So yours truly has been doing a lot of soul searching since we moved to Taiwan.
I've come to realize that I'm drinking a lot of humble sauce courtesy of God. I've been through so much frustration and challenges and still going through them since our move.
My biggest frustration was in not getting a job in Taiwan. You'd think someone with a PhD from an Ivy League university from the U.S. could easily find a job in Taiwan. Nope, I've sent out tons of resumes on Taiwan's version of indeed.com, online job forums, and even the ones in the local language (the 104.com.tw). The only ones I've gotten back are tutoring centers that can't offer stable hours nor health insurance for that matter.
Mostly having a job would solve our problem with getting myself and our kids insurance. While Taiwan, in my opinion, has one of the best health systems in the world, as it is socialized, it is really hard to get into it if you're not employed or if you're employer doesn't help you to get it. People tell me that the Taiwan government recently has required the employers to help their employee and dependent families to get health insurance, this hasn't quite materialized in our case.
So, that kind of forced me to become a stay-at-home parent. While being a SAHM (stay-at-home mom) I've come to realize that our son's development is not quite where it needs to be in terms of communication and social skills. Because we wanted our kids to be bilingual we figured it was fine if they were a bit delayed in speech but by the time when BJ turned to be 18 months and still didn't have enough word counts with both language combined I was a bit worried. It was also a bit concerning that he seems to ignore us when we call his name in whichever language. Also that fact that he doesn't have eye contact and seem to be object focused had me worried beyond the normal parent paranoid levels.
Which as a nurse has me wondering perhaps I'm over analyzing because 1) I'm a parent, show me a parent who is not paranoid 2) I'm a health care professional and probably overly sensitive but I also wondered maybe I'm just in denial because 1) We have no health care insurance and it will be a lot of work tackling this 2) I'm really hoping our kids are just normal. I finally had the courage to do some screening/diagnostic tools as most screening/diagnostic tools just ask parents questions and I'm a parent and also a health care professional it seemed fine for me to do that because mind you, we have no health insurance over here (I pretty much didn't have a choice). Anyhow, so the test came out to place our son in the medium/high risk group and just added to my frustration.
I'm coming to realize that we need a lot of help and part of me has just been too prideful in asking for help, whether from God or family/friends. It is exhausting being a stay-at-home parent as the kids constantly need supervision as otherwise they'd end up dead, lost or kidnapped. I have to put BJ on a halter and leash when we go out because he just is not very aware of settings (another slight suspicion for autism) and we've already lost him before. To be honest, I'm feeling kind of lost myself.
