u/Confident_Swimming84

My 5yo just started kindergarten. and I could really use some advice. She has sensory-seeking behaviors and was receiving OT, but we’ve used up the appointments covered by insurance for the year. She’s also being evaluated for an IEP at school.

She’s struggling with numbers, counting, and understanding worksheets, along with fine-motor skills like coloring and tracing. The problem is that she really fights me on doing any of these things at home. I’ve tried little circuits of counting, coloring, tracing, etc., but it turns into a battle every time. I quickly run out of patience and say, fuck it.

As a solo parent, my weekdays are packed, so weekends are really the only time I have to work on these things but I refuse to center my weekends around this.

I know she needs extra support, but I’m feeling completely overwhelmed and don’t know how to help a child who refuses to participate.

Parents who have been through this: what actually worked? Any low-prep, playful ways to work on counting, numbers, fine motor skills, etc. without it feeling like therapy or school? And how do you balance this as a parent with limited time and energy?

I’d really appreciate realistic advice, thanks.

For the last couple weeks, bedtime has been HELL. Every night, within 5–10 minutes of me leaving her room, she starts crying, screaming, and yelling for me. The excuse is almost always that she has to go potty. I let her go, and she never actually goes. I send her back to bed.

Then the cycle repeats. Three times. Every single night. By that point, I'm LIVID. I live in a small condo with neighbors on every side, so there's nowhere to escape the screaming. Then she completely loses it, screaming bloody murder because I won't keep coming back into her room. This is when my nervous system goes into fight mode, because flight won't fucking work! After 10+ minutes of her kicking the door, screaming like she's dying, I am FED TF UP.

I genuinely don't know what to do. I don't have the patience or emotional capacity to spend another hour sitting in her room trying to calm her down every night when I still have three loads of laundry to do, take a shower, or just get enough sleep before work the next day. You know, take care of my self???

I know some parents will say to just stay in the room, never raise your voice, and keep comforting them for as long as it takes. But I can't do that every single nihjt. You reach the last straw, and when it's the last straw, what do you do? I'm a single mom with no backup, and by bedtime I'm completely tapped out.

My current "coping strategy" is basically walking away and trying to disassociate, blair a video with my earbuds in, but that doesn't work when she's screaming in the bedroom right next to mine and I can hear every second of it. And so can my neighbors.

Do I leave and take a walk in the neighborhood? FFS!!

I need advice. Please don't suggest having someone else help or taking turns. There is no one.

TLDR: What do you do when your child won't stop screaming at bedtime and you have absolutely nothing left in you?

Today my boss told me that, as part of a global restructuring of our communications and marketing org, I'm being moved off my current North America marketing team and onto a team based in Germany that supports China and Asia.

I'm trying to keep my cool, but I'm struggling to see how this is supposed to work. I'm based in the U.S., which puts me about 6 hours behind Germany and even further behind much of Asia. I'll apparently be the only person on this team located in North America.

I'm also a single mom with a young child, so the idea of regularly working across multiple time zones on the other side of the world... is actually impossible if I want to be able to rest and unwind.

What confuses me is that my boss told me he has known about this for about a month, and that it's effective July 1 but a slow transition through end of year.

He said he didn't tell me sooner because it was around the time of my daughter's birthday and he didn't want to disrupt that time for me which I REALLY appreciate. But why wouldn't he tell me sooner so I could have had more time to process and prepare?

I also suspect some of my coworkers may have known before I did. Recently I jokingly said, "Watch, I'm probably getting cut," and one teammate gave me a look that made me feel like she knew something I didn't.

Here's another issue. I'm being moved under a manager who has a reputation for being a micromanager and difficult to work with. The reason I'm being transferred, according to leadership, is that they need someone to support a large website project and I'm currently the only person on my team with significant website management experience.

For context, I work for a large global automotive technology company, I'm in my early 30s, and I'm a mid-level marketing communications professional.

I'm going to roll with it because I don't really have a choice, but I'd love to hear from others who have experienced internal transfers during a global reorganization. Have you ever been moved from a regional team to one based in a completely different region? How did the time zone challenges work out? Did it end up being better or worse than you expected? What advice do you have for me?

TLDR: My company is going through a global marketing/communications reorg and I'm being moved from a North America team to a Germany-based team that supports China and Asia. I'll be the only team member in North America, and as a single mom with a young child, I'm concerned about the time zone challenges and how I'll realistically collaborate with coworkers on the other side of the world. My boss knew about the move for a month before telling me, and I'm also being transferred to a manager with a reputation for micromanaging. Wtf

Friday night again, and I’m sitting here feeling the same heaviness I’ve been carrying for a long time. I guess I just need to let this out and see if anyone else understands.

I’m a solo mom with no village, no family nearby, and honestly very little support. My weekends are usually uneventful, not because I don’t want a life, but because I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted all the time. By the time the weekend comes, I barely have the energy to make plans, so everything feels last minute and not well thought out. It makes me feel like I’m not really making the most of my life.

I love my daughter more than anything, but I worry that underneath it all I carry bitterness. Bitterness about how different my life turned out from what I imagined. Bitterness that motherhood feels so isolating. I have maybe 3 friends, and my closest friends aren’t moms, so they really don’t understand the constant weight of doing everything alone.

Facebook honestly makes it worse. I see these happy families going on camping trips, vacations, “up north” weekends, everyone smiling together in cozy family photos. Going up north and camping with my daughter sounds like a dream to me. But the reality is, I barely feel comfortable driving 2 hours away alone with her because my anxiety on the highway is so bad. I always think: what if something happens to us? What if there’s an emergency and I have nobody to call? I feel trapped by how alone I am.

And even something as small as photos gets to me. Everyone else has these beautiful candid family pictures. Meanwhile my camera roll is mostly pictures of my daughter or awkward selfies with my arm stretched out. It sounds stupid, but it makes me feel the absence of partnership constantly.

This week we both got hit with a stomach bug. She missed several days of school while I tried to work from home and take care of both of us while being sick myself. We live in a second-floor apartment with no yard, so she couldn’t even really go outside and get fresh air. My coworkers talk about their houses and backyards and supportive spouses, and I just feel… stuck.

I think the hardest part is that I don’t feel safe in the world alone. I hate admitting that. But without a partner, I feel limited in what I can do with my daughter. Trips don’t feel relaxing, they feel stressful. Even when I imagine doing fun things, part of me wonders if it would even feel fulfilling with just the two of us. I miss the idea of having someone to share life with.

Then there’s the social side of parenting. My daughter hasn’t been invited to a single birthday party this past year. I haven’t made friends with the moms at preschool. I’m younger than a lot of them, and sometimes I feel judged for being a single mom, even if nobody says it outright.

I need to find a couple new babysitters that I trust, but the process to vet and try them seems like too much right now. It feels like I don't have the energy to even go through it, or I don't know wtf I'm doing. I tried to hire a new sitter last weekend and she stood me up. This shows how bad my judgement is.

Lately it just feels like I’m living through one discouraging circumstance after another.

How do you find happiness or contentment when your life feels so unfortunate, so isolated and unfairly hard for so long? Has anyone else felt this trapped? Or do you now?

Today I took my 5 year old to the park and something happened that I keep thinking about.

We were at a big nature center (trails, indoor area, playground). There was a guy there with his two kids. He was really friendly right away. He showed us where the fish and turtles were, and we ended up crossing paths a few times naturally. I got the feeling that we both were feeling each other. But how does one actually initiate a move around kids and someone you don't know?

At the playground we talked again. I made a small joke about him going down the slide, he came and sat near me on the swings, and we chatted a bit about the park and stuff. But I think I am just an awkward conversationalist. 😭.I asked if he lived nearby and he said his ex-wife had just moved to the area but he lived about 30 minutes away. Then the conversation awkwardly fizzled out. Btw, I am not one who will make a first move. I like to let a man show his interest clearly instead of steering him in a direction. Unfortunately it's hard for me not to be so reserved like this.

I hoped one of us would introduce ourselves or say something about seeing each other again, but neither of us did. No names, no numbers, nothing. In the moment, I was kinda just doing my thing. I would glance over to see where he was and I could tell he was doing the same.

He was getting ready to leave with his kids, told me his daughter got a couple ticks from the trail...and I think I said something stupid like it was nice meeting you. Ughh! Now I’m just feeling a weirdly sad about it and wondering if this is just one of those normal “almost connections” that happens sometimes.

For those of you reading:

What would you have done here?

Do people actually run into each other again in situations like this or is that unrealistic?

this post is probably silly for someone in their 30s, but it honestly makes me so bummed when this happens. I felt like I was pretty open and I wasn't trying to overstep.