We love them, too, although they have taken a scary turn lately. We have close family friends who lost loved ones in a tornado and their kids used to get terrified of them when a storm started while we were on walks together. It was upsetting to all of us and our kids still get worried in any thunderstorm (we were there for that tornado and saw the devastation it caused just down the road from us). So as long as there aren't any tornadoes in the forecast we love them.

Thank you for this. I have been busy with other things but have been mulling over your post for awhile. Dd10 has an appointment at the local children's hospital (a major one) on Friday and ds12 has one on Monday. I'm going to try to arrange to meet with someone then and take that step out. It has taken a lot of years for us to realize that help really would be useful, but I think we are finally there.

I've learned with doctors to go in educated but to weave in what I know with what they are saying. I see it as supporting information. That way I'm not usually blind sided anymore. I'll never forget the first time I heard my kids' disease names (Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis and Medium Chain Acyl CoA Dehydrogenase Deficiency). I couldn't remember them and had to write them down. I try not to get myself in that position anymore. As far as therapists go, I can usually punch through my personal problems with the help of dh and some time to think through them. I guess that is why a diagnosis would be helpful for me. It would give me a baseline for my own analysis as to why things seem to be the way they are with me.

You definitely could be right. The not knowing drives me batty sometimes. I will go back and look at all my quirks and then spiral in my head a bit because it all lines up. But then, hey, what do I know? If there is anything going on then my definition of things could be fundamentally different from what NT people would think. Maybe. Geez, it drives me crazy, lol. Truthfully, what is limiting me from pursuing it is all the medical stuff we need to deal with on our children's end and the money it takes to do all that. I can see that it is important, though, and that other things may line up better as a result.

I am getting to the point where I can see this. This, again, has to do with not wanting strangers in my personal life and talking about such important things. Maybe if I had my son evaluated first I could ease into it in the background.

I just want to hear from other people about how they cope with day to day demands when things seem uninteresting or downright depressing to deal with. I don't care so much about sympathy, lol, I just need to know how to keep the ball rolling in the right direction. We had an amazing support system where we used to live. We moved because dh's career needed it. I never expected things to be quite as hard as they have been. We moved from a relatively small, but thriving, place to a big city area. It is extremely hard to get involved in any groups here (I normally wouldn't care and shy away from that stuff, but my kids need it desperately). I have said since we moved here that I have friends and they live in C---. I don't need friends here, but I guess that isn't really true, except that I really am not interested in replacing those people. I never was able to really make friends anywhere else but my daughters' illnesses drew people out there and a lot of people I grew up with lived there. I still keep in contact with them and we visit them occasionally. But here? So far that isn't working out so well. We finally got into a co-op for next fall and have a social this weekend that we are all really nervous about. I hope I can find one or two people that I can connect with for the sake of my kids. You are right about the social worker. We have had them in the past (hospital social workers), but I have always been nervous about them and didn't know how to act or what to request. It was liking having a stranger who wanted to step into the most private parts of our lives and act like it was perfectly normal. I guess that is part of why doctors and nurses used to make me so nervous, too.

That is a heck of a lot to deal with, even for me. What your 10yo is doing sounds a lot like what I used to do with my kids back before dd10 got sick. Now I just feel like I need to get her to the starting line, which is a lot of work, and to convince ds12 he needs to go back to the starting line in some areas to get some things straightened out. When he lashes out I make him run laps, lol. By the time he is done he is too tired to complain much. I am too tired (disinterested in the most benign way?) to deal with his junk. Sometimes I just feel like I am holding my breath through school with him so that I can exhale when we are done. He has made it clear that he doesn't want my help, but then he comes to me and asks for help. That just gets me riled up, especially when he just.doesn't.get.it. At that point I tell him to wait until dh gets home for lunch to go over it with him. I learned a long time ago to draw the line in the sand and say something along the lines of, "We are stopping here because if we don't I am going to lose my temper and neither one of us wants that." He got the message eventually. I think he is a lot like me, which is why we clash so much. When dd10 got sick (at the age of 3), I was pregnant with dd6. I was very sick during that pregnancy because of dd6's genetic problems. I lost all interest in that pregnancy and just focused on dd10 and how to get her better. Her very complicated, life-threatening illnesses became my obsession. Now I have lost interest unless there is something new we can do. I don't really read the latest research anymore and just make sure she has her medicine and that she follows the diet we have figured out for her in the last few months. My dd6's illness was overwhelming for a long time, too, and became part of my obsession once she was born, but I didn't know how to put on the brakes *ever* and ended up in the hospital for 5 days with a gangrenous gallbladder. That was when I hit bottom and had a very bad case of caretaker's fatigue. Through all of this I was feeling really, really lost. I had nothing to ground any of this on. Fortunately I had my best friend there who could kind of guide me through the problems I had with medical staff (many of whom have become friends in the end) because I just didn't understand how to communicate with them and I didn't trust myself to understand what was going on. So now here I am closing in on 40 and just feeling absolutely finished. Yet I can't be. I still have all the things going on that I always did and these kids who depend on me to raise them and educate them whether I am interested or not. Creating a routine has helped a lot in some areas, as I mentioned in my first post, but I still struggle with staying on task when I don't see much progress. We also moved away from our support system and I feel afloat without it. I spend a lot of time doing nothing because I'm not sure what to do next. I have decided to stop comparing myself to other people because I have realized that I am not like the other home schoolers around me. I can't keep a perfect house because I just don't have an interest in it sometimes, kind of like what you said in your post. At the same time it drives me crazy that *someone* isn't dealing with it (who is this mythical person if not me?). So I just wish I knew what is reasonable. I now know this: 1. Getting food on the table is the most important thing of the day. 2. Getting the bed made every day has to happen or I will get depressed and angry. 3. School in its most basic form: math and L.A. such as it is (although more almost always gets done), must always be done on our scheduled days in the scheduled times Oh, and dh depends on me to set the tone because I have always been such a driven person in one way or another and he is not. Do you remember that post about existential depression? I think that the part about there not being a structure out there that is absolute is part of my problem, too. Creating even the bare bones that I have above has been a mountainous struggle that has taken me 14.5 years to figure out. Yet my home schooling neighbor acts as if these things and much, much more is no big deal. Life just seems to come more easily to her, even with some pretty major issues that she is dealing with, too. I'm not jealous, lol, just amazed that she can pull it off and still wear her clothes on the right way (I can't). But that just isn't me. Jelly Bellies do sound good...

I strongly suspect that I have Asperger's syndrome and my husband insists that I do (I am looking to find someone who can help me figure this out here locally). I have struggled my entire time as a parent to pull it together to be a great mother and meet the typical expectations people have of parents in our culture. I have made home schooling my obsession but have 2, likely 3, children with dyslexia. I am not dyslexic (my dh is). There are other diagnosed and undiagnosed problems with our children. I dont have any of those either. I have a hard time being sympathetic sometimes and my rigidity can really get in the way of being able to think creatively enough to help them. I find myself getting depressed and angry. Our children also have rare diseases that lands them in the hospital in often life-threatening situations. It took me years of awkwardly trying to navigate the system with the vague feeling I was doing something wrong before I began to trust the people who were trying to help our kids and I came out of my fog. Now ds12 may have another rare problem that is life-threatening (it has killed family members) and I told dh I just can't bear the burden of another illness like that (my well ran dry a couple of years ago when I nearly died because I pushed myself so hard). He needs to run the show on this one since it is his family. That is a nice idea and all, except that he is dyslexic and can't fill out the paperwork. :( I also suspect ASD in my son and possibly one of my other children. My realization kind of explains a lifetime of bewilderment at my inability to get dinner on the table for my family because of of one obsession or another or why I don't understand what people are saying and why people have always said I am different or intense (these are examples, there is plenty more, lol). What it doesn't do is help me to understand how to manage home schooling these kids who desperately need my help. We can't afford to send them to a special school or to get them tutors right now. And I'm not a complete failure on this front - I just need to hear how other people manage life home schooling when they are the ones with ASD and they are overwhelmed with responsibilities. I would really like to hear other people's stories. (And, by the way, I have improved lots by going gluten-free/low-gluten and setting my food making schedule strictly between 8am-10am. Otherwise we bring dinner in or dh deals with it.) Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :)

I have similar reactions to what everyone else describes with any raw vegetable besides bagged salad. FYI, Advil helps me (I can't take Benadryl).

I just googled the metronome homework and couldn't find it. Where is it to be found? :)

This is *very* interesting. I am going to watch out for opportunities to point examples like this out to her. She is very sharp and likes to hear logical explanations for things. Thanks Elizabeth!

I was using my vague memories of linguistics class in college (loved that class!) to guide me. I have been showing her where sounds sit in the mouth and have her watch me when I say the difficult sounds (for her). Your ideas are good ones and add a lot to what I was doing. And the fact that your dd is hearing impaired makes me suspect that OneStepAtATime may be right about dd needing to see an audiologist. Thank you for this!

Good idea. I am making note of this, although I may just sit on level 1 for awhile (even though I just dropped the money for level 2).

Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed reply. In reply to your numbered points: 1. She did pass the Barton screening. She had a couple of hiccups, but nothing that kept her from passing. I think they had more to do with me not being used to administering the test. 2. No, no audiologist screenings. This is a good point. 3. When I don't do the hand gestures it affects her. I consider this an interruption that causes problems. I try to keep talking at a minimum as well. Even without these she can't hear the sounds I mentioned above. 4. I watched the recommendations on the videos but I have not read them. I will look at the written ones. Maybe I missed something. I believe I 5. One of the reasons I asked here was because there wasn't a lot of support that I could find for level 1 on the tutor support page. I also can't join the Google group because apparently Google groups doesn't like my Ipad. 6. This is really good to know. I thought that given the lack of information on level 1 problems that we were dealing with something much more serious than I understood. I can see now from your response that my instincts were probably right to just continue on the same lesson until I am comfortable that she can do it well. This understanding with your other ideas helps give me a new starting point. I suspect that I am dealing with my own problems that it make more difficult for me to tutor so sometimes I just need to hash out things that may seem obvious to other people. :) Thank you for sharing your children's stories as well, especially your son's. I have read about LiPs here a lot but was never clued into what it was (I am slow to pick up on things at times). And I am going to look up Spelling Success. Thank you for helping me to think this through! So I got all that typed out with a cat who wanted to play and walked all over my keyboard and a six year old watching a movie on my back. :)

Thanks for all the replies! We just got back into town and this is the first chance I have had to look at them. I will be responding shortly.

I have been going through Barton Level 1 with my dd10, who has been diagnosed with dyslexia and a processing speed disorder. We have gone through ElizabethB's phonics pages with some success. She also met with a friend who is a reading specialist for several months and went through a phonics program. These all strengthened her phonics skills but she still wasn't reading fluently. So we started Barton Level 1 a few weeks ago. She flew through chapter 3, but then in chapter 4 we hit a snag. She has problems hearing 'r' in the middle of a three letter nonsense word. It is even worse with 'tr'. She also seems to have memory problems with the nonsense words if there is any interruption at all, it could even be something as small as a sneeze. We are able to get through these successfully, sometimes after several tries, but I am concerned about moving on. I go back through and point in the air at each sound just to make sure she hears each one, especially if it is likely to be a problem sound. I just ordered level 2 this morning but I am not sure about when to begin. How fluent does she need to be before moving on? Are there any more ideas about how to help her hear the sounds? Does this need to be easy for her before we move on? How do you get her to hear a sound she doesn't seem to be able to distinguish? I would appreciate any thoughts on this.

I read dh all your replies and he has agreed to go ahead and get the couch. Thank you for your help!

My parents are getting a new couch set and have offered to give us their old couch. We really need one because ours is imploding in the back and should have been gotten rid of awhile ago. My dh says that it smells like their dog because he sleeps there sometimes and he has to cover his nose (he doesn't like dogs anyway). The kids and I have never noticed a smell when we sit on it and I know that the dog isn't allowed on the couch. They put the cushions up when they aren't home so he can't get on it. I don't doubt my dh at all, but I'm not sure how much of an issue this would really be. I told him I would ask here about getting rid of a dog smell in a couch. Has anyone had any success with getting rid of that kind of odor in a couch? I would appreciate advice and opinions. Thanks!

So what about sleep? I've noticed I'm not sleeping as well, which is weird. I'm also really thirsty at night.

Just out of curiosity, where did you find this research?

This happened to me yesterday. I had gluten at lunch and was a mess all afternoon and evening - yelling and angry. Today I felt like I had the flu. The symptoms have greatly subsided now so I know I wasn't truly sick. I will now be much more reluctant to cheat!

Double post!

Wow - thanks for the quick replies! All of your suggestions are good ones. We have wondered about blood sugar in the past as she has a genetic disorder related to blood sugar problems (MCAD). I have never even considered the possibility of it being an eye problem. Interestingly, she has had me wondering if she needs glasses this week. As far as allergies go, I don't think she has eaten anything unusual lately but I know enough about allergies to know I shouldn't discount that out of hand, either. I knew I could get some ideas I wasn't coming up with on my own if i posted here. Thank you!

My DD5 has had sudden, severe headaches over the last 2 or 3 years. They may happen once every two weeks or can be spread out by six months. She goes from complaining to screaming within just a few minutes (under 10). What is weird is that as soon as we give her Tylenol she almost instantaneously falls asleep. It almost always happens in the evening and sometimes she wakes up vomiting the next day. We have had her tested and nothing was found but some abnormal white matter in her brain (that's another story but likely not connected to the headaches). Has anyone else experienced this? Is it unusual for a child? It happened tonight so it is heavy on my mind.

Key To or Math Mammoth, as everyone else said.