So, as you may, or may not know, we have had a lot of changes and upheaval in our household in the past year. We moved to a new community, one son graduated from college in the spring and then in the fall he moved overseas for two years, the other older son is back in college, we experienced the death of a grandparent.<\/p>\n
Lots of things. So, clearly, it seemed like a good idea to go ahead and do some fairly significant renovations on the house.<\/p>\n
Now just to be clear, I\u2019m totally joking that it seemed like a good time. But, the renovations needed to be done so since we were already in a period of transition, we decided to go for it.<\/p>\n
Clearly, any renovation is hard, regardless of what is being done and when it happens. Even with only one or two adults and no children living in a home, it would be difficult. And with each \u201cvariable\u201d, it gets exponentially more difficult. I only have one kid currently in the home\u2026but then trauma just brings an extra layer of \u201cstuff\u201d to the mix.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the why: my kiddo really needs to know what\u2019s happening ahead of time. But if you\u2019ve ever done any sort of remodeling work, you know that you can\u2019t always rely on the schedule you\u2019re given. Sure, they\u2019ll be there at 8 o\u2019clock tomorrow morning\u2026or it might be 11 or later. Or they might not show up at all. Yes, they\u2019ll be done by Friday\u2026or it might be another week of work. The list goes on, obviously; there are many possibilities for what can happen in home renovations.<\/p>\n
And since we homeschool, and he\u2019s home all day, I have to give my son the schedule for the day, each day (what\u2019s happening, who is going to be at the house or where we have to go, etc\u2026), each morning. And sometimes he will ask for the schedule the night before as well. If he was gone during the day, this would obviously help this situation\u2026although he would want to know what *should* be done each day and would have words for me about it if it wasn\u2019t. Because even though he knows logically that I am not responsible for other people\u2019s work, trauma often trumps logic and the downstairs brain can hijack him before we can have a rational conversation.<\/p>\n
Point being: let me just encourage you that if you\u2019re going to go down the path of home renovations, just know that your child is probably going to need a lot of reassurance, comforting, connection with you, and some grace.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t mean there isn\u2019t structure, that doesn\u2019t mean there aren’t boundaries, and all of the typical things that we, as parents, use to provide as much control as we can. But when there\u2019s a lot more lack of structure than usual, due to circumstances outside of our control (during home renovations, for instance), grace is kind of where we have to camp. As with most advice I give you, I don\u2019t do it lightly. Of course our home renovation project (which ended up being three projects when it was all said and done\u2026yay for living in an older home!) was estimated to take a week and a half. It ended up being about three and a half weeks.<\/p>\n
The other piece of this, at least for us, is that in addition to trauma, sometimes children from hard places have an additional diagnosis which adds to the complexity of the situation. My son, for example, struggles with ADHD\u2026so you can imagine how entertaining it was for him when there was a revolving door of new and different people in the house; clearly on those days it was difficult to get him to focus.<\/p>\n
As a quick aside, for us, that\u2019s where the beauty of homeschooling (see my previous post for more on making the right schooling decision for your child) kicked in: He loves to learn new things and definitely is a visual, as well as and auditory, learner so if you show him something once and explain it once, he\u2019s probably going to know how to do it. Thankfully, most of the contractors were amazing with him and let him watch them work. Some would even answer his unending questions or let him help by getting them the tools they needed, etc.<\/p>\n
So while not a typical school day when the workers were here, I could view his observation of all these contractors as PART of a school day. I have to take a win where I can. He\u2019s learning something new, it just might not be the traditional school day\u2026and again that\u2019s OK. Takes us back to that idea of grace, right?<\/p>\n
I say all that to say this: I don\u2019t know that I have too much wisdom to impart for a time like this, because a home renovation is probably not going to be great or easy or simple or anything of that sort. But, you CAN get through it, especially when you are able to step back and realize that your child doesn\u2019t want to be upset or thrown off by this anymore than you do. And if you can stay regulated, you can share your calm with them which will hopefully restore or maintain THEIR calm\u2026which is always the goal, right?<\/p>\n
Godspeed and happy renovating!<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Kris<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, as you may, or may not know, we have had a lot of changes and upheaval in our household in the past year. We moved to a new community, one son graduated from college in the spring and then in the fall he moved overseas for two years, the other older son is back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kriss-corner"],"yoast_head":"\n