u/___HoneeBee___

I am 24 f and I work full time in autism services. A lot of the children I work with are adopted and I have been considering adopting once I finish my masters degree and purchase a home.

I have been researching adopting a sibling group from foster care so that they can stay together. I'm not trying to have a savior complex but I also would enjoy making sure they have a safe home, consistent support, and access to ​health/mental health/dental and college resources.

Another consideration is that I am white and my husband is black. I'm sure there are special considerations for black children who would miss having a black mother, and I would feel guilty for taking that away. My husband says the best thing for the child's mental health would be to adopt a biracial sibling group.

What are your thoughts? How do I know if I would be a good adoptive mother? What should I know before choosing this over bio kids?​

update: decided on moving out in 6 months and staying with my mom for a few months to save up after graduation

So I'm 410lbs, 5'5', 24 years old female. I recently started at the gym and I go 3 times a week to run a mile on the elliptical as fast as I can (12 minutes now on 10 resistance and 10 incline), and on these three days I lift weights (one day upper body / arms, one day back and core, and one day legs) and on Saturdays I swim laps for about an hour with flippers, trying to sprint each way faster and faster.

I eat roughly 2k calories a day so that I lose 5-10 lbs a month and learn about nutrition.

My long term goal (over the course of 4 years) is to get to 150lbs, have a few kids, and then get my extra skin removed. ​

However, I find myself really wanting to get stronger. I see online girls that are much smaller than me and they can lift 200+ lbs. I can barely lift 50lbs with my arms right now.

I want to do similar things to Li Wenwen and Park Hye-jeong. Obviously I can't be an Olympian, but I want to do this sport for fun and to challenge myself. How do I start to do this? What are the steps like? Do I have to get a consultation with a trainer to start?

*Edit*

Hey, all! I have decided that through talking with folks in the subreddit, I will start using time management tools to help me fulfill my duties and responsibilities. I will ask my supervisor about reducing my hours to 25-30 until I finish my MS ABA. Once I graduate, I will resume full time work as a behavior consultant to gain my unrestricted hours to be eligible to sit for the BCBA exam. Thank you for your advice, especially those of you who are positive and constructive.

*Original post*

Hello, all!

I am currently in my 5th month of being an RBT and full time master's student, and I am falling behind.

I show up for my clients every day, working about 33 hours in homes per week. My clients all are wonderful children who are funny, kind, creative, and they add a lot to my life. They do sometimes engage in behaviors that take a toll on someone over time.

The clients I see every day have some intense behaviors, such as urinating on the couch or the RBT or siblings (client can use inside bathroom independently, this has been in response to being told no or wait or attention being given to siblings), disrobing and engaging in physical aggression such as throwing rocks at people repeatedly or punching RBT and siblings and mom in the face/ears/stomach, and verbal aggression such as saying "I hate you fucking bitch" "fuck you fat bitch" and other things that hurt to hear but I don't take personally because it is simply a behavior. These behaviors occur at high frequency for the duration of the sessions.

In addition, my clients are 45 min away from me and from each other so by the time I get home it is 9pm and I have to wake up the next day to leave at 7:00 am. This makes it very hard to make time for feeding myself, cleaning my house, and basic needs, let alone my homework and discussion posts and reading my textbook and doing my safmeds. I can't lie, some of it is depression too because my mom has cancer and my husband also has cancer, and I feel so overwhelmed that sometimes I sit and stare for 30-45 mins.

That being said, I made some mistakes this month. I just started my third (only two more to go after this) semester of my MS ABA program, and my first discussion post is 2 days late. I also didn't fill out my MVF in time to log my supervision hours for last month (April). I was focusing on completing my paperwork for sessions on time and logging data accurately that I forgot to be putting my fieldwork hours in the tracker for Ripley. It was due on the 15th of May and now its the 30th.

At this point my anxiety is telling me I will be fired or disbanded from the BACB supervision program at my job, that I can't be a BCBA if I can't keep up because I will have even more paperwork to do, and that no one else has struggled on their journey to becoming a BCBA and I am somehow too fucked up to do this.

I just want to know if this is normal (have others experienced this level of oh my god what is happening on their way?), and what I can do to come back and crush this and become a great BCBA.

Some things I have brainstormed: using a read aloud app to help me digest Cooper on my commute, creating a daily check list that includes safmeds during my workout breaks and my Ripley fieldwork tracking entry, and time blocking with rewards for following the schedule. Today I am going to catch up on my homework and go have dinner with my husband to reset my mind. Tomorrow I will make sure I have something planned to say to my BCBA supervisor about my shortcomings this month and show her my checklists and time blocked schedule for June.