with, I hope, more success than I've had putting my daughter to bed,
since she's currently pressed up against the gate on her bedroom,
yelling, "Mooooommmeeee ... Moooommmeeee ..." Sometimes she has a moral
objection to bedtime. Meanwhile, her ADHDer big brother, whom you might
expect to be wide awake, given his skittery brain, fell sound asleep
about five minutes after his head hit the pillow. Go figure.
So it was an interesting year, possibly in the ancient-curse sort of way. We've learned that: 1. Kiddo has ADHD; 2. I have arthritis; 3. Kiddette was not going to let her brother be the only one to have eye surgery; 4. The Jersey Shore was so much more vulnerable than we ever thought (and corollary: I never thought I'd be grateful to only wait a half-hour at the gas station); 5. Apparently, the way to keep kids safe in schools is to give the teachers guns. Which makes me think of one of my high school history teachers, who had cataracts in both eyes and let a couple of students fill out the grade sheets for her. (Rumor was that said students upgraded their friends' grades.) I think we might want to rethink this gun idea.
I know more about ADHD than I did a year ago, but I'm still just scratching the surface, I think. I'm not always sure we're doing everything we can be doing for kiddo. I worry that his teacher is getting exasperated with him. I'm really doubtful the 504 plan is going to be enough, when he just does things like pushing other kids for no apparent reason and I don't even think he can explain it to himself. The school officials still seem willing to work with us, though.
I've learned that mental disorders are almost this great Wild West of medicine, because there's a lot that's still unknown, and treating such disorders is still a bit of a guessing game. And no matter what, people are going to assume that the "disorder" is a made-up excuse to cover for bad parenting.
I've learned that families frequently feel like they're alone in dealing with these issues, when they aren't. I feel like all these individual pockets of families would be better able to cope if they knew about each other, and banded together.
But we'll keep trying to do our best for kiddo (and kiddette). And since the world didn't end and all, we'll see how 2013 goes for us.
So it was an interesting year, possibly in the ancient-curse sort of way. We've learned that: 1. Kiddo has ADHD; 2. I have arthritis; 3. Kiddette was not going to let her brother be the only one to have eye surgery; 4. The Jersey Shore was so much more vulnerable than we ever thought (and corollary: I never thought I'd be grateful to only wait a half-hour at the gas station); 5. Apparently, the way to keep kids safe in schools is to give the teachers guns. Which makes me think of one of my high school history teachers, who had cataracts in both eyes and let a couple of students fill out the grade sheets for her. (Rumor was that said students upgraded their friends' grades.) I think we might want to rethink this gun idea.
I know more about ADHD than I did a year ago, but I'm still just scratching the surface, I think. I'm not always sure we're doing everything we can be doing for kiddo. I worry that his teacher is getting exasperated with him. I'm really doubtful the 504 plan is going to be enough, when he just does things like pushing other kids for no apparent reason and I don't even think he can explain it to himself. The school officials still seem willing to work with us, though.
I've learned that mental disorders are almost this great Wild West of medicine, because there's a lot that's still unknown, and treating such disorders is still a bit of a guessing game. And no matter what, people are going to assume that the "disorder" is a made-up excuse to cover for bad parenting.
I've learned that families frequently feel like they're alone in dealing with these issues, when they aren't. I feel like all these individual pockets of families would be better able to cope if they knew about each other, and banded together.
But we'll keep trying to do our best for kiddo (and kiddette). And since the world didn't end and all, we'll see how 2013 goes for us.
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