Flyswatter

Kids can be rotten. We all know that. But, as I've said before, add a mental illness to that fact and you have a recipe for complete insanity.



Growing up I had my moments of being a real you know what. I had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and as a child it ran rampant through my body. I also had the normal pain in the ass behavior too. My mother's answer to my attitude was a flyswatter. It stung on the backs of my bare legs. I remember her chasing me around the house with it if I ran off from her. My dad wasn't much of a physical disciplinarian. He had "the look" and the ability to make you feel really dumb. There were a couple of times I talked back and he smacked me across the face.



So, now I have my own kid. He's always been difficult. Again, mental illness makes it all so much more fun. You've got that fine line between what is the illness and what is controllable behavior. Joshua can drive me to the edge and over. There are days I barely hang on. Some days, a lot of days, I find myself raising my voice over and over again. There are times that guilt seeps in. They are becoming fewer and farther between lately. The teen years are killing me. The mouth, the attitude, the snotty tone, the horrid remarks. The puberty horomones raging. The need to be in control. The desire to be right all of the time. You name it and it's happening. I think his meds are not in line either. He's either really angry or talking nonstop. And I mean NON STOP. Motor mouth, no breath between words, nonsense that is meaningless, silly gibberish just to hear himself talk. It's a range between one pole and the other. Every day over the past couple of weeks I have wanted to ship Joshua off to boarding school. I've offered it to him and he's declined. Today, I even found myself offering that Joshua go live with Ron for a while to see how good he has it. He responded by saying, "no, you're just saying that because you're angry". True, but how tempting it is. We left the orthodontics office yesterday before he was even seen by anyone. His behavior and attitude was so bad that I couldn't take it and just wanted to get the hell out of there. He balled up his fist and banged on the windows of the car. I gritted my teeth and spat out a threat.



Any parent has to have a lot of patience with their children. Parents with special needs kids have to be saints. Here's the problem. We're not. We are regular people with our own issues, most of us have our own mental or emotional illnesses. Hell, if we didn't before we sure do now! Each day is a new ride on the roller coaster. With no idea if you are going up or down or forward or backward, you gotta get on. Most days you don't get a chance to put a safety belt on. If you're lucky, you make it through the day without jumping out a window. We all falter and have bad moments. Guess what, the kids will live. We will react, we will be tested. Sometimes we'll rise above it and reach that sainthood and sometimes we'll be just plain ordinary humans trying to make it through another hellish afternoon.



One thing we need to remember is that we are human. The world wants us to be supermen or superwomen. Our kids want us to take every bit of hell they throw at us without blinking an eye or opening our mouths. We tear ourselves to pieces if we don't act like the perfect parent. We are not stepford parents, we are real. Reality isn't all roses and cotton candy. Be easy on yourself, breathe. We get beaten up enough from our kids, we certainly don't need to do it to ourselves. They will survive us if we can survive them.