The assumption of caring

The frustration and hurt when you are struggling for assistance and acceptance and when you receive nothing in return, the frustration when worse than nothing is the minimisation of pain and struggle.


My parents are now assuming care of my brothers twins, the same parents who have not even babysat my children in over two years, the same parents that have not been to visit my children in their home for two years. The hard slap in the face of family yet again.


It is hard to completely walk away from family, but at moments like this I completely understand why people can do it. we receive almost no acknowledgement of our current situation and no support from my parents, they have assisted almost nothing. The most assistance I received last year some groceries delivered by Coles when my husband was hospitalised and I was struggling with three kids on my own.


Family is something that I have struggled with my entire life, really I guess why would adulthood prove differently? Perhaps I am not destined to be in that type of relationship despite the work I felt I put in as a young adult. Family life was always dysfunctional at best, simply put separated parents during primary school years, I left home at 15 to live with another family and really never returned home for more than a few months as a young adult. My relationship was always going to be outside normal given this start.


Where I feel let down is in my own assumption of what caring is, how I want this to be shown, in my family between my siblings I would love to see equality, my parents have made efforts to babysit my sisters kids, to visit my sisters kids but for me I am nonexistent most of the time. I want my parents to do the same things for me that my sisters get, in particular my children their grandchildren to be treated like the other grand children. (Although I also want them to understand the autism and our current treatment plans and goals so they can better deal with and engage with our children, so really I want more!.)


It is the picture of what is happening around me and the image in my head of how it could be that is simply ruining my future relationship. I can accept that my parents can’t deal with my life, lots of the time I struggle to deal with my life, but the thing I crave most is that honest dialogue about it, the acknowledgement, we can't really do this for you, sorry. Some answers to tell my children as they question the grandparent connection and lack of. Something solid to hold on to. How do you explain to children, yes your grandma takes that cousin away on a holiday/ night away but can’t let you sleep over. Grandma can travel to a 5 hour round trip to visit your cousins but not the hour round trip to see you?! Your grandparents left your birthday present at mummy’s work but could not give it to you in real life ummm. These are the hard questions to answer a 3yr old. The hurt this 30ishyr old feels thinking about it is insurmountable.........


The continuing devision that autism brings to our small world

Fitting it all in

Fitting it all in

In this parenting world where life is full of appointments and there are multiple children, comes the question of needs. Three children all with such individual needs and personalities, how as parents do we give all of the children what they require?

As parents we strive hard to fill the core needs, feeding, bathing, so on as parents of kids with additional needs these jobs become harder, feeding can be fraught with issues, bath time another mine field. Then we add on the additional needs and what the requirements are. For us currently it is ensuring that all appointments are logged and kept, it is fitting in all of the recommended activities, keeping up with the mountains of paperwork that this all generates, creating systems and further structure. Working hard at keeping up with social activates to grow new skills and maintain old ones.

Often we also have to make decisions on what systems best suits the individual need.

 Making core decisions on what type of treatment we will seek. How we can maintain this treatment format/style in our lives. These decisions keep multiplying. Now with a third child travelling down the pathway we pause to look at his needs and requirements for right now, and format a plan. This plan has to fit with two other plans.

Somewhere in this as I parent I have to work my plan around all of this chaos, my work schedule, (which is as flexible as a brick) and currently I am pushing harder than before for a social life, a life outside my work and my family, something to help keep me sane. Then the other parent also to find a happy medium to fit in parenting and paid employment, and some semblance of a social life.

At present my mind is stuck on the idea of who’s need is greater this thought simply terrifies me. How can I place one Child's need over another, how do I rank this. There is no simple guide on how to do this. People I talk to the standard response is “do as much as you can” “only do what you are capable of”. I often feel I am not capable of any of this, how do I co ordinate services for three children, how do I ensure I work enough to pay the bills, yet get enough actual “real” time with my children. I don’t want to be the mum that just did therapy, or the mum who was so stressed, or simply the working mum.

For the most part I enjoy being with my children, I love they have such individual personalities, they are a joy to spend time with, but there is the flip side, the meltdowns to poor coping skills that side of it not as much on the enjoyment front! To be honest it challenges me it challenges my patience and my skills, my mothering skills and my mental health skills at times.

in our household we have the added pressure of which parents's work commitments rank above the other, in our houslhold we are both trying to work and parent, which is further pressure as there is no clear lines.

IT feels like we are constantly trying to fit so much in, not just into our lives but the things we hold in our heads. As parents we often wonder at how much the heart can hold, as a mother of four children I am often suprised how great our capacity for love is. I wish that my capacity to do it all was bigger!

For now we are swimming (or drowning, depending on the day) along with the "just do as much as you can" and attempting to push the guilt further away.

My beautiful children......