Saturday, February 19, 2011

I am a Bad Mom

Do you ever just feel like a bad mom??? I do. 

I have 2 very rambunctious little boys. Skittles is a bit more rambunctious than most. I have never had him diagnosed but I am certain he has ADHD. He is a bright, intelligent boy. He is full of life. He can't sit still. He has no concept of personal boundaries. He gets excited and he has trouble controlling his actions. I homeschool him because I know how incredibly smart he is. I also know that he can not learn in a conventional setting. He is too easily distracted, too talkative, too wiggly. 

When he was in Preschool he developed a reputation. After school all the moms would line up outside the classroom door and wait for our little angels to come out and tell us all about their morning. On a regular basis the teacher would come out and in front of all the other Moms, tell me everything that my son had done wrong that day. We no longer were invited over for play dates or birthday parties. I couldn't even get a babysitter. I felt like the mother of a leper. My heart broke for my son and myself. I felt that if he was so flawed it had to be my fault. I was a bad mother. 

Every time I got a bad report it would ruin our whole afternoon. I would cry the whole way home. I would send my son to his room. I would take away privileges. I tried everything I could to motivate him to behave at school. It got to where I didn't want to pick him up anymore. So I stopped dropping him off. I couldn't take the embarrassment. I didn't know what to do.  

One day I stayed and observed him for a whole day. I pretended to drop him off as usual but instead I stayed and peeked through the window without his knowledge. He didn't seem to behave any differently than the other kids. Just to be sure this was not a biased Mom opinion, I had him professionally observed by a friend of mine. She admitted he was hyper but not a bad kid. I scheduled a mediated conference with the teacher. I asked her why she always gave me a bad report. Was he always bad? Why did I never get a good report? She explained that she thought of me as a colleague because I am a teacher as well. She admitted that she would never have talked to the other parents the way she did to me. The damage was done though. My son was labeled the "bad kid". 

I wish that people were more understanding of hyper kids. I hate that I came home and cried for an hour today because I am afraid he might be getting the "bad kid" reputation again. He is a good kid. I feel like a failure as a mother because I can not make him gear down. I hate that I have to consider putting him on medication to make him conform to what other adults want him to be... I want him to have friends and be a happy person. Maybe the only way to do that is to make him more pleasant for others to be around. 

There are no guarantees when you have a baby that they will be the perfect little angel you envisioned and there is certainly no guarantee that you will be the parent that you envisioned either. I am sure that there are parents of kids who behave all the time. Their parents probably think they are the best parents in the world or at least they think they have the best genes in the world. I am a bad Mom because I secretly wish they all get pregnant with an ADHD child of their very own... TOMORROW!

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