The Message Board

do good things ever happen to good people

Posted 919 days ago

Hello my name is Alisa Cooney I’m a mother of 4 beautiful and talented children with some extra needs. I have a 14 year old son Brandon who has been diagnosed with Aspersers Syndrome and his main obsession is game units and computers, we limit his time on the items his other favorite thing to do is jump on the trampoline it seems to help him when he frustrated about every day issues. I also have a 13y daughter Kira-Jane she has had a lot of trouble with speech in her early years and she can very clumsy, she has always cried on a daily basis about everything. Recently a psychiatrist diagnosed her with depression, I love my kids so much and try my best to keep them happy and thinking positive but we just seem have a genetic dispostion to depression. While it took my 13 year till the age of 5 to hold a pencil she has become a great artist we get her leaning to draw books all the time to encourage her talent. Then there is my 9y year old Willow she my most interesting child she has had anger issues since she was very young in the beginning we worried about bi-polar but in recent years she has started talking about killing people and herself her favorite thing in the world and the only thing that seems to calm her is her pooh bears she has one we call thread bear cause it’s the most loved with no fluff left on his bottom. Willow is very capable of being great at anything when her anger is under control. Then there is my youngest child of 4 years old, Jacob he’s my least effected child he has some minor sensory issues and some anxiety issues but is very capable of interacting and communicating his feelings in a very normal manor. I be leave he will become my rev head he loves his cars just like his Aunty (his dads sister)
I love my children very much and try very hard to provide them with the best that I can for them. I encourage them in their areas of their talents where ever possible. As a mother I feel like I’m not able to give my kids enough personal space with in my house and yard eight now. We finally became able to buy our own home but we had to down size from a 4 bed room , 2 lounge room, kitchen/Dinning to a 3 bed room with 1 L shaped lounge/dinning. We have a huge yard compared to the rental house and a huge undercover area which has the potential to easily be enclosed to create more living space for the kids to have there own space during the day. I feel like crying some days because I can’t utilize this space as often as I want to the way I want right now. With the outside/undercover area open the elements, very hot and very cold day make it hard for our family to speed out and have enough room for everyone to the thing they love to do. I have all these plans for the house and yard and I worry that I will not have the time or money to do what I want before the kids are grown and can benefit from it. I feel like I have to choose all the time what is more important and areas that seem to conflict a lot with me is expensive therapy’s like philologist bills and improving the home to impact my kids daily life now. I would love to be able do both at the same time but I seem to have to choose which is more important and will have the greatest impact on my kids daily functioning and eventually living on their own and having a successful life. I don’t just want my kids to work at Coles like my mum, sister and brother They can be so much more than that I know in my heart they have great things to offer society if I can just give them the best running start on life.
As a family we hit a big hurdle after I was assulted in a home invasion while still renting. I have pretty much always battled with depression but I functioned especially where my kids were concerned. After the home invasion I went downhill and fast. My partner had to go casual at work and become my carer I just could not get out bed most days and that had never been a problem for me in the past. I spent the first 6 months after the assault sleeping in the lounge room if I slept at all. Insomnia became major symptom. I managed to still deal with kids on a basic level as long as I could do it from bed on a bad day. I got so desperate for help with my kids that I as mother put a self report in to child welfare. I thought they would take the kids from me but instead they gave me in home support workers on the days my partner was working. I thing this helped my recovery heaps as well and the medications I was put on. I loved my kids so much I was willing to risk having them taken and put them temporary care if that was what was best for them while I dealt with my depression. It took about 10 months after moving house to get back on my feet enough to start completely unpack and/or organized from the move things were basically put on a self or in a cupboard and left this was not area my partner had ever had to do I always kept the house organized enough to find things with ease. The old house was packed so poorly as I was so depressed and in the end just did not care how I packed things in fact towards the end when we found a house to BUY our self faster than expected I just got my kids to start putting everything in box’s them self. We still had boxes/junk (after being raining on) under our back veranda until recently as getting rid of rubbish can be hard I try to save my money for helping improve my kids life in the most beneficial at the time its needed. We spent most of spare income in the first year of our new house getting furniture that could store thing or fit better to make more room in our very small house. Our old house had built in shelves and plenty of room for storing stuff our new house has no built in or shelves ECT. I recently ripped up the carpet and laid lino squares down to make it easy to keep the house clean. I have painted my hall way and put photo of my family all threw the hall way to I want to keep renewing the house but I just feel like I’m never going have enough money to do it fast enough.
I would love to enclose my veranda and create more space for my family. I would love a special Zone for each of my kids tailored to their needs and wants. I would love an easy to care for back yard I want to enlarge my back yard, I have a large corner block but the house in the middle of the block and unless I can find the money and time and energy to re-fence the yard the space is going waste. I don’t have a shed to keep bikes and scooter dry and safe, just a tiny garden shed we can finally afford more but unless we can also afford to stored it properly it has to stay under our veranda where it won’t get ruined and that takes up precious family space that we need. Everything in stored under our veranda and we have so much more yard to use but we always have to choose shed or lawn mower/garden tool ect. Bikes or better play area for the kids (I would love a nice play area but instead the back yard is just grass in summer it’s hard to keep green and winter it grows like weeds I can’t win). I have plenty of more compromises I find myself making that I wish I did not have to make for the sake of my kids.
Currently we have no car it was stolen 2 times in 6 months and it was returned both times but the second time I was returned in an un-drivable state so we gave it to a friend who wanted to fix it. The plan was to buy a new car this year. The banks accused of having a bad credit rating and when showed then a perfect credit report and asked them show us where they replied it’s invisible, so we asked the credit place about invisible credit issues and they said the banks were just using it as an excuse for some strange reason. We singed a no credit contract for 12 when we got our home start loan it was good faith thing we did to get our home loan. When home start removed the no credit contract after the 12 months they only took it off of one our credit reports. So when we applied for the loan it was still on my credit report we had it fixed and the back still said something was stopping the loan. We have given up on the idea of bigger car for my family right now especially until we can enclose the carport to make it a garage.
I love simple and easy to care for when it come to my home. I have enough challenges to deal with already with my children. I cry every time I see a show where a family get a home or yard makeover. I grateful that people out there have family that write in about how great the family is and why they deserve the renovation so much. I don’t have that sort of family I have had to do everything myself. I was kicked out at 16 lived in my own flat by 17y tried to continues school but it became too hard I recently went back to school. My partner has always worked we have been together for 15 year this year as of June 25 2009. I would have loved to have celebrated that mile stone but that would have money we have taken from something more important to our daily life and our children. I’m not married mainly because we can’t see the point of wasting the money on a one day event. I would rather use that money to have a greater impact on our life. If I had a fue thousand just a new larger fence to enlarge the back yard would be a more appropriate thing to use the money for. Recently our hot water system died so the $3000 we were going to put aside for our new car or could have use to do up the fence now has a new priority of buying the new hot water system so we can have a normal life. We could really do with a second washing machine to keep up with the washing we already have 10kg washer but it practically runs 24-7. We have a dishwasher but it’s in the laundry as our kitchen which is fairly new has no place for a dishwasher. So the laundry sink which should be used for soaking clothes is full of dirty dishes. We finally got our first new lounge Eva before xmas, but it only seats four people and we have 6 in our family. Our dining room in very small and we don’t even have real chairs right now as we had to sell our huge dinning setting before we moved as it would not fit in our current dining room. I would love to build a bar to make more room for other stuff or some other amazing space saving idea. There are so many little things that could make a huge impact on our daily living that I’m not sure where to start and or how to make it so as to keep the house feeling uncluttered and organized.
My partner works so hard to bring in a good income he even got his IT diploma but no company has ever given him a change always saying he needs experience. He currently works for “Game” and as the name suggest he sell video games and units. He enjoys his job but it was not the type of job he had in mind when we spent $1000’s on tafe fee’s years ago to improve job prospects.
I really don’t know why I’m writing this except that I suppose it a bit like X lotto you have to be it to win it. If I never try to tell my story I can’t exactly complain that nothing great eva happened to me. I never use to think my life or my effort to make the best of my life was anything special. I now know differently I started writing stories for a school magazine and people often comment on how inspiring they are due to how many bumps in the road I have had to overcome. I suppose I hope to somehow tell my story at the very least and if for some reason my family is special to somehow receive one of those home or yard make over’s it would be a like winning a million dollars to us and I would never eva wish for anything els ever again.