The hardest job

Parenting is hard.  No one tells you.  Maybe because for most families, there are not the drastic and dramatic events that transpire.  Families with typically developing children may never experience the manic highs and lows of parenting that cause gray hair, stress eating, sobbing and wrinkles.  Breathe.  I promise we can get through it.  

Just looking at this small human, your heart swells with so much love it might burst.  You experience the most profound pride in another human beings accomplishments.  From those first moments to the great achievements, we get to experience these with our children.  Witnessing the changes and growth in your child fills you with moments of both elation and quiet personal grief.  They grow so fast.  Mature in millions of ways physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.  In the blink of an eye an adult will stand before you.  

These moments of utter joy are giant successes. Celebrate them.  Hold tight to the knowledge that your child worked exceptionally hard for that success.  Other aspects of life may have slumped just to make it to that moment.  It is amazing.   

Then for some of us, along the way, there are also moments of absolute failure.  You sit wondering where you went wrong in parenting and puzzling how to change the projection.  Sobbing, you might try to make sense of the senseless thing your child did.  Your tears may fall on the head of the child you are soothing. You yearn for 'normal', for a typical child who would never dream of going against the rules, who stops when they read social ques, who controls emotions without thought.  Parenting sometimes has moments of utter isolation and despair because you will experience things you never see coming and your child will need your strength and guidance to move forward.  

No one will tell you how hard those failing moments are.  That you will feel alone and isolated.  That you will feel fear for your child's future.  No one has an answer when the days are the bleakest.  Perhaps because no one talks about the problems, no one wants to share the bizarre situations.  It is hard to voice, hard to hear and hard to understand.  Sometimes the hardest situations come with the most humiliation.  We need the most grace when we battle the most bizarre lessons with our children.   

Parenting is really hard.  Even with typically developing children, there come highs and lows of parenting.  We all sit tearfully googling how to parent.  We read books, articles and pray for strength to guide us in another day.  Our children will fail.  They will make decisions that are crazy.  The consequences of their actions and reactions are lessons in and of themselves.  You will fear for your not so typically developing child. Breathe.  I promise you are not alone. 

With all of that being said....I will tell you that last weekend I spent hours searching for answers for my ADHD middle school aged child.  I cried for him and with him.  After scouring the internet and searching books written by the experts I think there are no solutions.  Most of the answers are not answers.  I don't need to know that my child will

struggle in school

have trouble being organized, lose things

won't finish tasks

not have a social filter / misread social ques

have emotional extremes

has very poor impulse control, ability to slow 

I know that.  We live it.  We understand the struggles.  I needed to know how to help with all those things.  I needed solutions.  I needed answers about how to guide my child.  I needed to know someone else has had a similar struggle and a miracle happened.  There are none.  There are suggestions from the exerts on how to live with an ADHD child.  There are suggestions on helping and assisting your child navigate the messy world.  There are no first hand accounts of the wild, bizarre and exhausting events that may transpire in life and how to resolve, fix and never repeat them.  Maybe because of the stigma and no one wants to openly talk about ADHD.  There is a society of belief that this child will "outgrow" ADHD and life will suddenly be amazing.  We went to bed with heavy hearts for a couple nights.  

The thing with parenting though is you have to just pull it together and figure it out.  Figure out the one thing you can do right now.  That might not be what you imagined it to be but it will be right for the moment and you will figure out the next thing.  ADHD is not an excuse.  It is a way of life.  It is not an excuse for bad behavior or bad choices.  ADHD means that bad behavior happens because my child does not think through all of the consequences, recognize when to stop and emotionally he is not mature enough to control his impulses.  He is not a bad kid.  He is not destined to be a terror or menace to society.  He has not acted maliciously or with ill intent.  

Parenting is so hard.  Breathe.  I promise the next hour is different.  Celebrate the small joys and mentally prepare for the hard moments.  Stay strong there will be absolutely no telling what wild, bizarre situation happens next - there will be one and you will just need to breathe.