Keeping Track of It All

Sometimes I don’t blog because I’m so crabby that I would just puke all over the keyboard (figuratively, of course) and you’d be left reading it.

However, one of the things that I get crabby about is the constant struggle of having kids that don’t have boundaries and who lose track of the truth. I’ve been taught to reframe things and not to say that my kids steal and lie, so however you want to look at it.

So, we have the challenge of keeping track of people’s stuff. The girls are allowed to lock their room, but then the boys think it is a big game to steal their keys. We have a lock on our door, but it got broken in the door a couple weeks ago. So I find myself carrying my cash into the bathroom during my shower. We had a cabinet in the kitchen with a lock on it, until they broke the lock trying to get at the snacks we were trying to make sure were enough to go around.

So, it’s trying to be fair to the kids that do have boundaries and can keep track of the truth while not ever being sure how much of the stealing and lying is caused by FASD or intelligence issues. It’s not like we haven’t tried consequences, requiring money to be paid back, grounding, everything you can think of, but still things end up missing.

And it’s not just keeping track of the possessions and money and food that is a challenge -- it’s keeping track of paperwork and school meetings and notes. Friday folders must be signed every week, planners every night. Conferences are a trick -- the teachers coordinate them so they are back to back and we sprint (OK, so that’s an exaggeration -- me sprinting would not be a pretty sight) through the elementary school seeing one teacher and then the next. There’s party money and play costumes and every other kind of thing you can imagine.

On Friday at 2 my desk was cleaned off. By Friday at four it was covered, several layers deep, with notes to be signed and returned, papers to be read, oohed and aahed over, and either filed or thrown. I’m just getting ready to tackle it now.

Thinking about it all makes me tired.