I often feel like the ONLY parent in the universe who has kids who are struggling. Maybe I’m just the ONLY PARENT IN THE UNIVERSE who will admit that their kids aren’t perfect angels? Maybe I’m the only parent willing to say “hey, listen, I’m struggling to find a way to help my kids”…

Or maybe my kids ARE the only ones who have “issues” as yet undetermined?

Whatever the case, 90% of my interaction with the school/teachers* has been relatively NEGATIVE in nature. It seems more often than not I am being asked to explain WHY one or the other (or both) of my children are having problems.  I am frustrated. I have no set of peers to talk to, I have no other contact with other parents whose kids MIGHT be having learning problems, or social problems, or emotional problems.  I am given to believe that my children’s issues are unique in the school and in the realm of parenting.

Part of the problem, let’s just face it now, is that they live in 2 different places**. As much as the lawyers and courts want to divide them equally, this IS affecting them. Do they have a choice? No. And so they struggle to go back and forth. And we struggle to find a balance… and I struggle NOT to pull them in 2 but STILL maintain my OWN boundaries , rules, and traditions without theEx telling me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

My son struggles to find a way to make friends, to fit into the world he finds himself in. He struggles to be what everyone ELSE thinks a 9 year old boy should be – how he should interact with his friends and peers, what he talks about, how he talks, what kinds of behaviours he exhibits when he’s angry or sad or frustrated or lonely. And we struggle to make sense of their rules and the way other kids are allowed to treat him and how adults interact with him. And it breaks my heart that, for the most part, we find more cruelty than kindness being directed at him from adults AND kids alike.

My daughter is struggling to make it in a world that she doesn’t feel quite comfortable in. She struggles to feel good about herself. She struggles to control her world. She struggles to understand what everyone wants from her. She struggles with self esteem and self worth issues. She struggles to learn to read as fast as her peers. And we struggle trying to find out what causes her issues to flare up, why somedays she can do the work and the next day she can’t. And the only thing that I can determine is the way that people speak to her – when she has positive interactions with me or her father, her babysitter, or her teachers she feels like she can do it, but if she gets snarled at or snapped at or (I certainly HOPE it’s no longer happening without my knowledge!!) spanked or punished by adults around her, she feels that she is stupid and can’t do things. It breaks my heart that we she (and I) find so many mean words directed at her.

We struggle to find a place in the world, when we feel completely alone. And, let’s face it… chances are if I feel completely alone in this world, chances are that I am (ironically) NOT the only one feeling this way.  I sometimes think that if I could find other single mothers struggling with joint custody arrangements or single mothers dealing with kids who are having trouble adjusting to living in 2 places or ANY mother who can acknowledge that her kid isn’t superior at EVERYTHING and –gasp—they also have issues learning math or reading or writing or fitting it… if I could find others like ME we could support each other.
My children are neither MONSTERS nor PROBLEMS. They are loving, caring, sensitive, human beings that deserve as much love, caring, respect, and understanding as anyone else does. So why children with learning difficulties, social difficulties, or emotional difficulties are treated more like animals than human beings is a mystery to me. It is this paradox that hurts them so much – they are told that everyone deserves to be treated well, but they are treated poorly by the adults around them, and they then treat OTHER people badly, in a vicious never-ending cycle.  

Last year I went to parent/teacher meeting to discuss the fact that my son seems to have some issues that the school board thinks are PROBLEMS. He has a hard time reading, his fine motor skills are less developed than they would like, and his social behavior is not where they WANT it to be at his age. He has trouble reading other people’s body language. He has issues with his memory (he needs more repetitions than his “average” classmate). He doesn’t respond “normally” to the behavior of other kids around him – he gets frustrated easily, his feelings get hurt “too much”, he tries too hard to get others to like him. The warning I was given by the school psychologist and teachers?

If he doesn’t learn to read social cues correctly, if he doesn’t learn to respond to other people the way everyone else does, he will continue to be rejected by his peers… AND HE WILL BE AT RISK TO START DOING DRUGS OR BECOME SUICIDAL!!

Here I was being told that he was SO FAR off the “norm” that if he wasn’t corrected now he was going to do drugs or kill himself?

It made me wonder, what message are they sending to kids? If they don’t speak to the WHOLE group about respecting the differences of others, they are perpetuating the cruelty of bullying. If they can’t foster compassion for someone who might be struggling because of illness, difference, or situation, they are contributing to the problem. Blaming the child(ren) who are struggling makes it worse – it tells THEM that they aren’t good the way they are, it invalidates THEIR feelings, lowers their expectations, and diminishes THEIR small victories. Blaming the parents doesn’t help either – it makes us feel isolated, diminishes the praise we give to our children, undermines what we do to keep them going and keep them trying.

I keep thinking that life would be so much BETTER for everyone if we stopped deciding how to make everyone FIT in, stopped encouraging the status quo, STOPPED HURTING people who are different, and supported each other and our differences. I know how much better I would feel going to the school or talking to the teachers if, instead of telling me how horrible the lives of my children will be if they don’t start fitting into the mold,

• they celebrated the small victories that the kids have overcome.
• If instead of giving up after 5 minutes and letting the kid fail, there was a way to SUPPORT the parents and their willingness to HELP at home?
• Offer RESOURCES to not only the children, but the parents/family.
• Maybe, just maybe, offering insight into activities that the kids are struggling with in school and letting the parents/family/guardians know of alternative approaches or places to go?
•  Maybe having different approaches offered at different schools so that kids who are visual learners can be taught that way, and kids who are kinesthetic learners are taught more that way, kids who respond better to hands on approaches get hands on lessons, kids who catch on easier if they do a lot of repetition GET the chance to have a lot more repetition before being forced onto the next lesson?
• TEACHING kids to do things that aren’t necessarily NATURAL (like forming letters) instead of leaving them to figure it out their own way (only to get frustrated when their methods are not as fast as the correct ones)?
• Telling the parents what their kids ARE doing well at? And if there isn’t ANYTHING the child does well… then maybe looking not at the child as the problem, but the teaching methods sometimes?

I for one have decided that life is not about how well you do in school or what your grades are… life is about connection and love and learning about the world and SHARING it with those around us. Life is not meant to be a competition… its meant to be about cooperation.

So I for one am going to focus on the small victories, the sparks of light, the hidden miracles of the everyday…

I for one am going to try and foster small people to be who they are and LOVE who they are, despite the way the world treats us…

And I’m gonna keep WRITING and hoping and trying to connect to others OUT THERE… in hopes that I am NOT the only one…

** The court won’t entertain custody hearings – because there is no reason that either of us should NOT be part of the kids lives (neither drinks, does drugs, is violent, no outstanding court issues, stable jobs, stable income, appropriate living environments) they have decided that in order NOT to waste the courts’ time or our money by having yet another contentious he said/she said case where both of us will be ordered to share the kids the way we are now. But I keep hoping that theEx will find a woman who will take him and remarry and have another family OR find a job elsewhere and move away (because I have a clear advantage in that case)…

• I am not immune to loneliness and the feelings of being lonely. But I can choose to do something about these feelings instead of wallowing in them.
• When I am feeling lonely being online makes it worse… its better for me to go out, find something else to do, get offline and try to make better connections when things feel that terrible.
• Sometimes its just as good to put on a girly movie and just cry it out. At least that leaves you emotionally exhausted which will make it easier for you to sleep.
• I should have gone to the gym, but for the fact that TheEx needed to pick up something for GirlChild that she had forgotten I would have.
• I should probably remember to eat at least one meal a day… because I feel worse when my blood sugar is low. I suspect THIS one will be the hardest for me to do, because I find that when I am alone I don’t feel like cooking (because after all, there are so many dishes generated for one and I don’t really feel HUNGRY!) but I think its important for me to realize that I need to take care of myself.
• NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF ME, I AM TRUELY ALL I HAVE.
• Its okay to feel lonely, but its also okay to reach out to other people to help when you can. It’s not weak to admit that sometimes, even though you are used to it, even though you know this is most likely the way things are meant to be, you do need to be around other people.
• Shopping does NOT fill up the loneliness… its just depletes the bank account.
• Men and women communicate differently… when men are secure they stop wanting to talk to you as much, and although it really hurts that’s just how it is… I guess if you need that level of communication constantly its best not to ever settle in a relationship

Okay, so in the last month or so I have finally started to put some thought into what it is that *I* think makes a good relationship for ME. Maybe I should have thought of this years ago, and decided my future based not on whether someone seemed to like me well enough, and might be able to provide for me and future children that we might have, but really think about what qualities that I wanted in a mate — basically before I “settled” for someone I thought would be good to me (which, it turns out that he most certainly was NOT good to me, and even now I laugh when he says “if you need anything, let me know” or “I can’t really take care you you anymore” — since if I ask for help (based on statement #1) I tend to be responded to with statement #2 (and for that matter he never took care of me with any degree of thought anyway)).