Tag: working mom

The Most Important 20 Minutes of the Day

My son had a basketball game today for his middle school team.  He’s on the C team (which comes after the B team which comes after  the A team) so we’re not talking a glamorous, high profile game.  But when I walked into the door, saw his face light up and then proceeded to witness his game and his constant looking over at me, I knew the 20 minutes of play time he got today were the most important 20 minutes of my day.

For working parents, being able to attend these events is hard.  Looking around today, there weren’t that many parents at the game. I’m sure every parent who was NOT in attendance had very good reasons and it had ZERO reflection on how much they love their child.

My son has Autism so communication, verbal communication, is really hard.  He doesn’t like to have conversations.  He’s not capable of sharing his feelings verbally.  When I try to tell him how I feel about him, he doesn’t want to have that conversation either.  As I’m connecting with more and more parents of typical kids, I’ve learned that my teen with Autism isn’t so different than a typical teenage boy.  My ACTIONS need to be the way I tell him how much I care about him.  Today, I was able to tell him I love him by attending his game.  And he was able to tell me that he’s glad I’m his mom.

But making this 20 minutes happen took a lot of planning and preparation.  I’m hoping that sharing how I accomplished this helps another parent get the same 20 minutes I got today.

Block Your Calendar

When I got the basketball schedule, I added the games to my work calendar along with travel time.  This way, when others are trying to schedule time with me, they know that I’m busy during this time so they can find a better time that works for both of us.

Set Expectations

I’ve let my manager and my team know that attending these games is important to me.  I try to structure my work so it’s about what I’m delivering each week rather than how much time I spend at the office.  This helps.  I set goals based on a full workload for the week and then juggle the time as necessary to meet all of my commitments for both work and home.

Carve Out Time

Even when you block your calendar and set expectations, it’s still hard to find the time to do it all.  Sometimes I get up early so I can start on my work day earlier.  Commute time takes up at least 45 minutes each way.  Today, I worked from home and got 90 minutes back.  I got my full workday in AND made it to the game.  I also reduced travel time by staying closer to home for the day.

It Goes Both Ways

Often, spending time at a school event in the afternoon means I need to focus on work in the evening–and miss that time with my family.  I try to use this to teach my kids about trade offs and balance.  I want them to be hard workers when they have jobs.  I want them to see that when I leave work early, that time needs to be made up somewhere.  It’s a good lesson to teach them.

Let’s face it, we’re all very busy.  It’s easy for the pressures of work, meetings, deadlines and commuting to cause us to miss opportunities to really connect with our kids.  But with a little planning and preparation, we’ve got a better chance of catching some of the precious moments before we lose track of where all our time went and our kids grow up faster than we could have ever imagined.

Bring All of Your Calendars into One Place

Do you find yourself having too many calendars?  There’s your work calendar, your family calendar, and maybe even a personal calendar.  Even if you’ve got all of these calendars in electronic form, you can still find yourself in a situation where you need to check in multiple places to make sure you’re free.  And with multiple places to look, mistakes are bound to happen.

It’s pretty easy to bring all of your calendars together on any mobile phone, but it’s hard to see and plan from such a small screen.  Depending on how strict your workplace is, it may be harder to bring all of your calendars together at work.  I just started a job at a company that takes security around personal laptops very seriously.  I can’t install any old app or plug in onto my computer.  When it came to my calendar, this was leaving me very frustrated because I wasn’t allowed to add my personal account to Outlook.  If you’re in the same boat, here’s how you can easily get around this problem.

I’ve got a family calendar in Cozi.  And a personal calendar in Hotmail (Outlook.com). In my case, as I was trying to coordinate my work schedule against something as simple as attending my son’s basketball game or making sure I left work on time for an evening school meeting, I had to check my work calendar, Cozi.com and Outlook.com.  That was just too much for my brain to keep track of in 3 different views.

We’re using Outlook at work.  We happen to be using the 2010 version but what I’m about to describe also works in 2013 or Office 365. From most calendar programs, Google, Outlook.com, Cozi, you can share your calendar as a calendar “feed” or as a link.  This generates a URL that you can use to access this “calendar feed”.

From inside Outlook, under the home tab, choose “Open Calendar”, then choose “From Internet”.

Outlook Open From Internet
Outlook Import Calendar Feed Menu

After this, you’ll get a dialog box that lets you copy the URL you got from your other calendar program.  Once you paste that in, that calendar will be added to your calendar list.  In my case, I’ve got my personal calendar that I named “Doreen Hotmail” and my family calendar from Cozi.

Outlook Calendar List
Outlook Calendar List including Hotmail Calendar

Now, you can see all of your calendars overlay-ed with one another.  This helps you keep from double-booking yourself and helps you more easily manage family commitments against your work commitments.  The best part is that you can keep your work calendar as the “active” calendar and the other calendars really appear to be sitting in the background, not distracting you but helping you avoid creating conflicts across work and home.

Outlook Multiple Calendar View
Multiple Calendars Overlay-ed in Outlook 2010

Note:  I’ve shaded out the names of my kids and co-workers to protect their privacy

Meal Planning with a Magazine

We all know that if we plan our meals ahead of time, we eat healthier and the work week is a lot less hectic.  But this is much easier said than done!  Saturday morning soccer games, Sunday football, and all kinds of weekend activities make it hard to find the time to do meal planning, let alone grocery shopping.

I struggle with this myself sometime so today, I’m trying something new.  I’m already a subscriber to Cooking Light magazine – but any cooking magazine or your favorite website will do.  This morning, I didn’t need to be anywhere until noon and I found myself in a quiet house, kids doing their own thing and a warm cup of coffee in my hand.  I decided to get my meal planning done for the week.

After I picked my meals for the week and captured my list on my favorite phone app, I was on a roll, so I kept going! As I found a recipe that I wanted to eventually make, I just picked a day in my calendar and added it along with info on which magazine and what page it’s on.

I’m hoping that by doing this, next week, when I’m possibly less motivated to get my meal planning done, I’ll see these recipes in my calendar and I have a lot less thinking and planning to do.  I just need to pull my weekly shopping list together.

Also, by capturing the magazine details, I can quickly open up the magazine to look at the recipe.  I love all the recipe apps out there but I keep going back to my recipe magazines and cook books.  There’s something about the paper and not worrying about the screen timing out that I just like.  Call me “old school” I guess.

Here’s to a chaos free week ahead – and healthy dinner on the table after a long day at work!

Are you navigating your life with a map or with GPS?

Many of us have been in the situation where we thought we knew where we were going but our GPS got us lost.  Something happened to me this week that made me realize this may be an interesting analogy to life.

My babysitter is out on vacation so my mom was kind enough to come visit us and watch the kids – for a full week and a half!  (Thank you, mom!)  While my sitter was away, I needed my  mom to pick up my son from middle school after track practice and pick up my daughter from her elementary school after her school play rehearsal.

We sat down with a map and showed her where she was, where the schools were and the routes to take.  The next day, she went to the places with the babysitter.  But on her first day solo, she got lost.  As we figured out where she went wrong, it dawned on me that she knew where she was going, but she listened to the GPS instead of herself.  If she had trusted herself, she would have been fine.

The day she got lost, I stayed on the phone line helping her find her way to my son’s school.  The entire time, the GPS kept telling her to go the wrong way.  After she reached her destination, it just struck me how this scenario feels a lot like life does sometimes.

How often do you feel like you know where you’re going, in life, but you listen to the louder voices telling you to take a turn that you feel may be a wrong turn?  And then end up lost?  Or you try to ignore all this advice but it’s so loud and persistent, you finally give in and follow it?  And then end up lost?

At a micro-level, how are you planning your days?  Are you spending your time where you know you need to?   Or are you allowing your calendar to be filled up with meeting requests and just go from meeting to meeting without your goals and priorities, your destination, in mind?  Are you spending your days doing what you need to do to reach your destination, or reacting to the different directions life is pulling you in?

At a macro level, how are you managing your career?  Your family?  We have all sorts of voices telling us which way we should go all the time, just like the GPS that doesn’t have the right destination. As you drive, the GPS is yelling at you,

“Turn right.  Re-calculating.  Turn around.  Turn left. Re-calculating.”

As we drive forward in our careers, we hear direction from all kinds of sources,

“Spend more time with your family.  Re-prioritize. Don’t take that promotion (Turn around). Make a lateral move instead.”

So we re-prioritize which leads to a totally different sent of directions,

“Lean into your career.  Push harder.  Reach higher.  Demand more.”

As we navigate our life, our career, our family, our day, we need to have the destination in mind.  It’s not a literal destination of course but an idea of what we’d like our life, our career and our family to look like “down the road”.  We need to define what success and happiness means for ourselves.  We need to be deliberate about the priorities we set and live them.  We need to know where we want to go.  And then we need to ignore all of the things that are telling us to go the wrong direction.

My mom used the GPS as a safety net.  It was supposed to help her as she reached intersections where she was unsure which way to turn.  But it lead her astray.  In life, it’s appropriate to look for advice when we’re unsure of what direction to take our families or trying to figure out how to navigate our careers.  But we need to take that advice and ask ourselves if it will really help us get to our destination.

So the next time you read an amazing article or book, or get that great piece of advice from someone you look up to, or add another commitment to your calendar, spend some time considering what it means for you and where YOU want to go.   If we blindly follow any guidance or say yes to any commitment, we may get lost.  But if we carefully choose which directions to follow based on where we know we want to go, the route there will have a lot less twists, turns and recalculations.

 

How To Set Up A Calendar for a Busy Family

If you’ve got kids who are involved in after school activities, this blog post is for you.  If you’re a Stay-At-Home-Parent, you’re trying to coordinate everything and make sure the kids are where they need to be.  And you want them getting picked up and dropped off on time.  If you’re a working parent, you’re trying to coordinate all of this with your child care provider.

Our family had a busy week this week.  It was the first week of track practice for my 13 year old son in the 7th grade AND it was the first week of rehearsals for the school play for my 9 year old daughter in the 4th grade.  I faced the week with great trepidation.  Looking at my calendar, I think you’ll see why:

FirstWeekTrackPlay

To try and tame the chaos, I color coded my son’s activities in red and my daughter’s in blue.  I told my sitter, “Let’s just plan to text each other a lot to get through this first week on this crazy schedule.”  On Wednesday, I had the pick up time for Play Rehearsals wrong.  And my sitter was having a really hard time understanding all of this when looking at it on her iPhone.

My son has Autism, so it’s particularly important that he understands the schedule using the visuals of a calendar.  When I got this text message from him on Wednesday night while he was with his Dad, I knew I needed to do something to make this calendar easier to understand:

AidenCalendarMsg

Looking at the calendar, I had everything crammed into ONE calendar.  I had more details than were really needed.  Too many things were overlapping each other.  I needed to simplify the calendar.  My babysitter needed to understand when to pick the kids up and where.  My son needed to understand his own schedule, know when he was getting picked up, and not have his sister’s activities cluttering up what he was looking at.  He needed to see what HE cares about.

What to do?

I created a separate calendar for my son.  It’s under his Outlook.com account, but I set things up so that I can edit it directly while using my own account.  I also set up an account for my daughter while I was at it.  Next, I got rid of the overlap by moving my son’s track stuff into his calendar, my daughter stuff into her calendar, and then focused the family calendar on pick ups and drop offs.  The new version is much better:

FirstWeekTrackPlayRevised

Notice the tabs across the top.  Each tab represents a different calendar in a different color.  You can show multiple calendars at once.  And when you turn off my daughter’s calendar, it was a much clearer picture for my son.  We sat down and reviewed the schedule again.  Here’s what he is seeing on his iPhone now:

AidenTrackPhone

And here’s what the babysitter was looking at (on a Windows Phone), because my son’s calendar is NOT in view:

TrackPhoneView2

I’m hoping that the schedule will be more clear.  Everyone will be happier.  And I won’t be distracted with lots of text message from a frustrated babysitter who can’t figure out where I need her to be because I haven’t set her up for success.  Yes, we’re using multiple calendars and sharing them.  It may sound complicated at first but once it’s set up, you’ll wonder how you ever functioned any other way.

For those of you interested in some of the nitty-gritty details, keep reading.  For the rest of you, happy scheduling!

Some details for me to explain:

What is “Juanita House”?  We are in a split family.  Since the kids have 2 homes, “home” isn’t clear.  I call my house “The Juanita House” so they know where they need to be.  I don’t want to call it “Mom’s House” or “Mom and Jeff’s House” because it is “Our House”.  Dad didn’t name his house (because he’s functioning like a normal person 😉 ) so we just call his house “Dad’s House”.

Who are all of these people?  Dad is Dad.  Jeff is my husband.  Marie is the afternoon babysitter.  Lauren is my son’s ABA therapist (Autism services aide).  When I set up appointments with Lauren, I actually email those to her so they are on her calendar.  Dad also has the appointments for “which house” on his calendar as well as anything that is on the days when the kids are with him at the end of the day.  There’s a lot going on here but this way, everyone has what they need on THEIR calendar.

Please send me your follow up questions!  I’d be happy to do a dedicated blog post to deep dive on any questions you have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Hope at a Track Meet

I remember when my son’s middle school PE teacher reached out to me and asked me if I thought my son would like to join the track team.  I was elated!  My son has Autism and somehow, through all the speech therapy, ABA therapy, IEP meetings and everything else, I had just given up on the idea of my son being involved in any organized sports.  Thank goodness for this very proactive and caring teacher!

I think the way I find the energy to tackle and break down new challenges like this for and with my son is through an incredible sense of optimism when I launch into something new.  In this case, I immediately had fantasies of my son becoming an amazing track athlete, overcoming the odds, and being one of those viral stories that hits the internet and motivates countless people.

The realist in me understands the odds I’m up against.  But this remote possibility is enough to help me get started.  If you share a similar dream, here’s how I broke this down:

1. Find the time.  My son has ABA therapy twice a week and lots of help with homework.  We just had to put this on hold for a while.  Track season isn’t that long.  6 weeks to make room for a new experience that has the potential to build confidence and potentially open up an entirely new world is worth it.

2. Support the time.  Our ABA therapist met my son at the track 2 days per week.  Her time was spent observing my son to determine where he needed help.  He knew NOTHING about track and has gross motor problems that inhibit his ability to really run.  As he runs, it’s as if he needs to think about every movement to make it happen.  His arms pumping, legs moving, even how his feet touch the ground – it’s as if he has to think about each movement to make it happen.  We worked on running, understanding the track, “the rules”, understanding the race he would run, the starting gun (and how LOUD it is), what a finish line is, everything.

3. Coordinate the time.  On the days when the ABA therapist was not at the track, the babysitter would pick him up from track practice.  On Wednesdays, there was no track practice so my son needed to understand that on that day of the week, he needed to get on the school bus to get home.  Track meets were typically on Fridays.  He would need to support this very chaotic environment, to know when his race was and what he should be doing before and after his events.  I would flex my time at work to support this when our aide could not.

We used a calendar to help our son (and the rest of us) understand the schedule.  A typical week looked like this and was critical to not only ensuring my son knew where to be but to help coordinate who was picking him up on specific days and setting his expectation so he knew who was meeting him.

Track Schedule

4. Enjoy the Ride.  The first time I saw my son run in a race is something I will never forget.  I was fearful.  I knew he was slow and I wondered how all of these people would react.  What followed blew me away.  As my son was waiting, he was smiling, happy to be there and be part of things.  This really warmed my heart.  But not enough to lessen my fear that he’d cause a false start. He and the rest of the runners were ready.  The starting gun went off!  No false start.  YES!  As predicted, the other boys were running faster and got farther and farther away from him.  As the first kid hit the finish line of this 55 meter race, the crowd cheered.  By now, my son was really far behind and he was going to be running the last half of this race all alone.  But as he became the only kid still running, this wonderful crowd of students and parents did something I would have never expected.  They started to cheer LOUDER!  Louder than they did for the kid who came in first.  When my son crossed the finish line, the crowd cheered for him.  I’ve never seen him smile so big.  After the race was over, he literally skipped over to the coach who gave him a high five.  A couple of the other kids on the team also gave him a high five.  He was part of something and his confidence soared.  I sat there with a huge smile and tears running down my face.

There’s a good chance that my son will NOT become an Olympic track star or be part of any viral video that inspires countless people.  But he’s happy.  He’s doing new things and learning new things.  He’s becoming part of something larger than his family, becoming part of a community.  He’s showing the world what it looks like when integration in schools works.  As track season came to a close, ALL of his teachers noticed a big difference in him.  He was more confident, raising his hand a bit more in class, improvement with eye contact, improvements with greeting his teachers, all kinds of positive intangibles that are almost impossible to teach.  I would have never known that track would be such an important step to making improvement in the classroom.

I’m so grateful for the school my son attends and these wonderful teachers who are making such a difference.  I’m grateful that I’m sitting with parents who cheer on the underdog and are being such a good example to their own children.  No wonder my son is so happy at school.  We need to do what we can to help our kids be part of things that expand their world.  And even if you’re not in a situation where you have a child with special needs, I hope my story shows you how you can be part of making the world these kids live in a better place.

Behind every strong person is a supportive family

We’ve all read the quote “Behind every strong man is a strong woman” as well as all of the related quotes that mock the whole idea.  While I understand the criticism of this quote, I strongly believe that having a strong support network, whether it’s a spouse or extended family or friends, it’s a critical part of being a successful working parent.

At work, when I see someone that I view as very successful, when I am able to get more “behind the scenes” information, I often learn that they have a spouse at home who doesn’t work.  Their spouse is doing all of the heavy lifting related to keeping a household running, raising the children, volunteering with the PTA, very important and critical work.

For those of us who don’t have this kind of situation, we can still be successful at work.  It just requires a bit more juggling and planning.  This blog focuses on a strategy to help your support network at home help you so you can be more successful at work

Tip #1   Create a Family Calendar and share it with the right people.

In my case, I created a calendar on Outlook.com.  From any calendar, Outlook.com, Google, Yahoo, whatever, you can “Share” the calendar by clicking the “Share” button and then providing the email addresses of the people you want to share it with.  My babysitter and my husband have the calendar.  I helped my sitter set up her iPhone so that she sees this calendar.  I only add items that show up in the weekday afternoons so that she only sees stuff related to our family when she’s working.  She literally uses this calendar on her iPhone as a checklist for what needs to be done today and where the kids need to go.  My husband usually has this calendar turned “off” but it shows up in his list of calendar so that he can easily see what’s going on at any time.

By creating a Family Calendar, you’re creating a “Communication Center”.  All appointments go here.  Everyone knows where to look for information.  How does this help you at work?  You cut down on how many times the babysitter is texting you with random questions during the day about the schedule.  In fact, when she DOES send you a text, you know it’s important and related to something that you really need to respond to in the moment.  You no longer have your spouse IM-ing you with questions about whether or not you’re free next Thursday after work so you can get together with his co-worker and their spouse.  You organize your schedule so you can FOCUS.  This is a critical element to being successful at work.  if you’re constantly being distracted by things from home, your efficiency at work drops more than you realize.

Tip #2  Get the right appointments onto your spouse’s work calendar

Many working families share the responsibility of dropping off and picking up the kids to/from school and childcare.  But work responsibilities often mess up that routine.  When an important meeting is scheduled first thing in the morning on a day when I’m usually taking the kids to school, I create a calendar appointment that covers the school drop off time and send it to my husband.  If he has a conflict that he can’t move, he just “Declines” and I know I need to figure something else out.  The same goes for me.  If he can cover it, he “Accepts” and I know I’m covered.

Share Appointment with Spouse
Outlook calendar shows family coordination to determine who is taking the kids to school today.

By doing this, you’re setting things up in the moment.  No need to remember to talk about this when you get home from work (and risk forgetting).  No risk of your spouse forgetting to put this in their calendar, not to mention getting on the right day.  It’s fast, simple, clear.

This same approach can be used for meetings at the end of the day.  Have you ever had one of those “Executive Reviews” scheduled from 3 to 5pm?  They never end on time.  You spend the last half hour of the meeting watching the time.  You’re stressed.  You’re distracted.  You’re not focused on the actual meeting because you’re worried about picking up the kids on time.  Don’t put yourself in this situation.

When that Executive Review is scheduled for the end of the day, send your spouse a calendar invitation for them to pick up the kids or meet the babysitter.  You’re now free to focus on the meeting.  Beyond that, often, the most important conversations happen in the hallway after the meeting.  Put yourself in a position to be there for that conversation.  By taking this simple additional step, you’re lowering your stress, covering the responsibilities at home and creating an environment where you can focus, do your best work and be there for critical conversations.

Tip #3 Planning for the Week

Even with all the right appointments in the calendar, sometimes the family may not be actively looking at their calendars.  Family life is all about routine.  Routines are what help us manage the chaos and the volume of activities going on.  We can keep a lot of that routine in our heads and not rely on a calendar.  But the exceptions are the things that mess us up.  And the exceptions are the most important things to capture in the calendar because they are hard to remember.

On Sunday evening or first thing on Monday morning, email the calendar out to the people who need it.  In my case, this is obviously my husband and babysitter.  But I also include my ex-husband and the behavioral therapist who works with my son who has Autism.  To email the calendar from Outlook, go to the Home tab and select “E-mail Calendar”.  From there, you’ll get options to send the “next 7 days” and an email will be created with the calendar info.  I highlight the exceptions to the routine so my family can scan the email and get those exceptions for the week in their head.  If you use a calendar like Cozi, they have a wonderful feature that automatically sends a weekly calendar to a preset list of people every Sunday evening.

EmailCal2

By incorporating these 3 tips into your day to day management of your schedule, you’ll be amazed at how it will smooth out the bumps in the week.  It should also help you go from “surviving the week” to really excelling at work.

It’s all about having a dream, a plan, and a little patience

SkiBaker

I learned to ski a few years ago and after getting the hang of it, the first thing I wanted to do was share this with my kids.  I had this romantic dream of all of us hanging out on the hill, skiing all day together.  Family bonding at it’s best.

Making this dream a reality is much easier said than done.

My challenge is that my pre-teen son has Autism so teaching him new things takes a little more work than a typical kid.  Asking my friends how they approached teaching their kids, it sounded pretty easy.  Sign them up for all day ski lessons.  They ski while you ski with the grown ups.  Then, to reinforce the lessons, throw them on the school ski bus.

This sounded like a great approach but I knew it wouldn’t work for us.  First, group learning is tough for my son.  He struggles to watch and learn and often needs “hand over hand” type of instruction.  There’s also a communication barrier.  Private ski instruction it is.  Luckily, we ski at Mt. Baker, Washington.  It turns out that they offered private instruction for people with special needs at a less expensive rate than typical lessons.  We signed him up for these 2 hour sessions each weekend.  And we found a great instructor that we kept asking for that was a cool college kid from Western Washington University so that was an added bonus.

Now for the Ski Bus.  This one was tougher.  Kids pile on the ski bus, take their lesson and then ski with their friends until it’s time to head home.  Our challenge:  our son doesn’t really have any friends.  Sure, the kids are nice to him but there’s such a huge communication barrier between him and them, we knew he wouldn’t have a group of friends to ski with.  And you must ski with a buddy.  We’d been making progress with the lessons but we needed more consistency, like the consistency that the weekly ski bus would bring.

We worked with the ski school to have a private 2 hour lesson.  Our lesson included helping our son learn to independently rent his gear, get the gear on, and get to his lesson.  The plan was for me to meet my son AFTER his lesson and then he’d ride home on the bus with all the other kids and I’d meet him at the school.  But all the things that would happen between school getting out and me meeting him at the mountain required a plan for my son to be successful.

As usual, I used a calendar to capture the details of this new routine.

Ski Bus Schedule Clean

This calendar shows my work calendar, the family calendar that the babysitter uses, and my son’s calendar.  For me, I needed to leave early each day.  My work days are extremely busy and this took some juggling.  I admit, I was on a conference call during the drive up to the mountain to meet my son.  For my son, there were many things he needed to remember:

1. He had to bring the right ski gear to school.  The night before, we’d pack his ski back together to make sure he had everything from helmet to ski pass.

2. He would wear long johns under his regular clothes and make sure he wore his ski coat and waterproof boots to school.  These items would be set out the night before so he could independently get ready in the morning.

3.  After school, first, he needed to remember to NOT get on his regular school bus home.  Then, he needed to change into his ski clothes and get on the ski bus.

4. 10 minutes before arriving at the mountain, he needed to get his gloves, helmet and goggles ready and pack up everything he didn’t need on the hill and leave it on the bus.

5. Last, he needed to get to the ski school, rent his gear, get it on and meet his instructor.

These 5 items may sound pretty simple, but they were the reasons why I almost didn’t sign him up for the ski bus.  I couldn’t go with him everyday.  I could only meet him after his lesson.  He needed to do these things independently.  And at 13 years old, he really needed to be able to learn to do this independently, regardless.  This was going to be a stretch for him (and for me) but we did it.

I went with him the first day to help establish the routine.  I met with the ski school ahead of time to explain the situation so they could be watching out for him during the rental process.  And we dove in.  He really enjoyed it.  And by the end of the 6 weeks, he was getting his gear on independently and skiing very confidently on the easy runs.

Last weekend was the first time I went skiing with my son and my daughter without my husband (who couldn’t resist the great back country conditions after a long winter that hasn’t had the greatest skiing conditions).  It was such a wonderful day!  My son did everything on his own.  The rental process was SO much easier since I only needed to help my younger daughter.  On the hill, same thing.  My daughter is a bit of a dare devil and still learning to ski.  While I was helping to pull her out of snow drifts that she crashed into, my son was doing fine on his own and sticking with us.

It took 2 seasons of weekend lessons plus one season on the ski bus to get here.  But we have finally arrived.  I had many moments of frustration along the way where I was ready to give up on this.  But I’m so glad we stuck with it.

In a world where we want quick fixes and sometimes focus too much on the shorter term, this is a long term investment.  3 seasons of investment in lessons and logistics will now translate into MANY years ahead of skiing with my kids as a family.  Already, it’s SO worth the effort that just went in to get us to this ONE perfect day on the mountain.  And this has been a great confidence building exercise for my son.  He WANTS to be independent.  We just need to work a little harder to help him achieve that.

Use a Calendar to Empower your Teen with Autism

When your kids become teenagers, one of the biggest things they need to learn is how to be independent.  They WANT to be independent.  It’s our job to help them learn to be both independent AND responsible.

The same goes for a kid on the Autism spectrum.  The challenge for the parents is a bit tougher.

For my teen with Autism, I feel my job is to create opportunities for him to be independent and then put supports in place to help him be successful.  Our calendar is one of our biggest tools.

This year, he’s joining the other middle school kids on the Ski Bus.  This is a great social opportunity to be around the typical kids that he doesn’t usually see in his special education classes, take ski lessons to increase his confidence and have the other kids in school SEE him doing typical stuff.

For most kids, they sign up, hop on the bus and figure it out.  For us, it took a lot more work but as I look ahead to our first day, I’m optimistic that we will be successful.

First step, instead of a typical ski lesson, I arranged for a private lesson.  He’ll be more successful with one on one instruction so that’s what we’ll do.

Next, setting up a plan to establish the routine for getting from the bus to the rental center and ALL of the important steps involved in getting the ski gear and getting him to his lesson was key.  I met with the director of the ski school.  His team has a heads up that my son may need extra help.  And I will be with him the first day to work out the bumps.

Finally, I’ve made arrangements at work to adjust my hours so I can help each week.  It’s only 5 weeks.  My son will do the routine on his own, but I’ll meet him AFTER his lesson.  Unstructured time is tough for him.  So the 2 hours of free ski time will be with me.

This is where the calendar comes in.  For many kids with Autism, visual information is critical to communication and understanding.  I can TELL my son about what is happening but I know from experience that if he doesn’t visually understand what I’m saying, comprehension will be low.

We’ve broken this endeavor into 2 routines:  before school and after school.

Before school, he needs to get himself ready so he has everything he needs for the afternoon.  We’ve talked about it. He’s seen the schedule but I know he’ll use the calendar on his phone as a checklist so he can get himself ready to go in the morning, independently.

Ski Bus Morning

 

Now for the afternoon routine.  He’s got the breakdown of what will be happening.  In addition to HIS routine, the picture below shows my work calendar, our family calendar that our babysitter uses AND my son’s calendar.  This is to show that to support my son, it requires coordination across the entire family.  It requires team work. 🙂

Ski Bus Schedule Clean

This schedule shows our first day on the mountain.  This first day is about establishing the routine.  For all the future weeks, my son will be on his own until free ski time.  HIs calendar reflects that.  And my work calendar shows my team that I’ll be leaving early on those days so they know what to expect from me and can plan around me (and better support what I’m doing).

So for any parents out there with kids on the spectrum who look at school activities like this and think it can’t be done, it can.  A little organization, a few conversations with key folks and a solid plan captured in your calendar can go a long way.

Now let’s hit the slopes!

A Calendar Saves…the Tooth Fairy?

I should say that a calendar could have saved the Tooth Fairy!

It all started last night.  My 9 year old daughter announced that she had lost a tooth while eating dinner.  It’s been loose for weeks.  Later that evening as my daughter was ready for bed and just coming up to have me tuck her in, she was very excited about that fact that she had put the tooth under her pillow and was wondering how much the Tooth Fairy would give her for this tooth.

This is where I made my critical mistake.  In that moment, I thought,

“I can’t put money under the pillow until after she falls asleep but I’m going to forget.  I should put this in my calendar so I get reminded around 9:30pm.”

But I didn’t.  I somehow convinced myself that I would remember.  I should know better.

This morning, my daughter was a bit groggy.  After breakfast, she went back down stairs to finish getting ready for bed, brush her teeth, make her bed, etc.  Not much time went by before she came back down the stairs, crying,

“I lost my tooth when I was making my bed and the Tooth Fairy didn’t bring me any money!”

“Oh, no!”, I thought.  I forgot!  What am I going to do!  Do I tell her the reality that there is no Tooth Fairy in order to explain what happened?  Is there any way to recover?  Luckily, I think pretty quick on my feet.

I told her to grab her backpack so it’s ready for school and that I’d go look in her room to see what was up.  I needed a distraction so I could look in my purse for a few coins.  She left the room.  I looked in my purse.  ALL PENNIES!  What am I going to do!?  Ah!  A quarter and a nickel.  I can work with that.  The Tooth Fairy has never been very generous in our house anyway.

I went downstairs. Her bed was made perfectly as usual.  I dropped the coins down on the floor between her bed and the wall.  Just then, she came in.

“Hey, I see some coins down here on the floor.  Were they there before?  Or do you think they are from the Tooth Fairy and you accidentally knocked them down there in your sleep?”

“Let me look!  No!  That money is from the Tooth Fairy!  And my tooth is right there, too!

I didn’t see the tooth when I dropped the money.  I’ll call that a gift.  Phew!

So I recovered but the moral of this story is:  when it’s critical to remember something, especially something that needs to be done at a critical time, put it in your calendar!