My son told me yesterday that the "second hand stress" I was exposing him to was worse than second hand smoke.
I wish I knew how to stop the stress. My stress now is "situational" but I can't do anything about the situation. I wish I could have given my son the normal, carefree childhood but it wasn't possible. I don't know of any way to not feel stressed about watching my mother, who was a wonderful mom and more like a best friend, very slowly die (six years now) and watching my dad who used to be so strong look so tired and sad all the time while he tries to take care of her 24 hours a day with only me and my 10 year old son available to take care of her when he has to go to the store or doctor. My sisters work full time but they do bring meals on the days that I don't. My son and I take lunch to my parents several days a week and visit for hours. This is the kind of socialization my son gets at the moment instead of being with other kids his age so I stress about this too. When we take care of my mother there are things I have a lot of trouble doing like helping her up off the floor when she falls or helping her change her adult diaper when she is sick and it is leaking all over the floor and she won't stop when I ask her to and when she does she gets mad at me because she doesn't remember who I am and my son is in the next room worried about me. He has seen and heard things because of my mothers illness that I wish he hadn't. I feel this is one of the reasons he seems more like an adult instead of a kid, but like he told me once, we have to deal with what is, instead of the way it should be. He is way too mature for his age. Like his adult sister said, it is like he just skipped childhood.
I have asked him many times if he would rather go back to school instead of homeschooling but he always says no and I think he knows that he is a big help to me.
I know I let him stay on the computer too long and watch too many educational shows that he loves because I know it is an escape for him and he has friends online. He learns all kinds of interesting things and shares them with me. Learning something new and interesting is often the only way we find a little bit of happiness. We don't go outside much because when we walk down the road all we see is cows and we just don't want to see any more cows. Cows just don't hold our interest enough to take our minds off the stressful things we are dealing with.
Dealing with stress is why I had trouble making him do math when he wanted to learn about everything else instead. In survival mode sometimes you just have to let some things go and I did. Now that I see that this could go on for another year or two or three I realize that I will just have to make him do a certain amount of math every day and listen to him complain.
I got a prescription for something to help with anxiety but I rarely take them because they make me very tired and I can't be tired.
