You know when you are sure something is going to be unpleasant, but you try to talk yourself into a better attitude about it, and then it comes and it’s even WORSE than you were originally expecting and you’re like, oh hell fucking no. Enough of this shit.
Well this has been one of those weeks.
I knew it was going to suck. I KNEW it. But I tried to go into it with a positive attitude. I told myself maybe it would be okay to have short periods, and maybe conferences wouldn’t be as exhausting as I was expecting, and maybe they would even feel gratifying in some ways.
But nope. Having short periods all week was even more energy intensive, and yet less productive, than I was expecting. Conferences have been even more exhausting than I worried they would be, and since students were not given a chance to complete a reflection they haven’t been “student led” at all. We just sit there trying to think of things to say about students who are doing fine, but whose parents requested a conference anyway, and who are supposed to be showcasing some of their early school year accomplishments but instead are just sitting their responding to our questions monosyllabically.
I leave work every day super late and super drained and feeling incredibly resentful.
Today I asked my principal if next week we could unpack what worked and what didn’t this week and she said, no, we have too many other things on our Wednesday meeting agenda.
So we’re not even going to learn from this ridiculously ineffectual experience, which means we’ll probably repeat it next year.
I’m thinking of sending out a google doc or form and asking people for their input so at least we have SOME RECORD of how awful this felt, because I really do not trust our admins to understand what a mess this week was.
I have really been struck this week with how hard it is to parent a middle schooler with ADHD. Especially since I also have ADHD and struggle mightily with executive functioning myself. And when my husband, who is incredibly well meaning and handles most situations calmly and effectively, periodically forgets what is developmentally appropriate for middle schoolers who are not neurodivergent, let alone those who are.
So many of my students this year seem very needy. I need to have directions written a million different ways. I need to have copies of my notes for them, since they can’t seem to write effectively with a pencil. They are absent all the time which means I’m constantly creating supports so they can finish work at home, and then following up with them when they never get the work done at home. I gave our first assessment last week and seven kids missed it between the three classes and I’ve spent my lunch and after school half hours ALL WEEK giving make up tests. Everything is requiring twice as much effort and time as it did before. I swear it’s worse than last year, and I can’t tell if that’s true or just that I expected last year to be a raging dumpster fire and expected this year to be just a smoldering dumpster fire and so the fact that the dumpster fire is, in fact, still raging, is throwing me off guard.
Oh, and lest I come off as the glue holding all sorts of shit together, let me exemplify one of the ways I am a hot, hot mess, that is surely contributing to the chaos.
Remember how I couldn’t tell if my daughter still had lice? That is because she probably never had lice. What happened was that, last Thursday night she was scratching her head like crazy, so I asked her what was wrong. When she showed me her head, it was covered in white stuff, and her scalp had red, patchy spots. Then she told me that on Saturday, at her friend’s birthday party, a guest’s hat had fallen off and when she picked it up and put it on, he told her he had lice.
So of course I assumed she had lice.
And I stripped her bed and combed out her hair and did all of those things, which in retrospect I think were probably the right moves.
But then I didn’t really see anything I was sure was lice on the towel, but I just assumed I didn’t know what I was looking for and decided that lice was still the problem. Which means I kept washing bedding and towels and kept combing out her hair every three days, even though I didn’t have concrete proof she had lice.
Except the third time I combed it out I saw all the white stuff again and I freaked out. And then I realized the white stuff was probably just dandruff, which my daughter has never had before so I wasn’t used to seeing on her head. But what about the kid who said he had lice?! And of course it hit me, that kid was just fucking with her. He probably didn’t want her putting on his hat and told her he had lice so she’d take it off. Kids do dumb shit like that ALL THE TIME.
So yeah, my daughter doesn’t, nor did she, have lice. But since I didn’t trust my ability to figure it out for myself, and just started blindly following the directions I was given years ago, I didn’t realize that.
But honestly, the fact that parents have to know how to diagnose and combat lice infections, or cough up hundreds of dollars to have someone come comb out their kids hair, is some serious bullshit. Still, I should know this is a weak spot of mine because our bed bug experience, and the many tens of thousands of dollar wide hole it blew up in our savings, has me seriously scared when it comes to small bug infestations. Like I get blindly terrified when my kids get a bug bite I cannot immediately identify, even if it’s clear it happened at a park. I just need to accept that I can’t be level headed about any of it without professional guidance, and I suppose that is what I learned from this experience.,
See! I’m trying to learn from this dumpster fire scenario, instead of just looking away and pretending it never happened! Even though every time I think about it I want to punch a hole if my own reflection, I’m so, so mad at myself.
Okay, enough of my pity party. Tomorrow is Friday. Maybe I’ll feel better after a three day weekend.
A girl can dream.
