Coping with kids, noise, marriage and life in general

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Hi guys are there any mums on here that have kids? I have two sons 3, and 5 who are very very loud, very very messy, love rough play and are just so full on. To top this off my hubby works two jobs, I'm studying and our marriage is really suffering. Just wondering whether anyone has any tips for coping with the stress of all the noise, constant mess, and lack of support? I'm really struggling at the moment and I haven't found any useful resources on tips for aspie mums to cope with everything that comes with the territory of having kids. Any advice would be much appreciated thanks

I have two kids, so I can relate to being stressed out about the mess and the noise. My husband is really good about giving me "me" time when he's home, during which I read books or play video games. Sometimes I also go out shopping by myself to get out of the house, and he makes dinner and gets the kids to clean up their stuff a bit while I'm out. I'm pretty lucky in that way; my husband understands that I get overwhelmed easily and need a lot of time alone.

I had a mommy friend for a while and that made things so mug better because my husband works all the time. As our kids got older, she stopped wanting to do mommy things since her parents watch her kids every weekend. I don't have a sitter option so I can only do things that include my child. Now that I'm missing adult interaction I'm on a mission to meet another mom or a few moms who also have their kids in tow most of the time. I've also noticed that it's a bit harder getting play dates because my kid is non-verbal due to either ASD or intense boredom with earthlings. I guess my advice is find like minded parents to hang with. It definitely made the first year a lot better to have a mum to meet and vent with.

We have four: DDs 14, 7, and 4 and DS9. The middle two are very loud, very active, and very competitive. DS9 has an ADHD diagnosis and I honestly suspect DD7 has it too but won't get her dx'd unless it causes problems in school.

Hubby has become a lot more supportive since I had a complete breakdown in 2011 and really have not recovered well. But he's in engineering, his job is very stressful and demanding, and I'm the SAHP, so it's mostly me. I have a couple of parent friends but most of my friends are long-distance and childless by circumstance or choice. Due to drug and behavioral issues, I don't have much contact with my family of origin any more; other than his parents, my husband was alienated from his family or origin by a culture of abuse decades ago. My parents are deceased; his mother is still living but is 1000+ miles away for all but a few months in the summer when she stays with us (as much a stressor as a relief). We are basically on our own.

I adopted a policy of benign neglect when DS and Middle DD were toddlers. At that time, my hubby had a traveling job and I was completely on my own other than earning money. I don't know of any expert that recommends my practices, but it worked for raising me, and so far my kids seem to be thriving.

I make sure they are fed, watered, well, doctored, dentisted, educated, hugged and kissed, brushed and bathed, supervised, and safe. We do now occasionally allow them to be home alone with DD 14 as a sitter, but we are never gone long and never more than 30 minutes away (and always in possession of cell phones).

Other than that, I don't take a real active role. If they're behaving well and I'm feeling well and they want to interact with me, I will play games with them or talk with them or take them to the park or have them assist in housework. We do a fair bit of stuff together. We converse often.

If they're being little demon bats, I ask them several times to stop, and then I remove myself to my room (or send them to theirs if their behavior is truly egregious). The basic concept here is "Pissing Mommy off means temporarily losing access to Mommy's favor. No playmate, no cool snacks, no Mommy fun. Mommy will always love you and always come back later, but if you make Mommy mad Mommy will not do anything extra. Don't make Mommy mad." It seems to work. Sometimes the threat motivates them to modify their behavior and sometimes it doesn't-- and when it doesn't, it gives me time to do something I want (read a book, call someone, veg out on the Internet) before my head explodes and profanities and pea soup start spraying out of my mouth.

Benign neglect applies to housework, too. It's sanitary 97% of the time (and the other 3% is the couple of days that elapse between realizing it's time to shampoo the carpet and actually doing so). It's Tidy Enough about 60% of the time. The meals are nutritionally sound most of the time and everyone can find clothes that are clean and appropriate to the weather. If they want their favorite t-shirt/fencing gear/soccer uniform clean, I take only so much responsibility for that. I do at least one load of laundry six days a week, fold it, and deposit it in the bed of its owner. I put my clothes, my husband's clothes, and the baby's clothes away. Everyone else?? If it's not clean, it's because it didn't make it to the hamper. If it's all wrinkled and smells like dog, that's because you didn't put it away. Tough. Other than Hubby's, I round up clothes from bedrooms once a week. If you wanted it before then, you shoulda put it in the hamper.

If someone wants to visit us, the welcome mat is always out. Coffee can be ready in 10 minutes. If someone wants to visit a neat and beautifully decorated house, they should visit someone else. Someday I will have a magazine house. Today is not that day, and the next 10 years aren't looking good either.

I have some anxiety about adequacy and judgment. I'm in therapy for that. 25 mg of Zoloft induces sufficient apathy to keep that down to an ignorable level, at the acceptable cost of mild somnolence and anorgasmia. I wasn't that big a fan of orgasms anyway.

I have discovered that no one is going to give me time to decompress unless I take it, and no one is going to lower my stress level but me (and maybe .125 to .25 mg of Klonopin when it's really hitting the fan and/or it's clearly entirely me; I have a philosophical objection to getting high, but there's a time and place for everything and the prescription is medically legit and legal).

As for the husband happiness and/or marital harmony thing, I'm the wrong person to ask. I've had my best luck, in my opinion, by making an effort to be fairly submissive and trying not to resent it. Cook what he likes, do what he asks, keep my feelings to myself except by invitation as much as possible, minimize the display of negative emotions, agree with him whenever possible, don't reject sexual advances without an overwhelming medical reason (such as serious illness or recent childbirth-- not menstruation or fatigue or headache).

Our marriage is not particularly blissful; it is not particularly terrible either. It seems pretty average other than having moderate to serious communication issues that I suspect are driven by both of us lacking a healthy paradigm, my autism, and his ADHD.

He would argue with that and say that this behavior is the cause of most of our problems. He may very well be correct, but at this time I do not agree.

If we find a blissful solution, I will be the first to tell the entire Internet.

Hubby enjoys cooking. He has taken over responsibility for the bulk of weekend meals and some during the week when he has time and energy. This is good, because while I can cook and am conscientious about making meals that are economical and nutritionally sound according to current guidelines, I'm not exactly aces at making it look appealing or taste delicious. Hubby, meanwhile, could legitimately make a living as a professional chef if engineering doesn't work out for him.

He has also taken a more active role in the maintainence of the place since losing about 60 pounds and convincing himself that his father was wrong in declaring him incompetent. He and DD14 now both contribute to mowing the yard (this is of great value to me as I do not tolerate heat well) and picking up, and he has taken an interest in participating in DIY projects toward home maintainence and finding contractors for the things that are over our heads. We just replaced the floor in the kids' bathroom; he picked out new paint and tile, spackled and primed the drywall, did 50% of the removal of the old floor and quite a bit of the laying of the new floor, laid the tile, helped reset the toilet, and mostly installed the new cabinet and sink. I painted, did the rest of the demolition and floor replacement, and helped with the toilet and sink. The tile is beautiful. The paint job is awful. In my defense, I was in a hurry and stoned on Klonopin when I painted. Oh well. Nobody is going to die of brush marks and missed spots. I'll do another coat when I'm bored in the fall, after the kids go back to school.

Learn to find humor in it all. Perhaps dark humor, but nonetheless...

Appreciate the rich irony that is yelling "PLEASE STOP YELLING!!" For the umpteenth time.

Enjoy the humor of the fact that, the more you need personal space, the more they need to crawl up your butt. I'm sure you've experienced by now the absolute magic that takes place the moment your keister touches a toilet seat.

Honestly?? There's a difference between enforcing some hard boundaries and being a neglectful parent.

@ Buyer Beware.

I really get what you said in your post.

I think I have some very similar ways and it has helped me raise 6 kids and keep most of my sanity intact.

As my kids tell me, I am an unconventional parent, but it works.

I'm really interested in this too. My partner has been in jail for 4 months now (for a very minor DUI)... He's the one who worked, I'm a stay at home mom because he knows how badly I struggle with the stress at work... So, I'm dirt poor right now and doing this all on my own. I've been trying to meditate to calm me down because there isn't much of anything i can do to get a break. Today, when I finally got into a deep calm with my white noise playing in my earphones, my little tot woke up and crawled up on my tummy. I opened my eyes and he pulls out my headphones, "MOMMA!" This, I swear is impossible. He only sleeps for about 20-30 minutes a day.

I'm not coping well at the moment, but my usual strategies are pretty similar to the ones already shared. I did too much productive stuff yesterday and am paying the price today. My 8yo wants to go somewhere today, but I cannot manage it and she's very upset. I'm hiding in my room. The other three are occupying themselves pretty well right now.

Benign neglect often works well with both the children and the house. I have an app on my phone that is also an RPG and I get points and level up when I do important things in real life, like sweep the floor (one of the things for today) and do the dishes. It pops up on my phone with reminders to do those things also.

Marriage.... I don't know. I thought ours was great until a few years ago when my husband informed me that he had been unhappy for a very long time due to a lack of emotional support from me and his habit of reading into everything I said and did, which I had repeatedly told him not to do, but he kept doing it. That's also around the time that a good friend/colleague suggested I look into ASD and my entire life actually made sense for the first time ever. But I don't know how to cope with a marriage now that I am not simply ignorantly blissful. It's been very stressful lately, but it's always either difficult or impossible for me to talk about my feelings so I just kind of bumble along the best I can.

I will have been married 30 years in March and was a housewife for most of that. I have four kids. 27, 22, 21 and the youngest will be 20 next month. That's right, my three youngest were 18 months apart before my husband got fixed. I was at home with them constantly until they started school. I had three in diapers for a while. I kinda went nuts.

During that time I did take a part time weekend and evening job for a few months, and I also wrote an op-ed column for a newspaper for a good bit longer, because I could do that by mail and after they went to sleep or at naps or while they watched cartoons.

They were loud. They got into everything. We could have nice anything. I went a little nuts. Then I figured it out.

You have to take time for yourself. Even though I was home I'd take mine to a day care once a week most of the time. When I got home I'd go upstairs and read or get online or see or something alone and my husband took over for a few hours. We would send them all away to grandparents about once a month for a weekend so we could sleep and do nothing and get drunk at the same time and play loud music. You have to have that time. I've tried to go without it and had to go without it and I went crazy. Not actual crazy but regular crazy. I did have an anxiety disorder for a few years during that time but I don't know if it was caused by the kids. It could have been. It was hectic and chaos even though I was like Donna freaking Reed with the housework and crafts and all. although I never played with the kids, I don't know how. I talked to them. Like adults. And we went places to see and do cool things.

But make sure you take that time for you. It's not selfish. That's true if all moms but having AS makes us easier to overload. You can only do so much, and AS doesn't mean you can do less, I did just as much, if not more, than other moms. It just means that it's more important for us to have time set aside that we can count on and look forward to so we can relax and do what we want and not be interrupted every five minutes or expecting to be interrupted. It makes more of a difference than you think.

You can't really tell a difference in how your car runs when you change the oil or plugs but go a few years without doing it and you'll be on the side of the highway. That's what will happen to your mind if you don't take your time.

I don't care how you do it but get some time for you. Every day is best but at least once or twice a week. and send the kids to the grandparents or a friend's for a weekend every so often and don't spend that time studying or cleaning or sleeping. spend it with your husband. In bed, drinking, dancing, laying around doing nothing, talking. If you don't then you will lose each other and when the kids get older you'll figure out you don't like each other. It's the only way to stay in love. Do it! You may have to sacrifice something else. But figure out what's worth more. Sanity and your marriage or whatever or whatever it is you are sacrificing. Put off what you can still all the kids are in school. It gets a lot easier then. Even if it's school I hate to say, but since he's got two jobs you can't get him to do what my husband did with one job, wouldn't be fair.

Good luck and PM me if i can help or you just want to vent.

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