Changing Expectations

I was an A student. I made honour roll, I attended a private school in Montreal that required an entrance exam. 75 was a fail and if you had 85+ in the course going into exams, you were exempted from writing the final. I wrote 1 final (in Math) in my 2 years there, and I had an 83...I completed my Masters in 8 months. I've taken a number of courses since, and I'd go back to school in a heart beat.

I'm not bragging. I'm framing my background. I had one C+ in my life, and that was in 2nd year Stats. Since I had a B in first term, my overall mark was a B-.

And then we adopted my daughter. She's been diagnosed with ARND-Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder,  due to her birth mom's alcohol and crack use during pregnancy. My daughter doesn't have the visual facial clues, but she certainly has the aftermath. And since she started school, her mother has had to shift academic expectations, which has been a tougher lesson than expected.

My parents had very high academic expectations. My father could find the typos in an A+ paper (and did). I would have to explain where the other 8 marks went if I brought home a 92. I missed an academic scholarship in university by .2% because the prof chose to round down rather than up and my GPA was .2 too low for the scholarship cut off. I had visions of my daughter following in my academic path.

My daughter is smart. She's visual-if she sees something, she can do it. If she can find the pattern in things, she can do it. She makes Rainbow Loom creations by the dozen by watching YouTube videos. She has trouble processing auditory information and misses most of the instructions given verbally because by the time she has processed the instruction, she's forgotten the beginning. She has anxiety that is exasperated by stress, and trying to learn new things in a "loud" classroom is stressful. She was always the last kid out of the school. There was an inverse relationship between how cold it was outside, how much of a human popsicle her mother had become and how long it took her to get ready. After speaking with a FASD expert, I now understand that she can't process what to do if too many people are doing it at the same time so she waits. She was getting overwhelmed trying to remember what to do to get ready-put her lunchbag in her backpack, bring her homework, change her shoes etc. So now I go later and neither one of us are as stressed or cranky.

Our school is doing its best to help her and we've been blessed with good teachers, for the most part. The very nature of the learning environment is not conducive to my daughter's challenges. We often have a massive meltdown right after she gets home. She's held it together all day, and now she's in a safe place and it all comes out. She tries hard, and once she grasps a concept, she's okay, but it can take a LONG TIME for that to happen and when she forgets to bring home her homework, or write it down then I'm flying blind trying to help her.That happens often and she's just finished Grade 3.

How that translates is that her academic marks do not reflect her actual abilities and talents. She freezes on tests or rushes through them, making silly errors. Her report cards do not reflect her actual abilities, but some of the marks have had me biting my tongue because I have to keep reminding myself that she is doing her best, and deals with unbelievable challenges every day because of the damage to her brain that her birth mom inflicted on her. Just as you wouldn't yell at a blind child for not reading from a printed text held up to their eyes, I have to remember that in my daughter's case, with rare exceptions, it's not a won't it's a can't.

It's been a tough lesson for me, and I have to keep reminding myself that she is doing her best. They may not have been the marks that I would have received, but as she said to me one day last year, "Mommy, I'm not like you or Hermione (because we were in a Harry Potter phase)...I don't like school." We work together to help her understand, and she's doing her best.

On Mother's Day, she wrote a list of things she loved about me. "Helps me with my homework" was mentioned twice. It's a painful period for both of us, but it's making a difference, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

So the expectation is my problem to deal with, not hers. She's trying her best, and that's all that matters. If the school can't teach how she learns, then maybe the school should change how they teach...and I'll fill in the gaps in the meantime.

Little Things

This post was inspired by Laura Wright's new Blog  The ODD Mom. Laura has just started blogging, and she's on my must-read list. Go check her out.

My daughter has ADHD, OCD and Anxiety. Surprisingly, she can handle the big things pretty well-took my mother in law's death very well, and when my mother fell when she was there, she helped grandma bandage her hand (and injury that required 28 stitches to sew that skin back on-peeled it off the back of her hand) and then tried to clean up the blood for Grandma.  Big things don't seem to phase her.

Her OCD and Anxiety means that little things, on the other hand, can throw her right into a tailspin. We had a meltdown in a store last week because she was in a panic about whether her stuffed bunny was in the car or had been forgotten. She bolted from me one time, and I caught her a nano-second before she ran into 4 lanes of busy rush-hour traffic because Bunny had been forgotten on a table at summer camp across the road.  Barbies must be naked before they are put away for the night. They must go in a certain order into the box, and clothes must be below the dolls. She can't cope if it isn't done that way. Her hair is brushed before she brushes her teeth and she once locked herself in the bathroom for 20 minutes because I tried to hurry things along and brushed her hair while she was brushing her teeth. Her clothes go on in a certain order. She needs a clean spoon if she eats more than one thing requiring a spoon.

Her anxiety can be extreme. "But what if" enters into many conversations. She should go work for the Pentagon or CSIS-she can dream up scenarios that wouldn't occur to other people. Some of them are funny ("but what if someone breaks into the car and steals Bunny?" "Honey, if someone breaks into the car, Bunny is the last thing they'll be looking for." ) and some of them break my heart.  We were going to a fall fair last weekend and she was having a meltdown because she only wanted one of us to go with her, and the other one had to stay home.  She didn't care which one, but someone had to stay. We eventually found out that it was because she wanted someone to stay in the house to protect Bunny. Problem solved-Bunny came along in a zippered carryall bag. It took over an hour of her pleading with us before we found out. "Why do you want one of us to stay." "Because"  "Because why" "I can't tell you." "Well then I can't stay home." "Please...." "Tell us why" "Because" "Because is a preposition not an answer-tell us why we need to understand" "I can't" and so it went...

I drove to Welland, Ontario and back yesterday (2 hours each way) for my friend's mom's funeral. I dropped the kid at school and left, and had arranged for one of her friend's moms to pick her up after school for a playdate until I could get home. Vampira left her hairband ("her most favorite one in the whole world") at her friend's house and she was starting to panic. I called, talked to the little girl's dad and asked if they could bring it to school in the morning. No problem, I'm putting it in the backpack now. Crisis averted, kid went to sleep.

Fast forward to this morning and kid was trotting to school so she could get her hairband back. The little friend goes in a different door, so we waited by the door she goes in. When the bell rang, the little girl hadn't shown up yet, and Vampira was in a panic. She has a test today that we have worked all week to get ready for. When we left the house this morning, she was good to go. She knew the words, she could spell the words, she could write the words, she could recognize the words if I spelt the words...and I'm afraid it's all gone to pot because a hairband. Her brain may be stuck in the hairband loop all day.

She will have to learn to recognize and manage her OCD. People with older OCD kids say that it is possible and it will come. My little girl is 6 (okay 6 1/2) and she doesn't have the cognitive ability to recognize and interrupt the pattern. All she knows is that her hairband was supposed to be at school and it wasn't. Hopefully, the little friend was just late and all was well at recess, hairband returned to its rightful owner, or I will be heading to the accessories store after school.


Part of my job as her mom is to minimize her stressors. Sometimes that means sending 3 spoons in her lunch because she has soup, pudding and applesauce and can't use the same spoon. Sometimes it means walking her back to the car to show her her stuffed bunny is sitting waiting for her. And sometimes, it means buying a new hairband.  Someone who was supposed to have training in children's mental health issues thought I was enabling her compulsion by packing different spoons which told me she didn't understand OCD. While it may be enabling to an extent, it's also making sure that Vampira will eat her lunch. She won't use the same spoon, and it doesn't matter if you wash it in between. I have bigger mountains to die on, so I pack three spoons.

I'm meeting with her teacher after school today just to introduce myself, introduce the kid's challenges and commit to working together. One of her other teachers commented a couple of days ago that a little thing like where she was going to sit really got her stressed. I'm glad the school community is starting to see it. If they can't I'll educate them and we'll work together.

I just hope the bloody hairband showed up...