Becca has made some excellent points. Especially <Accepting this junk stinks but it is better to deal in reality than pretending that we're the same as we were pre-injury. >

Her comments about her kids just laughing off the wrong use of a word or such shows how much family can come to you support. We need to learn to laugh with our family. Laughter is a stress reliever.

As I said in a previous thread. When we learn to say to others, " I have a brain injury and sometimes it does strange things" and learn to believe this ourselves, we can start to change and learn to work-arounds and other accommodations that make life so much easier. It is amazing how our kids pick up on our behaviors.

I was watching some friends kids while mom had a chance to get out of the house with dad. I played a recording of wolf pups howling. Once the kids identified the sounds as wolf pups, I asked why they would be howling. With some clues, they realized it was because mom and dad wolf were away from the den. I asked why mom and dad would be away. One quickly answered, "Because they need some alone time." There was not bitterness or negative attitudes. They understood the value of alone time for mom and dad.

With a little help at understanding our symptoms and the modeling of seeing us accept our struggles, our kids can become very supportive and helpful.

Regarding going on disability, it is a tough and humbling decision. I would bet that most who have made this decision will agree that we put off the decision to go on disability much longer that we should have. Once we start the disability application process, we often get access to information that helps us better understand the extent of our disability.

Disability, whether short term, long term, or permanent is an option we need to keep available. Sometimes, by denying our condition, we hamper our chances of getting disability at a later date.

There is great value at being evaluated for disability, even if it only give us a marker of our current condition. Then, if our condition gets worse, we have that marker for comparison.

That humbling decision can also be a watershed event in causing a change in our attitude about ourselves and how others perceive us.