Thank you More!!!

Thank you so much for all the wonderful advice and support. I am having a long, hard think about things and taking all the amazing suggestions on board.  I'm really grateful. 

I'm doing okay and I had a boost yesterday as bear and I had an agreement about homework.  Bear, despite the evidence of his desk and bedroom, is an orderly creature.  He likes things as he likes them.  He noticed that keep our dvds in those sort of book things that hold 100 discs and thought that was the best way to keep his collection of audio books on CDs.  Bear and I had a discussion and I bought some extremely inexpensive cases for his CDs of Harry Potter, The Hobbit, the Narnia collection and Lord of the Rings.  They arrived yesterday while bear was at school.

I forgot about them until bedtime.  The rule is that we finish up story time and the bedtime routine and leave bear alone by 8pm.  He gets left to put his own light out when he is ready, usually around 9pm which is about right as he is normally up at 7am.  Sometimes the light goes out later, sometimes earlier but it averages out okay and between us leaving and bear actually going to sleep he has a chance to wind down away from all screens with books, audio books, sometimes he draws or does puzzles, whatever he feels like.  I don't know how long this will last as bear heads towards the teens, but I live in hope. 

Last night as we were leaving bear mentions the CD wallets and I remembered that they had arrived.  Bear wanted to immediately leap into action but I told him that he could sort it all out tomorrow after he had done his homework.  I didn't want him messing around with CDs too late.  Bear looked shocked and said that he could do his homework right there and then.  In fact he insisted on doing his homework right then.  I've never known anything like it.  Bear ran downstairs determined to get that homework done and dusted and to grab the CD wallets.  Before I knew it bear had written out his ten facts he had learned about the Ancient Greeks and was upstairs shedding paper CD sleeves. 

I should mention that bear had been telling me how impossible it was to do the homework as he couldn't possibly remember ten facts he had covered in school last Friday, it was utterly beyond him, he was stuck.  Faced with the chance to organise something into CD wallets it took him less than fifteen minutes and that included finding his book bag and me insisting that he put his homework actually inside the book bag so it had a chance of getting into school. I took it as a win.