Sacrifice: A Mother's Anthem

If you have ever spent anytime on an online mommy forum you know mothers will often deck it out, fighting over what truly makes one a mother. Is it giving birth, wiping a runny nose? Is someone who adopts just as much a mother as the woman providing the genes?

I will not attempt to answer these questions. It would only lead to a fight. But I will say there is one thing that makes you a mother, it’s sacrifice. A lesson I’m quickly learning.

See my six-year-old is what I call a tigger girl. Remember that cartoon with lovable winni-the-pooh and huggable piglet. What fun characters. Who wouldn’t want a child with their personality. Well, my child resembles tigger. She bounces here, and there, with no thought, destroying random objects in her path. Not even glue can keep her in her seat at school. Instead of focusing on her reading assignments, my child is off day-dreaming about what adventures superman and the power rangers are off to and no matter how much discipline my husband and I and her teachers doll out, she can’t stop interrupting to tell her latest theory or insight. She will have breakdowns for no reason at all while insisting she has lost a favorite even though we know that toy is sitting on her bed.
     For the last month four letters have been floating across my mind. Four letters I had been refusing to focus on for so long. Just such simple letters I didn’t want to accept. Those letters are ADHD.

How could four letters hold so much meaning? But they do. While a diagnosis of ADHD, isn't the end of the world nor is it as bad as hearing your child has autism or leukemia, it does attack a mother’s hope and dreams for her child.  ADHD children have high dropout, suicide, promiscuity rates. 50 percent will fail at least one class in school. It makes holding down a job harder and a mother cry because she knows her child is smart, but her little mind just can’t focus enough to read a five-minute book for a teacher.

Yes, treatment can be effective, but ever looked up the side effects for them?  Those medicine inserts could scare anyone. But what can you do? Let your child keep floundering.

My husband and I have begun the steps to get our daughter tested and treated. We have already had one doctor tell us he knows she has it and more likely OCD. And just in case we weren’t worried enough, he let us know he has never seen a child be “cured” without medicine.  

I’m already giving up more of my writing time and possible hours/traditional work setting to  help teach my daughter lessons she might be missing in school. I know the wallet will probably be getting lighter. But my little girl has a dream. She wants to be a “pet doctor.” While I can always work or write a novel, God has only given me and my husband such a short season to try and help my daughter reach her dreams. And I’m going to do what I can to make sure those dreams come true.

source http://www.ldonline.org/article/5925/

Josette Downey  is the christian romance author of A Time to Say Goodbye and Bonds of Tradition. She has master’s degree in English from East Carolina University, and currently works for a premier test scoring company. She is the mother of a precocious six-year-old girl, who enjoys bugs, snakes and superman.  She enjoys southern cooking, reading and exploring emerging technology, but is best defined by her devotion to her faith and the empowerment of women in the modern world.

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