For someone who was born so easily A has been a real pain in the keester since then. Actually the lead up to his birth wasn’t all that easy. In fact it was anything but.
My husband and I had been married for 17 years. In that time we had separated and gotten back together at least three times, had lived in nine different places, both large cities and small towns, moved 13 times, had ten cats, gone through over ten years of fertility tests and treatments and lost three babies. At the time I got pregnant with A we were in the midst of another move. My husband decided he liked his old employer, whom he’d left just 14 months earlier, better than his current employer, which was probably the best one he’d had in 17 years. I had just returned from the pestilent ridden city we’d left 14 months earlier where I’d taken a bus to look for an apartment.
That trip is practically a post in itself. On the way out there I’d been sitting next to a drug dealer who was transporting product to the city we were bound for when he was arrested half way through the trip. On the way back I was sitting next to a smelly, dirty drunk and behind a young couple with a young baby who spent most of the trip sleeping and ignoring the baby. They had been on the bus for two days and had to go several hundred miles yet when I got off.
Anyway, the employer decided that my husband was so valuable that they broke precedent and hired him back. I drove him the several hundred miles to settle into our apartment with what we could carry in the car to start his job and drove back to pack our condo and drive back again two weeks later. On the way back to the new apartment I became ill, chalked it up to allergies from the dust from packing the car and cleaning the condo, and stopped several times to throw up. I wasn’t pleased to be moving back to that particular city so that might have had something to do with it as well. I had been treated for an ulcer a few months before that and thought that was part of it as well.
After we got settled in the apartment life evened out and I still experienced nausea from time to time. The scent of my husband’s aftershave seemed to bring on a bout of vomiting every morning, but I’d always been sensitive to scents so I didn’t think anything of it. We’d given up on ever having children and stopped all the fertility stuff and I figured the nausea was just more problems with the ulcer. A barium test a few months before had shown it was worse so it made sense. I went to the doctor and scheduled an endoscopy. On the day of the endoscopy they asked the normal questions including the one about when my last period was. I did a quick count back. My periods had always been irregular and it wasn’t odd that I’d skip a month, but it had been three months! They insisted on a pregnancy test and I was sure it would be negative, but it was positive! Since our sex life had slowed down naturally over the years I knew when I conceived. I was nearly through my first trimester. I’d nearly missed it!
Physical activity and I have never been companions. We’re hardly casual acquaintances, but I wanted to be as healthy as possible so I signed up for water aerobics. I was doing pretty well until one day I got severe abdominal cramps in the pool. That scared the crap out of me.
About the same time my hubby decided that he would rather be living somewhere else. Seems he got the idea he wanted to die and this was the place to do it. He had been sure he was dying since we met. He was 20 at the time and sure he wouldn’t survive to see thirty. He has a death wish that refuses to come true. Anyway the baby had given him a reason to live so we packed up again. Luckily most everything was still packed. Off to the new place for a job interview and house search. Houses were selling like ice cream on a hot day. We made three offers and were outbid on all of them. Soooo we decided on an apartment temporarily. It was a military area so you could find an apartment with a month to month lease with a three month minimum. So pack up the car and the cats and follow the movers on to the next new place.
The doctors I went to at the beginning of my pregnancy didn’t seem to think there were any concerns with a 37 year old woman having her fourth pregnancy, the first one to go past the first two months, so I went to my first appointment with my new doctors without any preconceived notions of disaster. From the first visit they told me about being cautious and the dangers of having my first baby at my age. There were tests and ultrasounds and classes and then another specter reared it’s ugly head. In a class for high risk pregnancies I met a woman who was expecting her second set of twins. She had gestational diabetes and tested her blood right there in the class. She had to test six times a day. She’d had it with her first set of twins too. It wasn’t long before I had to endure the test for gestational diabetes myself. Of course it was positive. In the beginning it was only a dietary change, but I wasn’t gaining weight so they tried insulin. No matter how much I took there was no weight gain and I had terrible hypoglycemia. Yet every month I got a threat from my doctor, no weight gain and I’d go back on insulin. So I’d gain a pound. Then the next month the pound would be gone. It was the only time in my life I had trouble gaining weight.
I kept looking for a house, looking through the paper and driving around. Hubby had certain requirements, which I’m sure had something to do with him not wanting to buy a house. One day I found one with all of his requirements. It was a bit odd, but in an interesting way. We went to see it and made an offer the same day. It needed a little work, but nothing we couldn’t handle. We made a list and I started getting bids from contractors. Most of it was out of reach so we broke It down into manageable pieces and started painting and cleaning.
I was in the grocery store checking out one Saturday morning. I was almost exactly six months along. As I was bagging the groceries I got a hard cramp in my abdomen that nearly took me off my feet. Being the idiot I am I finished packing my groceries and took them out to the car, experiencing at least two more of the cramps. Hubby was downtown at a piano lesson so I drove to the music store to get him. There wasn’t a place to park so I had to go around the corner. On the way to the music store I had to go to the bathroom really bad so I stopped in a restaurant on the way to use the bathroom. When I got to the music store he had already left and the cramps were worse. I nearly sat down on the floor. Do you think I asked for an ambulance? I was about to when he came back in the store. We could get going faster than an ambulance could get there so we walked to the car and went straight to the hospital. I was in labor. They stopped the labor, but I was put on bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy.
We were in the middle of painting the inside of the house and putting in woodwork. That ended my involvement with redecorating. Hubby did what was left himself. We moved into the house with the help of friends. The day we moved in the basement stairs were missing. They’d been taken out the day before and new ones weren’t going in until after we’d moved in. So practically everything was piled in the diningroom.
You’d think that someone who was no friend to physical activity would have no trouble laying in bed for three months, but it is not easy! The only day I was allowed to get up was the day I saw my doctor, and that changed to once a week. We had food delivered every day. It was a very very long three months. Two months out my husband did something that both surprised and shocked me in it’s show of consideration for my safety. He moved the guest bed downstairs to the dining room so I didn’t have to come down the stairs in the middle of the night. We only had one bathroom, downstairs, and our staircase was less than safe. It was one of the things on our list that needed to be fixed.
Due date was fast approaching. The bags were packed. We were down to two days when I went to my weekly doctor’s appointment. I’d been having problems with pre-eclampsia, a blood pressure problem during pregnancy. So far it had been under control, but this time the nurse took my blood pressure and went out to get the doctor. He came in and asked me if I’d like to have the baby right away? He wanted me to go right over to the hospital to have labor induced. I wanted to get my husband. Apparently my blood pressure was so high he didn’t want me upset so he relented and let me go get my husband.
We got to the hospital two hours later, labor was induced. After the first few contractions Dad took a powder to the waiting room. I had a hired labor coach. Things moved along so quickly I never got my epidermal. Six hours and three pushes later I had my son.
He came into the world at the beginning of the current wave of breast-feeding enthusiasm. They pushed breast feeding to such an extent that I hadn’t even bought bottles. I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world. Women have been breast feeding for millennia - since the first baby! Nope. It took two days for him to attach once. Then we were out of the hospital and home. After hours of trying and many, many phone calls he latched on to one of them. I didn’t want to take a chance on him not latching on to the other breast and getting too little so I didn’t switch.
Then the colic kicked in. We didn’t sleep until early morning and hubby’s family was coming to see the baby. Four hours. We got four hours sleep before we had to get up and greet them. Thankfully they stayed the night and my sister-in-lay got up to take care of the baby so I could sleep.
We went out and bought bottles and formula and I pumped as much as I could to mix in. He threw it up. It took months to figure out he was allergic to formula and we had to use soy formula. I got an electric pump from the hospital and spent the time he was asleep pumping. By the end of the first week my legs were killing me from taking care of him all day, trying to clean, do dishes, and laundry at night, and walking the floor with him. 21 days after birth I couldn’t get the milk to come out. I had to hook up to the pump and have my husband stroke my breasts to force it out. When we were done that was it. Not one more drop of breast milk. And still the kid threw up a third of what he ate. Trips to the hospital, trying everything we could figure out to do for the colic, I was exhausted.
Baptism day, one month later and trying to get him to eat. “You’re starving him!” He’s not getting enough to eat” advice from my family. He takes a whole bottle for the first time. Hubby takes him back to our room to change him and takes forever. I go to see what’s happening and he’s changing his clothes. Two thirds of that bottle is on the back of his shirt. No cause is ever found for the vomiting or the colic.
The colic is solved accidentally at a visit to Grandma’s when I’m inspired to sit him in the warm tub after his bath. He’s a month and a half old. And I’d been afraid to put him in the water to give him his bath. He can’t sit up yet, but I can sit him up in the tub of warm water. For the first time he goes right to sleep and there is peace and rest. He sleeps through the night for the first time.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
I always wondered how other parents felt when their children came to be a certain age, when it was time to push them out of the nest to make their way on their own. There comes a time when people look forward to their life without the children underfoot and the children can’t wait to get out on their own, go to college, get a job, make their own life. I didn’t have the “luxury” of those feelings because I was sure I’d have “A” with me until I died. He couldn’t go into a store or classroom. He can’t cook anything. He can’t use a stove, he’s afraid to. He’d never be able to make it happen on his own. He has a plan to write books, publish and then when I die he goes on a long hike across America, seeing what he can see, scavenging, maybe going to California and living on the beach. Sounds lovely, but impractical. I’ll be dead so I can’t worry. He doesn’t care what happens to him so he’s willing to take his chances. Anything but living with his dad.
Then we had a big slap in the face from reality. My ex-husband is probably the best ex-husband on the planet. He deposits child support in my account with out fail every pay day. He does this without force from a court order and has been known to put in extra when needed. My finances have been a mess for months. We’ve been living far too deep in the negative. My phone and internet access were cut off and we were pretty much out of food. Pay day came and there was no deposit. He does something every once in a while that pisses me off to no end. He turns off his phone for days at a time and for all intents and purposes disappears from the face of the Earth. It scares the crap out of us. Even though I can’t live with him, I still care about him and his well being and I knew he’d been having heart trouble. That weekend he decided to disappear. While we were trying to reach him with my cell phone we feared the worst. My son, who usually never thinks about the future other than when the next Yugi Oh card release is, suddenly had a coherent plan that involved getting his GED, getting a job at Barnes and Noble and his own studio apartment. He said I could move back in with my boyfriend and we could both make it. That was such a huge step for him I can’t believe it yet, several weeks later.
It all worked out. My ex had forgotten it was pay day. I reached him after three days of anguish and he was just befuddled. It amazes me that anybody can live in a way that pay day can be forgotten, but he is safe and that’s all I was worried about. That leaves me to face a new fear that I thought would never come. What if my son has actually progressed to the point where he can take a class and get his GED? What if he does get a job and his own apartment? How will it feel to not be with him every minute of every day? It scares me. I don’t think I could ever be ready for it. I’m afraid if he gets his own place and I’m living with my boyfriend again that I will never see him again. In fact I’m terrified of the day that happens. Do other parents feel the same way, or are they relieved when their little birds leave the nest and fly away?
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
This is one of the old essays I mentioned in the Welcome post. I-43 runs from Beloit, in south central Wisconsin near the Illinois border roughly 200 miles through Delavan, East Troy, Milwaukee and Sheboygan, ending near Green Bay. Several times friends saw me stopped along the freeway looking through my camera at some obscure thing only I could see.
Hawkin’ Down the highway
There I was, minding my own business driving up I-43 going - well, as fast as everybody else was - and my eye was caught by what appeared to be a large squirrels nest in the middle of a dead tree straight ahead of me, about 100 feet from the highway. You know the kind, bunches of leaves and sticks bunched together on the flimsiest branch that hangs out over the busiest street in town. Except this one was firmly in the center of the tree and I glanced to the side as I passed it. There I saw the silhouette of a large bird. In my excitement I thought it might be an eagle. I’ve been trying to see an eagle in the wild from closer than two miles all my life. Unfortunately I had neither binoculars or camera with me and I was going - well, as fast as everybody else - on my way to downtown Milwaukee. For the next two days I thought I’d try again to see the bird, or birds, but I would leave the house without the proper equipment and not remember until I was past the point of no return.
Finally on the fourth day I remembered both camera with telephoto lens and binoculars. Just before getting to the nest site I saw a bird circling the sky and I knew I was close. As I pulled over as far as possible I saw the silhouette of another adult bird sitting on the nest. I turned off the car and turned on the flashers and got out with the camera and the binoculars and took a look just as the beautiful bird took flight. It was a very large red-tailed hawk and sailed toward the ground, then up to a tree across the clearing from it’s nest. Naturally I followed and photographed it, but then turned my attention back to the nest. I switched from the camera to the binoculars and back again and while I was looking through the binoculars two fuzzy little heads popped up from the nest. One of them was brave enough to climb up on the side of the nest and stretched its little wings as if to take flight. One of the parents was there in a flash with food, prompting the brave little trooper to drop back to safety so its sibling didn’t get all the food.
I watched the nest for a time, hoping that little guy would pop up again, but time was flying instead and I had to leave. Just as I was turning to load my equipment back into the car and pull away I saw both adults sitting at the top of a tree about thirty feet from the nest. I took a few more pictures of them sitting there and got into my car. As the door closed they took off in unison, soaring out over the highway. I felt like the whole show had been put on just for me and they left when the audience was leaving, taking their bows as they flew away. I left for downtown with tears in my eyes at the wonder of what I’d seen, knowing the other drivers were oblivious to the beauty of it all.
Hawkin’ Down the highway
There I was, minding my own business driving up I-43 going - well, as fast as everybody else was - and my eye was caught by what appeared to be a large squirrels nest in the middle of a dead tree straight ahead of me, about 100 feet from the highway. You know the kind, bunches of leaves and sticks bunched together on the flimsiest branch that hangs out over the busiest street in town. Except this one was firmly in the center of the tree and I glanced to the side as I passed it. There I saw the silhouette of a large bird. In my excitement I thought it might be an eagle. I’ve been trying to see an eagle in the wild from closer than two miles all my life. Unfortunately I had neither binoculars or camera with me and I was going - well, as fast as everybody else - on my way to downtown Milwaukee. For the next two days I thought I’d try again to see the bird, or birds, but I would leave the house without the proper equipment and not remember until I was past the point of no return.
Finally on the fourth day I remembered both camera with telephoto lens and binoculars. Just before getting to the nest site I saw a bird circling the sky and I knew I was close. As I pulled over as far as possible I saw the silhouette of another adult bird sitting on the nest. I turned off the car and turned on the flashers and got out with the camera and the binoculars and took a look just as the beautiful bird took flight. It was a very large red-tailed hawk and sailed toward the ground, then up to a tree across the clearing from it’s nest. Naturally I followed and photographed it, but then turned my attention back to the nest. I switched from the camera to the binoculars and back again and while I was looking through the binoculars two fuzzy little heads popped up from the nest. One of them was brave enough to climb up on the side of the nest and stretched its little wings as if to take flight. One of the parents was there in a flash with food, prompting the brave little trooper to drop back to safety so its sibling didn’t get all the food.
I watched the nest for a time, hoping that little guy would pop up again, but time was flying instead and I had to leave. Just as I was turning to load my equipment back into the car and pull away I saw both adults sitting at the top of a tree about thirty feet from the nest. I took a few more pictures of them sitting there and got into my car. As the door closed they took off in unison, soaring out over the highway. I felt like the whole show had been put on just for me and they left when the audience was leaving, taking their bows as they flew away. I left for downtown with tears in my eyes at the wonder of what I’d seen, knowing the other drivers were oblivious to the beauty of it all.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
I’m always overdrawn. I can’t remember what started the roller coaster ride down, but I’m always at least $250 overdrawn when I get my child support. The deposit goes in and just as fast goes out again. Having a child with OCD makes it go a little faster. He wants to read something when he wants to read it, not when I can afford it. He wants to eat a particular thing and nothing else whether I can afford it or not. Last week it was Panda Express Sweet Fire Chicken. He gets bored. On the other hand he has willingly given up all of his games and game systems so we can buy groceries when I’m out of money. He has given up trading cards and books to buy other books. He wasn’t always like that, but I’m glad he is now. When he was little I made the mistake of telling him about collectibles and what “mint on mint card” and “mint in mint package” meant. After that when we bought toys he wanted two so he could play with one and keep the other mint in it’s package. As the OCD got worse he wanted three so he could play with one, have a spare in case something happened to the first one and he couldn’t play with it anymore, and one to keep mint. It got up to five of everything before he finally decided one was ok again. I think buried somewhere in my boyfriend’s garage there are tubs full of mint in the package toys. I do have to admit he had good taste in toys.
Anyway, back to the pressure cooker. The telephone and internet are shut off because I can’t pay the rent and the phone bill. I got a yellow letter from the electric company because I can’t pay them either. Rent and groceries take all my child support and my SSI. SSI is a joke. I get $635 to support two people for a month. A teenage boy puts away approximately $200 in groceries a week. If I buy meat and vegetables my grocery bill for two weeks goes over $300. By the time my overdraft is covered and the rent is paid the groceries take the balance below zero. If I don’t do it we don’t eat. I can cut down to one meal a day, though as a diabetic I shouldn’t, but A can’t. I get just enough in child support to take me over the limit for any assistance programs. Luckily I’m low enough to live in an income controlled apartment complex. However because of the lousy economy there is no longer a housing authority in this city so no low rent or subsidized apartments. The only way I could get a cheaper rent payment would be to buy a house and with my cash flow problems I don’t see that happening. I feel the weight of impending homelessness or starvation almost constantly and there’s nothing I can do to change it. A’s dad pays support voluntarily and it’s all he can afford. He does come through with extra from time to time, but he can’t always pick up the slack. Between my disability and A’s OCD neither one of us can work, though he is making strides in that direction. He’d like to work at Barnes & Noble, but he has to be able to take a class to get his GED. So far in the last month he’s mustered the courage to go into Walmart at 4 in the morning and into B&N three times. I know it really stresses him out, but he’s trying and trying leads to becoming more comfortable and then to doing. All I can do is hope that some day he will be self sufficient and will be able to live on his own.
Until then I am at a loss as to how to make ends meet and keep the bills paid without losing my benefits or becoming homeless. It’s a constant game of tug-of-war.
Friday, July 13, 2012
My son had an idealic childhood. We had our own home. His nursery was beautiful. His dad had redone the room right down to the woodwork before he was born. He had pets who immediately bonded with him, “guarding” him while he slept and getting into the playpen with him on the rare occasions he was unsupervised for a few minutes. When he was in his crib they would gather outside the door and peer in to make sure nothing disturbed him. He had developmental toys that were all the rage. He also had colic, which kept us up and walking the floor for hours. At some time during the first two sleep deprived weeks we discovered that music would calm him and reduce the hours we had to walk about. So at the age of 14 days he got his first boom box with CD player and the Narada CDs made a trip up to the nursery. Ironically his favorite was a CD called Nighttime.
Just before he was two we moved to a small city in a different state where we had a more beautiful house and a big yard for him to play in. He started going to day care a couple of times a week just to be around other kids for a few hours a day. I grew up like an only child, my siblings were all grown and gone by the time I can remember anything so I wasn’t around other children very much before I went to school. I felt that it held me back when it came to relating to others in my own age group and I didn’t want that for A since he was an only child too. Before our move he had been enrolled in a baby and me class that separated the moms and the babies so moms could go to a parenting class and the babies could interact together.
The only problem we had with day care was he would get excited and start hitting other kids for apparently no reason. The teacher in the day care wanted to spend more time with him teaching him to socialize without hitting so he went three times a week instead of two until he started pre-school when he was three. Pre-school at three was two days a week. He would go to pre-school in the morning and to day care after, plus one more day of day care per week. Slowly, ever so slowly the hitting began to decrease, but the pre-school teacher wanted me to keep him back from Kindergarten because she didn’t feel he was socialized enough. At home he was always getting into trouble. I can’t remember what he did, but when he was four I remember him spending whole days in time-out. I kept hearing “it’ll get better when he gets older” but it never did! It just got different. The terrible twos started when he was about a year and a half and then came the terrible threes and the terrible fours. I took him to a social worker who specialized in ADHD children. I needed to know what was going on in his head that he just would not obey me. My family told me I spoiled him. Nice advice considering none of them ever saw him at home or saw how I interacted with him.
About the time he was four we were facing financial struggles and I wanted to look for a job. His dad said “No. A is your job now.” So I tried to think of a business to start so I could take A to work with me. In the course of trying to do this my marriage started falling apart. Dad was withdrawing into his own little world and having very little to do with A or me. I really needed his involvement because by the end of the day A had me worn to a frazzle. Bathtime was a nightmare because he fought me every inch of the way and I was always afraid he’d get hurt. Being a typical child once he was in the tub he was fine and didn’t want to get out. Once he was in bed, songs had been sung and stories told, CD player playing, Dad would leave the house. So, I was alone all day with a kid who wouldn’t behave, and alone all night with nobody to talk to. He come home after three or four hours and fall asleep on the couch having said approximately ten words to me since he had gotten home.
He hated the idea of me starting a business and he was sure I was spending “his” money hand over fist to get it going, but I had started a search for venture money and I’d had one firm show some interest. I had blueprints, I had other businesses interested in leasing space, I’d even contacted equipment manufacturers. I was just waiting for money to finance. In all I’d spent maybe $500. I started looking for decor and I’d bought some posters, both because I liked them for the family room in case it all fell apart, and because they would look great in the place if it didn’t. One day mister helpful dad came home with an ultimatum. I had been handling the family finances for years. Twice before he’d taken them over because he thought he could do better and the bills fell behind after two months. This time he offered me a choice, either hand over the money management or get a divorce. I chose divorce, but I guess he didn’t hear me because he came to me some weeks later and asked me again. So I told him to start looking for an apartment because the choice was divorce. He had threatened me with it many times before and he never thought I‘d do it. To him it was a power struggle. The one with the purse strings had the power. The only power I could see was the power to deny the other something they wanted. I never denied him anything. Any new toy he wanted we found the money to get. He, on the other hand denied me even a new blouse to wear to work. I ha to hand my paycheck over to him and if he wanted anything it was gotten, no questions asked. I worked when he wanted me to and at what he wanted me too. I’d given up my college education so he could finish his. When I wanted to go back the subject had to be approved by him or no dice. It is a wound that festers even today.
I’d noticed that he started going down in the basement immediately on arrival after work, and that his smoke breaks down there were lasting longer and longer. One day I went to the basement, out to the workshop where he smoked. I started looking around and packed in nearly all of the boxes stored in there I found empty brandy bottles. As far as I knew he’d been sober for over 13 years. From the size of the stash I guess he’d ben drinking for about a year, sometime after the death of his stepfather. That explained the decline in our marriage and the disappearance of money from my purse everyday. I usually went to the bank and got cash once a week or so, but I’d been checking my purse before going to the store and finding I had a lot less money than I thought I had. That was the nail on the coffin that was my marriage. I’d bent so far back at times to please him that I was close to snapping, but I was not going to live with a drunk again. He was out! He insisted on declaring bankruptcy because as far as he saw it I had run up th debt by pursuing my business and none of it was his. The truth of it was I had been borrowing on credit cards to cover bills for months because there was never enough money to go around. We’d gotten a second mortgage to catch things up the year before and between the higher house payments, higher credit card payments, and car payments there just was not enough. I just wanted him out, but it would mean losing the house. As it turned out A and I stayed in the house for another year.
While his dad and I were separated I continued taking A to counseling, but it was getting nowhere. I was supposed to try positive reinforcement, but how can you reward a kid for being good when he never is? She suggested I try one of the drugs for ADHD. If that was the problem there would be a difference right away with the first dose. Well, I found out it wasn’t ADHD. His father had a royal fit when he found out I’d given it to him, but he never had to deal with the problems. He behaved for his dad. He just wouldn’t for me! The only thing I can think of is the problem was familiarity. He and I spent every minute of every day he wasn’t in day care or preschool together. I never got a break where I could just decompress. Even if he was at a playdate or in school I had so much on my plate I could never relax. So I was worn out and he thought he could get away with murder and I couldn’t do anything about it. You’d think any kid, when they run against the same boundaries time after time would stop doing it, but not my kid! I knew from the beginning there was a problem, I just didn’t know what it was.
Just before he was two we moved to a small city in a different state where we had a more beautiful house and a big yard for him to play in. He started going to day care a couple of times a week just to be around other kids for a few hours a day. I grew up like an only child, my siblings were all grown and gone by the time I can remember anything so I wasn’t around other children very much before I went to school. I felt that it held me back when it came to relating to others in my own age group and I didn’t want that for A since he was an only child too. Before our move he had been enrolled in a baby and me class that separated the moms and the babies so moms could go to a parenting class and the babies could interact together.
The only problem we had with day care was he would get excited and start hitting other kids for apparently no reason. The teacher in the day care wanted to spend more time with him teaching him to socialize without hitting so he went three times a week instead of two until he started pre-school when he was three. Pre-school at three was two days a week. He would go to pre-school in the morning and to day care after, plus one more day of day care per week. Slowly, ever so slowly the hitting began to decrease, but the pre-school teacher wanted me to keep him back from Kindergarten because she didn’t feel he was socialized enough. At home he was always getting into trouble. I can’t remember what he did, but when he was four I remember him spending whole days in time-out. I kept hearing “it’ll get better when he gets older” but it never did! It just got different. The terrible twos started when he was about a year and a half and then came the terrible threes and the terrible fours. I took him to a social worker who specialized in ADHD children. I needed to know what was going on in his head that he just would not obey me. My family told me I spoiled him. Nice advice considering none of them ever saw him at home or saw how I interacted with him.
About the time he was four we were facing financial struggles and I wanted to look for a job. His dad said “No. A is your job now.” So I tried to think of a business to start so I could take A to work with me. In the course of trying to do this my marriage started falling apart. Dad was withdrawing into his own little world and having very little to do with A or me. I really needed his involvement because by the end of the day A had me worn to a frazzle. Bathtime was a nightmare because he fought me every inch of the way and I was always afraid he’d get hurt. Being a typical child once he was in the tub he was fine and didn’t want to get out. Once he was in bed, songs had been sung and stories told, CD player playing, Dad would leave the house. So, I was alone all day with a kid who wouldn’t behave, and alone all night with nobody to talk to. He come home after three or four hours and fall asleep on the couch having said approximately ten words to me since he had gotten home.
He hated the idea of me starting a business and he was sure I was spending “his” money hand over fist to get it going, but I had started a search for venture money and I’d had one firm show some interest. I had blueprints, I had other businesses interested in leasing space, I’d even contacted equipment manufacturers. I was just waiting for money to finance. In all I’d spent maybe $500. I started looking for decor and I’d bought some posters, both because I liked them for the family room in case it all fell apart, and because they would look great in the place if it didn’t. One day mister helpful dad came home with an ultimatum. I had been handling the family finances for years. Twice before he’d taken them over because he thought he could do better and the bills fell behind after two months. This time he offered me a choice, either hand over the money management or get a divorce. I chose divorce, but I guess he didn’t hear me because he came to me some weeks later and asked me again. So I told him to start looking for an apartment because the choice was divorce. He had threatened me with it many times before and he never thought I‘d do it. To him it was a power struggle. The one with the purse strings had the power. The only power I could see was the power to deny the other something they wanted. I never denied him anything. Any new toy he wanted we found the money to get. He, on the other hand denied me even a new blouse to wear to work. I ha to hand my paycheck over to him and if he wanted anything it was gotten, no questions asked. I worked when he wanted me to and at what he wanted me too. I’d given up my college education so he could finish his. When I wanted to go back the subject had to be approved by him or no dice. It is a wound that festers even today.
I’d noticed that he started going down in the basement immediately on arrival after work, and that his smoke breaks down there were lasting longer and longer. One day I went to the basement, out to the workshop where he smoked. I started looking around and packed in nearly all of the boxes stored in there I found empty brandy bottles. As far as I knew he’d been sober for over 13 years. From the size of the stash I guess he’d ben drinking for about a year, sometime after the death of his stepfather. That explained the decline in our marriage and the disappearance of money from my purse everyday. I usually went to the bank and got cash once a week or so, but I’d been checking my purse before going to the store and finding I had a lot less money than I thought I had. That was the nail on the coffin that was my marriage. I’d bent so far back at times to please him that I was close to snapping, but I was not going to live with a drunk again. He was out! He insisted on declaring bankruptcy because as far as he saw it I had run up th debt by pursuing my business and none of it was his. The truth of it was I had been borrowing on credit cards to cover bills for months because there was never enough money to go around. We’d gotten a second mortgage to catch things up the year before and between the higher house payments, higher credit card payments, and car payments there just was not enough. I just wanted him out, but it would mean losing the house. As it turned out A and I stayed in the house for another year.
While his dad and I were separated I continued taking A to counseling, but it was getting nowhere. I was supposed to try positive reinforcement, but how can you reward a kid for being good when he never is? She suggested I try one of the drugs for ADHD. If that was the problem there would be a difference right away with the first dose. Well, I found out it wasn’t ADHD. His father had a royal fit when he found out I’d given it to him, but he never had to deal with the problems. He behaved for his dad. He just wouldn’t for me! The only thing I can think of is the problem was familiarity. He and I spent every minute of every day he wasn’t in day care or preschool together. I never got a break where I could just decompress. Even if he was at a playdate or in school I had so much on my plate I could never relax. So I was worn out and he thought he could get away with murder and I couldn’t do anything about it. You’d think any kid, when they run against the same boundaries time after time would stop doing it, but not my kid! I knew from the beginning there was a problem, I just didn’t know what it was.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
I have a dear friend whom I’ve come to think of as the younger sister that nature didn’t give me. We met through our sons, as many close friendships start. They were a match from the start. They met in pre-school and were like brothers Both were only children, two highly intelligent little boys with huge, vivid imaginations interested in most of the same things. They both loved sports, though they were too young to be enrolled in anything organized yet. Several weeks into the school year C’s grandma stopped me on the way in to pick up A to arrange for a play date on Saturday. We went to their house and the boys played while Grandma and I got acquainted. Her husband was in and out doing this errand and that. After a few hours A was finally worn out and we left. On Monday I picked up A and asked him about his day. C wasn’t in school that day because his grandpa had died. I was shocked because we had just met him two days before and I was sure that A had not understood, so when we got home I called C’s house and his mom confirmed the bad news. He had died suddenly of a heart attack in his sleep the morning before. .I arranged to pick up C so they could go make funeral arrangements. Somehow we instantly formed a family that day. The boys spent as much time with me as they did at C’s house. We took day trips together and spent family celebrations at each other’s houses.
When they were old enough we signed them up to play t-ball together. C went to soccer camp with A. They were both cub scouts together, though I had to sign A up in a different city so they could be together. Sports camps, cub scout camps, swimming lessons, They did it all like brothers. They we moved away. My marriage had broken up again and we’d been through hell. We moved 2000 miles to live with a boyfriend I had met during my first divorce. Then we briefly moved back and things had changed. I’d been ill while we were away and A spent two months living with my boyfriend. I thought they had been bonding, but A had formed a pretty strong hatred of my boyfriend and didn’t let it show. He was different, more sullen and uncomfortable. He still felt his strong bond with C, but C had friends at school that A didn’t know and had a hard time fitting in with. As his discomfort grew it was harder for him to be comfortable going to school. He literally saw the germs crawling on the lockers and desks, anything touched by other students. As the problems developed I tried explaining them to my friend, but though she is also highly intelligent she could not relate.
Financial problems led us to a choice, back to my boyfriend or back to my ex-husband? A surprisingly chose back to my boyfriend. So back we went, 2000 miles from everyone we knew and loved.
Now that we live so far apart we don’t see each other so much, but I talk to C’s mom occasionally. The two boys who started out growing up so much alike have taken much different paths. C graduated from high school this year and is going on to college. A has been homeschooled since eighth grade and is not comfortable with the idea of taking a class to get his GED, though he could have taken it a year ago. When I talk to C’s mom she worries because she remembers that little boy who was so outgoing and gregarious and can’t apply the description of him now and his quirks to that memory. She is full of suggestions, but they involve a level of comfort that he is just not ready for. She doesn’t hear the accomplishments in my telling her he went inside Walmart or the book store, because she doesn’t see that he’s been held back from doing those things for so long. It’s hard to relate the progress, because she didn’t understand the digress. The rest of my family is the same way. They pull out the “you’re the mom, make him do it” argument and can’t understand why that won’t fix it. I get “his hair is too long, he needs a haircut” without realizing that part of this is an overriding fear of having a scissors anywhere near his head and to him it’s like being attacked in an alley by a knife wielding thug, even though he knows his mother would not let the barber hurt him. The fact that none of them have seen him since he was five feet tall and he’s now six foot six and out weighs me doesn’t help. I guess there something magical about being a mom that I didn’t get and what I say is just “magically” supposed to happen. I think that’s what’s the most frustrating to me. That the people I love most and should be able to turn to for support just don’t get it.
When they were old enough we signed them up to play t-ball together. C went to soccer camp with A. They were both cub scouts together, though I had to sign A up in a different city so they could be together. Sports camps, cub scout camps, swimming lessons, They did it all like brothers. They we moved away. My marriage had broken up again and we’d been through hell. We moved 2000 miles to live with a boyfriend I had met during my first divorce. Then we briefly moved back and things had changed. I’d been ill while we were away and A spent two months living with my boyfriend. I thought they had been bonding, but A had formed a pretty strong hatred of my boyfriend and didn’t let it show. He was different, more sullen and uncomfortable. He still felt his strong bond with C, but C had friends at school that A didn’t know and had a hard time fitting in with. As his discomfort grew it was harder for him to be comfortable going to school. He literally saw the germs crawling on the lockers and desks, anything touched by other students. As the problems developed I tried explaining them to my friend, but though she is also highly intelligent she could not relate.
Financial problems led us to a choice, back to my boyfriend or back to my ex-husband? A surprisingly chose back to my boyfriend. So back we went, 2000 miles from everyone we knew and loved.
Now that we live so far apart we don’t see each other so much, but I talk to C’s mom occasionally. The two boys who started out growing up so much alike have taken much different paths. C graduated from high school this year and is going on to college. A has been homeschooled since eighth grade and is not comfortable with the idea of taking a class to get his GED, though he could have taken it a year ago. When I talk to C’s mom she worries because she remembers that little boy who was so outgoing and gregarious and can’t apply the description of him now and his quirks to that memory. She is full of suggestions, but they involve a level of comfort that he is just not ready for. She doesn’t hear the accomplishments in my telling her he went inside Walmart or the book store, because she doesn’t see that he’s been held back from doing those things for so long. It’s hard to relate the progress, because she didn’t understand the digress. The rest of my family is the same way. They pull out the “you’re the mom, make him do it” argument and can’t understand why that won’t fix it. I get “his hair is too long, he needs a haircut” without realizing that part of this is an overriding fear of having a scissors anywhere near his head and to him it’s like being attacked in an alley by a knife wielding thug, even though he knows his mother would not let the barber hurt him. The fact that none of them have seen him since he was five feet tall and he’s now six foot six and out weighs me doesn’t help. I guess there something magical about being a mom that I didn’t get and what I say is just “magically” supposed to happen. I think that’s what’s the most frustrating to me. That the people I love most and should be able to turn to for support just don’t get it.
Monday, July 9, 2012
It is not easy being the parent of a child with OCD. I don’t say my son suffers from OCD because he doesn’t. I do. The machinations I have to go through to maintain his comfort level are sometimes very painful to me and at times it doesn’t work and I suffer great levels of stress.
I’ve tried to find support in other ways, but they were not satisfactory. My family is so caught up in their own drama that the only thing they do when I talk about my life is offer suggestions and criticism without understanding the problems. OCD doesn’t just run in my family, it trollolups and plies in giant circles through the room and plants big wet kisses on everyone it meets. I have a niece who is so obsessive about cleaning I once watched her disassemble and reassemble an entire kitchen three times one week, scrubbing every inch like it had never been cleaned before. Another one obsesses about her kids and knows everything there is to know about raising everybody’s kids and isn’t afraid to tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Sorry for the rant there. It has been my opinion since I started dealing with this that OCD should be considered as a member of the Autism family. I’m constantly reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rainman.” His entire world revolves around his comfort zone. He has to have a certain brand of underwear from Kmart. His things need to be arranged in a certain way. He wears a certain shirt on a particular day. The more I live with my son and his OCD the more I see the same kind of behaviors. I see some of the same things in myself. I have to have my food organized in a certain way on the plate or it’s uncomfortable to eat it. When I was young I went through many rituals. We went to a park with a beach for one of my birthday’s and for a long time afterwards I felt sand on the end of my fingers and would try to blow it off. For some reason I started shaking my hands when I felt stressed. It drove my sister crazy but I couldn’t stop it. One by one the rituals would go away and another would take its place.
The fact is Aspberger’s Syndrome has been linked to OCD and it is on the Autism spectrum of disorders. OCD is also associated with high IQs and a whole alphabet soup of other mental disorders like PTSD. OCD is often brought on by a trauma of some kind, even though it is an inherited tendency. My particular brand was brought on by a life-threatening illness when I was six. I am a survivor of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s, but along with the measles I caught chicken pox from my niece and nephew. I had such a high fever I was delirious for days and the doctor told my mother to prepare for my death. After it was over I became a different child, overly shy, unmotivated, and fearful. I’d missed a lot of school and had to stay in at recess time to make up my homework. I never got ahead of it again. I would start the new school year and be behind by the end of the week.
As hard as things were for me to deal with nothing has ever been as hard as what has become of my son. He was a happy child, popular among his classmates and teachers. He even took my divorce from his father in stride. Where things started to go wrong was when I remarried his father. We had to move into another school district and he had to adjust to being around people he didn’t know in second grade. He had a terrible teacher and an even worse principal. He had trouble making new friends. He started to hate school and fought against doing his homework. On the home front his father had a drinking problem so there were different battles there. We moved again in between second and third grade and he went back to his original school, but his friends had moved on so he was still without friends. Within a few years his dad’s drinking got so bad he tried to drink himself to death. He tried to rush things along with a knife one night and the only way to get the knife away was to get him to give it to my son. That night he was hauled off to jail and the next few days were very tense as Dad had to be taken to a treatment facility in another state. My son started experiencing mysterious illnesses in the winter that caused him to miss a lot of school. My loving family told me I was spoiling him. Now I can look back and see that it was the beginning of his OCD. It started in first grade with hand washing. That was after we married again and moved out of the house we’d lived in since my son was two. He was now six and had to give up most of his toys and belongings to move into a tiny apartment. Everything would start out fine at the beginning of the school year, but every winter after the Christmas break he would have trouble getting into the routine again and would soon be sick. He would miss weeks of school. More than once I was threatened with tickets for truancy, but what are you going to do about a child who appears to be seriously ill?
I’d been taking him to counseling for years because he was oppositional. No matter what I wanted him to do he would fight me and I couldn’t get through to him. The counselor never got OCD from any of the symptoms or situations. It wasn’t until years later, when he was in 8th grade, that everything came to a head. He had been through a lot. I’d left his father again because he could not maintain sobriety and neither one of us could listen to him beg for death anymore, I’d moved us to another state halfway across the country to live with a boyfriend who was not who I thought he was, I got sick and spent two months away from him, leaving him with said boyfriend, we moved back to where we lived before. While we were living there he was in eighth grade. It was a new school. His best friend went there, but had a crop of friends of his own who did not welcome my son, though the girls seemed to be turning themselves inside out to get his attention. He started noticing that other boys didn’t wash their hands and touched EVERYTHING. He started feeling and seeing the germs every where. He got more and more uncomfortable as the days went by and within a month of the start of school he was already feeling sick. The school and truant officer started making threats almost immediately. I tried explaining what I thought was going on. His counselor started making plans to have him go into a hospital for testing. His father, who never saw the symptoms, wouldn’t believe there was a problem, Again I was “spoiling him” and I should make him go to school because “I am the mom.” What the heck does that mean? One day just before Christmas, when we were waiting to hear from the hospital that they had room for him, he was particularly agitated, by then we had figured out that OCD was the culprit. The school called and insisted that he had to go to school until we heard from the hospital. I was on the phone arguing with the nurse when he grabbed one of his belts, wrapped it around his neck and tried to hang himself from a plant hook. He was in the hospital that afternoon. You would think the school would be more helpful after that wouldn’t you? No. After vacation they started again in earnest. Finally after fighting and arguing for months and both of us getting truancy tickets I pulled him out of school and filed a form with the State to home school him. I’d fought against it because I was sure he wouldn’t do anything to obtain an education. I was right. I tried online high schools, but he wouldn’t even log in to do the classes or assignments. Finally I just let him go. He read about whatever he wanted to read about and actually got a pretty well balanced education. At 15 I gave him Pre-GED tests and he aced them all. The only thing standing in the way of getting his GED is he has to take a class and he has Agoraphobia so he can’t go into a classroom with other people, but he’s talking more and more about doing it. For an Agoraphobe with OCD that is a really big thing.
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/news/20000427/ocd-possibly-hereditary
I’ve tried to find support in other ways, but they were not satisfactory. My family is so caught up in their own drama that the only thing they do when I talk about my life is offer suggestions and criticism without understanding the problems. OCD doesn’t just run in my family, it trollolups and plies in giant circles through the room and plants big wet kisses on everyone it meets. I have a niece who is so obsessive about cleaning I once watched her disassemble and reassemble an entire kitchen three times one week, scrubbing every inch like it had never been cleaned before. Another one obsesses about her kids and knows everything there is to know about raising everybody’s kids and isn’t afraid to tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Sorry for the rant there. It has been my opinion since I started dealing with this that OCD should be considered as a member of the Autism family. I’m constantly reminded of Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rainman.” His entire world revolves around his comfort zone. He has to have a certain brand of underwear from Kmart. His things need to be arranged in a certain way. He wears a certain shirt on a particular day. The more I live with my son and his OCD the more I see the same kind of behaviors. I see some of the same things in myself. I have to have my food organized in a certain way on the plate or it’s uncomfortable to eat it. When I was young I went through many rituals. We went to a park with a beach for one of my birthday’s and for a long time afterwards I felt sand on the end of my fingers and would try to blow it off. For some reason I started shaking my hands when I felt stressed. It drove my sister crazy but I couldn’t stop it. One by one the rituals would go away and another would take its place.
The fact is Aspberger’s Syndrome has been linked to OCD and it is on the Autism spectrum of disorders. OCD is also associated with high IQs and a whole alphabet soup of other mental disorders like PTSD. OCD is often brought on by a trauma of some kind, even though it is an inherited tendency. My particular brand was brought on by a life-threatening illness when I was six. I am a survivor of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s, but along with the measles I caught chicken pox from my niece and nephew. I had such a high fever I was delirious for days and the doctor told my mother to prepare for my death. After it was over I became a different child, overly shy, unmotivated, and fearful. I’d missed a lot of school and had to stay in at recess time to make up my homework. I never got ahead of it again. I would start the new school year and be behind by the end of the week.
As hard as things were for me to deal with nothing has ever been as hard as what has become of my son. He was a happy child, popular among his classmates and teachers. He even took my divorce from his father in stride. Where things started to go wrong was when I remarried his father. We had to move into another school district and he had to adjust to being around people he didn’t know in second grade. He had a terrible teacher and an even worse principal. He had trouble making new friends. He started to hate school and fought against doing his homework. On the home front his father had a drinking problem so there were different battles there. We moved again in between second and third grade and he went back to his original school, but his friends had moved on so he was still without friends. Within a few years his dad’s drinking got so bad he tried to drink himself to death. He tried to rush things along with a knife one night and the only way to get the knife away was to get him to give it to my son. That night he was hauled off to jail and the next few days were very tense as Dad had to be taken to a treatment facility in another state. My son started experiencing mysterious illnesses in the winter that caused him to miss a lot of school. My loving family told me I was spoiling him. Now I can look back and see that it was the beginning of his OCD. It started in first grade with hand washing. That was after we married again and moved out of the house we’d lived in since my son was two. He was now six and had to give up most of his toys and belongings to move into a tiny apartment. Everything would start out fine at the beginning of the school year, but every winter after the Christmas break he would have trouble getting into the routine again and would soon be sick. He would miss weeks of school. More than once I was threatened with tickets for truancy, but what are you going to do about a child who appears to be seriously ill?
I’d been taking him to counseling for years because he was oppositional. No matter what I wanted him to do he would fight me and I couldn’t get through to him. The counselor never got OCD from any of the symptoms or situations. It wasn’t until years later, when he was in 8th grade, that everything came to a head. He had been through a lot. I’d left his father again because he could not maintain sobriety and neither one of us could listen to him beg for death anymore, I’d moved us to another state halfway across the country to live with a boyfriend who was not who I thought he was, I got sick and spent two months away from him, leaving him with said boyfriend, we moved back to where we lived before. While we were living there he was in eighth grade. It was a new school. His best friend went there, but had a crop of friends of his own who did not welcome my son, though the girls seemed to be turning themselves inside out to get his attention. He started noticing that other boys didn’t wash their hands and touched EVERYTHING. He started feeling and seeing the germs every where. He got more and more uncomfortable as the days went by and within a month of the start of school he was already feeling sick. The school and truant officer started making threats almost immediately. I tried explaining what I thought was going on. His counselor started making plans to have him go into a hospital for testing. His father, who never saw the symptoms, wouldn’t believe there was a problem, Again I was “spoiling him” and I should make him go to school because “I am the mom.” What the heck does that mean? One day just before Christmas, when we were waiting to hear from the hospital that they had room for him, he was particularly agitated, by then we had figured out that OCD was the culprit. The school called and insisted that he had to go to school until we heard from the hospital. I was on the phone arguing with the nurse when he grabbed one of his belts, wrapped it around his neck and tried to hang himself from a plant hook. He was in the hospital that afternoon. You would think the school would be more helpful after that wouldn’t you? No. After vacation they started again in earnest. Finally after fighting and arguing for months and both of us getting truancy tickets I pulled him out of school and filed a form with the State to home school him. I’d fought against it because I was sure he wouldn’t do anything to obtain an education. I was right. I tried online high schools, but he wouldn’t even log in to do the classes or assignments. Finally I just let him go. He read about whatever he wanted to read about and actually got a pretty well balanced education. At 15 I gave him Pre-GED tests and he aced them all. The only thing standing in the way of getting his GED is he has to take a class and he has Agoraphobia so he can’t go into a classroom with other people, but he’s talking more and more about doing it. For an Agoraphobe with OCD that is a really big thing.
http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/news/20000427/ocd-possibly-hereditary
Friday, July 6, 2012
I am new to this blogging thing so I thought I would start out by telling you why I’m starting this blog. I am a single mom who is a bit older than most mom’s of teenagers. I was old enough to be my son’s grandmother when he was born. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I lost three babies over the course of 12 years. You’d think the extra time and extra baby lust would give me more patience, but sometimes no. It doesn’t help that I have a bit of OCD myself.
My son was a bit of a challenge from the beginning and my family just chalked it up to me spoiling him. Therefore I’ve never had a support system. I moved us 2000 miles from family and friends and none of them understand what it is like to walk in my shoes. They are just full of suggestions and worries without a bit of understanding. They know all about raising kids so they think they know what is going to work with my kid. By starting this blog I’m hoping to find the support I need as well as provide it for others who deal with an OCD child. I hope to post articles with needed information as well as add some humor to the days of my readers. From time to time I may post little articles I’ve written over the years just to break away from OCD for a day. At one time I hoped to have a humor column so I have a number of unpublished columns that I wouldn’t mind getting feedback on.
First I’d like to give a little background. My son was 13 before we got a diagnosis of OCD. Once we did and I started reading about it so many things made sense! I had been fighting with him and arguing with him from day one. I still can’t believe that his first word wasn’t sh*t because I said it so much. It’s amazing that he survived infancy because I did everything wrong! No matter what they say parenting is not always a natural instinct. I should have known he was special because he was always ahead on most things in the “What to Expect” books. His first word wasn’t daddy or mama, it was Geshundheit. His second word was kitty. He took longer to walk on his own, but a week later he took off running through the house and I couldn’t catch him. I’ve been trying to keep up with him ever since.
He had good teachers for kindergarten and first grade. Second grade was a nightmare. In two months time I watched my happy, outgoing, and popular baby boy become a sullen, shy, frightened child. His teacher and his principal were terrible. He became more and more oppositional and refused to do his homework. The harder he dug in the more they punished him. After Christmas vacation (or in P.C. speak, winter break, though in some places there is another break in the winter) he went to school for about a week and then exhibited flu like symptoms. From then on every year he would get sick for at least two weeks every winter, even though he had great teachers. There were several events that I will go into in another post that contributed to PTSD which is a common companion to OCD. It took years of counseling trying to figure out what made this kid tick until everything came to a head when he was in eighth grade. Since then we have had to deal with rages during which he smashes things, agoraphobia, insomnia, and other fun things I will talk about later.
I do want to welcome anyone who comes to check out this blog. I hope you will find solace and comfort here. I welcome comments, but please be respectful. Anyone indulging in name calling or commenting on other than the subjects will be banned from the site. This is meant to be a supportive place, not somewhere for people to come and be confrontational.
My son was a bit of a challenge from the beginning and my family just chalked it up to me spoiling him. Therefore I’ve never had a support system. I moved us 2000 miles from family and friends and none of them understand what it is like to walk in my shoes. They are just full of suggestions and worries without a bit of understanding. They know all about raising kids so they think they know what is going to work with my kid. By starting this blog I’m hoping to find the support I need as well as provide it for others who deal with an OCD child. I hope to post articles with needed information as well as add some humor to the days of my readers. From time to time I may post little articles I’ve written over the years just to break away from OCD for a day. At one time I hoped to have a humor column so I have a number of unpublished columns that I wouldn’t mind getting feedback on.
First I’d like to give a little background. My son was 13 before we got a diagnosis of OCD. Once we did and I started reading about it so many things made sense! I had been fighting with him and arguing with him from day one. I still can’t believe that his first word wasn’t sh*t because I said it so much. It’s amazing that he survived infancy because I did everything wrong! No matter what they say parenting is not always a natural instinct. I should have known he was special because he was always ahead on most things in the “What to Expect” books. His first word wasn’t daddy or mama, it was Geshundheit. His second word was kitty. He took longer to walk on his own, but a week later he took off running through the house and I couldn’t catch him. I’ve been trying to keep up with him ever since.
He had good teachers for kindergarten and first grade. Second grade was a nightmare. In two months time I watched my happy, outgoing, and popular baby boy become a sullen, shy, frightened child. His teacher and his principal were terrible. He became more and more oppositional and refused to do his homework. The harder he dug in the more they punished him. After Christmas vacation (or in P.C. speak, winter break, though in some places there is another break in the winter) he went to school for about a week and then exhibited flu like symptoms. From then on every year he would get sick for at least two weeks every winter, even though he had great teachers. There were several events that I will go into in another post that contributed to PTSD which is a common companion to OCD. It took years of counseling trying to figure out what made this kid tick until everything came to a head when he was in eighth grade. Since then we have had to deal with rages during which he smashes things, agoraphobia, insomnia, and other fun things I will talk about later.
I do want to welcome anyone who comes to check out this blog. I hope you will find solace and comfort here. I welcome comments, but please be respectful. Anyone indulging in name calling or commenting on other than the subjects will be banned from the site. This is meant to be a supportive place, not somewhere for people to come and be confrontational.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Welcome to my Blog. I want to tell you a bit about myself and my situation before I get into the meat of the blog. I am a single mom. I’m handicapped, disabled by an infection that nearly took my life. I have a 17, nearly 18 year old son who has OCD, PTSD, rage issues, germ phobia, and agoraphobia. Living with him poses a challenge that, I have to admit, I am not always up to facing. Sometimes it’s a bit like living with the Incredible Hulk. At those times I need somewhere to go for support and I just don’t have anywhere to turn. With this blog I’m hoping to find that support and offer it to others who need it too. He is adamant about not being written about and I have promised him that we will remain anonymous, so I will refer to him with the letter A. I plan to provide links to articles and sources as well as maybe a laugh or two. From time to time I might post an essay that has nothing to do with OCD. I once wanted to have a humor/ human interest column in a newspaper and I wrote several diverse column-like articles that I’d like to share. I’m hoping this will be part support system, part advice column, and all enjoyable. I hope this will turn out to be beneficial to all who visit. I welcome comments, but ask that you be respectful to everyone here. Anyone name-calling or otherwise being obnoxious will be banned from the site.
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