This blog is my place to vent and share resources with other parents of children of trauma. I try to be open and honest about my feelings in order to help others know they are not alone. Therapeutic parenting of adopted teenagers with RAD and other severe mental illnesses and issues (plus "neurotypical" teens) , is not easy, and there are time when I say what I feel... at the moment. We're all human!

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Gettin' R Done! aka Tom Sawyering

I've been working on trying to get the house ready for Kitty to come home from residential treatment, get Bear's room inhabitable again and make the kids' bathroom less of a biohazard. I’ve had family members come over and help. I’ve told them all I really need is for them to just keep me company while I work, but they’ve been very generous and helped too.

My mom allotted one hour a day for a few days and helped me paint Bear's room and do some serious cleaning on the bathroom. The younger kids got into some trouble, so as part of their restitution I had them work on moving Ponito's stuff into his new room, plus he’s been playing Tom Sawyer all week and gotten his friends to help.

I got in on this too and suggested that he and my nephew have some “fun” peeling the disgusting wall paper off the bathroom walls so I can paint it later. They had a blast and when they ran out of steam, my daughter and niece finished most of the rest (motivating me to do the final steps).
I’ve also paid Bob to help me clean Bear's room (actually I regret that because of the disgusting stuff she found).


Best part is that we’re winding down Spring Break and my sister had taken all week off work, so by Friday she was BORED. We'd been trying to get the kids together all week, so I asked them to come hang out at our house since I had to use the day to finish Kitty’s room (she was having her first overnight pass the next day).

My sister not only hung out with me while our kids played, but she helped me finish Kitty’s room! Then she washed a couple of loads of dishes!! (Our dishwasher is broken so this was by hand). Plus she got Bob (15yo) and her daughter (9yo) to dry the dishes and put them away!

Kitty's room looked amazing, and she loved it. We'd stripped out a lot of her stuff/junk that has accumulated since the last deep clean (her therapist recommends keeping it stripped and we find it really helps) and added some new furniture and reorganized so everything had a place.

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