A sad day for Roman

We are at the end of our rope with Roman. A friend at church tried to comfort us last night - "he was such a sweet angel the first couple years, I bet you guys are freaking out about this now!" Uh, yes. Here's how the day went.

Doug dropped Roman off at preschool. At the first circle time, Roman was told multiple times to sit down and be quiet. He continued to talk to himself, get up to go to the bathroom, and basically wiggle and move, unfocused, the entire time. Keep in mind, circle time is only 15 minutes. I was at home taking cute pictures of Charlie, like this one.

During Roman's lunch, it gets hazy; the teachers said he threw his lunch on the floor, Roman said it spilled. I tend to believe Roman on this one, because it was grilled cheese & fruit, a couple of his favorite things. However, when they asked him to pick it up, he did his obnoxious noise for no. They asked him again, the note said he got angry and refused to clean up. They sent him to the office to calm down, and he returned and cleaned up. Meanwhile, Charlie was getting grumpier.

During rest time, Roman kept talking. And talking. And talking. To himself, he says. Either way, he got sent to a different room for a little while as punishment. When I arrived to pick him up, the girl in the office pulled me aside and said that the director suggests we bring in a "stress ball" for Roman to play with during circle or rest, to help him focus. Maybe Miss Sheila forgets that I'm a teacher, but those words are code for a couple things - "we think your child has ADD/ADHD" or "we think your child is bordering on Asperger's." In seven years of teaching, I have only suggested that to a parent once, and that's because their child had Asperger's but the parents were in denial.

Could Roman be ADD? It's possible. Since baby-times he couldn't play with anything more than 10 minutes, and still can't. He roams from toy to project, and even at his preschool he has a hard time focusing on a project and tries to get it done quickly. However, when questioned, Roman tells us he is choosing to do these behaviors. I think the problem is what I feared when he began to speak - I suspect he is truly highly intelligent, and is bored as heck at his preschool. Because this happened at his previous daycare too, in every room he was placed in.

Meanwhile, Charlie got really grumpy because he was hungry.

So Roman has lost his Lego Star Wars game through the weekend, and is under threat of losing more toys with every unacceptable behavior today at preschool. His behavior didn't end with preschool, though. At our church dinner he wanted to follow the big boys (9 & 10 year-olds) into a Sunday School room where they had taken their ice cream sandwiches. We said no. Roman fell to the floor screaming and sobbing, causing most eyes to turn our way, and continued to carry on for close to 5 minutes right there in Fellowship Hall. Nice. Meanwhile, Charlie was happily in the arms of our friend Howard, who secretly pines for another baby (his kids are 8 & 10). But here's another picture from home.

Ahhh... love that pacifier.

I did have a talk with Roman about telling us what's going on in his brain. We got out of him the obvious; he doesn't want Charlie in the house anymore, we don't play with him enough, etc. The comment that did get me, though, was when I said it was okay to be annoyed with Charlie, because I am too sometimes - like when he was crying and carrying on in the car, and I couldn't talk with Roman. Roman said, "You could talk to me at home." I said, "I didn't, did I? I fed Charlie and then went downstairs to do some work." "Yeah, and you could talk to me instead." Boy, that did ping my heartstrings.