I have never heard of property taxes being included in closing costs. Every time we've sold houses, closing costs and taxes are two separate items.

I have eczema on my hands and my neck. I'm currently doing an elimination diet to figure out the internal cause and it is clearing up. Now, after my shower, it gets really aggravated and I think I need to clean up which shampoos and soaps I use. Any suggestions for clean shampoos and soaps that won't break the bank?

I feel like sometimes this is the direction we are headed. We are trying to stop it. I know she will get an ADHD diagnosis but at it's heart, I don't feel like that is her biggest issue. I do feel like she has a trauma brain and that is what needs to be healed. Unfortunately, despite my calling about and making sure I would get placed with a psychologist who could evaluate whether it was trauma or something else that was my daughter's issue, I believe we got a psychologist who applied typical child growing up in a typical family to her situation. She started in a situation of neglect and just joining our family did not make that lack of early brain development heal. Consequences don't work, rewards don't work - she wants to be in control and at 11, there is only so much she should be in control of.

Yes they could, but they’re not making any moves very quickly. They haven’t looked and I know some of those place have waiting lists. I’m pretty sure they have some in mind, but they are pretty content to stay where they are and not be quick to make changes. They’re both a little stubborn and I think they want different things.

She actually does better with more structure. It irritates her if people don’t follow the rules or listen to the teacher (yes ironic, but there it is). It shows she is different at home than at school. Rules are meant to be followed if someone else gives them. If mom and dad give them, then rules are meant to be ignored or argued about (unless she’s in a good mood and then they do get followed). Yes, her stress level does need to come down at home. It’s hard when she’s pretty much made herself an enemy to her brothers with DH and I burnt out by her emotional ups and downs and arguing about everything. Yesterday, she kept arguing with me about the availability of a parking space and why wouldn’t I take that one instead of backing up into the one I had decided upon. I kept telling her to look for the very small car parked in her chosen spot. She refused to believe me until she saw it. It’s that type of thing that’s constant. If I ignore her arguing, she tends to escalate it. If I try to stop her from arguing (ie. calmly telling her to wait on talking to me) she escalates. Sigh...

We’re not opposed to getting counseling/psychiatric help or using drugs to stabilize her moods. No religious conviction about it and a healthy perspective that sometimes your brain chemicals may be off. We just really need/wanted a starting point. If it’s a mental disorder (anxiety/depression/bipolar) that’s one road. If it’s food/environmental related that’s a different road. If it’s trauma/RAD—totally different road. All we been given so far is being told that the medications she was on weren’t causing her rage and increased anger/aggression when they clearly were. I have been going these other paths of getting her tested by a psychologist on my own. I have a child who has had trouble with anger and has been lagging in increasing in maturity for years and have wondered what we are doing wrong to the point that I have questioned my ability to be a good mom to any of my children. She has pushed us over the edge and my DH and I are starting to be concerned about early death from stress about each other. I know other parents of kids who are difficult but none of them are at the point of questioning their long term health like DH and I have been. We need this to stop and I’m grasping at whatever I can to figure this out properly.

Just an FYI about moving stairways. We have one for my son who has his bedroom in the basement. If you have a straight staircase, the cost is pretty reasonable - around $3K. If you have any need of curving it, even to accommodate one landing stair, you're looking at around $13K. Having lived in a house with a main floor accessible bath and bedroom and a house with the stairlift, I would ALWAYS choose main floor bed and bath. Using the stairlift for going up and down (and having multiple wheelchairs for different levels) is really annoying. SOOOO much easier with main floor bed and bath. Once our kids get older and move out, we will be finding a smaller ranch home. If we ever get the funds for an accessible home before that point, we will be moving as soon as we can.

She came to me yesterday with hives starting on her body. Under her armpits mostly. She has had this issue before and it even got to a point that her whole body was swollen with hives. Steroids didn't work - nothing worked until we gave her scabie medicine and it "seemed" to clear it up. She got hives around this time last year and we gave her claritin and they went away. No mention of needing allergy testing at the time because the scabie medicine seemed to work (even though they didn't present like scabies - she had hives that developed pretty quickly and made her face swell). At the point she got that, she had several rounds of steroids in her little body so they may have just kicked in. I am thinking I may need a new pediatrician. An allergist for sure.

On the list is an allergist. I've eliminated what I know she's having issues with and will see the allergist about possibly more or what we should be looking at further. One thing we did find out through the psychological testing is that she has no learning issues. She is in math a grade lower, but all I learned is she's not good in math. It's not a learning issue. I've told her I'm good with her being in a lower grade and she finds no issue with it.

I guess we are open to suggestions based on what behavior she’s presenting which is the reason we had her evaluated. We have tried and tried and the evaluation was our trying to narrow down things so we could get help in a certain direction instead of what we’re doing now—trying everything. It’s like the allergy testing. Instead of a huge elimination diet of everything, we were able to narrow it down to three. And now, she has those foods gone. I don’t know if it’s normal for a kid to threaten rages if she doesn’t get her way. She knows the effect they have in us and uses them to be disobedient. She has worn us out to the point where we lose hope. Our other kids have their own issues and annoyances but at least we have a relationship outside of “hard” with them. We don’t have that with our dd. It’s just always hard. Even her good times eventually turn negative. We needed a path so we could turn it around. I was hoping the evaluation could give us at least a path. I don’t think it will and that’s so disappointing. Also, we went to her pediatrician for her ADHD to find a solution. The solution and medication we were given made her symptoms much much worse. We went back to the pediatrician who said she was most likely developing a bi-polar condition. There was no talk of being allergic to foods and no talk of the medication being the problem. The medication was the big huge problem and we lived through five months of chaos and near psychiatric hospitalization before we figured that out. We have been trying to turn this train around and have gotten not a lot of help from professional medical people. The only good help we've gotten is from a nurse practitioner who thinks the medical community is not to be trusted. She actually looked for allergies. We are trying to make her life and our lives with her better and we've searched for solutions for years. It's just hard when you try to get help and the help you get makes things worse or at the minimum not better.

So, I finally got the full evaluation time with the psychologist that took three months to get to. I'm not sure what the report is going to say. My guess is it will say she has ADHD and that is all. She did a bunch of evaluation and then told me it was my turn to talk...with my daughter in the room. I tried to explain in some vague terms how she argued with us about everything and how we constantly felt we had to watch her. About how there were times she refused to do as we asked - to the point that her brother would leave the room/house because it was so disturbing...ALL while my dd was sitting there. I did kindly ask dd to just wait outside the door because I wanted to discuss how both dh and I have trauma responses from when she starts her argue cycle, about how the only reason she goes to after school care is because she constantly argues with me and I couldn't handle it, and other topics I really didn't want her to hear. Dd said, "No, I don't want to" and proceeded to argue with me about it. The psychologist said, "well, it's normal for kids this age to argue with their parents and not want to do what they ask." Sorry - not my kids. I explained I didn't know what "normal" kids are because my other two neuro typical kids do sometimes argue with me or sometimes not want to obey at times, but not even close to the level dd does. So, I apparently don't have experience with "normal" kids. So, I'm thinking that report may not be as helpful as I wanted it to be. Honestly, I thought the Psychologist may have been on the spectrum herself. She couldn't look me in the eye and seemed very intent upon her notes. When I met her, I wondered if she hadn't had time to shower in a while because she had a new baby or was sick. She hadn't combed her hair in the pony tail. When I was talking to her with dd in the room, I said, "I am telling you a lot of this in vague terms because dd is in the room and I don't want her to understand the true meaning...maybe I should write some of this down?", she didn't pick up on what I thought was an obvious appeal to not let dd hear everything. Sigh. It was so not helpful. I was never really able to explain the intensity of what dd can be because I didn't want her to hear me talking negatively about her.

My mother in the other hand has been very practical. She moved to a town where she can walk everywhere including her church. The town is also where two of my sisters live-one lives a 10 minute walk away and has been called when my mom needs help. She is also the sister that is the sister who has designated herself as the one who will make sure all my mom’s needs will be taken care of. My mom also made sure the house she bought had a full bath and bedroom on the main floor in case she needed such a thing. I have no worries about her.

The people they want to live near in a “few more years” are their age. No one will be watching out for them because everyone will be in a similar situation. I get it. I’m not sure that when I hit my mid seventies, I would want to go live near where my children live if it meant leaving connections we had for 20 years. We just recently did that to move here and it’s taken us four years to get settled. BUT, I hope I remember the stress it puts on your kids to have parents who are starting to show their age and still deny it. My in-laws moved to be closer to his mom and aunt who were getting older (my father in law was able to/forced to retire at 54). They wanted to make the move though to get away from snow. We don’t have that luxury right now to do the same.

We have a ton of assisted living/retirement communities near us. Really nice apartment places that can provide activities and transportation if needed while you live in an apartment on the complex. Places that offer tons of social opportunities. We had an elderly friend move to one of them after living in the same house for 40 years. She loves being social and there’s always something to do around her complex. I think they would enjoy a place like that and could afford it, but are wanting something like they had when they were 20 years younger. I hope it never gets to a point where they are forced into a situation they don’t want.

They like their other son also. They just have friends who are also their age in Arizona.

They are probably five years out from needing some sort of assistance (most likely just a assisted living type situation where help is available if needed). They are both in good health but driving will probably be the thing that interrupts their plan. Their current house will also. The garage is on the basement level, the living and kitchen on the main floor are in two different levels and the bedrooms are in the upper floor. They both admit it’s becoming an issue. Both are showing signs of starting to forget things. We have talked and talked with them about their plans to no avail. Their current very loose plan is to move back to Arizona where they have many friends. We live in central Colorado and my brother in law lives in Los Angeles. He works 60-80 hours a week, my DH is probably around 50-55 and we have a disabled son. Neither of the families has the capability to drop everything to go help for anything bigger than huge emergencies. I have told my mother in law that she wouldn’t really wreck my life course if they needed more help since I’m already taking care of someone. She’s willing to move here if she has dementia because she hates being cold and would rather not be mentally aware of where she is living if it involves snow. It’s frustrating.

What do you do if your in-laws are not close distance to either of their children? And what do you do if their true desire is to move even further away from the one son who is 100 miles away? How do you reasonable watch out for them if they need assistance?

We are in a situation with my in-laws where they are starting to be in positions where they really could use a different living situation. We are starting to get a little concerned about some things we’re starting to see (mostly forgetful type things and some issues with driving). Three years ago, my fil, had replacement knee surgery and they had to pay someone just to get him into the house because it’s a multilevel house. LOTS of stairs. They had no help other than the initial get fil into the house. Dh couldn’t drop everything and fly out there and neither could bil. They needed help and soldiered on somehow. They live 1000 miles away from us and 90-100 miles away from my brother in law. They want to move to a different state where they have more friends their age but then they are no where close to either of their children. Neither of their sons has a lot of flexibility in their jobs. I get their desire. But how are we supposed to help take care of their needs when they live a plane trip away? We keep asking them to get a longer range plan in place. They just want to live where they want. I get it. I would too. But, it puts their sons in a really awkward position.

If you are more than a little overweight, you should start losing weight and as the above pp mentioned, try not to lose muscle mass. When I worked in a nursing home briefly, the people who were in the most need of care at a younger elderly age were usually obese. They tended to have more trouble moving putting them at risk for pressure sores and needing specialized equipment to get them up out of bed or to the toilet. It’s not a popular opinion, but when I saw how much trouble the larger weight elderly population had, I determined at that point to continue to watch my weight as I got older. It’s not a guarantee that you won’t wind up with other reasons you’ll need full time care, but it will be easier to care for you if you’re a healthy weight.

A true sourdough bread can actually be tolerated by people who have gluten sensitivities. People with thyroid issues can have unknown problems because gluten can mimic thyroid hormones thus telling your thyroid to underperform. I see no reason if you don’t have issues. Why make life harder if you don’t need to?

I figured out that she is basically a vegan for baked goods now. That is not too hard. When I was altering my diet so severely in the mid 90s, there wasn't the internet to the extent we have it today. Also, vegan was practically unheard of. So much easier now. Honestly, there's not too much I have to change around here other than looking at labels a little more closely. I don't buy a lot of pre-made items anyway.

She doesn't eat many eggs right now and I haven't been baking too much lately - no muffins/cookies ect. Dairy to me is easy because I had to avoid it so long and there is so much out there that are alternatives. I have already started making a non-dairy kefir with coconut milk for her daily pro-biotic smoothy. Peanuts is not too hard either. Almond butter or cashew butter is not horrible. She mostly uses peanut butter for apples and almond butter may be acceptable to her there. The biggest issues will be when I bake cookies or muffins and our weekly family pizza thing. The internet has made things easier with recipes. Butter may be an issue but I don't think she would be opposed to mayo (egg free) for sandwiches or jam for plain bread. All things to research. I'm not too overwhelmed.

No, we never repeated the strep test. She's had behavioral issues ongoing. ADHD has been talked about for years before it became a problem. I think the main reason it became a problem is that the workload is starting to require more concentration. I had a feeling it might. The huge behavior issues were a result of medication that I believe was making her angry. She does have other anger issues and has had emotional issues before the bout with strep. I will ask the doctor we're seeing on Monday to see if that should be repeated.

I already supplement her with D vitamins. We live in a pretty sunny area of Colorado but the elevation screws up absorption so we take vitamin D.

No test for mono since she’s 11 and it’s usually off the radar at that age I’m assuming. She has ADHD so her sick may be another kid’s normal.