I see so many things when I look at this picture. I can see my baby and all at the same time my beautiful young lady. I see a beautiful young woman, yet I know inside at times she hates herself. I see the challenges she faces, and I see all that she has accomplished.I have to get these thoughts out of my head.
On Super (almost typed supper! Ha!) Nanny the other night, she was working with a family that had a 6 year old with ADD. First, it was almost nice to visually see someone else that is going through exactly what we have went through, and still experience every day - not that you ever really believe you "are the only ones" - but when you are in the moment it certainly can feel like you are all alone at times. People that do not have ADD children, just can not understand, and even when you do share your experiences with other parents of ADD kids, you don't share the "would you believe the other night I freaked out and K. and I wound up screaming at each other at the top of our lungs?" You just don't say those things out loud. So watching this mom, do some of things I can say have happened here, and most certainly not my proudest moments, just brought a lot of it to the surface for me. Little do you ever believe as a parent gazing down at your beautiful newborn that some day they may be given a diagnosis, in our case ADD, that in some way is going to change your relationship and life forever. We had no idea who those letters would change us and our lives. Years of being told, we were expecting too much when I expressed that I thought the second grade should not be this hard for her. The time and time again that she was beat down rather than built up by a teacher who told her she was lazy. How long can you experience those things and not start to give up on yourself. Even as a parent, it is a fine line to walk, in how much do you push, how much can you accept, what do you do when you just get tired, and don't think you can do it one more time. watching this young mom (who by the way had two other children and quite honestly the lamest husband ever ) have to sit with her son, one on one, to do his homework, and be a constant cheerleader and refocusing him really impacted me. Then I also knew at some point she was going to run out of positive energy, and still need to cheer him on. She is going to say something that she will regret, and they will start all over again.That is what goes on here - I don't go far from them working on their homework. Refocsing C. when the pencil eraser becomes suddenly interesting or one of his "what if" questions becomes more important than his spelling, or K. can't recall all the steps to figuring out precentages. People ask me all the time, why I need to be home in the evenings, can't my husband do it, just let her do it herself "she has to learn to do it sometime" - again - have no idea. When you child is trying her best to understand her math, and looks up at you with tears in her eyes, because she wants so badly to do well, and just has no control over some of the things going on in her head. The melts downs, the I am so stupid's, the tears - it can really break a mother's spirit. And after all that , puts "get an A on my math quiz" as her goal for the week in her assignment book, just amazes me. As parents we sacrifice a lot now to be there for our children. Her teachers and the school do the best they can. There are only so many hours in a school day, only so many free periods for tutoring...organization skills are weak, so time spent making sure things are written in her assignment book etc. The rest falls on us at home....being home to check her assignment book, help her organize her thoughts and yes, spend time, reteaching and tutoring her math almost every night. I will have years after they are gone to do what I "want" to do, I only have NOW to give them the best chance I can to succeed. And yes, there are times I would give my right arm, and soul to take this from her, and admittedly from me too. And those nights where I am not as encouraging as I should have been, when my energy is low. That is where the guilt comes in.
where this was all going (in my head anyway) was an exercise Jo Frost made this young mom do. She was asked to write on a poster around a large picture of her son, all of the wonderful good things she sees in him. She had to write words, that she thought described him. Why you ask? As terrible as it sounds, and anyone can judge another parent , but there are times when you are dealing with a challenging child, be it ADD or anything else, there are times when you can't see anything but those letters. You lose sight of the child within. Dealing with school, and homework, and the behavior issues,meltdowns, temper tantrums and everything on a daily basis it is so easy to get so wrapped up in it, that you forget that your child is still the same loving sweet happy child they always were. This young mom's task was , when things were particularly difficult for she and her son, and she feels herself losing control, she was to come up to that room to that poster, and take a moment to remind herself that her son was still there, and he did not want to be doing what he was doing. I was in tears as I watched this woman stand and look at that picture and cry. I so need to be reminded of that sometimes. Jr Jigh has presented K. and I with so many more challenges, and the last few weeks have been tough on her. Thankfully, I think my scrapbooking helps me refocus often. Looking at pictures of us having fun, and enjoying each other helps me remember that my children are more than their diagnoses. But there are times when we are "in a moment" that I forget, and it becomes all about the wrong things.
Then, laying in bed last night thinking about the show and K, and the new treatment we are considering for her, I started to cry. You see - this treatment gives us an 80 - 90 % success rate for "curing" her- if you can actually say that - meaning getting off her meds and doing well in school. The thought occured to me, that doing that may change her. What if taking away the ADD takes away some of the things we love about her. Her carefree spirit, her need to sing and dance all the time, her love of drawing, her generous selfless heart. How much of it is her, and how much of it is her with her ADD? As much as a parent,I want things to be easier for her, give her a chance to be successful in her life - I don't want her to lose some of the things that make her K. Are we doing her a diservice by pursuing this therapy, or are we giving her a chance to live life as an average person, and enjoy rather than feel challenged?
Yes, believe me I know we are lucky - things could be much much worse than that are, and for that I thank God daily. But that doesn't make what we go through daily any easier. Every parent looks down at that new baby and has hopes and dreams and expectations for them - then life throws you something very unexpected and suddenly all those things change, and you take on a new reality. Statistics and what if's start flying around, and you forget sometimes that that baby is still in there, and all those dreams and hopes are still there.
I am probably going to look back on this is a few years and wonder what the heck I was thinking when I wrote all of it, but the goal of this blog is to journal the every day, the thoughts and feelings that are happening to us now, and this is it. This is now.
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