Nance Confer

Carrie --

Aside from all the other points about all the issues involved in parenting and unschooling and lists and support that you bring up, some of which I have felt, some of which I don't see, this one comment stuck out for me:

"I know it's hard. I'm sorry you're struggling. If I was your neighbor I'd
come get your kids so you could sleep."

Do you have anyone you could call on for a recuperative break? It is OK to need a break. That IS one of the benefits of being in a two-parent household.

Who can you call for a helping hand? So you can enjoy the guilty pleasure of sleep and maybe a bath in peace. . . :)

Nance



Cocking A Snook
A Blog for Thinking Parents
http://cockingasnook.wordpress.com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

lelania1

--- In [email protected], "Nance Confer"
<marbleface@...> wrote:
Carrie --
> Aside from all the other points about all the issues involved in
parenting and unschooling and lists and support that you bring up,
some of which I have felt, some of which I don't see, this one
comment stuck out for me:> Do you have anyone you could call on for a
recuperative break? It is OK to need a break. That IS one of the
benefits of being in a two-parent household. Who can you call for a
helping hand? So you can enjoy the guilty pleasure of sleep and maybe
a bath in peace. . . :)
> Nance

Hi nance-

Thanks for writing. I moved into a community house a year ago for
this reason. Well, not JUST for this reason, I believe
philosophically in communal living too. I live in a house owned by a
land trust, and it is part of a community of 7 other houses. The
biggest problem is that we aren't a community of intention in that
since the original charter for this house was drawn up 13 years ago,
replacements room by room have meant we are currently a community of
strangers. So the support on the parenting front has been really
sporadic. Two folks moved in recently who are turning the tide, and
the support has increased exponentially. We are discussing the long
term implications of making a commitment to each other.
Right now, my kids dad is here way mre than I like, or is emotionally
healthy for me, and he offers support in certain ways and actually
taxes me in many others. But the kids are very attached to him, and
that isn't something I want to mess with in any way at all. Because
of his issues, I am still reticent to give him too much unsupervised
visitation.
So it is hard mostly because many of my friends are busy with their
own kids, and if they have no kids, hanging with mine isn't a high
priority. Having two really changes the willingness of most to do
childcare for me because it feels so overwhelming. Especially since
one is pre-verbal and wears diapers >G<. Still, in the last several
weeks I have felt a real lightening of the pressure and overload as
Gaelin has reached some developmental milestones that have made life
generally easier.
I look at how I have adapted my parenting to cope, and recognize that
it is often an hour to hour kind of existence. We all get in the tub
together which helps, we used to get out a lot and that helped. As
far as I can tell, the kind of survival mode I feel is just how it is
until they get older. I used to put a lot of energy into trying to
make it be different, but now I have really just accepted where it is
and moved into handling each day.
The comment I made about drinking alcoholically was in hindsight a
bad idea, because it has become such an inside joke within my
community it slipped out without a context so for that I apologize.
It comes from the summer after we moved, when my husband was
hospitalized, the baby was 5 months old and I was bewildered and
visiting friends, all of whom had two or more kids and a few recently
divorced. One friend gave me a gift, and it was these wine glass
charms that are supposed to help you identify your wine glass at a
party. So I said to her "You know I never drink!" and she laughed and
said "Oh, don't worry, you will be soon." and then we all laughed and
she told me they were actually for tea cups, because the other joke
is I am always making tea. So now, the joke is of course that I can
gage the kid of day I am having by how badly I feel like I need to
drink, and for two of my friends it has presented a way for us to be
able to talk about what is a concerning habit, without defensiveness
and hiding it.
Ido notice a lot of other ways that I am apt to check out, dissociate
or otherwise use non- substances to be unpresent due to overwhelm,
stress and so forth which is why I said that I could understand. Not
that it's "OK", just that it is what it is.
Carrie