p12. Oh you gotta have friends…
Da has had a rollercoaster ride in the amusement park of her life. It is often said that children with ADHD have a hard time socializing into the mainstream of everyday life; add to this the additional challenges of a disorder like bipolar and it is next to impossible.
You see, all the kids liked her and thought she was so funny, but they just had absolutely no idea what to do with her, she exhausted people easily.
I’ve noticed different patterns with my other kids, so it would be easy to say that children just do not make, keep or nurture friendship in the same way. My middle daughter had the same group of close friends from 1st grade until her junior high graduation, my youngest seemed to have her closest friends by who was in her class or homeroom of any given year. Da, well, she seemed to have friends until she exhausted them, which didn’t take a whole lot of time on occasions.
We started to define her patterns of relationships as early as kindergarten; she had started to ask her friends to do things that a child of her age really wouldn’t normally consider - such as walking to the school that was two miles away, or as in second grade, talking her friend into believing they could fly like birds. Da decided they should fly off of the play set; I was told later that she went first and some kid caught her, her friend wasn’t so lucky. As Da coached her to spread her wings wide and go…go…go… off she went – right to the emergency room to have her arms set, she broke both of them.
The older Da got, the more the behavior she suggested became unacceptable and in some instances dangerous. As I said in the very beginning, parents of her friends must have thought some wild things about us. I can only imagine them discussing our lack of discipline policy, while having no idea the kid was grounded most of her life. You might be saying… “Well they grounded her all the time she must have been rebelling”… well no. Da wasn’t invited to a whole lot of functions, mainly just those where our friends were involved or we would be there.
She was blessed with one friend that has stuck with her in the hard times since her 5th grade year. This friend was not really a “social” friend, meaning she didn’t hang out with her, but she was behind the scene helping to keep us informed and Da on the up and up whenever she could, I always called her my other daughter.
One very long hospital stay, Da had one of the best doctors for her age. I will never forget when she told us what kind of kids she would hang out with, and that’s where we have ended up. She slowly wore down the kids you want your kids to hang out with not the ones you don’t think you’ll ever meet except in the Metro section of the newspaper.
I must tell you a very important point of parents with special needs kids, is they too need friends. Mother’s of bipolar kids, especially those extroverted ones like myself, will not just say “oh great” when someone casually ask how you are or the kids are. Mother’s will give a litany of information. Father’s will say, just say “oh great” because people don’t really care. I think we are blessed with special friends who do care.
A special friend for a parent like myself is one who not only listens too me when I rant, cry with me when it’s sad; visit the hospital so I can have a change of scenery. Or simply pray for our children and us to find strength in their own quiet way. But the best of the special friends, they really understand. They know when times are especially rough that I personally will retreat. They know I won’t answer the phone, they understand I am in hiding. These are the friends that you can go a month and not speak with, then you talk and in two minutes – it’s like you’ve spoken everyday. These friends understand you are hurting too much to come out and play.
I hope everyone has special friends like mine, and I know they know who they are.
You see, all the kids liked her and thought she was so funny, but they just had absolutely no idea what to do with her, she exhausted people easily.
I’ve noticed different patterns with my other kids, so it would be easy to say that children just do not make, keep or nurture friendship in the same way. My middle daughter had the same group of close friends from 1st grade until her junior high graduation, my youngest seemed to have her closest friends by who was in her class or homeroom of any given year. Da, well, she seemed to have friends until she exhausted them, which didn’t take a whole lot of time on occasions.
We started to define her patterns of relationships as early as kindergarten; she had started to ask her friends to do things that a child of her age really wouldn’t normally consider - such as walking to the school that was two miles away, or as in second grade, talking her friend into believing they could fly like birds. Da decided they should fly off of the play set; I was told later that she went first and some kid caught her, her friend wasn’t so lucky. As Da coached her to spread her wings wide and go…go…go… off she went – right to the emergency room to have her arms set, she broke both of them.
The older Da got, the more the behavior she suggested became unacceptable and in some instances dangerous. As I said in the very beginning, parents of her friends must have thought some wild things about us. I can only imagine them discussing our lack of discipline policy, while having no idea the kid was grounded most of her life. You might be saying… “Well they grounded her all the time she must have been rebelling”… well no. Da wasn’t invited to a whole lot of functions, mainly just those where our friends were involved or we would be there.
She was blessed with one friend that has stuck with her in the hard times since her 5th grade year. This friend was not really a “social” friend, meaning she didn’t hang out with her, but she was behind the scene helping to keep us informed and Da on the up and up whenever she could, I always called her my other daughter.
One very long hospital stay, Da had one of the best doctors for her age. I will never forget when she told us what kind of kids she would hang out with, and that’s where we have ended up. She slowly wore down the kids you want your kids to hang out with not the ones you don’t think you’ll ever meet except in the Metro section of the newspaper.
I must tell you a very important point of parents with special needs kids, is they too need friends. Mother’s of bipolar kids, especially those extroverted ones like myself, will not just say “oh great” when someone casually ask how you are or the kids are. Mother’s will give a litany of information. Father’s will say, just say “oh great” because people don’t really care. I think we are blessed with special friends who do care.
A special friend for a parent like myself is one who not only listens too me when I rant, cry with me when it’s sad; visit the hospital so I can have a change of scenery. Or simply pray for our children and us to find strength in their own quiet way. But the best of the special friends, they really understand. They know when times are especially rough that I personally will retreat. They know I won’t answer the phone, they understand I am in hiding. These are the friends that you can go a month and not speak with, then you talk and in two minutes – it’s like you’ve spoken everyday. These friends understand you are hurting too much to come out and play.
I hope everyone has special friends like mine, and I know they know who they are.
posted by ewschott at Thursday, November 18, 2004
1 comments
