(Photo Credit Unsplash – Itai Aarons)
By Jane Korvemaker
It’s hard to imagine what my own mother must have thought about parenting me during my turbulent teen years, but I know that parenting my teen has been an exhausting journey. I typically love roller coasters, but this one jumps from gleeful anticipation to nausea to wondering where I managed to miss seeing the waterfall that drenched me, all to be repeated in some cyclic and aerodynamic form.
Those days when it’s a downward spiral and it feels as though my stomach is attempting to wrangle itself out of my throat are terrible, physically and spiritually. When I cannot turn my face to the sun because the pressure of that downward spiral hijacks my freedom to change perspective, it’s hard to grasp whatever hope is left within me before it flies off. Unlike a roller coaster, sometimes the momentum isn’t resolved in a smooth upward ride, but rather like the upward track was rebuilt with scraps.
Yet sometimes those downward dives turn out to be much smaller than I thought, or sometimes the height to which the track climbed was built intentionally and the valley was anticipated and an attempt at quality assurance was made for the after-ascent. I have to actively remind myself not to remain in stunned disbelief that it was smooth (and we’re uninjured), but to compliment the navigation and the smoothness of the ride to my teen.
The Stress of Neurodivergence
My child’s counsellor has reminded my husband and I many times that parents of children with ADHD have consistently reported stress at home at much higher levels than those with children of other neurodivergences and of other mental illnesses. I’ve discovered that parenting neurodivergent children amplifies and makes more unstable all the stresses that normally take place. The constant questioning can be debilitating:
‘Will she ever be able to resolve her ADHD impulse control issues?’
‘When will he come to a place where he can manage to catch his emotional dysregulation before it consumes him?’
‘Will she be able to hold a job and be responsible or will her ADHD inattentiveness lead others to believe she is unreliable?’
For the record, these are all thoughts that have hijacked my brain on multiple occasions. I am still a student in learning to let go of my own anxieties about my children and to trust that I am giving my everything, which is all that God asks of me.
Learning to Trust
Whether dealing with regular or irregular struggles, it can be hard to maintain hope as parents. How do we build hope into our parenting journey?
The first step is to trust that God is faithful. God loves me and my child more than I ever could dream. The Scriptures are the story of his love; faithfulness to his promises throughout the ages. He has been faithful to me and he will be faithful to my child. He has made it safe to trust in him, and that trust produces the seed of hope, which will not be fruitless.
Secondly, if hope in God is made through trust in faithfulness, we can reflect God’s light by being faithful to our child. They long to be known and to be loved, so here are some ideas:
- Discover something new together (have I interested you in bird watching before?)
- Plan a bike adventure
Make a goal to:
- do a Lord of the Rings marathon (or Marvel? other beloved series?);
- play two different board games a week for the rest of summer;
- plan get-togethers with your child to do with his or her friends (have they done murder mysteries yet? Board games night?)
The act of planning activities together affirms core values. It tells our children that we want to spend time with them and that we enjoy it and want to do it again. This helps them to understand that they are known and that they are loved. By envisioning our future together, even if it’s only an activity at the end of the week, we establish our faithfulness to our children. We too are safe for our child to entrust their future, planting the seed of hope.
Radical Love
To love radically means we are willing to divest ourselves of our arrogance through humility for the good of the other. This process can be painful because I, for one, often underestimate how deep my own arrogance can run in me. ‘I really didn’t want to know why Metal Sonic is so much cooler than Sonic and the rest of his gang, but I will listen to your two reasons and a very long ramble because I love you, and -wait. Did you just say that there’s a Sonic 3 movie coming out soon? Wasn’t Jim Carey in the last one? And – (scrolling madly) – Keanu Reeves is in this one?! Who’s Shadow…?’
I digress.
We must realise that our love is based not on ourselves, but on God who first loved us, and continues to love us in all our finite, stumbling, and Sonic-blubbering creatureliness that we are. Being humble is necessary for Christ to increase in us. Admitting not only my own faults but also when my faults contribute to hindering God’s love from being poured out from me is one of the hardest lessons I have been learning these parenting years. Yet his oil of gladness is the balm that can smooth a rough roller coaster track, and it comes only from allowing him space to live in me.
God is trustworthy, though. He has proved time and again he is faithful. As Sarah Kroger reminds me often in this song (which I listen to on-the-regular now), God seeks the good in us and for us – we are safe to hope in him.
Jane Korvemaker is a B.C. transplant who lives in Saskatoon with her husband, three children, and mischievous cat. She holds a Certificate in Culinary Arts, Bachelor of Theology, Certificate in Youth Ministry Studies, and is a Level Two Catechist in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. She hopes to one day find the perfect pairing of bacon, beer, and Balthasar. She semi-regularly writes at ajk2.ca
