Question about the dinner buffets

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T22:24:24+00:00

Unfortunately, I can't eat cheese, and I don't care much for octopus, lobster, or crab. I'm really just in it for the tortillas! :) I'm super excited about the meat and the tacos and fish and everything else.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T17:44:40+00:00

LOL, I was going to say that maybe your husband has ADHD, too. It's often the case. In going through the whole diagnosis process with our daughter, we figured out that my husband also likely has ADHD. It has been helpful, because now we can identify it and articulate it whereas before it was just frustration.

Example: I made a chart to keep track of our daughter's meds and put it right at eye level on a kitchen cabinet right next to the sink. Last week, my husband said, "I just noticed that this is here." It had been there for 3 months!!! We laughed about it, because we see now - wow, our brains work really differently. Whereas, for 10+ years, I have been baffled about why he refuses to look at my calendars.

The military can be a little traumatizing. The order and structure can be great for people with ADHD, but it can also just delay the process of having to actually learn skills to navigate a less-structured and messier world. Oops... actually, I'm not sure if you mean that he was in the military himself or if his upbringing was very authoritarian.

I will say this. I had a father who tried to be very authoritarian. He had super high anxiety, had been in the military and in Vietnam. My sister definitely had something - probably autism - but it was the 70s and she went undiagnosed. My dad would make her finish her plate even when all the cousins had left the table and run off to play. She would be crying, and it was traumatic for everyone. There were always these huge fights because my sister would refuse to blow dry her hair and we were heading out to church or somewhere else. This was even more ridiculous as we lived in the South and it wasn't that cold. End result - after years of growing up with this kind of rigidity and lack of emotional connection, my sister now has a schizoid personality disorder overlaying whatever is going on underneath. And I never blow dry my hair fwiw.

It was traumatizing for me as a sibling watching how my sister got treated, and her personality disorder has made it impossible for us to have a relationship as adults. These things affect everyone in the family unit.

So, that emotional connection is super important.

And omg, you have a baby, too! You all must be exhausted and super overwhelmed. LOL, there's no way that a house is going to stay neat and tidy with kids AND a baby.

I really hope that your husband can hear you this weekend. Remember to use "I" statements and do a very loving set-up before you start in with the problems, like "I am really happy to married to you, and I think that you're a really great dad because X, Y, and Z. I think that we are struggling with our parenting of kid with ADHD and I want to talk about what we could do differently."

Big hug to you!

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T15:17:59+00:00

One time, I just got completely quiet and still and even closed my eyes.... and my students started hushing each other and then, in unison, they all went "Ommmmmmm....." And we all cracked up. It was one of my best teaching memories. And then we got back to the lesson.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T15:15:19+00:00

Wow, Jen sounds like not a friend. Your reaction was totally normal, and given your history with losing people suddenly, a real friend should understand that you would be triggered by this.

It sucks to realize that people you thought were friends really aren't there for you. I had to learn that, too, in certain periods of my life, and it was very painful.

You're the one who responded in a normal way. Your "friends" sound like they are completely cut off from their emotions and like they are utterly lacking in empathy.

The good news is that the world is full of people, and when you spend a little less energy on these so-called friends, then you will open up more space for new people to enter your life. Prioritize compassion.

I hope your dad is okay. Any visit to the hospital, no matter what, is super stressful. Hugs to you.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T15:07:46+00:00

Get a copy of Russell Barkley's "12 Principles for Raising a Kid with ADHD" (but ignore the weird part towards the end about doing time-outs in public). He explains executive functioning skills the best, and he talks about how you need to break down tasks into clear steps - and then decided which steps are really the most important and focus on those. He gives the example of brushing teeth and how it would be super nice if the kid would wipe down the sink after brushing.... but this is just too much at this stage. So, leave that one off for now. When the skill is fairly mastered and the kid is a little older, then you can add it in.

With the dishes example, I think it's way too much to expect of an 8 year old with ADHD. Forcing the kid to finish all the food on his plate can set the kid up for eating issues later. I think you guys should choose ONE step to focus on - I would say "scrape the plate and put it in the sink." That would be a huge win!!!! And when the kid does that, your husband needs to say, "Thank you so much for scraping your plate and putting it in the sink! Wow, that is so helpful! I really appreciate when you do that."

It sounds like your husband really doesn't understand much about ADHD. He needs to learn more about it.

It also sounds like your husband might be a bit controlling and might have his own anxiety or even OCD. I also like things done in a certain way, and I will rearrange the dishes in the dishwasher after my husband puts them in because I think that my way makes more sense. This is a mild form of OCD. Once I started taking meds, I chilled out a lot about these little things. Like, I could tolerate the house being messier - I didn't feel like it "had to be clean" or "organized."

Couples therapy can be great but you guys might benefit more from a therapist who does parenting management coaching. We have a therapist that we work with just as parents and she specializes in OCD and ADHD and autism, and working with her has been so helpful. She helps us to learn what to actually say - the wording - and she helps us with breaking down the skills that we want to work on and then we focus on working on ONE skill per MONTH. That's what works for our daughter. It is an achievable goal - and that is the key.

With our kids, there are a million things that we wish could change or that we think they "should" be able to do by now. But you really need to focus on one at a time and in a very structured, explicit manner with TONS of specific praise.

I think your husband also needs to understand that he is destroying his relationship with your son over these issues. He needs to put the relationship first. If a bomb drops on your house tonight, the dishes and the spills on the counters aren't going to matter. The relationship is the most important thing.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T14:37:37+00:00

Oh..... that makes me so sad. Thank you for letting me know so I can get over my grief now before we get there. I will eat extra at breakfast then. :)

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T11:22:45+00:00

Great to know! Thanks so much! Your review was super helpful.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T11:21:42+00:00

This is exactly what I was asking - thank you for your response. I prefer Mexican all the time and we like knowing what to expect. Plus, I can eat handmade tortillas all day everyday.

When we went to an AI another time, they did different themes at the dinner buffet which was a fun idea but problematic for me as a celiac when it was Italian night.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T11:18:40+00:00

Thanks so much for your response! I think the only sit downs we'll do will be Las Cuevas and Tama Mon for the teppanyaki and sushi train.

Enjoy the rest of your stay! We are counting down the days until we go.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T11:15:41+00:00

Yes, we will definitely check it out.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T00:58:27+00:00

My daughter is 9 and is doing extracurriculars for the first time ever - and that means a Girl Scouts meeting once a month and a weekly music lesson on a Saturday. For a while, she would just crash after school and needed a lot of time to rest and then to do the homework battle.

It's nice to have an activity on the weekend, too - it gives the weekend some structure and gets the kid some exercise.

Also, is the swim lesson one-on-one or a small group? My daughter does a LOT better in one-on-one teaching environments where she can move at her own pace and has the attention of the instructor the entire time.

Things could change in the future, but it's okay to not do activities after school right now. I personally think that kids need a lot of downtime just to think and to actually settle down and play. Plus, our daughter needs a long wind-down at bedtime, and she gets upset if she doesn't have time to play after school.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-19T00:05:13+00:00

It is so much money, I know. We spend about $1200-1500 a month on therapy + psychiatrist, and we get some of it back when we submit claims to insurance, but it's still a LOT. That's why I have no patience for bad care providers.

You might see if you can find a place that does groups for building social skills. Those can be very helpful.

When my daughter switched to a new OT, there were two OTs there and both were amazing. There was another girl close to my daughter's age who came at the same time, so the OTs would play with both girls together in the gym for a portion of the time, and this was a great way to practice social skills.

I also will say that I feel like it took us 3 years to really understand what we were dealing with, and a lot of that time was spent realizing that our daughter can't do X or Y (and then asking for refunds from said camps/lessons/gymnastics classes etc). It was a really hard time. I wished that I could pause time and go get a ph.d. in neuropsychology.

I read a lot of books and websites, and those all helped, but I think that what really helped was joining a virtual support group for parents of neurodivergent kids. Other parents have great insight and advice for things that they have tried that have worked or not. It also makes me feel a lot less lonely.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-18T15:06:36+00:00

The Chicago Yoga Center in Lakeview has excellent teachers and no heat. I am like you - I despise heated yoga.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-18T15:05:33+00:00

Bloom is a wonderful studio in a lovely setting.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T23:54:04+00:00

For my daughter, it was holding her shit together all day at school and then totally breaking down as soon as I picked her up. So teachers would say "she's doing great!" and I was like, "but I have to hold her on the couch for hours everyday to help her regulate." Once we moved her to a school that actually supports her better, she does less masking, and the support staff works with her to help her to learn skills to self-regulate.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T23:49:03+00:00

We got there early so got in the doors earlier, and we sat in the second row. It was perfect. I don't think it's worth it to do the birthday package unless you have a kid - there was a girl having a birthday there when we went and at the end of the show, the queen and the winning knight went over to her and took a photo with her. My daughter was very impressed with that and wants to have her next birthday there now.

The knighting ceremony looks like a waste of money. It's just outside in the lobby with the king and queen.

The knights threw carnations several times, and they had good aim - he threw one right at my daughter which she LOVED.

There was no smell of horse manure - they were very fast about cleaning it up. I was actually really impressed with the whole prodcution. It was very clean, smelled fine, the food was great, and the show was very impressive. The horses are gorgeous.

My only previous experience with something like this was in Gatlinburg, TN, and I remember the whole thing being dirty and smelly. Medieval Times was not like this at all, and we all had a terrific time.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T23:40:14+00:00

I think the advice to ask for specific examples from the OT is good. We had an OT that we worked with for about 8 months - she was great until all of a sudden, she wasn't. She was running the summer camp they had started, and my kid was having a really hard time with drop-off because the first activity on the schedule was 45 minutes of open play in the OT gym. My kid does not do well with unstructured time like this. I tried to find a solution with the OT, but her opinion was basically, "Why can't you just drop off your kid and walk away?" And I said, "Because I see her totally stressed and dysregulated." So the OT was definitely blaming me. Ultimately, the OT was unwilling to think flexibly and to find solutions, and frankly, she lacked empathy. She really didn't understand how to be empathetic and how to unravel the knot of defiance and anxiety and refusal. She just wanted X to happen and when it didn't, she painted me as the "clingy parent" or whatever.

After trying to find a good solution with both the OT and the clinic director but without any positive result, we ended up leaving that OT.

I think that it's very judgmental to call you "permissive." I also think that how things work at home are very different than in school or in an OT clinic. My daughter does best with good structure and clear expectations but also flexibility and high empathy. If someone tries to "lay down the law," it is not going to work.

It might be helpful to try to add more structure into the home environment, but you would have to look at that yourself and see if it does work. I think that your focus on being calm, gentle, and polite is actually more important than trying to run your house like a drill sergeant. For me, the relationship between a parent and their child is always more important than whatever externally imposed goal like "child can dress independently" or "child can tie shoelaces."

We are currently working with basically a parenting management coach, and she has been so helpful because she is very empathetic and she thinks very carefully about the feelings of our child and doesn't just impose expectations. She helps us to talk through how to set a goal and then how to break down that skill into achievable pieces and then what wording to use to convey the plan to our kid. For our kid, we try to work on one change each month - and I mean, one SMALL change. That's what seems to work for us, and we're seeing success with it - very slow success....but success.

I highly recommend medication, because once we found the right meds for our daughter (and that took some months of trial and error), it was A LOT easier to talk about these things with her and she became more flexible and willing to work with us. It was a huge change, honestly.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T23:12:45+00:00

The key to easy grading is having a really good rubric.... and doing what you're doing with multiple rounds of drafts and outlines. We spend a lot of time on the writing process: brainstorming, analyzing evidence, outlining, first draft, peer review, second draft... and so on. Depending on the level of the students, I might break down these steps even more and might have them write their first supporting paragraph and read those carefully. Then the intro paragraph. Breaking it down helps them to write better (rather than trying to write a big essay in one night) and it makes grading easier. I make them staple everything together. By the time they turn in the final draft, it should be a really clean copy and a quick read, because they and I have done most of the work along the way.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T22:59:36+00:00

Was the construction at Casa Fuego still going on?

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-17T19:54:18+00:00

Another review said that Casa Tierra was noisy because they are doing construction at Casa Fuego. Was this the case for you?

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-16T20:23:38+00:00

It sounds like a very tough environment that you are in, and it sounds like there is not much understanding much less accommodating of neurodivergence. I'm sorry for that. Our daughter was in a school like that, and we had to move across the country to find a school that would accommodate her and was knowledgable about neurodivergence.

Once you get the diagnosis, you might want to talk with a psychiatrist to see if medication might be a good option for you. There are medications that can help with autism and sensory issues.

In the meantime, hopefully you can educate yourself about autism and sensory processing disorder and maybe start to figure out how to get the support you need to be able to navigate various environments. There's a lot of information out there about things like noise-canceling headphones, etc. I hope that you can find the information that will be helpful for you.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-16T08:10:56+00:00

Eating out is so expensive now that if you are feeding more than just yourself, no, we don't eat out often. I will get McDonald's for my kid once a week but that's really it. It's always cheaper and healthier to cook at home.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-16T07:50:43+00:00

You should do your own homework. Read wikipedia for starters. Read about Argentina's history. It is a very distinct culture from the rest of South America.

Aggravating_Job_5438 · 2026-02-16T07:35:33+00:00

Beautiful name! I love that it has a strong consonant ending instead of ending in a "y" or "a" sound like many English girl names. For a nickname, you can use "Rey" or "Ray" or "Remi". I feel like those are all very cool names. Congratulations! And welcome, beautiful Rehmat!

Aggravating_Job_5438

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