Did I mention that I just found out my oldest has ADHD four days ago? I am still reeling from it. Boo is 9 and entering 4th grade in the fall. I've suspected for a while that something was up, but I always chalked it up to brain changes because of growth or just being a kid. But Boo has always been a girl of extremes. When she's happy she's really happy and when she's angry she's really angry. She still melts down like a kid much younger than her would and has a defiant streak, but again, I assumed it's just who she is and that she'll mature in time. One big red flag waved when her grades started to slip last year. She raced through her homework and made careless mistakes and couldn't seem to stick to one activity for more than a few minutes before racing on to the next, and she started doing impulsive, age-inappropriate things at school and at home, like throwing a tantrum when she didn't get her way. Always talkative, Boo started talking so much and so fast it was impossible to have a conversation because you couldn't get a word in, ever. The other red flag was the pica. If you're unfamiliar with the term, pica is a compulsion to eat things that are not food, like dirt or paper. For Boo, it's erasers. We first found out she was eating them two years ago. We discussed it and told her it was unhealthy. When I continued to find pencils stripped of their erasers, she told us she didn't eat them anymore and just pulled them off to smush them with her fingers. But when I recently found a cache of chewed up pull-apart erasers stashed in the cushions of our basement couch, I knew it was time to call the doctor.
Luckily, our pediatrician practice has a lot of doctors and one that I like and trust happens to specialize in mental health for kids. I made an appointment and hoped he'd end up telling me I was imagining things, that Boo is fine and I'm overprotective. But after a long appointment and a bunch of paperwork, he told me she had ADHD and wrote me a prescription. He told me to come back in a week to talk about how she's doing and make plans for the future. Part of me still wants to believe that none of this actually happened, that I dreamed it. But every day when I open the cabinet that bottle of methylphenidate Hcl is there and I know it's reality. I was completely unprepared for the diagnosis even though I suspected some sort of hyperactivity in Boo. She's got a label now, and I'm pissed off about it. I'm pissed off that I didn't see this coming sooner, that I didn't do something when she first started with the pica, that I don't really have anyone to talk to or discuss this with right now. Like I said earlier in my post, if my mom was in town I'd be coping better than I am right now. She'll be home tomorrow and has only been gone a week but it feels like a month at this point. I haven't been able to talk to my friend about this in person, either. The only reason I contacted her was because I know I'll have to tell the school and since she has a child with ASD she knows the drill and could point me in the right direction. She was really supportive and told me I can vent to her anytime, which was beyond great, but she has her own problems to deal with so I still can't help but feel completely isolated.
You might be wondering if I'm married or in a relationship. I am. I have been married to my husband for 16 years. For the most part, things are fine with us, but Husband is...distracted. Tech rules his life and he's never without a device whether it's an iPad or his smartphone. It's difficult to have a conversation with him and often that conversation turns to either his work or something he read on one of the many websites he visits. It's hard to pin him down to talk about serious things, so I shouldn't be surprised that he appears uninterested in our daughter's newly diagnosed ADHD. I am surprised, though, and I'm resentful. All that time he spends on the internet and he relies on me to get him information about ADHD, like I'm his personal Here Let Me Google That For You. I made the mistake of telling him that much, too. He was in the middle of playing a computer game and angrily jabbed at the keyboard of his laptop until his game closed. "There, I shut it off!" Like he's a kid who ran out of screen time and I've been nagging him to take out the trash. I left him alone after that and tried not to pay attention, but I couldn't help notice that he was back to playing games before long. I know I am the type of person who immerses myself in something I want more information about and that I can go overboard. I admit it. But this is our daughter we're talking about. She needs our help and support. I need someone I can lean on regularly while we go through this process. Is it so much to ask that that person be my spouse?
So that's where I am right now. I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a forest and it's getting dark. I've got to get out of the woods before nightfall but I don't know which way to go. I don't have a compass and all the trees look the same. My daughter is by my side and trusts me to lead, but I'm lost and I can't find the way. How do I get us to the right place?
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