I've been talking recently about my son and his ADHD and how difficult it is to deal with. When we are having some of the toughest moments I can't help but ask myself...what would my egg donor have done if I behaved this way? The scary part is that I can actually see in my mind, really truly picture it as if it happened, what she would have done and how she would have treated me....and it wouldn't have been pretty! Certainly wouldn't have been as nice as I am to my child, not as understanding, she would not have spoken in a soft voice, she would not have done everything in her power to remain calm. She would not have picked me up and put me into my bedroom because she feared becoming her own egg donor if she didn't remove me from her view for a few moments. Sadly, I do fear it, I do feel that evil snake inside me rearing its ugly head. I feel like Harry Potter, in the Order of The Phoenix book, when he first starts going inside Voldemorts head. I feel like I could strike, I could hurt, I want to make this out of control child stop screaming at me calling me names, telling me how much he hates me and detests me. I feel worse and worse by the minute as he tells me I am the meanest mother on the planet, in the universe and that he wishes he could go into foster care so he could have nice parents. It breaks my heart, but deep inside, just like Harry, I know that he doesn't mean it, that I could never hurt him but I fear that so deeply that I need to walk away from him. Like Harry I fear the Voldemort inside me, the Voldemort that is my egg donor.
LMAO at the sudden realization that I make a lot of Voldemort references when it comes to my egg donor!
I hate her for the fact that she makes me feel this way, I hate that when I get into those tense moments with my child that I fear becoming her. I fear losing my control. As he yells at me that I am the meanest mother on the planet I find myself yelling back "You don't know what mean is!" and I am grateful that it's true.
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I have found my at a crossroads lately and I don't know what to do. Recently my son has asked me to share with him some of the details of my life. In the past, whenever he asked about my egg donor or my sperm donor, I told him I didn't like to talk about them. I have always just told him that they were not nice people. When he has asked why I ended up in foster care I have always just said that it was because they were not nice people, I have never told him how not nice they were. Although he begs for me to tell him about them, he wants to know details and I don't know at what point it's ok to give them. When is it ok to explain to your child just just how not nice someone can be? Is it EVER ok? Sometimes I think it would do him some good, show him how I am truly NOT the meanest mother on the planet, but I don't want to taint his image of me in doing so. How would he feel about me if he knew that I had been beaten daily, locked in closets, denied food or water because of a simple infraction of the rules? Would he see me as a strong person, someone to look up to, or would he pity me and see me as someone frail? I know what image I would like for him to see, I would prefer he see me as a strong person who survived a living nightmare. Someone powerful who can overcome hardship. I want him to want to be that strong, to overcome his ADHD like I eventually overcame the abuse. I want him to see his ADHD as the challenge he has to fight against and see me as someone he can try to be like in order to win the fight in the end. BUT I just don't know if I should ever put those images in his sweet little head! There is a part of me that says that he has a right to answers and perhaps if I told him some of the minor details he would be happy and he would maybe appreciate me more. Perhaps he would realize how very nice I truly am once he hears about someone who is truly mean. I hate denying him the answers he craves because I feel like I'm lying to him by just saying they were mean...because they weren't just mean they were down right evil! Honestly I know I will never tell him about the sexual abuse, no worries there. I draw the line on that subject, but the physical abuse, the emotional abuse, I sometimes wonder if maybe it would be ok to give him SOME details.
Here is our usual scenario, we just had one the other day.
Orion had gone to the bathroom and was in there for quite awhile. After he finally came out I asked if everything was ok and he said fine. I was concerned only because he had been in there so long and because he was not medicated that day. What I found when I went in there was that he had taken my small pair of scissors out of the medicine cabinet and cut some small slits in the towels. I called him in and asked him to explain, I gave him the chance to tell me what had happened to my towels. He put on his shocked face and asks "How did that happen?" I reminded him that I had recently showered and the holes weren't there before and he had just been locked in the bathroom for 20 minutes and there was no one else in the house. He tried to lie and say he was trying to open the package for the bum wipes and accidentally fell, cutting the towels. Well I explained how that wasn't logical either. In the end he was sorry and I know it was because of the lack of medication, but then he asked the question..."What would your mother had done if you did this?"
Now mind you, my punishment was to give him needle and thread and teach him how to repair the cuts in the towels. That was all, I sewed one hole while he copied my motions and sewed up the other 2 holes. Although he fussed that he was no good at it, that he couldn't do it, I made him sit on the couch with me and learn to do it. I made him sew the towels back together. I didn't yell, I didn't scream, I didn't hit him or hurt him in any way shape or form. I simply taught him how to repair the damage he had done with kindness and patience. This surprised him and so he wanted to know how I would have been treated if I had done something like that and all I could say was "It certainly wouldn't be just sewing this back, it would have been far worse." I could not tell him what would have happened, I just knew that it would not have been the punishment I had come up with. I still don't know if that was the right thing to do...maybe I should have given him a story, maybe I should have used that opportunity to show my child a small window of my youth...but I still don't know if he's old enough. In these situations I find myself feeling more like Dumbledore and Orion is Harry...I just feel he is not old enough, he is too young to worry his mind with such things. But because I have read the stories so many times I know that in the end Dumbledore realizes he was wrong in hiding the truth and that Harry would have been able to handle it afterall. So I ask myself should I ever explain about Voldemort and if so when??
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Have a great weekend. Everyone has a ghost or two in their closets, some are just bigger than others.
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