When you are at the end of the rope, tie a knot and hang on!

When my son was born he came out of his warm home of 9 months curious and happy.   There were no tears from him that day, I shed a few when I finally got to lay eyes on him, but he was more interested in taking it all in.  That little boy was looking around that room like he had seen it before, it was a little strange, but he hasn't changed much from that day, still being so very observant and interested in all that is around him. 


When he was about 2 months old he started to make this face, we described it as the monkey face.  Imagine when a money gets excited and pinches it lips together sort of like teenage girls do when they are taking a selfie in the bathroom mirror, well that's what my son would do.  He would pinch his lips together and the start to breath in air through his nose in a very noisy way.  It was funny, it was definitely odd, he was a bit of a quirky kid.


When my son was about 6 months old he added hand flapping to the monkey face.  If there was something that drew his attention, or excited him he would start flapping and puckering those lips.  He was definitely a little odd, a little quirky.  The thing about this little boy was he had his quirks, and yes, they sort of made us think there might be something up, but the kid was always happy.  He never slept, he was always "on".  Looking back to those early years I honestly can only remember one time when he cried for more than a minute or two.  He was my happy, quirky little boy.


We realized pretty early on that he was going to need some socialization with other kids.  We would take him to playgrounds and have play dates and he just really didn't play with the other kids the way others did.  He was controlling, obsessive, only interested in pleasing himself.  He had problems with hands on, he would anger quickly, and sometimes he would become aggressive.  When he was two and a half we made the decision to put him in day care to help him socially.  It was our thinking that having trained professionals work with him daily the social issues he was having would improve with real guidance.  We tried our best to help him on the play ground but unless you have understand and willing participates on the other side trying to guide your kid through difficult social issues with strangers really doesn't work.  We felt the only solution was full time day care for a while, so we started spending 8000.00/year to have someone with knowledge and education to help him.


While we had him in daycare we were able to get a specialist see him every other week, either at our home or at the daycare.  This specialist was from an outside non-profit organization in the community that helped children with things like socialization issues, mental delays, or children who had serious medical issues like autism.  We started working with this professional feeling like there was a possibility that our son was on that spectrum somewhere, and we felt the sooner we had someone confirm that the better it would be for him and for us.


He worked with the professionals at daycare and that specialist for two years.  Nothing changed for him socially at all.  There were a lot of idea's put out there on what the problem was, but nothing was concrete, he just didn't fit into any box they had.  We fought for over a year to get a psychological evaluation done, which eventually happened when he was 4 and a half.  I had held onto the hope that the evaluation would give us the answers we were looking for, I hoped that we would finally be given the direction in which to go down and improve our sons life.  When the results of that evaluation came back it was determined that he had ADHD.  We (both my partner and I) cried at the results.  We cried not because he had ADHD, but because we were disappointed that he didn't have something else, like Asperger's or was somewhere on the spectrum.  Now you may be asking yourself, why on earth would this woman want her son to have something like Asperger's or be somewhere on the spectrum.  Well, it's this simple.  When a child has ADHD it's so hard for any professional, teacher, or fellow student to believe that this is something that a child can't control.  When you are diagnosed on the spectrum, or even with learning disabilities or anything in a "box" with a medical condition behind it, well it is just understood that the child can't do anything about the cards they were dealt.  With ADHD it's the child's fault, and that is a direct result of how bad the parents are.  Honestly, people who hear ADHD think, it's a parenting issue, it's not the kids fault so much if it weren't for his parents he wouldn't be acting this way, they must just let him away with murder...that's why those kids are like that.  School administrators certainly don't get it, not for the most part...yes, if you are lucky enough to find a school administrator who has a child and that child has issues similar to those of your child you just might have some understanding there, but other than that they don't get it.


So, we were handed an evaluation of ADHD, sent on our way without any resources, facing the scariest of times we had ever faced, that of public school.  I was afraid for my son, I was afraid that he would be eaten up and spit out at public school...but what was I to do, I am not the type of person who could sit down with him at home and get him to learn, so public school was all we had.  We were lucky, the school he started in was great.  The principal got him, his teacher got him, and rather than make him and us feel bad about his social issues they worked with them to improve them.  His teacher had this wonderful way of explaining our son to the other students that made him feel special rather than different.  Many of the students began flapping their hands like our son did to be more like him...to which his teacher would say "no, that's not your thing, that's his thing, you need to find your own thing to do".  We loved that!  We loved that the kids didn't see him as odd, but as unique all because that's how his teacher presented him to the class.  Teachers can either be the savior in the class or they can be a catalyst to the bad behavior, it is really all in their control.  She was a wonderful teacher, who taught for all the right reasons and had many years of teaching under her belt.  We were grateful for this first experience with school.


We had to move the following year so we ended up in a school that was not at all similar to the one we were previously at.  My son had a really hard time making any friends, in fact, didn't make any at all that year.  He had a great teacher, who saw the good in him, but the children were closed off, only interested in sports (which my son does not excel at, or can really even hold his own at).  They were all from a small community, many of them related to one another and not interested in the "new" kid.  He struggled that year, we all struggled, so we decided we needed to move again so that he might have a better chance.


School number three started out good, he got a good teacher who seemed to care about my son and him having a successful year.  He has issues throughout the year with some outbursts, he had some inappropriate hands on, he sometimes yelled when he didn't get his way, he cried often so often that the EA on the playground informed other children who thought my son was being bullied to just let him be because he always cries.  Yes, this little boy who never cried was crying so much at school they didn't even notice it, and didn't care at all about it.  Sad for a mother to hear, sadder for a mother who can't do anything about it.


My son is different, he doesn't always have "normal" reactions to things, he doesn't understand body language, he doesn't talk about the things that kids his own age would talk about...he could go on for hours about the Titanic, knowing all sorts of facts that only he would be interested in.  He has impulse control problems....which have gotten better over the last year or so, but they still cause him problems.  Impulses that one would think, why can't you just stop yourself from doing, but he just can't.   He is not one to make others feel bad about themselves, he would never impulsively do something out of malice, he might touch another child but not to hurt them, maybe it might irritate them but he is not doing it to hurt anyone.  He doesn't always get that "no" means that.  He has a really hard time with winning and losing...he takes losing personally....very personally.  He is harder on himself than anyone else ever could be, and this has led to a self esteem problem.  He tries to be as good at things like sports as the other kids, but he is always going to be that kid that is last picked and wouldn't be picked at all if it weren't for the rule that all kids play.  He doesn't do well at recess or in gym, he tries, but I have found that in recent months he doesn't try much more at all.  He has above average intelligence, and understands concepts quickly and without issues.  His intelligence also makes him stand out, not in a good way.  My son has no idea what the listener is interested in, he is only interested in what he wants to talk about.  This has created difficulty in our home from time to time, but luckily at our house we try to accept him as he is. 


We have worked with him since a very early age how to win gracefully, and how to lose gracefully.  We have worked with professionals on how to help him with that, we have worked with professionals on how to help him with his impulsiveness, we have worked with professionals on how to get him to socialize in a way that is more effective.  There have been many visits to the school trying to find solutions to his unique issues, trying to find ways that will help him and help those around him.  We have paid attention to his strengths, like dance and music, and have gotten him active in out of school activities that help him develop those skills, with the hope that these will be the area's in his life where he will not only find other like minded people, but it will give him an opportunity to shine and build on his self esteem and value his strengths.  We have worked endlessly on ways to show him how to read body language, to see when people do this it means that, or when people turn away they are actually not interested anymore.  Some of these things have improved, some have not.  Now, instead of flapping his hands he has now moved to another hand thing that he does over his head.  He does it all the time, when he is watching TV, when he is watching others play on the playground, when he is excited, when he is nervous, when he is doing homework, when he is playing with the dog, when he is playing board games, when he is doing something on the iPad....he does it all the time.  I don't notice it anymore, it's just part of who he is, but I'm not sure that's the case with others.  I am not sure if the students in his class notice this, and that leads to some more problems or not.


I don't blame the other students in his class for finding him to be odd.  I don't think that would to difficult to understand.  I remember as a school age child noticing kids that were different, to some degree I was one of those kids.  I remember kids that did odd things, some slobbered all over the place, some placed their hand over their mouth and nose when they were sitting at their desk, some had strange clothes, some had strange behaviors some were just strange, but for the life of me I don't remember any of those kids not having at least one friend they could count on.  I don't expect that the kids aren't going to find my son a bit strange, but I certainly don't expect what he experiences.  When we moved here he made fast friends with the boy across the street, they were inseparable.  That whole first summer I had two kids in my basement or in the pool more often then I didn't.  When school started they played together whenever they were on the playground together, they played often after school they played on the weekends.  We had to start putting some restrictions on how much they were together because school, piano and dance had to take some of the time that he had spent with his friend.  Over time they spent less time together but he could always count on that friend to want to be with him.  Over the last school year that has changed, we don't know if it's the parents or the child stopped coming over, when my son would call and ask him to play he would say no, and on the playground he would not play with my son anymore, only playing with other friends.  The one child that my son could count on wasn't that friend anymore and that has been difficult for him.  He isn't the kind of kid that holds grudges, and doesn't stop playing with someone because they had a bad day or a bad moment.  He just thinks everyone is his friend, and he just wants to play.  This has been sad for all of us.


This weekend he broke down and told us how he is really feeling.  We don't get reports from school from him often.  He isn't the kid that walks home telling you all about his day, he is the kid that doesn't share much if anything at all.  He will talk your ear off, but nothing much about his day at school.  We have grown to accept this about him, and because of it have relied so heavily on the system to help us keep informed. Sometimes it works but more often it doesn't and we are left in the dark missing many important events and happenings in his daily classroom life. 


He has a very poor short term memory (ADHD) so telling us that he has to bring a toy in to school that is an example of a simple machine is one of those things he doesn't do....so when the day comes that he needed to bring that toy he misses out because he was unable to communicate it with us and if you don't bring a toy you don't get to participate in the class.  This is frustrating for a parent, and for the child, but it's pretty much par for the course. 


So this weekend he broke down and told us what's going on with him at school.  He started off by telling us he wanted to either get in a serious accident and get severely injured, or he wants to die.  This is something a parent never wants to hear, but yet here I am hearing this come out of my sons mouth.  Of course we immediately went to the "hurting yourself solves nothing, now tell us what is making you feel so desperate that you are thinking these thoughts"  he went on to tell us that during recess and gym he feels that way.  With some further explanation he tells us that during gym class the kids want nothing to do with him, if he sits on a bench where other kids are sitting they will move to the floor, if he sits on the floor they will move back to the bench.  He told us that when playing a game called wall burner outside during recess they change the rules when he plays, the rules change to if someone doesn't get to the wall in time after throwing the ball then the ball can be thrown at the person who doesn't get there in time...but the real rule is that they only throw the ball at my son, no one else gets that lovely treatment.  This is what makes him feel like he shouldn't live anymore. 


Obviously I am outraged, I am sad, but most importantly I am scared to death.  I can't be there on the play ground, I can't be in the gym, I can't get it into the heads of the other students that although you may not like someone, there is good in everyone and everyone has worth.  I am not able to fix the problem from home, it's not happening in my house, I am not able to fix the other children, I am not even able to talk to the other children, what I am left with is hoping that the administration will do something to safe guard my child.  What I can do as a parent is tell my son that no matter what others may think he does have worth, he is worthy of love, he is worthy of fair treatment, he is worthy of affection and that there are far more good things about him than not so good things.  I can reinforce that the problem with these other kids is that they have the problem, not him, that it's not a reflection of him that they act this way, it's a reflection of who they are that they act this way.  These are very hard concepts for a 9 yr old to understand, heavens knows many 40 somethings have a hard time understanding that it isn't their fault.  So, now we are off to the office once again Monday morning to address this continual isolation issue. 


We have decided it's time to get my son some therapy, and hope that it helps him not feel so alone, help him interact better with his peers...but you know that's going to be hard because now their minds are made up about him and it will take a great deal for them to change it.  It's too bad that those in charge of our children don't teach acceptance of all, how to look for the good, how to embrace those that have unique things to offer, how to just learn to play and be happy no matter who is playing in the group.  When I was a kid we played with whoever wanted to play, if the block was playing kick the can anyone who wanted to join just joined.  If you didn't let a kid play your parents had something to say about it.  Now a days that isn't the case, you are allowed to leave kids out, to say no, to not open your eyes and life up to others.  It's encouraged on the play ground and in the back yards.  Too many people are afraid of those that don't look, act or live the same as they do, they don't want anything to do with anyone who doesn't fit in their "box".  It's too bad that this is the direction we are heading in, I'm scared for my son's future, I'm scared for our world. 

Missing you my friend!

It's difficult at times to not be bitter.  Life has a sneaky way of doing that to you, if you let it.  I have let it as of late, I don't know why, I have so much to not be bitter about, but yet I can be and have been.


Things that happen in life can, sometimes, make you hard, make you closed off, or bitter.  I have experienced things that have changed me, unknowingly they have made me harder.  I am just now realizing that...and I need to step back and re-evaluate things.  I don't want to be this way, I was never like this before, ever, but now things about me have changed, life can be so hard sometimes.


I know, you should let people take away the good things about you, but sometimes that's harder than one would think.  Things happen, things are said, and you start to question what are the good things about me.  I had a friend once tell me that I did too much for her, that I was always there to help and that was too much (I brought her home made chicken soup when she was off work sick)....well, that's what I thought being a friend was, so after hearing how that was wrong I then start to guess what is friendship if it's not about being there.  This same person told me that I was weak because I would cry, so I stopped crying when things made me sad....  ugh.


I am sad that these sorts of things can really change me, they do a real number on me.  I know I shouldn't let it, but sometimes I can't help the feelings they create in me.  Since ending that friendship I haven't been able to be a "real" friend with anyone, I keep my distance, I don't try too hard or let them get too close.  I feel like it's better to have someone at a distance then someone too close that will eventually just change their mind and hurt me in the process.  At the same time I feel this emptiness, but can't get myself to do what it takes to fill it.  It takes a lot for me to ask you to do something with me, or to come to my house...you have to be someone really special to get that sort of invitation.


When I was young I had two really close friends.  I could tell them anything, they appreciated me for who I was and didn't think there was anything wrong with me.  They were my biggest supporters and were at my side through some of the most difficult times in my life.  I had no idea that those would be the best "friend" years of my life.  I really thought that these two friends would be with me forever....how things change.  One of my friends died 22 yrs ago and the other sort of just drifted away over the last couple of years.  I so wish the one who died was still here today.  She struggled through so many of the same things my son is currently struggling through, I know the two of them would have helped each other.  She knew what it was like to be left out, to be bullied, and to different than anyone else....my son sure could have learned so much from her.


I've been thinking about my friend a lot lately, what I wouldn't do to turn back time and try to do things differently so she could be here today.  I have regrets in regards to that friendship, I could have done things differently, I could have talk to her more, or listened more.  I could have put more on hold and been at her side more, maybe if I had done some of those things she would be here today with me.  What I wouldn't give to be able to pick up the phone and talk to her, I know she would not only listen to me but she would never spare my feelings to tell me the truth.  She was the best at keeping me grounded and showing me where I was good rather than where I was bad (hard to find these days).  I know she would have loved my son, and he would have loved her.  I think she would have been here, not missing a thing... I wish she was here...but wishing doesn't do a body good now does it.