Sometimes Mom Just Needs to Cry

On being a mom with ADHD just trying to feed her distractible kid.

Welcome! Parenting in Hard Mode is for those of us who are raising social justice-minded families and getting real about our mental health—all while navigating the ups and downs of parenting when life is on the difficult setting. I’m a sober bisexual Latina mom with ADHD who gave birth during the early days of the pandemic—which pretty much sums up my own “hard mode.” Please subscribe to join our community of parents who totally *get* it.

I’m currently sitting in my home office, crying.

It came out of nowhere and quite suddenly—or did it? As a parent, I am never not thinking about my kid. I think that’s common for most of us; that whole saying about having a child is like watching your heart walk around outside of your body is so true. The reason people say that is because it’s scary to watch this human that you created say and do things that are outside of your control, that might not be safe for them.

It’s constantly beautiful and painful and scary and joyful and amazing and frustrating and boring and exhilarating and exhausting and overwhelming and incredible and so fun, all at once, to watch the life of this little creature happen.

And sometimes, it makes you cry.

Right now, I am feeling more of the negatives than the positives. And so, I am taking some time away and letting myself cry.

Mom with ADHD Meets Kid with ADHD

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a growing realization that my husband and I need to start learning ASAP about how ADHD presents itself in young children. As a mom with ADHD and someone who was diagnosed late in life, I’ve been on the alert and pretty much assumed that Rio was likely to have ADHD, too. After all, it’s 70% inheritable, and I’d prefer to play the odds.

It was more-of-less confirmed by our pediatrician earlier this year at his four-year-old check-up, and I’m glad we had a really good talk with the doctor about it early on.

The thing is, there’s nothing truly terrible going on right now. A lot of what’s happening is typical behavior for preschool-aged kids, and the ADHD just makes it 100x more difficult. Not to mention that I myself have ADHD, which already makes many things in my life more difficult, and dad is neurodivergent, too.

So what do you get when you take two neurodivergent adults who have had only a few years to get used to their own diagnoses and are still a long way from figuring out how to best handle things, and give them full-time jobs and a rambunctious kid who is always dialed up to 11? Well… crying in the office at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, apparently.

The thing that broke me today is something silly. Or at least, something that probably shouldn’t been as big a deal as it felt like it was in the moment. But here it is anyway.

How Do I Feed My Highly Distractible Kid?

We’ve been struggling with feeding our son for months now. And probably partially for the majority of his life. It’s nothing supremely unusual; just that he prefers goldfish over broccoli, and his diet consists of 80% food that most people would put in the “junk” category though I am working on establishing a healthy relationship with food that doesn’t include demonizing some foods as “good” and others as “bad.”

Still, it’s fucking hard.

There are days when he eats almost nothing but an assortment of chips-like things and cookies, and maybe a banana here and there. I don’t stress these days when they’re happening because, well, they happen. And he eats pretty decently at school, if I’m honest. Probably the one place where peer pressure isn’t so bad if he’s happily having some green beans.

Overall, I don’t really worry about his nutrition that much. He’s growing just fine, and his development is completely on track. And, truth be told, he is nowhere near as picky of an eater as many, many of the stories I’ve heard online. I remember reading somewhere that your child isn’t really picky if you can name 30 foods that he can eat, and I definitely could name more than that. Granted, a lot of them fall into the processed food category but he still eats a handful of fruits, some veggies at school, and some more solid food that falls somewhere in between processed and whatever the opposite is. Unprocessed, I guess?

But all of that isn’t even that big of an issue. The issue—or at least the one that made me cry today—is that it sometimes feels like pulling teeth to try to get our child to eat. And sometimes it’s fine, and I can let it go. And other times, it’s so frustrating that I want to cry—and apparently actually cry.

There are so many days when I feel like all I am doing is trying to figure out how to make my kid’s life happier. I’m talking to his daycare about accommodations and realistic expectations, I’m researching the best inflatable bed to take on our vacation this week, I’m figuring out the best language to use when explaining to him why bedtime is important… and I’m working so, so hard to feed my family and to ensure that my child has a much healthier relationship with food than his dad and I ever could.

Yet every day, it feels like I am walking this tiny tightrope of trying to survive, to feed myself, to feed my family, to cook something we enjoy, to do this, and to do that, and it’s just exhausting. And the most exhausting thing is just trying to make sure that my highly-distractible kid just eats something.

Seriously.

Just. Eat. ANYTHING!

“He’ll Eat When He’s Hungry”… Really?

I’m working on an intuitive eating relationship with myself, and I’m trying to do the same for my child. But it’s really difficult to do that when your child doesn’t eat. But let me explain a bit further.

All my kiddo wants to do is play. Play, play, and play all day, and watch TV a bunch, and then play some more.

Putting aside that that is pretty freaking exhausting, too, my son is struggling with fully feeling his body during these times because he’s so hyperfocused on whatever it is he’s doing. That hyperfocus—and especially that difficulty eating throughout the day when your body is hungry—is actually pretty common for those with ADHD. But I’ll be honest: I never had that issue. I’m highly food motivated and I love to eat. Always have!

My son seems to be somewhat food motivated (I mean, cookies and cupcakes, amirite?), but mostly he just wants to be entertained. Even when playing on his own, he’s highly engaged and hyperfocused. And so… he doesn’t eat.

He forgets to eat for hours and hours and hours.

And it’s not for lack of us trying! This morning, his dad and he went on a hike, and I had been in such a good flow yesterday while food prepping that I even managed to cut up a bunch of fruit for them to take on their hike.

Know what my kid ate so far today? (Remember, it’s 4pm.) He had the better parts of two mini donuts, half of the icing of a cupcake… and I think that’s it?

Pretty much every parent I’ve talked to and experts I’ve read from would say, “Let him trust his body. When he’s hungry, he’ll eat.”

BUT WILL HE?

Here’s the thing about the advice that we always here: It’s general, and therefore often applies very easily to neurotypical people but not so much to those of us whose brains are wired differently.

I know that my son won’t starve, I’m not afraid of that. But I am afraid of what happens on days like today when he doesn’t eat for hours and hours. Because let me tell you… it’s not pretty.

If I relax about it, put out some snacks, even let him eat an obscene amount of goldfish crackers… he won’t eat much overall. And then the afternoon or, more often, bedtime becomes a complete nightmare with a meltdown like you’ve never seen before.

So what do I do instead? I end up quasi-forcing him to eat by spoon feeding him something that he likes that’s more on the “solid food” scale, like those canned Annie’s version of SpaghettiO’s.

It can get extremely frustrating because, HELLO!, this child is fully capable of eating himself. And he does! Plenty of times.

But for the most part, most evenings, either me or my husband are having to take this spoon-feeding approach because the alternative is everyone flipping out at bedtime and us not really being the kind of parents we want to be. Yet… constantly reminding him to eat and putting a spoon in his mouth feels wrong, too.

Am I Creating an Eating Disorder Here?

The worry I go back and forth on with this current food situation is whether I’m creating an eating disorder for my son by always emphasizing that he needs to eat. I mean, seriously, it doesn’t feel good to do that. But it also doesn’t feel good to see him suffering and crying and just overall not doing well after a day of barely eating. I just don’t know what to do anymore, and I don’t know what the right answer is.

My husband hates that we have to spoon feed him, and I get it. I don’t like it either, for both the are-we-giving-him-an-eating-disorder reason and because he’s four years old and is fully capable of putting a spoon in his own mouth.

But of course, neither of us likes the way that our lives devolve when our child doesn’t eat. Honestly, we only have so much emotional capacity during the day and sometimes I just don’t have the figurative spoons to feed myself, much less deal with all of the whining, crying, screaming, and hitting that my son does when he finally melts down at the end of the day.

Seriously, what am I supposed to do?

Today, as I walked away from the kitchen on my way to cry, it was because I found out and realized that Rio had eaten so little today and I was just so overwhelmed by it.

Overwhelmed because I had just made a really delicious late lunch/early dinner, and I knew that Rio wouldn’t touch any of it. Overwhelmed because I worked so hard yesterday to prepare food for the week and lots of fruit options for him to eat on the hike, and he didn’t touch it.

I know it’s common for parents to feel frustrated when their kids don’t eat what they made, and I don’t care most of the time because I know that’s a thing that happens and it’s not a big deal… but today, it just felt devastating.

I’m crying again, finishing writing this almost an hour later, because I still don’t know what to do. I am still devastated because I don’t know how to get my kid to eat. I am still scared because I don’t want to give him an eating disorder. I am still frustrated because I know that, if he doesn’t eat or just barely eats, this evening is going to be terrible and everyone is going to end up crying.

Truth be told, I’m currently supposed to be working on a project that will fulfill my life’s goal. I mean, literally, I have a deadline tomorrow. But am I doing it? No, not at the moment. Because at the moment, I am crying because my kid is just too distracted to eat and I don’t know what to do about it, and I just can’t handle another evening meltdown.

The last time I wrote something here—which already isn’t happening as much as I’d like—it was about my sobriety (which YAY!) but the time before that was another one of these long, difficult pots. I don’t want this space to become just me complaining and crying about the difficulties of being a neurodivergent parent with a neurodivergent kid, but that’s what it is today. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to read. I guess it’s just what I needed to write.

That’s all for now.

Can you relate or have any advice or want to give me a virtual hug? Let me know!

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Abrazos,

Your friendly neighborhood sober bisexual Latina mom with ADHD