Also writer how's that email to Dr. Harley coming along?

And the mass advertising of your services as an after-school carer, ready for August?

Nothing is coming along right now. Just focusing on trying to breathe.

DD3 came down with a horrible flu a week ago, and now I've got it. Sick all weekend. We've hardly slept. Fever, hacking cough, aches/pain. I haven't felt this bad in years. Ugh.

But we are writing up a contract for DS to sign, which will include either getting a job and paying rent or going back to school among other things. If he doesn't sign it, he will have to find alternate accommodations.

Sympathies, writer. Flu is horrendous.

Make your son agree to three babysitting sessions per week also.

Feel better, writer. That sucks.

We have an adult child that has struggled with mental health issues since early childhood also (ours was kicked out of preschool) and we also went through the numerous dx. that evolved from one thing to another, Dr's., medications, schools, you name it.

Our child also decided not to follow our rules and moved out at 18, but had to return at 19, with no job. We offered two choices, she could return home and go to school full time, and we would support her, or she could return temporarily, get a full time job, and pay rent.

Our child had to call and ask our permission to return, not just sneak in. We reviewed all rules an expectations prior to her returning. She agreed over the phone. She decided no school and agreed to seek full time employment.

Once here she was not getting up and job hunting. I gave her a couple days, then I got up every morning and demanded she get her butt up and out there. She had numerous excuses, (lost all her clothes, too hot, no car) I told her I did NOT care about any of that, these were all a result of her poor choices.

She did find a job, even with all of her "obstacles" she then refused to follow our rules, or pay rent, so she made the choice to make other arrangements. She now lives independently. Was she furious? You bet! Did it put a strain on our parent/child relationship? Yep! Did she get over it? YES!

I have always held this child accountable for her actions, choices, and consequences, regardless of mental health issues, because I always knew the real world would.

Of course raising her was far more challenging then the other children. We did have to pick our battles with her to a point. We have boundaries with her, she would never think she could just grab up her stuff, and just return home without speaking to us first. Of course she has violated our boundaries in the past, but if we find out about it, we come down on her like a ton of bricks.

Enabling is not the answer. I understand you don't want your child on the streets, of course not, but he needs boundaries, and rules. If he does not follow the rules, he needs to go else where. Be prepared that he may "agree" to the guidelines but test the boundaries, or just flat out not keep his word.

I am very proud of my daughter, she has had many challenges in life and been through far more then most young people already in her life, but she is strong. Have faith in your son, and the lessons you have taught him.

Thanks tismeagain.

Yes, my son came home unannounced and is now very unhappy about the fact that we are not backing down as far as our expectations that he follow our rules. We have told him that he needs to sign a contract and then follow that contract if he chooses to live here. So far, he is refusing to do that, so we have informed him that he has to make other arrangements as far as a place to live. I think he's having a hard time coming up with something, but that really isn't my problem. He knows he's welcome here, as long as he agrees to the rules.

I love my son. I always will. But no, I am not willing to give in and let him do whatever he wants and still live under my roof. I know that wouldn't be doing him any favors.

On a different note. I went to the doctor today and finally got some antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection. Hoping to feel like a human being again in a couple of days. Also ordered HNHN For Parents and Love Busters. They should be here in a few days. I've read HNHN before, but I think the one for parents will be more helpful at this point in our lives. I thought I had Love Busters, but it might have gotten lost in the move, so I reordered it. H has expressed interest in doing the MB program, so once everyone is feeling better we will be diving into the books.

Well, child care issues are still a problem. We spent several hours Thursday and Friday trying to line up child care for this weekend. Called pretty much everyone we know, and a lot of people we don't know (mostly teens from the church here that we don't actually attend but are still members of). Came up with a big fat nothing. I've checked Craig's List and care.com too, but I haven't been able to find anything under $10 an hour, and we just can't afford $40-$50 in child care for one date. That exceeds our total budget for dates without spending anything on the actual date at all. I am willing to pay, but realistically, we can't pay more than $20 for a night and I just can't find someone willing to watch her for that amount.

Here is the sad reality - when you have a child, the child has to come first. I can schedule all of the UA time I want and make it as big a priority as I want, but if someone won't agree to watch our DD, I can't very well leave her alone in order to put my marriage first.

I'm very frustrated.

For the past two weeks, we've maybe had 5 hours of UA time a week. Getting DD into bed early hasn't been working well at all. Ever since she was sick for 2 weeks, her sleep has been all off kilter and she's been waking up a lot. My mom watched her for 3 hours last weekend, but she will only do that once in awhile. She doesn't believe married people need much time alone. No one in my family or my husband's family does. And we know very few people where we live now. UA time for this week is looking like a big fat 0.

We did receive our books in the mail, but we haven't had any time alone to start reading them. Not sure it will do much good, since the 15+ hours a week of UA time is the cornerstone of this program, and it just seems impossible that we're ever going to manage that. Right now, we're spending much of our time on the phone trying to arrange for child care. But it feels like beating my head against a wall at this point. I didn't think it would be so hard to find care for one 3-year-old. I was wrong.

Why would you need to be alone to read a book?

Don't you live in an apartment complex? Do you have a notice board somewhere, like at the pool or something? Make a flyer advertising that you are in need of a babysitter for, say, Tues, Thurs evenings from 7 to 9pm, and Saturdays from 6 until 10. Surely there are some 13yo's who would be willing to do it for $5/hr, or you could barter with a single working woman--she watches DS3 for you, you clean her apartment while she is at work.

You are so full of excuses for why you can't do something. GET CREATIVE. If you don't know people, what do you do during the day? Perhaps you could visit parks and actually talk to other local mothers, or actually GO to the church and be social, and visit the common areas in your complex and meet your neighbors, or arrange a meet and greet for the people in your building, even if you do that in your own apartment. I am not hugely social, but when we bought this house, one of the first things I did was invite all the people from the houses I can see from my lot over for a cookout. How else was I going to meet them?

No message boards allowed here. We asked the management about it when we first moved in and they said it was against corporate policy. I have tried to meet people in my complex, but really, almost no one speaks English here and I don't speak Spanish. We live in one of two low-income, Section-8 complexes in our city, so most of my neighbors are Hispanic and probably not in the country legally. I've tried talking to them in the laundry room and such, but we don't get very far.

I do go to the park and library story time. I'm not social at all. It's difficult for me to meet people. I do talk to other mothers sometimes, but most of them seem to come to the library/park in groups, so they are mostly talking amongst themselves. And it always seems to be different people all the time, so I haven't really gotten to know anyone.

As far as church goes, I don't actually believe in that sort of thing, so it seems wrong to attend just to obtain baby sitting.

I'm not trying to make excuses. We literally spent 3-4 hours both Thursday and Friday trying to contact a possible sitter. We started contacting people last weekend to line something up for this weekend. We have left messages with dozens of people and gotten no responses. I have scoured ads for baby sitters in my area, but have found nothing I can remotely afford.

Those aren't excuses. They are facts. I really am trying everything I can think of here.

Have you written Dr. Harley like you said you would?

Actually, yes you did think it would be so hard. You have been very pessimistic about finding childcare from the very beginning, dashing any suggestions given to you instead of brainstorming and finding solutions.

You're setting yourself up for failure.

No, I haven't written to Dr. Harley yet. I thought we were figuring it out on our own. Apparently not.

What suggestions have I dashed? Craig's List was suggested, as was care.com. I am trying those. Local teens or people from church were suggested. I am trying those. I'm just not getting any responses. I don't see how I can do any more than I'm currently doing. I can contact people. I can't force them to respond. I looked up drop-in care centers this morning, but the cheapest one I found was $35 for registration, and then $9 an hour. We just can't pay that. My H is on the phone right now, still trying. Really, we are fighting hard to find a solution here, but we keep hitting walls.

Yes, I thought it would be hard to find and afford someone for 15 hours a week. I didn't think it would be that hard to find someone for a date night once a week. It's turning out to be much more difficult than I thought. It might be because it's summer and all the teens are off at camp or on vacation or busy doing stuff. I don't know. But we are trying. We're pretty much spending all of our free time looking for child care.

Finally got a call back from someone, but it is still $10/hr. for one child. That is the going rate even for teens in our area it seems. Everyone has been quoting the same price.

I guess that's what I get for living in such an expensive area. I suppose that doesn't seem like much to the people earning $96K a year (average median salary for my area). But it's a heck of a lot of money when you earn less than half that.

I'm hoping not to live here forever. DH is trying very hard to find a job somewhere more affordable. But for now, I may have to accept the fact that a lot of our dates are going to have to include a 3-year-old or occur in our apartment after she's in bed at night.

Go back and read through your thread again. A lot of times when someone suggests something, you come back immediately with "I don't think that will work ..." instead of trying to figure out how to make it work. I know that's how you responded to many of posts, without actually trying the suggestions, or trying to brainstorm ways to modify the suggestions.

There's a lot of negative thinking going on on your part, and makes it difficult for anyone to help you.

You said you would write Dr. Harley. When are you going to do it?

This really gets me. YOU SAID you would write him. Yet you have not. Why say it if you're not going to do it?

If the going rate to babysit is $10 an hour in your area, START BABYSITTING. Take advantage of that. I think that's been suggested. But you have a lot of excuses why it can't work ....

How does that help me get UA time with my H? Wouldn't I have less time if I'm watching other people's children evenings and weekends? That is the going rate for occasional, date-night type baby sitting, which would occur mostly during hours when my H is home.

The main reason I don't do full-time daycare is because of my living situation. It simply wouldn't work in our apartment. We have enough trouble with the downstairs neighbors complaining that our one child makes noise. Our first downstairs neighbors moved out because of the noise. The new ones have complained too. We've gotten notices on our door because of the noise. I don't know how this is possible, since our DD is tiny (30 lbs.) and not particularly rambunctious. The only conclusion I have been able to come to is that our apartment is very badly constructed and prone to making noise when we walk.

I am looking for opportunities to baby sit in someone else's house. I have applied for a number of positions, but haven't found one yet. I am registered with care.com. I also tested for a job last week as a library clerk and am awaiting results of the test to see if I move on to the next phase of hiring (which I am confident I will). Also applied for a job at a school library for the upcoming school year. Testing for that job is at the end of the month.

I am trying here. I only bring up objections to suggestions when there are legitimate reasons why they won't work in my situation. I do look for alternatives that might work. Examples of that are above, such as looking for baby sitting jobs in someone else's home.

Honestly, I don't know. I thought we were starting to make some progress, so I decided to wait and see.

Part of it is the fact that similar situations have already been presented on the radio show, and I've listened to the clips. Not sure if I would get much different advice than what has already been given.

Part of it is the fact that I'm extremely introverted. I do mean extremely. I'm very shy and have some social anxiety issues. I communicate fine in writing. Not so great in person. I'm very afraid to talk to someone on the radio. I've never done anything like that before. I grew up very isolated - single, working mother who wasn't home much and slept a lot when she was home. I wasn't allowed to go outside while I was home alone, so I spent most of my time while I was growing up in the house, playing by myself. I've come a long way socially since then, but I don't know if I've come far enough to be on a radio show.

Umm...you babysit three times a week for 4 hours each time, and you earn enough to pay someone else to babysit for YOU three different days of the week for four hours at a time and go out with your H.

So when are you going to send that email to Dr. Harley? They are back in the country and so you should hear soon.

I don't understand why you don't take free counseling from the best?
With all the posts you've written you could've sent an email many times.

What's the real reason you won't write the Harleys?

You don't have to be on the radio. He can just send you a response.
Here's another good clip.
Radio clip on UA with children