One of the things that seems to be pretty consistent in my life as a special needs parent, is stress. Most of the stress I feel is generated as a result of forces outside of my control. That’s just something I have to accept and learn to better deal with. 

There’s also a good bit of stress that I place upon my own shoulders. That’s something that I’m finally beginning to realize and trying to do something about.

There are so many things that I find myself stressed out over, each and every day.  These are things that many of us probably share an affinity for stressing out over. There’s always something going on with my kids and my wife.  Bills just keep piling up, much like the backlog of laundry waiting very patiently to get washed. There’s appointments all the time and we never seem to get good news.  This is just off the top of my head and doesn’t include the constant worrying about my children’s future or working with their ever changing and always growing special needs.

When raising kids on the autism spectrum, things can be quite interesting and by interesting I mean challenging. 

Factoring in the various aspects as well as numerous health issues, only makes things that much more interesting.

All of these things tend to create this bubble of stress around me.  The really sad part is that much of the time, I don’t even realize just how stressed out I am. Many of you can probably relate to this, at least to some degree. 

I’ve learned to gauge my stress level in a creative way, because otherwise I can go on, not knowing what my body is physically experiencing as a result of all the unhealthy amounts of stress.

It’s really weird but I am so accustomed to stress and chaos that I actually function better with it.  If things start going well a good things happen, I get really, really anxious and don’t know what to do.

It’s pretty easy to tell how well we are compensating by simply walking through my house.  At any point, you can walk through my house and see that it’s well lived in. 

You know what I mean, toys on the floor, dishes in the sink and laundry scattered and screaming for some much needed attention.

It’s become an inevitable fact of life for us that our house is usually going to look well lived in.

There are also times that you could walk through my house and see that we are living out of laundry baskets.  I mean, we get points for actually doing the laundry, which can be hard enough,  but the laundry never makes it out of the baskets. When we need clothes, we dig through a basket. This is is a sure fire sign that things aren’t going so well.

I absolutely hate this and it drives me crazy.  However, I can’t seem to do anything about it most of the time. 

I know this is difficult for the uninitiated to understand but life as a special needs parent can reduce you to living out of a laundry basket.

It’s not that we’re lazy. It’s usually that we are spread so thin and still being pulled in a thousand different directions. This leads to a great many things getting knocked off the priority list. This includes household chores like laundry, dishes, bills or even walking the dog.

I’m well aware that these things are there. The problem is that I’m often too exhausted to even think about working on these things, let alone do something about them.

Sometimes, I will catch a second wind and manage to get a few things done. 

However, my wife and I decided a long time ago that there was only so much that we could do.  Considering that we only have so much energy and even less time, our kids needs would get first crack at whatever we have left to give.  If that means that the housework has to pick a number and standard in line, so be it. 

You see, living out of a laundry basket is less about bad parenting and more about pushing yourself so far for your kids that things like this seem to fall out of focus.  There will always be those that judge you based solely on the superficial.  However, when your a special needs parent, you can’t really afford to give a damn about what the judggy-wudggy’s of the world. 

This site is managed via WordPress for Android, courtesy of the @SamsungMobileUS Galaxy Note 2 by @Tmobile. Please forgive any typos. I know how to spell but auto-correct hates me.  😉

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