Dawn Is Me

I’m probably going to get hammered by blog spam because of that last post.

Okay, just so you know, that snow day didn’t kill me. I just got busy.

My two challenging children may soon grow less challenging. David was just accepted to an adolescent day treatment program that combines education with the kind of intensive treatment that he’s been needing and I hadn’t been able to get for him. He’s scared about starting a new school, of course, even though he doesn’t need to be; everybody loves him everywhere he goes. Still, being nervous about going into a new situation is so very normal that it’s kind of reassuring that he feels that way.

Meanwhile, I’ve found something rather interesting with Kimmie. She seems to suffer mildly from Seasonal Affective Disorder — or so I thought. She gets very cranky and irritable during the winter months, that’s when her ADHD symptoms are at their worst and that’s when she is most likely to get in trouble at school.

Now, most practitioners treat SAD with light. But one of the things I noticed about Kimmie is that, in addition to the fact that her family lives in the spot in the nation with the least amount of annual sunlight, there’s the fact that she alone among my children simply will not drink milk. The other three will drink juice or soda if it’s available, but if they are required to drink milk, they’ll drink.

Kimmie will drink water before she’ll drink milk. In my experience, that is unusual enough to support her claim that she hates milk.

So, in addition to the issue about light, there’s the fact that she has got to be low on Vitamin D during the winter months. And I, concerned about nutritional balance and stuff like that, decided to go buy some chocolate milk to increase her vitamin D intake.

And now, her SAD symptoms have noticably diminished. How about that?

I think it’s weird, at least in the context of what I’ve been reading on the subject online. I wonder what her doctors will have to say about it? And I wonder if there might possibly be a connection between Seasonal Affective Disorder and vitamin D deficiency?

Intrustin’.

Anyway, it seems to be helping her get along better in school. And, all things considered, I’ll take all the help I can get.

One of the reasons why I like cruising the Blogosphere is because it provokes thought …

One of the things about being a mom that I have always known was going to give me a hard time was letting go.

My kids are like most normal kids. They spend their time pushing at the sides of the playpen, seeking greater and greater freedoms as they get older and their world gets bigger. My job as their mom is to hold the sides of that playpen in place until I judge (in my older-than-they-are wisdom) that they are ready to handle those new freedoms.

Sometimes that causes conflict, of course, especially when my two oldest are so much older than my two youngest. Kimmie thinks it’s terribly unfair that she’s not allowed to do everything that Gina does. I try to explain that Gina was not allowed to do those things when she was Kimmie’s age, either, and that permitting Kimmie to do them now would be really unfair.

That doesn’t really fly with Kimmie but that’s because she isn’t really interest in justice. She just wants her way.

By the time my teenagers became teenagers, I figured that sides of the playpen should resemble nothing more obstructive than that bright yellow police barrier tape. And, with Gina, that has been the case. At fifteen, she has managed to earn enough of my trust that I don’t find it necessary to interfere with her very often. She has her little life and that makes her happy and it makes me happy.

Most of the time it doesn’t even hurt (much!) when she wants to spend those special times out hanging with her friends instead of being home with her family.

And then there is David.

David does not push the sides of the playpen, and I don’t know if I could handle it if he did. Right now, I’m preoccupied with the fact that he’ll be eighteen years old in eight months and there are arrangements I need to consider making. Only, I don’t know what he wants his life to be like, so I don’t know how to make those decisions.

Do I plan for him to move to an adult residential facility? What if he hates it or finds it scary, and then the red tape to get him out is so monumental that he has to stay for months or years?

What if something happens to me and Gino? Will he be able to take care of himself? Who will help him? His siblings? Will we be able to count on Gina to help him advocate for himself when we aren’t around anymore?

Will he be able to hold down a job? What will happen to him, who will he be able to turn to if he is in trouble, is homeless, hungry, afraid?

Will he remember to take his meds? Will his condition cause him to wind up breaking the law? Attacking or hurting somebody? Hurting himself?

Too many, many question marks.

But I think the one thing that really breaks my heart more than anything is that, with David, there is no cutting of apron strings. As hard as it is to let the kids knock the sides of that playpen flat, it’s even harder to watch when they don’t even try.

I really want my David to grow up and become a man. It’s the fact that he can’t that makes me cry myself to sleep some nights.

And thanks to That Crazy Neighbor Lady for provoking these thoughts.