I absolutely Love this!! I sent it to my daughter... I can relate and I was actually called more than mean when they 'thought' I couldnt hear. My kids are not 'perfect' by no means, but they sure try hard and are not in any trouble. Since my daughter moved into her own apt. about 3 months ago she calls and we talk every day...we talk more now than we did when she lived at home... Makes me very proud!!! Dena

What an awsome group we have here! I'm teary-eyed reading your kind and generous responses to my outbutst. Sooey, my Mom's 91, and yes, when it's a Mom who's done everything for her family, had more energy than most people half her age, it's terribly difficult and unfair to see them this way; I hope your Mom's light-years away from where my Mom is now... Mark, what a coincidence about the stove! My Mom was leaning on our stove a few days ago, playing with the dials! I'm sure somewhere she knew what they were for, but I'm also quite sure she couldn't rationalize the danger she would have been in had she turned one on near her! How sad what happened in your town...those poor children... Lasershow, yes she's had an MRI, and there's nothing significantly wrong, such as a tumor, etc. Her neurologist has done her own testing and determined it to be dementia/alzeimers. We have thought about visiting various homes in the area, and I imagine that if it's been determined that she's a candidate, we'll begin that process. I've only been in one as a visitor to a friend's Dad, and....well...it's not 'home', is it? I'm honestly not sure anything would be good enough for Mom.... Fairiegold: you almost make it sound feasible! ;-) Sometimes I can picture a more idyllic situation: nice visits, bringing her treats, flowers, taking her on rides...without the mundane duties that can frustrate both of us...Now wouldn't that be so nice??? Sharlee, I'm assuming your Mom was living alone when she suffered her stroke and subsequent dementia? If that were true for my Mom, a facility would certainly be the obvious choice, as it was for you and your brother. Having had her here for 10 years or so...I feel more like I'm failing in her care by placing her. Your Mother seems like she's in a wonderful situation, comforted by her own possessions and receiving loving care. We should all aspire to that for our family members... Mary, yes, we too found an angel who cares for Mom each morning. She showers her, has coffee with her, gets her snacks, and is here for 1 1/2hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 2 hours on Tuesdays, and 4 hours on Thursdays: my DH's and my "date days"...;-) On those days she has lunch with Mom also, and gives her "the full treatment", including manicure! Mom truly loves her and she's become a part of our family! Patti, having to care for your uncle, I think, would be even more difficult. Maybe it's just me, but being close to Mom, and both being gals, I'm certainly more comfortable with caring for her....Does your uncle live with you? How is his condition? His age? I sure do tip my hat to you, Patti! It can't be easy... I hope you ALL take the same advice you offered to me, and take good care of yourselves, too! It's funny...I didn't really feel anything coming on, just felt as if one day rolled into the next, that I was coping quite well, thank you, and then the restlessness began, the not sleeping through the nights, getting 'edgy', resentful, impatient...Not good for me, and certainly not good for my Mother. Thank heavens where I leave off, my darling Hubby takes over with his calmness and sense of humour. Humour helps! ;-D Blessings to you all...I'm sure I'll know more after her assessment on Friday.... Thank you so very much; I hope I can be as helpful to you one day!

snork! My brother & I once had to share dishwashing duty. He had to turn his face upward to look down his nose at me, but he did it, & pronounced that washing dishes was women's work & I'd have to do it all. Luckily, my mother heard him & straightened that out. Then he decided that the way to get out of washing dishes was to be very very bad at it, so he put dishes into the rack with crusted-on food, put forks in the drawers with spaghetti stuck to the tines, broke a few dishes. didn't work. (I do like the idea of the cape.)

Yes, A__ has ADHD. He's coming up on 11yo now, and he is MUCH better at coping with his ADHD and his emotions than he was at 8. I credit this to several key causes: 1) He is older and wiser. 2) We have worked on tooshies off with him to provide him with coping techniques. 3) Less time with GM and more time with BM (who has stepped up a lot in the last year - in part due to her fiance. I still disagree with many of her parenting choices, but she's 50-fold improved) Even on days where ADHD isn't getting the better of A__, he still sometimes looks for negative attention. When that happens, we try to remove ALL attention until he is ready to receive positive attention. And we frame it just like that to him: "A__, you seem to be looking for attention right now; but I think you are looking for bad attention. Please come back when you are ready for good attention." "A__, that was not a very nice thing to say. You can go to your room until you are ready to apologize and be nice. Then we will continue with ___what_we_were_doing__." "A__, I realize that you are angry, and that's OK. But until you can deal with your anger in a nice way, I don't want to be around you. When you are ready to talk about what is bothering you, please come back and we can figure this out." Do you think your DH would be able to switch to an approach like that? Unless it is a "major offense," A__ doesn't usually get an additional consequence after we have started fresh. We've found that this is eliciting better behavior from him that when we tried stricter consequences for the same behaviors. For example: A few weeks ago, A__ had a minor mouth-off to me when asked to put on his coat to play outside. He was informed that he could go out when he was ready to apologize for his smart-mouth and wear his coat. Five minutes later he came out of his sulk and said "Ceph, I'm sorry for being rude and I would like to play outside and I will wear my coat." So off he went and all was well. But later that day, when we were headed to the hockey game and discovered he had shoved hunks of cinder blocks under the tires of the car, but shouted that he "didn't give a crap" when we said this was a problem... Well, we still had hockey tickets we had paid for, so we decided he wouldn't get to roam and wander at the game (he loves to roam the arena), no snacks or treats at the game, and straight to bed when we got home. He apologized partway through the game. We accepted his apology, and the next morning, we just started from scratch with a new day.