A Mother’s Anxiety

As a mother, you worry about your children. Starting from the moment you hear their heartbeat at the doctor’s office. You wonder what this child is going to be like. Is he/she going to be like their sister/brother? Will this one give you a hard time? Will he/she be colicky? Will they be a happy baby?

Then you worry when the benchmarks that are supposed to be made, aren’t. You ask your pediatrician at the time, if everything is ok with your child and he assures you that it is. Your son is perfect. Then you realize, he’s not talking like he should for a 2 yr old. No one seems to understand him, but you. Then your mother tells you that Mozart (or Einstein) didn’t talk until he was 4 and he was a GENIUS! *{PLEASE NOTE: I don’t know if this is true or not, haven’t looked it up. Don’t care to know – it made me feel better at the time, so that’s all that matters}

You decide to enroll your son in Head Start – it helped his sister come out of her shell, maybe it’ll help him to. He gets accepted because his social skills aren’t developed like they should be. Then he gets into Pre-K because he needs more help with ‘development’. Everything is good until Kindergarten…you walk into your son’s Kindergarten class for a parent/teacher conference and you hear her telling your child that he’s stupid and won’t learn anything! Needless to say, you get your son out of that teacher’s room. He repeats kindergarten only because he’s not "ready for first grade".

You ask and beg for help for your son because SOMETHING is wrong. You’ve known it from the beginning. Now, 11 years later you MAY have a clue as to what’s wrong and it’s scared you senseless. You lay in bed at night thinking everything a mother would…Why didn’t I catch this sooner? Why did it take 11 years to get the help he needed? Have you hurt your son worse by not getting him help?

Mother’s Guilt – it’ll eat you alive EVERY time. I have it and it makes me cry when I think about everything my son has gone thru for the last 11 years. I’m trying to get him help, but I’m lost. I took him to a child psychologist. I couldn’t take the phone calls from his teacher saying he was hitting his head against the concrete wall because he got something wrong on a quiz she gave. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t grasping the things that were taught at school that day.

I THINK I understand now why my wonderful son is having problems. The child psychologists report stated that he has ADHD, OCD and (MAYBE) Asperger’s…I know its NOT my fault – but what else am I to think? If my mother read this she’d tell me I am a great mom. I try to be, it’s hard. I’m scared…I’ve vowed to do everything I can for my children, but what if I fail? What if it's just not enough?

Have I told you I’m freaking SCARED?!?!?!?! What if it’s not enough? What if my everything isn’t what he needs? I can only pray and hope that the love I give my son and the doctor’s appointments don’t cut into his college fund (a try at humor).