Do you feel like this? It may be a little different for me because this is my weekend without my son – read ‘divorced’. I should be joyous and bouncing around the house because of the available “me-time”. I should be relaxing with the Sunday paper, making plans for lunch with a friend, etc, etc. But instead I find myself just doing mundane chores and trying my best not to cry. I wonder if others of you that are divorced with ADHD kids feel this way? When they inhabit the house there is always stress and the feeling of walking on egg shells as well as the constant picking up of everything they’ve left in their trail similar to Pig Pen in Charlie Brown, but when they’re not here instead of the big sigh of relief that should come it seems like the stillness just presents a giant opening for the sadness of the situation to come barreling through.
I try to read, I try to relax but all I can do is replay arguments we’ve had or berate myself for where now, in this stillness, I can see how patience would have been the better choice. Is this just me, or do any of you do this as well? Lately, I’ve found myself caught between looking back and looking forward. Experts and all the current gurus say that we all just need to keep looking forward, just keep your sights set on tomorrow as opposed to mourning yesterday and that is the way we’ll make it through. They say that just moving forward can even put things into motion (ala “The Secret”) and before we know it our lives will be what we have always wished for ourselves. As much as I try to want to believe this, and I have experienced some success with this when it comes to my business life, I just don’t know how realistic this is for the parent of an adhd-er. I find myself constantly going over the details of things past to try my hardest to figure out why my best laid plans with this child didn’t work. Just looking for that tidbit that will make me say “A-ha, that’s why we ended up in a yelling match over something that was so incredibly trivial” thus ending all trivial arguments for the rest of time. But, that doesn’t seem to happen and the thinking just never seems to stop….even in my sleep.
My son started with a new therapist a few weeks ago, and yesterday I heard from the therapist that my son wants to stay at his Dad’s house instead of mine because there are so many arguments at my house. Hmmmmm……is this truth or is this just my son’s somewhat bent view of the way things really are? The last time I dropped my son at his Dad’s house I witnessed his stepmom come storming down the hallway just to snap her fingers right in his face while she spit out the word “jacket” as her indication that he needed to go back to the entry hall and hang up the jacket he had dropped on the floor. It actually was quite shocking to me. So, why would he prefer that treatment to being with me at my house? Am I wrong in my efforts to treat him like a human being by actually speaking and trying to reason with him as opposed to “snapping” commands at him like he was the family dog? What happened to the ever popular – you’ve got to pick your spots with these kinds of kids philosophy? A jacket on the floor in my house wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, I’ve always kept my cool about that stuff waiting for the inevitable bigger transgressions. Did my son, who, by the way, jumped right up and put his jacket on the designated hook, prefer that type of communication? Is he more like a dog/animal that responds better to stimulus like that? Do my constant attempts to speak in a soothing, communicative voice when needing him to do something just come across as an annoyance in contrast to the quick and swift “snapping of fingers”? These kinds of thoughts occupy my mind at all times, as desperate attempts on my part to figure this all out.
Herein lies the moral of this story. I hate to write only negativity in my posts, I hate to think that someone clicked onto this blog to gain strength and courage just to read the most recent post and feel lower and more defeated than they had prior to reading my ongoing banter. I’ve come to realize that the one constant element in my never-ending thoughts is that I’m always looking to “fix” the situation. I’m not a perfectionist, but I am a fixer. When it comes to business deals, and everyday stuff that trait is mostly good, but as time goes on living with an adhd kid, I’m starting to realize that in my urgency to try to “fix” the situation I really think I am doing more harm than good.
Last week as I was getting my annual mammogram – that’s always fun – there was nothing to read in the waiting room except for magazines that dealt with cancer – not saying that’s odd or anything. But as I was thumbing through one I came across a subtitle that said that the most important thing a cancer patient can do is to realize that they can’t “fix” the problem, cancer is a journey and a process, there are no shortcuts one just has to go through the process and come out the other end. It dawned on me that this same thinking can apply to the journey of an adhd parent, I can’t fix this, it is something that just has to be a journey and hopefully in the end we will all come out okay. Realizing that there is no “fix” can be frightening but it can also be somewhat freeing to realize that as moms and dads that are conditioned to “fixing” all their kids problems this is one that we are not required to fix, our job is to just be there with them, doing the same thing that we do everyday with these kids………the best we can do at that particular time on that particular day. If we give ourselves the gift of non-judgement of ourselves – and of them – I think we’ll feel a little bit of mental energy return to us as opposed to the weight that this endless self-reflection and never-ending analyzing seems to bring.
Try it and see how you feel. Every time you hear that voice in your head asking you why you didn’t handle something better or do more for your adhd-er, just catch yourself and tell yourself to stop and see how freeing it is.
As for me….when I was typing that last line about just telling yourself to “stop”, I accidentally typed “shop” instead of “stop”, so I am going to take that as a sign from the universe telling me that since I have no kids today I’m going to stop sitting here beating myself up and do exactly that…….go shopping!
life and adhd 