Washable Workwear Wednesday: Crolenda Vegan Leather Shirt

I am struggling this morning because I suspect my 3 YO son has ASD. We’re on months-long waiting lists for a formal screening, and in the meantime son is receiving weekly speech therapy. If anyone has a child on the spectrum, I’d love to hear your experience because I am feeling very alone and scared right now.

My 26-month-old decided this morning he would not wear a diaper. I tried distraction, asking him questions about it, giving him a choice of two different patterned diapers, explaining why he needs one, etc. I gave up and let him eat breakfast naked and then tried again, but he still refused. Finally my husband and I wrestled him into it. Is there anything else we can try to get through these power struggles?

I’m here to vent. And I hate venting to this board about this topic becuase the resposes will be ultra harsh. But I’m going to do it anyway. DH and I have fallen into a pattern where I feel like I’m doing too many of the household duties. I breakdown, ask him to do more, he agrees he will, and then he only does for like a week. Finally months later after I’ve been picking up the slack for a long time and other things just aren’t getting done, I bring it up again. Repeat. There are definitely some things he owns and does a great job of. I love him, and I am not going to divorce him. Full stop. But I also don’t think it is fair to me to have to manage him to make sure his stuff gets done. I want him to own it and do a good job. We had one of said discussions last night, so obviously he’s all weird and pissy today.

Another silver lining to the pandemic? Virtual open houses and parent teacher conferences. Our school did a 100% virtual open house this year and is offering both in person or zoom conferences (teacher will be in the building either way).

The teachers are also much, MUCH better about email than in the past and half the dumb paper forms were permanently done away with entirely over the course of the pandemic.

Also, because literally everyone has HAD.A.YEAR (or two), all of the school events are doubling down on the “it’s okay to buy something! please don’t bother baking. Literally run into the store and grab something off the shelf. we don’t care.” It has assuaged a lot of working parent guilt. PTO meetings are still fully virtual but once they start up wiht in person again they will maintain the zoom dial-in option. My friend is super involved and she said they saw a doubling of parent participation when they enabled the remote options!

Does anyone have any tips for getting past rage about the pandemic? The context is – we’ve had a rough month. Son mysteriously came down with COVID in August and passed it on to me and my husband, both fully vaxxed, but not before my husband left town to deal with some family stuff. So he had to quarantine where he was and was gone for 2 full weeks while I was trapped in our little apartment with our son. I worked from home during this time. Then school started and my office reopened. After 1 week of classes, someone in my son’s class tested positive and the entire class moved to remote instruction for 10 days per local DOE policy (NYC public schools). I had a screaming fit and went back to working from home and tried to supervise remote learning at the same time. My husband is a teacher so can’t really work from home. The policy changed this past Monday to make it less restrictive (he would not need to stay home under the new policy_, but they did not apply it retroactively. So yesterday they were allowed to go back to school, finally. Last night while at a work event I got an email that a second kid in the class had tested positive last week, so they decided to add 2 more days of quarantine, even though they were all in school together yesterday AND under the new policy would not be considered close contacts anyway. But because the original infection happened prior to the date the new policy was implemented, it is treated under the old rules. So now he’s back home today and tomorrow. I’m just so full of rage I can hardly think about anything else. It is hard to feel like thank god they are protecting everyone’s health when this seems completely arbitrary. I’m just so done with this. We had almost no childcare for all of last year because there were no good affordable options, and I’m sick of trying to be a parent and a worker at the same time and feeling like I’m failing at both simultaneously. I keep thinking, okay, now it’s going to be different, and then it isn’t. I’m lucky my supervisor is understanding and willing to let me work from home when I need to for this, but now that everyone is expected to be back in the office most of the time, it’s harder to be remote. And I miss my alone time on my commute, seeing my coworkers, not having to look at my at-home to do list all day, etc. Ugh! I just can’t seem to get past my frustration. I know I have to just accept this; I can’t control it or fix it, but how?

My 22 month old is a hitter! In previous months, he had only hit us or his sister if he was obviously frustrated or provoked in some way but in the last few weeks he has started randomly hitting other kids at the playground. They’ll just be standing next to him, not bothering him at all, and he just reaches out and hits them or even attempts to kick them. In the moment, we respond by saying, no, we don’t hit others or something along those lines and then apologize to the child (he’s not verbal enough to apologize but he understands). What else should we be doing? I thought he’d grow out of it but it seems to be getting worse.

Kiddo came down with a cold, so we’re taking her for her first covid test today. Last cold the pediatrician was comfortable ruling out covid, but now kiddo has a temperature and fatique so while he thinks it is probably not, still need to get her tested. Here’s hoping it’s negative and off to cancel everything through Friday at least (and hope we get results back on Friday). Going to do it at the pediatrician’s office; I did not realize that Walgreens and CVS make you swab your own kid! I can barely get her to let me take her temperature, but she’s usually very agreeable for her doctor! Wish us luck!