Single and looking for sanity in those ADHD teen years

I usually only post thoughts about my son, but I guess it’s time to peel off some of the so-called protective layers and reveal a little about myself.  I am a single mom with two teenagers, a 13 yr old daughter and a 14 year old ADHD son.  I left my marriage not only because I had lost myself but also because I was beginning to realize that all the calls from school regarding my son were starting to add up to something real and despite the doctors and the diagnosis my husband would not admit that there was a problem with our son.  I saw the writing on the wall and realized that if I didn’t get ‘myself’ back there wasn’t going to be any one there to make sure my son got what he needed to make his way through his life.

Don’t get me wrong, my ex-husband wasn’t a heel or a dead-beat, he just didn’t get it.  So, we now share parenting of the kids with the new addition of his OCD wife……which is a total pain but does lead to some pretty good stories. On a good day it’s humorous to the point of making the families in the hit TV show Modern Family appear functional compared to what is going on in my house, and on bad days it horrendous and lonely and I find myself fluctuating throughout the day between chugging cups of coffee while simultaneously taking little bites of a xanax tablet which in and of itself is kind of insane since the two are diametrically opposed in what they have to offer my body.

Being a single mom with an ADHD kid is beyond challenging.  It was one thing to try to control the chaos when my son was little, but once he surpassed me in height and strength it’s a whole new ball game.  His frustration (and mine) lead to these crazy fights where “because I said so” doesn’t even begin to cut it. The language that comes out of his mouth towards me just blows me away, and the language that comes out of mine leaves me feeling awful and deflated long past the arguments end. What lacks the most in my house is a male voice that would rise above the argumentative words to say that age-old phrase, “DON’T YOU SPEAK TO YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!”  It’s just me and I look like a fool when I try to take on that stance.  Yes, I know what you’re thinking, why don’t I go out and get a boyfriend??  That’s an easy one to answer……..who the heck would ever want to enter into this dysfunction willingly?   It’s hard enough to get past a first date on my own merit, I can’t imagine bringing someone into a house where a request to put the bottle cap back on the gallon size bottle of orange Gatorade that is sitting in the middle of my new white carpet results in a negotiation of global proportions.  Honestly, how would I ever explain to some poor unknowing soul, yep, this is what it’s like around here, grab a dictionary, dust off those debate club skills, brush up on how much your co-pay is for therapy and jump right into MY life.  Hmmmm, don’t see that happening for a while.

Parenting my son in his teen years is one of the hardest things – yes, I’m going to say it…IN THE WORLD – because being a teen is all about needing your own space and wanting your parents to take a back seat…….and we’re talking the WAY back.  Having ADHD and going through the teen years is a total paradox.  They don’t need us any less, in fact with the increased and more important school work (because it is now part of their permanent record) they need us even more, but everything I do is looked at as the ultimate intrusion.  Even asking the simplest of questions like, “would you like a Gatorade or water in your lunch today” gets a reply of “OMG, YOU’RE SO ANNOYING NO WONDER YOU’RE MIDDLE AGED AND CAN’T FIND ANYONE TO LIVE WITH YOU EXCEPT FOR THE TWO CATS!!”  Unfortunately both of his points are spot on,  but really a very over the top response to the question that was asked……not to even go into just plain rude on his part.  Then there’s the social aspect.  It seems like I spent so many years worrying about how he didn’t have any friends except for the ones he was speaking to remotely on his XBox 360, and now that some friends have arrived into the picture, let’s just say none of these guys would ever have been picked anywhere near the beginning of a pick up game.  I just try to smile as they load themselves into the back seat of my car without it ever dawning on them to say hello or utter a word about where they live so I can drop them home…..needless to say it makes for an interesting ride and a lot of U-turns.  The whole thing is really quite a mess and takes up the majority of the space in my mind trying to find the proper balance.

Like I stated before it’s a constant battle and the highs are really high and the low days feel like a very slippery slope straight into the very long and reaching fingers of depression, but I have discovered one truth along the way.  As much as I don’t know what I’m doing from day-to-day, and as much as I yearn for a normal relationship with my son I have learned that despite years of trying all kinds of “new” things to engage him and win him over I have found that the best gift I can give him is a healthy and sane mom.  On some of those bad days I realize that my thoughts keep revolving around my behavior and how or what I could have done better, just plain beating myself up. But you know what, just like all of us moms of ADHD kids out there I did the best I could with the information I had at that particular time.  So my goal now is to just disengage a little bit more, remind him as often as he’ll allow me that I love him and will always be here for him, and then give myself a little bit of credit and get on with the business of trying to find my inner happiness because if I’m happy maybe some of it will rub off on him and happiness is my ultimate wish for this kid.

Is this ADHD affected “us” more than them??

Yesterday morning I went to my car to discover my tire, yet again, almost flat.  This would be my fifth day in a row of having to put air in my tire on my way to work.  I finally gave in and called with an excuse for being late to work so I could finally have the darn thing fixed.  I don’t have any extra money right now, so I was very worried about the cost.  When it was done I was so relieved to find out that it only needed a patch instead of a whole new tire and the total cost to me was only $19.95.  But, of course, they had discovered another problem.  I only had the slightest inkling of a brake pad left on the tire and that was going to cost me more around $250.  Not currently having the money, I passed on having it fixed right then. They said I only had a few days left to drive on it and I very well may be causing more damage every time I hit the brakes.  Having no extra funds I had no choice but to leave and hope to negotiate some time off work next week (and find some extra money) to get it fixed.  We’ll circle back to this situation in a bit.

Today I also have to take time off from work to attend a meeting with my son’s geometry teacher due to his lack of performance.  After it taking a half hour to get him out of bed and fixing him a nice breakfast of pancakes and eggs (got to get that protein into him, right!) I proceeded to help him get his backpack and school papers together for his day.  No matter what I did or said he was terribly belligerent and nasty to me.  As I was organizing his papers for him I noticed that one of his Spanish assignments was only partially filled out, I got concerned and went onto the web site to see if this incomplete piece of paper was his homework from yesterday, only to find out that listed under today’s date it said……..Chapter 5 test HOY.  I don’t have the first clue how to speak Spanish so I asked him what HOY meant.  He yelled back, “oh my God, you are so annoying, you annoy everyone in your life no wonder you are middle-aged, have no one in your life except your cats.”  Well, not the answer I was expecting, but whatever.  I quickly googled HOY only to find out that it meant “today.”  TODAY, oh my god I didn’t know about this test (he is already failing Spanish).  I looked at Chapter 5 to see what the content was only to find out that the test would be all about the days of the week.  How do you have a test about the days of the week and not know what HOY is?!  Shouldn’t that be just a given if you’ve been studying the days of the week for the past 3 weeks?  So, I guess this is where my totally forced morning “calm” gave way to mommy panic.  When asking him why he didn’t know this and wasn’t he worried that he had a test today and that his grade could not get lower he starting yelling how I make everything his fault and it wasn’t his fault that the teacher was giving him a test, what was he supposed to do, it wasn’t his fault.  Thinking, “oh, I have the perfect answer to that question I responded by saying, “that’s easy, what you’re supposed to do when you have a test is to study.”  In all his ADHD-ness, he responded, “what, are you crazy, how would I possibly study for a test, I don’t know what’s on the test so how would I possibly know what to study?”  I guess there is some bent logic in there somewhere, but I’m just not seeing it.

So, finally packed up and ready to go we proceeded to the car where I drive him the 3 blocks to school.  Entirely unnecessary for me to drive him, but I figure it hopefully gives me some time where he is trapped and has to talk to me.  I thought I’d be proactive and nice by not only reminding him of the afternoon meeting that was scheduled with his Geometry teacher but also to throw him a bone and say, “I just want you to know that this meeting isn’t about trying to bust you on stuff, they just want to meet so we can see if there is a way to get you more engaged in class.”  He shot back some nasty retort about how the meeting was all my fault.  Starting to get a little pissy myself I pointed out to him that this meeting had nothing to do with me and actually it was going to be quite a pain because I had to take time off work to attend it.  He started on a rant about how it was all my fault, if I would just stop communicating with all his teachers then these meetings wouldn’t have to occur (yea, it’s all me not his failing grade that was the cause).  Trying to keep my calm and not scream out, “HAVE YOU ABSOLUTELY LOST YOUR MIND, WHAT KIND OF LOGIC IS THAT YOU CRAZY LOON”, I then began a low-key tirade of facts surrounding the meeting.  Somewhere in the middle of my logical talking points he yells out, “just shut it and drive, will ya!”  So that was it, all logic, reasoning, sympathy for the ADHD brain totally evaporated in me and I slammed on the brakes (told you the brake story would come back around) and told him in words I will not print here to get out of my car.

I drove away, came back home and pulled out my new defense mechanism…..my little case of hidden cigarettes.  I know, I know, totally stupid and I’m sure a giant tumor is forming in my lungs even as I write this.  I don’t know when this ‘sneaking a cigarette’ first started but it has totally become my ‘go to’ when I’m at my breaking point with him.  The really ridiculous part is I have to hide it so much that when I do sneak one I actually have to don my ‘smoking gear’.  (Keep in mind I live on the east coast so we still have snow outside).  God forbid that a teenage ADD-er finds out their mother smokes, this would be a complete free pass to pick up the habit themselves.  So, I put this giant stocking cap I have so that the smoke doesn’t settle in my hair for him to smell, I put on giant sunglasses because the smoke really bothers my eyes, and I put on my ‘down-gown’ which I have come to call those floor length down jackets that us east-coasters constantly wear, in an attempt to keep the smoke from my clothes.  So, there I am looking like a total freak to the neighbors sitting on my front steps (we don’t have back ones) resembling some kind of  middle aged, mommy, unabomber with Vera Wang sunglasses.  Ridiculous I know, but smoking that cigarette makes me feel like I have some control over my life…….yes, I know I need to figure out something a little healthier for my empowerment fix, but for now this seems to be it.

So, to bring this all back home…….I ask, now that I’ve undoubtedly stripped away the last shred of that little brake pad that was keeping the job at $250 as opposed to the $600 for whole new brake drums which I probably NOW need because I slammed on the brakes, add to that the fact that I’m undoubtedly giving myself some type of lung disease, and not forgetting to mention the neighbors think I’m a total whack job sitting on my steps sucking on this cigarette butt like it holds all of the answers to life……..who exactly is being affected by this state of ADHD…..the kid or me?  How many of us are letting this diagnosis take more from our lives than it is taking from our kids life?  Hmmm, something to think about.

The lucky recipient of a box of chocolate truffles

This morning I think I experienced what most people do……a normal morning with children.

It was quite fantastic and above all so manageable.  I haven’t revealed this before but I am a divorced mom. I only have my kids (ADHD son and non-ADHD daughter) part time.  Due to traveling schedules between the kid’s Dad and myself I had not had my kids for 4 nights, however, last night would begin, what I refer to as my “call of duty” of 7 days and nights straight with my kids. Their Dad had to go on a week long business trip.  I was excited to have them to myself for an extended period but also was having trepidations about not having any support around for the inevitable “episodes” that always occur with my explosive son.  I had planned everything out in the hopes of avoiding any conflicts.  House was clean and tidy (my son’s favorite way to ‘bust’ me).  I had to work yesterday which meant there would be a time period of 3 hours between them arriving home from school and my arrival home. When I came home I had bags of Chinese food in my hands so that we could go straight into dinner thus hopefully avoiding the additional unstructured down time for my son while I was cooking dinner.  I really thought this would be a good idea, allowing me to focus more on him without having to deal with cooking dinner and clean up. There was only a one hour window to eat and chat before he had to go to an event at school.  I had also called him a few times while I was still at work to make sure he was getting all of his homework done before dinner so we wouldn’t have that added pressure.  Each time we spoke he assured me that he was working on his homework.

Well, I’m a fool.  When I got home he was plopped on the couch glued to the TV and had a vast array of containers, wrappers and Gatorade bottles strewn about and his backpack was by the door and had not even been unzipped.  In other words, he flat out lied to me about doing the homework.  My choice was either to make my first encounter with him a confrontation about the lie or to just point out that I was disappointed that now he would be rushed to get everything done before he had to leave again.  I opted to go the mention/disappointment route thinking that to start with a confrontation would be a sure recipe for a bad night.  I tore the bags of food open and we began to eat.  The insults to his sister began immediately (let’s just summarize by saying it was full of things that you just don’t say to people) it made any conversation impossible.  Then he threw his chopsticks like daggers at his sister, was mean to the cat, took a jar of vitamins (don’t know why he had those in his possession and slammed them into the rice which caused his sister to freak out because the rice was now “contaminated.”  I literally said, “start your homework” at least 30 times to him while his sister and I finished our food.  The child COULD NOT get himself to even open his backpack.  He would go into the room where his backpack was and then come back a few minutes later with no idea that he needed to start his work.  There was absolutely no connection for him as to what he needed to do.  Starting to teeter very close to the edge myself I was trying to not lose my temper, but finally I had to yell which made a little bit of difference, at least it got the backpack opened.

On a side note, I’m in the middle of reading Buzz, by Katherine Ellison.  In some of her research she found that the ADHD brain craves stimulus when it can’t find it, and I’ve come to notice that the re-entry to my house from the kid’s Dad’s house is creating some anxiety that may be the reason for my son to create havoc on that first night that I have him back to my house.  It got me to wondering if that was the reason behind my son’s behavior, did he need me to yell because it was stimulus for his brain?  God, that is screwed up if that is true.

But, I digress, so I finally got him out the door only to have him return 2 hours later to stir up even more dramatic chaos….not to bore you with the time line I’ll just tell you it involved, spilling graham crackers crumbs used for baking ALL over my brand new shag rug (I’ll never get all those crumbs out), throwing a scarf that toppled over a plant, dancing in front of the TV so now we’re not quite sure which girl didn’t get the rose from The Bachelor (sadly, huge in my book), again terrorized the cat, and the grand finale right at bedtime, throwing a potted plant at his sister (thankfully fake so no dirt to deal with) and causing a large bump on her knee which, of course, then gave her the platform to create gigantic proportions of bedtime drama.

I was beside myself.  Who acts like this at his age?  I started in on him, “Why do you do this?”  “What are you thinking?”  “How can you possibly think this kind of behavior is acceptable?”  “Five year old children do these kinds of things, not teenagers!”  “Do you really not have control of your actions?”  At this point he looked at me and just said, “No, I don’t have control of myself, I don’t know what is going on.” That made me stop, was that a break through or just a tactic to get mom out of his face? Then as I stood there glaring at him I noticed he had what looked like black lip liner on.  It turns out that he had opened a huge box of truffles that someone had given us for Christmas that I had hidden away, but he had found while home alone yesterday.  He had eaten half of the box during the afternoon and that night.  As stupid as this sounds, it was the first time that I really made the connection between how the sugar was affecting him.  We had a small conversation about it and he seems to actually be aware that the chocolate may have sent him over the edge.

This morning he woke up without any issues, asked me to make him breakfast.  I also turned on the TV which I usually don’t allow during breakfast wanting to see if the stimulus would help out.  He sat quietly eating his breakfast and at one time when I was trying to tell him he needed to finish getting ready for school he was totally zoned out on Sponge Bob, when I said his name and said, “hey you were totally zoned out” he just laughed instead of the usual insult towards me, got up and finished getting ready.  When we were in the car, I told him how amazing his behavior was this morning and how it really made me happy.  His response was, “well, you didn’t feed my all that sugar stuff for breakfast.”

Of course, it’s always my fault.  But, in the bigger picture, if I’m going to read all this information about ADHD perhaps I should start to follow a little more of it, shouldn’t I have figured out the sugar element long ago?? Meanwhile, that stupid little squirrel that I’ve been battling with all winter is going to be one happy fellow today when he discovers a years supply of chocolate truffles in my trash can.

Square Peg in a Round Hole?

I would imagine this is how my kid feels most days.

Detention………hello, Mr. Principal

Well, we’ve finally hit the big time.  An actual call from the principal saying that my kid raised his hand in math and asked to go to the bathroom.  However, instead of going to the bathroom he went up and down the halls saying hello to all the substitute teachers of that day (there was a school conference so most of the regular teachers were out).  I was also told that he seems to excuse himself quite often to go to the bathroom as a means to get out of class.

Okay, couple of issues good and bad here.  WHY am I just hearing about this 4 months into the school year?  (I’m pretty sure it is payback on the principal’s part for me filing a formal complaint of how the school held a 504 meeting about my kid without any of this testing results on hand)……this is bad, or on the bright side, at least I now understand why the kid doesn’t understand a lick of mathematics, not because he’s dumb, it’s because he’s always in the john, so, I guess that’s somewhat of a positive??

I inquired exactly what does detention mean?  I was told they all sit in a room and are told to be quiet.  Ooooo, that’ll show him.  Are you freakin’ kidding me, after years and years and years of school kids getting in trouble and this is the best that these schools can come up with?  Won’t there just be lots of hand signals to the other kids in detention and other general tom-foolery that on some level will just result in an overall bonding experience for all the bad kids?  How is sitting in a room with all your fellow hooligans supposed to make an impression on you when you’re 13.  If anything I think that it sort of says, “Hey, I’ve arrived, I’ve hit ‘bad-ass’ status.”

When I asked if they really felt that this would work they informed me that if this became a habit then they could enforce a “no-bathroom” policy.  What?????  How do you NOT allow a kid to go to the bathroom if he has to.  They actually said that they would monitor how often he could go to the bathroom.  Great, so the onus once again falls back on me, the parent of an ADHDer.  Do I opt to have his very basic freedom of going to the bathroom taken away with the slim chance it’ll nip this bad behavior in the bud, also by allowing the school to do this to him won’t it just give his already ADHD riddled self-esteem yet another blow by having yet another person telling him what and when he can do something.  Seriously, just shoot me now.  This blows!!!!!

I Hate You!!

Yep, we all knew we’d hear those words at some point, right. Except instead of it coming out of my son’s mouth it came out of mine. I couldn’t believe I said it, yet I REALLY meant it at that moment.

It was a school morning and I was running around packing the lunches for him and his sister, and had just made him a fresh fruit smoothie for his breakfast when I realized that I had mistakenly eaten the last of the Frosted Mini Wheats last night as my midnight snack. Well, his sister ONLY eats Frosted Mini Wheats so we were in a real crisis moment here. She was running late and hadn’t even started to get dressed for school yet, I looked over and saw him just sitting there reading a comic book. So since we literally live about 10 feet from a Starbucks I asked him if he could run across the street and get a bagel for her while I finished making his smoothie. Well, of course a huge argument ensued as he listed all of his reasons why he shouldn’t have to do it. It was unbelievable! Seriously, this kid who was sitting there doing NOTHING couldn’t do this to help out the morning situation. I was so blown away by the total disregard for anyone/anything but himself that I just lost it and yelled out “I hate you.”

What I meant (?) or should have said was I hate people who are as selfish as you, but no instead of lashing out against the ‘behavior’ of the ADHD kid, I lashed out at the actual kid. But, tell me, was this unacceptable behavior the kid’s fault or the fault of the ADHD? After all that is done for this kid it was beyond me that he couldn’t just do this one thing. He wasn’t in the middle of an X-box game, he certainly wasn’t overwhelmed by anything since he was just lounging on the couch looking at comic book, so was I really supposed to be okay with this incredible level of selfishness just because he has ADHD. This certainly wasn’t any kind of attentional issue, this was just a plain lazy and bad attitude. I couldn’t believe that those words came out of my mouth, but I have to say that I have never felt so justified in making a point.

Ironically, after I dropped him off at school he called to say that he had forgotten to print out his homework assignment that was on my computer so I had to print it out for him and drive BACK to the school. Then he called again, right after I returned home for the second time to then tell me he had forgotten his assignment pad. My desire to say, “oh, I can’t bring that to you because I’m reading a comic book” was so tempting, but of course, like any mother would, I got back in the car for the THIRD time that morning and drove the assignment pad over to the school.

So, again I ask……..ADHD or selfishness. How do we know and when should we treat the bad behavior like we would with any other kid.