One Thing After Another

Ever have one of those years where nothing seems to go right? I'm closing in on the end of a real humdinger.

As I have mentioned before, my youngest son, Zack is severely autistic. He's been in a specialized, self-contained classroom since he was about 6 and considering his delays and challenges, he has been doing pretty well over the years. In 2015, he moved from the multi-age classroom he'd been in for 5 years to a similar program at one of the local high schools.  There was nearly a year's worth of prep-work put into making sure that the transition went as smoothly as possible, involving a lot of visits from the new teacher to the old classroom so that he could meet and work with Zack and get advice from staff who was familiar, several day trips to the new classroom so that Zack could become familiar with it and lots of storyboard work to help Zack understand that when the new year started he'd be in the new classroom full-time. Even with all the prep-work, the transition was a challenge and for the first few months it seemed that every other day his dad and I would be asked to come help with some combative behavior or to advise them on how to deal with a meltdown, but by about mid- January, he had settled in pretty well and the calls had slowed to a trickle.

Then in May everything started going downhill fast when, with no warning at all, I received a phone call informing me that the school district had decided that Zack had to move to the other high school for the coming school year. I immediately lodged a complaint with the school district and started making a series of phone calls to the school board members, the superintendent and anyone else that I thought might be able to help me get the decision reversed. "There's no time to prepare him for the move!" I told them. "He can't handle that kind of disruption to his routine without a lot of prep-work! He's going to act out because he doesn't understand and someone will get hurt! Please, don't do this!" But I was ignored, or told that I was over reacting and that the staff at the other school could handle him. I dug out the storyboards we'd used to prepare him the year before and began working with him so that I could try to prepare him, but all the while I continued to plead with the district to change their minds or at least help me prepare him. My pleas were ignored- in part because they didn't even have a teacher for the new classroom yet, though, of course, they didn't tell me that until about two weeks before the school year was set to start when they finally hired someone. Then they invited Zack and I to come see the new school.

Alarm bells in my head, which had already been going strong for months now, managed to get even louder when we arrived at the school. We were met at the entrance by his new teacher- an older woman in her 60's who barely came up to Zack's shoulder- There was no way that this tiny woman could physically handle Zack if he became combative. She introduced herself to us and began to brag about how she knew how to handle kids like Zack because she had acted as a caregiver to another child with autism and the alarm bells rose a few more decibels, because anyone who has ever worked with multiple people on the autism spectrum knows that, while some things will carry over from one child to another, each one has it's own special challenges and knowing how to handle one only means you can handle that one. To assume otherwise is asking for trouble.

She ushered us into a conference room where the principal, vice principals, school psychiatrist, the school district's director of special services and the school's therapy team were waiting-  none of them had even considered that Zack would not really participate in this part of our visit and so there was nothing for him to do, so I pulled my phone out to let him play a game and the whole group suddenly realized their mistake. The next 20 minutes was spent with them all running in and out of the room trying to find an activity for Zack. When the teacher eventually came back with an iPad so that he could play games on a larger screen than my phone's, we finally started our meeting. They then proceeded to try to reassure me that they all knew what they were doing and Zack would adjust just fine. All I could think was, "you didn't even have enough foresight to realize he was going to need something to do for this meeting." I was also told during this meeting that since there was so little prep-time they were going to bring a para-educator from his old classroom to be his one on one so that there would be someone in the classroom that knew him, but they couldn't tell me who that would be because it hadn't been decided yet.

After this meeting which left me with even more doubts about this "plan", the teacher took Zack and I on tour of the school, and the alarm bells in my head were replaced by air raid sirens. First off, the school bus would be picking him up and dropping him off on the opposite side of the school, diagonal across the campus from his classroom, meaning that to get to and from his classroom, he was going to have to be escorted across the entire campus, through crowds of high school students who would not be even aware of how my sensory challenged son was being over-stimulated by the commotion. The classroom itself was a third the size of any that he had been in since preschool and had twice as many exits- big red flags for a kid with anxiety issues and a tendency to run when overwhelmed. The classroom was on the front corner of the school with one of the doors leading out to an open porch facing the busy road beyond the front parking lot and they had placed the desk with Zack's name on it right next to the door to the main hallway. As the teacher continued to share anecdotes about her previous autistic charge and inform me of things she intended to try to have Zack participate in, such as eating lunch in the busy cafeteria and participating in a general ed PE class, I reeled from the sheer number of red flag items that I was seeing. Had these people even looked at Zack's file? Were they unaware of the anxiety attacks he had the last time he was in such a small classroom where he ended up curled up in a corner, lashing out like a wounded animal whenever anyone got too close? Or the numerous times he had slipped out of other classrooms unnoticed, trying to get home, when he was overwhelmed by whatever was going on? Had they not read the reports of combative and disruptive behavior when he had been put in crowded gen ed classes on a trial basis in the past? Or the numerous times he had had to be kept out of assemblies or other high commotion situations because he went into meltdown before he ever even reached the area because of over-stimulation? How could anyone think this was a good setting for him?

But anytime I voiced a concern, I was simply told not to worry and the sirens got louder.

The next few months went from bad to worse. First off, the para that was supposed to follow him from the other classroom never appeared. The teacher that was so convinced that she could "handle" Zack was fired in the first month for grabbing and shaking another kid in frustration, and by mid-October, Zack's school behavior had deteriorated to the point that he was being brought home early in a police car more than he was being brought home on the bus.  By Halloween the school district was ready to admit that they had made a mistake moving him, but rather than move him back to the setting where he was doing well, they decided instead to send him to another school entirely. Fortunately this time, it was to a school that was actually equipped to work with him.  We met with staff from the new school the first week of November and adjusted his IEP to reflect the change and after seeing the much less crowded, locked campus facility and meeting the staff, I was totally on board with this new option.  I came home from the meeting more hopeful and relaxed than I had been in months.

And then it all came crashing down again. When I got home, there was a notice from the landlord on the door- due to the frequency of police vehicles visiting our home over the last few weeks, the landlord had decided that he would not be renewing our lease at the end of January and we were being informed that should we not be moved out by the 1st of February, he would begin eviction proceedings.

So, I began hunting for a new place to rent.  Unfortunately, if any of you have looked into renting in the Olympia, WA area lately, larger rental units (we need a 4 bedroom) are few and far between and when they do pop up they often get snatched up before I even notice that they've appeared on the market. It's now mid January, Zack, I'm proud to report, is settling in well to his new school and we are in the process of packing up, but we still don't have anywhere to move to. I feel like such a failure.

Anyone got a suggestion out there? Because I don't know what to do anymore.

Parenting

Having kids is a real trip- I love my kids and I think that I've generally done pretty well with them, but other parents continually baffle me. They won't give their kids straight answers and then expect the kid to not only not ask anyone else but also to trust what they say over anyone else. And God forbid that their kid asks you and you have the gall to answer them honestly. Do other parents really think that they are protecting their kids by avoiding talking to them about sex and drugs and other less than savory subjects until they are "old enough" and someone else has already answered their questions? I find the concept utterly flawed. 

My kids and I have had an ongoing discussion going about sex and drugs from the time that they were just old enough to ask what a cigarette was and why people smoke them. By the time that my kids were old enough for the schools to be thinking about teaching them sex ed, my kids were not only more well informed on the subject than most of their classmates, but their teachers were using them as back up on topics not covered by the textbooks, because they already had the correct information. Meanwhile, other kids are getting pregnant and ruining their lives with drugs because their parents won't tell them anything and the schools are waiting too long because the parents don't want them to bring it up and so the kids are asking other kids and getting bad advice. Other parents accuse me of pushing my kids to grow up too quick, or pushing them toward things they "aren't ready for," but I would argue that my kids speak for themselves. I have 2 in technical college programs (Computer Aided Manufacturing and Culinary) and 2 still in High School. All getting good grades, no drug or alcohol issues, no pregnancies or STDs or anything like that, and I have generally good relationships with all of them. My kids are the type that teachers generally love- they listen, they learn quickly and they are always doing research on stuff. You can bring up topics with them that most other kids have no clue on and my kids probably not only know what you are talking about but probably know stuff about it you don't.  Example: My 14 year old, Scott, was having a discussion with his teacher about behavioral psychology (started by a classroom discussion of the play Oedipus). It was the last class of the day, so Scott stuck around to continue talking with his teacher while the other kids slowly wandered off. Scott and his English teacher have a lot of great discussions and the other kids from the class will often stick around to listen because they always learn something when Scott starts talking. They began talking about the Oedipus syndrome and various ways that that tendency shows up in most people, such as girls tending to search for guys that have similar character traits to their dads, or boys wanting a girl who shares a talent with their mom, etc. and moved into a debate on the merits of Freud's work and after a few great points about how many of Freud's theories having a grain of merit that was often just taken to an unreasonable extreme, Scott's teacher commented that he seemed to be very knowledgeable about behavioral psychology and asked if that was what he planned to pursue after high school, to which Scott replied, "No, I'm going into Biochemistry. This was just something that I was reading about for fun." **Note this story was originally told to me by one of the other kids in the room and then later repeated to me again by the teacher during a conference.**  

All in all I think that I have done pretty well with my kids, so why is it that other parents don't seem to like them and routinely tell their kids that my kids are a bad influence? How? My kids are never in trouble, they're well behaved, outgoing, helpful, generally polite, and always willing to help their friends learn something new. Their friends love coming to our house and we've had more than a few of them want to move in. Why? Is it because we let them do whatever they want? Hell, NO! We have a very simple set of rules. Everyone in the house has a set of chores that they are expected to do and kids under 18 have a curfew and if the older ones are not coming home for the night they have to let us know before 9pm. Other than that our only rule is "Don't be that guy." I tell people that and they tend to look at me like I'm crazy, but it works. 

And who is "that guy"? We all know that guy. He's the one that pisses off everyone by playing pranks that no one else thinks is funny. He's the one that thinks that it's ok to not do the things they're supposed to because someone else will pick up the slack. He's the one that takes your stuff out of your room, wallet, purse, house, whatever, without asking and might return it in a couple of months if it is still mostly usable. He's the one that has no idea when it's ok to be loud and joke around and when it's better to be quiet. He's the one that bullies people into doing things their way all the time instead of letting other people have a turn leading once in a while. He's the one that never cares how anything he does affects anyone else. Hopefully you get the point. 

Early on, we just got in the habit of stopping the kids and pointing out something that someone was doing that we thought fell into the "that guy" category and just saying, "Look! it's that guy again." or if they were doing it, "Would you like it if that was done to you? No? Then don't be that guy to anyone else."  If they asked what was wrong with something, we told them. "It's rude and hurts people's feelings." Or "he almost ran into those people and that would have really hurt." or "he's hurting himself and the people who are around him." or "it's not his." As the kids got older the explanations were asked for less and often could be a lot more technical, but the point is that their questions got answered, even it was "I'm not sure, but let's look it up." 

One of Scott's best friends' parents moved their family to the next town over and out right told their kid that now that they were in this new place Scott was not welcome. They are allowed contact with all their other friends, but not Scott. Why? Where is the logic. Scott helped this kid pass History last year and has tutored him in grammar. How is he a bad influence? Answer: He has too much freedom. They think that the fact that I was letting Scott ride the public bus on his own at age 10 was too soon. They think the fact that my kids know how to cook is dangerous. They think that the fact that my kid knew more about the research on the actual effects of extended use of assorted narcotics than they do means that we are encouraging them to use drugs. In short, they think they are protecting their kid, who is 2 years older than Scott and in total rebellion over all of this.  

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but I am frustrated and baffled.  

So, Life happened and I stopped writing for awhile, but I'm back. Did you miss me? Probably not, but that's ok-  Here we go!

Feminism? No thanks, I'll stand by my men

So, there's this nasty trend that is going on that just has my panties in a bunch, so to speak.  It seems that everywhere I turn there is another famous lady coming out as a die hard feminist. Now I have no issue women wanting to be treated fairly, but the feminist movement is much more than that and I'm tired of being told that I'm either obviously not a woman at all or obviously a self-hater because I refuse to tow the feminist line.

Feminism is advertised to the masses as being all about equality: Equal pay, equal rights, etc. That I have no problem with, but when you look closer at their history and the women who often lead these groups there are some truly disturbing things to be found. Many of them take the philosophy to extreme of hating men. They want to rule over men, make them weak, hurt them and in some extreme cases basically outlaw them all together. 

I have a husband that I love dearly he's always treated me as an equal partner in our relationship. Over the years we have taken turns being the parent at home and being the working parent, we've made decisions about the budget together, raised 4 awesome kids together and generally just never had the need to be the one in charge of the other. 

Three of our kids are boys and I look at the world that they are preparing to venture out into as adults (the oldest is 18) and I am terrified for them. What is this MADDNESS? Thanks to the Feminist movements, did you know that in many parts of the world a guy can be locked up because a girl he never saw before said that he raped her? Someone told me that and I didn't really believe them, so I did some research. In California for example, it is actually legal for a guy to be accused of rape and put on the sex offenders list with no proof except the girl's say so. I read a case file recently- aside from names being redacted this stuff is usually public record, folks, so don't take my word for it, look it up- where the only evidence that was presented against this guy was that the girl pointed him out to police from across the room. There was no DNA, no witnesses, no rape kit from the emergency room- nothing.  And when the guy's attorney asked about additional evidence, it was insisted that to press the girl for more evidence would be like raping her all over again, so since this guy had no alibi, he was automatically declared guilty.  In another case, a girl and guy are dating. They have sex a couple of times and the guy secretly tapes it, intending to use them to help keep himself from cheating while he is out of town for a few weeks. He comes back and finds that the while he was gone, the girl had second thoughts about their relationship and decided to turn him in for raping her. Well fortunately for him the date that she gives police happens to be one of the sessions that he taped, so to exonerate himself he produces the tape of the encounter which shows that not only was she not raped, but she was initiating everything. Case closed, right? Wrong. Now he is being sued for taping her with out permission with intent to sell as porn despite the fact that until this came up he hadn't shown the tape to another soul and had not kept a copy for himself after turning it over as evidence in his defense. Plus there is now a movement to get taking videos of sex acts labeled as rape so that they can get him on that count too. 

In addition, to that nonsense, there are movements now to get all sorts of innocent stuff labeled as rape. There are some Feminists who claim that a man can rape a girl by simply disagreeing with her publicly. It sounds ridiculous, and everytime I hear one of these ideas my first thought is "That's got to be fake!" but with very few exceptions my research always supports it. You know how everyone's all mad about how women are kept subservient and/or generally demeaned in Islamic countries? Many feminist groups are working to turn our country into a place where that is pretty much how they treat men. If I don't want that for my daughter, why the hell would I want that for my son?  There is a fantastic article from... I think it was Rolling Stone Magazine... done by a lesbian feminist who wanted to expose the "privilege" enjoyed by men in our society. So, to prove her point, she decided to disguise herself as a man and live as a man for 1 year.... By the end of the year, she was so traumatized by her experiences that she had to be institutionalized for a mental breakdown. When she was finally moved to out-patient treatment, she wrote a very different article than the one she had originally intended because what she found was that "white male privilege" is at best a myth, which (if it was ever true at all) is the opposite of truth these days. 

My point in all this is simple. Feminists say that they want equality, but what they are accomplishing is anything but. I'm all about Fairness and equal treatment, but I can't support feminism anymore than I can support male chauvinism. Both of those -isms are about domination and power over the opposite gender and I would rather stand by my man's side than over or under him. 

The US Immigration Controversy

There's been a lot of press about this lately and it's got me going again. First off I do agree that many of the new laws that many states are trying to enact go over the top, but on the other hand I have to say that I can't really support the groups opposing the laws either because many of them seem to have lost track of the fact that many of the people that they are attempting to protect are here illegally. I may not agree with the current laws that govern the immigration of people from other countries to the US, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to ignore them and come in illegally. I also sympathize with the thousands of adult illegals who were brought here illegally by their parents before they could object and who don't remember living anywhere else, but it is not the law that has done them wrong- it is the parents who brought them into this legal predicament in the first place.

I think that in light of the numbers that we are talking about, there does need to be a reevaluation of the way that these cases are handled, but I bristle against the implication that everyone who has grown up here is automatically entitled to all the benefits of citizenship, even if their very presence is illegal.  US citizens have jumped through the hoops and paid their dues. They and their families should be entitled to the benefits of being a citizen (eg. public education for their kids, decent living conditions and infasctructure, resident pricing for college), and they should not have to take a back seat to people who decided that coming into the country legally was too much trouble and so they were going to sneak in and demand all those benefits anyway.

I would like to see a program put in place that would allow many of the currently illegal residents of our country to acquire citizenship in a timely manner and that would allow for a more reasonable process for people still wanting to come in, but I think that should be accompanied with stiffer regulations to punish those who still refuse to legitimize their residence here. I agree however that the current stance of stiffer regulations with no alternative is wrong, if only because it does effect so many who were drug into this situation before they were old enough to object.

Creationism in Biology class?!? Really?

Ok, so here's the deal... I was talking to this friend of mine who has 3 kids the same age as 2 of mine (a set of girl/boy twins the same age as my oldest daughter and a daughter the same age as my oldest son) All 5 of them are in high school this year, but at separate schools, and we were catching up and comparing notes having a completely normal conversation when all of the sudden she launches into this little rant about how she is going to go to the school and insist that her kids be allowed to leave the classroom when their biology classes cover evolution because the school refuses to teach creationism as a competing theory.

I had to almost physically restrain myself from responding to her.  I really like this lady and there is a lot that I really admire about her, but when it comes to this subject I just can not agree with her, but in the interest of preserving our friendship, I held my tongue and did the whole smile and nod routine. After all, whether I agree or not I am a firm believer in the idea that if she wants to believe in that type of religious claptrap... well that is her business, but when she suggested that Creationism SHOULD be taught in our schools I almost lost it.  I wanted to scream at her! CREATIONISM IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY! AT BEST, FROM A SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT,  IT QUALIFIES AS AN UNTESTED HYPOTHESIS (AND I'M NOT SURE BUT IT MAY NOT EVEN QUALIFY FOR THAT AS HYPOTHESES USUALLY HAVE TO BE BASED ON OBSERVATION AND CREATIONISM REALLY HAS NOTHING EXCEPT THE HEARSAY FOUND IN THE BIBLE!

In fact, I have to wonder how many people who claim to believe that Creationism is true are even aware that prior to the creation of the King James version of the Bible, there were actually multiple versions of the creation story in Christian lore. Most of those versions can still be found from other sources, though a few have been lost to ages due to the Church at the time of King James hunting down and destroying as many copies as they could get their hands on. Furthermore, the biblical book of Genesis, like most other early biblical texts, was not written down at all until the time of Moses, which means that it's most likely not even close to the original version to begin with since we all know how well facts are preserved when spread by word of mouth alone- anyone ever play "telephone" as a kid? Each generation that told that story prior to it being written down would have changed the story a little bit- maybe not intentionally, but it would have happened- and we are talking about a lot of generations here. Not to mention that each time it got translated into another language it would change a little bit more and it went through at least 2 translations before it landed in the King James Bible (Hebrew to Latin and Latin to English).

So near as I can tell, the closest thing that the Creationists have to real proof of their claims is another hypothesis- the idea of intelligent design, which basically says that the fact that all things in the universe follow set rules like gravity implies that there must be a God.... that at least has some observable basis, but it's pretty weak, because while there are indeed a large number of rules that the universe follows, there is also a lot of chance and a lot of random crap that argues against the idea. Honestly I think that I would be more apt to believe in God if those rules of nature didn't exist because then there would be no other explanation for why anything worked.

If any of you have gotten this far (and I would be surprised if you did, all of you folks out there that believe in the idea of creationism), I would urge you to consider this thought: You can not permanently protect your children from learning about theories like evolution (and if they intend to progress in scientific studies in college, they won't have the option of opting out and still getting credit there) but do you really want the scientists that view your "theory" as little more than popular tripe to be the ones teaching your kids about the creationist ideas? It is my opinion that if you believe in creationism as strongly as you seem to think that you do, the better idea would be to ask for an elective class that would have a teacher that believes in it teaching these ideas, but don't be surprised if not even the religious based colleges consider the elective an acceptable alternative to sciences like modern biology.

Am I Doing Something Wrong?

When I was a kid and I used to get in trouble and complain about my punishments, like any kid is apt to do, my mother would tell me that she was sorry, but if all of her children where happy with her at once then she wouldn't be doing her job right.

Fast forward to today...

I have 4 kids, one less than my mother, and I'm not going to waste my breath claiming that they are never in trouble, but some days reading through the daily posts on CafeMom, especially the Moms of Teens group, I get the impression that MY kids don't get in trouble enough and when they do it's never as serious as many of the posts that I see. But what really gets my worried is that my kids all seem so... HAPPY. I even had one of them tell me that their friends have asked her if we would be will to adopt them if something were to happen to their parents. Does this mean I am obliviously over-looking stuff that they should be in trouble for? Or have my husband and I actually found a way to keep them happy AND well- behaved? I mean they are all doing well in school, none of them have gotten in trouble with the law, neither of my girls is pregnant, neither of my boys has a pregnant girlfriend, we haven't had any major arguments around here in months, everyone does their chores with minimal nagging required and somehow our kids still seem to enjoy spending time with me and hubby, even our almost 16 yr old (Are't they supposed to start hating us once they hit puberty?).  As much as I would love to just take credit for being THAT AWESOME, there's a nagging voice in my head that keeps recalling what my mom used to say about how she wasn't doing her job if we were all happy and I worry that somehow I'm missing something... 

The Pink Cadillac Cafe

I got an e-mail from my mother last night about my uncle. Apparently last month he had brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor that was had grown there and they are asking for people to pray for him.

I have very mixed feelings about this news. On the one hand he is family and I do care about him and his kids, but on the other hand, this is a man who for reasons that apparently are only known to him has avoided contact with most of the family for as long as I can remember. I can in fact only remember seeing him on 3 occasions during my entire life and the last time was over 2 decades ago when I was in high school.

I was visiting my grandparents who only lived about 10 min. from his house, and I had called them because I wanted to see them while I was there. It took 3 days for me to get any response and when I did, it was my older cousin who responded. He was 18 at the time and was thrilled to get a chance to see me like me, he considers family to be important but since his parents tended to change the subject whenever the extended family was mentioned, he had had no way to contact us, but he had accidentally intercepted my message on the answering machine and decided to take it upon himself to come see me.

He and I spent most of that day together. He took me to his parent's house where I got to briefly see my aunt and uncle, neither of which said more than 3 words to me before leaving the house on an "errand", but I also got to see my other cousin and he joined his brother and I for the rest of the day.

We went to the mall for a while and about mid-afternoon, we decided that were hungry and they took me to one of their favorite hang-outs, The Pink Cadillac Cafe. Situated right in the middle of downtown, it was 50's style diner with the largest booth in the place being a bright pink colored Cadillac convertible who's front seats had been reversed to face the back and a table was embedded in the center. (Kind of like the car booths at the restaurant in the movie Pulp Fiction when John Travolta's character takes his boss's wife to dinner) A few of my cousins' friends met us there and we had a great time just visiting  and joking around while we ate. And after we ate they all took me to a nearby video arcade where we goofed around for a few more hours before they gave me a ride home.

That is my most vivid memory of any of them. I never saw any of them again and though I did send my cousin a letter about a month later, and again a few months after that,  he never responded and I am not even sure if he ever got them. It's always been one of my greatest frustrations that I didn't get to know them better, but after more than 20 years without any of them even acknowledging my existence, there is a small pouting child in the back corner of my mind that is still angry at my uncle for basically rejecting his little sister and all of her children, though I know that she tried repeatedly to establish a relationship with him and that kid thinks he has a lot of nerve expecting us to offer any kind of support now that something is going wrong in his little world that he never wanted us to be a part of.

How Do You Know You Have A Healthy Marriage?

I see posts on CafeMom or articles in magazines or on-line all the time talking about how important it is to keep up an active sex life in your marriage and it just makes me laugh. Sure it's important to keep that spark going, but you don't have to measure success by how many times a day/week you have sex.

In my opinion, one of the biggest things that my hubby and I  have going in our marriage is not the sex (though that is definitely important- LOL). It's the fact that we can spend time together for hours on end talking about things other than our family and not run out of things to talk about that we both care about. We share some of the same hobbies and like a lot of the same music and have the same basic beliefs when it comes to religion/faith and politics. It's very important to make sure that you married couples out there are spending some time together just being a couple and talking about these things that you have in common as well as your family. I don't think that my husband and I could have lasted the nearly 20 yrs as a couple that we have under our belts if we didn't keep those communication lines open and find time to just enjoy being the friends that we were even before we got romantically involved.

So, how do you know if you have a healthy marriage? I guess to some extent that depends on what a "healthy marriage" means to you. For me, it means that your spouse is someone that you want to spend time with doing things both with your kids AND on your own; someone you still enjoy sex with, but who understands if you just don't feel like it tonight so that you don't feel like you have to do it; and most importantly, it means that when something upsetting or really awesome happens, you can't wait to tell them about it and when you do tell them, they actually CARE and RECIPROCATE! In my opinion, if you are forcing yourself to have sex with your partner some arbitrary number of times a week out of a feeling of obligation or from some misguided notion that somehow doing so will fix your marriage, but you never do anything else together without the kids and you have nothing else in common, it's time for some serious couples counseling and soul-searching.

Mommy's Me Time

I'm sure a lot of moms can relate to this- sometimes I get so busy with my kids' projects and activities and appointments and whatnot that I just don't seem to be able to find time for me. This is one of those issues that I have been making a conscious effort to change for myself. Being a parent, whether you work outside the home or not, is a busy, challenging and often thankless job and there is no shame in just saying "TIME OUT! I need a break!" The tricky part is that because kids aren't nearly as understanding about this as they expect us to be, we have to really work on just planning in time for this into our days.

For me that means that when I walk my youngest out to his bus in the morning, I make a point of taking a walk around the block on my own before I go home to make sure my cyber-schoolers are up and eating breakfast so they can start their schoolwork. And when their dad gets home he gets to spend an hour with the kids so that I can take a shower or read or play on the computer for a while after spending all day with them. And then he gets his cool down time too, because being Daddy is hard work, too!

A lot of time it seems like people forget just how important it is to take some time for yourself, especially if you have one or more kid(s) with special needs, who typically need exceptional levels of supervision and assistance. I have some friends who seem to think that "me time" has to be treating yourself to something exceptional, e.g. getting your hair or nails done or getting a massage or going shopping, but that kind of mind-set seems like it causes more stress than anything else because it gets so damn pricey! I have a dear friend that drives me crazy with that mind-set. She works like 60hrs a week, barely gets to spend any time with her kids, never seems to have money for anything, but insists on constantly getting her nails done or buying herself another pair of shoes that she doesn't need and that costs way too much for what she got, all of which goes on her credit card and all in the name of treating herself and having me-time. Why?!? What is the point of reducing your stress in ways that cause you more stress when the credit card bill comes? "Me time" doesn't have to cost money, people.  It can be as simple as going for a walk or taking a shower uninterrupted so long as you do it on your own and enjoy it!