Patrick’s First 15 minutes

The dates on this blog show that I have successful avoided getting started on this adventure for at least a week? Okay, okay, some of my kids were sick and the one of our dogs had a triple mastectomy. I might have been preoccupied. I might have been avoiding it. The idea of leaving Patrick alone still frightens me. As often happens when I’m on the edge, the opportunity to jump came up and bit me on the butt. So, I leapt.

Three kids in our house have music lessons on the same day. Patrick’s guitar teacher comes to our house. I transport his sisters to their lessons in shifts so that one will be here with him until the guitar teacher gets here. This week, the guitar teacher was going to be late. Usually when this happens I take Patrick with me on my last round of pick ups and drop offs, which are 6 miles and 14 minutes from our house. This time I pushed myself to leave him alone in the house for those 15 minutes. Pulld the trigger so to speak. The fear isn't going to go away, we're just going for it.

When I told him he was going to be alone, he was pretty excited. That old whiteboard came to the rescue once again. I erased everything on it, then listed some rules for staying home alone: no answering the door, except for Jacob, the guitar teacher; no answering the phone, if you need to call someone only call Mom (he sometimes calls inappropriate people for the situation so I wanted to make sure he wasn’t calling a family friend to tell them that he needed to get more toilet paper or something – just call me for anything you need). After the rules came a new modified schedule to focus on this 15 minutes. He was to play on the computer for 15 minutes, resetting the timer from it’s usual 30 minutes. After playing on the computer he was to sit in the living room and read until either I got back or Jacob got there. Then after his lesson and dinner, he could use his other 15 minutes of computer time. Playing computer games is a great way to keep him focused. Sometimes too focused, which is why I limited the time to 15 minutes. He is less than agreeable on every occasion that he has to stop the timer while he’s on the computer. We avoided that.

Into the computer room he went, with his timer. Out the front door I went with his sister. There’s always more traffic when you’re in a panic to get to something. All 5 traffic lights were red. We were gone 20 minutes. When we came in he was just coming back to the living room. The guitar teacher was waiting outside. He had knocked but Patrick probably didn’t hear from the computer room. Though my heart was racing a mile a minute, I survived. He seemed unscathed.

The next day after TRACE he told me that his teacher talked to him about being alone. Funny, I didn’t tell her. Is he saying that he told her he stayed alone? Many questions later, I deduced that coincidently they talked about the rules to follow when staying alone. Perfect timing.

We have a new item for our schedule on music lesson day, Stay home alone – play computer games 15 minutes. Maybe I’ll make up some Rules of Staying Home Alone and print them on the computer. Seeing things repeatedly helps him to remember things.