My Night Owl
2003-11-14 at 4:36 p.m.
E has been staying awake all night again. This child is terrified of night and thinks he has the upper hand on whatever it is he's afraid of, if he stays awake all night in preparation for its arrival. Whatever it may be. When he does sleep, he has to have the television on. Before I had kids, one of the many things I swore I would never do as a parent was to allow my kids to have TVs in their rooms. Now, not only does E have a TV and VCR, but I've begun allowing him to keep it on all night. When I tried to remove these things from his room, he goes ballistic. I figured if he had the background noise of the TV at night, maybe it would help him be less afraid and help him get at least a couple hours of sleep.
As a result of him being up so much, he has difficulty getting his lazy butt up in the morning. Today ws no exception. We all woke up rather late (for us) at 7:45am. I tried to gently wake E to no avail. I tried a little more forcfully. Still nothing. Even after threats of not allowing him to rent a movie this weekend, he still lie there, grunting at me.
I told him that if he didn't get up and begin getting dressed, he wasn't going to school. (NOTE: most children would jump for joy at this threat. My abnormal child accepts this a real threat, something he would do anything to avoid.) Even that didn't work.
I came downstairs and assumed he'd being staying home today. Just as K was getting ready to leave the house, down comes E, fully dressed and ready to go. I had to give him cereal in a plastic bag as his breakfast. Little shit. His teacher said he's been falling asleep in class. No shit. I kinda suspected he might be. They were late arriving to school, so K had to sign him in. When K listed the reason for E being tardy, he wrote "Child refused to get his lazy butt up".
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I'll be back later with more of my day -I promised J a game of "Go Fish". Be back soon...