The other day my oldest, Rebecca, was talking about some kid who had been in one of her classes this past year. "He has ADHD, too," she said, "and my grades are soooooo much better than his. I think I deserve a pat on the back for that."
Which she did, and I gave her one--though with a little cautionary lecture about not defining success as "better off than X," because a) who knows what problems X has and b) next week, she could be X and c) it's just rude. But the moment ended, and I was left to think to myself: What about a pat on the back for me?
And on the heels of that thought came another thought: what about a pat on the back for ALL the parents like me--the parents of kids who have some special challenge, whether relatively manageable, like mine, or seriously daunting. All those parents out there who, like me, spend all that time in parenting classes, trying to figure out why their toddler is behaving so badly; who progress to Anger Management classes, to help them cope with the toddler who is behaving so badly; who spend all that time figuring out which expert to go to and what questions to ask, and how to get insurance to cover some part of it; all those parents who schlep back and forth to psychiatrist appointments that their kids don't want to go to, and staring up at the ceiling at night wondering if those pills the shrink just wrote a prescription for are going to permanently damage their child's brain; all those parents who schelp the kid back and forth to psychotherapy and social skills groups and occupational therapy and tutoring appointments; all those parents who go to the 504 meetings and the IEP meetings and stay up late at night e-mailing teachers about some missing assignment or the latest outburst.
Parenting kids like ours can be a lonely task. The only feedback we are likely to get is when there's a problem, and then there will be a lot of people who are eager to tell us what we are doing wrong and how they fixed that same problem at THEIR house (not understanding that maybe their problem and yours aren't the same at all). And though all parenting involves a lot of work, this kind of parenting involves vast amounts of extra work that nobody outside your immediate family is likely to hear about or see, much less give you credit for.
If this sounds self-pitying, I don't mean it to be; my kids are my greatest joy. It's just that Rebecca's words made me think that I deserve a little credit too, which I am hereby giving myself--and also to all you other guys out there, whoever you are. Because we are doing a very tough job.
