Time flies when you're in Grad School

It has been a very long time since I posted here and so much about Ricci continues to change. I have no true excuse why I have lacked the discipline and fortitude to keep this process updated, other than work, Grad school, oh and Ricci...

So as I sit here with the quiet converging on my mind, I thought now I need to discuss Ricci.I face the last weeks of my program and as this wraps up, I realize that there has been this urgency as part of my life for the past three years and once its gone, I wonder will I be able to slow down and just be present with my son.

I started Graduate school right before I found out Ricci's father and I would not work, so I faced the untimely choice of do I continue this program, working as a preschool teacher single mom, with a four year old Special Needs son, or do I quit... I chose to push through.

In fact I think that the pushing through became the escape. I put on my crash helmet and barreled straight ahead "pushing through" and "pushing away" the best I could. However, now on this end as I feel the urgency shift to accomplishment, but I can't help but wonder if Graduate School and Ricci worked as an excuse to barrel through life. These hefty diversions kept me from the toxic pity party of slowing down to grieve for the loss of my relationship, my family, the home I created, and most of all it allowed me to construct a world of rushing and over-planning, of excessive caffeine, and work outs, which thus prevented me from sitting down and building Legos, and playing ice cream parlor, and seeing that perhaps part of the anxiety and ADHD tendencies which rattle my sons existence might possibly be personality shrapnel he got from his spazzing mother!

I do of course know that a large part of Ricci's behavior is neurological. He has Asperger's and ADHD. The ADHD however is the part I hear about most, and while its part of his brain's chemistry, I can't help but feel I made it worse. In fact I had to face that there are indeed times when I refuse to slow down long enough to let him fail, or to do something himself until I had his teacher tell me the first week of second grade that she can't help but think that SOMEONE enabled him (GASP!!!!)--- (who????) as she looked straight at me... I turned around to see if his dad had walked in... but then the reality hit, she meant me! It wasn't until I was at home trying to get ready to go somewhere, that I faced the fact that....yes it was me! I maybe didn't create the issue, but I for sure perpetuated it!

SO I faced the blaring music...and realized, if I didn't slow down, how could I expect him to, and that if I refuse to let him fail, I not only protect him from the feeling of failure, but I also deprive him of the feeling of pride.

And so, I armed Ricci with the only tool I could, after years of OT, and super nutrition, guidance in expression, behavior therapy, and so much patience, I finally agreed to try medication. This is something that I loathe each and everyday. I give my seven year old son medication so that his teachers can manage him. I swallow this reality each morning as he takes his pill with Trader Joe's yogurt, and as I digest this paradox, I let the anger, guilt, and frustration pass through my system.

I felt so terrible, until one day, sitting at the kitchen table, Ricci took his pencil, refused my help, and completed two pages of math entirely on his own, and did it correctly! I felt like I was looking at Leo the late bloomer and he was staring at me saying, "I made it!" After three years of prompting Ricci every twenty seconds during homework, and redirecting him for the torturous thirty minutes of allotted time for his modified homework, my son took the bull by the horns and he did it all on his own!

It was at this moment that I realized how much he's grown, that all his independence culminated at that moment and he was ready to be Ricci, and I needed to stop hovering, rushing, forcing and pleading. My son is seven now, I am forced to see that time flies when you're in Grad school, but now its time to slow down!