FFS Friday - Rough

It's Friday! We made it! I think we all deserve a medal for making it through the week. I'm sure the weeks are longer and tougher than they used to be.

 

I've always found motherhood to be very isolating, I spend so much time alone. Mostly I'm okay with it, but sometimes it's rough. Since Chai's diagnosis I've felt even more alone. I have some lovely supportive friends both in real life and online, but I'd like to know more people in my situation.

Lately the universe has been sending me support and I couldn't be happier.

Last Friday we met a lovely lady at the supermarket whose son goes to school with my boys. Her son also has ASD and ADHD. The boys got on really well, we had a great chat and swapped phone numbers. Awesome.

 

That evening I connected with an old friend on Facebook who told me he's just been diagnosed with ASD and ADHD and both his sons have ASD. More support. Yay.

 

Saturday we went to a birthday party for Eljay. The mothers there were lovely and one has already said she'd love to catch up with the kids for a play date. Slowly but surely I'm building a network.

 

It's so important to have support, but finding it isn't that easy. I'm very lucky to have friends who'll listen to me whinge (I'm looking at you Karen, Emma, Lisa and Jo).

 

This year I'm going to put more effort in to making and maintaining friendships. I haven't done very well with this in the past but I'm determined to get better. 

 

This week I've been trying to find the support services that Chai needs. It's not very easy. Every single place locally has a waiting list that's at least 4 months. Some places wouldn't even put us on a waiting list. 

 

I love living in the country but not having access to necessary services is really rough. If we lived in the city I'd be able to easily access everything that Chai needs. It really makes me consider moving but I so don't want to live in the city again. 

Down here we have friends and family, there's lot of nature and life is pleasant. The city isn't like that. 

 

We'll be waiting 4 to 6 months to get him the speech therapy that he needs. I haven't heard back from his psych, if she won't see him then we'll be waiting around 6 months for a new psych. 

 

I also have to start looking into high schools, even though he's not going to high school until 2023. There are only two high schools with ASD programs. One of them will only take him if he doesn't have learning disabilities. He does. So there's only one option when it comes to high school. The paed told me that it's quite likely he'll regress as a teenager so will need even more support than he does now. That's something to look forward to. 

 

The poor boy has had a rough time at school the last few days. He's got a very strong sense of justice and is always sticking up for the underdog. It usually gets him in trouble. A few days ago one of his friends was slapped so Chai pushed the perpetrator away from his friend. That earned him a lunchtime detention. They call it something fancy. Whilst the idea behind it is good, making an ADHD child miss out on their play time is a recipe for disaster. 

 

This is how it works. After they've eaten their lunch they go in to a room with a teacher, talk through what happened and then discuss how they could have handled it better. It's a great way to teach them what's socially acceptable but it just doesn't work for Chai. 

 

Due to him being rude to the detention teacher he got another detention the day after and he has no idea why. 

In his mind he was just trying to explain himself, but in fact he was being very rude. I'm sure he was being rude because he does the same thing at home every single day, but he truly doesn't understand why it's rude.

 

This just shows how much he needs a speech pathologist. Thanks four to six month waiting list. 

 

Poor kid, I really feel for him. I spoke to his teacher and she made sure that he got the chance to get his energy out, but it still seems unfair that he's being given detention when he has no idea what he did wrong.

 

I suppose it's better for him to learn what's acceptable in a safe environment like school. Even though, it's still tough. My poor baby.

 

It's a long weekend here in WA. Tiger will be working the whole time though. I can't wait till this shut down is over. 

 

That's all I've got for today. Have a wonderful weekend beautiful people.