Photo Credit: varandah at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Guest blogger Kimberly Drew recently nursed her family through a bout of stomach flu. She’s here to explain what she learned about maintaining realistic expectations while caring for sick kids with special needs and managing housework.

Housework + Special Needs = Lower Expectations

There isn’t anything fun about having sick child. We have recently endured two rounds of the stomach bug in our house. All five of us got it in varying degrees. Gross! Our daughter Abbey cannot communicate the need to throw up, or get to the bathroom, or do anything to care for herself. It’s so upsetting and frustrating and messy. It’s times like these when everything else goes to the back burner as you care for your child. The dishes, the phone calls, e-mails, and laundry just start piling up and you don’t even care.

You are in survival mode.

You have to make sure that your child has what they need. When the immediate crisis subsides, you try to get things back in order. I don’t know about you, but for me, it takes about two weeks to recover from one week like that. I wish I could say I’m one of those people who jumps right in and tackles the whole house. I will do the immediate disinfecting that needs to happen and then kind of close doors and pretend the mess isn’t there. After washing all the sheets and towels, I wave a magic wand and the rest of the pile is suddenly invisible. It’s so convenient to just shut the door to the basement and ignore the pile. Email and phone calls are sort of the same. Finally, in a moment of exasperation, I will put on my favorite CD and work like a mad woman until everything is caught up.

The chaos is under control…for now.

What does any of that have to do with parenting a child with special needs? Everything. The reality is you just can’t do it all. Because every day of your life is this kind of assessment of what must be done now and what can wait. If life assigned heads of triage, parents of kids with special needs would get the job. Assigning things to their level of importance is part of the daily grind for most parents, but parents of children with special needs know it all too well. Health and well-being get admitted immediately, and laundry gets a bed in the hallway. Accepting that some things will take a back seat to the care of your child is hard for Type A personalities. I tell people that I’m a Type A stuck in a B- life. In a rough week I hover at D.

It’s true.

Over the years I’ve been forced to let go of things that used to drive me crazy. Sometimes you need to clean and cook, and sometimes you need to give your children cereal for dinner and put them to bed early so that you can watch TV. It’s okay not to have it all together. The sooner you can release the expectations you have on yourself, the sooner you will relax. It won’t be this way forever. In a week, or a few days, you’ll feel something inside nagging at you. You’ll find Lady Antebellum on your iPod and get out the Windex and paper towels. But if you’re not there today, it’s okay.

Take it one day at a time.

Have You Lowered Expectations?

Have you learned to relax your expectations about housework? What have you been forced to let go? What life circumstances taught you to do it? Leave a comment in the box.

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