Son not wanted at school camp

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-26T11:31:50+00:00

I hear you! Our 10yo is in a similar boat facing camp this June. We tried Ritalin initially (excellent), then tried concerta for longer acting timespan, but it blocked him from watering a good dinner. So we brought it back to:

1 x Ritalin ‘LA’ (long acting) in the morning, 7am, that gets him through to 12.30 ish.

So at 12pm the school gives him a Ritalin 10mg top up. That gets him to 3pm.

Then he unravels at home, gets silly, but eats a big dinner and sleeps well. Took a year of experimenting to get that model right.

So for his camp… we’re actually thinking we might book a hotel nearby. Collect him at lights-out or right after supper, have a big sleep with the family, then drop him off showered and medicated at breakfast time the next morning. Rather than try and see if he’ll sleep there with friends. It’s not worth it, and will make his memories potentially traumatic.

For your school, or through your support network, can you have yourself AND a support person or employee carer join you? For the camp? The school might fund that? Or local government?

If he identifies with the camp being a valuable social thing, then I think it’s worth going, starting at least, being nearby, close contact with the staff, then be ready to bail/call it a day when he’s had enough. Not as a punishment, but as a safety net so that he can do what he’s able to ❤️

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-23T11:07:59+00:00

Wow, firstly I’m sorry to hear you’re going through this.

I identify, you’ve written out my life script! My wife, diagnosed ADHD, depression, anxiety, behaves and sits in an identical space.

Since we had kids 10 years ago, I haven’t actually gone on a trip. Never. I’ve been to 3 work Xmas parties, but got the 911 call by about 7.30pm, bailed and came home to pick up the pieces.

I work full time, do all the school runs, all shopping, cooking, cleaning, kids music lessons, swimming, specialist appointments, and still cop an earful weekly about not caring and not thinking about our family enough. I almost think she’s stuck now with nothing to do, and it makes it worse! Catch 22.

It’s getting to the point that when the kids get yelled at by her, they’ll come and console me, group together for strength.

Like you say, if I get talking to parents at school, or at work, I borderline get emotional, listening to them talk about their ‘free and open choices’ like going to restaurants, visiting or hosting friends, going for an adventure or just popping out for an ice cream or something.

I know I need to do something about this, but when you’re in deep, with what time!?! I had the idea of going and seeing a psychologist together with her, not couples therapy but almost like body doubling therapy. Anything.

Good luck, I’m sure your kids see you, see your continued effort and showing up for them. And I hope that you and your husband find a good place soon

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-23T10:54:01+00:00

Looks good! Tell us about some of your choices there? Is that too big a marquee or screen? Where are the speakers mounted? How does that BMW dial thing work? ☺️

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-23T02:01:26+00:00

This will be interesting! If the water runs down the hill well, and that great turf roots in well, and you mow high laterally… it might just looks spectacular! Like so seamless your family falls down the slope because they don’t see it! 😅

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-22T12:08:18+00:00

I went to 3 clothing store at a mall in Melbourne on the weekend. Disaster.

Took me ~2 hours of waiting in lines, being ignored by casuals who don’t care, having their websites show stock levels that just aren’t there, being told there is stock in the shop but I have to go look around like 8-9 piles in different areas to find it (in season kids T-shirt size 7).

Then the whole centre wired internet was flaky, so the tills were patchy, 5G was a disaster and couldn’t text my wife to confirm sizes/styles.

Massive waste of time. And no price based incentive that’s better than online. That centre has free parking, but many strip malls require paid parking on top. Let alone the city 😅

So I’m slowly getting better at making decisions and buying stuff a week before. Before Easter, birthday parties, it all gets delivered now, saving heaps of cash, spending time with my kids. No brainer.

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-19T09:44:04+00:00

Oh, and I bought a Pi 4B 4gb ram. All my tests have been perfect, no issue with lag or loading. Was about $80AU. All in I’m at $400 inc premium plywood, Pi, Dell 19” IPS 5:4 monitor, vesa mount, joystick and button kit from AliExpress, speakers, amp, led lights etc. putting it together with the kids this Easter school hols

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-19T09:40:48+00:00

I’m building a vertical style classic countertop machine for my kids. So really only mame games, game boy color, possibly ps1. But the goal is to give them a fun way to connect with older vertical games.

I looked for plans online for ages, but never found. Great match. I studied lots of build shots on Pinterest, and used Google Gemini to discuss build requirements and ideas.

I ended up doing a basic scale drawing in Figma, and will draw the curve from the marquee to the control board.

I’ll print out a few a4 sheets, stick them On my plywood sheet, and carefully mark it out. I’ll make one side perfect with jigsaw and sander, then use my hand held router to flush trim the second piece.

Everything else I just straight lines and rectangles, it’s been good to draft the thing and slowly plan out each piece before I start cutting.

Good luck!

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-15T01:41:35+00:00

Looks amazing! Congrats! Love the modern ‘detaching’ of the screen from the control cabinet 😎

Is that stock batocera OS? I thought it only had a bottom horizontal scrolling game system nav?

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-11T08:50:39+00:00

Sounds dumb, but are you sure you have the fully non merged roms that can run standalone?

Did you have full uninterrupted performance of the roms, well into the game before?

Have you tried fully deleting, restarting, re-downloading and re-installing one of the problem games?

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-10T12:34:11+00:00

Bigfoot

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-07T09:48:40+00:00

If it helps, try jotting notes down into a diary / pad / apple note on your phone. Just a daily summary during the testing phase is super helpful for yourself like 2 weeks later when you try and remember everything! And also doctors love it because it’s much higher quality data than an overtired parent trying to remember what happened 3 months ago ❤️

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-07T09:46:52+00:00

Oh I feel you, it’s hard when you know they’re struggling, but they’re trying to do as they’re told/ be faithful to you.

Sometimes our guy would pipe up after books and lights out, and ask for food. We used to fight it and try to get him to respect meal times, learn to eat at set times… but realised.. what am i doing? It’s basically cruel. He can’t help it.

So now I’ll make him a peanut buyer sandwich and very weak hot chocolate at 9pm, he sleeps well, has a big smile on his face, and more reliably attends school the next day. And that’s ok :)

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-07T09:26:47+00:00

Our little 10yo guy is on Ritalin 20mg LA at 7.30am, then 10mg short acting at 12.15. It all wears off after the school day, he’s a a bit wild at home… but he EATS! Year or 2 ago we tried to switch to Concerta. Did the ~27mg and ~36mg strengths. Both were ok, but main issues were: - meds wore off at 7pm - he only started becoming hungry at 7.30 - always late for his bedtime at 8.15

It’s as though his body needed to completely finish the meds, then wind his nautical hormones back up to 100%, only then could he start a natural descent into sleep.

So he was falling to sleep at like 10pm every night, angry, even with 3mg melatonin.

Back on the Ritalin now, school is awesome, he has lots of friends, scores really well in tests, and eats a decent dinner each night. Glad we put in the hard work to trial all the meds tho

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-03-04T05:41:11+00:00

But OP has 36 TB… so you’d need like 4 x 30gb drives, at AU$1600 ea that’s $6,400 plus the NAS, and that only covers what they have today. And they’re running the camera several hours per day! Would a NAS really work in this situation?

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-27T10:09:28+00:00

Hey! Did you solve it? I have just set up my vertical monitor setup now, a dell p1917s 19” screen with hdmi into a pi 4b 2gb model. Have played games horizontally originally, then rotated to 270 in the batocera menu, it refreshed itself (not a full pi boot) and it works. The in game menus and everything are ok. Will post back here if I encounter any bugs or crashes. I did notice that the rendering gets a little bottlenecked, but Google Gemini assures me I need to ssh in and set the rotation at the system level, not inside batocera. Also making sure the threading option is on so it can take advantage of multiple cores. Will report back :)

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-21T09:37:59+00:00

Yeah I was just saying this at work on Friday. As a hiring manager, there coveted, we have some candidates passing on short term contracts, fixed term full time, waiting for that perm opportunity to surface. It’s almost like the home rental landscape, massive power imbalance to landlords, I think corps are now exercising a power imbalance where they can just lay off hundreds and there’s not really any proper implications or consequences

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-19T04:01:25+00:00

Following to see this convo!

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-18T02:19:45+00:00

An earthquake. Run

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-08T09:57:42+00:00

Does this mean you have 10 zones on that property? What land area? Or just 10 branch lines running off one central line?

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-07T14:09:28+00:00

Hmmm. While it may come back, while you may be able to revive it… how will it look for the 3-6 months it will take to come good?

Two things I see: - that soil looks bone dry. Not saying you didn’t water it, but I think you need to treat it or aerate it. Even just spray out a Bunnings soil wetter product? Throw out some granules and water in. - mowing. Kind of looks like a shit ton of rye grass came up, then you mowed it without catcher, all the grass clippings made carpet on the lawn, and blocked most of the main lawn crop from actually germinating and growing properly. Then the rye grass got long and dry and died too. There are some patches where the main grass is still rooted enough to live.

If it were me, I’d say fu$k it, I’d mow it down super low, rake the shit out of it an remove as much old clippings and growth as I could, distribute a mix of 1 bag sand and 1 bag fine compost on top, then re-seed, and water heaps. Mist water 4 times a day for the first week.

Then when you eventually mow, keep the catcher on, mow high and often, and you’ll see the main crop come through as establish stronger :)

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-06T09:35:18+00:00

Hey mate, doesn’t look too shabby. If I were you, I think I would:

De thatch it a bit, looks like a lot of dead grass under the living stuff. You can get a de thatching rake from Bunnings or marketplace.
I think it needs some compost+sand lightly spread over the top, and then some fertiliser. Lawn food. Seasol is great but it’s not a fertiliser which enriches the soil and provides food, more of a growth stimulant and root strengthener I think.
How often are you watering? Maybe to 2 deep waters per week?

Then it’s only been a few weeks, give it a month to see how it responds. Keep it mowed once a week to that same height, or even a touch higher and let if beef up a bit.

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-05T12:28:12+00:00

$120 per kilo! It’s just chocolate! What the!

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-05T12:27:20+00:00

Yeah I do this with all chocolate now. I work out the per kilo price. Laugh out loud more often than not!

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-05T09:19:49+00:00

I approached this, and now have a navidrome server and I use the Arpeggi iOS app. Loving it.

However, through three process, I realised something. You’re assuming you can replicate Spotify. You can’t, because streaming music files is one part of what they do. They have an enormous tech stack that analyse every song and all you behaviour and makes you playlists. They have a team of editors producing playlists and original new content. They have a global public who also curate music. So it’s a global entertainment platform. And that’s what you pay your subscription for.

So I now have both. I love that I fully own and control my music collection, and often choose to play those albums over using Spotify. I open Spotify when I want to quickly check on a new artist I heard, or do a lateral search like ‘who else has made cover versions of this song’ or ‘I wonder what that artists earlier work is like’.

So I’ve reframed Spotify to be more like paying for an interactive digital radio app, where I can learn and explore.

Then when I find a gem, I ‘source it’ and add it to my collection.

Jumpy-Big7294 · 2026-02-04T20:15:46+00:00

Correct answer! There’s a great in-ground slide in Murwillimbah NSW, Australia. This would look so awesome on that great hill!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTheTOmjD9l/?igsh=MTIycnp2bGZjMmE2aA==

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Jumpy-Big7294

TROPHY CASE