Sit Down With Frustration, Stand Up With Hope

I have learned today that one thing my kid can't handle is a play-date with more than one kid at a time.  He becomes heated, over excited, surly, frustrated, freaked, impossible, and the aftermath is twice as bad.  Right now it is impossible to talk to him.  He's hurting himself with his frustration because he doesn't know how to deal with it.  Banging his foot hard against the wall.  Partly to get our attention, partly because he's got this intense pent up energy spiraling out of his control, making him feel worse and worse.  Nothing comes out of his mouth that isn't a barking yell or an order or nasty rebuke of any help we try to give.

It comes up as if from nowhere and takes hours to dissipate.  I know he'll feel better if he eats but his perception of everything is completely tweaked so that his food is too hot right now but in two seconds it will be too cold.  Nothing will feel right, look right, sound right, or be right.  Until the frustration abates.  Which is almost impossible because absolutely every noise, interaction, and stimulation raises his frustration level even higher.  Where's the ceiling to his rage? 

Finally I hear the crying has stopped.  There is a fifty-fifty chance that his nose has started bleeding and he's sitting there letting it drip on his bed in big quickly coagulating puddles that will permanently stain everything because I am lousy at getting stains out of anything.  I feel too tired to go and find out.  I'm all worn out. I've been all worn out for years.

My own frustration levels are high from trying to navigate his.  I want to scream at him at the top of my lungs.  This may have the temporary effect of out-freaking him into silence but then I am the mom who screams at her kid who has a mental disorder that he doesn't have control of.  It's like yelling at a kid for having crooked teeth. 

Now it's totally silent in his room.  What I really need to do is watch a movie for a few hours, drink a six pack of beer, and pretend I don't live in this constant state of stress.  And I will.  I will drink that six pack of beer and I will watch the movies but I won't relax until my kid is asleep which won't be for another few hours since he has trouble going to sleep.  When he's awake there is no relaxation.  There is no rest.  Ever.  When he is awake it requires Philip and I to constantly anticipate the next step: what will it take to get him to eat his dinner so that at least he isn't frustrated from hunger?  How will we get him in his pyjamas with the least amount fuss and fight?


Max just announced to me that he was done with his food.  I said "Well done!" and then he said from his room "And I calmed myself down by taking deep breaths."  So I told him how proud I was of him for doing something to help himself calm down.  And I truly feel it because, folks, that is the very first time (to my knowledge) that he has taken steps on his own to reduce his frustration.  Yes, it took a huge scene, floods of tears, parents close to yelling down the house, and him trying to break his toe first, but this is the kind of initiative that kids with ADD lack and it is very hard for them to develop these self soothing self helping skills.  This is evidence of our therapy dollars beginning to pay off.

I sat down to write about my bitter frustration and I will do so again and again for many years because that's what life is like for parents of kids with ADD.  Every single day is like this to some degree.  Charged with emotion, rage, shocking mood changes, flashes of brilliance quickly buried under the weight of the challenge our daily rituals pose.  This is not an easy life and some days I wish I wasn't living it.  But that little dose of what might become possible, a kid who can learn to manage his own challenges, that gives me hope, which I didn't feel when I sat down to this post.