Woodstone Prairie

This blog is made up primarily of my ramblings about life in the country, wildlife watching, homeschooling, and the ongoing (never ending) project of fixing up our tumbledown old house.

I’m a stay-at-home mom, and my husband and I have five children…

Our three older children, all daughters, are grown. The oldest is 29, married, and has three beautiful, amazing children. Our 25 and 22 year olds are recent college graduates (political science and psychology) and live about 90 miles away.

We adopted our youngest two children as babies,  and both are developmentally delayed due to FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders). In addition, our son, M, has severe childhood-onset schizophrenia (schizoaffective disorder) and struggles terribly with psychiatric symptoms. Our youngest daughter, R (13) has OCD and anxiety disorder in addition to her developmental disability.

In the past I was very open here about the day to day challenges of raising (and homeschooling) two kids with disabilities… probably focusing primarily on the challenge of our son’s schizophrenia.

I hoped that writing about our lives would help others to understand schizophrenia more accurately and realistically (no, it’s NOT the same as having multiple personalities!), and also hoped to show that kids with serious mental illness can live at home and even be homeschooled successfully. In addition it was helpful for me to have a place to write about the frustrations, challenges, and successes connected to the unique parenting path we are following.

But I found that, for me personally, the stress and frustration connected to sharing about our journey with sz far outweighed the positives involved in being open about it. So, for the most part, I’m no longer writing about M’s illness.  

Our struggles with schizophrenia continue, and will continue, but this blog will focus instead on the simple pleasures and events of our lives…

I hope you enjoy your visit here.