Halloween fun!

This year we got to enjoy our community's Halloween celebration for the first time. Houses are too far apart to make trick-or-treating practical, so Main Street closes down for the evening and the kids trick-or-treat from shop to shop. It was probably the most fun we've ever had. Here's a picture with Sam, Tom, and two of their friends. Sam is Freddy Fazbear, and Tom is the astronaut.

Our first science project (all the way back in September).

This year we are studying Human Anatomy with Guest Hollow. Here is the project the boys made their first week when we studied genetics. The boys made DNA models out of Red Vines, colored marshmallows, and toothpicks.

Tom's summer experiments with a watermelon.

Tom (Robin) decided to experiment with skinning a watermelon. As you can see, he had a lot of fun wearing the results!

An even longer break!

Last December, we moved from the Eastside to Vashon Island. We traded suburban for rural, a condo for a 3,600 sq. ft. fixer-upper, a common area for 10 acres of forest and pasture. We traded freeway commutes for ferry rides. We acquired another puppy and some chickens. 

Step Two--Fire the Psychologists

So Robin is seeing one psychologist for encoporesis checkups and Batman is seeing another one for behaviour & emotional issues.
Batman's psychologist is charging $200 per hour to play games with him and come up with lists of calming techniques. When I explain that Batman comes up with the list items easily because we practice them at home, and that, even though he understands what to do, he lacks the emotional maturity to do it, so they don't work at present, said psych blinks at me, questions how often I actually work with Batman (daily), then says that it's supported by research. He has nothing else in his repertoire.

So much for magic bullets. I am so sick of "professionals".

So fired.

When I realize that Robin's pychologist is billing $75 dollars for a 15 minute visit, I ask her whether the weekly follow-ups are necessary. No! Apparently, once we had the procedure down, they were never necessary. (This admission was aided, no doubt, by the discovery that our insurance company wasn't going to pony up.)

Since when has "take the money and run" been ethical or acceptable in that profession?

This went down two months ago and I'm still angry about it. Can you tell?

It makes me feel like a moron for even going to them. Apparently, the lesson, "Mother knows best" is a hard one. There's still a tendency to appeal to some authority.

Incidentally, the encoporesis cleared up two weeks after our last appointment.

Step One

So, the first, most obvious solution was to drop something from our schedule.

I was driving back and forth from the local public school four times a day, three days per week.

We had homeschool co-op for three hours one morning per week.

We had three separate therapy appointments for one hour each week.

The therapy involved is: occupational therapy to address Batman's heinous printing and below average core strength, speech therapy for social communication skills and psychotherapy for emotional regulation and anxiety.

We had regular showings for our condo.

I had my running group.

I know what they say about self-care, but I axed the running group right off.

The therapy had to stay. Co-op was actually one of the few times during the week I get a break, and the condo was only going to stay on the market through the end of October. So, we decided to drop the public school classes.

That seemed like a straightforward decision. It cleared up our schedule; I started a much-needed decompression process wherein I regained my personality and reined in my overwrought adrenal glands.

But it wasn't, not really.

Ambivalence

I recently drastically altered my schedule. I had created the perfect plan for my family--mainly for Batman, now that I think of it. Every moment of every day was filled with something, and all of it was going to be educational. And the schedule worked very well. For Batman. For Robin, it worked okay. I mean, he used to life revolving around his brother. It probably never occurred to him to question the constant driving. For me, it didn't work at all.

I was the weakest link. I was making two round trips to our local elementary school each day, homeschooling, making three separate trips to therapists and participating in homeschool co-op. I was also trying to get up at 5:00 am two mornings a week to go running and regularly prepping our for-sale condo for showings. I was driving myself crazy. I was perpetually wired and distracted, on an adrenaline rush from the constant activity.

Then I crashed.

It was a little ugly. I realized I was taking everyone's needs into consideration but mine.

What's more, I realized that Batman's needs have taken priority ever since his diagnosis, which was four years ago. I know, I know this is understandable. But the playing field needs to be levelled out a bit. So, what to do?