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anonamama says
WYYD – have a weeklong work trip to Europe coming up, my first trip of this length since having DS almost three years ago. The work itself is going to be a heavy lift, and I’m nervous about being away for this long. DH has expressed interest in going in hopes we can manage an add-on Paris trip to extend our trip by a couple days, not to mention any travel delays. The last time we did this it was his work trip, and pre-kids. Money is a *little* tight, but I’m trying to decipher if this worth the hassle for him to go now that the logistics are different.
Pogo says
bringing the 3yo or not bringing 3yo?
Anonymous says
I personally would not want my child on a business trip with me. It’s too much distraction and focus pulling when I need to be all in on business travel.
Anon says
My DH is a professor and it’s common and acceptable in his industry for spouses and kids to come along on conference travel, and I do that quite a bit (both alone and with our kid). But I would probably not go in this circumstance. The fact that this trip is heavy lifting for you and you’re nervous about it suggests to me you should concentrate on the trip without the distraction of your DH. Also the fact that you’d be adding a stop, potentially adding travel delays and complications and lengthening the amount of time you’d be away from home and your kids seems like stress you don’t need right now.
Walnut says
For me, work trips are exhausting. Long days of meetings, followed by happy hours/dinners and being “on” is so mentally exhausting that I collapse at night or stare at the ceiling thanks to jet lag. It would be zero fun for anyone to tag along unless they were basically having their own parallel vacation.
Anonymous says
Absolutely no way, if only because you are anticipating a hard week of work. Having a spouse (and child?) along when you are doing demanding work is no good. I speak from experience.
Anon says
I never bring my family on work trips, and my husband is even a stay at home dad.
My work trips are intense, which it sounds like this one would be, and it would not end well for anyone involved for my family to be there. Plus, bringing family along really adds up expense-wise (even though in theory your plane ticket and part of the hotel is paid for, which I realize is the allure). So, we are going to pay all that money for DH to have to solo parent all day and potentially all evening in a non-home setting (whether that’s okay or not probably depends a lot on DH and DS’ temperament, but I imagine at age 3 for most that wouldn’t end up being appealing); and even if we added on something fun after I would be so worked up for the work portion I wouldn’t really be looking forward to the fun, which for me is half of what makes a trip worth it. I would much, much rather spend an incremental amount of more money but on an actual vacation that we all can enjoy.
Just my two cents. I realize not everyone feels this way and lots of people make stuff like this work.
Anon says
I realize now you may have meant DH without DS? When you mentioned being away a long time made you nervous I assumed that meant you were asking about bringing DS for that reason, but now that I reread I realize that is not clear.
I think my answer stands either way.
GCA says
I can see this working if you go first, complete the work part of the work trip, and he joins you in Paris later sans DS. Getting a 3yo accustomed to a time change for a couple of days is no fun. (Most of my work trips are super intense and involve meetings or conferences all day followed by lots of evening socializing and about six hours’ sleep each night. Even if my family came along, I would barely see them.)
NYCer says
+1. This was going to be my suggestion too. Either leave your husband and son at home the entire time, or just have your husband meet you in Paris for a long weekend at the end of the trip.
Spirograph says
I just got back from a 3 day business trip alone and I cannot tell you how happy I was to just be work-me, connect with my colleagues, enjoy dinner and drinks without anyone waiting for me to get home, and focus on one thing only. I vote you leave the family home. Go to Europe with them when it’s a real vacation; don’t try to make this trip something it’s not.
Anonymous says
We had our EI eval. DS #2 (almost 20 months) was slightly behind in speech and motor but not enough to warrant intervention (he’s already in private PT). He’s fine on social.
Where he was slightly below threshold and qualified for services (by 1%) was cognitive abilities – e.g. paying attention, following directions. They’ll send a child development specialist to our house 2x/month. I opted to go for it – I figured we can do at least a few sessions and the re-evaluate. I feel weirdly…relieved that it was so borderline, and of course the 80’s-90’s kid in me is thinking “is this really necessary?”/was he just rated low because it was “new” people?
Would love to hear if anyone did this type of intervention with kids and how it went.
Anonymous says
We did it at 2.5 when he had 50 words or so but was dropping syllables (so “ba” could have been basement, bathroom, ball.). It led to an autism diagnosis that I thought was bunk. I absolutely hated the speech therapist sent by EI who made us go to the developmental pediatrician. For a year+ I researched “autism misdiagnosis” and when he finally got good enough at speaking around 4.5 it become clear that no, we are in the right place. (His perseverations and restricted interests became much more obvious when he could talk about them.)
So a) you have the same kid now as you did before EI was suggested (or after a diagnosis). The diagnosis or intervention will not change the kid. But they might help the kid get the services he needs to grow and communicate.
b) I hate to say it but the people who work in this space can tell pretty quickly if a kid is autistic or not – it’s one of those “you know it when you see it” kind of things. So if they don’t see it, that’s OK, focus on the speech or whatever he needs immediately. If they do see it and you disagree, you’ll still get more services for your kid with the diagnosis than you will without it.
c) Be patient with the EI people – funny thing about a lot of parents I know in this space is that universally we all hate the first speech therapist we worked with, usually through EI. That doesn’t mean you don’t need EI, just that it’s the wrong therapist for you — go to a private speech therapist, that’s usually where the talent is anyway.
d) “early interventions” – be wary of ABA therapy. Speech, OT, PT, yes, give them at try – but research ABA yourself before you get roped into it.
OP says
This is helpful, thanks. He wasn’t diagnosed with autism but is more “behind” – per their evaluation he’s basically at a 15-18 month level where he should be at ~20 months – which may end up in a diagnosis, who knows. His social skills are pretty good (for his age), but I understand no case is the same…
Anon says
I don’t think you are necessarily in the wrong place. We did developmental therapy and PT for DS. When a child qualifies for EI, our state sends developmental therapists first. They, in part, exist to help with low-hanging interventions that can be done before the kid sees another therapist and evaluate the kid for additional interventions/therapies needed. In our case, DS had scored low on several areas of his evaluation due to a gross motor delay, and the developmental therapist was able to determine that DS really just has strength/gross motor issues and no other issues that needed an intervention at this time. We now just do PT with DS and not developmental therapy. DS had several issues– low birthweight, reflux, etc.– that likely caused his gross motor delay, so we don’t have a diagnosis and do not anticipate one.
So, I guess, in sum, the developmental therapist you are going to see will help make sure you get the help you need. For us, they served as somewhat of a gatekeeper and counselor throughout the EI process. Our therapist was also able to pick up on things that didn’t come across in the eval. So, I think the therapist will be able to give you a better idea of what help, if any, your kid needs from EI.
More Sleep Would Be Nice says
Thank you so much! Our kids sound similar – DS #2 was low birth weight/slow weight gain, didn’t have reflux but he did have infant regurgitation (which presents similarly, and he grew out of). I do think the low birth weight probably contributed to the gross motor delay, and the lower scores in other areas – again, thank you!
Anonymous says
Have any of you had luck with getting a toddler (18 mo) to stop screaming? One of my twins lets out an ear-piercing scream whenever he doesn’t get his way: diaper changes, being put down from the table after throwing food, when his twin takes his toy, etc. My husband will sternly tell him to stop: I usually ignore it. Neither of these is a great strategy. He understands that we don’t like the screaming – he’s showing us he is mad. He can sign and has a few words. Any tips appreciated.
anonM says
18 mo is tough sometimes because of limited vocab. If you haven’t tried yet, what about saying something like (and necessarily the whole thing) “ouch, that hurts my ears. Please use your inside voice. I can hear that you’re [angry]. Let’s try saying “please” instead” *make sign for please*. Hopefully the screaming is a phase until they have a few more words. My 2.5 yo can really screech and for her, it sometimes works to say “ouch! that hurst my ears. I can’t figure out what you want when you scream like that. Can you tell me with your words?” but obviously 18 mo is way harder in that sense because they don’t have as many words! (Also, I do sometimes ignore and sometimes do just tell her to stop, so maybe not great but also not horrible I hope! Haha!)
anon says
Anyone have a sensory seeking sensory processing disorder kid? My preschooler is vestibular and proprioceptive seeking, with some fear of loud, sudden noises thrown in the mix. It was causing lots of problems at home in various ways, but we’ve doing OT for a few months now and she seems to be making lots of progress. The OT eval also found some retained primitive reflexes and (possibly related) decreased bilateral coordination. Before the OT eval, we did a full developmental eval with a psychologist (and they were the ones who initially directed us to OT), which noted visual spatial giftedness and some possible early signs of ADHD, but she’s very young and her current daycare/preschool environment is very well suited for her, so she’s not having problems at school.
I know sensory processing disorder isn’t recognized as its own diagnosis currently, and many still think it’s a symptom or part of autism or ADHD. I guess I’m just curious for anecdata and others’ experiences if anyone has had kiddos with similar issues, and whether they felt SPD was a standalone issue, or ended up being an early sign of ADHD. In either case, I’d love to hear any tips or suggestions of things that worked for people both parenting at home and helping the transition to a traditional elementary school environment (and stories on whether it went better or worse than expected). Thanks in advance!
Anon says
My sensory seeker is currently sitting right next to me :) He is 8, and we currently do have a standalone diagnosis, which is admittedly somewhat rare. My guess is that we are eventually headed toward an anxiety/OCD diagnosis, but likely not ADHD. I could write a book on this, but I’ll try to boil it down to the most important stuff.
My sensory seeker improved tremendously with OT, but the critically missing piece was getting OT to teach us all how to get him OUT of a sensory seeking loop. I got frustrated that almost all of the information out there speaks to helping a sensory seeker get additional input — which is definitely critical — but these sensory input filled activities didn’t help him calm his body down. That is, jumping on a trampoline, or full body play just absolutely amps him up to an almost dangerous level of activity if he’s already in the red zone (OT also gave him the language to describe how his body was feeling, which he previously couldn’t describe to us when he was out of control – he can describe it when it feels negative now — “my body is doing things my brain doesn’t it want it to,” or when it’s positive “I feel strong and can keep going when others are tired.”) With the help of our OT, we discovered that he is calmed by looking at visually busy pictures (think How Things Work or Where’s Waldo when he was younger, and graphic novels now), sketching very intricate pictures while listening to a certain beat of music over headphones, and eating/drinking full fat foods (a sandwich with peanut butter and honey – or drinking a thick milkshake).
Loud noises also are hard on him, but we learned for him it comes with a much deeper love and understanding of music. We learned through OT that certain beats of music help him calm down. I think he honestly just hears more than most people do. We do try to avoid auditory sensory input as a result. Airplanes, in particular, are tough for him to handle. Conversely, really good noise cancelling headphones helped him tremendously on a plane or when his play based preschool class got too loud, and made him feel out of control. He started playing the violin by ear pretty early, and playing also fills his sensory cup in a very positive way.
We also learned he gets more out of sync when he is hungry or tired, so we work really, really hard to avoid those triggers. We added a ton more unsaturated fats in his diet and he improved as well.
Going back to my lead in, he has a lot of anxiety, and as he has gotten older, we do see the sensory seeking manifest more when he is anxious about something. When his brain is moving fast, or he has a worry that gets “stuck,” he tends to want to make his body move fast too. This part has become stronger as he has gotten older, so we are just now transitioning this year to work on CBT to help him with his anxiety.
So far, we have not had an issue in school b/c if he works very heard, he can control a lot of the sensory seeking behavior, but he does come home and really need a physical outlet. We set up things in our yard to give him an outlet if he doesn’t have sports after school. He also needs more downtime to just play than our other kids for unstructured play.
It was helpful for me to understand how much of this is out of his control, working with him to avoid triggers, and helping make sure he has enough outside/activity time. I admittedly could/can get very frustrated when he was constantly jumping on the couch, jumping up to touch the walls, always touching or wrestling with his siblings, etc. I would walk into a room and just see all the things he was going to crash into. Notably, yelling at him didn’t help him stop :) Now we can ask him directly – “Do you need help slowing your body down?” and brain storm ideas to slow down. And, going back to the language part, he can now see his “fast body” and “fast brain” as a positive thing – not something wrong with him.
Anonymous says
Not OP but wanted to say I love this thoughtful, detailed response. My oldest is not “wild” but he becomes very sensory seeking when he’s tired/stressed and is extra sensitive to hunger. He’s emotionally mature so I tend to respond with “why are you misbehaving?” Instead I’m going to try “do you need help calming your body” in the future.
Anon says
Thank you so much for your very kind words. It really makes my day, and I really do hope it helps someone. My son was the hardest toddler/preschooler I’ve ever met. We joke that we didn’t sit down for two years. Even in our progressive town, the only thing that was on our radar and the teacher’s radar was ADHD, and that was clearly not what was going on. It was just SO hard for him to keep his body still, but he kept coming back without any of the other markers for ADHD. I remember finally stumbling on the sensory checklist, and he literally hit every marker for sensory seeking. It was the first time I’d ever read something that just clicked for him.
Sadly, already by about 5, my son had started to internalize that he was being “bad” when he was sensory seeking or overstimulated. It was like I got hit with a train when he finally, with the help of his OT, told me “I want to stop when you ask me to stop, but I don’t know how to make my body stop. When you yell, it makes me more in the red zone, and it’s even harder to stop.” !!!!
Happy to say that with the more robust vocab and me having a better understanding of how his brain works/his triggers, he is a thriving 8 year old. He will be a very driven athlete and is a blossoming musician. He is also the most compassionate of my kids. I’ve even started using the vocab on myself when I feel like I’m getting out of control.
anon says
OP here; this is late so I hope you see this, but THANK YOU SO MUCH. Both of your replies are so so helpful and capture a lot of what we’ve been living, more eloquently put into words, and provide such concrete suggestions of things to try and hope for the future. I really appreciate your time and thoughts so much. My sensory seeker also has sleep apnea, which caused a surprising assortment of wild symptoms, and the sensory seeking also contributed to bad bedtimes, overnights, mornings, so it’s been a wild and exhausting couple of years. It’s nice to hear from someone a bit farther down the road!
GCA says
Thank you for sharing. I wish I had understood sensory seeking characteristics earlier. I could’ve written your first paragraph right down to the ‘we didn’t sit down for two years’ (or sleep…) with my first child, who is now 7. There was/ is lots of running (literally laps around the house after dinner), fidgeting, nail-biting, daredevil jumping and climbing – other friends with kids would actually say to us ‘wow, I know you said D was high-energy but I didn’t realize what you meant till I saw him’. Because he is very smart, not disruptive, and not aggressive, teachers have never flagged any issues to us and there is no formal diagnosis, but I think that vocabulary to articulate how he is feeling and strategies to calm his mind and body will help him tremendously. He’ll be a rockstar athlete one day if he wants to.
Paging Daycare Crying says
Thinking about you and your kiddo as we struggled with sleep last night, I realized no one asked you about ear infection or thrush. Does he cry when someone lays him down horizontal to eat or play? I would probably never have figured out mine had thrush if the rockstar lead teacher hadn’t noticed and shown it to me. Especially because nursing and mommy cuddles are a pretty powerful painkiller, so he was usually still happy when I held him. Just a thought, in case it helps.
Daycare Crying says
Thanks! After his daycare teachers started putting him in a swing for naps, he became a happy guy, so he was just overtired and couldn’t fall asleep on his own. We did also switch him to Dr. Brown’s bottles and move his first feeding a little earlier to make sure it wasn’t hunger/digestive distress, but the naps are what fixed it. Our daycare always closes for the last two weeks before Labor Day (I fear our daycare is not coming across well in this saga, ha!), so my mission for the next two weeks will be to figure out how to nap train him so we can get him off the swing naps. They make me nervous for sleep safety reasons. My older kid was pretty resistant to sleep training, so I hope it goes better with this kid!
Anonymous says
I wonder, though, does the fact that the swing keeps him more upright solve any pain from an ear infection etc?
Anon says
Venting post. I’m 37 weeks pregnant with my first, and feeling alllllllll the expected aches, pains, and discomforts that comes with that, plus a flair up of my painful chronic illness. DH doesn’t seem to appreciate how bad it is. I think it largely comes down to our differences in communication style- he is an asker and I am a guesser. He is constantly complaining about run of the mill daily aches and pains, and asking me to massage them or rub his head to help him fall asleep. Whenever I ask for the same from him, he does a really bad job at it- like he half-asses it and gets distracted or falls asleep after 3 min. This is stupid but I guess I sort of expected to be pampered like a queen at this stage of pregnancy? This is so, so, hard and I wish he showed appreciation/gratitude, and it doesn’t feel good to basically have to nag him for it.
Anonymous says
Stop guessing and start using your words. Like. “My dude are you kidding me? I amm37 weeks pregnant with your child. Stop whining, no I will not be massaging you, and yes I do need a cup of tea.”
Anon says
No it’s not stupid. He’s being a jerk.
More Sleep Would Be Nice says
I was in a similar position to you when pregnant with DS #1 – basically DH had started a big new job a few months prior and was just going through growing those pains and was out to lunch about his VERY pregnant wife – and let me tell you – 1) Your feelings are valid; and 2) the resentment is ONLY going to build once a newborn arrives. Don’t be me/us. Talk to DH ASAP – “I feel like you are half-assing things when I REALLY need help”, “I really need you to ____”, etc.
SC says
My husband also started a really big job while I was pregnant, and he was entirely out to lunch for my pregnancy and really, the first year of Kiddo’s life. We hired a contractor to renovate the bedrooms of our apartment, and I packed everything up by myself. I wasn’t supposed to lift heavy boxes, so my male coworker/friend came over and moved boxes to the garage for me because DH refused to do it. (Coworker and I were in Big Law.) I was put on bedrest around 7 months pregnant–my MIL cooked for us, and my FIL came over and washed dishes. My parents, who live out of town, came in for my baby shower, unpacked all our baby gifts, and set up the nursery. DH pretty much did nothing for me while I was pregnant or nursing, barely saw Baby for the first year, and whined constantly about getting woken up in the middle of the night. Oh, and he wants another baby, LOL.
He’s a SAHD and a great dad now. But man, we had a lot to work through. We almost got divorced when Kiddo was about 18 months-2 years old (there was other stuff going on too, including financial dishonesty). We worked through it and are happily married and a good team now.
More Sleep Would Be Nice says
GIRL. Similarly – we were probably very close to separating at one point, and there were a LOT of other stressors contributing to it, but the overarching challenge was that there was also a lot of unmitigated resentment on both sides (stemmed from not communicating) and we had to take a lot of time and therapy to find our new normal. We’re great now, and I can’t go back and change the past, but for OP’s sake – start communicating what you need/want now because in my experience, these things will only build.
anonM says
Sorry you’re not feeling great or getting the support you need! Have you talked much about what to do when baby get here? Especially if you plan to breastfeed, now is the time to start discussing wakeups, etc. Will he be the one getting up, changing the diaper, and bring baby to you? Refilling your water cup while you nurse? 100% in charge of groceries/meals for the first thee weeks? Is there something specific you’ll need re your chronic illness? I recommend you warn him outright that during labor, delivery, and postpartum that unless it is something severe, he should keep his minor discomfort to himself (or if you want to make it funny- make him watch the clip of Friends where Ross tells Rachel during deliver “you have no idea how much this hurts” — youtube Friends: Rachel Gives Birth (Clip) | TBS)). I would be direct about your needs for this final stretch of pregnancy, let go of pampering expectations, and put your focus on what is most crucial long-term — his support during labor/postpartum. These mismatched expectations and lack of communication can really fester in a marriage and resentment about a partner not carrying their weight during the really hard times can linger.
Allie says
I hate to say it but this is not going to get better when the kid arrives so now might be the time for a come-to-Jesus conversation about pulling his own weight. You are growing an actual human so he should be doing a lot more of the other family needs — cooking, cleaning, laundry etc. I’d ignore massages, help falling asleep etc. and focus on the meat and potatoes of keeping a family going day-to-day.
Anonymous says
I’ve recently decided that a lot of the mom content I’ve been consuming on social media is encouraging my anxiety so I’m trying to step away from it. Just putting this out there in case you’re feeling that way too. I can see that a lot of the content can be helpful as a way of normalizing the stress, guilt and anxiety we feel as moms (you’re not alone!), but I am starting to recognize that it doesn’t make me feel better to hear about it.
Pogo says
I definitely feel this way about Motherly. It’s kind of a downer.
My favorite recent follows are satire that acknowledge the awfulness but make you laugh – themanwhohasitall and workingwhilefemale.
EDAnon says
I posted on the main page but didn’t get specific advice yet. My sister is getting divorced in Gainesville Fl. Any attorney recommendations?
They have kids. Two are HS aged. One is on 5th grade.