As a parent we have tough choices to make, it’s part of the deal, I get it. Every ounce of your being worries about daily choices and obviously we all strive to all that we can to help our kids and make them the best little humans they can be.
We have had a couple of things that have come up that really make us stop and struggle to make the right choice for our boys.
First, we took Carlos to speech on Wednesday and afterward his therapist said that he probably wouldn’t be needing speech much longer. I was stunned and it’s been REALLY bothering me since she said it. I don’t think I hid my emotions very well because she said “oh, we’re not stopping next week or anything, but he’s just making all the sounds and……the rest is a blur” I still don’t understand him a lot of the time and I thought the goal was not just to have him be able to make the sounds on demand but to actually be understood in daily conversation. Since I’m not a therapist and was only going off my gut feeling, I made a call to his other speech therapist and she agreed with me that he has quite a way to go. He’s doing great, really working hard, but still needs more support. So now I get to be “assertive mama” and fight for what’s right for my son.
The other issue that came up is Aikido. Now if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ll know that the boys did the camp a month ago and loved it. Carlos especially thrived and seemed to respond to the discipline of it. Well, they are offering a class on Fridays that would work for the boys. Alice is signed up as well, but the class is $70/month/child. Yeah, $140 a month is a lot for us. I’m sure for most the Bainbridge types this would be a no-brainer, you just hand over the money and all’s good, but for us it’s really a lot of money. The struggle for me that I have is I KNOW how great it will be for them, especially Carlos, but what do we sacrifice in order to make it happen? It’s not like we’re not already seriously frugal so there aren’t too many corners to cut. So maybe we’ll do a fundraiser…a “Field-Bennett Boys Trike-a-thon” or something. At this point, I think Levi would end up going (as he wouldn’t understand why Carlos and Alice got to go, and Carlos and Alice are usually like oil and water and Carlos would spend the class bugging her but if all three were in class together Levi and Alice would hang out and Carlos would be fine) but that bites because Carlos would excel with it.
Like I said, sometimes parenting has some tough, tough choices.