To sleep in the living room?

[FamilyCircus]

DP and I live in a smallish 2 bedroom flat with DS (9). We are hopefully moving soon but can only afford another 2 bedroom flat, but in a nicer area and with a private garden.

Space will still be restricted and I want to change the way we live in our new home to give us more options. DP has recently been retired and DS is home educated, so for the foreseeable future we're all at home for most of the day and we get in each others way.

I've suggested that we do away with our bedroom and make it into a study/hobby area/home education zone. I want to buy this bed and put it in the living room for us to sleep on. Clothes storage will be in what would have been our bedroom.

I'm also going to get bunk beds for DS's room so one of us can sleep in with him if we want to go to bed earlier than the other.

Has anyone done this? Is it a stupid idea?

Yeah I know that feeling too.
My only other thought would be that I am trying to balance the needs of 2DDs(10 and 8) and DH and keeping a parent/child relationship between them without the DDs growing into the caring role.

Have you thought about how much outside social interaction your DS is getting to make sure he is getting the chance to develop his own life independently of the issues at home?

Social interaction is fine howabout. DS still has mates from his school days; they all live on the estate and play in the street/communal garden together. We observe school holidays so he doesn't feel like the odd one out. Plus he has a different set of friends that are also HE'd. Then there's cousins and family friends ...

I know what you mean about being aware of children slipping into caring roles. It's difficult to strike a balance with some things, although I may be being over-aware. A child occasionally fetching a drink for an adult is normal family life but I tend to jump up and do it because it shouldn't be DS's responsibility to fetch and carry for his disabled dad. Although, actually I think DS should be doing extra tasks because of DP, because IMO families should work together to find solutions. I just struggle to implement it and not feel bad.

but I never would have contemplated it if I'd known how life was going to pan out. Continuing with it is my way of trying to reduce the impact on DS, but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up.

Oh love, I am an "HEer due to circumstance rather than choice". It can be overwhelming at time, and our reality has had the double whammy of disability thrown into the mix.

What sort of issues did your DS have ? Would flexi schooling provide a better balanced answer than full on HE ?

and more importantly what support are you and your husband getting to help him transition to his new reality mobility wise ? Has he been offered some kind of counseling at least ?

our reality HASN'T had, rather.

Thanks for asking fastweb. DS was dx'd with autism when he was 3. He had just started nursery and his teacher practically laughed at us when we told her; he really doesn't come across as autistic at all, but quite obviously has some issues.

School became really shit for him. He couldn't cope with having to conform all day and would come home and self-harm . He became friends with the school bully who used to treat him like shit but he didn't 'get it'. Add to this that he was terribly behind on his learning. He could neither read or write. In fact he couldn't even hold a pencil.

We've never got to the bottom of his issues but they are less important now he's out of the system. I suspect he has mild dyspraxia but I'm loathe to put him through the diagnosis procedure again - it was damaging for all of us last time. His old school stated that they didn't feel that there was anything really wrong with him but admitted that he wasn't coping. I'd had enough by this point anyway.

Initially we removed him from school in order to give him a break, and then we were going to apply for a place at a school with better provisions for SN. We didn't get round to it as everything clicked into place while he was at home.

I've been testing the waters with him wrt going back to school lately. Things like "Well, you'll probably want to return when you're ready for high school", but to say he's unenthusiastic is an understatement.

So, if you don't mind me asking, why are you HEing? I read that your DS is unwell at the moment, but I assumed you meant a virus type thing. Or is because you've moved overseas?

I wouldn't want to sleep on the daybed everynight.

DS1 has it in his room. Is very comfortable as a single, with the mattresses on top of each other. Less so when is a double, with single thickness mattress.

It is an excellent bed though, and I'd get it for your ds rather than bunks TBH. Lots of storage.

I was just thinking that pooka. It would look good with DS's furniture and he would love to have a spare bed for sleep overs.

I'm looking at the murphy/wall beds now and wondering how I can build a cabinet round one when it's upright. It will cost £££ but I do love them. I could have one built in my bedroom and then put it out of the way and use the room for a second purpose during the day. Might be the best compromise?

FamilyCircus-we have been sleeping on the clic clac bed for about 6 months. It's super easy to put up and down too. If you get it-make your side the side that doesn't get sat on. I insisted that I wanted the seat area because I didn't want to be next to the wall-DH's side is much comfier and I'm trying to convince him to switch! We have it in chocolate and it kind of matches our L-shape sofa so it doesn't look odd-I wouldn't have wanted it to look like a bed in the living room during the day.

Our sofa is an L shape as well! It's in blue fabric at the moment but is being returned (delivered stained) and I'm changing it for cream leather. The clic clacs seem to come in lots of colours so we should be able to find something to compliment our sofa.

Where did you get yours from? I can't seem to find a manufacture website; only retailers. Am I being thick and they are actually a type of sofa bed rather than a range?

FamilyCircus

I live in Italy, with my Italian husband and our mini tricolore waver, who has a stinker of a cold, is feeling miserable and wants everybody to know it.

I do understand how you can reach a point where the stress of trying to "manage" an uncooperative school so your kid is both safe and getting an education is a worse prospect than dealing with fulltime HE. Because after three years in the elementary system it got to the point where my head was bleeding from banging it against a brick wall.

Italian state schools (and private schools, cos I have taught in them too and not seen any startling contrast), particularly in my area, have "issues".

I would never have chosen HE for its own sake, but once we started things "clicked" for us too, and my son has gone from slapping himself in the head saying "I'm stupid, STUPID !!" when he makes a minor mistake when learning something new, to understanding that errors are part of the risk taking process that is essential for growth. Not that surprisingly he is now learning and retaining to the extent that he has gone from an "only just" pass on his final school report, to full marks for his last state exams.

There were other issues, but I don't want to write a novel... and send my blood pressure up LOL

I suppose I thought we could take a breather and then work out what to do next...but there seems to be a lack of other options. Although I am turning over the idea of a "proper" online school later on down the line. But it isn't cheap and the timings are not great for us because we are an hour ahead, and it would be a struggle to fit all the Italian requirements around it.

I can only manage this because I can hand my son over to his dad by 3 at the latest, and most days that means he promptly goes out for his social stuff until past 7 (with daddy as his taxi driver). I can imagine that if you don't have that option to share the load then you must be feeling like you have no time for you at all.

Would it be worth looking into SN provision again once you have moved, even on a part time basis, or as a temporary measure until your husband has made a transition and come through the other side ?

I am getting the impression (perhaps mistakenly?) that your husband's depression over his recent disability is maybe the bigger issue, or the extra bale of straw leaving the camel in fear of its back ?

Absolutely fastweb. Life was pretty good before he was retired. God, it sounds soooo disloyal but I am generally not disloyal to him and do love him dearly.

He's had arthritis since he was 19 and has ignored it up until last year when he had to take time off sick to have an operation. I was happy to ignore it too because when it finally hit me that he would soon be in a wheelchair for the majority of the time I was devastated. He's only 37 . I think the hardest aspect for him is that his employer was so reasonable about retiring him. He thought he would be payed off, but they went the whole hog and declared that he would be unlikely to work again, for any employer, ever! It was shit for him.

So, there's a fair bit of anger on my part that I cannot talk about in real life. If DP had taken his DX more seriously when he was younger he would have been given meds and we may never have reached this point. I'm sure that when he finally accepts what's happened he will be angry with himself as well. I'm not looking forward to that stage. Please don't flame me for feeling this way; I'm not proud of it but there's not much point in denying it.

I had exactly the same thing with DS hitting himself. He used to punch himself in the forehead and call himself names. One of the worst times for me, just leading up to deregistering him, was when he came home and told me he'd been put in the wrong class. His teacher had made an innocent comment about all her students being very clever and he automatically excluded himself and thought there'd been a mistake. I was gutted.

Got to serve lunch now but want to say that hopefully DS will want to go back to school when we move. He won't have the same links there that he enjoys at the moment and may need to go to school to establish some new friendships.

I could gasbag about this all day.

Got ours in Argos.
Marwell Clic Clac Sofa Bed - Chocolate. 629/1181 order number!

God, it sounds soooo disloyal but I am generally not disloyal to him

Love, that is not disloyal. Grief, regrets, anger...they are are not only perfectly normal responses, but responses (to the profound changes you are BOTH going through) that really shouldn't be without an outlet.

We are responsible for MIL who is physically and mentally disabled, (which I appreciate is not the same level of struggle you are dealing with, there are far more layers when it is your spouse or your child who needs your care) and I would go stark raving mad if anybody suggested I wasn't allowed to feel the disappointments, the anger, the sense of being trapped, the regret and a whole host of other unpleasant emotions that can go with that reality.

In retrospect I wish we had gone in for some sort of counseling when things reached a point where it really changed our lives. But time did help as we got more used to the new reality and started to be able to see things we could jig about to make it easier to live with. What looked like being at the bottom of a dark pit turned out to be more of a tunnel, with light at the end. Although I find it is rather like driving through the mountains, you come out of one tunnel and spend some time in the sunshine, but there are new tunnels up ahead to get through. It's just they aren't as bad as the first one, when it was all so new and scary and I thought I was in a pit.

What I am trying to say is that YOU are entitled to feel the loss that YOU have suffered as well.

Do you have any sympathetic ears or shoulders available in RL ? Friends or family maybe ? Because having a place to vent and unload to stop stuff festering or getting volcanic from suppression can be a real help.

Does your husband's specialist know of any support groups for younger people dealing with his condition ? It might help him in the journey of coming to terms with things if he could unload onto people who totally understand what is going through his head and maybe even open up a new network that could lead to more opportunities over and above the TV. Which might take a good lump of pressure off you too.

School could be a good idea to help your DS make new links in the new area, I'm fairly certain that if we moved (fat chance with this market) I'd have to send DS back to school (in the short terms at least if we started having the same problems we've had here) to establish him in the community. I have traded so heavily on his school friend network to get him the sort of social life he needs\wants and it wasn't easy even with those connections in place.

Not sure it would have been that successful if we had come in "cold" to a place because he tends to make new friends via existing friends. He has always been pretty good at making friends from scratch when entering a new school, but less willing to entertain the idea of going into a social\sporty environment full of kids he doesn't know. It might be easier to sell the idea of a return to school "for now, while we adjust to our new home" rather than "forever" if he doesn't seem so keen on the idea and then revisit how permanent to make it once you both have had a chance to get a good idea of what it is like and how happy he is with it.

Thanks happy. I like that sofa bed. Does a double fitted sheet fit on it ok? I'm just thinking about how quickly I could set it up as a bed of an evening.

Hi Fastweb, thanks for your lovely message. I'm sorry to hear about your MIL. When it's your partner or child that is ill you have to accept that your life is going to change, but I don't think I'd be prepared to adapt as much as you have for my MIL.

We do have quite a lot of support. I've found another woman who's partner has the same type and severity of arthritis and we chat online a lot. They are a young couple too so she understands the hidden issues. My best friend is always there to listen and she encourages me to get out of the flat for a bit. Mumsnet has been a huge help as well.

Practical support has come mainly from those who we'd least expect it from. We had little to do with our neighbours before DP got too ill to work, but they have been great with helping me up the stairs with shopping and getting rid of old furniture for example. Our local shop are lovely as well. They are the only shop that DP can go to on his own as they will carry his bags out to the car so he doesn't have to struggle on his crutches. Our families aren't terribly helpful, which has surprised me. His family are emotionally distant and I can't work out what they really think. My mum is furious that we are prepared to move away from London and my dad irritates DP by keeping on asking him when he'll be back at work. He doesn't mean to be unkind, he just doesn't understand how you can be retired in your 30s'.

There are support groups, both online and in the community that DP can join. It doesn't surprise me that he won't though; he's never been that type of man. I have waited so long for him to do the most basic things such as apply for a Blue Badge that I end up doing them myself. I can't access emotional support for him though, so it doesn't happen.

As for school for DS, yes, I would really like him to go back when we move. I've loved having him at home with me but I need a some headspace now.

Thanks for chatting about this