#1 IMMEDIATELY: Do not write another bad check. A young acquaintance of mine did that and ended up in jail. She had commited a felony in her state. It is very difficult to get a decent job with that label following you for the rest of your life.

#2 Feed your child well with whole foods. If you can’t afford it, there is a federal program called WIC (women, infants & children) which will provide you with food. From what I understand this is separate from food stamps and lasts until the child is 5. Please check this out. Please check out FISH (For Immediate Sympathetic Help), a program run out of local churches. Volunteers will provide you with a bag of food and are given a small amount of money to buy fresh food and will also drive you to the doctors, for example.Also,check out local food banks.

#3 You possibly may be able to get free vaccinations and some health care for your child through Dept of Human Services. Talk to people there – ask questions – get help.

#4 Some states have a cooperative extension program where people in debt can be counseled by volunteers. Many of these people have accounting or financial backgrounds in their jobs. Also, credit unions have free counseling.

#5 Do you have any friends with kids whom you could switch baby sitting with, perhaps in the evening so you could go back to school or get technical training so you could get a better job?

#6 You need help, but you also need to set a higher standard for yourself. You don’t need to scam grocery stores or men to get meager rewards. You are stronger than you think…you have survived so far, and you need to believe that you can get control over some aspects of your life, if not everything all at once.

You have written a diary of what you do throughout the day. Now write a PLAN of what you plan to do that will be beneficial to yourself and your child. Include regular bedtimes (for both of you!), regular mealtimes (perhaps cooking could be shared with your mom), regular exercise to relieve stress and depression for you. You seem to be bouncing all over the place in your diary. Maybe fewer cokes and cigarettes will actually allow you to calm down a bit. Don’t feed the stress!

You need to look for VALUE in what you spend your (limited) money on. Every time you make a decision to buy something you take yourself ( and by default) your child in a direction towards or away from poverty. The amount you spend on her Halloween costume and on her birthday gift was way too high. I would limit myself to ONE treat a day under $2 for yourself – coke OR cigarettes-Or books or a shirt- Pick one small thing, enjoy it and move on. Then allow yourself one treat a week at under $10 – a shirt, a drink out, whatever. Your child is still so young that a cookie or a push on the swing would be enough of a treat to her.

Get help, get your $hit together, and work as if your life and your child’s life depends on it. Because, Single Mom, it does…

You need to discipline yourself, as well as schedule you and your child’s life.

Plus the whole friends with benefits stress release. Sorry everyone Ive been their she is brave and a tough mother she deserves her vices as long as she does not neglect her daughter. I live in ky and a lot of people survive just fine here and buy homes for a salary 1000 to 1200 a month.

There is so much chaos in this woman’s financial life, I would not be surprised if there is also CHAOS = Cannot Have Anyone Over Syndrome in her home. One website that has helped me a lot with home disorganization (and somewhat with financial disorganization as well) is
http://www.flylady.net

The basic ideas there are: You are not behind, and babysteps. If I were in this woman’s shoes, I would start with a babystep of making sure I wasn’t paying all those “last minute extras” for the cigarettes and Coke. I would budget them into my financial schedule, and buy them at the cheapest rate store that I knew of. I would also promise myself to quit at some point down the road. Just not today/this week/this month. (And I’m a former smoker, so I know that whole “I’ll quit tomorrow so why buy an entire carton today” mindset.)

In the flylady system, the first babystep is “shining one’s kitchen sink” and keeping it clean/polished for one entire month. It’s amazing how this one habit then spreads to keeping the counters clean, and various other habits. But the big point is that one can only add one habit a month. And, it takes pretty much a full month to establish a habit.

Priorities are the other key thing I would suggest here. I find I can focus on just one life priority at a time. I would guess that getting a diagnosis for her daughter might be this woman’s key life priority right now. The basic question being: What do I need to accomplish in order to improve my life long-term? And keep my focus there. Do something every day/week to accomplish that life goal.

And yes, go find a good support group.

Best wishes! You can do it!

You need to work the system concerning your child. And I MEAN WORK THE SYSTEM TILL IT SCREAMS!!!

Shouldn’t your child be covered by Medicare/Medicaid? What about food stamps? Get in touch with whatever gov. dept handles her disability and get involved with them. Get a caseworker assigned. Whatever you do, don’t treat any of these people like gods. Get a plan in place to help with your child. Check out group support. In that way you’ll be in touch with people who understand what you’re life is like. Also, check your work. Some have programs in place to help employees with problems, both big and small.

Hope this helps

I don’t know anything about Hawaii’s system of social services, but I do know something about California’s. It is possible that kiddo is eligible for medical, counseling, and other services, but mom would have to pay for counseling, even if it were just a small amount. I also know very little about France’s system of services, but it has been my impression that France, along with other European nations, is way ahead of the US in considering adequate housing and medical care for all citizens a right. You may be expecting more from the State of Hawaii than it actually delivers.

@Katydid:
thanks for pointing that out, I indeed missed the dual payday (I live in France, where paychecks are monthly).
Yet, we’re still talking almost 3/4 of her income on childcare and rent, for a person who lives with her mother at age 25.

re: couselling: I don’t really know how social services work in the U.S., but somehow I doubt that the kinds of social services accessible by this person would be geared to identify and respond to such psychological issues as I talk about. What it seems to me is that she applied for some extra money to take care of her kid and some welfare. I don’t see how good psychological counselling would have come in the picture.

re: mother: sure, mother has her own issues for sure. So what? I still think (maybe ’cause I’m French or something) that shelling out 3/4 of your income in rent and childcare when you live with your mother is a symptom of something wrong. We don’t know enough obviously, every situation is different. I’m just suggesting an avenue of investigation there. Given all the particulars that we know, it’s fair to assume that this person’s family history is not her strongest backbone and that she might benefit from trying to break this cycle (I didn’t hear of a grandfather being in the picture, did you? I’m sure you catch my drift).

re: smoking: where do you get the $300-400? I make it $100…

As to your conclusion: what is it in what I said that makes you believe that I don’t think that the responsibility starts with herself? Who else would it rely on? What is more of a personal responsibility than having to deal with your psychological issues? You lost me there.

This single mother of a special needs kid lives with her MOTHER, and she shells out all of her salary in child care and rent?

It seems to me that’s a clue there as to the psychological situation she’s facing. Her first order of business is to fix this crazy relationship she has with her mother. If you add to this the fact that her idea of a nice night out is to go chat up guys to get them to buy her drinks and a hot dog, which seems to be the only activity for which her mother (the kids’ grandmother) accepts taking care of the kid (when he’s asleep), you have another slice of the picture.

Stopping smoking indeed…

Finding social services that will help deal with these blocking (get free counseling and so on) psychological barriers, with the objective to get off her psychological dependency to her abusive mother, would be a start as far as I can see.