ADHD is a very disruptive and difficult disorder. I have often mused how the criteria that I use when I diagnose people with ADHD are so sterile and concrete. Living with a person with ADHD is chaotic, overwhelming, maddening, and...at times it feels hopeless.
I have talked with several people over the past week, and read a blog post from a sweet friend, about the topic of hopelessness. I have been struggling with it for years and certain events occur that bring it more to the fore. I am usually able to beat it back eventually, but lately I have been hit hard from a variety of directions and hopeless I have been for awhile.
6 weeks ago we decided to put Grace in public school because her oppositional behavior was constant (at least 95% of the time) and it was preventing her from learning and the other kids from learning, or even feeling safe or calm in their own home. It has taken a bit of an adjustment but we will all tell you that we are so thankful that we made this decision. Grace LOVES, LOVES, LOVES going to school. She loves that she gets to play and be with people. I don't know that she is academically improving but she wasn't here either. We will see what the standardized tests indicate at the end of the year.
After 6 weeks, life at home during the day has become remarkably...calm. The house is quiet. Kids actually venture out from their bedrooms and join everyone else to sit quietly at the kitchen or in the living room to do their school. The constant tension is more intermittent (we still, of course, have JJ to content with). It is what I hear from other home school moms that a day actually looks like. I am struggling to remember back to when we just had Beautiful and Buddy when I actually got to engage with the children and do projects and fun things rather than just discipline all.day.long. I have been finding the energy and motivation to deep clean the house and take pride in my home again.
Two weeks ago Grace was...I am not sure that I can even put words onto what she gets like. No one would believe me if they just saw her "public" behavior. She is a different child at home. The easiest way to talk about it is pure contrary and oppositional behavior at every moment. There are times of reprieve, but they last minutes to a couple hours and are not daily. We realized at the end of a terrible week with her that we had run out of the supplements that we use for her neurotransmitters. I didn't realize we were out until we were out, then it took time for them to ship. She has improved (meaning longer stretches of more compliant behavior) in the past week since they came in. Last autumn we increased her ADHD medication. It has been 4 months and there has not been one single noticeable improvement. However, there is clearly improvement from the neurotransmitter supplements (and she is equally terrible if she doesn't get her ADHD meds - it is just that the increase in dosage provided no decrease in behaviors).
The day after she got back on them she and Superman were playing "Ninjas" while I was trying to keep them in the basement with me while 3 kids were still doing school upstairs. Apparently in playing Ninjas, Superman caught Grace and went to put her in "jail" in our bedroom. In the tussle they tripped and he landed on her, but she landed against the metal bed frame and ripped a gash in her lower back. I yelled for Beautiful to help who stopped the bleeding while I called the clinic (thankfully it was 5 to 5 and they were still open!) and went to deal with Superman. Superman is an extremely sensitive child and he was hysterical. I found him in his bedroom rolled into the fetal position sobbing and repeating over and over that he had hurt his sister. I just held him, made him look me in the eye, and repeated over and over that I loved him and that he was not in trouble (although they know not to play in our bedroom the accident could have happened anywhere). I didn't know what had happened then but I knew there was no way that Superman would maliciously hurt her...or anyone for that matter. I knew that Superman would retreat further into himself if I didn't handle that immediately. So, after 5+ minutes of reassuring him we got Grace to the clinic and got her 10 stitches done.
The next day she already popped one stitch. By Wednesday it was 4. Thursday we went to the clinic to see what could be done as she kept unraveling the stitch by not being still. Ha, this child cannot be still. When she next gets stitches it will have to be tied off each stitch. Her last 7 stitches in her toe months ago only had 3 left when we went to have them taken out. Sigh...
We did that in the morning, then took her to school in the afternoon. When she got home she was hyper and wanted to ride her bike. We told her that it was not OK for her to ride that day since the steri strips had just been put on a few hours before (Grace on a bike is anything but sedate and calm). She was not happy with us and just ratcheted out of control. The things she screams, the constant back talk, the putting her fingers in her ears to not listen to us is maddening.
So, we did something we had not done before. In the middle of it, my husband and I retreated. We fed the children, separated them all, apologized to Beautiful and left her in charge, and left.
We were utterly hopeless. Nothing that we do seems to help. All of the money, time, new ideas...nothing seems to make it better.
We went out to a new Mexican restaurant that we had not gone to before but had heard good things. And we talked. I don't know that since having children we have ever gone out to eat (due to where we live going out to eat means driving to the next town) and just ate and come home without running errands. But that is what we did.
We talked through her behavior. We talked through what we have tried before. We talked through what we can attempt in the future. We talked through what is realistic given everything else that we have to do. And we came up with a plan.
At a minimum it gave us a glimmer of hope that maybe this time it will be manageable. Time will tell. We came home and held a family meeting telling everyone what the new plan is and to ask them to help us implement it. It will require the help of the other kids.
Essentially, the new plan has to do with frequent (every 30 minutes) rewards for not opposing us in the prior 30 minutes and hourly intentional sensory stimulation. Consequences mean nothing to Grace, as every parent of an ADHD child will tell you. ADHD is a disorder of time. The past (thinking, "oh, I got in trouble for that before I shouldn't do it again"), the present (they are so impulsive that they do what they want while thinking it - not gap time to consider if it is right or wrong) or the future (oh, I will lose that if I don't obey) are time concepts. So, we will hope that 30 minute rewards will be effective. We are not even 24 hours into it and, so far, we have behavior from her that is less than the type that makes me want to pull my hair out and beat my head against a rock wall. She is outside riding her bike right now. Her steri strips are already ripped off. But, this child just cannot be still and the sensory stimulation keeps her calmer so ugly scar or not (it is healed shut, just not pretty) it is what it is.
We hope that this will help. On the one hand we keep wanting her to get older to mature and get some control over herself. On the other hand I work with a lot of ADHD kids who are older and it is not better. I struggle with not getting hopeless while imagining her at 10, 12, 14, 16+. I keep reminding myself that I have to stand before God and giving an accounting for what I have taught her, not what she has actually learned. That is between her and God. But God sure did give her to us for a whole lot of our own sanctification work to be done and not for calm and ease lol!
She is a constant reminder that our Hope is to be in Him and not in anything in this world.
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