Paperwork Mountains

I am snowed under with paperwork! Actually, my two year-old constantly running to sit on the back steps to "wait for the snow to come" has made me even more aware of it being summer, but that's another story.

We're about half way through 2012 and I've spent a good portion of it advocating for my little ones. I knew that as a parent with ADHD I would be keeping a very close eye on my kids for any areas they could use extra help or needed different approaches to learning. It turns out, that genetics aside, I had no idea I would be putting this much time and energy into it this early.

For the first 4 years of parenthood my work and personal life- or stuff- was marked by a significant decrease in actual use of paper. I started taking work notes on my computer; I finally got an iphone and this helped me continue on this path. My particular brand of roving toddlers meant that I'd never be able to find anything where I had put it down, and that there was no time to bring stuff to a safe location (or tend to it there once it was there).

Recently we hired a weekend day of childcare to clean up some piles of paper in our safe location- in the basement. It took a while though it was much, much easier because we had an existing filing system- we just hadn't been able to attend to it. But it is still there.

But now a new species of paperwork has emerged. Now I know this is a head start on what most parents deal with once kids hit Kindergarten, but it also goes far beyond the paperwork that comes with typical development.

There are reports. And notes. And documents. And forms to fill out. They are many, many pages long. There are a lot of them. They appear randomly in the mail, in kids backpacks, at moments that I'm making dinner and juggling multiple mess-makers.

Point being, I don't have a system for this yet. Some parents I know use high-speed scanners paired with digital storage. Some have file folders. What I know is that I don't have my own yet. And that means the piles stare at me, I stare at them, and I don't quite know the next step. But I'll get there, and it will be worth it to make the rest of the ride easier.