{"id":3252,"date":"2022-10-27T22:54:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T03:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/autisticme\/?p=3252"},"modified":"2023-11-26T16:26:27","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T22:26:27","slug":"prioritizing-family-because-i-have-a-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/2022\/10\/27\/prioritizing-family-because-i-have-a-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Prioritizing Family, Because I Have a Price"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I were not home, our children would still require supplemental supports. Those are expensive<\/strong> and not fully covered by insurance.<\/p>\n

At home, I am the provider of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, reading supports, behavioral intervention, and much more. Mothers (and fathers) knew this before the pandemic. Special needs parents often choose to stay home becuase it is cheaper and easier than working!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not uncommon for families to spend, out-of-pocket, $25,000 or more for supports. Per month, each service might cost $300 to $1500, depending on the provider, frequency, and other variables.<\/p>\n

As COVID-19 appeared to be receding, I called local providers to estimate a budget in case I returned to work and homeschooling became impossible. Speech-language therapy is $150 per hour, with two sessions per week. That\u2019s $1200 per month to help our third grader with her language processing challenges.<\/p>\n

Physical therapy and occupational therapy (PT\/OT) is $100 per half-hour with three weekly sessions suggested. That\u2019s another $1200 expense.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness our psychiatric care provider is covered by insurance. Most of any talk-based therapy would also be covered by insurance. These therapies help support our daughters\u2019 ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, and other challenges that affect their learning.<\/p>\n

If I want to work for an employer outside the house, I have to earn enough to offset the rather shocking expenses required to help my children.<\/p>\n

And yet, part of my nightly routine is a check of Indeed and LinkedIn, where I skim the latest job posts, check my previous applications, and feed the gray monster that gnaws on my ego. I remind myself of my qualifications, the skills I have demonstrated via academic degrees, costly exams, and online assessments. The monster laughs and reminds me I\u2019m into my 50s without a \u201creal\u201d career.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you even look for work?\u201d my shrinking ego asks, pleading for its survival. \u201cYou have a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a creative!\u201d I tell the monster. \u201cI am self-employed like many writers, bloggers, podcasters, and social media content creators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, to actually write, blog, and produce content, I would need several hours of creative time daily. Those hours do not exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not that job,\u201d my ego mutters, his head hanging low. \u201cThe other job. You\u2019re a special education teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a truth I resist, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that I embrace being a full-time homeschooling parent. If I earned a significant income as a writer and content creator, I\u2019d feel a bit more secure not having a salaried job for some organized entity. Yet, I\u2019m probably making a much bigger difference by homeschooling a Neurodiverse student than I would make in a corporation.<\/p>\n

Announcing time and again that I\u2019m proudly prioritizing our family over everything else is an effort to convince myself that this is the right choice \u2014 not merely the only choice I have. I have to believe that I didn\u2019t just \u201cgive up\u201d and stay at home, that homeschooling wasn\u2019t a result of my failures outside the home.<\/p>\n

Reality is complicated.<\/p>\n

I turned down some job offers during the pandemic because I wasn\u2019t comfortable going into crowded spaces before vaccines were widely available. I also turned down two teaching jobs that switched from being tenure track to contingent posts with much, much lower pay.<\/p>\n

Given a choice between any job<\/em>\u00a0and my family, the family wins. I\u2019m not going to work long hours for insultingly low wages, doing more work I would have done as a tenure-track professor. Higher education is broken; colleges and universities seem to depend on a legion of doctorate holders willing to work for less than some retail jobs now pay.<\/p>\n

I have a price, and reflects more than the finanical costs our family would incur. There would be the lost time with my daughters and the challenges Susan and I experience trying to schedule support appointments. Our emotional and physical energy has at least as much value as money does.<\/p>\n

I need to work at home, on my schedule, as a freelancer and content creator. Even then, my primary job is \u201cElementary School Teacher.\u201d Yes, it is a choice, but as I have hopefully demonstrated, a choice made for many reasons.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I were not home, our children would still require supplemental supports. Those are expensive and not fully covered by insurance. At home, I am the provider of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, reading supports, behavioral intervention, and much more. Mothers (and fathers) knew this before the pandemic. Special…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingPrioritizing Family, Because I Have a Price<\/span> <\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":16,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[36,127,185,246,517,662,699],"class_list":["post-3252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-employment","tag-add-adhd","tag-career","tag-covid-19","tag-elementary-education","tag-pandemic-parenting","tag-special-education","tag-teaching","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/12\/Podcast-HD-1920x1080-comp-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfivLC-Qs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3482,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3252\/revisions\/3482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}