To medicate or not medicate, that is the question.

We live in a world today where people don't blink twice about taking meds for their heart, lungs, thyroid, etc when they aren't working properly.  However, when the subject of medicating for something that is more mental, than physical, there is a lot of controversy.

A lot of mental/emotional illness can be treated by diet, exercise, and sleep.  Some people have very strong opinions that this is the way to go.  You SHOULD NOT use medicine for mental and emotional issues because it will just mess you up further.  That and put needless chemicals into your body.

Other people have the opinion that medicine should cure it all.  You don't need to make lifestyle changes.  Just take a pill.

I personally stand on middle ground.  I think lifestyle choices make a major impact on how someone feels emotionally and mentally in addition to physical health.  I am currently taking medication for depression and anxiety, and it helps a lot.  But I also try to watch what I eat, get as close to 8 hours of sleep each night that my children will let me, exercise often (even if it is taking the dogs for a walk).  All of that helps me manage my issues.

For my kids it is not so easy.  Cinderella deals with a lot of anxiety, she takes meds for it, but lifestyle choices tend to be more like an average teen.  Guy and Spike take ADHD meds, and live their lives the way they want.  The medicine helps them all dramatically, and I am glad we made the choice to try it.
 However, Scooter is another story.  Scooter has always had a vivid imagination.  From the time he was able to talk he was always telling us about Scooter's world.  Even now that he is 6, Scooter's world is very real to him, even though he is now aware it is all imaginary.  On a daily basis, it is not uncommon to come into a room and see Scooter walking around talking and interacting with those in Scooter's World.

This school year started off on a really rocky start.  I often got calls from the school that Scooter was acting out and having behavior problems.  The first time he threw a desk and chair.  Then he was banging the computer mouse against the desk.  Kicking the teacher, hurting other students, not respecting others space, standing in the back of the class room yelling, running away from school.....  I knew we needed to do something, I just didn't know what.  I thought it was possible he has ADHD like his brothers, (I also deal with this by the way), or may even be high functioning autistic.  I made an appointment to see the Dr.

The Dr gave us evaluation forms for the parents and teachers to fill out.  Based on the answers he says that Scooter is sever ADHD.  And recommended that we put him on the same meds we give our other boys, starting out at 10 mg instead of the usual 5, because his behavior has been so sever.

We have him his first dose Saturday morning, and it did calm him down, but it also got him talking.  If you know Scooter, then you are already aware that he is a charter box, talking to anyone he meets with no filter.  Well, on his meds he started talking non-stop, and getting really upset when someone won't listen to him at that point.  No matter the situation, and how appropriate conversation is at that time.  He is usually talking all about Scooter's World and what is going on there.  He isn't acting it out anymore, he just follows me around giving me a play by play of what is happening.  It is rather exhausting.  Then came night time.  He just couldn't fall asleep.  He was too wired.  We tried giving him melatonin like the Dr suggested, but even a high dose seemed to have little affect. He had lost a tooth that day, and finally around 11:30 he told me he doesn't believe in the tooth fairy.  I told him tooth fairy or not, no one could switch his tooth for a coin unless he went to sleep.  He finally did, and the tooth fairy was able to come. 

Then yesterday, he was at it again. Constantly talking.  Come bed time, and beyond, he couldn't get to sleep.  I tried, the hubs tried, he just wasn't going to sleep.  We finally just went to bed, and he eventually came in our room, and started taking to his dad about all kinds of things.  The hubs was really patient with him, and kept answering his questions, until he dozed off enough, that Scooter's next comment startled him awake.  The hubs sat up so fast, it scared Scooter, and Scooter started crying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. "  I tried to get Scooter's attention at which point he covered his ears and went screaming from the room.  Afraid he would wake the whole house, I followed him out.  He had moved to the corner of the window seat in the kitchen.  I sat by him and he started screaming, "Go away!  Go away!"  Hands over his ears again, he refused to listen to what I was saying.  I told him he needed to calm down or I would take him outside.  I have learned from experience that when a child is really upset at night time, taking them out into the cooler air for a minute often will help them calm down.  He refused to calm down, so I took him out.  He did calm down at that point enough for me to talk to him.  I was able to get him to be calm and go back to the area of the house near his bedroom.  He and I then sat on the couch and talked.  He told me it is really hard to not be able to act out Scooter's World.  I found myself wondering if these meds are good for him.  His dose may be too high, he may need a different med.  But what if none of these meds help him focus without taking away his ability to be who he wants to be?  How do I help him then?  It is my current quandary.

This morning he told me his stomach hurt, which he has mentioned the last few days as well.  This could be a side effect to the meds, or it could be something else.  I let him stay home from school, and he was constantly at me talking to me again.  I tried to encourage him to act out the ideas he was talking to me about.  I got him paper and crayons to encourage him to draw out his ideas.  We will see if he goes to sleep any better tonight.

How do you handle meals?

I have found myself swamped lately, with many things required.  I seems like I never am done with laundry, I always have dirty dishes, and I am so busy running around, I don't even have enough time to sit down and play with my kids as much as I would like.

As I have been trying to figure out how I can simplify I realized that something that takes a lot of my time and creates a lot of stress is food.

First is meal planning.  Scooter has a dairy sensitivity.  This means that we try to do as many meals without dairy as possible, and if it has dairy we try to make it optional.  Also with my fibromyalgia I have found I do a lot better when I avoid processed foods as much as possible.  I try to have as many of my grains be whole grains, avoid processed meats most of the time, (and if my preference was all I went off of, we would eat vegetarian.  However with kids who love meat, we tend to be flexitarian, meaning we eat meat, but we also have a lot of our meals be meatless).   This makes finding meals that we can/will eat difficult. 

Second, is when to go grocery shopping.  Our normal day as a family starts with a goal of breakfast on the table at 7:00.  Sometimes I have been able to drag myself out of bed to go shopping at 5:30, but that makes for a rushed morning.  Then once I get the kids out the door for school, I then spend the rest of the morning cleaning up breakfast, starting or attempting to keep up with laundry, running to therapist appointments, or violin lessons.  I have found that grocery shopping for one week will often take be between 1-2 hours.  If I have time to go shopping in the morning, I have the stress of taking Angel and Bunny with me.  Angel likes to ask me why I don't buy all the things she wants.  Every time.  She also doesn't always stay with me in the store.  This can be stressful.  By the time I am done shopping with them, I get home and it is time to get them lunch and get Bunny down for a nap, and I haven't even started putting groceries away yet.  I don't manage stress very well when I feel like there are multiple demands pressing on me that very minute.  This makes shopping in the morning hard.  When Angel is at school, Bunny takes a nap, and so it is a terrible time to go shopping, then the kids get home from school, and we are trying to do homework, and extra curricular activities.  Then it is time for dinner, more activities and starting bedtime routines which tends to run until at least 9:00 at night.  Lately it seems more like 10:00.  This makes shopping at night hard.  I am drained by this time, and just wanting to crawl into bed.

Third, is making dinner.  We have times when I am busy with kids up until time to eat.  On day's like this I have been trying to do crock pot meals.  The problem with crock pot meals is it often takes me all of the time between Angel leaving for school, and other kids coming home.  On those days I don't get anything resembling a break, and it really wears me thin. And starting it that late, makes it so we are eating around the little girls bed time.   On the days that I try to make dinner that is not a crock pot meal, it seems to take me forever.  Probably because I am trying to multitask, not just make dinner.  My goal at times is to have it ready at 4:30.  Because soccer practice starts at 5:30 and the little girls go to bed starting at 7:00.  I can't usually start until I get Angel home from school at 3:30.  So these meals that are even supposed to be quick fixes don't get done until after 5:00.

Last is clean up.   It seems to take forever to clean up after a meal.  And even longer if we are consistent and try to get our kids to help.  Each kid has a job to help clean up, and it rotates monthly.   However, they tend to eat and run.  Making us have to chase them down for each step of they way, or just do it ourselves.  The hubs is great at helping clean up after dinner.  But even then, if we aren't out running around, it takes our whole evening to clean up.  And the nights that we are running around, it usually piles up for me to try to take care of the mess the next morning.

So after this long explanation, I am wondering if any of you have any suggestions of what can make any of these steps more simple?  Is there something I can do to make things easier and less time consuming?

Thanks for any suggestions  you may have.

Aurora tells me this sounds like the story of someones life, who is really stressed out and then a miracle happens.  I am still looking for that miracle.

A momentary rant.

I am struggling.  I'll come right out and say it.  I know I am a mom of young children, and I have even made a choice to add extra children to my life.  I love all these kids, I also feel overwhelmed by all these kids.  And I feel I am losing my identity to these kids.  Anytime I try to do something for me, unless I can find a time when no kids are around (which doesn't really happen), if I want to do something or have something, I have to be willing to share it.  Does it make me a bad mom, that I want to make sensory jars and not have the 4 and 6 year old take over and dump too much glitter in?  Should I just relax and go with the flow and consider all they are learning?  Does it make me an inconsiderate mom that I don't want to always allow kids to help me cook?  That sometimes I want to make something by myself?

Am I selfish that I have my secret stash of chocolates and juice that I don't want to share.  That when a kid asks me what I am eating or where I got it, I tell them it is something that is mine and not for them?

It's not that I never share or let them help me.  I give them a lot of things.  And we do lots of crafts, activities, and cooking projects together.
I spend a lot of time playing with kids, tickling, pushing swings, building blocks, coloring, putting together puzzles.  I let them help me with a lot of a lot of things when they want to.  But do I always need to do such things?

Extracurriculars

We have a  lot going on right now, and I have a tendency to feel overwhelmed and swamped.  School just started, and with school starting, we also have extracurriculars that have started.  In the past I have put some of my kids in music lessons, but that has been the extent of extracurriculars.

At the end of last school year, Scooter told me he would like to play soccer.  Spike agreed.  One thing about out family is we have never been into sports much.  As a result, we also aren't as physically active as we could be.  This has been a concern, but not something we have known how to fix.  So what Scooter asked about soccer, I decided to take him up on it, and enrolled him and Spike.

Aurora, at that same time decided she wanted to do gymnastics instead of violin which she had been doing for the last 2 years.   She had committed to 2 full years of violin, and those 2 years would be up at the end of the summer.  So I told her we could sign her up in the fall.  Then I got so busy with our summer, that I forgot all about soccer and gymnastics.

Then about a week before school started I got an email about soccer starting.  It had a link to the boys have schedules.  Once I looked at the schedule, I realized how busy just games and practices were going to make things.  And I hadn't even signed Aurora up for gymnastics yet.

We finally signed her up and for her started.  At her first lesson, I took Angel, Bunny, and Scooter with me.  They all decided that want to do gymnastics too.  With Scooter doing soccer, I told him maybe next year.  But I was able to sign up Angel so she can participate as well.

Cinderella and Guy are both in Jr high school now, and have their music classes there.  So now all the kids except for Bunny are involved in something. 

I know she wants to be part of what is going on, but with her only 2, I'm not sure if I should do something for her or not.  A lot of activities for toddlers are during the day instead of afternoon.  If I put her in something in the morning, Angel will feel as if she needs to be included and REALLY let me know every time if she isn't.  And I don't know how much farther my time and finances will spread.  So I think I'll hold off for now.  Maybe she can join the fun when she is preschool age.