Taking a deep breath and moving forward - One step at a time.........

Parenting - it can be like facing an emotional roller-coaster on a day-to-day basis.

Being prepared for anything and everything at any given time.

Not everything is rainbows and sunshine, not for anyone,

some days seem to drag on, with so many things to deal with.

Just recently I went through a really down moment, my stress levels were through the roof,

It was a really bad 'life can really suck' moment!!!!

Due to the day I had, my focus and drive completely dissolved away.

I know things can be hard to comprehend and deal with at times,

understanding how and why they happen, and what we need to do to manage it.

Although we can still be sideswiped by things when they happen out of the blue.

When we're dealing with a difficult behaviour/action/mannerism, our first instinct is often:

“How do I stop this?”

However, other questions may also be helpful.

Firstly, "Why has this happened?"

Looking into the reasoning or triggers behind certain actions and behaviours;

In our case, this time, it was saying something that shouldn't be said,

this can be caused through minimal communication with others,

or due to little understanding of certain expressive language, and so on.

A.J. can regularly make a comment without understanding the actual meaning,

Our kids are so vulnerable to mis-interpretation, due to word context not being understood by A.J.,

or having others confused and not understand his delayed social age and expression. 

This in itself has been a battle we've been fighting to resolve for the past 6 plus years,

and it is only getting worse or more obvious as he gets older,

missing important social communication cues, lacking interpretation of communication banter,

and what is and isn't acceptable.

Add to that the expectation others have as to his chronological age, compared to his emotional age,

and we definitely have a combination for disaster due to poor emotional language, behaviour, expression, and regulation.

Secondly, "What could they do instead?"

What resources would my child need to resolve this?

After accessing so many different support networks we still seem to come back to the same thing.

How do we get him to understand when things are acceptable or not in a social sense.

So now it is back to the drawing board

and accessing any and all the supports we can gather together

O.T.'s and speech therapy and whatever it takes to keep the progress flowing.

There have been many times in our lives where things don't go as planned, for many different reasons,

but the hardest to deal with, as a parent, is the self doubt, guilt, and 'what ifs' you throw at yourself.

Some days are so hard I feel it's best to go back to bed and start again in a new day.

I want to be positive!!!! Really I do. And mostly I am!

But how can anyone do that consistently with so much hanging over them?

The answer is........Taking a deep breath and moving forward - One step at a time.........