Nendil's Procrastination Outlet

wow, apparently last I updated was Monday?

Tuesday was super busy, since I had my 2 classes, plus faculty meeting, and then I drove to the mock trial tournament. It was really fun seeing the kiddos compete, but also I got home at 11:30pm, so that wiped me out for all of Wed and half of Thursday. As in, I was just so exhausted both in and out of work, ugh. Plus Wed and Friday afternoon I had more Mock Trial practice, Wed night was the trip meeting, and Thurs night was comickers (yay!), but also this week has been one of trying to shepherd Miss R through a ton of homework, both from school and for Chinese.

I think we're finding a new balance with Chinese School homework, though, which I'm feeling good about. Basically:
Mon: vocab + character writing in the car, reading at home
Tues: vocab + iPad in the car, reading at home
Wed: vocab + iPad in the car, reading at home
Thurs: vocab + character writing in the car, iPad at home
Fri: vocab + character writing in the car, iPad at home
Sat: just character writing prep

This way, there isn't too much work that need to be done at home, which clears the way for either other homework, or Minecraft playdates.

Anyway, hopefully next week will be slightly less busy. At least I won't be going to week 2 of the mock trial tournament, though I might go to the 3rd and final week. Comicking progress was slower this past week -- I kept having to re-draw page 2, which has been frustrating, so now I'm kind of behind on page 3. But maybe I'll be able to get page 3's layout re-done as well, at least enough that I can then draw page 3.

Oh! Spouse's birthday was this past Wednesday, but I was so busy that I didn't get a chance to properly celebrate, but we managed to have cake and dinner tonight, and yesterday he had some friends over, so at least that's something. Aiyah.

Miss R's ADHD has been making school hard for her, but at this point, I feel like there's a pace to this:

The Oct 30 parent teacher conference is always the teacher being like "Miss R... she tends to space out and it's hard to redirect her attention...."
Me: "Yes, this is an issue, I wrote about it in the step up form that I assume you read. Here are some examples of how she tends to build projects up in her head, and also some examples where she just can't make herself do boring things. She's also just developmentally later than everyone else, she'll catch up around May."
Teacher: "Okay, more specific instructions, gotcha."

The Jan 30 meeting tends to be the teacher being like "Miss R is not doing any of her work, we have no evidence of her producing anything, everything is very dire. We've tried breaking tasks down and giving her a timer but it doesn't work. Could she maybe have attention issues that need additional support?"
Me: "Yes, we'd like to get her diagnosed but we'd need your support on this. Also, timers don't work because that just adds to her stress and she is kind of time-blind. Making things granular helps but only if you're doing a lot of check-ins, and if you don't give too many options because she gets decision paralysis. I've mentioned this at the last meeting."
Teacher: "Well, it might be too early to diagnose her, but we'll try some of your strategies at school."

The Mar 30 meeting tends to be the teacher being like "Well... some of the methods might be working??? Guess we'll have to keep trying and see."

The Jun 15 meeting is then something like "Oh whew, Miss R seems to have finally figured things out in the last month or so! She ended on a strong note!"
Me: "Yes, I said back on Oct that she's about a year behind so she usually catches up around May."

Anyway, let's see if this will be the pattern this year as well. I'm still a bit frustrated that we weren't able to get an ADHD-inattentive diagnosis for Miss R because her teacher filled out the form in Oct being like "Miss R is weird and has trouble making friends." And I'm like "yes but she comes by that honestly. Did you not notice her spacing out in class?"

Tonight the showering process took her an hour and a half, because she kept spacing out in the middle of it. I was talking with spouse about it on the walk earlier tonight, and:
- We need to think about good ways to actually help her build her executive function abilities.
----> Making her feel guilty and feel like she's not trying hard enough doesn't actually help
----> Sitting around waiting for her to do the work doesn't actually help her, it just makes us feel miserable because we're delaying our own tasks
----> Micromanaging her and telling her next small task and getting her to refocus gets the work done, but it's a bandaid because she's not building that ability her self
- We came up with a new shower strategy that we're going to try, which is:
----> no media, just her being bored in the shower
----> We'll start by checking in every minute or so to see if she's spaced out.
----> When she gets to the point where she doesn't space out within that minute, we'll start checking in every 2 minutes... and so on and so forth. The goal is to get her to a place where she can focus for 5 minutes on a boring task without spacing out. Then she'd be able to take 5 minute showers! (and also hopefully do other stuff)

Oh! I've been caught up in playing Cookie Clicker recently. After nurturing my cookies for a month, I finally bit the bullet and did my first Ascension Friday night. I then proceeded to reach the same level of cookie production within ~2 hours. Then this morning I did another Ascension and got to the same level of cookie production in ~40 minutes. And then just now I did a 3rd Ascension and got to the same level of cookie production in ~6 minutes. Absolutely ridiculous.