Do you know how expensive dark chocolate is? Did you know that dark chocolate has anti inflammatory properties? Do you know how expensive it is??
I’ve been eating a bit each day. On the day I got back from the rheumatologist, I went into the room and then left it unlocked. I went back in and noticed pieces of dark brown on the floor but it didn’t compute till the next day. I thought maybe Reo had eaten a sugar-free cookie in my room.
Then, the next morning while I was medicating Little Miss Reo, and sorting food out for the little ones, I realised Ammy was gone and had been gone for a while. I became suspicious. The recent rule is that they do NOT enter my room at ALL and if they want something from my room, they must ask me to get it for them. But I’d forgotten to lock the door..again.
I crept to the bedroom. She was taking way too long for someone who was apparently just taking all their (Samsung) tablets out the room where we keep them. Indeed, as I walked in, she came from the side where my bed is with something clutched in her palm, and also chewing.
I made her open up her hand and it was my chocolate. I don’t know if I can ever get used to the disappointment. Will j ever not be surprised or sad? We teach our children right vs wrong. I live the right example for them. But like Eve and the serpent, my voice of reason is drowned out by ADHD impulsivity and inability to analyze actions and consequences. It’s not the wasted money. It’s the fact that while I broke my body cooking yummy food that I can’t eat because I’m intolerant to it, they /she can eat it, and then go take what is not hers. Stealing. Every day, something gets stolen. I don’t realise until I need it. Or when I find it where it should not be. Even unopened packages are opened and torn apart. Nothing is safe. That’s why I lock my bedroom. Even when using the loo, I lock because they creep in. Well, I try to. But it’s not normal or reflexive to lock your bedroom door when you go cook or when you go pack laundry etc.
I get hungry. The silly Amytripiline has increased my appetite This time I wasn’t just hungry, I HAD to eat something substantial before taking my antibiotics. I went to the kitchen cupboard and there we go. Two gluten-free rolls gone. Eaten by one girl who can eat wheat rolls, of which we had many. Do you know how expensive gluten-free rolls are? See a trend?
I had grapes. I had crackers. There was NOTHING else that was safe for me to eat that day. The bananas were still green. I couldn’t make food for them then prepare frozen veg for myself. I needed it immediately so I could take my tablets and medicate and teach and plan.
Compound this with constant lying, and you have a constantly heartbroken mom. Many parent report the lies and negative behaviour but you keep assuming your children will act differently. You don’t spend the day thinking, “Brace yourself, you’re about to hear a lie.” And also, I can’t predict where the next onslaught will come from. I can’t prepare my heart. I can’t prepare my stomach. I can’t shield myself.
School equipment. Books. Anything and everything. Sugar that Vi uses. It’s ongoing. Relentless. Constant.
Disappointed. Constantly disappointed.
I think of my child’s biological mother who when we were searching for her, was found to have a criminal record by an ex police officer we first tried. After finding her and cajoling her for years to tell me WHY she had a criminal record, she finally told me. She and a friend decided to go break into a the friend’s ex’s house and trash the place. Breaking and entering. Malicious damage to property. Criminal record due to impulsive behaviour.
There’s always been the background cry about how many prisoners have special needs.
If you can constantly steal from your parent, what stops you stealing from a stranger? Or breaking and entering? Or trashing someone’s house?
I don’t know, reader. I pray God will form a hedge around my children, especially my ringleader child. I pray the disappointment I’m constantly feeling now will not be felt forever. She has so much to give to the world. So much love, creativity and loyalty. I pray those strengths increase and the negatives decrease.
This letter was during the week.
I’ve just had to dispense another, “I forgive you,” hug just now. It’s ongoing. The disobedience, defiance. We have many I’m sorry moments and many I forgive you moments. We have agreed that tomorrow will be a new week and we will forget – till it happens again – all the waste of misused hair spray and stolen food and slavery. (Bossing her brother around while not letting him play with them.)
Impulsivity has many ways of manifesting itself. I’m so tired of people minimising ADHD that I’ve added yet another person to my list of people I reply with a, “Casual, ‘we are fine’ answer because they never seem to get it when they ask what the children are up to then reply with a “My child is like that too” retort.
Example. They saw a photo of my child walking on a wall.
They commented how their child who is HALF her age, ALSO climbs. I responded, “Man, she hurts herself when she is climbing. I hope yours stops hurting themselves soon because it’s really stressful not knowing if you’re ignoring a serious injury or not.” I knew full well that their child is very likely NOT getting down dangerously. And indeed, as I KNEW, the person responded, “No, this one never gets hurt. Ammy must just learn how to get down safely. My child is so different to their peers. They like ladybirds and all the other children are scared of them.”
Guys, my child is different to other children because she eats pencil crayons, erasers, rubber bands, picks at her hair and makes it severely untidy, chews her blanket day and night, and still has no bladder control – day and night. At age 10. I could only wish that fearlessness of tiny insects was what made her and her siblings less like their peers.
That’s what makes this special needs life so lonely. The ones who try relate but haven’t actually put themselves in YOUR shoes and so relate to nothing related to your experience at all. As I said last time, you feel unheard when your cries are trivialised or the abnormal normalised and the stresses ignored. I can’t. I need to protect myself. I’m fighting too much to fight trivializing of major problems.
I could have retorted, “Yeah. You and I truly go through a lot. Remember last year when my child pretended they were seeing demons and even told doctors that and we ended up spending nights in hospital while they did expensive and painful and dangerous tests on her to check why her brain was sick? Except actually, it was her psyche that was sick and she just wanted to get attention from a Paed who had taken care of her the PREVIOUS year when she was hospitalised after she hadn’t felt any pain from a spider bite (thanks to her low sensory registration) that became infected till the infection almost took her leg from above the knee down? Wasn’t that crazy!? Our children put us through a lot don’t they? True outliers! They really are different to most kids. I’m so GLAD you can relate to what I’m going through with my sick body that homeschools neurodivergent children while your healthy body sends your neurotypical children to school. And you know frustrating it is to tell them to get up and get dressed over and over and 30 minutes later they’re still not even partly unclothed yet?”
But that would have been repeating a point I’d already made to them when I begged them to stop minimising major things. And I don’t like being facetious even when someone deserves to be corrected.
No more special needs version of casting pearls before swine. It’s a waste of time and a cause of pain, responding truthfully to a questioner who has no real desire to know what your answer to their question means for you.
A psychiatrist told me (when diagnosing our non speaker) that I need someone to take care of ME. Such people do the opposite, they add to the burden. It’s great having a blog. You get to spit it all out and a page can’t reply and show you it didn’t hear you.❤️🥹
They said I should write a book 