Hatchet.

It is so easy to get irritated with Bean, and so hard to maintain pleasantness when he launches into a meltdown. It inevitably leaves me feeling like an asshole. I'm getting better at taking some deep breaths and not snarling at him, but it is a slow pace I've set. Bleah. Today he was in a freakout, crying, complaining, not slowing down enough to see that he didn't need to be upset. All because he has to read Hatchet at a set pace for a school book group ("But I'm already in the middle of four series!!"). What upsets him the most is when the world does not line up the way he expects it to. Everything is supposed to go according to plan, to his plan, and deviations are cause for catastrophizing as if the world is ending. And it all ties together, everything is related to everything else, all the bad things are connected. He is sure there is a larger evil plot to destroy him.

Oh christ. He's just like me.

At least he is easily distracted nowadays-- he used to hold on to the suffering for days. Today I pointed at a sheep and said, "Look at the sheep's face." He started to laugh, as I knew he would, because who can look at a sheep's face and stay sad?