One of those days...

Today is one of those days...it happens to be my birthday but sadness and parenting guilt do not discriminate. When living with boys who don't like school and feel like it's a "waste of time" just in elementary, the morning and afternoon routines feel ridden with exacerbating negativity no matter what I say.

I have normally been a class half-full person, but admit that their negativity hits a spot in me that hurts. It initially hurts and then makes me mad.

What have I done to have them hate school? We've always taught that learning is good. We read books and look up "how-to" things but somehow...learning just isn't fun for them at school like it was for me.

Sure, I grew in anxiousness each new year but somehow found a rhythm and understood that school is just part of life: good, bad or whatnot. It was expected and I wanted to do good. I wanted to learn and I wanted to excel.

This drive is somehow diverted from them into other areas of life that feel more important to them. I feel as if I failed. I have failed to show them joy in life through exploring, discovering and through completion of things.

Modern parenting today has many, many pressures for sure and I try to watch what I read, listen to and see. I desire to be transparent with others and to be real with them, but this is hard. Parenting is hard. Keeping a good attitude when all I hear is complaining is hard.

And as much as reading about other parents who experience the same thing with kids who have ADHD...it helps but it doesn't...because nothing is changing. The only thing that I can change, is myself: my thoughts about it, my responses and reactions and my perspective.

The rest is not what I can focus on.

Some resources that I am finding helpful in seeking out how help for my own responses is: 

http://www.ImpactADHD.com

And https://www.additudemag.com

The webinars for both of these websites are really good and today's webinars were on School Survival Skills and the other on Parent/Teacher Relationships

LATER ON THIS DAY:

I discovered that my eldest had not taken his ADHD medication this morning which would account for his ROYAL negativity and continual outbursts of loudness and interruption in the morning and especially as I picked him up from school. He apparently dropped the pill somewhere in the house and never retrieved another one.

As he spoke, bounced off the walls and complained incessantly this afternoon that he was "hangry", it made sense to me and still about 'did me in.' If you have never experienced this type of intensity it is somewhat like, feeling like your are on a constant roller coaster between the movement and changes in volume and subjects. It's overwhelming and when siblings play off of them, which his little brother also I'm sure has ADHD as well (the evidence is pretty upfront) then it just compounds the situation.