SD6 had never taken a class of any sort until we signed her up for gymnastics. We let her decide what type of class she wanted to take and then found one that was at 11 a.m. on a Saturday. We told BM that we wanted to do it back in May, we gave her a month's time to object before signing her up in June, then another three weeks until class started the last week of June. Both her therapist and pediatrician are concerned about her schedule and lack of sleep; BM puts her in her room around 8:30 with the TV then turns it off around 9:30. She wakes her up one to two times per night so that she won't wet the bed, then gets her up at 5:00 a.m. to go to daycare. Additionally she leaves her with someone else on a regular basis, including at least one night on every one of her weekends for the last FIVE months and at times SD will stay up past midnight. I've kept this well documented from teachers emails and notes to discussing it with both her pediatrician and therapist, which SD confirmed to them.

Well since we signed her up for a class, BM HAD to do the same thing because parenting isn't about what's best for the kiddo, it's about looking good and never being upstaged. So BM took it upon herself to announce that she had signed SD up for martial arts class. This was before gymnastics had started and we told her that if she insisted on doing so, we would pull SD from gymnastics since it's not healthy to put a sleep deprived child in a bunch of physically demanding classes. BM insisted that it was only one day per week and if it became an issue that she would stop martial arts. As of last week they had no record of SD6 being signed up so we didn't worry too much about it, now we find out that she is signed up and for a SIX PM class twice per week! At our house, by the time SD has been up for 14 hours, she's going to bed. Up at 7 for summer school, in bed and asleep by 9. Now at BM's, she'll be up at 5 a.m. and after approximately 7 hours of non consecutive sleep, she'll be doing martial arts at that 13 hour mark. Then a 20 min drive home, probably a stop at McDonalds and an hour or two of TV.

Everything that I've read shows that exercising at night can make it more difficult to fall asleep and that it takes 2-3 hours for your cortisol levels to return to normal. The poor kid couldn't even stay awake during SCHOOL on several occasions yet BM thinks that this is a great idea and of course, DH isn't allowed to have an opinion, it's "her parenting time and he's not legally allowed to interfere." She hasn't taken her to the doctor is over two years, hasn't been to her therapy appointments and blew it off last year when she was responsible for taking SD but she's the expert on what is and isn't okay for a kid because she's a daycare "teacher" and took some classes. HAHAHA. I've got calls in to her pediatrician and therapist so we can make sure it's documented that this isn't healthy and we told her that but she did it anyway.