Reply to Just curious: you feel judgment about the sacrifices you make for your teens?

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Reply to "Just curious: you feel judgment about the sacrifices you make for your teens?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, every mother thinks the amount of work they are putting into their children is absolutely necessary to their child's well being. But the reality is that there is a HUGE range of time parents put into their kids.  My close friend is a sahm of 3 school aged NT kids, and she legitimately feels like everything she does for them is necessary - and she will complain that her schedule is much busier than mine (I'm a full time big law partner).  She has lunch with one of her kids every day at school, she runs one of their extra curriculars, she volunteers in school, she takes them all to ECs, etc etc. She is convinced all of these things are necessary for their well being.  I work full time with one ADHD ASD kid, who isn't really interested in many ECs. I do pick up and drop off every day, he does a few activities before and after school, and I help with homework every day, plus manage therapies. I think I do enough for my DC.

I don't think 90% of what she does for her NT kids is necessary, because I don't do any of them for DS and he's fine, he's good in fact!

Point is that every parent thinks what they're doing is what their kids need, because that's what let's us sleep at night. I sleep at night, not feeling guilty that I'm not more available for DS.  My friend sleeps at night, knowing there's a purpose to her life.

It's quite possible you don't need to be doing the vast majority of what you are doing for your kid.  Frankly, child therapists are rarely a good gauge for what's necessary. It's rare to meet a ST who doesn't think your kid should stay in speech, an OT who doesn't think your kid should stay in OT, or a psych who thinks they wouldn't benefit. There are a million posts on this forum of SN parents wondering where the balance is between what is recommended therapy vs what is realistic (either because of time or money or overkill concerns).  We're all pretty aware that therapists may be overselling the benefits of their services to us.

On the flip side, your therapist thinks you're in overkill mode. He must be saying that based on something he's seen, like you're unhappy, or tired, or losing yourself.  His opinion is at least worth listening to, I think.  Because if he's right, there's no prize for being the best mommy martyr.  If he's wrong, or if you are good with your life, then listen to him but don't take the advice.

fwiw I've decided over the years to do a minimum of therapy for DS. I don't think he benefits much from it, in our case. I've also picked and chosen what fits healthily into the family lifestyle we want. And three days a week of therapy does not.  I typically keep to one thing at a time (focus on speech for a while, or now we're focusing on some academic tutoring).  I've also taken periods to do a "break" from therapies and overall worrying about DS - like, we may start a school year without therapies and do a mental reset to see how things go for a while.  The one psychologist we maintain a long term relationship with also commends me for this approach.  She celebrates this "intentional parenting approach", and I think she's tacitly suggesting that too many of the kids she sees have parents that are too enmeshed in their kids.  On the flip side, she's a therapist and may just say this to make me feel good (like, she'll tell every parent that they're doing an amazing job, whatever their approach) - which re-affirms that you shouldn't believe whatever all the child therapists are saying, because they're just saying what you want to hear.

To me, it sounds like multiple people in your life are giving you permission to step back, and may even think it would be beneficial for you to step back - both to you and your DD. I'd listen to that.  But it sounds like you don't want to listen to that, because you are vested in the decisions you've made.  That's fine too.  But it's unlikely all of that you're doing is really necessary.  [/quote]

Why does it sound like multiple people in my life think that it would be beneficial to DD to step back? I don't think that what I said implied that at all.

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Not PP, but because of your OP, where you talk about multiple people.

I too sense a lot of defensiveness in your responses and [b]do question the turn from ADHD/ASD to suicidal[/b].  It leads me to question a lot of what you saying here, and might be why your therapist is responding to you the way he is. Just something to reflect upon.  None of us here can know exactly what is going on and can only go by what you are writing and reading between the lines of that.[/quote]

OP here again. I guess this is just something I didn't understand, is that suicidality might be more (or at least different) what you would think a special needs parent has to deal with. This therapist was brand new and I was there for issues relating to my family of origin, not my present situation, and I had been pretty vague about DD's issues. I didn't mention the suicidality part. I don't want to tell people because it's sort of private, but I suppose it makes sense that people would "read though the lines" and think this is overkill.

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