Change is Constant

It's a new year and all sorts of changes have happened two months prior and will continue to happen into the new year.  Our daughter began to take a low dose of medication to help with her possible ADHD. Her teacher and I answered the questions of the form, she hit all the marks for it. When I spoke with her pediatrician I explained how we didn't really like the idea of having her on medication, but that I was at my wits end with the fighting and fits and constant struggle to get her to do anything for school or at home. All her frustration and anger was aimed at me and I was having a difficult time keeping my emotions in check and wasn't always able to do so. I had also started us with counseling weekly to help us fill our tool box with tools to help us build a better relationship and be able to be better to one another by learning about our emotions, our responses, our reactions, and ways to do these things in a healthier way. Everything I had heard suggested that parents should have counseling with their child while they take the medication, so that the child and parent can navigate the harder moments that come up and encourage better behaviors from everyone.

The changes in school and at home have been amazing. We still have meltdowns; however, they are fewer and fewer as we learn ways to help her calm down and reset and refocus. She asks to do school work. She gets frustrated and says she needs to stop and come back to it later. She has earned Student of the Month for Growth because she has improved so much in her reading skills and fluency. We make sure to tell her how proud we are of her and encourage her daily to keep trying, to practice, and that she is loved. 

Our best change is coming soon. We are moving to a bigger house. We will still be in Oakridge. We have been working on boxing up our things that we can live without for the month and we are throwing things away and donating other things and deciding if there are things we want to sell. I love the reset that happens with a move. I get to decide what we really need and what we really want and what we will get new if anything. My daughter-in-law has been coming over and cleaning some this past week to give me a hand with keeping things under control during the chaos of packing for the move. I told her that I need her to keep me accountable for keeping things in their place and keeping up on the cleaning at the new place. Since I will be starting in a freshly cleaned house, I should be able to stay on top of the cleaning. I plan to make a cleaning chart that I can check things off and be able to show myself that I have done it and hold myself and others in the house accountable for keeping things organized and clean. It is going to take a lot of will power and self discipline on my part. It has been so easy to say that I will do it in the morning or I'll get to it tomorrow or on the weekend. It's a dangerous slope to slide down when procrastination takes over the brain and body.

I want to create a flexible schedule for chores and self-care that allows me to pick when I do things during the day as long as I am doing them before bed and not all right before bed. I may choose to write in the morning for fifteen minutes after my daughter leaves for school and before I go to work, then start laundry before I head to work. Once I get home from work I might empty the dishwasher and load any dirty dishes from the morning meals. After that I could choose to make dinner and switch laundry. After our daughter goes to bed I can load the dishwasher with any dishes from dinner, then sweep and mop the floors before taking an hour before bed to do whatever I so desire. The way I choose to do the things I need to do is completely up to me and how I am feeling that day. The important part is that they get done before bed.

Life is chaotic. I want to be better at planning and organizing and keeping up with the house. I know that it is possible most days, but there will be days that don't go as planned, that have the unexpected happen, and all the plans go out the window and wait for another day to find their place again.