Overwhelmed

I’ve not been able to update my blog the past few days. He’s fine thankfully and we’ve been going to kindergarten. His class teacher was back on Friday and things are well.


I’m not feeling too well though. I’ve not been getting enough proper rest. It’s a case of the usual “too much to do, not enough time to do it”. This time it’s not the errands but of helping my son.

I feel it’s a slippery mountain that I’ve to climb in my efforts to help him. He hasn’t been cycling for some months now and when I brought him to Desa Parkcity two weeks ago, I found out he lost some of his cycling ability. Thankfully, towards the end of the session, he was slowly picking it up again. I brought him there again last Saturday and he was slightly better but still definitely worse off compared to the time he was cycling regularly.

There are so many areas, so many skills that he needs to practice. It’s hard to know how much focus to place on each area. If only there was more time.

Since having a new helper I’m giving him a lot more opportunities to practice self care skills and school readiness skills – toileting, feeding, changing clothes, and lots of other small mundane tasks (turning the pages of his exercise book, putting his exercise book into his folder etc). That’s the silver lining from having this helper.

It’s hard to keep up with the academic side of things. They’ve started teaching addition (not sure what happened to the subtraction) and introduced spelling (!). School seems to be allocating more time on BM lately, and I don’t know how to reallocate my time to help him keep up in BM. As for science, well, it’s only done when the opportunity arises.

Then there are the other life stuff he needs to learn – responsibility, consequences to his actions, discipline...

Right now, by the time we come home from school, and cook a quick simple lunch, feed him, shower him, brush his teeth, help him with his homework, it’s around 2.30pm. Then if we have time, we either do some quick simple activities on fine motor or phonics (homemade blue series word list). If there’s Neurosuit therapy at 4pm, I start getting him ready for it around 3.15pm. If the therapy is at 5pm, he either does a bit more fine motor or reading, or he gets a bit of a rest and a smoothie before getting ready at 4.15. I try to squeeze in a quick shower and my own lunch before heading off to therapy.

His Neurosuit therapy is thrice weekly now, for 1.5 hours, so by the time we get back, it’s either 6 or 7pm. I feed him his dinner, give him a quick shower, and get him ready for bed. I usually have my dinner while I’m feeding him and have my shower either while he’s lying in bed or when he's asleep.

If he doesn’t nap during the day, he must be in bed at 8pm in order to get up early enough for school the next day. So there really isn’t much time for him to do much else.

On days where there's no Neurosuit therapy, we either run an errand at the shops or play at KizSports or fit in some activity or other.

I’ve been on Panadol the last few days because I’m probably fighting a flu (I’m worn out) and because I’m having a tension headache. I wish I could take a day off! I try to reduce the time I’ve been spending on preparing flashcards or preparing his materials so that at least I get to sleep earlier.

I’m so tired but have to keep on keeping on. The progress that I see in him serves as enormous motivation to just carry on (the carrot). The regression that happens when I stop, serves as a reminder not to stop (the stick). I do wish there was respite care locally, the way they do overseas.

Nonetheless, I count my blessings, and there have been many indeed. I thank God for being my strength and for His faithfulness in this journey.