There’s a solution to this, ya’ know.
Rhymes with shabattical
I don’t have any personal experience with this so if this suggestion is off base, just ignore.
He’s overwhelmed, right? Although the social skills group will help in the long term, is it possible to take a break for a could of weeks just to reduce the short term stress while he get used to school again?
Again, just an uninformed suggestion.
Why are you saying, or so she tells us? I’m confused. Are you doubting her? Do you know her off the boards? I just did not see that coming.
I don’t know either, but I want to stress this is as much about logistics and emotional stress as it is about time. I don’t usually have to do a full week’s work, but sometimes I’m absolutely swamped, so it’s kind of a cyclical situation in terms of my work load, and right now I have three government grants on my plate including a 30 page narrative due at the end of the month. I don’t think I can just abandon this stuff for FMLA because nobody else at my job knows how to do it. I don’t want to put anyone in that position. However, I’ve spoken to the HR guy and he’s 100% supportive. We’re supposed to meet soon to discuss FMLA.
I was thinking just taking Tuesdays and Thursdays off and I could commit to the deadline stuff but nothing else extra for a while. I could use the additional time when I’m not schlepping him around and dealing with teacher/therapy meetings to just read up on this sort of thing and brainstorm and try to get my head around it.
But last night at home my son kept escalating to the point he started hitting me and his Dad.
We’ve decided to drop him off just before school starts instead of having early morning child care to give him some extra sleep and just one hour less of having to deal with all those kids. I really hope it helps. But yes it comes at the expense of work time.
And I’m behind right now at work because I’ve just been spiraling.
I suppose technically I am in a similar situation having recently become a de facto SATF. Our kids are a bit older (3rd grade and middle school) and my son isn’t as autistic (Level 1). Also it was forced upon me by a layoff rather than a decision, so that may influence my opinion.
What does resonate is that constant feeling of every day turning into an unwinnable “Kobayashi Maru” test constantly juggling competing demands of work, kids, running errands and other logistics required to maintain a functioning household with children.
Is it less stressful to not have to worry about a job while doing stuff with the kids? Yes. Sort of.
The reality is that SAHM/F is not a “real job”. At least not in the way a professional job is. You don’t get paid and you can’t get fired. Maybe when the kids were small (at which point we needed a nanny) but now they are in school from 8 to 3. Even if I fill my time cooking and cleaning and doing home improvement projects (which I can’t do anyway because of my wife’s particular nature), it’s still not the same as I simply don’t have to deal with the bullshit of a job where I have to constantly keep some boss happy.
It’s also not rewarding as a “real job” IMHO because honestly it just feels like running stupid errands and busywork and I’m mostly by myself all day. Not that I mind the work itself but with a job at least I have colleagues, I feel like I’m working on something important (more or less) and I get paid.
That has the potential to create resentment and a power imbalance if one partner has to work at a stressful job dealing with a demanding boss and clients, possibly with a long commute, while the other is home all day.
I need to find a new job anyway, but if I was currently working a job I really liked, I might be hesitant to leave it to be a SAHM/F. There’s no guarantee it will be there when you are ready to go back.
I don’t know if that helps.
<3 It sounds like your kid and you had a very rough day yesterday. I’m glad that you have the school and therapist involved and talking to each other – that’s HUGE.
I definitely do NOT think you should stop social skills and BCBA, that support is absolutely necessary for both your son and your family. Though it’s possible, yes, that you might try cutting it shorter for a while (not necessarily forever, or even for very long) or even canceling for a week while you guys get back on your feet. I would absolutely talk to the BCBA and see what he thinks about everything that is going on, and what his recommendations are.
ETA: Also I forgot to add, but my particular kid had a hard time at this age when there were a ton of kids around, especially when they were noisy and disruptive (which basically is the definition of kindergarteners). So I think it’s a really good idea to drop him off later and give him one less hour of all that, plus which the early morning care is going to be more noisy and disruptive than actual school. Plus sleeeeeep, of course!
Heh, I missed this the first time around. Yeah… tell me you’ve never been the primary parent for a special needs kid without telling me.
First of all, for a non-special-needs child, parenting a kid this age is already some work:
- School… except the days that there aren’t school, and school breaks, and also figuring out what to do after school; after-school care exists… if you’re lucky
- Sick kids staying home from school
- Picking up sick kids in the middle of the day unexpectedly
- Kid forgot lunch; I know you’ll say, the kid will learn not to forget lunch if she goes hungry but joke’s on me, haha, the time she actually did miss lunch, it turns out that when my kid misses a meal she goes faint and the school thinks she’s sick and makes me pick her up early
- Appointments: doctor, dentist, podiatrist bc it turns out your kid is walking funny
- Spending time with one’s kid because you don’t want the phone to parent them after school
- Spending time making sure the kid brushes teeth, takes a bath, puts pajamas on, etc… depends on your model of kid how long this takes; could be quite a while
- Spending time doing any homework or whatever that the school gives (K shouldn’t be giving homework, but sometimes there’s stuff like a “reading log,” and then there’s random crap like “crazy hair day” that fortunately my kids didn’t usually want to do)
- Getting the kid outside so they can run off some of their energy
Okay, like, none of these are too horrible – although let me say that it’s not any one thing, it’s all of them together – and most families with two working parents figure out how to make this work one way or another with only some grumbling. But then add in special needs, even mild special needs, and it just gets exponentially harder:
- Communicating with teachers about your kid’s issues, potentially daily
- Meeting with school bc your kid has done something
- Communicating with therapist/specialists/etc. about your kid
- Scheduling in therapy for your kid
- Logistics of getting kid to and from therapy
- Picking up your child early from school because she has melted down
- Researching wtf you can do about your child
- Following up on insurance yuckiness
- Heading off a kid meltdown
- Heading off another kid meltdown
- Going over social/emotional rules with the kid, pretty much constantly
- Figuring out stuff that’s intellectually interesting for the kid because otherwise she gets bored and acts out even more [I will say this was tough for our first, but easy for our second because I’d already done all the research with our first]
And, like, again, it’s not like this takes every moment of every day. It’s that each of this is five minutes here, ten minutes there, fifteen minutes another time, and before you know it another day is over and you haven’t got any work done, you’ve just been dealing with kid stuff. And God forbid you actually have any feelings about it that take even more time because you’re busy dealing with your own emotional feelings about the whole thing. And all of these things also take mental energy.
And this is what I remember dealing with my kid, whose issues weren’t actually all that severe in the grand scheme of things. Just off the top of my head @Spice_Weasel has additional issues, with eating (and figuring out how to stuff enough calories into the kid as a separate issue) taking way longer than it takes in our house, and I think verbal therapy too, which we didn’t have to have, and ADHD issues, so she does in fact kind of constantly need to be making sure that he doesn’t get himself in trouble because that’s what ADHD kids do at this age.
It does get easier as they get older and more independent, but this age is tough.
I wish more people understood this.
I was explaining to my husband that whenever we submit a grant project we tack on a 15% de minimis cost that’s intended to cover all the indirect costs of the project. Someone has to manage it, there’s a certain percentage that goes to utilities and other operating costs, etc. So the federal government just assumes that will be built into de minimis.
Having a special needs kid has a lot of overhead. A lot of time just trying to figure out what to do. You have to apply that de minimis expense. I’ve had two hours-long conversations with my husband this week alone. And I don’t know how many phone calls/texting with teachers. And researching FMLA (which it appears I will be starting on Tuesday but we have to figure out the details.) And it’s all attached to a lot of emotion. I’m an atheist but I damned near almost prayed last night. So in the times you’re not dealing directly with the logistics, your mind is just consumed by it which makes it really hard to focus on anything else.
Whenever the government says anything stupid about autism, my husband goes on Facebook and creates an Ask Me Anything style post where he donates money for every person who asks a question. One of the questions was, “what are the appropriate interventions for autistic individuals?” And when my husband told me that, I said, “Lady, I don’t even know what the appropriate interventions are for my own kid.” We have some ideas about what helps but there’s hardly a consensus, or a manual, because the issues vary so dramatically from individual to individual. Especially when you’ve got a kid with ADHD and autism and giftedness and he doesn’t really fit any one profile. He’s extremely mentally rigid and highly creative. He wants everything a certain way but constantly seeks out novelty. He ignores his peers but seeks deep connections with adults.
This morning he made a rubber band paper monster and spent his time “feeding” paper to this little creature he made. It was freaking adorable.
OK, talked to boss and CEO, FMLA is still on the table but they want me to take a beat and figure out what I need without feeling rushed into it (and I did feel rushed into it.) So I’m allowed to take “me” time until Wednesday, think about what I need, then we’ll reconvene Wednesday.
This is one the many reasons I am reluctant to leave this job. You couldn’t ask for more understanding people. Most of the conversation was just them showering me with praise about how I have such high integrity and how conscientious I am and how they supported me when my son was first diagnosed and it’s not going to be any different this time around.
So at least I have that, and that’s a lot. And now I just have to figure out everything else.
As another parent of a kid with special needs:
Good luck. Whatever you decide will be the right thing.
(and be very jealous about your own sleep/rest – nothing will break you or your relationship like sleep deprivation. Consider sending (rotatring) one of you to sleep somewhere else to make sure you get enough winks.)
Have you thought about hiring a Nanny? Give both you and your husband some relief.
Does the school have a shadow program? A person who shadows your child at school?
I think you need hands-on help.
It ain’t cheap. Call in some markers from Dads family.
Clearly you both utterly misunderstood me.
What I meant was “I accept her assertion that her kid takes all her time. I’m not asserting that; I’ve never met the kid. But she said it, I accept it, and the rest of my comments proceed from there.”
There was no sense whatever in which I meant to imply I disagreed with her assertion, or thought she must be exaggarating, or is lousy at time management, or …
Any such implication came from your minds, not mine.
Haha, okay, apologies! I’ve run into that kind of implication before, which is probably obvious, but I apologize for taking it out on you. On the other hand, I appreciate the excuse to vent, so thanks for that 
Yeah, I felt/feel the same way about my job, which is also very understanding and flexible. I definitely think that, given that you love the job and that they’re willing to support you, that you shouldn’t necessarily just get rid of that. It seems that, given that they are willing to be flexible with you, there is probably some middle ground where you work part-time for a couple of years, and/or take FMLA, and/or some other solution maybe that comes up as you discuss with them – where you can have the good things about your job in your life as well have a little more time to figure out everything else.
I also wonder if there’s a middle ground between “husband takes on all the medical and school logistics and I work full-time” and “I take on all those logistics and become a SAHM.”
Something I forgot to ask before: Is your health insurance through you or your husband? How does it affect your insurance if you went part-time? That’s a factor too… I understand that your husband gets less income if he works less, but if you work less then maybe that’s a much bigger reduction in income if that also means you lose health insurance.
We’re insured through him, and he’s self-employed. It’s outrageously expensive. But it took so long and so much effort to get Wee Weasel diagnosed and approved through this insurance company I’m not sure we want to go through all that again.
I’m off until Wednesday, I guess. I feel calmer and more optimistic. He’s had two good days at school and earned his first small reward, which he picked out, and it was math, and he smoked it.
I’ve just been thinking about long term strategies for coping. At a certain point I’m going to have to accept that I can’t control what happens at school. I can support their efforts, coordinate care, talk to my son about it and otherwise try to set him up for success, but the outcome is not in my control. And maybe he’ll adjust quickly and maybe he’ll struggle a bit. And I sort of have to be okay with all of it or I’ll go insane.
I also don’t want our time together to be bogged down in discussions about misbehaving at school. He has clear consequences that we enforce, but otherwise I just want us to have positive family time. If school becomes a massive challenge for him, I don’t want to drag it home all the time. So in lieu of grilling him every day after school we’ve decided to do a weekly family meeting, one that’s not focused solely on him but includes a review of how the school week went, and we can build in that conversation there. And talk about the coming week and strategies for success. For all of us. Not just him.
And at home, when he escalates, just trying to remove the emotion from it as much as possible. Also, if he melts down at social skills group? Best place for it. Their entire job is to coach him through those moments. The goal is to get him through school without incident and I’ll worry about that later.
The other thing my husband implemented which has surprisingly worked is that he told him to follow the rules at school and if he doesn’t know the reason for a rule, instead of answering back “why?’ he can ask us at home during dinner. So I asked him tonight if he had any questions. And he did! He wanted to know why he couldn’t draw in the gym and why he couldn’t turn the lights on and off real fast. And I told him why. And he seemed satisfied with that.
I think we are all happier getting more sleep, too.
Crisis moments can be good for re-evaluating what you actually want out of your life and so I’m trying to make it useful in that regard.
I’m so happy for Wee Weasle having 2 good days. I cannot tell you.
Yes, that letting go at the school door gets easier. I promise.
You guys will be old hat at this soon.
You and your family are amazing. You’ve got this!
Yeah. I think I feel about this the same way I have come to think about a lot of stuff. Up to a certain point, struggling makes us (or our kids) stronger. Past a certain point, we break. And sometimes it can be difficult, especially when in the thick of it, to figure out what that threshold point is. I’ve certainly gotten it wrong both ways, at least for small things. But I’ve got it wrong more one way than the other: I’ve underestimated my kid’s resilience and ability to (eventually) deal with stuff a lot more than I’ve overestimated it. (This became clear when we went to our awesome therapist for anxiety and she was like, “[Older Child] needs to be in more situations where she’s able to succeed against her anxiety, don’t rob her of chances to do that!”) And you have a great team on his side, they’ll be able to tell you if you are near that breaking point.
I also love your ideas to talk about strategies for success.
And this is just awesome! I absolutely love this.
I’m very happy to hear things are moving in a positive direction.
No worries!
Good luck to the OP.
I guess my bottom line to dear @Spice_Weasel is that if someone is routinely feeling overwhelmed, then the fact is that they are overwhelmed. The only way to overcome overwhelmedness is to reduce what you’re trying to do. You can’t grow more arms, or more hours in the day, or sleep faster, or …
The only thing that works is to reduce task loading. So find the least essential thing and stop doing it. Lather rinse repeat as necessary until you’re not overwhelmed. The hard thing is recognizing which is least essential. Especially if one is a pleaser where one feels that every obligation anyone tosses their way must be accommodated.
Despite the ease of describing them, these are not easy decisions. Almost by definition, any real decision is choosing the least-bad of several bad alternatives. Decisions that include a good alternative we don’t even notice making, they’re so easy they’re automatic. Every real decision is a balancing of suckitudes.
The Super Mom myth hurts everyone.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to keep my helicopter mom blades from whirring to fast. It was a constant struggle. I still worry about Son-of-a-wrek, I don’t think he’s completely cooked yet 
I can relate, @Spice_Weasel. I divorced when my daughters were 3 and 5 and became their primary, then sole caregiver. Both faced serious challenges—my oldest battled BPD and self-harm, my youngest suffered multiple strokes from moyamoya.
My parents, who lived next door, already in their 80s, were lifesavers: the girls stayed with them after school until I got home from work, and then I took over.
When the girls hit their early teen years, the roles flipped. My dad passed away and my mom’s Alzheimer’s worsened to the point where she couldn’t be left alone. I hired a visiting nurse during school hours, but after school my daughters became her caregivers until I returned from work to look after all three of them.
It was a long, tough slog, but I always reminded myself it wasn’t forever—and it wasn’t. We got through it.
So my only advice to Spice_Weasel is this: whether you stay in the workforce or choose to be a SAHM, remember that time is on your side. The hardest stretches come with an expiration date, and life does get easier. You are obviously a great mom and there’s life at the end of the tunnel, no matter what path you choose.