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Standing on the East Coast, pointed toward California, and clicking my heels three times
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Stumbling Along
I really wish that we all came with an instruction manual. This trial-and-error, this "keep trying everything and then try it all again," it gets really freaking old.
I certainly could use one in dealing with my own corporeal and mental mess, but it's the kids who are just so unfathomable at times. It starts when they're babies, and they cry (in Matthew's case, 24/7, unless he was attached to a boob), and you try to find what works to make them stop. You walk, you jiggle, you pat, you change, you sing, you shut up, you feed, you go for a drive, you stop driving anywhere not absolutely necessary, you try simethicone drops and camomile tablets, you despair. Then you think you found the thing that makes them stop crying, but it turns out to have been a fluke, and it doesn't work again. So you start all over again.
We've spent Matthew's whole life trying to figure out how to help him, make his life easier, help him navigate the world more successfully. After a million different strategies and behavioral plans and things that seem to work, and then don't, we've moved on to psychopharmacology. And took a wrong turn again, since Ritalin and Zoloft definitely didn't work for him, and might have actually made things worse. So now we've moved on to Seroquel, and I'm wondering where we go from here if that doesn't seem to help.
I was reminded today of what has been my mantra, ALL these years with Matthew: progress, not perfection. I've never expected things to be perfect, just better. And I try to accept that often that progress is a two-steps-forward, one-step-back type of progress, curving rather than linear. But the road is also curved, and it's impossible to see what's ahead, and sometimes I lose my resolve.
If you make mistakes in your own life, that's bad, but you can regroup and try to carry on. But somehow, it's just SO much worse to make mistakes in your child's life, when he has to live with the consequences. Sometimes, the road gets bumpy, and the light is dim, and I don't know where we're going.
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I really wish that we all came with an instruction manual. This trial-and-error, this "keep trying everything and then try it all again," it gets really freaking old.
I certainly could use one in dealing with my own corporeal and mental mess, but it's the kids who are just so unfathomable at times. It starts when they're babies, and they cry (in Matthew's case, 24/7, unless he was attached to a boob), and you try to find what works to make them stop. You walk, you jiggle, you pat, you change, you sing, you shut up, you feed, you go for a drive, you stop driving anywhere not absolutely necessary, you try simethicone drops and camomile tablets, you despair. Then you think you found the thing that makes them stop crying, but it turns out to have been a fluke, and it doesn't work again. So you start all over again.
We've spent Matthew's whole life trying to figure out how to help him, make his life easier, help him navigate the world more successfully. After a million different strategies and behavioral plans and things that seem to work, and then don't, we've moved on to psychopharmacology. And took a wrong turn again, since Ritalin and Zoloft definitely didn't work for him, and might have actually made things worse. So now we've moved on to Seroquel, and I'm wondering where we go from here if that doesn't seem to help.
I was reminded today of what has been my mantra, ALL these years with Matthew: progress, not perfection. I've never expected things to be perfect, just better. And I try to accept that often that progress is a two-steps-forward, one-step-back type of progress, curving rather than linear. But the road is also curved, and it's impossible to see what's ahead, and sometimes I lose my resolve.
If you make mistakes in your own life, that's bad, but you can regroup and try to carry on. But somehow, it's just SO much worse to make mistakes in your child's life, when he has to live with the consequences. Sometimes, the road gets bumpy, and the light is dim, and I don't know where we're going.
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