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It Takes Two

Raising Kids

By Erika FriesPublished 5 years ago 6 min read
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Morgan and Adelina staying busy at work

Above in the picture, you will see my coworker Morgan and my daughter Adelina. My daughter is six years old and was recently diagnosed last year with “intellectual border disability." What is that you ask? It’s a politically correct term for.... dare we say it?! “Mental retardation." My daughter does not drool, she communicates pretty good, she doesn’t need help getting around, or someone to feed her. Nope! She is pretty independent!

BUT....

She still wets the bed almost every night, she has spaz fits all the time, sometimes about the same topic for months and months at the same time, other times it will be a random topic and randomly happen out of nowhere. What do I mean by spaz fits? I mean this child can be happy as can be one second and the next she is throwing, kicking, screaming, and won’t calm down until she is good and ready too. She has a crazy imagination, so you never know what to believe is the truth or not. For instance, one day she told me after school that a little boy showed off his you know what to the whole class and my daughter.... me putting faith into the public education system and the people in charge of my child, I immediately thought “No, they would of called me in case Adelina were to say something to me about it, they would of informed me that the situation although very little, was under control." So I immediately put it off as nothing but her wild imagination.

A few months later I am at a counselors office, and she sees this little boy. His face is filthy, he is jumping off the walls, tugging at his mom as she is trying to get release by talking to me, another mom, an adult being... stains all over his clothes, running around like he had eaten a sugar cane field. I felt so bad for the mother who looked tired and mentally and emotionally exhausted. My daughter Adelina walks up and says “mommy, that’s Matthew, he was in my class and pulled his pants down and showed his privates to me!” Then she walks up to HIS MOM!! (LORD HELP ME JESUS! She is actually going to accuse this little boy of something far fetched that she thinks is real but in fact came straight from her imagination!) she says in her little tiny voice, “Um, Es sues me..... um, YOUR SON PULLED DOWN HIS PANTS AND SHOWED ME HIS PRIVATES IN MY TEACHERS CLASS!!”

Bad enough she said it but she HAD TO SCREAM it so the entire building could hear, lol. His mom then smiles and replies “oh yes, he does that all the time! He has an issue being clothed, likes to run around naked." WAIT WHAT?! No MA’AM! His issue is he needs to learn that if his clothes don’t stay on in front of little girls and in the public then he can say goodbye to toys, snacks, doing what he wants to do. This child needed a butt whooping!

Aside from the difficulties to ever tell if it’s her reality or her imagination, my daughter has dyslexia, she can’t seem to retain the knowledge of letters and sounds. Which makes it difficult for her to do any work including that of a pre-k student. She is now in first grade and is on a Tier 3 for special needs. They see here being in ESE classes really soon.

Aside from my daughter, I have two boys ages 11 & 9. They are smart, mouthy, funny, stinky, messy, always hungry, bouncy little boys. So as you can imagine I have my hands full. I struggle to pay my house payment every month, on top of a $400 car payment, car insurance, two cell phone bills, electric, food, plus take care of our three dogs. What do I do for work you ask? Well I’m a server at a country club. As a server, sometimes you need the hours but can’t find a baby sitter, that’s where my server coworkers have supported me and helped me as a single mother. Morgan in the picture above was playing with my daughter as I was serving tables trying to earn money to put food on my kids plates. I got off my shift later that night only to find that my daughter had taken a million photo shots on my phone, haha. But this one caught my attention and melted my heart!

Where is their dad you ask? Oh he is off with his girlfriend, playing daddy to her little girl. Meanwhile he is actually fighting me for custody of the babies I have been caring for ALONE for the past two years. Last year, he abandon them for eight months. This year, it’s been seven months so far. I mean why even waste the money on a custody case if you aren’t going to make an effort to at least look like the better parent? Hindsight is 20/20, is my only input at this time.

But my point of how I manage to raise these three wonderful, unique, pain in my butt little devils all by myself is... I don’t! If it wasn’t for my GM saying “Sure, you can bring her in as long as she stays seated," or my managers who take the time to acknowledge that she drew a beautiful picture, or my co workers that make sure my daughter is full on ice cream and French fries and soda, lol. I haven’t been doing this alone. They have all been here with me, helping me. Since their father bailed, it’s been so hard doing this on my own. I had to learn how to be mommy and daddy, how to be the statistic and not the wife anymore who had a husband for 12 years. I now had been fit into the category of everyday statistics. But listen, if you have five kids or one, it takes two to raise that child! For me I’ve been blessed with a multitude of helpers and friends at my job! It hasn’t always been like this for me and my kids. And we are still struggling everyday, but if you have at least one person who tries to help you because your number two, decided to split on you and now you feel like negative four trying to do this all on your own... THANK THEM! Even if it is just five minutes of their time they put into your child, because that is five minutes of time you couldn’t manage to give or five minutes that even their father didn’t care to give. To that child, it means the world!

Look out for one another!

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