Socially Awkward Parent

I got a call from my in-laws this morning asking me to take my kids out of school and homeschool them again because of this article. My in-laws said they knew I had the kids in school because of other issues, but they didn't want their grandchildren learning things contrary to the constitution. 30 minutes later I received an automated message from the junior high that a 9th grader had died  unexpectedly last night. Later I learned it was suicide.

This is our battle: I have four sons with varying degrees of autism, ADHD, sensory integration disorder and brain injuries. Trying to homeschool one special needs child is hard, but trying to homeschool four was beyond my scope of ability. We had no structure, we had  no peace, we had no cleanliness, and we had very few good, engaging lessons because there were too may literal and implied fires to put out. I needed help, and there is no one on this earth that was willing to come into my home 5 days a week and help me with that for the amount of time I needed help, that would still love my family unconditionally and still be my friend. I turned to the public schools at the bottom of our hill. The tests were run, the kids were behind in their skills (not just academically, but physically and mentally too), they enrolled them with the teachers that match my kids' personalities perfectly. My kids have 3-5 people working with them every day, teaching them skills that I was never going to honestly be able to do because 1. I did not have the education needed to help them with their disabilities and 2. I had many other responsibilities in my life to tend to that I did not have the time to give them the appropriate attention. I sensed my kids needed more people in their life to help them and I have been blessed with loving and helpful professionals that have done just that for my kids.
I send my kids out the car door every morning with "I love you! Have a good day. Make good choices!" I pray over them every morning and every night for their health and safety. We read scriptures before they go to school every morning and we have family discussions every night around the table. I have one son I still homeschool. I hug him every day, tell him thank you for being my right hand man when I have 40 other things  going on. I have an almost 2 year old daughter, that if I didn't see her progression, happiness and enthusiasm, I would doubt my abilities as a mother. We live our life to the best of our abilities and strive to do better every day. When we stop doing that, we need to re-evaluate.

I found myself getting really upset with some groups. I am both a homeschooling and a public school parent. I have a foot in both worlds, which means I have an interest in both worlds. As with any one thing in this world, I run across  fanatics. There are those that have homeschooled all their life and their kids have never attended public school who feel confident to preach the evils of public school. There are public school parents that have never homeschooled that feel anyone who homeschools is only producing socially retarded children. It is a lack of understanding on both sides, and with it comes fear mongering. I see this in politics, health, foods, children on medications, adoption, cleaning a house, even how you hold your baby or where the baby sleeps. I wish we could be more diplomatic in our dealings with one another.

Tonight, I have been forced to discuss suicide with my 14 year old son. I don't know what to expect or say, I don't know if he knew this other kid, or what has been told to him at school. I'm saddened for the family of this child because I know no parent would ever want this trial and my heart aches for them. The medications my son is on for him to be able to be a participating and capable child in society come with warnings of suicide. Every month we evaluate this with him, and thankfully, every month, he says no, he is fine. Did these parents get that answer? Did these parents suspect their child was suicidal? I asked this because yes, I want to compare my own situation and in a sense, yes, to make sure I don't have to experience this same tragedy. I do not judge this family in any way. I have feared the same situation myself.

Every day I get on Facebook and I read a number of gun control posts, public school is evil posts, foods are bad for us posts, places I would like to see, and occasionally the few funny posts about kids or pets or pictures. In the last two months I have three friends that have bared their souls on Facebook. I read every word. I'm not delighting in their trials, but I'm grateful they shared because I enjoyed learning that they were human too. They have had hard roads to walk, and I have walked some of those same roads as well. I learned from their stories. I wish I could read more life stories of my friends.

Too often in our world we get sucked into the newest TV show, the latest video game, the hottest new song, or we chat with friends by phone or text instead of in person. We are loosing our human connections, replacing them with online relationships or even fantasy characters controlled by humans. We are becoming apathetic. We are loosing our children because the people of the world are being consumed by media and technology, by the availability of all things evil and filthy, by over indulgence and looking for the next fun thing. Will reading my scriptures to my kids every morning, going to church every week and not allowing them watch TV help them not do drugs or get overweight or commit suicide or hit a kid at the playground? No. I will not be able to protect my children from every evil, unclean and horrible thing in the world. And I'm not supposed to. My job is to teach my children how to be kind, helpful, and polite. My job is to make decisions for them until they are of a responsible age that will be best for their welfare, which means I feed them healthy food, I teach them the qualities I hope they will emulate when they are older, I teach them that home is a place of love and comfort, peace and happiness, responsibility and hard work.

When I shut the front door, I shut out the world, right? Wrong. It seeps in over the internet, over the TV, the radio and in music. Do we live a sterile life, afraid of what's on the other side of the door, thinking that no contact with the world is the best option for our children? No, we cannot. We cannot fear every time something bad happens in the world. I have heard all my life that if you are prepared you shall not fear. Our job is to prepare our kids for the world, teach them how to handle these things that are around them day in and day out. Teach them to have a plan for every decision they may have to make, that their parents love them, that they need to be kind to their siblings, that a banana is better for you than bacon, despite how tasty it may be.

I'm not a perfect parent. I wish I had a book that told me how to deal with the myriad of emotions and situations that can happen in an adoption. Please someone tell me how to best discipline a kid with Autism and ADHD when they set your freezer on fire. I want to know how many outfits a child really needs so I can save my sanity and arms from having to wash 9 loads of laundry in a day. I want to know how I teach my kid that if he is ever feeling like killing himself, to please come to me and tell me so I can get him help, before we are in a stand off situation or before I have to come home an empty bedroom. I want to know how to safely wrap my kids in bubble wrap from birth to age 5 to prevent brain injuries. Please someone tell me how to have a conversation about sex with my child without giggling through the whole thing. I feel like a socially awkward parent.

I encourage you to really talk to your children, take an interest in them, play with them, search them out when  you know they have had a bad day, advocate for them, hug them, teach them! Our children have free agency, to make their own choices. I know natural instinct is to make the decisions for them, but we need to learn to back up, hands off, let them make the decisions, and if they fail, we welcome them back with open arms, and cheer when they succeed. Remember to love the person, not the crime. Remember that all of my ramblings may not mean a hill of beans in all situations. Share more of your life with others. You never know when you may help someone or they might help you. Laugh at your mistakes and share your shoulder for a good cry. Trust your instincts, you, as their parent, really will know what is best for them. Go outside! Sleep on the trampoline with your kids. Find more positives than negatives.
Find more love than hate.

Just the facts: Mom’s do Math Everyday

Math is integrated in all areas of life.  Mothers are experts at doing mental math everyday without even thinking about it. In fact, we are quite good at math, but then….I’d wager cleaning your bathroom sinks that you already knew that!

For instance, when I hid four candy bars in my closet and came back the next day ready for a chocolate fix and find three wrappers and half a square of one bar left I use deductive reasoning to conclude that I either a) am a glutton for punishment and candy bars or b) someone thought by leaving a half a square of chocolate that it would satisfy me and alleviate the four spankings that are fairly due.  Another example is… if I leave ten minutes before the orthodontist appointment for my daughter, I should expect to arrive five minutes late.  That equals stress on my part, a dirty look from the receptionist, and ten minutes or more of extra wait time in the lobby plus or equal to the wait I must already have because they are always busy when we get there.   

If I notice my children are not very hungry one afternoon, mathematical reasoning tells me to make fewer sandwiches. Murphy’s Law teaches me that once they start eating they will be hungrier than at first they thought and therefore I must spend extra time pulling the ingredients back out of the cupboard, making more, and cleaning up again.  The next time I notice the children are not very hungry I try to remember the last math lesson I learned and make enough and extra. If they don’t eat it I store it away and then I will have negative time because I have saved it for the next meal or snack.  Negative time equals more time doing what I want---ideally, and therefore a less grumpy mom.

The real fun begins when we start multiplying. My two-year-old, red-headed little boy loves his mother. I could do no wrong in his eyes, so when I get ready to leave the house he always gives me two or more hugs and kisses before I open the door and two or more hugs and kisses when I’ve reached the porch.  When the rest of the children have realized that I’m leaving the house, they beg for one or two to come with (they know that I rarely take all nine children with me) and so now it is time to use their spiritual gift of persuasion.  If this doesn’t work, they move on to the next phase and that is to beg for more than one treat and remind me of all the good things they did that day to earn the treat (they’re learning multiplication and estimation here).   If that is a no-go, they move on to phase three, which is… what else can we get if we can’t come with you.  This looks something like, “Can we watch a movie if we finish all of our chores?” Or “Can we make two bowls of popcorn and listen to Mama Mia…if we finish all of our chores?”  The answers from me vary depending upon mood, or forgiveness of the chores not done, or seeing all their nine innocent faces staring pleadingly up into mine.  They’re good, but I’m better. They learn from the best!

Division is a bit harder.  Lots of pondering must go into division.  Should I cook two chicken breasts and divide them into a stir-fry or a picnic roast and divide it in more generous portions…the answer would depend on the time of day I’m pondering this question or how much work I choose to do standing in the kitchen.

Dividing and conquering cleaning the house can be chaotic and miserable or fun and organized.   Either way, it is a necessary evil math problem.  First, I have to think about who has been lazy lately, who can be counted on, and who should work alone, and who needs a buddy to help them along the way.  Then I have to divide the house into cleaning zones and assign the groups or individuals segments and zones.  This can get complicated very quickly.  The worst is when I see someone goofing off or hiding in the bathroom and I have to remember where they were assigned and to what regiment group.

Each woman has an innate sense of math skills and talent whether she knows it or not.  We are interior designers, which require knowledge of algebra to gain an understanding of formulas and their application to design. For example, determining the amount of paint needed based on surface area divided by the coverage each can of paint provides.  And Geometry is needed for determining spacial relationships in a room as well as measurement. Also, the calculation of angles and area are needed.  She needs these skills in determining how many kids can fit in the bathtub at one time or how many beds and bureaus a 9’x9’ room can hold.

As a mother she is multiplying and replenishing the earth and has to keep track of birth dates, each of her offspring, height, weight, clothing sizes, how many meals she fed them, how many days she grounded him/her, etc.  She divides her time and attention and multiplies her love.  How many times have you used math today?  Does each mother know…she is a genius and Einstein has nothing on her?!

Are We Modern-day Romans?

A Comparative Look at Roman Life to ours

 


I have always been fascinated with history.  Perhaps it’s due to a curious thought that I should have been born in another timeframe.  Not that 60 BC would have been my timeframe of choice, but I do love to read about it.  I’d much rather learn through other people’s mistakes than completely mess up my own life and end up giving up like Cleopatra and letting a poisonous asp bite me because I couldn’t think of another way out of my problems. And vice versa, I love to learn from the successful people who changed the course of history in positive ways.  It’s an example to me that I have the same power to be a positive change in the world.

We’ve all heard the names of Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, and Augustus Caesar.  Some lesser known names are Cato (a Roman Senator), Crassus (military general and politician), Pompey (military and political leader), and Sulla (a military leader and later a political leader).  Cicero was a famous lawyer, orator, philosopher, statesman, constitutionalist, and great writer of those times.  I find it fascinating to read about all of their lives.  There could be a TV mini-series or soap opera worthy of hearing about their lives, choices, their mistakes, and triumphs.
The sun keeps rising each day and each night the sun sets again.  For thousands of years the world has continued to go on.  Our world is the same world as it was thousands of years ago, with some modern day exceptions.  “There’s nothing new under the sun.” (See Ecclesiastes 1:9)

My chariot is a black Suburban, affectionately dubbed the big, Black Angus.  Most of us women are spoiled, though we may not care to admit it, and live in a similar fashion to Cleopatra.  We have closets full of clothes and many luxuries that we enjoy daily.  We even have servants, aside from our kids, and they are known as the Dishwasher, the Washing Machine, the Clothes Dryer, the Butler also known as the answering machine on the telephone, and the list goes on.  We are spoiled in that we don’t often think of what we have until the refrigerator stops running and then there’s panic. 

We are not slaving away all day to prepare food and daily living so our bodies need a little more working out.  My husband often speaks of these “modern-day”, “new to us” workouts where men pick up logs and boulders to throw them as a way to work the muscles.  Thank goodness for the modern day gym because there is no nudity allowed.  I wouldn’t be caught dead naked in a gym anyway, but then women weren’t allowed in the gymnasium in Roman times.  Look how far we’ve come, Cleopatra?

Let us, step back from this closer view and look at the larger picture.  The Roman aristocracy kept their people busy with distractions known as “Bread and Circuses” while they were destroying the Roman constitution--and the Republic itself.   Our country is filled with large distractions such as organized sports and free government food and handouts.  The government of the Roman’s was always dealing with corruption, selfishness, and greed.  People were more than willing to stab their best friend in the back if it served them and helped to progress them to a higher, more powerful position or rank.  Do we see like archetypes in the “aristocracy” of our day? 

The coliseum was filled with entertainment that often bothered the people but they frequented it anyway.  Sometimes, their entertaining actors (like Hollywood?) the gladiators revolted their places and Spartacus and his followers rebelled.  While the Roman’s enjoyed the gladiator fights, they were so afraid of them that they made them live and train far away from the city of Rome.

Are we making positive changes in our day, using our power and influence for good?  These thoughts I’ve been pondering as I finished reading about the Romans.  The Roman’s lives and their influence are now written down in the pages of history.  The sun has risen and set and many moons have now passed.  It’s our turn now. How are we living our lives?  Are we living as positive examples for our descendants?  What will be said of our generation?

Doing Hard Things

I visited with a beautiful friend this morning and our conversation weaved in and out of topics, but one that stuck with me and has had me contemplating many thoughts this afternoon was about doing hard things. As humans I think we tend to take the easy way out. I think we also justify to ourselves why we extricated our selves out of a hard situation. Many times we may not have any regrets for getting out of a hard project, but I think there are a handful of things we could say, "I wish I had stuck it out". 

Recently, my husband and I were talking about the military and that we both, had we stayed in, be at our 20 year mark now. With that in mind, many of those memories are coming back to me, and I'm finding myself discouraging my kids from joining the military. We are a multi-generational family of military members. Both our fathers were in the military, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great grandfathers have served in this nation's military, and yet I am telling my kids not to join. I worry it would be too hard for them. The military is a melting pot of people from all walks of life. In a small unit you could have any number of religions, people that grew up in foster care, people that grew up in upper class homes, people that were in trouble with the law as kids and now want to make something of themselves, people that think the military will get them in shape, people that didn't know what they really wanted to do, and people that are there for the benefits. Some are thieves and liars, some are the most loyal and honest people you will ever meet. But you never know, and you don't have a choice many times in what job you get or where you are stationed or when you get deployed. They don't always care that you just had a baby 6 weeks ago, and they don't always allow you time off to go home to your mother's funeral. I wasn't prepared for racism, hormonal lieutenants, sexual harassment, or immoral situations that abounded. It was hard to be in the military. It was hard, as a 19 year old, to figure out what was going on all the time, socially, professionally, or even physically. It was almost like junior high school again! The new airmen didn't know who they were or what they were doing. Everyone was trying to figure out their new definition and what it meant to be in the military. Most were scared of what was expected of them, or didn't understand what was expected of them. 

One morning we heard on the news there had been a bombing in Saudi Arabia. The Khobar Towers were dorms to our airmen stationed there in 4 month rotations. We knew some of our unit had been deployed there but didn't think much of it. We went to work that morning and came home that night, watched the news  and life went on. We knew we had not lost anyone in our unit in that bombing. A few months later however, one of our friends in the unit had been there and helped to recover some of the bodies. Does anyone wake up and say, "I'm ready for a bombing!"? No. Nobody wakes up and says that, I hope. But the point is, we all wake up and expect our day to go off without a hitch and be easy. We don't expect to pull dead bodies from a building, loose our jobs, get a disappointing diagnosis for our kids, stay by a sick parent's bed, or even break down on the side of the road. These things are hard, and we aren't programmed to naturally expect to do hard things. 

These thoughts then turned to my kids, and more specifically, my oldest two boys, ages 12 and 14. I kept my 12 year old home from a winter camp out because, one, he had been sick, but two, I was worried he would get too cold or slip and fall, or get hurt. I let my fears of a situation being too hard affect him. I should have sent him. It would have been uncomfortable and, well, hard, but he could have come back with such confidence! He could say, "I did hard things!". 

My oldest son has mild cerebral palsy. While I always suspected it, we didn't get an official diagnosis until this past summer. The mornings are particularly hard. His medications have worn off and he is spastic. Putting on his shoes and tying them takes 14 minutes. Getting out of bed, finding his clothes and getting dressed takes 35 minutes. If we run late at all, it turns into a panic session. He can't eat quickly because the more stressed out he gets the more spastic he gets, spilling his cereal, and in turn, requiring another change of clothes. I resort to putting his shoes on for him, getting his lunch in his bag and zipping it up for him, and putting medication in his mouth for him. We have this expectation that by age 14 he should be able to do this stuff, and guiltily, I have found myself yelling those same things at him, but he isn't doing these things on purpose. I see the hurt and tears well up, and I hug him and apologize, sending him out the car door to school with a "Have a good day and I love you". Putting him in school was hard. We homeschooled for 8 years because we had less stress. But he wouldn't be able to learn the hard things he needs to learn here at home. It was becoming evident that he couldn't learn the social aspects of life interacting with just his siblings, and I discovered rather quickly, I could not teach math in a significant manner for him to learn and use. He needed more help in many areas of his life that I could not supply. I needed to step back and become just his mom. This was hard, because I had been the one to teach him everything, and now, I had to step back and be his support group, cheerleader, organizer and pillow. I needed to be a soft place for him to land when girls were rejecting and boys were rude and classes were too hard and lunch was gross. It is hard to be just that to my son that for several years I was everything to my son. However, this is the natural progression in life. Moms won't always be there to shelter their kids, but I did need to learn to be the one constant and dependable thing in my kids' lives. Again, this is hard! 

My realization was this: I need to prepare my kids to do hard things, and I need to stop making life so easy for them. I think this is the natural order of parents to want to make life easy for their kids, however, we won't always be there to make our kids' lives easy. They need to learn to cook, clean, wash clothes, live with other people, help others, and become self sustaining and independent. I want them to be more productive, which means limiting TV, video games and computer screen time. I want them learn what deadlines mean, take initiative, and be motivated to learn new things, which means putting them in situations with consequences and exposure. (Ok, let me clarify here. I want Jesse to take a literature class, and Isaac is participating in debates at school..nothing illegal or immoral). I'm making more of an effort to talk about movies, shows and books we read in depth so that we start to relate stories to real life situations, and how to deal with them. In a world of distractions and convenience, this is hard! 

I have another beautiful friend that has lost over 100 lbs. I managed to loose 5 lbs. in 3 months. Loosing that 5 was hard, and maintaining it, is hard! I never realized how hard it was to loose weight, when most of my life I was struggling to gain weight. Walking with my friend most mornings has taught me how hard it was for her. This was a struggle and there were many things that could have stopped her, but she kept going, eating healthy, kept moving. These are hard things, and it requires diligence and effort, changing habits and rearranging your schedule, and discipline. Changing your perspective in the face of adversity is very hard, but my friend did it. I am doing it.

There will always be hard choices to make. Hard decisions, hard experiences. Through these things, we  learn faith. We move on and later say, "I did hard things", but there isn't dread and sadness, it is said with humbleness and confidence, and gratefulness for the experience and learning. Don't fear doing hard things. Good things come of it, even if you can't see it in the moment. 

PMS Much?

Just a word of caution: I'm writing this hopped up on chocolate and Coke and potatoes. 

I'm just going come out and write about hormones. They drive me nuts. I think I could have been certifiably insane this week. I can't predict it. I can't schedule it. So far, I don't know of any medications, oils or foods that help. There aren't warnings, and there aren't any good signs for a flare up until you've said too much or went too far. 

PMS=Prementrstrual Syndrome. Wikipedia says it is a collection of physical and emotional symptoms related to a woman's menstrual cycle. It sounds innocent enough. Like, maybe I need to put a sweater on today because I might get chilled. Or maybe I have a bad hair day. Or maybe I need to wear my fat pants. I think as I get older, this gets worse. 

At the beginning of the month the acne starts. I never had bad issues with my skin until about 4 years ago and the doctors told me the hormones were to blame. When that finally clears up, the bloating starts. After that, the cravings start. It never seems to be the same. One month it's ice. Then it's chocolate. Then it's chips. Then it's soda. Then it's (oh gee, I don't know why I have skin problems) popcorn. Then I decide my version of Lo Mein three days in a row is a great lunch. And the acne is back. 

I'm starting to think these hormones are affecting my brain and my thinking/decision abilities. In November I wanted to adopt babies from orphanages. In December I wanted the perfect Christmas tree. By the end of the month, it was half mauled and most of the ornaments were smashed. 

               And by January, this was my list of activities and ideas: 

                                                                                                  Start a cookie delivery service

                                                                                           Make my own kombucha

                                                                                    I'm going to Nursing school! (Scratch that idea)

                                                                           Let's rearrange the WHOLE ENTIRE HOUSE

                                                                      Do I need another cat?

                                                                 Declutter every closet in the house. 

                                                             I don't have enough glitter. 

                                                        Maybe I have ADHD?

                                                   I need to learn to crochet. 

                                               Give up soda. Tomorrow beg Curtis to bring home soda. 

                                           I work out. 

                                      Listen to the same song 20 times so I can memorize it. 

                                  Research and obsess about a damaged hypothalamus gland. 

                             I start to think Tropical Fish Shop game on my phone is the best.game.EVER!

                  I watch an entire series of Little Mosque and decide to learn Arabic. 

            Decide to go on a juice fast, and then chuck that idea 24 hours later. 

Had a dream I had an affair (Does this mean I want to have an affair? Obsess and analyze my entire marriage)

Two days ago, I decide it's a great morning to start a fight with Curtis. Nothing gets your point across like 50 angry texts because he hung up on you for being irrational and insane. 6 hours later, I have no idea why I was so mad and what his problem was. Poor guy. He was sick and then when he got to work, they sent him right back home because they didn't want germs there, like he really wanted to come back home because who knows what his half-insane wife would be doing.

By this point in the month, I've lost my memory too. I asked Curtis three times in a row if he is going to work tomorrow. I'm sure it's Friday, but the calendar says it's Thursday. I can't get any of the kids' names right, so yelling at them becomes an incoherent string of jibber jabber and no one knows who I'm yelling at. 

Food stinks. Laundry soap smells awesome. My deodorant is okay, but my soap smells like barf. Today my hair looks awesome. Tomorrow after washing it, it looks greasy and I can't get a brush through it. My clothes are too big, too small, don't match, or aren't weather appropriate. I'm freezing at bedtime, sweating when I wake up. 

Migraines. 

Joint pain. 

Hives. 

My teeth hurt. 

Sinuses. 

(These may or may not be symptoms of hormone problems)

Then I loose my internal filter. I'm calling my aunt, mom, and friends over 50 drilling them on their menopausal symptoms. 

Today I decide (more like my whole family decides for me) I need to get out of the house and go have alone time. I go run some errands, decide I'm going to take up a hobby and drive all over looking for the things for this one hobby but never buy anything for it, and then decide to look around a thrift shop. Treasures of treasures, I find a book I never got to read in high school! I still had time before I had to be home, so I decide to sit in the car and read the book. I fell asleep. I don't know for how long, or even when I fell asleep, but there was drool and everything. I woke up because heard my phone chirping. 

I am exhausted from the hormone roller coaster. The one comfort I have in this is that it is temporary, but that "temporary" is feeling more like a permanent house guest. I had one friend tell me that once she realized this was just life and a process, she just let it happen and it made it more bearable. I try to remember that and not burn any bridges along the way. I'm thankful I have forgiving kids and a good, tolerant husband, and a dog that comes when I call on that one day I have NO patience, and for little neighbor girls that come over and help me scrub dish soap off walls, floors, toilets and ceilings, and for friends that let me vent irrational thoughts and cry on their shoulders and confess that I love Bradley Cooper (only because of his blue eyes...mostly). Without these things, I wouldn't be coherent or able to get through one day, much less my life. I think we all have moments when we break down spiritually or physically. It is wonderful when we have people in our life that catch us when we do, dust us off, and stand us back up. Hopefully, I can look back and laugh at these things I get myself into. If I don't laugh, I might cry. 

OMG...I have disabled kids?!

I've been rather quiet on here for the last year.  A lot has happened and all of it good, but for a time, I felt I needed to keep it to myself and close family and friends. We adopted a baby girl, we got sealed in the temple to her, we baptized our 8 year old son, my sister and her family were also baptized, I had a trip to Texas to see my family, Curtis got a job he loves, I had a neck fusion surgery that was painful, but so awesome, and then August showed up.

If you have been following this blog, you will know we homeschool, but I have struggled with it off and on because of my kids having various disabilities on the Autism spectrum. The one time I did put them in public school ended horribly. Yet, by the time we prepared for school to start this fall, I knew we had to change some things. School for us was just not working. Our daily "school" consisted of screaming kids, a poopy 3 year old standing on the desk, another kid throwing papers and books and another one picking fights. Every.single.day. More often it was like that. Very rarely could I say we had had a good day. We tried to do school through the summer, but that was backfiring. I also didn't estimate how long of a recovery the neck surgery would be, so some days were just not good. 

In an effort to find something affordable but easy, something to take pressure off of me, we enrolled them in an online school. Well, that backfired after about two weeks because we just could not keep up. With 5 kids in school, it was sucking up 16 hours a day of my time just to get school finished for them. Oh, that didn't include trying to make meals, clean the house, change the baby, feed the chickens or leave the house for an errand. It just was not a good fit for us. I disenrolled all the kids one Wednesday afternoon and the next week we were all sick. 

I laid in bed for two days trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. I felt that I would be guided and provided for homeschooling like I had in the past. I talked to friends and family. I obsessed about it with Curtis. Then, after weighing everything at stake, I decided to keep homeschooling the 2 older boys, put the three middle kids in elementary school, and then we just had the 2 babies. The next day, the three middles started school. The boys and I cleaned the house top to bottom. The babies were happy mom could give them all the attention they needed. The stress level came down considerably. 

The boys and I started back to homeschooling slowly. The middles came home happy and excited, exploding at the door when they came in. Things were good. We were adjusting and it was not nearly as bad or scary as I had anticipated it to be.

Most people that know our family knows we struggle with disabilities. Three of the kids have had traumatic brain injuries. You might think we were in car wreck. Nope. They all happened at different times, mostly by the time the kids were four. For Isaac, he had fell out of his carseat as a baby and then we slipped down and icy driveway. For Simeon, he fell off a freezer, was diagnosed as moderately autistic, and then the dog ran him over, flipping him on a driveway. For Ammon, he was accidentally pushed off the trampoline, but is also autistic. Joshua, who never had a brain injury so far as I know, had a cyst on his brain discovered in the 5th month of pregnancy. He has an auditory processing disorder. Hannah has ADD. Jesse is just intensely shy. These are not debilitating disabilities in the way I used to think of "disability". They are not in wheelchairs, they can speak, go to the bathroom, dress themselves and do chores. They laugh and run and climb things they are not supposed to. They do stupid "boy" things, and Hannah does silly "girl" things.  

This week we had the IEP meetings. The IEP (Individualized Education Plan) were for Joshua and Simeon. Simeon is moderately autistic and recovering from two traumatic brain injuries, Joshua is just delayed a bit but we aren't sure why, has a processing disorder unspecified and a learning disability they haven't specified yet because of his age. Simeon has been on IEP status since he was 3 years old. He did half a year in Kindergarten, and then we moved and I never put him back in school, feeling like I could work with him and undertake his education. I knew he had delays of about 2-3 years. This is my life, so for the most part, I put myself and my kids in a big pink bubble and just enjoyed them, aware of their disabilities, but I didn't let it run our life. 

What I wasn't prepared for was that now, 3 years later, he is held back a grade, most of his academic skills are in the K-1 grades, his IQ is 70, pulled low because of his language skills. He has low short term memory, and so this affects his ability to learn because he can't remember things, like the ABC's, or how to subtract. Everything is very literal to him, but he has been getting some jokes and able to laugh at his mistakes, sometimes. One day  he can understand that "hold your horses" means patience, but the next week if we said it, he would reply with "I don't have a horse!!". He stutters because he brain can't catch up to his speech. He draws elaborate pictures because he doesn't have the verbal skills to process his thoughts. His skills are still spiking on a random range because that is the nature of brain injury healing. He might be able to tell me all the sounds of the letters, but he can't name the letters. He can count by 10's, but can't figure out counting by 2's. Reading is by memory because he can't remember how words are put together, so he memorizes the sight words, but he has no idea how they get their sounds. He will be in school year round now. Once the meeting was over I cried. My pink bubble was popped.

Maybe every homeschooling parent wonders if they did the right or wrong thing by homeschooling. Has it been a disservice to them? Would they have been better off in public school? Are their learning disabilities because of homeschooling? Have I ruined them in some way? And then, I realized I'm their mother. My job is to love and care for them, and teach them, yes, but when it comes to disabilities this severe, not every mother is taught/trained in how to care for that. (This is why there are professionals for these kinds of things).

I needed a mom. My own mother is 1200 miles away. I called my Relief Society president and not even 30 seconds into the phone call, she told me to come over. I sat on her couch, used up her box of Kleenex and cried about these decisions, the results, and now we knew exactly where my son was, and it was much worse off than I thought it was. She shared some of her life experiences, and I realized then that we all have trials to bear, but we share our burdens and these trials become a little easier.

Once I calmed down and looked at everything from afar, this is what I discovered:

• We started homeschooling because Isaac was overwhelmed with school as a 1st grader and homeschooling allowed him the quiet environment he needed to learn in. He didn't have as many distractions and could move at his own pace (which meant 3 hours for 1 page of math). 
• Stress levels in our home came down when we started homeschooling. Our schedule became more relaxed, but we followed a rhythm of school in the morning, lunch, chores, play, dinner, and bed. This served us well for many years. 
• 3 more babies joined our family from the time we decided to homeschool, allowing us to become a closer knit family. I KNOW my kids. I know them down to a twitchy eye, a shoulder shrug, or a smile. My kids are close and bonded, and it is amazing to see the willingness of older kids helping little kids. 
• If all my kids had no learning disabilities, no autism, no injuries, homeschooling might be totally different. Once I put the kids in school and the boys started their special education classes, I realized I was trying to do the work of 4 people. They needed skills and help that I could not give them. 
• They homeschooled for the time they needed it. I was able to give them the comfort and lower stress. I was able to give them time they would need to heal and develop that they otherwise would not have had. 
• My heart ached that my homeschooling days might be over for the majority of my kids. I felt like I was betraying the homeschooling community, and I felt like I was failing. I had to stop these thoughts. No matter what was happening presently, I knew we had developed foundations for our family, our value system, and that my kids knew I loved them and would go to the ends of the earth for them. It was time to change gears a little bit. With the kids in school, things didn't get worse for us, but actually got better. Just what we needed! 

After this meeting I started thinking about Isaac and Ammon, two other kids with brain injuries. I went home and made appointments for them to be evaluated. Isaac was just a little better off than Simeon, but has the same problems he has, just  a little different in a few areas. Ammon will start his evaluations this coming week. Isaac went back to school after Christmas break. While only having done two days of school and I worried all day both days on how he was doing, he is liking it. And so far, holding it together. This leaves Ammon and he will be attending a special needs pre-K for his help with his delays and injury. 

This leaves Jesse and baby Leah. Jesse opted to continue homeschooling. This made my heart skip a beat!! Yay! I get to keep homeschooling and I'm not loosing that definition. Jesse, with no disabilities, and smart and witty beyond his years, gets lost in the shuffle a lot. I had been feeling I needed to spend extra time with him. God has a way of opening things up for you when something needs to happen, and it did. Starting 2013, we have 5 kids in school, 2 at home and a whole new schedule and way of life to adapt to. After a whole lot of prayer and thought and preparation, I'm not feeling anxious. I don't feel like I have "fed my kids to the wolves", like I have felt in the past. The teachers that each of the kids got were not just organized by administrators. I think angels and God helped orchestrate which teachers they got as those teachers match my kids' personalities exactly. It has been a wonderfully good experience. 

I share this because I know there are other parents out there that struggle with these same things, but I have learned it is such an individual decision. Only you can make these decisions for your family. If you are confused and struggling, shut out the world, and turn inward, step by step laying it out in front of yourself to figure it all out, using prayer, using pros and cons, and ultimately, discussing with your family what is on the table and what are the best options. We have contingency plans in place, feeling we may need to plan for things that are just not working for our family. Believe that most people want to help, not hinder, your family. 

As a last thought, I have started to research head injuries and how the pituitary and hypothalamus can be damaged. I am asking for some more help! Can any one share privately or publicly with me if they have had a hypothalamus injury? What were your symptoms, injury, cures, medications, or things that helped? I'll save that post for another day, but thank you in advance for anyone willing to share. 

Happy 2013

Dear Readers....whoever might be left reading this blog, 

Happy 2013! You are all probably busy making your New Year's Resolutions, putting away your decorations, cleaning the house, stocking up on your "the kids returned to school today" treats (nap, magazine, chocolate, etc), or just vegging on the couch because you are the last person in the family to come down with the huge cloud of sickness circulating the neighborhood. I'm going to try a new format this year, and yeah, one of my resolutions is to try to breathe life back into this blog, and hopefully, I am more on top of it than writing down rambling thoughts at 1 in the morning that make no sense. 

The last six months have been very eventful for our family, and so I will just fill you in on that, and then keep up from there. 

1. Adoption is beautiful! I hope it is something I can experience again, but for now, we are happy with our 7 kids, Leah being our little caboose. I don't think the desire to have more kids ever goes away. I can't say we are "done" because I would welcome more babies to our family in a heartbeat. I do like that as I look at how I parent my younger kids compared to my older kids, I'm a lot more patient and tolerant. I don't like that the older I get the faster I get worn out. 

2. Understand that there are friendships you outgrow. If you are not happy, if that other person makes you feel horrible, or you find yourself happy to make the other person feel horrible, do yourself a favor and end the friendship. Don't keep trying, dragging it out, dreading a call, making yourself feel obligated to that person for some reason. There are other people in the world that you can be friends with, that will appreciate you, that you can feel like your friendship is fulfilling and rewarding. 

3. Homeschool vs. Public School. This has been a struggle for me for the last 8 years. We tried public school, then homeschooled, then public schooled again, then back to homeschooling. This year, I found some balance, maybe. We started out with an online charter school. After about 3 weeks, I disenrolled all the kids. It was too intense, and we had no time for life. A week later, we decided to put our three elementary school kids in school, and homeschool the older boys. By December, after a very informative meeting with the teachers, I discovered Simeon has severe learning disabilities with Autism, relating to traumatic brain injuries from when he was 2 and 4 years old, Joshua is also learning disabled and has an auditory processing disorder. Tearfully, I worried that I had done them a disservice by homeschooling them. What I realized was that I had done exactly what Heavenly Father wanted me to do. I prayed at the start of every year about homeschooling and every year to this point, I was told to continue homeschooing. This year, it changed. I then began to worry about Isaac. He also has a slew of disabilities: Asperger's, ADHD, and mild cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injury from a fall at age 2. (I'm starting to think my kids need to wear helmets from birth to age 6). I had him evaluated, and while not as bad as Simeon, he had many of the same issues as Simeon and they dropped the Asperger's diagnosis, stating he couldn't have Asperger's and ADHD at the same time. He will start 8th grade after the Christmas break. I worried I would be all kinds of freaked out about all this, my kids going to school after so many years of homeschooling. But I'm not. I'm at peace. I know that I did what was best for them at the time, and I'm grateful to have the ability to listen, pray, and consider what was best for my kids, not necessarily what I wanted. In the end, 5 of my 7 kids will be in school, and just Jesse will continue homeschooling, by his choice. Ammon will also be attending a special needs Pre-K for therapy for his traumatic brain injury. Like I said, my boys need helmets! 

4. Traveling with 7 kids by yourself is no picnic, but it is doable. Even when it is the hottest year on record, your fan clutch and radiator goes out taking your trip from 9 days to 16 days, and you have to bunk with relatives for far longer than anyone planned, and you return home with 6 cats and 1 puppy. I hope one day I will look back on these "adventures" and laugh about it all. Right now it just makes me sound like I'm insane. 

5. I hate Halloween. 

6. I like the other holidays. This year, we started new traditions. Most of our family live too far away to get together for them and I decided I need to be okay about that. For Thanksgiving we have a Pie Off. Everyone has to make a different pie and we have a contest on who had the best. Isaac made a triple berry pie. It tasted like summer! For Christmas we started doing the Reindeer Games. I will post another entry for that, but we had some good friends come over and we played about 15 Minute to Win It games. It was so fun! For Easter, we have done Easter Egg hunts and I will keep playing with the kids for as long as they want. I think I may step it up this year and do something different, but I just don't know what yet. Valentine's Day is our family tea party, complete with love notes and small boxes of chocolates. This year we studied Jane Austen, and everyone has a favorite Jane Austen movie now, so we started doing Jane Austen marathons. Don't be afraid to start your own traditions, your own family parties. I held onto the past for so many years, sometimes pushing myself into a depression because I didn't have my extended family to participate with. 

7. Health. My goal this year is to loose 35 lbs. I started walking and doing weights in the mornings with a friend. It is slow going and my arm and neck are still touchy after the surgery this spring, but I keep going. I feel my energy coming back. I feel better and my attitude is improving. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner!!!! 

Our goal with this blog was to share recipes, remedies, life stories, and general things that encompass making a home. I hope to continue with that and be more regular about it. I wish you health, wealth and prosperity this coming year, may you have many happy moments, and many learning opportunities. 

Words Will Sometimes Hurt Me

I received an email this week from another blogger that was about "Bully Shaming", and this post is written as a part of Bully Shaming project started by Toulouse and Tonic. 

I hated Junior High school. I also hated puberty. The combination together made childbirth seem like a picnic in the park. Maybe that is a bad analogy, because I don't want to seem like I'm promoting teenage pregnancy, but the physical pain of childbirth would never equal the emotional or physical pain of being the victim of a bully.

It really started in 5th grade. We had moved to Germany after living in Texas for two years. I spent my days playing outside, I tan easily, and I was skinny. I had already started developing breasts and by sixth grade they were well beyond what other girls had. Half way through 5th grade we moved to Germany. Nobody believed I could be "that" tan, so they started pinching me. No big deal I thought. Maybe they had lived in Germany too long. Soon after I noticed our male 5th grade teacher would stand in front of my desk and scratch himself. After a few minutes, he would stand behind my chair, looking over my shoulder at my work and touching my shoulder, sometimes moving his hands a little lower than my shoulder. Gross. The guy was creepy. Nothing more ever happened and I think he was fired that year. He wasn't back the next year and all my classmates that had been in his class now had to do resource classes because we were behind.

6th grade was a little easier. I got glasses, braces. and a bad haircut, all in the same year. I sat in the back of the classroom, staying quiet, focusing on my work, and made one good friend.

By 7th grade it was apparent I needed to wear a bra and there was no possible way to avoid one. I've since come to realize that I probably had Asperger's Syndrome. The bra was a torture device, and I HATED it. I had a hard time with a lot of clothing fashionable in that day. Seams down the front of the pants=not being able to sit still or concentrate. Wearing an itchy, constricting bra=lots of itching and crying. Wearing no socks=sure I was getting some kind of disease or frostbite. Wearing make up= wanting to claw my own face off. Hair=forget it. Couldn't figure out how to style it. I would have given anything to just wear sweats and tennis shoes all day. I quickly outgrew the little beginner bras. I was in a 34C by 13 years old. And they itched so badly, I took some of my dad's old t-shirts and wore the bra over the tee shirt, with my regular shirt over that. No one needed to know about it...until we had to change for gym. I started changing in the bathroom and that began the teasing. "Too good to change with us?" One unfortunate day, the girls found out why I was changing in the bathroom. And it spread like wildfire through the school.

My mom was able to find some sports bra that I could finally handle wearing. But by that point, the damage was done. If I liked a boy, they printed it in the newspaper. If I couldn't diagram sentences (WHY did we need to do those?!) the teacher chimed in on the teasing already coming from the class. By the end of 7th grade, I had no friends, my days were full of teasing, horrible girls. Every attempt I made to make friends with new girls failed because the other girls made sure she knew all the horrible things about me. On my lonely walks home, I contemplated how to get even with them, and it wasn't good, godly thoughts either. My grades were failing. Mom put me in counseling but I wouldn't talk to the lady because I couldn't understand I was probably a victim of bullying, I just thought it was ridiculous that I needed to tell someone about all the petty crap these girls did to me.

At the end of 7th grade I was supposed to go to a dance at the youth center. I didn't want to go. I didn't like the music (too loud, and I couldn't stand it), I knew I wouldn't like the kids there, and I was already insecure about my body, why would I want to be on a dance floor so people could just have more to make fun of me with. A boy grabbed my hand at one point, and pulled me down to his lap. I fell instead, and yeah, my hand went "right there". I left. I walked along a canal until it was time to go home. I couldn't wait for summer break. Then I didn't have to deal with any of these people. Instead, I threw myself into Red Cross volunteering in the Newborn Nursery. I would spend 12-14 hours a day up there. Those babies were sweet and beautiful, the moms appreciated my help, the nurses taught me all they could about newborn care. I loved it. It was my escape.

When 8th grade started, nothing much had changed. I had one girl I had befriended, then she turned nasty and "de-friended" me because of these other girls. She lived in the next building from us. I was so excited that I could have had a friend close by, but instead, I got an enemy. I spent my days playing with my sister, babysitting or volunteering. School was just some crappy place I had to endure for 7 hours a day. This year we had to be in health class. Then the ridiculing really took off. One of the classes were about personal hygiene. We were taught ho to wear make up. I reacted badly to it, broke out in hives and ended up with a chemical burn. Oh yeah, I was great looking, and then had to walk through the halls looking like that. I developed an ovarian cyst that made me look like I was gaining weight. By the time it was removed, it weighed 8 lbs. It was baby sized!!

I hated my body. I didn't want anyone to look at me as a result of all the teasing and nasty things being said. There were threats on a weekly basis that I would get beaten up. While that never happened, they found other ways to humiliate me. Broke my ankle tripping on the corner of a wall chasing someone for my notebook.  Boys started wanting to make trades. "You show me your's and I'll show you mine." I didn't want to go swimming because people looked at me. I didn't want to speak in front of class because I couldn't tell who was going to attack me: peers or teachers. I hated how my body looked, whether it would have been good or bad in anyone's eyes, I didn't like the changes. All that boobs had gotten me was grief. Big shirts, sweats, and sweaters hid them well enough. My daily prayer was "please no one notice me today."

By high school it was a little better. I didn't have a lunch hour with friends, so I ate with the Special Ed kids. Usually I could laugh, talk with them, enjoy their pretense because like the newborn babies, they never judged, bullied or humiliated me. I could go through the whole day without saying a word. Teachers didn't talk to me, and I had no close friends that paid any attention to me. My boyfriend went to another school, so I didn't date anyone at mine. I just kept to myself, waiting until I got home to do my socializing. I did join a church at that time, and things were starting to improve.

The cherry on top was on my 18th birthday. I had pushed myself to get into Drama (Theater). I knew I needed to overcome some of these fears. We had competitions and we had to complete so many a year. This next last one happened to be on my birthday and my boyfriend also had to compete for his school that day in the same place. At least I had him to hang out with. When it looked like we weren't going to place in anything, we decided to go watch the duets and monologues. When they let out, another friend (had made a few by that time) found us and said my class was on the bus waiting for me. We panicked. I felt bad being the reason they couldn't leave, but I was doing what the teacher had said: go watch the other events when you get done.

She waited until we stopped for dinner. She didn't let me off the bus after everyone else had left. Then she laid into me. Called me a whore, asking how would she know I wasn't off sleeping with my boyfriend instead of participating in events. There wasn't anything I could say that would have made it better. Everything was just an excuse to her. I gave up at that point. School was just a day prison. I didn't talk to anyone after that, stopped participating in a lot of things. Church and my boyfriend were all that really mattered, and at least there, I felt accepted.

Unfortunately, the dislike I had for my body didn't stop there and continued well into my 20's. Somehow, I even managed to marry a bully that took the last little bit of self worth and dignity I had in four years. I can't say why or how I married someone like that. But the day I got everything back, my self worth, pride, and happiness was the day I packed up a U-haul trailer and left him. Four years of abuse and deprivation had left me pale, starved, and empty, and full of anger. After that, I decided not to waste time on people that didn't like me. You don't like me?  Fine. Move one and move out. I don't care. I'm not here to play games and waste my life in petty, stupid dramas. My opinion didn't really change about my body and looks though, until after I had my first baby.

Most women would have disliked their body more after having a baby. Not me. I realized my breasts were for nourishing a baby...took a while, but we figured it out. They got even bigger, but I was happy they actually had a use. I gained some weight that benefited me. My hair was finally nice. I got glasses that were in style. I had straight teeth. And I realized that my body was here because I had chosen this life, because I became a mother to children, a wife to a good, God-loving, man, and I needed to be a sister and friend and aunt to many other people. Now, 7 kids later, I could stand to loose a few of extra pounds, and I could learn to wear my hair a little better, and I could wear clothes other than sweats. But I have done good with my life. I am happy. I am a good mother and wife. I love my family, my life and my body, because they all do amazing things in this world.  My breasts do not make me a woman, but it is what the world would say defines me as a woman. I am more than that. I will always be more than what the world wants me to be.

Guess the Mess

If you guess correctly where the c*#p in this bin came from in my house you win an hour of chores done in your house by my kids!

*hint: I've only owned it 2months.