Hi all,
We are headed to Stow, MA for a week from the midwest, and have two kids in tow. 5 and 1 year olds. We will have a rental car available to us, and are looking for things to do while we aren't visiting with family. Right now on the radar is the Maynard Discovery Museum, the Worcester EcoTarium, and the Franklin Children's Museum.

Mostly interested in burning some energy, but I'm highly motivated to avoid children's museums that are basically cavernous-but-otherwise-empty dumping grounds for school field trips. I find that in my area it is the smaller museums that are generally more interesting.

Thanks in advance!

Hello Tildes,

My partner and I are at the point where we need to get more care for my dad and I could use some advice from people who have been down this road. He's in his early nineties and still living in his home, and the family has been lucky in many respects. Dad still has good cognitive function, he has excellent health care through his military retirement (USA: Tricare for Life). My brother is living in the family home, so there's someone in the house overnight in case there's a fall or other serious issue.

Last year we got Dad set up with a medical alert service, so he's only one button press away from talking to a helper if he's in crisis. My partner and I are down visiting him about once a week to help with chores and hang out. Same with my other brother. We've been holding things together.

But Dad's having difficulty with normal life stuff (walking, bathing, eating) and he's transitioning into a bedbound state, losing weight and eating very little. He seems fairly comfortable, just extremely tired and increasingly frail.

To be clear, I'm not asking for medical advice. Where I'm stuck is: How do we initiate and navigate the process of getting him a home health aide? His medical team was entirely unhelpful when we asked about case management. They say "if he's struggling, bring him to the ER" but he absolutely does not want to go to the ER, and we're loathe to force him at his age unless he's in crisis. Also, the ER is full of people with the flu right now.

We've reached the "we can't put this off any longer" moment, I think. Any advice on getting the ball rolling would be appreciated. Do we just randomly call up home health agencies? How do we figure out what his insurance will and won't cover?

Thanks so much.

GP

Without going into details, my partner's parent is sick with an unknown prognosis (1-5 years; 1 year has passed). I admire how they've come to support their parent and have tried to both be supportive and keep myself busy so my partner could focus. Still, it's created a lot of distance for me. Where I see the future as exciting and exploratory for us, for my partner, they imagine their family in shambles and their favorite person gone. With the uncertain prognosis and the aftermath, it's hard to imagine that really changing for the foreseeable future.

I am looking for insight from people who have been in similar situations. Perhaps it's the sort of ridiculousness of how selfish this is or sounds, but I don't know if I've ever heard much about how this affects romantic relationships.

Hi Tilderinos!

First, apologies for the ramble. I'm based in the US. I got a letter from our state's child services department telling me that one of my relatives who is a minor has been removed from the custody of their parents. The letter asked me to complete a form to indicate the level of involvement I'm interested in having with said child's placement and/or support.

We don't know what the child's situation is. I'm the furthest-degree relative they search for - hopefully someone closer will step forward, but unfortunately, based on what I know of our part of the family, other relatives may not be in the best situation to take on a child. I'm hoping that this would be a temporary situation and that the ultimate goal is for the child to be reunited with their parent(s), but we have no information at all right now other than "child was removed and we're looking for support from relatives."

I'm going to call the contact info on the letter tomorrow, as we received it after business hours today. We've discussed our comfort levels with caring for a child and what type of situation we could say yes to and what we would have to say no to. We are very fortunate to be in a stable situation (in control of our own housing, dual incomes, qualified for leave programs, etc.). Our point of view currently is that this child is a child in need of support, and we are willing to provide what we can as long as it's not overtly detrimental to us or to them. I already filled out the form the best I could in a manner that corresponds with our comfort level, which is approximately that placement with us would be a possibility but not right this instant, and otherwise we're happy to correspond or communicate in whatever way benefits the child. (We suspect that the child is currently 1-3 hours from us, so frequent physical assistance on our part would be less doable unless the child were placed with us.)

Is this something you've been through before? What experiences have you had with child placement? (I'm actually not even really sure what questions to ask beyond this, but if you have been down this road and are comfortable sharing, please do!) We've discussed adopting or fostering before, but only in hypotheticals, as it's something we weren't planning to look into for 5-10 years (we're in our early 30's and are not having bio kids). Something externally-initiated like this was never on our radar. Any guidance, tips for questions to ask, or experiences you would like to share would be welcome!