Confessions of an ADHD Mom

ADHD sucks. Like I mean, it really sucks. While I’m sure I have a mild case of it myself and I’ve learned how to cope with it…I never fully appreciated the struggle that is ADHD until I had kids with the diagnosis.

Of all the diagnoses there are in the world, ADHD has got to be on the incredibly low end of the spectrum. I mean there’s cancer, there’s severe autism, cerebral palsy, mental illness…there are legit syndromes and conditions that are debilitating and life threatening! Who cares about a little attention and focus disorder?
I guess that’s what I always thought and why I never lent it much respect. Get over yourself and the fact that your kid’s not “perfect” and deal with it. Ohhh….so sorry for you that you have to be involved in their schoolwork….poor you!

Let me tell you…I’m a pretty tough cookie and I have shed more tears over my children’s struggles with ADHD than just about any of my other struggles. Why? Mostly because they’re my babies and anything that causes them angst causes me double. But also because I had no clue just how hard the journey was until I walked it.

Let me paint you the picture:
It’s you’re first baby, going to school for the first time. You can’t wait to see what adventures she takes and the new things she’ll learn. You’re welcoming the break during the day and excited for her to meet new friends. You send her off to school with her new shoes and back-pack aaaaaand ….she ends up hating school. She cries before she goes and she cries when she comes home. When you ask her how her day was her report is either a play-by-play of everyone who walked past the classroom door or a complaint that it was “too hard” or “too long”. Homework is a chore and once she reaches upper elementary it takes her hours. You talk to other parents and they seem puzzled by your experience. “Oh really, my kids love school! They feel sad when they miss it!” “Four hours for homework!?!? Oh my! No, little Suzy never spends more than 30 minutes!” Parent teacher conferences become something you dread because your kid is never keeping up. You are told that they are a “joy to have in class…but”. There’s always a “but”. At report card time Facebook is flooded with honor roll and straight A posts…and you’re still waiting for your turn. While your friends report their kids go up to their rooms and independently do their homework, you sit at the dining room table with yours for hours. Homework is never done before dinner time which means answering questions and redirecting in between stirring the pasta and chopping the veggies. Your evenings are no longer yours and day hours are speckled with sending e-mails to teachers about missed assignments and falling grades. While you once longed for the days you could get a break by sending your kids to school, you now dread that institution as much as the kids do.

ADHD robs you of your time and sanity, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that you have to see your children’s tears hit their notebook paper and watch their frustration, every day. You have to see their faces red with embarrassment when they forgot their homework…again. You have to know that every so many days they go without eating because they forgot their lunch and they just don’t want to call you to bring it, again. You hear them say, “No I’m not” when you tell them that they are smart and look into their disappointed eyes when they missed honor roll…..again. ADHD it seems, is an endless stream of disappointing “agains”. You have to know that despite your best efforts and the practices you’ve put into place to help them succeed, you still have to let them learn the hard way in order to find their most effective coping mechanisms. That constant stream of trials and errors is painful to watch. It’s a disorder for which medication is controversial and you can’t fix it.

I’ve spent an hour trying to convince my child to stop rolling around on the floor and sit up at the table to do their homework. And I’ve broken them by demanding that they “Knock it off, sit up and get it done or else!” I’ve given them the simplest directions of writing just one sentence and returned 20 minutes later to find an empty page. I have broken down a one page reading assignment into sentence fragments (Think about that!) to make it easier to understand. I’ve spent 8 hours trying to help them write one paragraph and days trying to re-organize their rooms. I’ve bought the entire school supply list 5x over because everything kept “getting lost” and I’ve restocked the nurses “snack cabinet” from all of the times my children have borrowed from it when they forgot their lunch. I’ve never had the luxury of missing a parent-teacher conference and I’ve got every teacher’s e-mail memorized.

But I’ve also watched my child earn the honor roll after 13 worthy but failed attempts. That’s a celebration! I’ve seen the relief of finishing a day-long assignment wash over their face. And I’ve heard from parents and teachers alike that I have “really wonderful children”. My children have had the opportunity to learn from a young age that their disability isn’t an excuse not to succeed. They are learning to work hard now.

I know that there are so many, much worse conditions that my children could be plagued with. They are healthy. They are kind. They are great kids! I wouldn’t trade them for every last dollar on the planet and I love them more anything in this world. They are my everything!

I am a stronger person because of it and one day I might be able to use this journey to help others…. But ADHD still sucks. Just because it’s not the worst thing that could happen, doesn’t make it easy. I have to deal with it but I’m allowed not to like it. 5 years ago we got our first diagnosis and many days I’m still overwhelmed. I am a strong person and I still privately cry when I see them struggle. I am proactive and work to get them accommodations and help them learn coping skills but I still ache for school and organization to be easier for them. And when it became clear that my second child needed to be evaluated too…I cried even more. I really really didn’t want to walk down that road again. Because it’s a hard road.

But it’s our road…so I’ll walk it with them…hand in hand…with a sticky note reminder on their binder and an extra pencil in my pocket. And we’ll be ok…. crappy ol’ ADHD and all.