Having Fibromyalgia and having kids can be rough.  And I have it on both sides of the spectrum, with two daughters (15 and 12) and a son who is 5.  The hardest part is keeping the house clean!  I can straighten everything up, vacuum, mop the kitchen, make beds, do laundry, etc., and once the kids set foot in the door destruction begins.  First thing the girls do when they get off the bus from school is make popcorn, which they then drag upstairs to the office—my office, where I’m still usually trying to work—and get on the spare computer behind me.  Of course, there are water bottles involved, too, and I’m left with the mess.  Yes, there’s a trash can, but somehow kernels of unpopped and popped corn litter my floor and bottles of water are left half drunk.

Their bedrooms are horrendous.  Why do I put up with this, you ask?  Well, I have a theory.  It takes a lot of energy to tell someone to pick up after themselves repeatedly.  It takes even more energy to stand over them while they clean up their messes, making sure they do it properly.  So, I decided to try something new.  It’s called allowance.  Instead of giving them money whenever they want or need it, they can now earn a weekly allowance.  BUT it is not a set amount, depending on how well they hold up their end of the bargain.  The deal is that they have to keep their rooms relatively tidy—by making their beds everyday and washing their own laundry (and putting it away) each week, in addition to being mindful when they are asked to do anything else, such as clean up supper, sweep the kitchen floor, empty the dishwasher, or vacuum the kernels off my office carpet.

There is a cap, and I base that on their ages.  The oldest gets up to $15 a week, the twelve year old gets $12.50 (she’s actually twelve and a half, she argued, and won), minus whatever I deem they didn’t earn.  They started out doing pretty well, but have slacked off a bit, which will be evident in the amount of money they get tomorrow for allowance.  I’m hoping they will “get it”, and that a week’s turnaround time isn’t too long for them to make the connection and care enough on Day 1 of 7 to make their beds.  I’ll keep you posted.

We got a new shelving unit to put right inside the front door where they can store their bookbags and shoes instead of all over the entryway.  This has worked wonders!  But we’ve only had it for a week, so again, I’ll have to keep you posted.  It sure is easier to say, “Put your shoes on the shelf!” than it is to tell them to put them in their rooms upstairs, which is not likely to happen in my lifetime.

Now, the five year old is a different story.  Yes, he makes messes.  He has tons of toys that overfill the toy box and spill out all over the music room floor.  There’s another toy box with the same fate in his bedroom, but he is afraid of monsters in his room (thanks to my girls) so he doesn’t play in there as much.  The other thing he does is pull all the pillows off my sofa to make a hiding place.  He gets the pillows from every chair and couch we have, and piles them up in the family room.  I haven’t figured out how to get him to put them back yet.  I sound like a terribly bad mother letting my children walk all over me, and I don’t dispute it.  It’s just easier to wait until he’s gone to daycare for the day and put them all back in their correct places than it is to oversee the job getting done right by him.  At least I can look at a clean(ish) house while I’m working from home until the kids return to destroy it again.

While we’re on children, they all like to hug.  Hard.  I’m trying to teach them to give me soft hugs, but it’s really difficult for them.  Especially my son.  He will come running toward me like a flying torpedo and smack into me for a hug.  Can you say OUCH??

Yes, children have a hard time understanding that Mom has an invisible illness.  Five year olds want to see the booboo and teenagers don’t believe 95% of what you tell them anyway.  Anyone else have Fibromyalgia with some pointers on handling children?  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  We haven’t touched on the weekly nagging session over letting even more children sleep over at my house.  I’ll leave that for another post!