Life in progress

Category Archives: Parenting


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Yesterday’s News – Perspective

In the interest of trying to write at least one blog post day, I’m going to start something new. I rarely have the chance to read the papers I deliver until the next day, so I thought I’d start writing an article based on something I read in yesterday’s paper, thus the title, “Yesterday’s News.” It may not last long with Nanowrimo coming up, but I’ll give it a go.

In yesterday’s editorial section there was a piece on Thanksgiving and how we, as Canadians, should give thanks just to live here rather than a war torn country. The article mentioned people complaining about ‘first-world problems’ when there are others starving to death, homeless because of weather and ongoing battles etc. etc. It didn’t take me long to put this into the perspective of my own life.

When I tell people of my home situation (that I’m single with two handicapped kids), I almost invariably hear the same things: “And I thought I had problems!” is one of the most common. I have a hard time responding to this statement, because, I believe, it truly is all a matter of perspective. Just because I have a lot to deal with, doesn’t mean you don’t too! is what I really want to say.

I was thinking about all this this morning as I was pouring my second cup of coffee – precisely the same time I realized that the filter in the coffeemaker had collapsed and I was getting a cup full of grounds. First-world problem, I thought. See? We all have them!

Another example is this:

perspective

This is the dashboard of my 2001 Pontiac Montana. You may notice the engine light is on. The gas tank appears full, but I have to reset the tripometer every time I fill up because the gas gauge doesn’t work. I have to say though, at least it has a positive attitude.

From my perspective it is worrying to drive around with the engine light on, especially when one of my kids has an out-of-town doctor’s appointment, but I can’t afford to fix it. Case in point – the gas gauge has been acting this way for about six years. BUT, take all this from the perspective of someone without insurance, whose car is sitting in a tree after a tornado rips through, and my problems seem to hardly register.

I had a friend once, who, every time she had a bad day, would phone me up to listen to my problems, just to make her feel better. She was very upfront with the fact she was doing it, and I was happy to oblige. But it makes me wonder why we read the news from other countries. Does it make us feel better? Does it help us to be thankful for what we have in the place we live? Perhaps. But we still have to give ourselves some room to breathe. It’s okay to let first-world problems give us grief, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for it.

Everyone has problems. It’s all a matter of perspective.


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Yet Again

It’s Thanksgiving here in Canada today, so I have my mother visiting for an extra day; normally she only spends Saturday night at my house. There are many changes going on with her, in her advancing age, though for an octogenarian she’s not doing too bad. Her memory is going, she has a harder time getting around, and her skin is thin, so she tends to cut herself quite easily. But the change I see in her that bothers me, personally, the most is her increase in being judgmental. It affects the way I feel I must do things, even in my own home.

Take last night for example. After the kids go to bed I must sit in the room with her while she watches TV. If I don’t, I don’t hear the end of it. If I decide to stay up, she stays up. If I go to bed, no matter how early, so does she. So last night I wanted to get some homework done for my course. I couldn’t concentrate on the story I was reading from my textbook with the TV going, so I thought I’d read in bed. With a glass of wine. I know that this is unacceptable behaviour, in her eyes, so I waited until she was brushing her teeth and I snuck upstairs with my glass of wine and my book and pretended I was going to sleep.

I’m almost 50 years old, and I’m still sneaking booze – just like when I was a teenager, except now it’s in my own house. Why don’t I just put my foot down? It’s not worth the aggravation of having to explain to her over and over that just because I have a glass of wine before bed doesn’t mean I’m an alcoholic, nor does staying up for an extra half an hour mean I’m going to be tired all day.

Just one of the many reasons my mother won’t be living with me any time soon.


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Home is Where the Heart Is

I consider myself lucky to live here in Canada; far enough away from the east coast not to experience the dreadful weather that comes off the Atlantic, and with plenty of distance between me and the west coast to worry about major earthquakes.  Of course it’s nice as well that I don’t need to survive through winters with no sunlight. Such a vast country… Yet, I’ve always lived within the same 300 mile stretch of Ontario and Quebec, at varying distances from Highway 401.

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to travel a little. I realise my view of the world would be quite narrow, otherwise.

When I started writing this post, I had no idea where I was going with it. But I have a picture. This is part of the walk I take every day on my paper route:

walk

Looking at this picture I get a profound sense of where I am, and the circumstances that brought me here. I didn’t aspire to live in this town. I was guided here by the needs of my son. I’m not sure that I will stay here – there is not much here for me that feels like home. But then, I don’t know that any place along the 300 mile stretch of land in which I’ve lived feels that way.

What is home? My extended family lives in the U.K.; there is only my immediate family here, and they have followed me everywhere I’ve chosen to settle. There are places I’m familiar with. But are they home? I hold no attachment to the places I’ve lived. Home is most definitely where my children are.

I’m blessed to have been born in Canada, and consider it a wise decision to have stayed to bear my children here. But if I did decide to leave, where ever I go will be home, as long as my family comes with me.


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Field Trip

covered bridge

I had to drive and hour out of town to feed my youngest son his lunch today – the teachers aren’t allowed (according to school board rules) to give him a gastric-tube feeding.

Normally I get pissed off when I have to do this, but today, as you can see from the picture I took with my phone, it was worth it for the scenery.


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Does the Irony Never End?

As you may know by now, I have a seventeen year old son who is severely autistic. Occasionally he has violent outbursts at school. He goes to a regular high school and is, for the most part, integrated into regular classes, though he does have a one-on-one EA with him at all times.

Today, when he had one of his outbursts, the school called to let me know. To their credit, this year (it’s new) they have an “in-school suspension room,” where he goes when he misbehaves. Up until this year, I’ve had to pick him up and bring him home for the remainder of the day. The exception this time was that he had pinched his EA, and apparently they don’t put up with physical contact. So they sent him home.

Apparently there are many things the high schools don’t put up with. The “in-school suspension room” is reserved for special needs students. In the case of infractions carried out by mainstream students, such as skipping school, the usual punishment is a three day “at home” suspension.

Yeah.

Maybe it’s the new method of teaching irony in English class.


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Sleeplessness

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. Not one single wink. So I got up and had my breakfast, the kids are gone to school and my papers are done. Great, I thought. The rest of the day I’ll spend sleeping, until the first school bus arrives.

Wrong. I lay down in bed… nothing. Still awake. After an hour and a half of trying (okay, maybe the two phone calls didn’t help) I’m up and trying to figure out what to do next. I have two blog posts I want to write… except doing anything is difficult because I can’t think straight and I can barely see straight. If I couldn’t touch-type I wouldn’t be writing this.

What does one do when they are too exhausted to sleep? I’m not sure how the hell I’m going to be able to look after my kids when they come home. I’ve never experienced such a thing before.


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My Three ‘Only’ Children

The dynamic that makes up my family is so unique that I don’t imagine there is even a statistic out there which would cover it. Since this is the case, I will describe it so that you can imagine.

Having grown up an only child, I always said that I would have more than one, so that my children would have a sibling to play with. So I gave birth to one beautiful little boy and then another, 14 short months later. When my second turned four years old, things became complicated. He was diagnosed with autism. After months of therapy and learning to read, he finally began speaking. Yes, reading taught him to speak. But being autistic meant lining up toy cars all the way around the dining room table, not playing with his older brother. To this day, he prefers to be alone all the time, and rarely interacts with us.

Then came the decision to have another child. Although there was going to be five or six years difference, at least when they were older my first child and my third would be able to get along perhaps. My third son was born Deaf, however. Imagine it. Having someone in your family, who you gave birth to, who speaks a different language.

Yes, we have all learned to sign. But there is no doubt that my youngest son is most at home with people who can not only speak his language fluently, but who can teach him what it truly means to be a Deaf person in a hearing world.

So there you have it. My family consists of three children who essentially have lives which are fundamentally different from each other’s.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, and anything is possible.


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How the Internet is Hurting our Kids

I’m going to start off with a disclaimer, because what I’m about to say, I realize, doesn’t apply to everyone. While I don’t want to generalize, I do find that there is a prevalence, with the introduction of the internet to the general public, toward people getting used to instantaneous gratification. It comes in the form of ‘likes’, having people agree with us, being able to buy something and have it delivered within seconds… the ways are countless.

But I have to wonder how much this bleeds into our real lives. Those of us who grew up without the internet know that sometimes you have to wait for things. We have learned how to save up, sometimes for years, to get what we want.

I’m finding that it’s much harder to teach my children the value of waiting than it might have been had it not been for the internet, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. It seems to me that there are more young people these days looking for handouts because they can’t manage to save enough – they don’t want to wait. And from what I’ve concluded, observing many young people (in this country anyway) there are more of them sitting at home on the internet relying on government assistance than ever before. For instance, according to  Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, in 2012 the unemployment rate for those aged 15-24 was 14.3%, compared to ages 25-54 at 6%. What this tells me is that more kids, in or well out of high school, are living off either their parents’ or the government’s back than those who are wise enough to have figured out that they’re not going to live long if they expect everything to be handed to them. These are supposed to be their brightest and most energetic years, and yet they sit in their rooms and surf.

Are we enabling this behaviour as parents? I think so. It used to be that families who lived off welfare taught their kids to do the same. (See disclaimer.) But now, how do those of us who do work, teach by example when our kids are learning more from the internet than they are from us, their parents? The obvious solution is to cut off the internet – easier said than done. If we do so temporarily and take the time to teach our children the values we grew up with, how long is it going to take them to go back to their “regular programming” once the computer is turned back on? I’m thinking five minutes, if we’re lucky.

It’s a difficult situation we’re in, and one that isn’t going to be solved overnight. Kudos to anyone able to resolve it before our kids turn 25.


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The Sandwich Generation

I am truly of the sandwich generation. On one hand I have my kids, two of which who, even though they are growing older, will probably never be out of my care because of their special needs. On the other hand I have my octogenarian mother. She still lives alone, and can take care of herself quite well despite the fact that her memory is beginning to go, although she doesn’t drive much any more. Farther than two minutes away requires that I pick her up and take her where she needs to go. Her biggest problem is that she’s lonely. It is the cause of most of my problems as well.

To give a little background, my mother moved to Canada with my father and their two best friends. My mother is the only one of the four still alive. Adding to that, she decided to follow me both of the two times I relocated, so she keeps leaving all of her other friends behind as well. I am now all she has, being an only child and being that all of our extended family is in the U.K.

My dilemma arose today when I wanted to go back to Kingston for the day to do some research for my book. My mother didn’t want me to go, because she is fearful for my safety. In the end I agreed to come back to town before it got dark. What does this mean? At the age of 49 I have a curfew that is even earlier than the one I had at 16.

While I feel that I should be allowed to “grow up,” she is so worried about being left completely alone that, whenever I have to drive out of town (I go to Kingston regularly anyway for the kids’ specialist appointments) she is immobilized by fear until I get home. The last time I went to a movie without telling her, she left no less than 14 messages on my answering machine.

It’s difficult enough to struggle with having a life of my own outside of being a mother, and that’s what I am, 24/7, unless they are with their father. Apart from two weekends a month I am raising them single-handedly.  But having to answer to my mother as well is close to intolerable.

I had hoped that writing it out might show me a solution, but it seems there may not be one. Being of the sandwich generation is far from appetizing.


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Insomnia

I have discovered what this insomnia thing people speak of is all about. Last night for the first time in many years, I experienced it.  And while I was tossing and turning, trying to find that sweet spot where I could settle enough to drift off, it came to me. Insomnia is for people who can choose their own bedtimes!

My kids have been gone since Wednesday and aren’t coming back from their dad’s for another week, so I’m anticipating a few restless nights to come.

Anyway, while I was laying there with the clock mocking me at 4:39am, I came up with what, at the time I thought a brilliant idea. I kept repeating it over and over in my head – not because I wanted to but because it wouldn’t leave me. It was this:

The internet was so vast, she could only end her sentences with commas,

What do you think? Brilliant? Or simply the product of an overactive brain?