The Narrow Ridge

Recently I was having a conversation with a close friend about the many challenges we experience parenting Matthew. As I’ve said before on this blog, most of what is hard about Matthew these days has nothing to do with his adoption and everything to do with his delays and special needs, which we are still only beginning to uncover (at least that’s how it feels).

We had a lovely Christmas break for the first week, but the second week, we noticed that Matthew was getting a little discombobulated. I’m not sure if I have written this before, but after a terrible trial with Ritalin last October, we switched to Adderall and had great success for a couple months helping Matthew be more focused and less impulsive. In early December, at a follow up appointment with our neurodevelopmental pediatrician, she urged us to move up his dosage of Adderall a small amount, with hopes that he’d have even more relief from some of his impulsive and hyperactive behavior.

So we did, right before the start of break. Well, the first week we noticed he was more sleepy and lethargic, but eventually as the meds seemed to take hold of him more, he started showing signs of aggression, increased tics, and a return to the level of impulsivity he had formerly seen.

For a few days at least, both Aaron and I thought his changes in behavior were due mostly to the changes in routine—ie. he wasn’t going to preschool, and the holidays had changed our family schedule in significant ways.

However, early last week as we returned to the routine, his behaviors continued to escalate. The hardest thing we’ve been dealing with is his increased aggression, which is saddening to me and also makes me very empathetic towards him.

Finally late last week I scheduled an urgent care appointment with our family pediatrician, who agreed with me that something neurological was going on for Matthew—and so now we are in the midst of shifting his meds, paying more attention to his environment, and trying to enact some positive changes so that all the negative behaviors go away and we can once again enjoy our sweet boy.

So back to this conversation I was having with a friend. Recently I have found a metaphor that is helpful to me in thinking about parenting Matthew: With our first two kiddos, who grew in my body and were with us from the moment they arrived in the world, parenting feels like a wide path. At the edges of each path is a steep decline and rocky ground, but as long as we stay on the path, we do fine. If we get too far to the side and start falling off the edge, we have to work hard to correct our direction to get back on the path. But in general, the path is wide and gracious.

With Matthew, sometimes I feel like we are walking a narrow ridge—if we keep our feet straight ahead of us, one in front of the other, the path is straight and we can manage. But one misstep to the left or right, and we are slipping down a steep, rocky mountainside. And the amount of effort it takes to get back to the narrow ridge is no small feat sometimes.

The good news about this metaphor—and its translation into our real, day-to-day lives, is that it is possible to find a path with Matthew where we can exist in relative peace and harmony. Every single day (when things are going well) is not an arduous climb through perilous terrain. But it also reminds me that when we do slip down from the narrow ridge (often through no fault of our own), the climb back up is challenging and takes a great deal of energy.

If you are a praying person, we would greatly appreciate your prayers in this season. Things are a little bit better with Matthew than they were last week, but he’s still showing a lot of aggression and impulsivity—so much that his teachers and others who care for him each day are sharing with us about it. We are grateful for the many folks in our community and family who help care for our boy. He’s lovely and wonderful, but right now he’s also exhausting.

And I’m pretty sure life is a little exhausting for him right now too as he’s trying to navigate a body that doesn’t always cooperate and try to live in a world where he has very little skills in communication. Poor guy.

But we carry on, knowing that parenting this little human being is part of our calling and purpose in life, and that although we take two steps forward and then one backward, those forward steps are SO important in helping Matthew learn, grow, and move toward adulthood.