It's been a long time since I've blogged about the family. Life got in the way...no, make that graduate school, babies, raising babies, schooling (theirs), job changes, starting back to work - all happened. Last fall, I graduated from my library degree program (whoo hoo!) and decided to walk away from a full-time job in a school library. The reason - it wasn't working. My family was falling apart. Our lives were hectic, over-scheduled and no one was getting along. The other factor. I knew something was wrong with my children and I couldn't put my finger on it. I needed a breather to get my head back in the zone and have the mental and emotional energy to figure things out.
About a month ago, my former college room mate and I got in touch. We started chatting about our kids, especially our boys. She had been on her own emotional roller coaster with her son. As we were talking, my gears got turning. What was going on with Luke? I wasn't sure if he was ADHD or had some sort of processing disorder (or WHAT!?!) but the questions in my head were forming. A few days later, I was at a swim lesson with my children. As I watched my son, standing in a line with 3 other boys about his age, I knew immediately that he had a problem. As all the other children stood and listened, my son was uncontrollable moving his body. He was wiggling and squirming, moving his arms, talking and slapping himself in the forehead. It was as if I was seeing him for the first time as an outsider would. He was totally unable to control his body.
We emailed the pediatrician, got Vanderbilt forms and sent them to his teachers as well as filled them out ourselves. I knew we were going to get to the bottom of this but I still wasn't convinced he had ADHD. Maybe I was in denial but I'd like to think that I just wasn't sure. All of my friends had told me that he didn't seem like he had it and that he was just "being a boy" or was "just active". However, a conference with his teachers made me feel a bit more strongly that even if it wasn't ADHD, there was definitely an anger component to all this and we needed to figure it out before he got to big and we got to scared to handle him.
I call it "the look" and I've only seen it a few times. The most recent was about a week ago when I came to get him from a friend's house. He came stomping up the stairs, angry and looked me right in the eye saying, "I HATE leaving!" and then promptly punched me in the stomach. My son is 5, 2 months shy from his 6th birthday. In my book, this is unacceptable behavior for someone his age. But what really frightened me was the look in his eye. It was mean and angry. You would have thought I had berated him or done something awful to deserve it, but I didn't. His teachers had also described this "look" and this is when I knew we had to get with the pediatrician and get a counselor involved.
So that's what we did today. Mark and I went and met the pediatrician. He is ADHD with ODD. Right now, we are working on setting up the appt. with a counselor and will probably start meds in the spring. I'm sad today for so many reasons, but hopeful that in a year from now I will be amazed at the transformations that have occurred. While there are many parents out there dealing with so much worse than I am, I'm not sitting here throwing myself a pity party. There is some relief in knowing a bit more truth to what I have been dealing with for a long time and blaming myself or my spouse for bad parenting.
That's all for now...
