Serving Two Masters

The Bible says that "No man can serve two masters."  

Well, it definitely wasn't writing about working moms. And certainly not about working moms with any kind of special kid.

I feel as if I have at least two masters in an average day, at least if I want to pay the bills and keep moving forward. 

As an ADHD mom, I'm constantly serving my son. Not literally. Okay, not literally all the time. But I am serving him in the sense that I am preparing meals, laying out clothes (that he ought to be), cajoling him to finish eating, urging him to finish dressing, trying to get him to finish homework, and on and on.

Serving him also includes trying to find the right dosage, the right combination of medication. Taking him to social worker appointments. Dealing with teachers who just don't get it. Buying software that might help. Reading blogs and websites, trying to learn more and find more ideas to make things better for him.

Then there is work. Work would like to think that for at least eight hours a day I am completely in service to the organization. And I try to be. I have a good job, one that carries a lot of responsibility and really takes up at least every minute of those eight hours. One that really could use the occasional evening or weekend put towards it.

But I don't have it to give. In fact, I use small bits of those eight hours to make those calls to the doctor. To take Dylan to the social worker appointment or meet with the teachers. Even to read blogs and message boards. 

No matter where I am, I feel as though I am not doing enough, and not where I ought to be. At work, I feel like I need the time with my son, or at least for my son. I need to work on that letter to the school. I need to be working with Dylan on homework. I need to be searching for that piece of information that might make the difference.

At home, I think about all the things I haven't done at work. Deadline things. Work that other people are counting on. Work that helps me keep my job.

Forget about any kind of a social life. 

We've been having some rough evenings dealing with Dylan and homework. A couple of nights ago, I met a friend for a long-awaited, often-canceled night out. I didn't call home to check at all while I was out, but it was there with me, sitting on my shoulder, gnawing at me as my friend and I shared appetizers and wine. I wondered how it was going at home, if things had gotten bad again, and if I should be there to help. 

Unfortunately, I was duly rewarded when I got home to hear about how rough it was, how Dylan fought with RockStar and refused, completely refused, to do homework. 

It makes me feel a bit like this guy above. I'm never quite where I ought to be and very often wherever I am is not where I want to be, or need to be.

Today is a perfect example.

I took a sick day today.  Yes, I was not technically sick (shh....). But I did deal with a pressing medical/health problem. I arranged to try an afternoon "bump" of medicine to help Dylan be able to stay focused during homework, and secured the appropriate paperwork from the school to do so. I also prepared a letter for the principal, formally requested a full individual evaluation (and learned that correct phrase in order to ask for it properly). I arranged to meet a tutor who may begin working with Dylan soon to help fill in the many gaps in what the teachers are not getting through to him. I did some searing for targeted medical professionals (psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists) and reached out to find a school advocate. And I also caught up on blogs and sites where I learned new information. 

I felt guilty, but I also felt validated. I was not getting all of this done before. And it had to get done. Whether I was doing it at work or not, it was sitting on my shoulder there and keeping me from being as productive as I could be.

Tomorrow, I will go back to work and try to serve that master to my fullest ability. While also wishing I could be with my son and help him navigate this confusing world that he doesn't quite fit into as smoothly as he would like. The two headed snake slithers along.

Losing My Cool

I lost my cool with Dylan tonight. In a big way. Said things I don't mean.  Made him cry. Made me cry. It was awful and I'd do anything to start over.

The worst part is that I don't know if anything would be different.

I was already on edge thanks to a meeting with Dylan's teachers today. It was unpleasant and frustrating and dejecting. 

You know the Hallmark movies where a special teacher makes it his or her goal to reach this child, teach this child, make a difference in this struggling child's life? This was nothing like that.

It was a lot of "well, I have no training in this;" "there's nothing we can do;" "you just have to make him get his homework done;" oh, and the ever-popular "you need to get him on more meds."

It didn't help that we changed his meds over the holidays trying to make it better but have inadvertently made it worse. While the medication (Focalin) seemed great at first, it's had a quickly diminishing affect. So while we weren't sure the previous meds were doing the right thing before Christmas, they were at least working to some degree.  Now...now, we have less attention all day, attention that wanes much earlier in the day, and a whole lot more opposition.  

Which brings me to tonight. I did manage to get him to get some homework done. No where near done, but some. I wisely gave up when it was obvious no amount of prodding would get more done.  But no amount of prodding would get him on his way to bed, either. My requests became orders; the orders became commands which became ultimatums.  In the end, we were screaming at each other and Dylan swung my bedroom door open, nearly cracking the mirror RockStar gave me for Christmas.  

And then I said it.  "If you break that mirror, I'll break you." Now I really did feel like I was in a Hallmark movie, only I was the evil, verbally abusive mother and Dylan was the poor, pitiful child who would somehow be rescued by a loving adoption by the end of the movie.  I felt awful deep in the pit of my soul.  

Of course then, there was more crying, eventually hugging, and then I really started crying.  Big horrible sobs that had been sheltering behind my broken heart. It was like a rainstorm that just doesn't want to quit.  I don't think Dylan liked that any better than the yelling.  

I apologized over and over.  I tried to explain how much I want to help him.  How I need to be the parent; I need to tell him to brush his teeth, to get dressed, to go to bed.  That it's my job and that I do it so that one day he can be independent and do these things all on his own.  

It sounds so simple really.  And it's anything but.

I hope that tomorrow is a wonderful day.  I hope that our pediatrician responds to the message I've left and we can get him back on the medication he used to be on.  I hope that the medication gets right back to where it was, even if that was not perfect.  I hope his teachers begin to see past the missing homework and realize that Dylan is not a disability and not a hopeless cause.  

And I hope that Dylan exceeds all expectations and shines bright, even if mommy once had a terrible day and said something she really did not mean. 

Getting dressed

This post was originally about non-believers, and it still is, really.  But it's also about getting dressed.

I don't specifically remember when I learned to get dressed on my own, but I do remember being about 4 and getting dressed in the kitchen.  I think I dressed in the kitchen fairly often, although I'm not sure why.  I might not have even had a bedroom yet.  When my mom and I first began living with my grandparents, I had a crib in the "parlor."  I think I was in the crib long past the time I could crawl out of it.  My mom was in the room that would eventually become mine, and a boarder named Roger lived in what would become her room. (Yes, I'm old enough to have lived when having boarders was not unheard of, even if it was no longer commonplace.). Family lore says my grandmother kicked Roger out one day after he had the nerve to discipline me.  I guess paying for room and board didn't include the right to tell the child of the house to behave.

So, for whatever reason, I frequently got dressed in the kitchen. That is, until I was told that it was somehow uncouth. Actually, I was told I shouldn't let my uncle's friends see me naked.  At 4, I really didn't get this.  I think I had been doing this for some time and there are numerous pictures of me running around in only shorts so being naked was pretty natural for me, no pun intended!

Although I remember being told not to get dressed in the kitchen anymore and that it did suddenly make me feel - what?  shame? taboo? dirty? Definitely uncomfortable. I don't specifically remember getting dressed in my room at that age.  But I feel fairly certain that I did get dressed behind closed doors from then on. On my own.

This has yet to happen for Dylan.

I realize, he's 9.  Almost 10.  But most often he gets dressed in either the living room or the dining room. 

He actually used to get dressed in his bedroom on school mornings. Maybe way back in first grade. In an attempt to reduce distraction we moved the process out to the dining room.  What's distracting in a dining room? Apparently plenty since it still regularly takes him 30 minutes or more to get dressed. 

Which is where the non-believer comes in.  I let myself get sucked in to an online conversation on a Facebook group. The group has nothing to do with ADHD, but one of the posters commented that another child she knew had been diagnosed with "ADHD."  That's how she put it, in quotes.  I very nicely suggested that she might want to take the quotes off since I had a child at home who suffered from ADHD and that there were not quotes involved.

And an argument was born. 

I really didn't realize that she had an axe to grind. I thought she didn't believe that this child had ADHD. Rather, she doesn't believe any child has ADHD. Worse, she's some sort of therapist.

For several posts, back-and-forth, we got into it.  I tried to explain that a "normal" child (quotes very definitely intended) does not take 30 minutes or more to dress, at least not at 10.  Her response was that she had to scream at her now-grown daughter every day to brush her teeth. 

Am I wrong?  Isn't getting dressed on an entirely different level than brushing your teeth. I mean, there are plenty of times I don't feel like brushing my teeth.  But getting dressed?  That's...that's just something that you do.

I'm not saying that Dylan only takes 30 minutes to dress before school. If that were the case, you could say he just doesn't want to go to school. But it's the very same scenario when he's getting ready for kung fu or going to a friend's house or doing any anxiously awaited activity.  He simply cannot maintain his attention throughout the dressing process, or even to begin the dressing process.

It's entirely frustrating!

I wonder at the non-believers like this poster.  How can you say you know someone's situation if you've never met them?  As a therapist, she should know and recognize ADHD. I'm not saying you have to medicate, but at least recognize there's something outside the standard range of experience, something that inhibits daily life.  In the online group I belong to, there are a number of parents who do not use medications, but they all recognize that ADHD is a real and debilitating condition, one that affects the whole family. 

So often, especially in responses to articles about ADHD, people blame the parents. It's their upbringing!  The parents are too dang permissive!  Yeah, I'd give him something to be distracted by!  You know then that these people have never known - really known - a child with ADHD.  Who have never been faced by a situation like this where nothing, nothing can make that child do as they wish.  Not punishment, not physical force, not rewards or incentives.  They are just incapable of moving forward at anything remotely resembling a timely pace. 

It's real.  Very real.  The parents know.  And the naked kids dance in the dining room.

Resolutions for an ADHD Mom

NOTE: The term “ADHD Mom” could be taken two ways, meaning either a mom who has ADHD herself or a mom of a child with ADHD. For me, it means the latter, even if there are crazy days when I question my own ability to handle distraction.

  1. Prepare, prepare, prepare. 

I think some of my worst moments come when I don’t prepare, when I don’t consider how a situation will affect Dylan. What’s worse is that I know better.

Years before Dylan was ever diagnosed, when he was 3 years old, we took him to see Santa. It was actually his second visit to the big man, the first coming when he was about 10 months old and was the friendliest, happiest baby on the planet. The picture from that first visit shows a happy if slightly wary little guy thrilled with being the center of attention. What we didn’t know was that he was coming down with a whopper of an illness and surely was already feeling the effects. You can’t tell from the picture, nor could you from his smiles and giggles that day, which would become typical for him.

His dad and grandma tried to take him again when he was two, but he was not having it. He was not going to sit on the lap of some strange big man in red. No. Sir. Eee.

By three, he was a definite little boy. We staying in Atlanta, recovering from Katrina, and longing to return to New Orleans, but happy to celebrate Christmas in a big city for a change. And visiting Santa for a (finally!) talkative boy was definitely a part of the plans.

His eager smiles for everyone had turned into a definite shyness around strangers. We wondered how we could pull off the Santa visit. Preparation was the key. For weeks, we talked to him about what would happen. We described how there would be a line, that there would be other children – some happy and some not so happy – who would also be waiting to meet Santa. We talked about how Santa would be sitting in a big chair and we looked at pictures of Santa, dressed in his big red suit with his fluffy white beard. We read The Night Before Christmas. We told him how, when it was his turn, he would walk up to Santa and Santa would put him on his knee, and that mommy would not be right there. Mommy would be nearby and he could see her, but she would not be next to him.

We asked Dylan what he wanted for Christmas that year. In our house, the rule is that Santa only lets you ask for three things. Sometimes he brings you more, but you can only ask for three things. I’m ashamed to admit that I only remember two of the things he asked for that year: a microphone and a dump truck. We coached him often on what do you say when Santa asks what you want for Christmas, and he got very familiar with repeating his three items.

Finally, the day arrived. We loaded up the family and drove out to the Peachtree Mall where they have a very convincing Santa (with a real beard and a majestic red suit). There was a line, although not too big, and it looped around behind Santa’s chair alongside a gigantic Christmas tree. Dylan’s eyes were big. We wondered: will he do it? We continued coaching in line. What’s going to happen when it’s your turn? (I’ll walk up to Santa and mommy will stand off to the side.) What will Santa do? (He’ll pick me up onto his lap.) What do you tell him you want for Christmas? (A microphone, a dump truck, and that third item.)

Before we knew it, Dylan was next in line. And despite the fact that he was the kind of kid to hide behind mommy’s skirt, he walked right up to the big man in red, shook his hand, and got up on his lap. On cue, he told Santa what he wanted for Christmas. The photographer snapped a photo (we had prepared him for that, too) and he stepped down with a huge grin on his face!

Preparation worked impeccably well then, and still does today, at least when I have the foresight to think about it!

  2.   Let Go of Guilt

Dylan’s grades for fourth grade have not been stellar and I hold a ton of guilt over that. I don’t come by the guilt naturally (or at least not completely naturally). His school and many of his teachers have helped to add considerably to this pile of guilt. And in 2012 that will end.

I do what I can. I help with homework. I encourage good grades. I try to instill a good work ethic. But I am not his teacher. Yes, yes, every parent is a teacher. But I send him to school to learn the math, and science, and social studies. I can provide back-up, but for the primary task of teaching these subjects I have empowered professionals to do this. And I won’t blame myself for bad grades any longer.

RockStar and I already have plans to visit school the first week back and talk about Dylan's progress, or lack thereof. I will not entertain guilt about homework not done or how long it takes for him to write a paragraph. We do homework in the evening but I won't let him sacrifice sleep for the sake of a few more problems, especially when the medication has worn off by then. The teachers get him at his best and education is not about studying and working non-stop, even if (especially if!) you have learning challenges.  If I can see that he is trying and wants to learn but he is still testing poorly, then someone with an education degree needs to help us figure out why.  While I don't agree with all of the high-stakes testing we have now, the fact is that we live in the era of No Child Left Behind and my child will not be left behind.

3. Find Personal Time

I will admit, I’ve been having a hard time lately. One could even say that I have been depressed. There are a lot of reasons for this and as an ADHD mom, I’m certainly not alone, but one of the big reasons is a lack of quality “me time.” My personal time is the very first thing to go on the schedule. Not RockStar’s gigs, not Dylan’s Kung Fu, not Saints Games or Scout meetings. That has to change in 2012.

It’s well known that if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy and that, I think, has been very true for us. I need to recharge. I need to spend time on things that are important only to me. No one else is going to do it for me.

4.        4.  Schedule More Family Meetings

In our house, we are famous for planning to have family meetings that never happen. We need to have them, we need to get on the same page, and we need to stick by our decisions. RockStar and I need to plan our time (see item #3), and we need to figure out together how best to handle Dylan’s challenges (see item #2). Dylan needs a plan (see item #1) so that rules aren’t thrown out on the fly, never to be followed. 

5.        5. Live More Spontaneously

It almost seems contradictory. Almost everything above has been about planning, and now I’m saying we need to be more spontaneous. I don’t think the two need to be mutually exclusive., however. Yes, we need to plan more, prepare more, have guidelines for all of us to live by. But I also think we are so focused on dealing with ADHD and dealing with modern American life that we miss out on the spontaneous moments. So often, Dylan says “can we…” and I say no because we are scheduled to do this or that, or because we need to do this other thing. We all need to enjoy more unscheduled moments. Walking the dog on the spur of the moment. Going to look at Christmas lights when we were going to cook dinner. Choosing to go see a movie instead of going to a sugar- and cake-fueled birthday party. Whatever it is, we need to allow more room for unstructured happenings. Not everything has to happen according to plan.

This list is certainly not all inclusive, but it’s a good start – a good list of broad goals to help us manage our family and help me manage me!

Combining Business with Pleasure

Sometimes there’s an offer that is just too good to pass up.  Or in our case, it was a combination that was too affordable to pass up.

Because of a lack of funds, we never took a family vacation this past summer.  Dylan got to attend the usual round of interesting summer camps, but RockStar and I just slogged away at our respective jobs.  And because of a lot of internal changes at my office, it was a summer of a lot of really intense work for me. 

At least I had our annual convention to look forward to.  One of my job responsibilities is coordinating our exhibit booth, so every year I attend the convention to set-up, help staff, and tear-down the booth in whatever city it’s in.  This year, it was in Washington, D.C.

The wheels began to churn.

My trip would include airfare, a hotel room close to the convention center, and a per diem.  After all that, adding a couple of additional airfares and meals seemed like a vacation deal even Living Social couldn’t match.

I’ve never taken the family to a previous convention destination, but D.C. seemed to offer the ideal mix of kid-friendly history and interesting attractions.  Besides that, it’s a walkable city, so they wouldn’t be stuck somewhere while I was working. As an added bonus, we have friends who live in the District. 

There was that pesky little detail known as school to deal with, but I figured a trip to Washington was like an extended field trip that would back up what Dylan learned in social studies, maybe even science, considering some of the Smithsonian museums.

We were all excited, but I was nervous, too.  Would we be able to get Dylan to work on his required homework when we were not actually at home?  Would Dylan cooperate with RockStar while I was working the show? 

Realizing our worst fears, we did start off badly.  On our first morning in Washington, we tried to go to the International Spy Museum.  A budding secret operative himself, Dylan had been talking about it for months.   It seemed like an easy place to start the trip; an easy win.

Keep in mind that here we were traveling just before Halloween.  The entrance to the museum was draped in cobwebs.  We approached the ticket desk and I requested our tickets, but also asked about Operation Spy, a separate experience where you are the spy, pursued by double agents. 

Big mistake. 

The first words out of the ticket agent’s mouth were:  “It’s too scary for kids under 12.”

Never mind that he was talking about something other than what we were purchasing.  Dylan heard scary and now he was putting on the breaks.  I had just spent $56.00 on tickets and he didn’t want to use them.

Thankfully, the museum was understanding and said we could come back the next day to use them.  But the damage to our collective psyche was done. Over the next few hours, Dylan spiraled completely out of control, and I wasn’t too far behind him in reaction to it.  Admittedly, he hadn’t had medication that morning (okay, that was the first mistake).  And he was out of his normal routines, sleeping in a new place, having new experiences.  All of that combined to form a veritable hurricane of a meltdown.  An epic meltdown (and epic is not a word I throw out lightly.) With me having the extra pressure of work responsibilities…well, let’s just say I didn’t have the most cool and calm reaction to his meltdown.

I honestly feared that our entire week would be a nightmare and that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake combining a business trip with a family vacation.

Thankfully, that first day was a bump in the road.  The rest of the journey progressed more-or-less unscathed. 

I think we did learn a few things about traveling during that week.  Prior to this, our only similar vacation was a trip to Disney World when Dylan was 7, before he was diagnosed.  Our other vacations were mainly beach vacations, which are, by definition, a whole lot more relaxed and not dependent on visiting places.  These are tips I’ll remember for future vacations.

1.     

1.   Establish a routine.  Yes, sticking to your regular at-home routine is ideal, but if you can’t do that, establish a new, short-term routine.  For us, the 8:00pm bedtime went out the window, but we kept the order of the bedtime routine similar to what we have at home.  We even kept my schedule routine – most days I worked at the booth until mid-day, giving me the afternoon to spend with family.  Dylan knew what to expect, when.  There’s comfort in routine.
2. Continue any medications.  We were really successful with taking the summer off from ADHD meds.  When we forgot to give Dylan medication on our first day, we figured we would see how it went and hoped we would have a similar experience. Well, we found out it didn’t go well, and we didn’t make that mistake again.  For summertime, the pressure was off.  But with an action-packed vacation in a hotel, the pressure was just different and the meds helped him handle it.
3. Allow for downtime.  I will admit that on this type of vacation I like to see everything and make the very most of my time.  But Dylan doesn’t need to see everything.  And he does need time to decompress, even watch TV, which is (unfortunately) a familiar activity. We allowed for at least some downtime every day, including a relaxing visit to the hotel swimming pool.
4. Bring familiar items.  Even though it was tough to travel on planes with them, we made sure we took Dylan’s favorite stuffed animals.  They helped him feel secure on the plane and made the hotel seem more like home.  We also brought familiar small toys and games to entertain him throughout trip, another comfort factor.
5. Keep active.  D.C. really is a walking city.  I think we walked a minimum of three miles a day, usually much more than that.  Although Dylan is not used to such intense walking, it kept him busy and the activity helped keep symptoms at bay.  I was always afraid that he was going to start complaining about the walking, but he never did.
6. If at all possible, stay in a suite!  This was such a bonus!  I chose the hotel based on location, but it ended up being an all-suites hotel.  We had a spacious 2-room suite, with a large bathroom, and a separate kitchenette, complete with sink, fridge, and microwave.  If Dylan did feel a bit ornery, he could go in the other room and calm himself down.  We could also put him to bed, and still stay up ourselves in the next room.  We were able to keep food cold, and reheat that lunch that went uneaten during the height of the medication’s effect.  It really did make the hotel a home away from home.   

It ended up being a great vacation, even with the business thrown in. We saw the monuments and some of the Smithsonian museums, and visited with friends.  We didn’t let our initial bump throw us off completely, and as a result we all enjoyed a fun, educational trip that we all look forward to repeating.