Welcome back to my crazy house blog. Let’s jump right into it! That’s right, routinely spring cleaning has always been my tradition, even if I couldn’t get rid of everything old and bring in the new, I’d rearrange every room it the house, go through all the kids clothing etc. But being a mom with ADHD who overthinks everything, my increasing anxiety over the the fact our whole town and most of the world is closing stores, community centres, churches and schools. Reading how an entire nursing home has tested positive with Covid-19, tears my heart and spikes my worries. Knowing my best friend and sister went on a trip, I convinced her to go on. Even though it wasn’t out of province, it was hours away, has me in fear.
To battle my anxiety, I’m ditching my traditional spring cleaning for rearranging our dining room into a homeschooling setting for my extremely anxiety driven, aggressively defiant, strong willed 11 and 15 year old’s. It may be only for two weeks, it could be longer, we don’t know for sure, so might as well setup a new routine until further notice to avoid the meltdowns, the triggers, the behaviours you know will happen without it.
Just thinking about it has Cam’s anxiety going, even though he is doing better than he was with his first, corona-zombie, outbreak, because of his new anxiety med,s and a little occasional help from Ativan, some days are still a struggle. Today his anxiety got the best of him and a explosive meltdown occurred out of no where, totally unexpected, he wanted all the blankets washed, but the washer was already running, I knew it was a meltdown and not a tantrum because I could see the fear that filled his big bright blue eyes as he is yelling, pushing me down into the couch and throwing his sister’s Polly pockets collection she had neatly displayed in our living room table onto the floor, landing in the cat litter. As I’m trying to still hold him tight to comfort him and calm his emotional monsters, I knew instantly that it was going to cause a fight, but when you have a child that is 6 feet tall and over 260 pounds that’s going through an anxiety evoked meltdown your instincts kick in to protect both of them, which could potentially turn into world war three. I said to Sarah as calmly as I could “let me calm him down and I will help you pick them up and we can wash them in hot soapy water and place them back on the table.” Which surprisingly worked better than expected. Even though I ended up with a black eye in that moment I felt like Mary Poppins! Couple more bear hugs and back to work…
Let the challenges begin!
First I gathered supplies around my house, books, pencils, sharpener, markers, art stuff, paper, and more. I found some old board games they have forgotten about that can be transformed into educational tools. Dug out the Legos and disinfect them in the dishwasher. Researched websites and resources to find the best that would get their attention. Downloaded educational Minecraft, which is offered free through their school e-mail address. Bought sims 4 from the EA-Origin store (it’s on sale for like $6 Canadian), yes it’s a video game, but has lots of reading and programming abilities. Set TVO kids on Sarah’s computer and other educational games. (I’ll link some cool resources at the bottom). I cleared out a shelf that was mostly house junk and organised it with all my findings. I cleaned up an old forgotten bulletin board and posted a print out of the Covid-19 daily homeschooling schedule, the 30 day Lego challenge and more!
The past week was March break so of course I let them relax, get accustomed to unwinding from our strict school day routine, deal with some anxiety triggers from the overpowering news-feed the Corona virus has created. We are going to relax, enjoy our weekend and start full force on Monday. I will be posting our daily routine on my YouTube Channel “my crazy life”, so if your interested in following me, please subscribe, click on the all notification bell and a notification will be sent to you via e-mail.
Wish me luck! I’ll keep you posted. Stay safe, practice social distancing, keep happy and healthy
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