Hi AndromedaJulie
Just read your post and glad to see you're getting some good input from others. Here's a small suggestion that might help. If you haven't yet explained to your kids the need for quiet one way which might help them understand is to give them an analogy they can relate to. You could try explaining to them that for you being in a 'normal' room feels like being in a TV studio with 50 screens on at full volume and someone else has the remote controls and is channel surfing and that it gets very confusing and you need to have them turned off sometimes. This would help them to imagine what it is actually like for you and hopefully they would respond. Another way is to set up (with their and your husbands input) a 'codeword' - then they would know that whenever you said that codeword you needed some down time. Make it something fun and not too serious so they don't get anxious for you. All the best for your journey back to peace and quiet.