Feb

1

Free for All Friday

Posted by preciouschild

February 1, 2008 |

Well…  It’s that time again…  Got a grievance?  Got a complaint?  Got a praise?  It’s free-for-all-Friday!  Let loose in the comments.

As for me, I’ve got a gripe that maybe you all can help with.

As I’m sure you can all understand, babysitters are an issue with me.  Because I don’t necessarily know what my oldest is going to do…  I can’t just hire a teenager to come in so my husband and I can have a date night.  Rarely, when really necessary, my parents can do it - and they do help out a lot.  Just BOTH kids is a little much for them, as my mom is really ill (I’m a bona-fide member of the sandwich generation.)  But my husband and I, to keep our relationship solvent, really need to reconnect on a regular basis, and that’s just not happening.  We’ve had one date night in about the last year.  That’s just not good enough.  That time, my best friend came over.  But she can’t do it on a regular basis, because she’s got her own family.  And thus exhausts the people in my life I trust with my kids.

We’ve tried getting respite care through the therapy center Joseph attends.  So far, they’ve been unable to help us.

So that’s my question to you all - do you have any resources as to babysitting for special needs kids?  What do you do?


Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. Steph on February 3, 2008 8:34 pm

    How is the respite care through his therapy unable to help you? :(

  2. Kyron on February 4, 2008 3:51 pm

    In the past to manage with Katherine we’ve split the kids up - Katherine with grandpa and Donovan with babysitter. BEFORE Donovan was in the picture we actually had a couple of parapros from Katherine’s school and one unmarried teacher who was willing to babysit for Katherine. Now that we have an aide for Katherine through her waiver it’s not such an issue anymore but I totally get what you are saying.

  3. Michele on February 4, 2008 4:58 pm

    Well - they don’t seem to have anything in place. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of function for it. Our previous therapist was working on it - even seeing if she could offer up one of the interns - but it was a no go.

    I’m gonna start the fight all over again, soon, ’cause there’s no way I trust Joseph with a teenager. I’m sure the teen would do fine - it’s my extremely cagey son I’m worried about.

  4. Babysitters: The Barrier to Having a Life Outside of being a Special Parent | The Special Parent on February 5, 2008 9:08 am

    [...] was over at Michele’s site today and reading her Friday gripe session which was about her desire to keep the marriage alive by [...]

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