The struggle is real

When I started this blog, it was supposed to be a place where I could just unload. I wanted to help people who also have children who have been diagnosed with crazy acronyms and the diagnoses do nothing but tell you that your children behave a certain way. What those diagnoses don't do is tell you how difficult life will be and what to expect. Every child is different. Today is the beginning of Autism Awareness month, and I have changed my profile photo on Facebook. I don't call it Awareness ... because we are ALL aware there is autism. What we need more of is acceptance. Accept that neurological disorders manifest in very different ways. No two children are the same and the parents who battle behind the scenes are doing everything they can to protect their children's hearts ... and help them to become a functional member of society when they grow up.

That brings me to my latest battle.

Been a trial

The past few months ... actually years ... have been a lesson in weathering trials. As I have stated before, I suffer from anxiety and battled postpartum depression. I was misdiagnosed with bi-polar, but my therapist discovered that it isn't bi-polar, it is simply massive anxiety attacks that I was having.

Unfortunately, my children have had to feel the brunt of my quirks until I learned how to handle them and get the help I needed. Now that I have though, our family is beginning to operate like a normal family. We are finally to the point where we are surrounding ourselves only with people who will continue to lift us up and propel us to the successful future that we know we have in store. Thanks to this, we have seen MASSIVE success in our family. I want to share a little with that now since I have not been online lately.

Amazed with the talents of my children

So, Monkey battles with ADHD, we have been looking for things that help her cope. We have discovered many things, such as planners and lists all help her. However, she would still get extremely wound up and struggle with de-stressing. We knew that she loved to color and doodle, so we decided to let her get a drawing pad and just doodle while listening. It was a long battle of picking our battles because she cannot stand still when we are correcting her, but finding out she listens and comprehends while doodling is something else.

I should start by saying that I have known for a LONG time that Monkey is a Liberal Arts child. She has always enjoyed music and art way more than math and science. That is not to say that she does not enjoy doing the STEM classes, because she is most definitely a geek. However, she is EXTREMELY talented in the arts. Her balance is unbelievable. She can pick up an instrument and just play. I should not have been surprised when I saw her latest creations! She has taken doodling to another level. I think it is time to start looking at music and art lessons. It is when she feels most at ease and I can visibly watch her calm down.

Here are just a few of the pieces she has drawn simply watching YouTube tutorials!

She even colored one in for me to use on my profile photo on Facebook!

However, YouTube tutorials are only one part of what she does. She also doodles during downtime at school. Here is something she drew on the fly at school:

So ... I am creating a list of things I should consider purchasing for my budding artist. I have drawing pads, watercolor pencils, and drawing pencils (that allow shading and blending). I know that she is REALLY into drawing logos and other branding items. However, I would love to see her take lessons in many mediums and see if there are other things she enjoys.

In addition to art and music, Monkey has discovered the love of Debate this year. It took her a while to find a partner she works well with, but she did ... and she placed. She took 5th for her personal work and her team took 3rd.

Been a while ... I know.

It has been forever since I have put up a post. I guarantee it is not for the lack of desire. I have been doing freelance writing for so long now that when I sit at my computer, I cannot get creative. I am not able to create blog posts or work on my novel. Now that I have made that connection, I write by hand first. Hopefully, this will mean more posts will be put up.

Let me try to play a little catch up. However, I do have several posts that are planned for after this one so this is going to skim the top. We have been struggling with two of my four children who have special needs and are nearing puberty. This past spring, we decided to wave the white flag and get professional help from the State of Kansas in the form of Case Management. We had to apply for a SED waiver to get the state healthcare. Yes, we DO have personal health insurance. However, our insurance does not cover case management ... at all. We are extremely grateful that our kids qualified for KanCare so they could receive the services they needed.


Adella is battling ADHD and OCD. We were making huge progress over the summer and now we are almost right back to where we were before. I'm struggling as a parent because I see the medicine she is on really does help with keeping her focused and on task. However, we are noticing that she has fallen into a cycle of two great days, followed by 36 hours of hell. This "hell" consists of refusing to accept responsibility for her actions, extreme snarkiness, extreme disrespect for others, and so on. It's almost like she has an anxiety attack every two days over something ... even if there is nothing to trigger it!

It has gotten to the point where we are back to scratching our head and brainstorming. If anyone has any ideas, please let us know in the comments below. We are struggling with the defensiveness, disregard for other people, and refusal to take responsibility. It's almost like she is a possessive dog, who goes absolutely guanopsychotic when someone nears her space, but then is the cutest creature the rest of the time.

On the other hand, my son is doing loads better. He is headed to KU in just a few weeks to start the screening process for an Asperger diagnosis, but we have already started treating it as such at home. We were dealing with extremely volatile meltdowns at home and school. As our case manager worked with Bullfrog and an emotional therapy animal entered the home, he started doing better at home. We still have meltdowns, but he is getting better at sensing them and going to his room to begin the calm down plan. However, school was still a major problem. Thankfully, we sent the case manager there to start getting everyone on the same page because I felt they were not listening to me. We are finally seeing progress there, slow but definite progress. He is pushing himself in the social area and then working with his therapist when he begins to falter.

Anyway, that is the slimmed down update. I believe our family has come a long way, especially since we started looking at this as a family solution instead of pointing fingers at who was doing things wrong.

Jackie, our emotional therapy animal. She's a rat terrier who is between 5 and 6 years old.

Rough days mean extra comfort

I knew this week was going to be rough. I just didn't have any idea of how rough. My eldest has continued with her struggles with ADHD and it is now beginning to affect her in school. She has HUGE plans, so this just wasn't going to do. My son found out last week that his teacher was going to be pushing group work, so he already knew that his anxiety was going to be taxed. My little Monkey also knew that she would have a different teacher, but didn't realize it would be in another area of the school and she would have a different bus all together.

What this led to was meltdowns ... from ALL of my children. Thankfully, they were all meltdowns that extra squeezes from mom (or a little rocking) helped care for. Their sensory banks were just completely empty by the end of the week.
Peanut went in to see her psychiatrist this week and we all agreed that medication would be necessary. She has done GREAT with behavior modification for her defiance and OCD coping skills. She still has some room to grow, but she is doing SO much better. However, she has two phobias that she just cannot get over. The first is Trypanophobia, or the fear of needles. Normally, this is only a situation when we go in for vaccines. HOWEVER, this week she was informed she would have to have a blood draw and an EKG done to make sure she was completely healthy and ready for the stimulants.

Yup ... she melted down when the needle was present. I held her the WHOLE time and wiped her tears. We made sure she was completely calm before she went in for the EKG, and that nurse made her day by giving her suckers. I don't care if she is 12 years old ... snuggling with mom and getting a sucker after being poked and prodded is always comforting.

Now, Bullfrog on the other hand, he forgot his lunch on Wednesday. He had been taxed all week with the new surroundings, rules, and teacher. When he realized he forgot his lunch, he had convinced himself that he couldn't eat the school lunch because he had no money on his card and that I wouldn't bring him a lunch. Both were false, but he still took himself to the Recovery Room to wait for me while his class was in the lunch room. I gave him a few squeezes and filled his sensory bank just enough for him to make it through the rest of the day (which was good since his teacher had them do group math work).

Monkey ... poor girl, she is still trying to cope. She had a new teacher, a new classroom layout, new bus, new bus driver, and then next week she will start daycare in the morning. She has been trying so hard to keep it together during school that she just collapses when she gets home. Last night was really rough and she woke from dead sleep needing mom. She needed more hugs and rocking tonight. We will see if she can make it through the night or not.

How did the first week going for you guys? Or, have your kids not started yet?

What is living in acronym hell?

So, I thought it would be best to start a new personal blog, and leave my Redbird Empire blog to be more about business related topics. While I absolutely love talking about my kids and my life, it is hard to separate that from coding, electronics, technology, social media, and everything else that Redbird Empire is about. It only made sense to start a blog that was my personal life. I thought for a long time about what to call my personal blog, because there are so many cool names out there.

However, after the past few years of being diagnosed and treated for PPD, having suffered from PTSD, having a psychiatrist tell me that I have ADD (in addition to bi-polar and OCD), then being told I DIDN'T have bi-polar ... but rather GAD & OCD. I started to wonder how much more of the alphabet could be shoved into my life. You know what, never wonder these things! My eldest daughter has been diagnosed with ADHD & OCD. She talks about her life on her blog at Marvel-ously Talented. My son has been diagnosed with extreme anxiety, and possibly Asperger's (pending more testing). Oh, and he has SPD. My second daughter, who is four, has been diagnosed with SPD, which is now classified as a manifestation of ASD.

What in tarnation am I talking about? For those who do know, you are probably crying along with me. But for those who are just visiting my site because you know me from Redbird Empire, let me define.

• PPD - Post-Partum Depression
• ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder
• PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• GAD - General Anxiety Disorder
• ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder
• SPD - Sensory Processing Disorder
• ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorder

My goal with my new site is to show you what life is like in my house. However, maybe more importantly, it is to give me a place to talk about what I go through and feel a way to breathe. Maybe someone who has already gone through the same things would love to give insight for me. Maybe someone else is feeling so overwhelmed and they do not know which way to turn. I am not deleting my past blog posts at Redbird Empire. You can still find them. I will edit this post after I get the finalized location set. I plan on making them accessible through a link so they do not distract from my budding business.

I hope this site continues to grow and become a place where I can feel that it is no longer hell ... but just normal life. Parenting is hard. Parenting with severe anxiety is extremely hard. I just want one day for it to feel "normal."