Mom's Tools for Staying Sane...ish

Whether you're like me- a work at home single parent-or not, we all need a break. But how, HOW do we get a break when our kids have issues typical kids don't? Having special needs kids can often make it hard to leave them with a sitter, so what do you do?

Some of us have family members our kids are comfortable with who can take them for short periods of time to give us a few hours' break (or maybe a night). Others don't- maybe they live too far away, maybe their family cannot handle their child's needs, maybe there's no family left. And even for those who have family to help out can't always turn to them for help- if you're in meltdown mode at noon and your family members are out of town, at work, or otherwise unable to help, what do you do???

Keeping in mind that my kids are higher functioning, so what works for us may not work for you, here's some ideas from Mom's Tools for Staying Sane...ish:

1. Pop in a movie the kids will watch, hand them a snack, and lock yourself in your room for the duration. Or until someone screams. Screaming should probably be dealt with by an adult. Probably.
2. Stay up an hour or two after the kids go to bed. Watch a movie. Drink some wine. Read a book. Take a hot shower.
3. If you're not a night owl, get up an hour or so before your kids (unless your kids are like mine and get up at 3 a.m. Then, by all means...sleep as long as you can!), and drink yourself some coffee or tea, watch the morning news, whatever.
4. Speaking of time to yourself, actually use that time for YOU. No, put down the laundry. Step AWAY from the sink. Don't you DARE lay out that kid's clothes yet! Bad, Mom, bad! Sit. No, really, SIT DOWN. Good Mom. Now, drink your coffee. Yes, it's hot. It's SUPPOSED to be hot.
5. Can't trust the kids in the living room alone? Okay, guys- quiet time! Everyone to your room! Yes, your OWN room. Because I don't trust you to let your brother live in one piece in the same room, that's why! Set a timer and no one is allowed out until that timer goes off. 
6. Separate. Bedtimes. Yes, really. The King goes to bed at 6:30. Taryn goes to bed at 7:30. Kyle goes to bed at 8:30. I get individual time with each kid so they are less likely to hang on me throughout the day, AND their bedtimes are early enough that staying up for a bit after they go to bed for myself won't kill me when they inevitably get up before the sun. 

Will those ideas work for everyone? Naturally not, but it's a starting point, at least. Every parent needs time to themselves. We didn't stop being ourselves just because we became parents. I have always needed time to myself- I get way more than just a bit cranky without it. What do you do to get time to yourself? 

Imperfection

Today, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

You came running out of your room, all excited and babbling and talking at the top of your lungs. And I yelled at you to be quiet, because Mommy's head hurt and I couldn't stand the noise.

You played together, making all sorts of messes and noise, and I yelled at you to knock it off. Because my head was pounding and I couldn't take the noise.

You ran through the house to your room, whooping the whole way, and I yelled at you to keep it down. Because my head was pounding, and the nose was too much for me.

You pestered me to let you watch Winnie the Pooh on Netflix on the computer, and I let you. Then I yelled at you both because one of you touched a button and shut the computer off and I had to do everything all over again. And then the audio was going faster than the video, and I got irritated with you when you kept asking me what was wrong with your movie, and I yelled at you again. Because I had a headache, and no patience.

You asked me fifteen times in a row (I counted) for juice. And fourteen times, I answered yes. The fifteenth time, I whipped around from the counter where I was pouring  your juice and snapped at you to quit asking me because you could quite plainly see I was in process of getting you your juice. I know exactly why you were doing it-it's something you've always done and probably will always do. It's part of your autism, and I know that. But today, for a moment, I forgot, and I snapped, because I am tired and my head hurts and I don't have any patience.

And then you crawled up onto my lap, put your little arms around my neck and said "Kaikai sorry for being naughty, Mom."

And I realized what message I've been sending you all morning.

You are a 3 year old autistic boy. Your brother is a one and a half year old little boy learning about the world from you, and from me. Neither of you meant to annoy me, or provoke me, or make my pounding head hurt even more.

Yet I was acting like you were the worst children on the planet, like my exhaustion and headache and irritability was all your fault.

I'm sorry, my sweet boys.

You are not naughty. You are good boys who happen to have a mom having a bad day today, and I thoughtlessly took it out on you.

I'm going to let you in on a universal truth about parents: We are not perfect. We do not know everything. We make mistakes. We get crabby and irritable, and we snap at those who don't deserve it.

That doesn't make it okay. Just like when you are having a bad day and you decide to take it out on me or your brother and you get in trouble, Mom shouldn't take it out on you either. And I believe if I'm going to give you consequences when you do it, then I deserve consequences when I do it.

So, my little men, your imperfect, flawed mother is going to give herself a consequence. Beyond apologizing to you both for being crabby to you and yelling at you when I shouldn't have, Mommy is going to go pay the Mom Jar. Remember the jar we started a while ago for when Mom yelled more than she should have? Mom has to pay a dollar when I yell too much. Remember? Well, now Mom's going to pay that jar five dollars-one for each instance this morning when I took my crabbiness, irritability, and headache out on you. And then, when we go to pick up your aunt this afternoon, we're going to take that jar to the store. And you are each going to pick something out for yourselves.

Not because I want to buy your forgiveness for my imperfection, or because I want to bribe you.

Because you deserve to know that you are good boys, and good boys get rewarded for their behavior.

For putting up with my attitude this morning, and for trying to apologize for what you didn't do, you have more than earned a reward.

Courage is being a single parent

"I could never be a single mom."

I hear that a lot from my friends and family who aren't single moms. That, to me, makes it sound as if they are in awe of single parents, which is all well and good-it is vastly different from parenting when you're in a relationship. Many of them pity single parents, so sure that we have the worst end of the deal.

Oh, there are disadvantages in abundance to being a single parent. Whether you are a single mom or dad, or single-handedly raising your grandchildren, you face many of the same problems: financial hardship, having to explain to your children where the other parent is if they're uninvolved or under-involved, handling all the problems on your own with little or no support...all the things that people in relationships are well aware of and can't imagine facing themselves.

Trust me, very few single parents ever thought we'd be in the position we're in.

I can't speak for all single parents, so I'll just say that in my experience raising a disabled child and a typical child who have an uninvolved father on my own, the hardships are numerous. I juggle doctor appointments with both kids in tow, whether they are Kai's, Taryn's, or my own. I've gone without a surgery I need for nearly a year now because I don't have the childcare to do it. Taryn has learned to walk, run, and speak attending physical, occupational, and speech therapies with his older brother, while all the attention was on Kai and not him. I have learned to hold my screaming, struggling three year-old with one arm while assisting the nurse attempting to give my one year old a shot with the other. I have struggled to pay bills from month to month, sometimes calling family in tears unsure of how I'm to pay this bill or that bill because insurance refused to cover Kai's appointment or Taryn's medicine or some other thing cropped up and it was important and I had to pay it. I have felt like a failure when my youngest son spends days on end playing on his own because I'm busy running my older child to appointments that call for my full attention, or because his big brother has hurtled out of control and I need to deal with him, so while Taryn's basic needs are met, his need for my attention has gone unmet. Those are usually the days I let him stay up late because I know he needs me, and bedtime can wait-he can't. I've cried when my oldest son demands his father and I have no answer for him. But.

There's always a but.

For every unpaid bill, there's a day full of memories. There's the day we spent baking cookies because the boys wanted to, and the day we spent camping in the living room because it was too icky to go outside and I needed a way to entertain them. For all the bad days, there are the nights when I've ended up with both boys snuggled up in my bed, watching movies with me and giggling and talking in words I don't understand. For every appointment where all the attention was focused on Kai and Taryn took a backseat, there is a night full of laughter and fun projects Taryn and I have done after Kai was in bed. For every unmet demand for their father, there is another day full of their mom that they can look back on when they grow up and say "No matter what we went through, Mom was there. No matter what we said or did to her, she loved us, and she never left us. For every even in our lives that our dad missed, our mom cheered us on twice as much."

For every screaming match between me and their father in which I begged and pleaded with him "Just pay attention, please! Just see them, play with them, stick your head through the front door and yell that you love them-anything! Please!", there is a hug, a kiss, a snuggle from one or both boys that lets me know, on some level, they understand. For every time I saw another child with their father at the park and broke my heart over my children's lack of that relationship, there is an  "I love you Mom!", a special moment that can never be replaced-there is my children's knowledge that their mother adores them. For every moment I felt I couldn't do it on my own, and for all those moments still sure to come in the years stretching before us, there is another moment that tells me, I might not have all the answers, and I might make mistakes, and I can never replace their father, but I've done the best I can, and somewhere deep down they know that.

I was that person, once. A long time ago, it seems. I never thought, when they handed me Kai the day he was born, that I would find myself a single mother of two and that Kai would be revealed to have so many health problems. And though that has undoubtedly made my experience different from many other single parents, it has made it no less special and incredible. One day, my children will look back and say "Wow. Mom did all that on her own?" And it will hopefully give them respect for women and mothers they will meet, especially the women I hope they some day fall in love with. I may not know what the future holds in store for them (unfortunately, one of the Mom super powers I didn't get was psychic ability), but I do hope that for them-that they will fall in love one day, and that they will know women are strong; I hope that I, and all the other single parents out there, are strong enough to teach our children, come what may, you can do it on your own. All the single dads, I hope you set the bar high for your sons and daughters-show your sons what a man should be, involved and loving. Show your daughters that there is no need to settle-they can have high standards because they deserve it. All the other single moms, teach your sons that the future mother of their child doesn't need them, and thus they must treat her well to deserve her. Teach them how to get along with their ex if it ever comes down to that, but to know what to do if that isn't possible. Teach your daughters to be strong, self-reliant women. All the grandparents out there raising their grandkids for whatever reason, teach those kids the old-fashioned values parents of my generation may not think to impart. Raise them to be ladies and gentlemen like you were. Teach them that so that, if your granddaughter falls in love with my son, she can teach him what I didn't know to teach him.

And all you parents in relationships, don't worry-if your relationship ends, there's a lot of us out here; we've got your back.

Father's Day in a single mom house

Today is Father's Day. It's a day when we celebrate our fathers, or father figures, a day to thank them for their contributions to our lives, and to honor them for the sacrifices they've made for us throughout our lives.

In my house, it means precisely zip.

As you all are aware, either because you personally know me or because you've visited this blog before, I am a single mother. I'm sure you've picked up on the fact that my children's father is fairly un-involved. At this point, in fact, he hasn't seen nor spoken to our sons in a month and a half, after previously being MIA for two months straight.

I call it revolving door syndrome.

My youngest barely remembers him. In fact, he thinks "Daddy" means picture, a conundrum I ran into with our oldest as well. Kai now remembers Daddy, and those memories are largely unpleasant.

So what happens for Father's Day in a house like ours, where there is basically no father? I grew up with this problem myself. My father wasn't around, and many memories are...unpleasant, at best. So, I'm taking a page out of my mother's book, and recreating what we did.

We have Father Figures Day, or Important Men Day. We call grandfathers and uncles and close male friends and thank them for the role they play in our lives.

From Robbie, who helped teach Kai to throw a ball, to Robert who saw us through all the legal troubles with their father, to my stepdad who has stepped up as a grandfather though he is not married to my mother, to my mother's cousin's husband who has also stepped up as a grandfather to my sons, to my grandfather who loves me, my siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and children so very much, we call, send cards, make gifts...

Next year, we will be by our father figures. Next year, we will be two thousand miles on the other side of the country from the father who walked away from them. This year, we're making phone calls and counting the days until we leave. This year, I had to explain to the head start teacher that no, we will not be attending a father's day picnic, because we have no father to take with us. Next year...we'll go, if there is one where we will be.

To all the fathers, the ones who stayed, the ones who love their children even if the relationship with their mother didn't work, to the men who stepped up for children who aren't theirs...Happy Father's Day. You are the type of men I hope my sons will grow up to be.

Envy

I see so many single moms, many of them friends of mine, complaining about how little time their children spend away from them, how often custody orders are changed, ignored, or compromised, how short their monthly child support was this month.

Dears, I have a message for you.

My oldest son is 3 years old, and I can count on one hand the number of times their father has taken him, his brother, or both. Which also means I can count on one hand the number of "breaks" I've gotten. My bank statement can tell you the number of times we have seen financial support from him (never).

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, I have my boys. I have full physical and legal custody for reasons we're not going into. Five days a week, I make appointments, bring them to appointments, handle therapists and doctors and schedules and teachers and medications and diets. Every night, I lose sleep because my oldest son has nightterrors and nightmares spawned by things I wish I could rewind the clock for, and because there are nights when he simply will not sleep.

The other day, I made their head start teacher laugh and think I was insane because I informed her 3 a.m. wasn't THAT late for me to get to sleep, and 8 a.m. wasn't THAT early for me to wake up in that circumstance.

I envy that you have set dates you can plan child-free things around, days when you get to sleep in and just be YOU instead of Mom. I envy that you don't have a child who requires so very much. I envy that you don't know what an IEP is, that you have never heard of DDAVP, Factor VIII, melatonin (though how you missed that one, I'll never know), ABA, or any of the other acronyms and terms that are common place in my house.

I envy you because your children's father wants them. I envy that he is jumping onto your post to tell you he will come and get them, because he WANTS to see them. I envy that he pays his child support. I envy that he is there for you and for your kids.

We are both single moms, you and I, yet it is you who does the complaining, you who has the life I wish I had. You have a life free of doctor appointments, of an uncertain future, of a child scarred and broken before his time. My son's doctors have become friends, confidantes, even family. They know us better than our own family does. They have seen more of both my children than their own father. I have never received support of any kind from their father, be it financial or emotional. I envy that you do not know that life.

Would I trade my life and the children I have for a chance at a different ending to my life? No. Life is a story, and this is my story, my children's story, and I wouldn't change it. But that doesn't stop me from looking at your situation through jaded eyes and thinking you a fool for complaining. There are many who would read the story of my life and think me a fool for complaining, for I have the life they wish they had. Take a look at the lives of those around you, dear-yours really isn't that bad.

This is not to say that I think my life is horrible. I am able to honestly say everything my children have came from me, that we made it on our own. I have been privileged to see my children's first steps, hear their first words, watch their successes and their failures, and watch them grow from babies into little men without interruption. I have been given the distinct honor and privilege of watching my oldest son overcome every obstacle thrown his way, and I can claim the joy of having been the primary person to help him do it. There is nothing about my children I do not know, few memories they have that do not in some way contain their mother. I have learned to stand on my own in a way that you have never had to. Many times, I have fallen financially or otherwise, and found a way to pull myself and my children back from the brink of disaster. And I did it on my own. One day, my children will look back on their lives and know that they were loved and cared for, wholly and completely, to the best of my ability, and that I did it without their father.

Much as I often envy your circumstances, I am proud of the memories my children will be able to look back on and the lessons they will have learned.

Do you want the memories your children retain to be the ones of you complaining that they are with you? Do you want the lesson they learn to be that you resented them?