in. After reading for half an hour he started doing better, and when I had him read his history tonight out loud he was doing better too. Unfortunately, catching him up in school to the point he should be at in 6th grade is not going to happen fast, things need to shift. If he was like my daughter I would have no issues with keeping my fish, but right now, I need some breathing room.
We are cutting down from a 125, two 75 tanks on a stacked stand, a 56, and a 10 to just the 125. It looks like a good group of the fish are going to their new home today, but I still need to sell the tanks and not sure about if the flowerhorns are actually sold right now. We are going to break down the 125 as a family project over a month and redo it. The stock in that tank is sold, and I am considering going with an Asian theme and 3-5 fancy goldfish (we can incorporate his history and science lessons too). In the future I can always change things out again but this made the most sense for now.
