Firsts

Today was a day of firsts. We got our first snow of the season here in Denver, and I think it was more than was originally expected at about 6 inches.

It was also the first day of my new job. This is the first job I've started in about 16 years where I didn't second guess my decision. There are about 6 people in the office who I worked with two jobs ago, and it felt almost like coming home. I think this is going to be a much better fit for me professionally.

Now I'm getting ready to go to sleep for the night. It was a good day, but it was also an exhausting day and I didn't sleep all that well because of nerves. Luckily there is a wonderful winter wind howling tonight which should lull me to sleep (and melt all the snow).

Snow, School, and Serentiy

It has been an eventful and positive couple of days. Yesterday afternoon we were finally able to meet with my son's teachers. We were able to give them the full history of his mental health issues and it seemed like most of the teachers had a new understanding about what was behind his classroom behaviors. His Language Arts teacher is just a phenomenal teacher who clearly takes her profession very seriously. According to my son, who has always hated Language Arts, she makes the lessons fun and engaging. She's also really good at using technology to communicate with parents and keep us in the loop. So I think she's going to try some new techniques with my son and because he likes her so much I think we're going to see a good result there.

My son has two Science teachers who do a job share. Because of schedules, we've only ever met the one at parent-teacher conferences, and she said she didn't have any issues with our son. The other Science teacher and the Social Studies teacher (who just recently returned from maternity leave) are both very young teachers. I don't know that either of them have much experience with issues like my son presents, but they both seem like they'll take cues from the Language Arts teacher and I think they'll see better results also. Then there's the math teacher. I don't think she's coming from a bad place, I think she's just very old-fashioned (although I think she's younger than me) and thinks that there is one way to teach math and one way to learn it, which is quietly doing exactly what she does. As someone who loves math, what I enjoy about it is solving logic puzzles and figuring out how to get to an end result, and unfortunately I think her type of teaching can kill that love and exploration of math. So we're going to look into math club so my son can continue to be exposed to math as fun. The good news is that I think she won't keep fighting him quietly sitting in class but not taking notes verbatim. I think this is just one of those teachers that my son isn't going to click with, but I'm hopeful that this class will be a little smoother for the rest of the year.

After we left the school meeting, my husband and I headed up into the mountains for a weekend getaway. I was able to really put my new Xterra through it's paces. I had to put it into 4-wheel drive to get over Vail pass, and I was extremely pleased with the decision to get a manual transmission because I could just down-shift and I barely had to touch my brakes headed downhill in the snow and ice. We're staying at a lodge outside of Edwards, and the area is just beautiful. These pictures were from our balcony this morning. I took the picture before the sun came up barefoot in my pajamas, so that one was out the balcony door but from the room. I got dressed for the others so I was actually out on the balcony.

We went for a wonderful hike on the East Lake Trail. The sky was an amazing, bright blue; it was completely silent except for the sounds of birds. We saw deer but no other people until the very end of the hike. There are several pictures below, but they were so pretty that I had to share.

I imagine this trail was beautiful in a different way between four and six weeks ago when the hillsides were probably pure gold in aspen leaves.

This weekend is exactly what I needed. I'm feeling refreshed and ready to be the mother my children need when I get back home. Facebook presented me with a good article (which still creeps me out) about celebrities with mental health issues who shared them so others wouldn't feel alone. One of the celebrities who has many of the same issues as my son is John Green. My son really likes him, so I'm hoping that when I share that with him he'll feel less alone and realize that he can still do whatever he wants in life.

I'm also really excited about starting my new job on Wednesday. I'm hopeful that it'll be a better fit and since it's in a suburban setting I'll be able to take walks in nature at lunch which always soothes my soul. So the upshot of this fairly long post is that things are looking up, and I feel better equipped to manage my life.

Roller Coaster Ride

I've never been able to handle rides that spin, but I love roller coasters, at an amusement park. When my life feels like a roller coaster ride, it's not so much fun. Things felt like they were getting better, but then they took a turn for the worse again with my son.

Winding down at work has been harder and more stressful than I ever thought it would be because I want to leave my soon-to-be-former team in a good place. But it's situational stress and I feel like I've got a handle on it and am dealing fairly well. Where I'm not doing so well is with the pervasive and sustained stress which is a result of dealing with my son's mental illness. I've reached a point where I think I'm the one who needs some help. I feel like I've been knocked down and can't get back up. Occasionally I manage to get back on my feet, but before I can get my balance, I get knocked down again. That kind of feels selfish, but it's like in the airplane when they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before you help anyone else. Right now I don't really feel like I'm much help to my son, and won't be until I take care of myself.

I looked in the mirror last night and realized that I look...old. I'm sure the stress is the primary cause of this. So I decided that if I have to look that old, I intend to at least be skinny. I'm back on track with my weight loss as of today. I'm hoping that by the time I start my new job next Wednesday my clothes will be a little more comfortable. Then by the time I attend a wedding on January 1st I'm hoping to be close to my goal weight. By the time I have to put my snow pants on again in February, I want to be at my goal weight. I think I might accomplish the weight loss this time for two reasons:

1. The last time I managed to lose all that weight was when I was really stressed out and the weight loss gave me something to control.
2. It's easier to adjust habits when we change our environments. Since I'm going to be starting a new job I'm hoping that the food triggers won't happen in the same way and that I'll be able to form new, healthier habits.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to post weekly weight updates or not. I'll think on that and provide an update at a later date.

Now to the pictures. All of these below are from my phone camera, so none of them are of really great quality. But they all tell a story of what's been happening outside recently.

This picture is of the sky while I was out for a walk, right before it started to storm and rain like crazy.

The next two pictures are from a recent afternoon walk. I loved the way the fence shadow looked and was falling on the leaves. The red tree against the bright blue sky was just so pretty that I had to share. I did not make any adjustments to that picture, those were the colors I saw on my walk.

Slowly Getting Better

I'm slowly starting to feel better. My mental state is improving a little at a time. Knowing that I'm going to be starting a new job soon is really helping. I've even started being able to view my current job objectively. I've got a ton of things to show other people, but I'm fairly well organized and have good notes anyway. As an analyst, I run lots of recurring reports for people, and each of those has an instructions tab as something that I learned as best practice long ago. So even if I wasn't able to finish the training, I think people will be able to figure it out. After recently going through the pain of figuring out how a former co-worker did her job because she didn't show us or leave documentation, I'm determined to leave my team in a better place with my departure.

My son is making some improvements at home and school. I think part of his improvement might be because we figured out that he wasn't consistently taking his medication. Now that we're managing that, he seems to be making better choices and we've received a couple of positive emails from teachers this week. The meeting at school didn't happen yet because of schedule conflicts, so now it's next week and hopefully it will be more collaborative and less adversarial if he continues to do better at school.

Now that I'm getting my mental house in order, I may finally be ready to start tackling my physical well-being soon. I haven't lost the desire to lose about 20 pounds, I had just stopped thinking about it for awhile because I had too many other issues to deal with. But now that we're making some positive, forward progress in other areas, it's time to start thinking about my weight again. I haven't devised a new plan just yet, but hopefully soon I'll have an update on that.

Now it's time to finish my Friday chores so we can ready to celebrate Halloween tomorrow!

Check In Part 2: The Difficult Stuff

I finally found some time and the emotional fortitude to write the second part of my check-in. My son's transition to middle school has been a bit of nightmare. If you've been following for awhile, you may have read my previous post about how difficult it has been dealing with son's issues. We got things to a manageable place in elementary school. He had a fairly successful fourth grade year because he had a teacher who had a son just like him and was willing to work with him. Fifth grade was tougher; that teacher had been teaching for over forty years and had some pretty old-fashioned ideas. But we managed and even though I don't think that teacher ever liked my son, he still got decent grades.

Now we're in middle school and we have several teachers that we have to work with, with varying degrees of success. His math teacher seems to have a major control issue and she and my son appear to have a major personality conflict. At this point they're both being intensely stubborn and I'm tempted to ask if it's possible to home-school for just one subject. I would look at another teacher, but with the inside knowledge we have from my husband working in the school district, I don't think there are any better options. We had quite the interesting email exchange with this woman yesterday, which made it abundantly clear that a student who is compliant is much more important to her than a student who is learning. I think one of my biggest frustrations from this situation is that my son has always loved math, and know he's saying he hates it. We're meeting with at least this teacher this coming Friday (and I'm hoping some of the others as well) and I think it's time to unleash my inner bitch. I've tried the calm, kind, patient, partnership mode and we're not seeing any positive improvement, so I think I'm done being nice. My son's education and his emotional well-being are too important to let this go any longer.

The rest of his teachers are frustrated because he doesn't put enough effort into his work. They all claim that when he's participating in classroom discussions he demonstrates very creative and intelligent thinking, but they can't get him to put any of that down on paper when it comes to homework and tests. He was placed in honors Language Arts with an excellent teacher and for the first time since Kindergarten claims to enjoy writing. But if he doesn't start putting more effort into his work, he's not going to get to stay in that class.  Aside from effort issues though, the rest of his teachers are dealing with him and not creating an adversarial learning (or non-learning) environment.

Part of the frustration we're experiencing is that once again, we're feeling judged and deemed unworthy as parents. Especially with this math teacher, who seems to think that we're not doing anything to address the issues. We're trying to keep the lines of communication open and we've been very forthcoming with our interactions with the psychiatrist and adjusting medication. We keep talking to our son about school and what he needs to do there. We are providing consequences and he's currently grounded from friends and electronics. Short of sitting with my son all day and making sure he's on-task, I'm not sure what else we're supposed to do. My daughter has never required this type of parenting, so these aren't skills we needed to develop prior to now. A big part of the reason I found a new job was so that I could be closer to home and have a shorter commute so I could be with my son in the mornings. We've read dozens of books* and the we're finding some promising information now in one called Smart but Scattered Teens which talks about the executive skills we need to help our son develop. We are doing everything we know how to do, and trying to find new solutions daily, but this teacher seems to think that if she just keeps telling us that he's not meeting expectations that we'll come up with some magic bullet to fix the problem.

If there was some magical solution that I could apply in this situation, does this woman honestly believe that I wouldn't have already done so? I don't want to watch my son suffer this way. I don't want to deal with his temper and outbursts every time we need him to do a chore around the house. I don't want to worry about his safety when he threatens to hurt himself or tries to run away. I was the girl and young woman who almost never cried, and lately tears have been almost a daily occurrence because I'm so worried about my son and how he's going to navigate life. I'm about 96% sure that we're doing the right things and once his brain development and maturity reach a certain point, we'll see a wonderful young man who can make unique contributions because he sees the world differently. But there's that 4% of me that worries that I'm raising my uncle. My dad's youngest brother and only surviving sibling is the most awful human being I've ever encountered. What if this is all genetic and my son grows up to be like that? That concern keeps me up at night and is causing me so much stress right now that I'm actually losing my hair. Instead of support and assistance from the school we're getting judgment and more stress.

My husband and the principal at my son's school were close friends in high school. We haven't wanted to call on that relationship to handle problems, but since we're about to go Falling Down on this math teacher, I think it's time to use this relationship to get some different results. We're going to go in with a list of items we need addressed and we're going to take the approach that due to my son's mental health issues, he needs accommodations from the school and his teachers. We are also going to investigate a 504 plan which will legally require the school to make some more accommodations.

If you've stuck with this long rant, thanks for reading. If your child has any issues with ADHD or other mental illnesses, know that you're not alone out there, and maybe the book I listed above, or one of the others below will help you. I'm trying very hard to get myself into a better mental place so I can be an effective advocate for my son, instead of just feeling helpless and frustrated. If I can help even one other parent, it will make this all feel more manageable.

* Some more helpful books:

• 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child
• Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence
• The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
• Boy Writers
• Bright Minds, Poor Grades
• The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety
• Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens
• The Explosive Child
• Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key (this one is for the kiddos)
• Mindfulness for Teen Anxiety
• Mitten Strings for God (this one is more about creating space in our lives, but I found it helpful)
• The Motivated Brain
• My Anxious Mind: A Teen's Guide to Managing Anxiety and Panic
• Parenting Children with ADHD
• The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook for Teens
• Stress Free Kids
• Superparenting for ADD
• Talking Back to OCD

Totally off topic, just wanted to share a quick snap of the rain of leaves on this lovely fall morning.

Delayed

I promised part 2 of a check-in today, but I'm not emotionally capable of writing it at the moment. So instead I'm just going to share a few autumnal photos from a walk this afternoon.

Check In Part 1: The Good News

I have a pretty large check-in this weekend, so I thought I'd do it in two parts and start with the good news and the positive things happening in my life.

I was offered and accepted a new job. I will be just a couple of miles from home so I'll be home with my son in the morning before he heads off for school. I had to take a small pay cut, but not as large as I had anticipated, so that was really good news. I'm going back into the restaurant industry which is where I "grew up" professionally and am better value-aligned. Giving my notice wasn't very much fun, but my boss handled the conversation very well so it worked out alright.

Yesterday I went with my husband, mom, and in-laws to watch my daughter's high school marching band perform in the state quarter-finals. Her school made the cut for the quarter-finals for the first time in 17 years. The kids thought it was pretty cool to march at CSU's stadium.

My son's middle school hosts an annual 5K called the Spooknology for Technology race. They raise money for technology for the school with the race. My daughter was never interested in doing it, but my son wanted to so this morning while it was still quite chilly he and I headed out for the race. It warmed up rather quickly and ended up being a lovely morning to be out walking and jogging.

We took the kids out to the pumpkin patch and the Halloween store today. My daughter wouldn't get out of the car while we were picking pumpkins because of our solution to the muddy fields due to the rain we had earlier this week. We put plastic grocery bags on our feet, which did look ridiculous, but we were the only people not scraping our shoes back at the car.

Tonight my husband and I are going to see Crimson Peak at the theater. I'm super excited to get to see what is supposed to be a beautiful (if predictable) horror movie, and have a date night with my husband. The pictures below are from a walk I took yesterday afternoon with my husband. The image quality isn't great since these are all with my phone camera. It's just about time for a new phone, and camera quality is going to be a deciding factor in the model I choose.

That's the good news, and I'm glad I wrote it out because there's actually lots of good stuff going on. Tomorrow I'll write about the not-so-good stuff that's been happening of late.