My husband and I work full time.  Fortunately, we are blessed with a wonderful extended day program at our kids school, that they attend for about 90 minutes before school and about an hour afterwards.  They certainly seem to love it, anyway.

Thing is, we’ve come to realize that L is incredibly tightly wound – the poor kid’s on high alert at all times, especially when at school or extended day.  And the minute he gets home, there’s a good chance he’s going to blow out.

So starting today, we’re pulling both M and L out of daycare in the mornings, and on Monday/Tuesday afternoons.  That’s another 90 minutes a day (at least) that they get to chill in the comfort of their own home, and don’t have deal with tons of transitions (do you realize how many transitions occur during the school day – and even during a single hour of day care?  It’s a lot!).

Of course, me being me, I’m hoping that this change will solve all the world’s problems, and we can be a nice, normal family.  Of course, that’s not how it works.  Maybe we’ll see a dramatic change, but more likely, we won’t see anything – at least not in the short run.  But even so, it can only help our kids to spend more time relaxing, and less time performing.

Because for the first few years of their lives, relaxation was not an option.  And their little systems deserve a break.

Lately, L has been doing really well – seems the latest med-cocktail is really helping him make good choices.  As a result, we’ve been doing a whole lot less displining, correcting, yelling, whatever.

Funny thing though – once L started calming down, M started ramping up.  This is the girl who knows what all the rules are, and is perfectly capable of following them.  Yet all of a sudden, she’d go out of her way to do the wrong thing, resulting is displine, correction, yelling, whatever.

We suddenly realized that she was doing this on purpose – that she wanted to get us to yell, punish – to do anything negative.  Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  Why would someone WANT to create a negative environment.

Well, when its the only thing you’ve ever known, “crazy” can be comfortable – its the thing you’re the most prepared for in life.  “Calm” is new, different, and uncomfortable.

So we’ve come to realize that the crazier M and L get, the calmer J and I need to get.   The goal is to prevent them from getting what they want (crazy), and help them learn to live in the calm.