Night 1 is now over with. At some point Elliott had a bad dream and climbed into bed with us. Emmett did sleep through most of the night and got up about 6:30 am. Usually he is up between 4 and 5am so this was nice. He however, soon realized mommy wasn’t waking up and completely freaked out. It took a while to get him to settle down. So all the kids are awake and our day has begun… I need to make a run to the store at some point and pick up a few things. Those of you with a child(ren) on the spectrum know what I face taking all 3 of my kids to the store. Nothing about that is going to be pleasant. It is however, necessary, so it will happen at some point today.

Life changes when 1 parent gets sick. That’s really kind of an understatement because life is really turned upside down.

When this happens to a special needs family the effect is felt in a far greater way. The secial needs family usually is surviving by maintaining the finest and most fragile of balances. When 1 parent gets sick (even if it’s just the flu) chaos can ensue. Routines are disrupted which causes anxiety, which leads to meltdowns. The kids don’t understand why things are different they just know that they are. Even “typical” kids will struggle when a parent becomes sick.

I hope to show how this impacts my family so people have a better understanding of fragility of the special needs family.