I wanted to give everyone more than one post last month, but it didn’t work out. It failed on an epic scale. Now you may not think that it was a fail, but I don’t have another word for it. The month ended up being full of sorrow. Read on to hear my heart.
How It Started
Last month started with a post full of my high hopes as we went into Autism Awareness month. What I got was days fraught with contention, lies, anger, impulsivity, and sadness. Do I know these things are part of living with my son? Sure I do. Do I long for the day it isn’t like this? Yes, yes, yes! I have spent many days in tears on the floor wondering why. I despair of a life I don’t even know.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was a day that started pretty good. Not too many preteen rebellion rearing its ugly head. Well, as we trooped to the car to go to school, it devolved into a maelstrom of refusal, unpreparedness, fear, and sadness. I had to let go, watch my son go into almost certain failure based on his poor decisions of last week. It is heartbreaking and hard to watch your kids fail, even knowing that there really wasn’t anything you could do.
The Common Struggle
Don’t we all feel like giving up sometimes?
I have long realized I struggle with sharing his burdens and challenges. For instance, I spend a lot of time saying “We have a problem.” instead of “He has a problem.” Many of the first few years of his diagnosis I spent advocating for him and trying to find the best group of practices to help him thrive. For me, what has happened is that I have glossed over some of the things he can do for himself. I get way too emotionally invested in whether or not he succeeds at something. But also whether or not he fails or remembers.
Kids’ behaviors often trigger moms emotionally. From talking to my friends with neurotypical kids, they struggle with this. For me, it is an even stronger tie based on my own history. This is a perfect storm of a child who struggles with impulsivity and anger and a parent who internalizes every confrontation as a confirmation of how horrible they are at this.
The Failure
The day I let him fail, made me feel done as the day unfolded. He struggled a lot last month and it felt as if there were 30 days of chaos. Both in my head and in my home. Feelings of sadness and anxiety and lots of crying after realizing there was going to be an imminent failure. I could not snap out of it. There was no emotional stability. I wanted to give up. The secret here is I often want to give up.
I know I’ve said it before, but I won’t give up on him. Or me for that matter. But the truth is, I live in sorrow a lot.
Hey everyone! I was thinking about how my life is taken up with a lot of care of children and family. Sometimes I believe I am doing a terrible job, as many of you might. But, I realize I often have these feeling more when I haven’t been paying attention to these 5 habits I’ve developed. Read on and even if you aren’t a mom, there might be a takeaway from the 5 habits every mom should develop.
1. Develop a self-care routine
You might think the idea of self-care is an overrated fad. It is so much more. Lots of people have realized that taking care of themselves should be a priority and not an afterthought. So while it seems as if the phrase just popped up and is used everywhere, it just means we have become more aware.
Many of the self-care routines you can use are small, everyday things you can do to make sure you feel good. There is skincare and makeup (if you wear it). These acts can be like a ritual that is calming and makes you feel prepared to face the world. Maybe you enjoy manicures, pedicures, or bubble baths. Any of these and things like them can calm our minds and refresh us. I also include hobbies in my idea of self-care. These things make us feel good by virtue of being something we make time to do. So don’t discount activities, that don’t involve the kids, that you enjoy.
You are probably reading that title and shaking your head. I know, schedules can be the detrimental to our days. But they don’t have to be. Often as moms we are controlling many peoples schedules. There are sports, dance, martial arts, gymnastics, theater group, and a host of others. They all take up time in our responsibilities with our kids. We have to schedule weeks in advance to meet our friends for dinner! Yet, I find if I give myself a loose schedule, like a block schedule, I can be more focused and accomplish more than running a cab service and errands. I set aside blocks of time designated for different activities that happen daily and weekly. I make a few different iterations based on how the weeks change with activities.
So, my blocks might look something like this:
5:00-6:00 exercise
6:00-6:30 rest and recover
6:30-7:30 time in prayer and bible study
7:30-8:30 eat and dress
8:30-10:30 wake son and prepare for school
10:30-11:30 tidy up from the morning
11:30-12:30 school drop off
12:30-2:30 work
2:30-3:30 chores and start dinner
When the time is up for a particular item, I leave it and move to the next item. It isn’t always an option to immediately stop or leave it till the next block, but the habit helps keep you checking off your to-do lists. The times may get moved around, items are added on those days there are appointments and after school activities. But, if I can keep items in a prescribed time, I seem to accomplish more. Don’t we all want to check more things off those to-do lists?
3. Develop a habit of journaling
Now, you may think, “I don’t have time for that.” Or maybe you are saying, “I am not a writer.” Let me tell you, you do have time and you don’t have to be a crafter of the next great novel. While I am a writer, and I don’t journal everyday, I know it helps me when I do. I have been journaling for years and it has always been a great way for me to work through my feelings. Acknowledging them, even if we don’t share them with others, can be cathartic.
These days, I certainly don’t seem to have a lot of time to do full journal entries every day. I’m falling into my bed as soon as the last kid is safely in theirs. Cause let’s face it, I am mostly exhausted! Anyway, even if I don’t do a journal entry, I like to record one line of gratitude. What can I look back on and be thankful for in my day? Sometimes, it is as small as sharing laughter with the kids or finishing a project on time. Whatever it is, realizing that it wasn’t all doom and gloom that day makes our brains smile.
4. Develop your kids responsibility
I must say, I kind of dropped the ball on this. All my friends would be talking about the great skills around the house their kids have, and I am like “Hunh?” I realized that as a mother of children with special needs I had gotten into a rut of taking care of them with the many difficult things and forgot to let them spread their wings.
Chores and just general helping in the household, really sets up capable adults. And let’s face it, they won’t be young forever, we want them to go out into the world to be good and kind people. So, making sure they learn things like washing dishes, sweeping, care of their possessions, washing their own clothes, and cooking are pretty vital. There is a whole list of items broken down by age groups to guide you if you are lost. Bonus gift here is that you actually get to do less, more time for self-care.
Responsibilities dealing with executive functioning skills are big at our house. My son struggles a lot with them and my daughter often gets distracted and refuses to actually do them. So, helping them learn ways they can manage things like school assignments, preparing for the day, or practice for after school activities grows their brains and helps them form good habits. Now if I can find a way to teach them these things without the backlash, then I would be rich!
5. Have fun
Photo of four women of color looking at a mobile phone outside Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Parenting is a really hard job. No matter that people tell you before kids, after them you realize your idea was way off. So many things come up and are changing. Sometimes it is hour to hour and it becomes hard to keep up. While there are plenty of self help books out there, we don’t get a one size fits all education before we bring those little bundles home. You won’t get it right all the time and you will forget something vital, like the time I forgot to pick my kid up from school! The feeling of ruining their lives forever will come to haunt you. But, if you can view it all as an adventure of the unknown where even the bad things bring growth. I believe you can be in this season of mommyhood without losing it completely.
Have you been reading this summer? I spend a lot of time reading, a host of genres. Really anything that captures my attention I will try. I even have that terrible feeling of guilt to finish books I don’t really like. So, I generally have a never-ending books to read list that grows daily as I find more interesting stories I want to give a try. This summer I meant to catch up on some books I had on my list from earlier in the year and read one parenting book in regards to my 2e children. Well, like many of you probably, summer was a blur of fun, pools, beaches, camps, and video games. While the kids did all of that, I found myself gravitating to quick and fun reads with tons of HEAs. So, I didn’t get to some of those books I originally planned on, but I read other great stories, so it isn’t a bust! Now, as we have only a few weeks before back to school here in Central Florida, I am re-committing to finishing these three books.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi – this book has had a lot of great buzz. Many writers I enjoy following made me aware of Ms. Adeyemi before the publication in February. Then I saw the viral video of her unpacking her first box of bound books and I knew I wanted to be a part of her expansive love of words. This fantasy tells the story of one girl’s journey to reintroduce magic to her world along with fighting the ruling monarchy. Grand new world with interesting characters and qualities, check. There are wonderful takes on mythology, religion, and culture, so sign me up to be immersed in this newly imagined world where a girl is fighting to save us all. And, it is now a summer read on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, which is awesome exposure for the author. This is a must read on my list and I can’t wait to jump into Orïsha through the pages of this novel.
Cedric The Demonic Knight by Valerie Willis – in the vein of transparency, I personally know Ms. Willis but haven’t read her work before. This is the first in the Cedric Series and was published a few years ago. Here we get to go on another adventure into a fantasy world built with folklore, myths, and history from the 12th century. It is filled with beasts and demons, where Cedric battles himself in an epic choice quest. I always find it fascinating the many ways writers use and interpret folklore and myth. I am excited to finally read this fantasy world.
The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene, Ph.D. – as you know through many of my posts, I have twice exceptional (2e) kids and sometimes that means things don’t go so smoothly. One of the psychiatrists in our lives suggested I read this book to better equip myself and our family with understanding behaviors, identifying triggers, and solving problems in a proactive manner. I have read the first couple of chapters and I see us in almost every paragraph. So, I look forward to reading this popular parenting guide that has been useful to so many others and recommended by those we entrust with our physical and mental health.
Now that I have this goal, I’m planning to finish by September 30th. Stay tuned to see if I can do it.
I am back and running after a week of preparations, moving targets, and no power after Hurricane Irma came through. I feel blessed to have come through with our family intact, along with our home. As we continue the clean up efforts, I want to talk about parenting through hurricanes, or any storm. Particularly, parenting exceptional children of differing abilities. In my family, the differing ability we struggle the most with during storms is anxiety.
Anxiety is often thought to be the exclusive purview of adults. It is also portrayed as a person who is afraid to go places or to start things. I’ve learned that anxiety can look like anger through actions and words. It can inhibit sleep, and yes, just plain make you worried about the smallest chance of something going wrong or being different in your well-ordered world. For anxiety sufferers, storms might be right at the top of the list of things they never want to encounter. That is because storms are inherently unpredictable and bring more unknowns than they feel comfortable with.
We have spent years helping our children embrace who they are, including the anxiety. With that, comes lots of plans on how to calm our bodies and redirect our thoughts to what is more likely to happen, not what seems to be the worst scenario. With storms, we try to follow a plan of action meant to minimize their fears and keep them participating in life, rather than focused on the storm. The plan includes being truthful and direct, talks about what we will do in different outcomes, and reminders of past success of making it through storms. That is for the kids. For the parents, the plan is a lot looser. Parent Plan for the Hurricane is a lot less regimented and designed to help us not go crazy trying to manage the fears of the anxious ones. Remember though, it is hard to help anyone with fears that don’t always look like fear and leads them to act out, regress, and spend a bunch of time destroying things in their attempt to control their environment. So the parent plan includes adult beverages and laughter. The adult beverages help the laughter, which keeps everyone calmer.
As Irma made its way towards our state, leaving death and destruction in its wake and on the heels of the devastation in Houston, all parenting had to be done with laughter and love. My kids were scared and extremely concerned about everyone in the path of the hurricane as well as those affected in Houston. Parenting through this time requires patience and dedication. And really, I am a little skeptical that parenting and patience actually go together anyway! Irma caused a lot of damage, yet we were minimally impacted. We will spend time cleaning our home and helping our neighbors to show them how we come back from bad things. I hope it helps, because, hope is all we have. No one knows how well we are helping them, they can barely articulate their own feelings. I also don’t know how well we handle the patient part after the millionth questioning on the same topic. But we try, when we screw up, we talk about how it isn’t easy for adults either. We all just have to keep at it. And then we do that, keep at it. This week we won while parenting through the hurricane. I pray you get some parenting wins this week too.
Loading Comments...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK
