Red and Blue makes Purple

I don't know why I'm writing this, perhaps it's because I've just had a barrage of sulky abuse from my son and heir and am feeling alone. No-one really understands the frustrations of raising a child with ADHD unless they do it. The pressure I feel to present him to the outside world in a positive way is huge and always has been. This pressure is mainly because society is very black and white or red and blue, whatever the contrast - if you're primarily perceived as one thing, that first impression will define you. There is truth in the expression 'mud sticks', and my teenage son is not 'red' or 'blue' - he's 'complicated' and needs patience to be understood. My son likes to make a good impression upon others (he’s confessed to ‘manipulating’ people in order to ‘get’ stuff – admiration, sweets, money – any attention), so he’s nearly always charming, which helps, but the downside of that is that people only see one side of him and minimize his diagnosis. To them, he's 'red' not 'blue', when really he's both, to extremes.
The reality is he finds it difficult to take responsibility for anything - his appearance, his work, his self-esteem, even taking his meds. He's almost 15 and other people don’t see me MAKING him brush his teeth, wash, put deodorant on, cut his nails, change his clothes so he doesn’t smell, counsel him, lock the kitchen cupboard so he doesn’t overeat (he finds it difficult to stop eating and was once sick because he’d eaten so much), monitor him on the Internet, make him do his homework, I tutor him daily to help him through exams although he doesn’t want it – even though he’s failing at school, he feels he’s OK and is sulky, aggressive and rude when I try and help him. Despite this, we do try and give him freedom, but we have to be careful because he’s impulsive and doesn’t have much of a sense of danger. So this is where his mobile phone is great, only he uses up his credit on sending pointless texts to his friends instead of keeping it to ring us in an emergency! Sigh... His medication has improved things so much – he’s a lot happier and less impulsive, he thinks more now and is willing to have friends and let them take the spotlight for a moment. It’s easier to let him go out. Before medication, he would get into fights, endanger himself and be very aggressive and depressed. We still have these times, but not like before, although he steals money and food from us and he breaks stuff through anger. We teach him the same basic rules every day and he still forgets them or chooses to ignore them. His room is always disgusting, even though we make him tidy it for health reasons on a regular basis – he hates us for that but as he’s on the autistic spectrum as well, we need to instill basic life skills – I don’t want him to have a negative self-image and low self-esteem. So I cook with him, he can iron, he recycles, takes the rubbish and comes shopping with me - budgeting, reading sell-by dates and nutritional values.
The practical support we can give him is easy really although time-consuming. The psychological and emotional implications of his ADHD and ASD are harder to bear, for him, his sisters and for us.
When he winds his sisters up or swears at and threatens them or tells them he wishes they were dead – I could cry with utter sadness. This is not the picture of family life I had. At the worst moments, I imagine for a split second what life would be like without him – and I'm ashamed - I die inside a little each time, because, despite all of this, I love him with every last breath of me. At the best moments, he’s happily chuntering on about his latest obsession, he makes me laugh till I cry, he’s thoughtful, helpful and charming, respectful and polite. A lynchpin of our family. I'm so proud of him, his achievements and skills. At these times I see the man he can be – the amazing potential in him and I will never let him give up on fulfilling that. It's all I can do when at times I feel so helpless and hopeless - I have to slog on, because he'll have to everyday of his life and if he's going to learn one thing from me, it's going to be NOT to give up.

Adolescence has a lot to answer for.

Living with a teenage woman is like living with Hagrid's dog 'Fluffy'... I'd like to approach her and give her belly a rub but she scares the hell out of me... So I think I'll just throw her scraps of food from a safe distance and not mention anything controversial (like 'chores', 'friends', her brother and any phrase beginning in 'Will you just....'). Controversy or 'winding her up' in 'teen-speak', tends to result in slight foaming at the mouth accompanied by extreme flapping of the arms while jumping up and down and screaming - Animal from 'The Muppets' with rabies. Now, I love her to bits, but it's very hard to relax around her - you just never know when those raging hormones will kick in and, being a wheelchair user - it' s very hard for me to retreat quickly to a safe distance, so I've taken to wearing a crash helmet, safety goggles and a fat suit for protection.

Despite her hormonal troughs (which bewilder her more than me..), she is, and always will be, my beautiful girl. In good times I see the woman she is turning into; kind, clever, confident, sassy and strong. Adolescence has a lot to answer for. Sometimes I worry that our relationship is dying, then she will bring it back to life by being so incredibly nice - today at high school she had to write about someone who was her hero - and she wrote about me.
I grieve her growing up, I remember tickling her, playing with her, just being with her as a toddler and I feel physical pain that she's growing up into womanhood. But she has to. I have to be there to help her make the scary transition. And I will. She will probably never know how much I love her until she has children of her own, and if she does I will tell her to make the most of those precious years because they will be the memories which will help you get through the difficult times later.

Let's be bad and have fun!

Parents' Evenings...sigh. As if I don't feel guilty enough - I now have to stand over my children with a bible in one hand and a whip in the other threatening hell and damnation if study is not seen to be done. I had to sign a contract promising the school to turn my teenage twins into Stepford children so that the teachers' lives could become more pleasant at work. All the parents had to, it wasn't just me, we had no choice. No-one was going to openly defy the teacher, as we all sat at individual desks, sweating. Some swatty parents had brought their own paper and pen - taking down important points and dates, chewing the end of the pen and nodding knowingly as Sir said something about holidays not being holidays but instead; 'opportunities for study'... Great... I got the distinct impression that spontaneous and carefree family days out were gone. Is this really how it is when your kids are teenagers? My shoulders and head drooped under the weight of how to happily balance all of our lives when Sir produced the contract for us to sign... I perked up... unlike the good parents - I didn't have a pen, although I had poked at my finger with a paper clip so I could scrawl down the Christmas holiday dates in blood on the back of an old till receipt. No pen = can't sign = get out of burdening pressure = hurray, let's all go out and be silly. Then Sir produced, from the ether, a bag of spare pens for the bad parents who obviously don't take these things seriously enough. Damn... Have pen = have to sign = have to be a strict and serious parent = conflict = stress = buy more chocolate and meditation tapes to avoid hiding in box for rest of life.
Well, I told the kids I had to sign a contract and that if they break it - I'll go to prison... I wagged my sceptic finger at them (from the paper clip) which seemed to give me more credibility. They're studying quietly now, but they're not stupid - they'll work out I'm lying, then I'll just have to resort to plan B...which involves a pan pipes cd, a stash of Curly Wurlys and a large box.

Is My Son Turning into Lou Reed??

Sibling rivalry. It can manifest itself in many ways, but typically results in non-understandable mumblings where words have no beginning or end and the pitch is so low, that random dogs respond to him as he, without end, laments his life and curses his sisters. Head down, shoulders hunched, walking 10 metres ahead of me as a physical protest to my callousness in letting his twin sister go on a trip with her guitar class.
Anyone would think the poor boy was deprived - I, on the other hand am obviously living the life of Riley behind his back: Mojitos by the pool, endless hours of Playstation and limitless donuts, laughing raucously with lots of beautiful people, while he, miserable and self-pitying, sits in a darkened room, covered in straw wearing a hair shirt and self-flagellating with the recharger lead from his MP3....
His granma keeps telling him she had her first job when she was a year older than him, but to no avail - he thinks there'll be an opening for him at 'Ben and Jerry's' as a taste tester, so is gearing his academic skill towards achieving this goal... which involves eating marshmallow, nougat and cappuccino at the same time and seriously assessing it's enjoyability...
I wish I could motivate him more, I've already promised him a Ferrarri if he just PASSES school (I'm hoping he'll be so flushed with self-importance that he'll forget I said that...).
Oh well, he tidied his bedroom this morning - that'll keep 'Greenpeace' off our backs for a bit longer... as it does normally have a moderate to high 'disaster rating', two men in dark suits came round and mentioned hiding 'Weapons of Mass Destruction', but my son and heir managed to confound them with his teenage slurring, mumbling and grunting and they left saying something about 'care in the community'.... Must check under his bed.....

Kids - you gotta love 'em

‘No’ is a word I never used much in my youth;
- ‘Fancy another gin Sarah?’ – ‘Don’t mind if I do…’,
- ‘Wanna lock the woodwork teacher in the cupboard? – ‘Sounds like a plan…’ .
So, why oh why, nowadays do I seem to spend my whole life saying it???? Especially to my son and heir who seems to spend most of his life, when not on his Playstation, demonically devising questions to which the answers have to be ‘no’ so he can then strop about being a deprived child in a suffocating and dictatorial environment…
‘Mom, can I use dad’s old watch as a timer for a bomb???’ or ‘Mom….. can I just test that if the hamster eats bicarbonate of soda, he will explode???’ or ‘Mom, can I take the toaster apart to see how it works????’
Sigh… I never wanted to be the kind of parent who says ‘no’ when your offspring have just finished pronouncing the word ‘mo-o-om??’ But what can I do? Children just seem to have this knack of setting parents up to fail – he begins to ask me a question (I know by the intonation of ‘mo-o-om…’ that it’s going to be a question I have to say ‘no’ to) and I have to deny him. Then as he mumbles his hatred for belonging to our family and kicks the fridge at the unjustness of life, I begin to feel rubbish as a mom and even begin to question whether there is some educational value in ’constructing phallic objects out of Lego and uploading them to ‘Facebook’’….