Hi. My name is Jamie. I am an ADHD parent with an ADHD child. I was unable to have more children, so it's just the one...I don't think I could have handled more, honestly. Today I found this group because it was one of those days with a big reminder that my life as a parent is not the same as others. And right now my heart hurts. I want so much to feel proud, compassionate and humored by my child like other parents seem too get to, but feelings of powerlessness and anticipation for the next meltdown or the next accident overwhelm those other parental feelings. Most days I'm acceptant of our reality and work with it, don't feel too much about it...too busy to "feel" about it...but those days with reminders that we're not (neither of us) are neuro-typical are hard. And today was one of those days. I just need support.
New Member: Hi. My name is Jamie. I am... - CHADD's ADHD Pare...
New Member
Welcome Jamie-
We are so glad you found us and we are here for you when you need us. When you are having a hard time please post. We have all been there.
Here is a special poem written by a parent but it applies to all of us enjoy!
A Trip to Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability -- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans... the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, Gondolas. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After several months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives.
You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland!" "Holland?" you say. "What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy. I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine, and disease. It's just a different place.
So, you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around. You begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. And Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, " Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that experience will never, ever, ever, go away. The loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
Please take time for yourself, remember tomorrow is a different day, this phase will change and become something different. Please take time to read the other post to see what has helped us so you can also find so help.
Best of luck, big hugs...
Thank u. I’m crying but I’m relieved.
*hug* and welcome.
welcome Jamie. I so so so understand. You are not alone. Hugs to you.
Hey jhlnd79, I’m in that frame of mind pretty often. I’m actually really jealous of people who have “normal” kids. Of people who don’t have to deal with all the stuff we go through. I’m even angry sometimes at other kids bc life is so much easier for them than it is for Aiden. But I know being angry isn’t gonna change anything so I try to keep my head from exploding by taking deep breaths, walking away, throwing the garbage out so I can have a moment alone in fresh air. I try to remind myself of everything I love about Aiden and that somehow things will get easier eventually and then hard again and then easier. It’ll never be a smooth path because nothing ever is that way. I hope this helped you a little.
Welcome! Your not alone, sending hugs
Welcome to the group, Jamie!
I am a parent of one child as well. I can empathize with you. There are days where I feel so overwhelmed, emotionally drained and I feel like I just want to curl up into a ball. It is difficult having one child with ADHD as it can be hard deciphering from what is the ADHD vs being a “kid”
There are days I cry because we can’t be a “neurotypical” family and go on family trips or do “normal” activities. It makes me sad, but then some days I, too, accept our family dynamics. We aren’t a neurotypical family and we have had to learn to navigate through this. I am thankful there are resources to help support us parents, (this group included). We all “get it”
We just took my son off Guanfacine as it just wasn’t working anymore. We have started him on a small dosage of Prozac. We want to see if that will help with anxiety and in turn, help his ADHD symptoms?? Idk....always trying to figure out the right combo.
It’s hard but we need to give ourselves a break and grace. Try to have days where we don’t think about his ADHD and just “be”, there are gifts that come with ADHD. I try and focus on those gifts (but some days it just doesn’t happen 😝).
Hugs to you,
Penny
BetcotP- I am so sad to see your pain. If your child has ADHD and is managed well with medication your child should be able to function well. What changed our life was working with an amazing pediatric psychiatrist. When we were finding the right medication she would call and talk with me about what I needed. For so long when we were not managed on the right medication I wondered how we could survive with life that way.
This doctor told us 60% of behavior should be controlled by medication and 40% by behavior interventions.
I hope you find the right solution.
How do you deal with it on a daily basis? i have problems with it and its starting to overwhelm any emotion or feeling i have towards anything its just so overpowering to control and if i dont find out how to help/fix it im going to destroy everything i work so hard for
I'm trying to stop and reflect on everything. She will be 7 this year which means we're no longer raising an ADHD toddler/young child, we're now raising an ADHD full-on kid. When she was around two years old it occurred to me that our hardest times were always during times of developmental adjustment. So, I try to 1. be aware of when we're adjusting and 2. keep my shit together while we're adjusting. Currently we're adjusting in a big way and I feel like I'm not sure how to handle it this time. It's more complicated now; her emotions are now more tied to her mental state and it's therefore even more fragile. Which is scary. I guess I'm trying to be mindful of two things: how the ADHD mind works and to be very purposeful about my actions based on the reality of how the ADHD mind works. When I was a child I just wanted everyone to stop being so upset at me all the time. Now as a parent and an adult I understand why that was the case. I'm mostly trying to focus on that. No matter what, in the end she just needs me (and her dad) to not be upset at her.
When I wrote my post the other day we had been to a science discovery center with friends and the employees brought out a mini robot coding game. The robot follows black and when it crosses a pattern of red, blue and/or green it does whatever action that color of patterns means. She was one of the first group of kids (her friends included) that explored it. ALL the other kids stopped, observed everything on the table while minorly listening to the person explain it, and then proceeded to explore and play with it with still and silent curiosity. My daughter immediately grabs a marker and starts creating a complicated black path, pushes away the recommendations from me, my friend, and the employee of the path templates on the table, puts the mini robot on her black path she drew and the robot can't follow it. So she gets angry and emotional as though she's a massive failure because it didn't do what she expected it to do. After a few moments of complete unwillingness to hear any instruction from anyone she moved to another side of the table to get away from me specifically and continue her own determination on how she's going to make this thing function. And of course the employee who is a teenager and has to demonstrate her ability to handle kids, is trying to placate her because she's being emotional...and everyone's first reaction with an upset kid is to try to make them "feel better" by talking them through it or whatever typical distraction tactics they're familiar with. So, my daughter has the girl and all the people around her feeling alienated because she's being unnecessarily emotional when the answers are right in front of her if she'd just chill the **ck out about it for five seconds. So, I stand several steps away and wait for the stages of what I know are happening, while everyone interacts with her like she's just a typical kid that just feels frustrated and her peers have no idea how to interact with her. No, she's not feeling frustrated, she learning backwards from the other kids. See, I know that the other kids will do what she's doing in their later stages of this exploration, they're just not there yet...if they get there at all. She's just doing the toughest thought processes first and by the end of this fiasco she'll have such a complete understand of the technology behind this little robot and take it to the next level. While the other kids will have a little fun with it and never think about it again. Yes her behavior makes me look like...and feel like...an inadequacy parent, especially since I'm not actively doing anything, but the fact is that I know something about how all these kids work that all these other adults (and teens) do not and I am waiting for the correct moment to help her understand what is in front of her AND help her understand how she can make this learning process easier on herself. The thing that makes it hurt is what it looks like to everyone. How it effects us both socially. The other kids feel like they can't be her friend because they can't figure her out and the adults believe that they actual have control over who their children are...ignorance is bliss...so I must too and I'm just a shitty parent.
So, that's what I'm trying to do. I am desperately trying to have conviction in the fact that I understand what's going on way better than it appears because I am the one who lives with her every day and my brain functions the same way. And I'm desperately trying to remember the power that my daughter is and will be capable of as she grows. She's going to blow me away and making overwhelming proud some day. She does now; if I could just focus on that. I will always worry for her social health, but I think in the end that we're just not meant to be social creatures. It totally sucks that we ARE social creatures and it hurts that we suck at it while we have this stubborn ability and need to articulate are thoughts too much too fast. What a catch-22.
Thanks for sharing your experience with your daughter. Here is what my son's counselor would tell me to do, in a calm a quiet voice explain "did you hear when the lady said.... if you do..." Did you see how the robot did follow you plan... its because the path you created was..
Here is the thing, the ADHD mind already had that robot racing down the path and therefore she "mostlikely" did not listen to the fine details to make it work.
Or you could say before she starts:
Before you start did you hear her say...
I see this play out so many times with my son, over and over.. DAILY.The former with kindness is where I get success.
I know what you mean girl! - we all ‘get it’. What I hate the most is that I KNOW how brilliant and sweet and hilarious and charming my little ADHD + aggression- child is.... but most people just see his impulsive rude comments, his hyperactivity, his aggression and his defiance. I wish they saw it ALL. He just turned six and reads at a grade two level and is incredible intelligent. I know he is brilliant and loving and sweet and then in the next moment I am pulling my hair out. HANG IN THERE.
Try everything but medicine (the side effects are horrid & they are not beyond ‘repair’ they just have slower firing neurons where attention and self control are managed in the brain), and work with your child daily on emotional intelligence, meditation, include physical outlets, compromise- and clean up their diet. Do everything you can.. they will all be okay. I more than know it.
Huge hug! X
Welcome Jaime you are definitely not alone. My son is 9 with ADHD and odd .Everyday is a different day and you never know what to expect. I don't regret having my child but there are days i wish we can have some peace in the house. I use to feel like I was alone until I started reading other people stories and they sounded just like my own. People who don't have children with disabilities don't understand what you go through with a child with ADHD. Family members don't understand I rather not even tell them what I am going through. Best of luck! Take care of yourself
I too, feel overwhelmed...most of the time. My son is very intelligent, funny, charming...and in an instant, he can become very angry. I'm glad that I found this blog...and know now, that I am not alone!
I can relate in so many ways! You’re not alone!
You want to hear something kinda funny/strange? I sometimes feel proud about how much trouble my son causes at school. (Sort of)
For example; Last year he hacked the school security system and crashed their computers. They were furious. Suspended him, of course.
Secretly, I thought, wow my kid is really good with computers. His computer teacher was perplexed at how he did this. I guess what I’m saying is, I see the positive side. Now if I can just steer him in the right direction!
I’m sure you have those ‘proud’ moments too! I just have to laugh sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I have bad days too! Feeling helpless and all that!
Hugs!!
What do you know now that you wish you had been told when your child was first diagnosed?
Feeling very overwhelmed and alone!
New Here;]
