January Blog a Day: #22 Kids

I'm behind by a few posts on JanuaryBlogaDay, but planning to get caught up.  Sue me.

Kids.  Such a loaded topic in some way.  First, you should probably know (if you don't already) that I have two children.

Rachel is my 8-year-old daughter.  She is funny, very smart, empathetic, sensitive and loving.  She also has ADHD, OCD and some oppositional defiance, which means she can turn angry on a dime, lash out in physical aggression, wake up at night and stay awake for the rest of the night (I'm talking waking up at 11pm, or midnight, or 1am, and just not going back to sleep until the following evening) and fixate on something to an obsessive degree.  We had reached a point with her a few years ago where we were desperate and didn't know what to do.  She was so angry, and getting more and more aggressive physically, kicking, scratching, hitting, trying to bite us and in other ways acting out.  There was no reason that we could see for her to be acting that way, and we tried everything we could think of.  We were at our wits' end.

Then we ended up finding out about son's developmental delays and what that could mean, and I decided I was done slogging through on our own and trying to figure out how to "fix" Rachel and parent her appropriately.  We got connected with a neurobehavioral pediatrician who is a very wise man.  Through months of visits with him, talking about things and figuring out what was driving some of Rachel's behavior, modifying our own parenting behaviors (no more temper tantrums for us and finding a parenting method that would allow us to be more emotionally neutral, thus decelerating things instead of accelerating them) and, finally, a careful and cautious use of medication to help those parts of her brain chemistry that were not functioning as they should - not to mention lots and lots of prayer - we were able to get to a place that was infinitely better than where we had been.  Our neurobehavioral ped is a miracle worker.  He's really helped us to bring out the best in all of us and has been like a family therapist.  He'll work with us through the years as Rachel grows into adolescence, and that is a huge comfort and blessing.

She has come such a long way in the past 2 years and is so often a joy.  She still struggles sometimes, particularly when she is sleep-deprived and therefore quicker to have an outburst.  But she is doing well in school and is often helpful at home.  She adores her little brother and is such a great big sister to him!

Ben is my 4-year-old son.  He was a fussy baby at times and we now believe that he suffered from acid reflux that made it difficult for him to sleep unless he was partly upright.  In between the fussing, he had a smile that could just light up the room.  It was hard to find toys that interested him.  He had a habit as a toddler of spinning in circles for several minutes, then just walking off like it was no big thing.  When frustrated or angry, he would shake his head back and forth hard, or pull himself forward and then slam back against his highchair or car seat or where he happened to be.  We had some concerns about some of his repetitive behaviors, the fact that he didn't play functionally with his toys and his lack of verbal progress, but check-ins with his pediatrician led us to believe that he was progressing normally.

As he passed 2, we still weren't seeing much verbal progress, and we decided to listen to our gut feelings and get him evaluated.  At just over 2 1/2, we took him back to the pediatrician, who thought there was some verbal delay, and recommended we take him to Birth to Three Developmental Center for an evaluation.  It turned out that he had a global developmental delay in every area except gross motor skills.  Further evaluation by a developmental pediatrician led to a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, an autism spectrum disorder.  This was recently changed to a diagnosis of Autism by his neurologist, an evaluation that was done after a hospital stay in November for epileptic seizures.  That was the first (and so far, thank God, only) time he's ever had seizures, and it was terrifying - loss of consciousness, rigidity, vomiting, no responsiveness to us whatsoever.

Ben is in developmental preschool 4 days a week, including an afternoon session for children with autism that works on behavioral therapies.  His progress there has been slower than they and we would like, but I'm thankful that he's had the opportunity to go to the school and work with therapists and teachers and paraeducators who are so invested in helping him to learn.  He is pretty limited in his vocabulary, although he's made some progress in how much he understands and responds, and in following requests from us (when he feels like it).

We really don't know what Ben's future will look like.  He may start to pick up more words, then sentences, and be able to communicate with us verbally on a more typical level.  He may remain really delayed in that and/or other areas.  His school speech therapist said yesterday that she thinks picture cards will be key for him as a skill for the rest of his life, eventually moving on to using an iPad or similar type of device with a speech program.  I don't know if that will be the case or not.  Only time will tell.

When we decided to start a family, I never dreamed that parenting would be so full of challenges.  It's been hard, y'all.  I'm glad that I didn't know ahead of time how hard it would be, because I'm not sure I would have had the guts to go for it.

But I've learned that I'm much stronger than I thought.  I've grown a thicker skin and learned to be less concerned about what others think.  I've grown in patience and developed a better ability to (usually) control my temper and my own propensity toward angry outbursts.  I've learned how deep a mother's love for her children goes.  I've learned to celebrate the small things, and to be optimistic.  I've learned to take each day as its own and not try to figure out the next 5 or 10 or 20 years.  And I'm still learning:  to trust my own instincts more, to go after what my children need no matter what others tell me, to handle a lot more than I ever thought I could.

Do I regret having children?  Absolutely not.  Do I sometimes miss the days of freedom and being able to go out to dinner at 9 o'clock on a Friday without having to pay a babysitter or worry about how early I'll need to wake up the next day?  Sure.  That's normal.  I think we often miss what we no longer have.  That's why we should appreciate the great things about each stage in our lives while we're in that stage.  I remind myself on the hard days about the positives and try to cherish the special moments and burn them into my memory.  My memory sucks, so it will only help so much, but at least I'm making the effort ;)

So to sum it up, kids will change your life and transform you as a person.  And they're totally worth it.