The Tempest

I've been preserving Internet pages by not writing unnecessary blog posts for the past three months.

Well, that's the most creative excuse I can come up with. I have no good excuse except a general feeling that I couldn't "allow" myself to spend time writing a blog post when I had so many undone things on my to-do list. That, and a general feeling of malaise that colored everything blah. Who wants to write about blah?

Shortly after my last entry, my daughters performed in their dance studio's production of "Mary Poppins", and grandma and grandpa made the long trek north from Sparks, NV to see it. My 11-year old took time off from homeschooling the week they were here. When they left, she was balky and argumentative with me as I tried to wrap up the school year. She seemed to think she should be done with school for the year, even though her friends at public school still had a week of school to go.

Things escalated one day as I was requesting her to read aloud to me while we were driving her sister to her therapy appointment, with the goal of finishing the book she'd been reading to me for months (at ever increasing intervals, even though it was one she likes and had picked herself.) She was refusing to do it, and I ended up grabbing her book and hurling it out the window, saying, "You're right. We're done. You're fired." Six years of homeschooling, wrapped up in one impulsive gesture. It had been building to this point for the past year and a half, but it still came as a shock when it happened. (I did go back and retrieve the book, but not before it had been run over. The tread marks on it make a nice commentary. I might put it in a shadowbox display at some point, but for now, it's sitting in obscurity on a shelf.)

Over the next few days, we discussed (in calmer tones) how it just didn't seem like we were enjoying homeschooling anymore, and how it was generating a lot of friction between us. I told her I valued our relationship more than I valued homeschooling, and I thought she might benefit from having someone else as her teacher. She agreed, although she still was shocked that I'd "fired" her as my student. (She admitted she'd fired me in her head several times as well. I'm sure I deserved it, too!) We've even laughed about the tread marks on the book.

Even though we'd left the confines of the K12 curriculum utilized by the Idaho Virtual Academy that she'd been enrolled in for grades K-3 and I'd tried to venture into the less formal lands of project-based homeschooling and unit-based homeschooling in grades 4-5, it had proven difficult to achieve the focus and consistency necessary to complete even the modest goals we set. It seemed she was having an incredibly difficult time focusing on anything for any length of time, and abandoned projects cluttered her room and spread out all over the house and even into the yard. I felt her pain, as I'm a squirrel-brained Golden Retriever myself most days, but it was reaching a level of disorganized thinking and action that went way beyond simple immaturity. It was actually getting worse as she got older, not better!

More troubling, her frustrated outbursts any time she couldn't instantly master new material were becoming more frequent and intense. (It reminded me of me doing algebra homework in 8th grade.) She pushed away offers to help like they were offers of cyanide. She interrupted constantly, and argued even minor points as if her life depended on the outcome. There was no filter between her brain and her mouth...if she thought it, she blurted it. I was reactive, and we were engaged in yelling matches far too frequently. I felt like I'd become the mother of a belligerent 16-year old, and I despaired. If it's this bad at age 11, what on earth would 16 look like? And it finally occurred to me, with my husband's input, that our beloved, creative, impulsive, talented, moody, brilliantly inconsistent and inconsistently brilliant girl might actually have Attention Deficit Disorder...along with her mother. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. No wonder we had been struggling to make homeschooling work for so long!

One of my main summer goals (besides trying to relax and enjoy ourselves) was to have both of us evaluated for ADD, and to act on the (probable) diagnosis with medication and behavioral modifications so that she could start out her public school career being the best her she could be and I could perhaps become more the mother I want to be, leaving some of the anger and irritability and chaos behind. We'd already planned to have our youngest daughter evaluated, as after a year in kindergarten it was apparent that she had an incredibly difficult time remaining focused enough to accomplish any work, and her boundary issues from lack of impulse control have begun to affect her social life. A pediatric neurologist she'd seen for an EEG consult in June suggested strongly that we have her evaluated for ADHD, as well. My husband also suffers from ADD, according to online assessment tools, but he has more of an anxiety component. In other words, we're a whole family of squirrel brains, but all with unique issues resulting from the same condition. Since he's dealing with a host of other health issues, we decided not to pursue his diagnosis/treatment at this time.

It was not surprising to confirm through evaluations by the behavioral health specialist that both daughters and myself score very highly in the ADD/ADHD spectrum. All three of us began prescription medication. We've had almost two months now to assess their efficacy, and have had to change medication for both daughters due to unacceptable side effects, but the good news is that my oldest daughter has started to exhibit some amazing ability to maintain focus, and her irritable outbursts are far fewer and less volatile. We are waiting until school starts to try a different medication for my youngest daughter, as the first one affected her normally cheerful personality to a very noticeable degree. She became very oppositional and unhappy. When all three therapists commented on it on the same day,  it confirmed our conviction that it was time to change medication. As for me, I started on a very low dose, and have noticed a mild improvement in my ability to focus, but am going to see about increasing the dosage, as it's awfully subtle. I still struggle mightily to stay focused. (It has taken me four days to write this post.)

We went by the school yesterday to see the classroom lists that were posted at 3 PM. (Not like we were counting the days, hours, and minutes or anything!) My daughter didn't get the teacher we'd requested, but she did get placed in the same class with a friend. That was probably more important, as the teacher is still supposed to be a good, nice teacher, and my daughter was mostly worried about making friends. She's been cleaning her room (usually looks like a tornado hit it), and two days ago spent hours sitting at her desk working on her 4H recordbook...the desk that had been buried under a mound of randomly tossed items for months. She's been researching kid-friendly school lunches that she can pack. The medication definitely seems to be reaping obvious and intended benefits.

Now of course I'm second guessing myself and thinking, "Gee, maybe if she'd been on medication last June I wouldn't have fired her as my student, and I'd be homeschooling my girl next week instead of sending her off to public school. What have I done???" I can't deny that I'm experiencing a sense of loss, and have been trying to fill these last days of summer with lots of quality time together, cognizant that our time together is going to be a much more rare, precious commodity once September 3rd rolls around. We have a salon appointment together on Wednesday, the day before school starts, and I'd like to think of something fun to do afterwards.

But a part of me believes I also need this time to blossom, to have some time to pursue the goals and dreams that weren't possible in the confines of the homeschooling life I was leading, and that she will blossom with new friendships and learning to navigate in the world more independently. Hopefully part of the benefit for her will also be seeing her mom become the writer she'd always dreamed of becoming, of pursuing her dreams and achieving them. I don't want her to grow up with an image of me as her "woulda-shoulda-coulda" mom.

There's a tempest outside as I prepare to post this...wind bursts up to 70 mph, I'd estimate. It matches my inner turmoil about my sense of adequacy as a wife, mother, and human being at this point in my life. I can only hope that when this storm passes, the rains will come and the heavy smoke from raging wildfires that's filled our valley for the past several weeks will be cleansed from our skies and homes, and we'll be able to enjoy the beauty of summer's end instead of hiding out indoors. Hopefully my internal weather forecast will follow suit.