Frustrated

It's soul-baring time! 

Today is one of those days when, morning cuppa joe notwithstanding, I just feel tired and discouraged. 

We had been scaling back on Ian's ADHD meds since his improved sleep (due to melatonin, thank Jenny!) had seemed to be affecting his behavior and impulse control for the better. And since I already feel so ambivalent about the meds, as helpful as they are in some areas, any opportunity to scale back is welcome. 

So things were going fairly well until today. It is 12:45 p.m. and not a scrap of schoolwork has been done. Even my offer of a juicy readaloud has gone unanswered. Normally, he looks at his list of weekly to-dos, picks out five things, and sets to it, with minimal reminding. Today, I feel like we're back to where we were a few months ago. I've reminded him several times, and each time he says something to the effect, "Oh Mom, I'm sorry!" but next thing I know, he's drawing faces on his sisters' stomachs or playing Don't Break the Ice with them. 

Which is all well and good, it's not like he's juggling knives in the middle of the street, but it's very frustrating. I feel like I either have to be the policeman, standing over him and intoning "FOCUS!" or completely ignore the situation and go read a book (which I've done). That's the more relaxing option as far as our relationship goes, but it doesn't provide any consequences or motivation to think beyond 'what I feel like doing right this moment.' Sigh. Can you tell I'm not feeling so highly effective today?

On top of that, I'm reading this fascinating book called Healing ADD: The Breakthrough Program That Allows You to See and Heal the 6 Types of ADD, and the most enlightenment I'm getting is to recognize all these characteristics in MYSELF. Terrific! We're just one big flaky family, fumbling our way along and trying to figure out how three winter coats and one lunchbag can be missing.