Mom Brain is an unquestionable fact of life. The concept is grounded in science, because it follows one of the most basic laws of physics: For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. So by adding a precious, sweet, squalling creature to your home, and thus becoming a mom, something must necessarily be subtracted. In my case, and in the case of most every mom I know, the thing that is subtracted is a chunk of brain. The big chunk that is in charge of remembering stuff.
Adding another precious, sweet, squalling creature to your home necessitates subtraction of another chunk of your brain. This time it varies for everyone. For me it was the little teeny chunk that controls the impulse to eat chocolate and dink around on Facebook all day.
Adding more kids subtracts more chunks of brain. This is why moms like me who only have 2 kids are so much smarter than moms like Amanda who have more.
There are other factors that determine how much of your brain you have left, however. Certain kids bring more than just their precious, sweet, squalling selves. Lots more. So, you guessed it, lots more brain must be subtracted. This is what I like to call 'Special Needs Mom Brain.'
With these moms it's impossible to tell exactly what portions of brain are gone, because it seems to change from day to day. This is both good and bad. Bad because when you don't know what's missing you don't know what situations to avoid, but good because sometimes you can fix yesterday's mistakes, as on occasion the chunk that was missing one day will come back the next.
Today I'm going to give a list of this week's 'Special Needs Mom Brain' moments.
1. I completely forgot to send Ashton to school this week. Instead of a traditional school year where you go to school from September to June, his school has "tracks." Your kid can either be on A, B, C, or D track, and each track goes to school at different times. Usually the system is that the kid is "on track" for 6 weeks, then off for 3, then on for 6, then off for 3, etc. This system is especially helpful for Ashton, who has autism and really hates change. So just as he is getting adjusted to being in school, he goes off track. Just as he is getting adjusted to being off track, he goes back on. We get to experience first-week-of-school anxiety like 8 times a year! It's fantastic. Anyway, Ashton's school is on the track system. Kaitlyn (who attends the School for the Deaf) and Mike's (my husband, who is a school teacher) schools are both traditional. Kaitlyn and Mike's last day of school was last Friday. Ashton still has school until July 2nd. But instead of sending Ashton to school when I was supposed to, I kept him home doing summer stuff with Kaitlyn and Mike. No problem on his part. A little bit more problematic for me. Especially when I had to call the teacher to tell her that I "forgot" to send him to school. Awesome.
2. I took the car to get the oil changed. If you've read any of my previous posts, you know this is a treat for me. This time I took it to Jiffy Lube instead of Walmart because they had a dancing guy out front with a sign saying, "Open bay! Get your oil changed for only $25.99!" The dancing guy was cute so I pulled in. He then proceeded to ask questions about the car. Really tough stuff, like:
What year is it?
Is it 6 cylinder?
Does it have 4-wheel drive?
After I answered:
2010 (at first I thought it was a test to see if I was awake, but when I realized he wanted to know what year the car was manufactured, I had to look it up. For future reference it was 2006)
How do I tell if it's 6 cylinder? and
Umm... it has 4 wheels and they all turn, so yes?
he stopped asking me questions and just looked up the answers in the manual. Cute dancing guy or not, I don't think I'll be going back there any time soon.
3. I accidentally posted something really vulgar to Facebook. I'm not going to repeat it here, but suffice it to say that if anyone who didn't know me read the post, they now have a very interesting opinion of me. That could be sort of fun, come to think of it. The best part was that it was up for an entire 24 hours before I realized the unintended double meaning, so there was plenty of time for all of my Facebook friends to see it: My mom, my dad, my mother in law, my nieces and nephews, the local leaders of my church, my perverted friends... There are now 293 people I will never be able to look in the face again.
I have a huge list of other things I did this week, but this is getting ridiculously long. I'm going to stop for now but will probably post more another time, because this stuff is just too embarassing to keep to myself.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
ADHD is a Four Letter Word
I was a geek when I was in school. Dork, nerd, dweeb, goober, weirdo... whatever you want to call it, that was me. I'm sure this comes as a surprise to absolutely no one. I was the overachiever poster child and I actually wanted to be teacher's pet. I lived to please and worked very hard to do my homework correctly and get it in on time. Unless I was procrastinating, but that's another story.
You can imagine how popular I was.
So anyway, dorky overachieving is all that I know, and I guess I just assumed my kids would follow in my unfortunate footsteps. But you know what happens when you assume...
Which brings me to Kaitlyn. I'm having a hard time writing this, because in many ways she is the hardest working and most determined person I know. Unfortunately, that work ethic does not extend to school. When it comes to school, Kaitlyn is Ted. Of Bill and Ted. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. It's hilarious.
To be fair, the challenges she has with school really aren't her fault. You see, she has this terrible, nasty, debilitating condition called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD for short. You may have heard of it, but don't worry if you haven't because it's pretty rare. Ha ha ha.
In my blissfully naive pre-children days, I was positive ADHD was a made-up disorder that encouraged lazy parents and teachers to give little Johnny Rocket a get-out-of-jail-free card. I treated people who believed in the disorder with disdain, basking in the knowledge that my children would be much better behaved than these monsters because I would have superior parenting skills. As long as you discipline your children with love, they will be the model of perfect behavior.
All I can say is that if this is your attitude, repent and do it NOW. It's too late for me, but please, for the love of Pete, save yourself. If you don't, you WILL be humbled.
ADHD is real. And it's horrible. In fact, I'm considering bringing charges of false advertising against the person who named the disorder because the term ADHD sounds much too innocuous for this dread disease. It would be more appropriately named Stare-off-into-oblivion-even-though-the-teacher-is-three-inches-from-your-face-Jump-up-and-down-on-your-chair-Slug-whoever-happens-to-be-walking-by-just-because-you-want-to-and-Never-once-voluntarily-bring-your-homework-home-from-school Disorder. Or for short, A Quick Way to Drive Your Parents to the Brink.
If school were Super Mario Galaxy 2, we would have no problem. But life is not a video game. Life requires sitting still, paying attention, listening carefully, waiting your turn, and actually doing what your parents and teachers tell you to do. Without these skills, or at least a smidgen of these skills, there is little chance a kid will be successful in school. Unfortunately, these are the exact things that are difficult for the poor kiddos who are affected by ADHD. It's not that Kaitlyn doesn't want to concentrate and sit still, it's that she can't. Plain and simple. And if you don't believe me, you only need to spend a few hours in the afternoon with her and I promise you'll become a believer. Let me know when you're ready and I can send her over with her list of spelling words.
When my daughter was diagnosed with 18 Q Deletion Syndrome, we were given a laundry list of issues we should be prepared to handle. Among them were hearing impairment (yup, she's got it), mental retardation (nope), delayed social skills (yup), learning disabilities (yup), little or no ability to communicate either through spoken language or sign language (nope), autism (jury is still out), inability to walk (nope), and a weaker than normal immune system so she will host every bug that comes within a 10 mile radius of her (double yup). These, along with many others, were the things we were prepared for. What we were NOT prepared for was ADHD.
As odd as this may sound, this is possibly her greatest challenge in life. No, really. I feel so bad for the little munchkin - she loves to learn and has an aptitude for reading and science, which is amazing and wonderful. But she just can't concentrate when the teacher is talking, and thus misses 90% of the classroom instruction. I don't have to tell you how detrimental that is to her, and how frustrating it is to her teachers.
We've tried just about everything. We went the "natural" route by treating her with supplements and the Elimination Diet (google it), we tried behavioral intervention with two different therapists, and finally we pulled out the big guns and tried prescription ADHD medications. By the time we got to that point we were desperate and would have chanted naked under the moonlight in old man Tucker's corn field if the doctors told us to. Fortunately, they didn't. Unfortunately, and to our great disappointment, the medications made the problem worse. If you read the 10 page booklet of instructions that comes with your prescription, you will find a list of very uncommon side effects. 'Very uncommon' means that typically less than .5% of people taking this medication will experience whatever the side effect is. One of these rare side effects, and this is true of all ADHD medications, is extreme agitation. And, you guessed it, we pulled the short straw. We tried several different classes of medication, and they all had the same effect. Which definitely wasn't good. The lowest point was when we went against our better judgment (I'm telling you, you shouldn't doubt mother's intuition) and increased her dose because her doctor promised that increasing it would decrease her agitation. Instead, our daughter experienced a screaming, raging tantrum that lasted nearly 24 hours. After several calls to her doctor and a trip to the ER, she finally calmed down and went to sleep. We threw the medication in the garbage (wrapped in a dirty diaper to ward off pilagers) and never looked back.
Unfortunately, this exhausted our options for treatment. We haven't been able to find anything that helps her focus, and because of that her school work, homework, and social skills continue to suffer. So for now, we do our best to be patient with her and help her work through this challenge while we wait for science to catch up and discover something new. And we wait. And wait. And wait.
Come to think of it, maybe that's how I'll make my millions - by curing ADHD.
Nah, sounds like too much work.
Did I mention that I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago? I told you, repent NOW. Karma will really bite you in the behind.
You can imagine how popular I was.
So anyway, dorky overachieving is all that I know, and I guess I just assumed my kids would follow in my unfortunate footsteps. But you know what happens when you assume...
Which brings me to Kaitlyn. I'm having a hard time writing this, because in many ways she is the hardest working and most determined person I know. Unfortunately, that work ethic does not extend to school. When it comes to school, Kaitlyn is Ted. Of Bill and Ted. If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. It's hilarious.
To be fair, the challenges she has with school really aren't her fault. You see, she has this terrible, nasty, debilitating condition called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD for short. You may have heard of it, but don't worry if you haven't because it's pretty rare. Ha ha ha.
In my blissfully naive pre-children days, I was positive ADHD was a made-up disorder that encouraged lazy parents and teachers to give little Johnny Rocket a get-out-of-jail-free card. I treated people who believed in the disorder with disdain, basking in the knowledge that my children would be much better behaved than these monsters because I would have superior parenting skills. As long as you discipline your children with love, they will be the model of perfect behavior.
All I can say is that if this is your attitude, repent and do it NOW. It's too late for me, but please, for the love of Pete, save yourself. If you don't, you WILL be humbled.
ADHD is real. And it's horrible. In fact, I'm considering bringing charges of false advertising against the person who named the disorder because the term ADHD sounds much too innocuous for this dread disease. It would be more appropriately named Stare-off-into-oblivion-even-though-the-teacher-is-three-inches-from-your-face-Jump-up-and-down-on-your-chair-Slug-whoever-happens-to-be-walking-by-just-because-you-want-to-and-Never-once-voluntarily-bring-your-homework-home-from-school Disorder. Or for short, A Quick Way to Drive Your Parents to the Brink.
If school were Super Mario Galaxy 2, we would have no problem. But life is not a video game. Life requires sitting still, paying attention, listening carefully, waiting your turn, and actually doing what your parents and teachers tell you to do. Without these skills, or at least a smidgen of these skills, there is little chance a kid will be successful in school. Unfortunately, these are the exact things that are difficult for the poor kiddos who are affected by ADHD. It's not that Kaitlyn doesn't want to concentrate and sit still, it's that she can't. Plain and simple. And if you don't believe me, you only need to spend a few hours in the afternoon with her and I promise you'll become a believer. Let me know when you're ready and I can send her over with her list of spelling words.
When my daughter was diagnosed with 18 Q Deletion Syndrome, we were given a laundry list of issues we should be prepared to handle. Among them were hearing impairment (yup, she's got it), mental retardation (nope), delayed social skills (yup), learning disabilities (yup), little or no ability to communicate either through spoken language or sign language (nope), autism (jury is still out), inability to walk (nope), and a weaker than normal immune system so she will host every bug that comes within a 10 mile radius of her (double yup). These, along with many others, were the things we were prepared for. What we were NOT prepared for was ADHD.
As odd as this may sound, this is possibly her greatest challenge in life. No, really. I feel so bad for the little munchkin - she loves to learn and has an aptitude for reading and science, which is amazing and wonderful. But she just can't concentrate when the teacher is talking, and thus misses 90% of the classroom instruction. I don't have to tell you how detrimental that is to her, and how frustrating it is to her teachers.
We've tried just about everything. We went the "natural" route by treating her with supplements and the Elimination Diet (google it), we tried behavioral intervention with two different therapists, and finally we pulled out the big guns and tried prescription ADHD medications. By the time we got to that point we were desperate and would have chanted naked under the moonlight in old man Tucker's corn field if the doctors told us to. Fortunately, they didn't. Unfortunately, and to our great disappointment, the medications made the problem worse. If you read the 10 page booklet of instructions that comes with your prescription, you will find a list of very uncommon side effects. 'Very uncommon' means that typically less than .5% of people taking this medication will experience whatever the side effect is. One of these rare side effects, and this is true of all ADHD medications, is extreme agitation. And, you guessed it, we pulled the short straw. We tried several different classes of medication, and they all had the same effect. Which definitely wasn't good. The lowest point was when we went against our better judgment (I'm telling you, you shouldn't doubt mother's intuition) and increased her dose because her doctor promised that increasing it would decrease her agitation. Instead, our daughter experienced a screaming, raging tantrum that lasted nearly 24 hours. After several calls to her doctor and a trip to the ER, she finally calmed down and went to sleep. We threw the medication in the garbage (wrapped in a dirty diaper to ward off pilagers) and never looked back.
Unfortunately, this exhausted our options for treatment. We haven't been able to find anything that helps her focus, and because of that her school work, homework, and social skills continue to suffer. So for now, we do our best to be patient with her and help her work through this challenge while we wait for science to catch up and discover something new. And we wait. And wait. And wait.
Come to think of it, maybe that's how I'll make my millions - by curing ADHD.
Nah, sounds like too much work.
Did I mention that I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago? I told you, repent NOW. Karma will really bite you in the behind.
Monday, June 7, 2010
You Know You Have a Child With Special Needs If...
Wow. My first post. I tried hard to make this witty, touching, and insightful, so you'd get a glimpse of the wonderful things that are to come.
Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for whatever came out of my mouth at 12:22 a.m. Please come back anyway.
In the spirit of the thousands, nay, millions, of emails that are circulating with hilarious lists of things that describe some aspect of who you are (You Know You're a Child of the 70s If... you remember the alternate lyrics to the Dee's theme song! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), I'm going to create my own list. Because we can always use another one.
And if you don't remember the Dee's theme song, or have no idea what Dee's even is, I'll post the lyrics after my awesome list.
You Know You Have a Child With Special Needs If:
1. You panic when you leave the house without your phone because you're going to miss all the reminder calls for your child's upcoming doctor visits, which you wrote down on a receipt from your purse and then promptly threw away.
2. Even though you threw away the receipt that had the doctors' appointments on it, you still have a receipt in your purse from a random trip to the grocery store in 2003. Along with other miscellaneous garbage that will never find its way out.
3. You ask, "Now which clinic is this?" when the receptionist calls to remind you of the appointment. Even though you've been taking your child there regularly for 8 years.
4. Your child has 22 specialists and since you can't remember what any of them do anymore, you hope to get clues as to their specialty by observing the other people in the waiting room.
5. Your pharmacist not only knows you by name, but knows which prescription you're there to fill.
6. You lobby for a punch card so after your 10th appointment the 11th is free.
7. You have your own personal advocate with the insurance company and they call to see if everything is ok if they haven't heard from you in a while.
8. Even though you spend a third of your life in doctors' offices, you haven't had a physical in 6 years because you don't think of scheduling an appointment for yourself and after a while, they stop calling to remind you.
9. Ditto the dentist.
10. You rejoice the first time your child talks back to you.
11. You rejoice when your 7 year old goes pee pee in the potty.
12. You have a t-shirt printed with the words: Yes, I know my child is having a tantrum and no, I don't care.
13. You have another one printed with the words: I'm sure you would do a better job than I do. Why don't you take him for a week and show me how it's done?
14. You wear one of these shirts every time you visit the inlaws.
15. Every time your mother in law opens her mouth, you point at the shirt.
16. You know what IDEA, IEP, 504, FAPE, and LRE mean.
17. You've had more than one conversation that begins with: I'm sorry my child won't stop saying, "My mommy makes me eat my boogers!" I don't know where he got it and I don't know why he won't stop. Please don't call DCFS.
18. You're trying to figure out how to get a refund on your ticket to Holland, because when you come right down to it, the canals of Venice are much cooler than clogs. And tulips. And windmills. But Rembrandt is pretty cool.
19. You become a soggy, weeping puddle when you hear the song "Wonder" by Natalie Merchant.
20. You get teary when you see a little girl skipping down the street.
21. You can identify every single train from the Island of Sodor and know the purpose of each one.
22. Although you wouldn't have chosen this, you thank God every day for the ability to experience life through the eyes of a child who will never stop delighting at watching the ants that are walking across the kitchen floor.
If you said yes to 5 or more of these, hide yourself in the laundry room and take a nap in the middle of the pile of dirty clothes stacked on the dryer, where they can't see your feet. You deserve it.
Original lyrics to the Dee's theme song:
Goody box, goody box, good-goody-goody box
A big, juicy burger
A bag full of fries
An ice cold drink
And a surprise
Alternate lyrics:
A big, juicy booger
A bag full of flies
An ice cold *censored*
And a surprise (said while raising eyebrows up and down)
Link to lyrics to Wonder by Natalie Merchant:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nataliemerchant/wonder.html
Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for whatever came out of my mouth at 12:22 a.m. Please come back anyway.
In the spirit of the thousands, nay, millions, of emails that are circulating with hilarious lists of things that describe some aspect of who you are (You Know You're a Child of the 70s If... you remember the alternate lyrics to the Dee's theme song! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), I'm going to create my own list. Because we can always use another one.
And if you don't remember the Dee's theme song, or have no idea what Dee's even is, I'll post the lyrics after my awesome list.
You Know You Have a Child With Special Needs If:
1. You panic when you leave the house without your phone because you're going to miss all the reminder calls for your child's upcoming doctor visits, which you wrote down on a receipt from your purse and then promptly threw away.
2. Even though you threw away the receipt that had the doctors' appointments on it, you still have a receipt in your purse from a random trip to the grocery store in 2003. Along with other miscellaneous garbage that will never find its way out.
3. You ask, "Now which clinic is this?" when the receptionist calls to remind you of the appointment. Even though you've been taking your child there regularly for 8 years.
4. Your child has 22 specialists and since you can't remember what any of them do anymore, you hope to get clues as to their specialty by observing the other people in the waiting room.
5. Your pharmacist not only knows you by name, but knows which prescription you're there to fill.
6. You lobby for a punch card so after your 10th appointment the 11th is free.
7. You have your own personal advocate with the insurance company and they call to see if everything is ok if they haven't heard from you in a while.
8. Even though you spend a third of your life in doctors' offices, you haven't had a physical in 6 years because you don't think of scheduling an appointment for yourself and after a while, they stop calling to remind you.
9. Ditto the dentist.
10. You rejoice the first time your child talks back to you.
11. You rejoice when your 7 year old goes pee pee in the potty.
12. You have a t-shirt printed with the words: Yes, I know my child is having a tantrum and no, I don't care.
13. You have another one printed with the words: I'm sure you would do a better job than I do. Why don't you take him for a week and show me how it's done?
14. You wear one of these shirts every time you visit the inlaws.
15. Every time your mother in law opens her mouth, you point at the shirt.
16. You know what IDEA, IEP, 504, FAPE, and LRE mean.
17. You've had more than one conversation that begins with: I'm sorry my child won't stop saying, "My mommy makes me eat my boogers!" I don't know where he got it and I don't know why he won't stop. Please don't call DCFS.
18. You're trying to figure out how to get a refund on your ticket to Holland, because when you come right down to it, the canals of Venice are much cooler than clogs. And tulips. And windmills. But Rembrandt is pretty cool.
19. You become a soggy, weeping puddle when you hear the song "Wonder" by Natalie Merchant.
20. You get teary when you see a little girl skipping down the street.
21. You can identify every single train from the Island of Sodor and know the purpose of each one.
22. Although you wouldn't have chosen this, you thank God every day for the ability to experience life through the eyes of a child who will never stop delighting at watching the ants that are walking across the kitchen floor.
If you said yes to 5 or more of these, hide yourself in the laundry room and take a nap in the middle of the pile of dirty clothes stacked on the dryer, where they can't see your feet. You deserve it.
Original lyrics to the Dee's theme song:
Goody box, goody box, good-goody-goody box
A big, juicy burger
A bag full of fries
An ice cold drink
And a surprise
Alternate lyrics:
A big, juicy booger
A bag full of flies
An ice cold *censored*
And a surprise (said while raising eyebrows up and down)
Link to lyrics to Wonder by Natalie Merchant:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nataliemerchant/wonder.html
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