There is absolutely no better way to celebrate your birthday than hearing your 9yr old stepdaughter is having behavior issues. Which isn't a surprise present. It's kind of like knowing all year your great aunt is going to crochet/knit a purple turtleneck and you will have to put it on at your party to appease all the family. You know it's coming. And you know it could always be worse, but you're always hoping she will forget to knit the damn turtleneck. But she doesn't. It's that warm feeling.

DH and I sat down with the teacher for a talk. But first we looked through a composition notebook on SDs desk. SD had to write an assignment about herself. First she listed off her family:

Hex, DH, hex's mom, hexs brother, hex's brothers wife, hex's moms sister and her two kids.

What's missing? DD, myself and all of DHs family. Hey at least DH was mentioned?

A couple pages later there was a bunch of questions she had to answer with numbers. The question was, "How many siblings do you have?"
SDs answer? "I have 0 siblings."

Huh. Pretty damn sure I gave birth to her sibling. Not gonna lie, it was as if someone hit me like a piñata. SD has that whopping stick and is just hell bent on banging us with it.

SDs teacher is really squared away. She told us SD is very intelligent, and doing well academically however it is her job to prepare SD for middle school and SD needs to change her ways or else she will be all over the place. She said they will finish snack time and go into a lesson. Ten minutes later SD will be in la-la land, still munching on her snack. She does not transition well and just moves slowly.

And here is the wonderful kicker, less than two minutes into the meeting: The teacher will give a student a verbal warning every time they misbehave. After the second warning for doing the same action they have to stay in class for fifteen minutes while all the other kids go to recess. The student then writes what they did wrong and how they will ameliorate it.

This happens to SD three time a week. First we are hearing about this. The written slips by the student go home in the Thursday folder. We never have SD on Thursdays and hex has never communicated about this with DH.

It's all varying things- not turning homework in, not listening to directions, talking instead of listening, not being where she is supposed to be, etc etc Etc.

3/5 weekdays she is getting verbal/written reprimands. You know what the sad part is? This was better than last year. At least she isn't hiding in the bathroom instead of being in class, gossiping and hitting people like last year.

Merry Christmas to me! Oh and we have SD this weekend so DH is all "let's just relax today and we can celebrate your birthday when SD is here."

Yay.