Where Was The Tom-Tom?

Photo By: Olemiswebs

I think I know what it is. The reason why I’m beating myself up so much. The reason why sometimes I feel too tired to parent, too tired to demand the correction of whatever my kids might get into this minute or that. The reason why I feel like I can never do enough, never do it all right, really have no clue what I’m doing and I can only desperately try not to ruin them.

I didn’t get the manual.

Map Quest was down; Tom-Tom wasn’t invented yet, directory service had no idea where to send my call. The dictionary doesn’t have enough space and the internet is too cluttered with people like me who are staring into space, head in hands, frantically searching for answers on how they got themselves here to begin with, and wondering what the heck they’re supposed to do now. Maybe write a manual?

Then I was special enough to have a special little boy choose me.

Well, now THAT, there’s definitely no manual for. I have to tell you, if you’ll allow me to digress for a moment, that all of your jaws would drop if I recorded our house for a day. After waking every morning at 1 am since our son doesn’t sleep through the night – ever – in almost 6 years – ever sleep through the night, we get the excitement of the day. The number of times we say:

“stop”, “don’t hit her”, “keep your hands to yourself”, “not the face”, “it’s okay”, “we’re going to, in a minute”, “why did you bite your arm”, “what’s wrong”, “she’s not doing anything wrong”, “don’t worry about it”, “don’t bite him/her”

…or whatever else we can come up with for reassurance, direction or to get the point across to cease and desist the action that is a safety concern for others, is astounding. The number of complete meltdowns because of eating, dressing, putting on the backpack, going in the car, not going in the car, brushing teeth, washing hands, Pink Panther isn’t on today, anything, is maddening. By the end of the day, we are so tired we could sleep for weeks. It’s like typical parenting under the influence of a case of Red Bull and we’re so constantly hyper vigilant that we can never really relax…ever…ever.

(Sigh). Thank you for that moment.

But again, we all do this don’t we. Beat ourselves up to meet up to our imaginary expectation of what we should do to reach that throne. I think it’s just that when you’re parenting a special needs child, everything – everything is magnified. It’s not something I can every really explain in words, although one day I hope to do this. Maybe it will make sense this way:

A friend of mine, who is a special needs mom, told me that she was watching a special that had scientific proof that for every year that you parent a special needs child, it takes 6 years off of your life. For every 1 year, 6 years are taken from the end of your life. So, I’m tired, I beat myself up. My kids really aren’t that bad. They have great hearts, they’re mostly kind, considerate, usually listening (unless their sleep deprived) and most importantly I love them. I don’t think I’ll completely ruin their childhoods, their memories or their lives, and those days that I feel down about where my manual is for all this, I’ll remember what my mom told me:

“As far as I am concerned…you are ‘riding high’ as a mom. I don’t know anyone who has worked as hard as you to do so much for their kids. Mom”

Thanks Mom.

(I’m still looking for my manual. Does anyone else have one?)

Tagged as: humor, Motherhood