Truman had a big ol' breakdown at Encore Camp today that basically boiled down to not being able to contain his emotions.
He has a chore chart at home, and in order to earn screen time, he has to complete 5 of 6 items, all really simple stuff. And yesterday, he didn't do any of it, even with reminding, so today, no screens. It made the day start off badly, and apparently it carried over to Encore where, by noon, I got The Call.
He's so damn complicated. Not having screens and unable to express frustration, it builds, it peaks when another frustrating thing occurs, and then there's a meltdown. Unfortunately it takes a full teacher's time to deal with the meltdown, and that time today was about an hour. He was only better after he spoke to me on the phone. (They also found him a Dick's flyer.)
It still took me until just now to sort out why a meltdown, why such frustration at such a small thing (I wasn't aware that the frustration was carrying over from screen loss). He let me interview him (see below) because he didn't want to talk directly to me about it, but he would talk if he could just read my questions.
The interesting thing is that as soon as the source is tapped and he feels understood, he's fine. We sorted out the source of his sad, made cookies and now he's playing croquet with his friends in the yard (OK, really they're hobbling around on the croquet mallets like they're crutches, but whatever).
See what I mean about untangling?
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