Things are humming along; 9 more teaching days to go until the SUMMER!! I don't know how others work year-round at one job - I need the changing of the seasons in routine, like the weather.
I was invited by my friend/co-worker to go on vacation with her and her husband and daughter, along with my kids. We are headed on a road-trip down to GA, then FL on the 29th for 2 weeks! It will be my longest away-vaca ever (x was never able to be gone from work for that long). The kids are super-excited to go, and so am I I worried a little about talking to x about it- he really does hate to be away from the kids. I was surprised that he took the news pretty well, and I told him that we can schedule some extra time for them when we get back (I am much less protective of "my time" in the summer, since the kids and I spend most of the days together). We'll be back in time for my son's birthday.
Speaking of my son... we took him to be evaluated by the psych today for possible ADHD. A very bright kid who should be getting As and Bs, but is getting Cs and Ds. After the interview and running through an 18-point questionnaire, which he did with all three of us together, he came to the conclusion that S14 is NOT ADHD, but an underachiever. Gave him a pretty long talk about applying himself and all the good that can come of it, etc. $350 please.
On one hand, I am glad. But.... if he had fit the spectrum more consistently (as in, answering more questions with "often" than with "sometimes"), he could have gotten a 504 or IEP for school...along with some special help with strategies / study skills / organization. He really doesn't know how to study. I hope that he can get it together on his own - maybe I have been too involved, letting him use my monitoring as an excuse to not take the initiative. Hard to know when to step in and when to be hands-off and let them fall, learn on their own.
But it is also a little awkward for me, too (and I KNOW this is all my own chit and none of my son's!) I looked back at my own life, and had related to my son's struggles in school, being bright and compensating until too many balls where thrown in the air in high school, where things snowballed (I hit the wall in 10th grade and had to drop from 4 honors classes to one in 11th). Big difference was that my parents were not involved at all in my schoolwork. Maybe my tendencies were ADHD, and perhaps passed down to him. I spoke to my IC about it, and she agreed with me that this sounded like it was the case, that it was good to have him evaluated, that I should ask my own psych to do an eval on me and see about some strategies, maybe meds. But my x was pretty adamant that S was just not applying himself, being lazy, slacking, etc. - that he wasn't ADHD. He would go along to have the eval done, but was sure that this wasn't what was going on. And he told me on more than one occasion that I hadn't been checking his work enough, holding him more accountable. The last talk x and I had, one that broke a nearly year-long silence, was about my fears of how he had looked at me, and how I didn't want my son to face the same rejection.
And now, he was right about the diagnosis.
I had talked myself into thinking that my role in the demise of the marriage was because of my own ADHD tendencies, that it was something...I don't know...not my fault...? But now I am left to wonder:
was I an underachieving wife? lazy, slacker, "didn't take care of him,"......all the old complaints that he dumped on me in the sudden flood after the bomb, things that I wasn't aware bothered him to such a deep extent and was never given the chance to address..., except that I should have been aware of it, should have known, should have worked harder at taking care of our marriage, of him, being an adult, in a relationship...all coming to the surface....blech. Was my x right about me, about our marriage, all along? I sometimes think that this is a life-lesson that I had to learn the hard way. That this is the way it had to happen, like he told his friends and family. And that he does have a better partner in the woman he left me for, the one he is still with.
Is my son an underachiever due to my example?
I guess it doesn't matter in the end, since I am working every day to grow and become the better person I want to be. I want to do right by my kids. And I want to be a good person. Maybe the person I was deserved what happened, after all.
Quote:
Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of '75 When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July Everyone said they were crazy "Brenda you know that you're much too lazy and Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life." Oh, but there we were wavin' Brenda and Eddie goodbye. Oh, oh, oh Well they got an apartment with deep pile carpets And a couple of paintings from Sears A big waterbed that they bought with the bread They had saved for a couple of years but they started to fight when the money got tight (although we made the mistake to NEVER fight) And they just didn't count on the tears. Oh, oh yeah rock 'n roll Oh, oh, oh Well, they lived for a while in a very nice style But it's always the same in the end They got a divorce as a matter of course And they parted the closest of friends
