My youngest is what happens when the beauty of a storm produces a gorgeous sky and a swirl of unstoppable wind all at once. He causes the rainbow and the chaos. In the end, he is doing his best to control it and sometimes succeeds as much as an umbrella stops a hurricane.
Yet, on the other hand, he is the first to play with a child sitting alone. When his grandmother died, he took tissues to the funeral for the sole purpose of dabbing my eyes when he heard me sniffle. If you dress up or get your haircut, he will be the person to tell you at first sight how beautiful you look. When you are overwhelmed, he will find you and ask what he can do to help.
Then the next day, he is sent home from school because his motor runs too high to control.
I read the comments section from an article on ADHD/Sensory Processing Disorder and it broke my heart.
So many judgments. “We call this parenting” or “they are manipulating you.” It took every ounce of self-restraint for me to not reply, “right, because spending six hours trying to complete two worksheets is him getting his way” or even the feistier, “please educate yourself on frontal lobe development and executive functioning in children with ADHD/SPD.”
But I didn’t. I clicked off the article realizing as a mother, my job is to constantly be an advocate and simultaneously recognize and dismiss people who say I am enabling this generation to not try.
In the words of many therapists, it is not my business what others think.
However, because I feel like I need to respond, this is my response to those individuals:
I will not apologize.
I will not apologize that my child is the one to notice the grief of everyone at once and be the only one to hug those sobbing.
I will not apologize that my child recognizes his sister is avoiding everyone because her heart is broken and makes it his mission to cheer her up.
I will not apologize that my child’s impulse control, or lack of, resulted in him screaming in the car “I hate cigarettes” after his grandma died from lung cancer, saying what each adult was thinking.
I will not apologize my 7-year old’s brain runs at such a clip that he already started to brainstorm games to invent to teach kids from a young age that smoking hurts.
I will not apologize that he can run for three hours straight without tiring when your reaction to his need for movement is to ask me if he is in sports… as if that would tire him out.
I will not apologize that his boredom to repeat a worksheet causes him to give the wrong answers to simply get it done when he was multiplying in his head at 5 years old and reading chapter books at age 6.
I will not apologize that when you ask him a question and he answers you honestly, you misinterpret that as sarcasm when your question, in itself, rang of the like.
I will not apologize when you try to run the energy out of him and it doesn’t work but only energizes him more, yet I warned you early how his mind operates and what triggers his motor and you dismissed it as enabling.
I will not apologize that he is not interested in sitting and coloring a page when in his room, he has two periodic tables and a game on molecules.
I will not apologize that he has said when he grows up that he wants to make a school to teach kids like him so they can learn easier.
I will not apologize for his personality. If you cannot see the potential you have in front of you, this is your loss.
But, with everything I can, I will teach him tricks I’ve learned and coping mechanisms for what he cannot help.
I will try not to judge you but instead understand you haven’t been put in this position. If you were, your reaction would be different.
And then, if at all possible, I will surround him with people who will grow him, challenge him, and teach him tools to help him become not just a productive member of society, but one who alters its course for the better. Because berating an individual and making them feel unwelcome has never worked.
I will apologize for one thing. I am sorry you are missing out on a brilliant mind, a compassionate, judgeless soul who would have loved you until the end of time. This loss is one who would have pushed you outside your comfort zone and into the beautiful flowers he produced because of his storm.
And for this, I am sorry.
