When Mommy Doubt Gets a Break

If you are anything like me you often find yourself wondering if you are making the right decisions in life. Am I raising my child well? Are they going to be functional adults? Will they have empathy? It can be doubly hard if your child is neurodivergent in any way. At least that is how I feel in my house. I have ADHD, so I know what it is like to grow up with a brain that doesn’t always work the way everyone thinks it should. My child also has ADHD and is autistic. Their brain doesn’t always approach the world the same way as everyone else. When we received the diagnosis, I had two options. One, I could try and train their brain to operate to societal standards, or I could lean into the diagnosis and teach them how to love their brain and to learn coping mechanisms and redundancies to navigate the world so that they can embrace their differences.

I chose option two. We immediately started homeschooling, and I used my knowledge from teaching college to help shape our curriculum and how we were going to do this. We tested different methods that worked for us and eventually found a way that not only helped increase learning and knowledge retention, but also engaged them on a whole new level. Even though our experience is that we are learning and operating above grade level standards, I often find myself in doubt as to whether or not I had made the right decision even though we have been doing this for more than six years now. Would my off the wall tactics pay off? Would they backfire? How would I know if I’d done the right thing?

I am pretty sure that last night I got my answer. After we wrapped up on Trick or Treating (we walked over 4 miles and my fluffy self was NOT prepared).  I was so exhausted I fell asleep in a chair in the living room next to my child as we were watching a Halloween themed movie. My husband had already gone to bed because he had to wake up at 6 am to go to work. When I woke up a few hours later with a deep urgency to pee I realized that my child had covered me up with a blanket. Moved it so that the fan I sleep with was next to me and brought me a pillow. Then, they had curled up on the chair next to me and gone to sleep. When I went into the bathroom, I saw evidence that they had followed through with their nightly ritual of getting ready for bed without prompting from me. All of this made my heart happy.  

So, there are days when I will wonder if I’m doing well and if I’m making the right decisions. But thankfully today is not one of those days.