I fully realize I’m a grown man but I’m so far over the edge today that I feel like breaking down.
As a father to three boys with varying special needs, but all with Autism, I’m in over my head on most days. I feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of the load I have to carry.
The boys have been having a rough day and that means I’m having a rough day as well.
Elliott has been struggling quite a bit as well, especially in the sleep department. Rather than trying to repeatedly justify our struggle with sleep issues, I going to ask that you simply take me at my word that were doing everything we can to work through these issues.
Sleep has been placed on the endangered species list in our house, especially at night.
Elliott and Emmett are both tired but won’t nap and have been fighting on and off, all day long. Gavin has been talking to me for most of the time he’s been awake today. I’m feeling beaten down, burnt out and completely drained.
I know this will pass and things will improve again but right now I’m so overwhelmed I feel an overwhelming urge to break down and cry….like I need to Purge my frustrations and anxieties.
Hey Rob. I bet you’re totally exhausted. I don’t have any suggestions anyway, just an observation as a person on the spectrum AND mother of son on the spectrum. For me, I started having anxiety issues (at least apparently, probably before then too) when I had a teacher in 2nd grade who picked on me. In retrospect, she wasn’t really harsh but she was unfair to a lively, talkative child (who was never diagnosed when a child). So I got anxiety over school and it also affected my sleep. With your son being bullied, I imagine he is feeling more anxiety. His anxiety may affect his brother. *sigh*
No suggestions because I never got over the anxiety until I hit menopause and calmed down some. Also no suggestions because I couldn’t solve all of Jacob’s sleep issues. Now he can stay up all night and it doesn’t affect his work as he works afternoon and evening.
You are not alone; you do have others who understand! 🙂
Sorry to hear Lizze is having a few bad days. Winter is always worse for people with fibromyalgia. Usually I would say having the temps go up is nice, but then the air pressure keeps changing with the temps fluctuating so wildly. Stable, warm weather is best for us and that is NOT what we have at this time of year. At least we are getting more and more daylight which helps.
Thank you Becky. Lizze and I were talking last night because Elliott was out of control and it blurry much looked like mania. That said, anxiety can look the same way as well and we KNOW he has issues with anxiety.
He’s on the short list for bipolar disorder due to genetics but I don’t even want to go down that road until he’s older. Gavin was very obviously bipolar when he was younger but Elliott is experiencing great deals of anxiety and it’s hard to tell the difference.
Thanks for the well wishes for Lizze. I’ll pass them along. Our best you you and yours.. ☺
What a shitty thing to write to people that take time out of their day to read your blog.
If you would rather not get comments and suggestions about issues that OTHER PEOPLE HAVE BEEN THROUGH, don’t write about it.
I welcome your comments and I always will. You’re reading way too much into this. I get that you want to help or have questions about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it or whatever but sometimes it would be nice to just share something without it being over analyzed.
I’m sorry that you’re offended by that statement but it was a simple request that you just take my word that we’re doing all we can, even if it doesn’t make sense… It was a general statement and not directed at anyone in particular.
I just want to be able to share something about my life without having to feel like I need to defend it.
I truly appreciate where those comments are generally coming from but sometimes it’s overwhelming.
Again, I’m sorry you are offended by that request but I will never be able to keep everyone happy.
As for what other people have been through. Unless you’ve been through it with an Autistic child, it’s not the same thing. Autism parenting and typical parenting are vastly different and while there will always be similar threads, Parenting an Autistic child is simply not always comparable.
Whatever you say, rob. Enjoy your blog and the dwindling audience.
My audience isn’t dwindling. Since July of 2016, I’ve had over 1.2 million visits, my following on Twitter has tripled and I’ve gained thousands of new followers on my Facebook page for this blog. I feel blessed to have the audience I do and I’ll be sad to see you go because you’ve asked some good questions and I appreciate that. We just don’t always agree and that’s fine.
I was frustrated because I’ve had a really bad day and I was sharing that the best way I could and rather than show compassion or say nothing at all, you focus on one paragraph and sorta lash out at me because of it.
Still, I wish you the best in whatever you do….
A lot of times
Where is Lizze? Why can’t she take over and let you go drive around for an hour to decompress?
Lizze is always here. The last few days have been really bad for her and so she’s been resting. Normally it’s not a big deal but today was just a rough one for me. Typically, we can trade off or I’ll escape upstairs for a little bit and recoup. Today was just one of those days where I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and the kids just wouldn’t quit.
That’s a good question though Kim. I should have said something about that..
We do take turns. She’s limited in many ways but we make it work. It’s one of the things I realized during our separation. When she was gone, I realized just how much she did, despite her health issues.
That’s something I’ll never take for granted again.
I don’t necessarily agree with the tenor of the response from Dutch on this one, and I also can appreciate that you don’t *always* want to feel like you have to defend yourself on a particular approach you’re taking to a particular situation (in this case, sleep), but the “trust me, I know what I’m doing” tactic isn’t helpful or insightful. Obviously it’s your blog and you can do whatever the hell you want. But that approach certainly alienated someone above who, while tough on you at times, has also provided what I would presume you believe to be reasonable suggestions and insight. I know it must feel like at times that you have to defend everything you do, but you’re choosing to provide the information to people. You can omit certain information, either by intent, for privacy reasons, or by simple oversight, lack of time, or unclear writing. I get what you were trying to say, and that you didn’t want to get into a whole sleep discussion, but the “trust me” approach can be a little off-putting – particularly on subject matter where you have been, in the very recent past, open to receiving suggestions. You can’t on one hand open the floor for suggestions, and then later in a separate post say that you’re doing everything you can on the issue. It’s disingenuous, and I suppose that irked Dutch.
Anyway, I do hope, for your sake, that you *haven’t* done everything you can. That would mean that you have an unsolvable problem on your hands. I hope you can figure it out, for your boys and for yourself. Out of all the challenges in your life, this one might be the most important to get a handle on. If you could tackle this one, it would enable you to handle many more of your challenges in a much more productive way. You just can’t underestimate the power of being well-rested on a somewhat regular basis. It would put you in a much better place to take on everything else. Sorry you’re having a rough go of it right now. Hang in there.
I agree that Dutch/Braden came across particularly harsh in that reply, but I know that Rob’s ‘trust me I know better than you’ way has put me off of the blog at times. It seems to me that when Lizze came home the blog turned from less of a sharing and ‘let’s all commiserate and compare notes’ place to Rob acting like a guru of autism. The other thing that will put me off is when he ignores replies. For someone who wants to make money off of his blog, he should NEVER make his readers feel ignored, yet it’s about 50/50 on him replying to posts.
Thanks for sharing your opinion
Thanks Jimmy. Here’s the deal. I was obviously having a bad day and I sorta poured myself out into that post. Rather than recognize that I was struggling and maybe cutting me some slack, he lashed out. That’s why I was upset.
As for the sleep issues, we have done everything we are capable of doing at this point in time. We are going to try some things with tax return but our hands are tied until then.
We’ve worked with the boy’s doctors and therapists. This is just one of those things where there isn’t a working solution for. I said trust me, we’ve done all we can do because I talked over and over again about what we’ve tried and where we stand. I was trying to send the signal that I didn’t want to keep going into it. If I say we’ve done all we can, we’ve done all we can.
I realize that saying this in the above post isn’t very insightful but at the same time, I’ve gone over this many times and I just wanted to try and ask for this to just become an accepted fact, rather than continuing to dispute it.
With a blog like this, sometimes things just need to be accepted as fact because I’m the only one in a position to know that.
Does that make sense?
I hope he doesn’t go but there isn’t much I can do about it if that’s what he decides is best for him.
I get it – it’s just really hard for anyone to authoritatively say they’ve done everything, particularly when it comes to sleep issues. There are always other theories, things you may be doing not exactly right, or something completely unorthodox that you haven’t tried or even heard of. Plus there’s the challenge of being absolutely consistent when implementing a new routine, procedure, or medication, particularly when there are so many other things going on that can throw a monkey wrench into things.
Not nitpicking – I know how frustrating and mind-numbingly exhausting the sleep issue can be. And ultimately it’s just my opinion, and I’m not saying the solution is out there, but if you’re saying you’ve tried everything, you’re probably missing something. If it is I hope you find it.
Hey Rob. I bet you’re totally exhausted. I don’t have any suggestions anyway, just an observation as a person on the spectrum AND mother of son on the spectrum. For me, I started having anxiety issues (at least apparently, probably before then too) when I had a teacher in 2nd grade who picked on me. In retrospect, she wasn’t really harsh but she was unfair to a lively, talkative child (who was never diagnosed when a child). So I got anxiety over school and it also affected my sleep. With your son being bullied, I imagine he is feeling more anxiety. His anxiety may affect his brother. *sigh*
No suggestions because I never got over the anxiety until I hit menopause and calmed down some. Also no suggestions because I couldn’t solve all of Jacob’s sleep issues. Now he can stay up all night and it doesn’t affect his work as he works afternoon and evening.
You are not alone; you do have others who understand! 🙂
Sorry to hear Lizze is having a few bad days. Winter is always worse for people with fibromyalgia. Usually I would say having the temps go up is nice, but then the air pressure keeps changing with the temps fluctuating so wildly. Stable, warm weather is best for us and that is NOT what we have at this time of year. At least we are getting more and more daylight which helps.
Thank you Becky. Lizze and I were talking last night because Elliott was out of control and it blurry much looked like mania. That said, anxiety can look the same way as well and we KNOW he has issues with anxiety.
He’s on the short list for bipolar disorder due to genetics but I don’t even want to go down that road until he’s older. Gavin was very obviously bipolar when he was younger but Elliott is experiencing great deals of anxiety and it’s hard to tell the difference.
Thanks for the well wishes for Lizze. I’ll pass them along. Our best you you and yours.. ☺
A lot of times
Where is Lizze? Why can’t she take over and let you go drive around for an hour to decompress?
Lizze is always here. The last few days have been really bad for her and so she’s been resting. Normally it’s not a big deal but today was just a rough one for me. Typically, we can trade off or I’ll escape upstairs for a little bit and recoup. Today was just one of those days where I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and the kids just wouldn’t quit.
That’s a good question though Kim. I should have said something about that..
We do take turns. She’s limited in many ways but we make it work. It’s one of the things I realized during our separation. When she was gone, I realized just how much she did, despite her health issues.
That’s something I’ll never take for granted again.
I don’t necessarily agree with the tenor of the response from Dutch on this one, and I also can appreciate that you don’t *always* want to feel like you have to defend yourself on a particular approach you’re taking to a particular situation (in this case, sleep), but the “trust me, I know what I’m doing” tactic isn’t helpful or insightful. Obviously it’s your blog and you can do whatever the hell you want. But that approach certainly alienated someone above who, while tough on you at times, has also provided what I would presume you believe to be reasonable suggestions and insight. I know it must feel like at times that you have to defend everything you do, but you’re choosing to provide the information to people. You can omit certain information, either by intent, for privacy reasons, or by simple oversight, lack of time, or unclear writing. I get what you were trying to say, and that you didn’t want to get into a whole sleep discussion, but the “trust me” approach can be a little off-putting – particularly on subject matter where you have been, in the very recent past, open to receiving suggestions. You can’t on one hand open the floor for suggestions, and then later in a separate post say that you’re doing everything you can on the issue. It’s disingenuous, and I suppose that irked Dutch.
Anyway, I do hope, for your sake, that you *haven’t* done everything you can. That would mean that you have an unsolvable problem on your hands. I hope you can figure it out, for your boys and for yourself. Out of all the challenges in your life, this one might be the most important to get a handle on. If you could tackle this one, it would enable you to handle many more of your challenges in a much more productive way. You just can’t underestimate the power of being well-rested on a somewhat regular basis. It would put you in a much better place to take on everything else. Sorry you’re having a rough go of it right now. Hang in there.
I agree that Dutch/Braden came across particularly harsh in that reply, but I know that Rob’s ‘trust me I know better than you’ way has put me off of the blog at times. It seems to me that when Lizze came home the blog turned from less of a sharing and ‘let’s all commiserate and compare notes’ place to Rob acting like a guru of autism. The other thing that will put me off is when he ignores replies. For someone who wants to make money off of his blog, he should NEVER make his readers feel ignored, yet it’s about 50/50 on him replying to posts.
Thanks for sharing your opinion
Thanks Jimmy. Here’s the deal. I was obviously having a bad day and I sorta poured myself out into that post. Rather than recognize that I was struggling and maybe cutting me some slack, he lashed out. That’s why I was upset.
As for the sleep issues, we have done everything we are capable of doing at this point in time. We are going to try some things with tax return but our hands are tied until then.
We’ve worked with the boy’s doctors and therapists. This is just one of those things where there isn’t a working solution for. I said trust me, we’ve done all we can do because I talked over and over again about what we’ve tried and where we stand. I was trying to send the signal that I didn’t want to keep going into it. If I say we’ve done all we can, we’ve done all we can.
I realize that saying this in the above post isn’t very insightful but at the same time, I’ve gone over this many times and I just wanted to try and ask for this to just become an accepted fact, rather than continuing to dispute it.
With a blog like this, sometimes things just need to be accepted as fact because I’m the only one in a position to know that.
Does that make sense?
I hope he doesn’t go but there isn’t much I can do about it if that’s what he decides is best for him.
I get it – it’s just really hard for anyone to authoritatively say they’ve done everything, particularly when it comes to sleep issues. There are always other theories, things you may be doing not exactly right, or something completely unorthodox that you haven’t tried or even heard of. Plus there’s the challenge of being absolutely consistent when implementing a new routine, procedure, or medication, particularly when there are so many other things going on that can throw a monkey wrench into things.
Not nitpicking – I know how frustrating and mind-numbingly exhausting the sleep issue can be. And ultimately it’s just my opinion, and I’m not saying the solution is out there, but if you’re saying you’ve tried everything, you’re probably missing something. If it is I hope you find it.
What a shitty thing to write to people that take time out of their day to read your blog.
If you would rather not get comments and suggestions about issues that OTHER PEOPLE HAVE BEEN THROUGH, don’t write about it.
I welcome your comments and I always will. You’re reading way too much into this. I get that you want to help or have questions about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it or whatever but sometimes it would be nice to just share something without it being over analyzed.
I’m sorry that you’re offended by that statement but it was a simple request that you just take my word that we’re doing all we can, even if it doesn’t make sense… It was a general statement and not directed at anyone in particular.
I just want to be able to share something about my life without having to feel like I need to defend it.
I truly appreciate where those comments are generally coming from but sometimes it’s overwhelming.
Again, I’m sorry you are offended by that request but I will never be able to keep everyone happy.
As for what other people have been through. Unless you’ve been through it with an Autistic child, it’s not the same thing. Autism parenting and typical parenting are vastly different and while there will always be similar threads, Parenting an Autistic child is simply not always comparable.
Whatever you say, rob. Enjoy your blog and the dwindling audience.
My audience isn’t dwindling. Since July of 2016, I’ve had over 1.2 million visits, my following on Twitter has tripled and I’ve gained thousands of new followers on my Facebook page for this blog. I feel blessed to have the audience I do and I’ll be sad to see you go because you’ve asked some good questions and I appreciate that. We just don’t always agree and that’s fine.
I was frustrated because I’ve had a really bad day and I was sharing that the best way I could and rather than show compassion or say nothing at all, you focus on one paragraph and sorta lash out at me because of it.
Still, I wish you the best in whatever you do….