The last few days have been rough. I don’t think it is all about Mother’s Day, though, although I am sure that contributed to it. The initial trigger that caused the spiral was my son being unappreciative. (Yes, I get that he is 11 and that 11-year-old’s aren’t always appreciative, but still…)
I can’t remember if I have already shared this, but hub is halfway through a two-month hiatus from work (long story that is his to share, not mine), so much of my life is “about” him right now. On top of this, my child has special needs, so life is always “about” him as well. In fact, I have taken him to three doctors in a week – one for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication management, one for asthma management, and one for poison ivy on his face.
I think part of what set off the downward spiral is that too much of my life is about the two people who drain the most energy without replenishing it, and I am burning out after five weeks of this (on hub’s end – with my son, it is 11 years of this).
I am not “blaming” either of them for being so needy. I am just stating that I have needs, too, and they have been shoved to the side so I can take care of them. I usually have time during the work week to meet my own needs while hub is at work and child is at school, but hub has been home 24/7 (I work from home) since the beginning of April, and I have had to pick the child up early three out of the last five school days, and all of this is interfering with me meeting me own needs.
When I go through a pity party, it is (ironically) rarely about my childhood. It is about the two areas of my life (being a wife and mother) that take the most effort with the fewest results. I have spent years trying to “cheer hub up,” but he is perpetually unhappy (not with me specifically, but with life in general). I have also spent years taking my child to doctors and educational experts to meet his needs for asthma, ADHD, and learning disabilities, including dyslexia, and there appears to be no end in sight with any of these issues.
I think I am just plain worn out and need a break, but I don’t see a break coming. Hub returns to work, quite literally, the day before my child gets out of school for the summer. I’ll have to figure out some way to nurture myself because I feel like I am going to lose my mind!
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
I totally understand what you mean Faith. I just had this discussion with my husband yesterday. I told him I needed my “me” time in order to not resent what I do for others. I have it worked out for my situation, and I hope you can find the right balance too.
I understand how an 11 year old could cause you to feel this way. I have one! I am also a single mom and work full time and just finished the semester of school full time, so my needs were definitely pushed to the side. I am taking a break for the summer and trying to date when I get the opportunity. I think balancing the most Important things in life can be the most difficult. I will keep you in my prayers!! Your son loves you I’m sure and one day he will realize all you have done for him 🙂
On the topic of your son’s learning disabilities:
There’s a reason you feel like there’s “no end in sight” to them as you put it. I don’t know much about ADHD, but dyslexia never goes away, and I’m pretty sure ADHD is the same way.
Dyslexia, as you probably know, is a genetic condition where your son and myself use different parts of our brains to process written language. There is no “growing out of it,” no cure, and no way to “fix” it. Your son will have these issues for as long as he live, and there is no way around that.
The trick is to help your son figure out a way to work WITH the ADHD and Dyslexia in a way that allows him to be successful. That’s important to remember- while these issues will have a constant affect on his life, he can still be successful. I couldn’t read fluently until the 4th grade. When I write by hand, I spell like a 3rd grader. And you know what? I’m currently a 2nd year Art History major at the University of Chicago. (There’s a lot of reading involved there.)
Here are some things that might help:
Reading stuff printed on pastel blue or pastel green paper.
Putting a clear light blue piece of plastic over pages in a book to read.
Using a light grey marker as a highliter instead of a bright yellow one.
There’s a new font called “dyslexi” specifically designed to be easier to read.
Having your son walk slowly around a room while reading to trick his ADHD into letting his brain focus on reading
Sunday school might go better if he had his own bible printed in a larger font. (They sell those.)
Buy him a kneaded eraser to fiddle with while he does work.
Livescribe pens are a god-send when you can’t take notes very well.
Buy him comic books. (Seriously, this helps. I recommend Calvin and Hobbes.)
Hi! I’m sorry you’re feeling so down, I would hug you if I were next you you! I think ADHD is very misunderstood by the education system. First of all it is seen as a ‘disorder’ when it’s not, that would mean that there is something wrong, there is nothing wrong, it’s just different. I even went to a child psychologist. I had that so called ‘disorder’ when I was young and sometimes it’s not that you can’t focus, it’s that you can’t focus on one boring thing at a time, rather you focus on everything at once. That is not good for regular school learning, but once I started working a high pressure corporate job, the ability to multitask made my life much easier. So, what I’m saying is, it’s just a different way of absorbing, and it’s not bad, we just need a lot more to be entertained at any one time. Sitting down to read was hard, but when I started studying english (it’s not my native language) and still didn’t know it very well, I found that I could focus on reading english because it took a lot of effort. That’s how I learned how to focus on reading, and then I actually liked it and now I read a lot. Teachers try to ‘simplify’ things for kids with ADHD, focus on one thing at a time, but that is completely wrong, what we need is a challenge. We need to be standing on one leg, while reading and listening to two different conversations at once. There is hope, we can thrive, now I’m a college graduate, worked a corporate job, got two masters degrees and now I’m studying a PhD. Let your kid follow his motivations, whatever they are, and give him more than one thing to do at a time (something physical coupled with having to think is always good- like playing guitar or any other instrument). Complex video games really help also, and motivation is a big factor as well. For me, it’s not that I ‘got over’ my ‘disorder’, rather I learned to work with it as a talent, now I can read several topics at a time and condense them into a page or a new idea a lot faster than if I read them separately. Just to finish I’ll quote a nice anectode: ‘a board of teachers at an elementary school called a student’s mother to a special meeting, there they told her that they had all decided that it would be best if she removed her child from the school and trained him as a store clerk as he was obviously ‘addled’ and couldn’t handle ‘real’ work. She told them that they were right, her kid did not belong in that school, but not because of what they were saying but because he was smarter than all of them put together. So she homeschooled her child and he grew up to be Thomas Alba Edison, one of the men with most patents to his name….so no, he couldn’t focus on only one thing. (He’s not my favorite scientist but that’s another subject, he was still a bright and endeavoring businessman). So there, different is not ‘a disorder’.
I’m glad you posted that, because I just posted the same thing about my dyslexia- you don’t grow out of it, you figure out how to work with it. Also, I felt a lot better about suggesting that she have her child read while walking around, because since I don’t have ADHD (despite the lengths my grade school teachers went to convince my mother I did) I’m not really qualified to give advice about dealing with that aspect of a learning disability.
Also, I completely agree with you on the use of the word ‘disorder.’ It’s not a good term to describe things like ADHD and Dyslexia. I also have a HUGE problem with the terms ‘retard’ and ‘impairment’ because it seems to validate people who decide that a learning disability = stupid.
Hi, Sol and Creagan.
Thank you for both. I am very excited about the dyslexie font! :0)
My son attends a private school for children with ADHD and other learning differences. They actually use term “learning differences” instead of “learning disabilities” because that’s really what these issues are. Students have to have an average to above-average intelligence to go to this school. No question my son is bright, but he definitely learns differently from most other children.
~ Faith
This all sounds familiar to me. I have noticed with many friends of mine and myself the it is sometimes near to impossible to set healthy boundaries with our children after we have been abused as children. There is guilt and etc… going on, but I can say that there is such a thing as going too far with the “understanding” of why a child feels or acts inappropriately. A good freind once told me that in some ways it does not matter WHY they are doing what they are doing so much as pointing out that it is not right or acceptable or whatever. I think what you said about your son being mad at YOU for receiving the wrong order is unacceptable. He should at 11, learning disabilities and all understand that it isn’t your mistake or fault. And while it is acceptable and even understandable to be upset and frustrated by it, it is not ok to take it out on you or blame it on you…. Maybe he is somehow not getting this message because of how you are feeling about you or because he is used to getting so much slack due to his issues…?
Anyway, I hope things get better for you.
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I write hesitantly as I do not want to be disrespectful and know nothing about Dyslexia. I was DX as HDHD and Discacula sometimes can not read and sometimes print like a young child.
I just see it all as a brain thing that comes and goes.
Here is what I have found for me. If I swim including submersions and do the sidestroke at a level where it is not aerobic than I do not print as a child or have any of the other issues. Sometimes I need to swim twice a day.
The swimming does not have the same effect if I do not have enough sun energy. Vitamin D and or a SAD light akes the edge off it is not enough.
It is not knowable if I use more sun energy than most people or just can not store it. I do know I can deplete the energy very quickly if having issues with not being able to read etc.
I have to intellectually know and remember I need to swim and get enough sun light. It is not connected enough so my body just knows that is what it needs.
So as a person who processed differently than most people I just throw my experience out there for evaluation. I do so with the understanding I do not understand.
This just occurred to me- have you tried giving your son OMEGA-3 supplements, or increasing the amount of fish in his diet? A bunch of recent studies have shown that dyslexics tend to be deficient in OMEGA-3 oils, and supplements can help children see improvements.
My math grades, which is now the only area my dyslexia really affects, greatly improved after I started taking supplements. (My mom just told me studies showed that people with ancestry from the British Isles need that vitamin to avoid the placebo effect.) And by that, I mean I got my first A- in math since the 8th grade.
You’re in my thoughts, I hope you get some time to relax a bit, I know how bad it can seem when everything gets on top of you and you can’t recharge yourself while being left to look after others, take care x
I can sure understand the struggle to find time for you…to just take care of you. Hugs.