They Call Me Anteria...

I'm taking a few minutes for myself while Lil Miss watches Peg + Cat to write this.
I've written before that I'm happy, much happier than I was before. But there's something that eats away at me.

It's failure. Every time Lil Miss asks for something, I have to tell her no, because we don't have the money. Every time she wants to go to the park, I have to look all over town on the weekends for a park that hasn't been rented out for someone's birthday. But what breaks me in half is when she cries because she has no friends.

We've moved to a new town, again, where we know absolutely no one. Lil Miss's birthday passed a few weeks ago and she had no friends to invite over for a birthday party. She didn't even have  a birthday party, just a cake I made for her and a few presents from us and my in-laws (who do live near us, thank god we're not completely alone). She received gift-cards from others that we used to buy her cold weather clothes, things she needed.

But it's friends she wants. People to play with. Mommy and daddy is all she has right now, and when she plays with her aunt and uncle she breaks down when we have to leave them.

I feel like a failure because I should be doing more for her, but what else can I do? I want to home school her, am trying to, but she wants friends. She did really well in Sunday school the few times my father took her to church with him and his girlfriend. So there's evidence she would do well in a school setting. And she wants to go to school. She doesn't see the schoolwork we do here as school, just something she has to do. The only real way to get her to sit down and pay attention is buy paying her in TV time.

Shows like Peg + Cat, the Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, they all do really well teaching her different situations. Lil Miss lea
rned her whole alphabet from watching PBS, even counting to 100 (the thing I helped there was counting with her when she would ride her bike in circl
es, and that was a game she invented). She can skip count by two's. She asks how to spell words. All of this from TV.

Math is easy for her. Reading, not so much.

Maybe if I put her in school she would do better. Teachers are trained for it better than I am. She wants so much to do things on her own.

Do you see why I feel horrible all the time? I can't give her friends, I didn't put her in a traditional school, she learns more from TV than me. What hell am I even good for in this situation?

I do I help Lil Miss when all she wants is to play?