Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Balancing act

If you're a mom you know what I mean when I say it is all a balancing act.  Actually, dads should know too.  Being a parent is all about figuring out the balance in it all.  Which battles to fight with you toddler, whether or not your one-year-old uses her fork or her fingers, going to bed with that one little car or the huge truck, getting the ponytail in or just letting her hair go wild since we are staying home.

My every day is a balance from the moment I wake up.  My first decision in the day concerns whether or not to let Angel watching Netflix on his iPad because it will make him happy and I can sleep till the sun actually rises.  My second decision is whether or not to let Bella fuss for a few minutes because if she wakes up and Angel isn't in the room with her is a stage 5 meltdown.

My most recent larger balancing act comes in the form of Angel's ABA therapy.  In three months we will be uprooting Angel's entire world to move to Hawaii.  It means changing his home, his routines, and his therapists.  All of his therapists.  I am fully aware of how hard this transition could be for him and I'm praying when it happens I'll be able to balance it with the move itself.  Right now though Angel's junior therapist, the woman he sees four times a week, Mrs. Casey is having legal troubles with our previous ABA center and has been told that she temporarily can not work.  That means Angel doesn't get his therapy.  Here's what I'm balancing with that news:

I'm trying to do as much of the same things he does with Mrs. Casey as possible but I don't have the same materials and that makes it a little difficult.  So I'm balancing my attempt at continuing therapy with my lack of tools.

I'm trying to balance my anger and sadness that my son is being deprived of a therapy he needs, a therapy he has thrived in recently because of someone's petty selfishness.  My child is doing without something that can and has really helped him and that breaks my heart to see him hurt like that and infuriates me to know someone doesn't care about this impact on him.

I'm balancing those feelings with the relief that I don't have to drive him back and forth to therapy because it is physically exhausting and it is financially draining.  I hate feeling like this because I know it's not right but I can't help that little feeling of relief lined in guilt.

Every day is a balancing act for me.  From teaching Angel to share his iPad while teaching Bella that it is Angel's iPad to making another peanut butter sandwich for Angel while making Bella something new to eat.  When you're a parents you're balancing it all and sometimes it's easy and sometimes no matter what you do you'll do it wrong.  The best part though is knowing that while I'm balancing the world on my shoulders I've got two sets of little arms wrapped around me to hold me up.

No comments:

Post a Comment