And This is Why I Miss Out on Stuff for the Kids

My daughter is the one who suffers most around her with the mood disorder of her brother. You see, my son Aj is six years old and has a mood disorder, up until about six months ago, his medication was never really quite perfected yet and for the first five years of his life he wasn’t even being diagnosed for the mood disorder. We lived in hell, literally. It was challenging more so than anything we go through today.

With that being said, mood disorder under control for the most part, we still have occasional issues. Usually the issues are that my four year old, K-man, refuses to let his brother sleep. Aj is the child that takes after his Mama, he usually sleeps from 11-12 hours per night and it works best for him. He is a pleasure to be around and has occasional six year old challenges with his parental figures, but he is easy comparative to what he was without medication. Without his 11-12 hours of sleep at night? You may as well be dealing with a bear, one who is guarding her cub from what she feels is danger. It’s close to a nightmare and super frustrating.

I have compassion for Aj when he is suffering from lack of sleep and in turn being more dramatic in response to things, such as attending his sisters contact lens appointment, to get contacts for the first time. Aj felt it was completely fine for him to lay down in the middle of the waiting room floor. Mind you, it’s a small office. But that didn’t matter to over tired Aj, he was sleepy and he just couldn’t stand any long.

There were rows and rows of places to sit, heck even a two cushion seat was open where he could have acceptably laid down, but not over tired Aj. When this kid is over tired there is no rhyme nor reason with him, there is no getting him to understand common sense. Nothing. It’s seriously frustrating. I take my patient Mom mind and work best I can around him, but he was so bad the other day that I had to leave my daughter with her Dad for her first lesson in using contact lenses, I was sad.

This sucked. I wanted to experience this first with my daughter too. You all read how close her and I are, she is my only daughter. I hate that I have to miss out on these appointments from time to time simply because they are at a time of day that my sons are exhausted and impossible to have in such confined areas. I have no one to watch the boys, so they must come along. Their Dad works nights and it’s not his job to take them every time I need a backup for an appointment, while he probably would if he were able to because it’s a rare time when I really ask for him to help in that way.

But back to the point, I have missed out on so much with my daughter for many reasons, mostly due to having a son who needed most of my attention for the first five years of his life and now as he struggles with loss  of sleep, all I can think about is when we find a place to live this Summer and we move, that hopefully the boys can have their own damn space because then the K-man will only wake me up, not everyone else all of the time.

So while I missed the full appointment, I know my daughter will come home from her Dad’s telling me all about it and I will get to see if my daughter has contacts or not for the first time….. Note – this was written day after appointment when I had not yet seen my daughter but by the time it’s published I will have had her back to me for a couple of days!

I suppose, with the positive attitude I have and instill in the kids, they get sad and frustrated too but then they realize this is our family and we do all love each other. Sometimes one is having a bad day and that is okay, even adults have bad days from time to time. My kids are human and treated that way, so while I can understand it being sad to my daughter when I miss out on things, she also understands because we are family and will forever be there for each other no matter what.