Thoughts on becoming a SAHM

In My Humble Opinion
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Wee Weasel started his ADHD treatment today. It’s called Interactive Metronome. It’s twice a week, God help me. Then you take a year break, but he’ll probably be doing a different program they also have.

The gist is you put on headphones and sensors and clap/stomp as close to the rhythm of a tone as you can. I tried it. It’s a bit challenging (side note: my score was better than my husband’s. I gloated, of course.)

My kid is so intense. He was loud and interrupting, but he became super interested in how all of this was being quantified. He actually was pretty enthusiastic about doing it which I didn’t expect, but I think the rhythm might also be like stimming for him. The intake person took his enthusiasm in stride.

We got amazing news today, that all costs incurred from private school will be covered. Tuition, books, even transportation. We didn’t even have to ask. I know I complain a lot about going to those fancy parties, but there are people in my husband’s family who are the most generous people I’ve ever met. And they genuinely love our son.

So now we are infused with some newfound enthusiasm about finding not just a workable situation, but the best one possible. We’ve got four options we’re looking at. They each have their pros and cons, so a lot of the questions will be:

  1. Can you really handle a Level 2 autistic kid?

and

  1. Can you handle a gifted child?

and

  1. Will he be able to socialize with peers?

One option we thought about was having a school with smaller class sizes and more community (this is one of our options, and it’s specifically for neurodiverse kids and kids with learning differences. How cool would it be if he got to have classmates like himself? It’s a 1:5 student ratio and no more than ten kids per class.) But if they aren’t quite able to handle the giftedness, we could do the 1:1 school as supplementary math or science education (they do that, and offer a very flexible schedule.) And the schools are within five minutes of each other.

We will probably have to move. These schools are about an hour away, about twenty minutes from work. We’d have to suck it up for maybe six months and see if it’s working before making that kind of move. A mortgage payment will definitely make things tighter but you gotta do what you gotta do.

In the meantime we are still trying to get things settled at his current school. His IEP meeting was cancelled today due to a snow bomb. (That’s what it felt like when it hit last night.)

I finally have a therapist to talk to about this, and man, she is so good. She was great when we were going through my son’s autism diagnosis because she is highly knowledgeable about public schools and parenting and autistic resources and has told me stuff I didn’t even know (like our state has a separate department of education and we have state legislation protecting our son’s rights, so even though the federal Dept. of Education has been gutted, we still have recourse.) She’s also helping me deal with work stress.

Sometimes I feel like I am a working Mom stereotype, the other day I got a message from my boss while I was picking up the boy, asking me to drop everything that night and figure some last-minute stuff out, and while I was reading her text, the school called! (It wasn’t related to the boy. We had a fire in our subdivision so they had to reroute busses.)

Things are going to be harder with two more evenings a week dedicated to his therapy. We’re making it work, but gosh does it feel amazing to get help with this.

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Oh yay thank you for updating us. This is all so amazing, I’m so glad for you and for Wee Weasel and that you are getting so much support!

And I think that yes, it could work very well that the 1:1 school could be supplementary to the other school. My older one did something like that for math. Her school was able to accommodate her for a few years but not after that, and we cobbled together a supplementary math program for her at that point.

And I’m so glad that you have a therapist to help you deal with all of this. It’s a LOT.

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It sounds like a lot of decisions need to be made, but it also sounds like things may be headed in the right direction. That’s really good news!

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Update.

Well, we’re trying to get more information from schools, but the weather has not been cooperating. We had five tours/appointments scheduled this month and we’ve successfully accomplished one. Everything else keeps getting pushed back due to school cancellations and inclement weather (which have also made it impossible to get any work done.)

We did meet with the 1:1 school. Without question they can meet his academic needs, but we wanted to address his social needs too, so we were thinking of doing them as complimentary in his areas of special interest alongside a smaller classroom setting. Apparently they do that all the time. They want to evaluate him first, then they recommended having him try things out in the summer, just take a class or two his favorite subject and see if he likes it and if the format works for him. So we will probably do at least a summer thing no matter where he ends up. Even if it just becomes a summer activity where he gets to go geek out about math, that could be good.

The biggest issue there is logistical. Even full-time it’s four half-days, and the summer program would only be an hour or two a week. Not really conducive to two adults trying to have jobs.

Tomorrow IF weather cooperates we’re doing the open house for the public charter gifted school. The other two schools have to be rescheduled. And the IEP meeting was rescheduled to next Thursday.

The Grow Notes have stopped coming from class and I’m not sure if his behavior actually improved or the teacher read our letter and realized they were doing more harm than good. But at home, things have been great. He’s really getting into the swing of things with managing his responsibilities, including practicing vocab and writing most days. I see less resistance to getting started on work, though he still needs constant redirection. Since my husband and I stopped feeding the back-and-forth argument cycle, that’s pretty much stopped.

At home his arithmetic skills are sharpening. He’s been asking us for division problems of three-digit numbers. The other day he got 301 divided by 7 and he worked out in his head that it was 43. I could not have done that. He does NOT like getting them wrong, though. That’s what we’ve got to work on. It’s okay to be wrong.

He was also supposed to start Interactive Metronome for ADHD last week, but again, weather. Man makes plans, Winter laughs.

I did have myself a good cry Monday after the third school cancellation. Probably long overdue. I’m doing okay overall. Just tired. I was worried about not getting as much done at work, but I’m doing my best, and I just decided it was going to have to be enough. The idea of being the ideal Mom and the ideal employee at the same time seems like a bit much right now. I’m just going to try to be frazzled, flawed me.

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This winter certainly has thrown a wrench into so many things. I’m glad you’ve realized it’s ok to be frazzled. You’ve got so much on your plate, but remember, nothing is off the table, it’s just postponed. The schedule you were describing sounds very challenging for working parents, Is there anyone that could help you out? What would he be doing the rest of the day? Forgive me if I misunderstood. They have a short summer program and four half days during the school year? They don’t do like a tech school,(I’m thinking high school) where the kids could go for academic classes in the morning and then be transported to the tech school for afternoon classes. That schedule seems strange to me, do you know if this is a usual thing?

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So this is basically a 1:1 tutoring situation but it’s an accredited school 1st-12th. You can do the full-time school or you can mix and match and do everything a la carte. Their full time course load is four hours a day four days a week, because four hours is usually the students’ limit for handling intensive 1:1 instruction. Depending on how advanced the student is, they can get through their coursework in a certain grade level in the course of an academic year or even sooner.

Their summer program is usually more skill-building focused and I get the sense that a lot of kids who struggle academically can get caught up during that time, but it’s also the opportunity to do more in-depth course work in certain subjects. So the director was recommending that we try to putting him in a summer math class and see if he does well with the 1:1 format (no other students, just him and teacher in a room.)

They are kind of the island of misfit toys for students. She said most of their kids have ADHD, many are autistic, many are gifted, some are remedial, some are just advanced athletes who need a more flexible schedule, one kid has a chronic medical condition that makes traditional school prohibitive. So in terms of his academic needs he’d probably fit in pretty well.

I think she said during the school year there is an after-school group but I need to follow up on the details. I don’t think we’re heavily leaning toward having him do this full time, but more as a supplemental program to address his gifted education needs - if the other schools cannot meet them. Overall we would prefer him to have classes with other students, just in a smaller classroom setting. The one I’ve been really looking forward to touring is 1:5 ratio with no more than ten students per class. I think that would be about perfect.

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Four hours of 1:1 instruction sounds very intense. Do you think he can handle that with someone he really does not have an established relationship with yet? I agree with you, perhaps a small class of 5 would be ideal and you could keep the summer program on the table. I’m thinking as a parent and a teacher the socialization is so important and with the 1:1 it’s not there. As a middle school teacher, I know, he’s not there yet, but when my grade partner and I do promotion lists we give that consideration. We look at academics, friend groups, who needs to be separated, which teacher moving forward we think will be the best fit and so on.

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And the socialization is especially important for him because he struggles with social skills. My #1 so far is the 1:5 and they are specifically for students with ADHD, autism and learning differences. They even have all-inclusive sports. I just don’t want to get my hopes up too high until we actually go out there and talk to someone.

But that school is only five minutes away from the 1:1 school, so theoretically he could go after school for supplemental math education, or something.

I think it’s entirely possible he’ll be doing college level math by the time he’s in junior high. I don’t know that any traditional school setting will be able to get him there. After meeting with the 1:1 school I am confident they can get him there. So I think that school will probably factor in somewhere, even if it’s just for math.

I’m not too worried about the 1:1 format because he is a voracious learner and he loves 1:1 attention from adults. This is a kid who plays with his calculator in his spare time and begs us to give him math questions. So I think he would probably have the time of his life. But we don’t know for sure, which is why we were thinking of doing just some math classes in the summer. Start with something he loves and see how he does. And if he’s not ready now, he may be ready later on.

Just wanted to add: all of these are contingent on him actually being accepted into the school, so that’s another unknown. They will need to evaluate him before they make a decision.

We’re going tonight to the public charter open house.

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Ugh, I hate the process of looking at schools, so time-consuming. You are doing great, especially with the weather working against you. Good luck with all of that!

What does he usually do in summer? Can you sign him up for a regular camp (or whatever he usually does) and just pull him out one day or half day for that summer activity? Oh wait, I think you’ve said he was in daycare in the summers so far. Well… welcome to the world of summer camps. …You probably do want to start thinking about those right now, as if you didn’t have enough to do!

That’s so great to hear that things are improving at home!

Yeah, we were not able to find any in-person math solutions that worked for my kid after about sixth grade or so that also worked logistically for our family (she might have been able to go to the high school/city college and take classes there, but this was just not workable for us at the time), so we went with non-traditional solutions – in our case, Art of Problem Solving classes, which are text-based synchronous classes. BTW, I also highly highly recommend, from the same company, Beast Academy (https://beastacademy.com/) for your kid – not all kids like it, but the ones who do really like it. (Both my kids were in this category.)

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Yeah, daycare. I think he’s getting close to aging out so that’s another thing we have to figure out. Summer camps would be nice, it just seems they are in very high demand and I often wonder if he’s there behaviorally. We get into such a good rhythm at home I forget that there are people that just don’t know how to manage him. Like the meltdown with my FIL could have been avoided, and I’m not blaming him. I know my son is not easy. But I had that moment of, “Oh yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that he won’t eat if he’s hyperfixating on something and you have to enforce a break regardless of whether he eats or not, and then he will realize he’s hungry and eat.”

It’s not all that intuitive I guess. Just stuff we’ve learned from trial and error. But if you haven’t figured out that stuff it’s easy to run into problems with him. When people go in expecting a neurotypical kid they meet reality pretty quickly.

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The GATE/Magnet school. Oh my Jesus. It does seem like a wonderful gifted program, with the option to attend university classes as part of the curriculum. As the guy who runs the college math program says, “These kids don’t even want me to teach them math. They just want to do math. All the time.” That is certainly my child.

He would not be eligible to apply to GATE until 2nd grade, but there’s a k/1 gifted option he could apply for, but it wouldn’t mean automatic admission into GATE.

There are maybe 48 spots for 200 applicants with residents taking first priority, the rest go by lottery. For the k/1 they want a teacher letter and a behavior report… I though that might sink him right there.

So as this massive crush of people goes to stand in line and ask questions of the k/1 program director, my husband goes up and blurts: “Autism. Level 2. Can you do it?”

She says, “Yes!” (she is wearing an autism lanyard.)

He says, “Behavioral problems because of autism and giftedness?”

She says, “See my lanyard? We should talk on the phone.”

So that’s where we are with that.

The school district in and of itself supports gifted education outside of the GATE school, offering accelerated programming and dual enrollment in college as young as 9th grade. This is definitely the most I’ve seen a public school district do for gifted kids, and it sprung out of a grassroots effort on the part of parents who wanted that option for their kids. So this whole district has become a sort of haven for gifted kids.

At which point I say to my husband, “Maybe we should just move to this school district.” Even if we never got into GATE it’d be an improvement over where our son is now - but if we lived there, we’d have first priority. It’s also about 20 minutes from all the other schools we’re looking at and much closer to our jobs. I’m sure the property values are sky high in this area, though. So we need to see if there are any lower-income possibilities in the school district.

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You’ve got so much to sort out and process. I really think you’re considering everything he will need moving forward at this time so be confident in the decision you and your husband make.

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Oh gosh. Uhh yeah haha maybe it makes sense to move into this district… judging by this charter school, at least, I could also imagine the whole district being more familiar with and understanding of 2E kids. Anyway it seems like you have options, which is great!

(It’s like pulling teeth to get acceleration in our district up until high school – I know families who have done it, but they basically have to push and push and push. We went private to not have to push. Though in high school this changes and they are totally cool with dual enrollment in the local CC. A district that supports both those things is like gold.)

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Some big updates.

We finally got to have his IEP meeting today. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I have to admit I was really impressed with everything they have been doing to provide accommodations for him. He’s made friends with the security officer so on days he behaves well, he gets to see the security cameras and talk to the security officer. They are also giving him regular breaks with 1:1 attention out in the hall (non-contingent reinforcement.) I thought this was going to be mostly negative but in fact they reported a large amount of growth over the last month or so (we’ve seen it too, at home.) It’s just a matter of figuring out how to prevent those big meltdowns. He had another one last week where the principal called us and it took him an hour to calm down. So I wasn’t expecting to hear much positive, but in actual fact it sounds like most days they are seeing a big difference. The day after his big meltdown, he actually got a POSITIVE note home (they are called Glow Notes) and he was overjoyed and showing it to everyone. That was a first.

So now I am left worried about potentially disrupting his progress. But his current school is absorbing into another school in a few years anyway, so it’s not like this could last forever.

Meanwhile, my situation at work has been extremely stressful. Because of government cuts we are dealing with a significant funding deficit, and somehow the board has decided the determining factor in our success or failure is how many grants I can get. So the pressure on me, specifically, is just enormous. Consider this in the context of how much time I have had to take off to deal with my son’s various medical and educational issues.

So I mentioned to my boss that I was going to talk to our HR guy about intermittent FMLA and he decided we should meet today, in person, even though I usually work from home. So after the IEP meeting I drove to work and had this meeting.

They reiterated their support for all I was going through but also contextualized it with the immense pressure they are all getting from the board for me to overperform. So HR guy said yeah, intermittent FMLA is always an option, but also they are going to require me to come into the office five days a week effective immediately. And that is their way of convincing the board I’m doing my work, I guess. It’s vaguely insulting (from the board – my boss and the rest of the executive team don’t have any issues with my work.) I’ve been doing this job at this agency for ten years and I’ve never been subjected to this much pressure. I don’t think their expectations are realistic and I don’t know why they are singling out grants, specifically.

I’m not sure if being under this much pressure is really good for my mental health, so I’ll have that in the back of my mind as I go through the paces over the next few months. I also do wonder though, what happens if I rise to the occasion and totally kill it? You never know.

Anyway, working in office five days a week starting next week. It sounds horrible, but for me I don’t think it will be. My boss doesn’t really care what time I show up/leave so it may not even disrupt our existing schedule. I’m being encouraged to take PTO for my son’s school stuff including the tours we have next week.

It might help my stress to have a sort of wall around my work life. The downside of remote work is that you feel like home life and work life are all comingled together, and that can get really overwhelming for a brain like mine. If I can get to a point of, “I work when I’m at work, but I get to be truly present at home after work” it could work out for me. I do wish it weren’t a 45 minute drive to the office but if we move I’ll be closer.

Of course I just bought two fancy dual monitors and spent a bunch of time setting up my remote office. I kinda begrudged the move from ultra-wide to dual monitors in my home office. And my first thought was, “Hey, I guess I get to use my ultra-wide monitor at home again. Good thing I kept it.”

That’s all for now.

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First, YAY on your son’s progress and I hope it continues, and so great that he is able to celebrate his successes!

I hope the work stuff works out. That sounds like a LOT.

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Well, such good news to hear that’s for sure! You’re still dealing with so much, be sure to celebrate the wins!

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I just submitted an application for a new remote job as a grants consultant. Pays twice what I make now. It’s a subcontractor position so I’m hoping they’ll be happy with 30 hours a week, because that’s about all I have to give.
I meet and even exceed their preferred qualifications - they want seven years’ experience in grant writing, an advanced degree, and experience writing for women’s issues. I have fifteen years of experience, an MSW, and ten years working in domestic violence/sexual assault.

My job would be to work with various nonprofit clients and help them develop funding strategies, write and develop grant proposals for them, and essentially strengthen those relationships. It’s an area where I want to grow, and consulting is the next logical career step given my experience. I think it would be especially fulfilling given how challenging the current grant landscape is. Helping to guide non-profits through it all would feel pretty good.

I did the math and if they pay what I’m worth, I really only have to work 20 hours a week to earn my current income. There’s a lot of money in this field, especially relative to working as a non-profit employee.

I also have a couple other doors open due to my past experience. Both of my former supervisors are serving as references and hooking me up with their contacts.

I feel bad leaving my agency in the middle of their mess, but I cannot sustain a full time job right now. That would be true even if all the other issues at this agency didn’t exist. There is so much going on with my kid, it’s just too big of an ask for me to deal with this much pressure at work.

So I’m gonna hope for the best and keep looking and we’ll see where it goes.

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I’d re-write this:

I feel bad leaving my agency in the middle of THEIR mess, even though at least some of it is due to not listening to my very reasonable and specific requests over a long period of time.

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I mean, let’s face it, if the board had not turned up the pressure on you in ways they should very much have known are not sustainable for you, you probably would not be thinking about leaving. That’s on them, not you, and maybe actually will be good for them to realize that they’re being stupid.

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I am happy you have some options to explore.