You Can't Just Spank It Out Of Them

Now that elections are over, and political articles and posts are dying down, it seems like the judgmental parenting one’s are again taking over.  Specifically, I have seen no less than 4 on children with ADHD or Autism in the last 24 hours.  While most of the articles and blogs are positive, there is always a barrage of negative comments, or sharing of the articles with a negative post.

As anyone who regularly reads this blog, or those that have known me for a while, knows, my 15 year old has ADHD. He has a couple other side diagnoses too, which is typical for kids with neurological disorders.  Fighting the ignorance on these disorders is something I will do till I’m dead, because I know first hand how that ignorance can affect a child’s life, well into adulthood.

The biggest fallacy that people cling to in this area is that ADHD is not real, and that parents just don’t discipline their children.  Let me talk about that for a moment.  People that have met my son in the last few years, they looked shocked if he mentions he has ADHD.  Some of those people may be shocked right now reading this, they see a polite, somewhat shy, smart, sensitive, caring, athletic, disciplined, amazing teenager.  Why?  Not because I am a lazy parent who sits on the couch eating bon bons and watching TV while my child runs wild, but because as a parent of a child with ADHD, I have invested huge amounts of energy in finding resources, treatments, and strategies that help him cope with his symptoms and frustration. 

For us, one of those is medication.  Medication that gets him through the school day and wears off in the late afternoon or early evening.  He doesn’t take it so that I can drug him into submission and not deal with him (though it is nice when it’s still in effect and he isn’t a constant chatterbox), it has worn off by the time I am around him.  It is so that he can focus in school and learn.  It is so the stimuli isn’t all hitting him so hard he can’t filter through it.  It is so he has a chance to process his feelings and thoughts without something else interrupting.  It is so he can practice the strategies we’ve worked on for years.

When my son was younger, before anyone would listen to me that something was wrong, I was more of a disciplinarian than I am now.  He was grounded, he was spanked, he had toys taken away, and privileges revoked.  Yet, he still was not reaching his potential in school, I got notes and calls from teachers, he was actually suspended once in the 3^rd grade, he would hit me, throw things, destroy his belongings, lie constantly.  We did sticker charts, behavior contracts.  When I pushed, teachers told me they were going to get him tested through the school system, and none of it ever came through, and many of those same teaches treated me very condescendingly at conferences, as if I was to blame for everything.  I spent way too much time hiding in the bathroom crying out of frustration.

For my son, a turning point came at the end of 5^th grade, when a new teacher (I think he had 4 different teachers that year, which definitely wasn’t a help!) had a conference with me, and to my surprise agreed with everything I said about my son, because she actually saw his full potential.  She encouraged me and helped me to get private evaluations done because it would be much quicker than going through the school system.  She filled out paperwork in a very short time frame for the neurologist evaluating him, and the summer between 5^th and 6^th grades he started medication.

Because we don’t really just drug the children of our society, the doctor started him on a very small dose.  It can take a while to find the right medication and dosage that works for a child.  While we worked everything out with the medication, he still struggled, and ended up failing 6^th grade.  However, about that time, we found the right medication treatment and I enrolled him in a private school for children with learning disabilities.  The child he always was, was finally visible. 

He excelled in school, getting all A’s but for ONE B in the next three years, and now in a regular high school he is still getting all A’s and B’s.  There were not nightly fights about homework.  I no longer had to ask him for a 5 minute break here or there, because he discovered how to entertain himself.  He still hates grocery stores, noisy restaurants, and crowded events because of the amount of stimuli, but he can handle them without a meltdown.  We still technically have a behavior contract, but the only part of it we look at anymore is the part about school grades, specifically the rewards he earns for them.  He now has an “off switch” that he can control. As a hormonal teenager, he can get loud and rude and obnoxious when I ask him to do something or not do something, especially after his meds wear off, however I have learned to tell him he is being unacceptable and walk away, and wait the 10 minutes for him to calm down and inevitably come and apologize to me for it and then talk about the problem and he follows through on my requests. And, well, I hand it to the naysayers, I rarely, very rarely, discipline my child anymore.  I don’t need to.  Those lessons that I tried to teach when he was younger, they actually did sink in, it was just hard for him to find them before.  If he does get stubborn, all I have to do is give the look or, at the worst, start to pull the cord out of his PS4, and there are no more issues.  He has really come to recognize his symptoms and is in control of telling his doctor if he needs a medication adjustment, as well as learned how to recognize them in others.  We often give each other that knowing, our heart feels for them look when we see a child struggling with his own issues.

A neurological disorder is not something you can just spank out of your child.  It takes a lot of hard work, education, rethinking how you deal with your child.  And it takes TIME. Time in which both the parents and the child are frustrated and working hard. The next time you see a mom in the grocery store who looks like she is about to burst into tears because her kid throws a box out of the back of the cart on the floor AGAIN, try picking it up for her instead of giving her a dirty look.  She might just think back on it at the end of the day and feel encouraged, instead of having to cry in the bathroom.

That’s why they have wine.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It....And I Feel Fine.

On the way to school this morning, my son, a high school freshman, asked, “Tuesday is election day, right?”

“Yes”

“Ok.  Then Wednesday is the end of the world.”

Election time.  Isn’t that kind of how we tend to react?

8 years ago around this day, that same son got in the car after school and said, “Mom, you are a racist.”

“Um, what?”

“We did mock elections at school.  If you don’t vote for Obama, you are a racist.”

I tried to teach him his first lesson about voting.  “You don’t vote for someone because of what color they are, you vote for them if you feel they represent you.  You vote for a President based on if you think they will be a good representative of our country and you have the same kind of opinions they do.”

“Well, according to school, you are a racist.”

Ok, then.  Apparently he was not ready to learn politics.  He was 7.  Unfortunately, there were people who were old enough to vote that weren’t ready to learn that either, so, I resigned myself to being labeled a racist, I was still going to vote for who I felt was the best candidate for me.

4 years later, my son was much more interested in what was going on.  I told him the candidate I was voting for, and why.  I explained differences between beliefs of candidates.  He followed the campaigns.  He went in the voting booth with me and read everything, and we discussed the amendments. He watched the election results all night. Again, in school, they had lessons revolving around politics, and had a class President election.  He introduced his grade to the Libertarian party, and subsequently became their Libertarian President-elect.  I’m pretty sure, however, that his promise of “Fun Fridays” appealed to all, regardless of party.

During this time my son actually APOLOGIZED to me.  He now understood why I voted for who I do, and he couldn’t believe he ever called me racist.  He’d learned a true lesson, not only that you should vote for who you feel would be the best President, but that sometimes politics are really ugly, and we try to influence people by calling names, a tactic most 11 year olds can tell you is pretty counter-productive.

This year, he didn’t have to ask me who I was voting for, he knows me well enough by now.  And, well, that Johnson/Weld sign in our front yard kind of gives it away.  We still talk about politics.  He actually got me back into listening to talk radio a few years ago due to his interest, so we hear a lot of things in the hour and a half or so we are in the car together every day (thus his sarcastic doomsday comment this morning).  He laughs when I yell at the radio and tell them they are wrong.  He asks questions if he wants to know more about something.  He’s formed his own opinions on the candidates.  I’m pretty sure he’s glad he’s not old enough to vote.

Most importantly, he’s gotten to see what the third party movement actually is, and he has learned that our choices in life aren’t really as narrow as the majority would have you think.  He’s learned that being successful doesn’t necessarily mean winning.  He’s seen that getting excited over the small stuff can be a big deal.  He sees parents who don’t back down on expecting our leaders to have integrity and be someone we can be proud of, and none our discussions have had to be why it is OK for Presidential candidates to do and say things that he would be grounded for life for.  

I don’t expect Gary Johnson to win the election tomorrow.  Gary Johnson doesn’t expect Gary Johnson to win tomorrow.  But we’ll be watching the results, not to see who wins (after all, Wednesday is the end of the world!), but to see if history will be made in Johnson getting 8%, which will give the Libertarian party equal access to state ballots and funding that the major parties have, thus the beginning of the end of the era of the two party system.  Some people will consider it success if we have our first female President.  Some will consider it a success if we build a wall.  I consider it a success if just one more person did some research on the other candidates.

Revolutions can start small, but they can have a big impact.

Make sure you vote, for whoever you feel best represents you.

That’s why they have wine.  Here’s to successes, not matter how small!