I asked my family today if they mind my nagging because I feel quite bad about it. My feelings of “badness” stem almost entirely from my belief that society in general dislikes nagging, especially from women. A nagging woman is a scold. Historically speaking being a scold is very bad indeed.

My family generally indicated that they don’t love it but they get why I do it and they accept it as part of life. Noah specifically detailed how he never ever labels my behavior nagging on purpose because he knows I am ashamed of it and if he comments on in it in any neutral fashion I will attempt to suppress the behavior. Which will lead to me not communicating where and what my needs and desires are and at some point things will get so off course I will explode and be a right bitch. He’d much rather I nag him. (He can express all of this without ever calling me a bitch; that’s 100% me.)

He likes being married to me and he plays me like a video game.

We all agree that to some degree our nagging is positive/important because we are all very invested in supporting one another living to a ripe old age and that’s why we pester about eating well and exercising. We all really want the others to continue and that means we are twerps about “Hey you aren’t doing this thing you should do.” Everyone in this house has at some time or another said, “You really sound like you haven’t taken your medication today.” Do I love hearing it? I do not. So mostly I take my fucking medication so they won’t fucking ask me.

We are a house full of people with atypical brains. All of us struggle with regulation and routine. Some of are us are diagnosed as autistic and/or as having ADHD but I have my suspicions about people who haven’t been diagnosed yet. We certainly all manifest struggles in similar areas.

Medication was not offered to me as an option when I was young. I had to learn how to cope with my brain. I learned how to make a schedule that will get all the things done. But we have to help each other stay on the schedule.

That’s a lot of where nagging comes in. How do we help each other stay on task? It’s hard. It takes a lot of willpower. It was tactfully suggested to me that I try letting the kids be the train conductors sometimes. Now that I have set the children up with ridiculously scheduled days from now until the end of the next school year (online calendars are so much faster than writing all that shit by hand) we will see about handing around conducting responsibility. Stage managing. Project managing.

It’s all the same shit. How do you have a list of requirements and make sure they are all met? Figure it the fuck out. You try. You fail. You try something else. You fail again. You try something else. It kind of works but not very well. You try combining the last thing with part of thing one and hey that’s a little better.

And the thing is, with the home schooling thing… we have to create all of the structure for ourselves. None of it comes externally imposed.

We are not taught history or science or maths or physical education or religion or home economics or drawing or financial responsibility or… anything by an outside source unless we go ask pretty please, like with tae kwon do or gymnastics or swimming or chess. And we haven’t outsourced a lot. We tried for a writing class. The teacher quit in the middle of the term because students weren’t cooperating how she wanted. Well awesome. That means that *I* have to schedule a lot of time where I sit around and teach my children absolutely everything I think they need to know as adults.

I am not raising children. I am raising future adults. What will they be like? I don’t know for sure. But those little turkeys will be able to make and follow a schedule even though it is not natural for any of us.

Children need structure. Well, some people believe this. My children are more polite and easier to live with when my expectations are clearly communicated and I do so best through structure.

Thus I nag like a motherfucker. I’m so god damn annoying. But you know what? The more I nag the less I scream.

Noah’s not wrong. He has lived with me for a minute or two.

But Sarah isn’t wrong when she points out that once I get the schedule set… there’s no reason I need to squat over it like a poisonous toad ensuring I am the taskmaster. Sharing is caring.

When we go on the road my body load is going to explode. I worry about teaching the kids to take turns micro managing each other. That shit is complicated. I need to not parentify the children.

Where is the happy medium.

Let’s fuck this up six ways from Sunday and see what we learn.