When a Boring Week Is a Good Week

Autism, ADHD waiting lists and the financial guilt of not working

 

Sometimes, a boring week is actually a really good week.

When I sat down to record this week’s Mumma Chats, I genuinely thought I had nothing to talk about. It had been one of those weeks where nothing particularly exciting had happened. We’d done the school runs, made dinners, washed uniforms, negotiated bedtimes and generally just got on with everyday life.

And then I realised that, for us, that is actually something worth celebrating.

In our NeuroSpicy household, a boring week usually means everyone is settled. Nobody is refusing school. Nobody is completely overwhelmed. We aren’t firefighting or trying to work out how we’re going to get through the next day. Life is just ticking along.

“For us in this house, a boring week is a good week because that means that everybody is happy, everybody is settled, we are not in battle with things.”

After some of the weeks we’ve had over the years, I will VERY happily take boring.

Of course, I then managed to turn my lovely boring week into conversations about autism, ADHD waiting lists, work, money and mum guilt... because apparently I can’t just enjoy the boring.

The mum guilt I wasn’t expecting

One of the things that caught my attention this week was the National Autistic Society talking about autism being genetic.

You’d think that would just feel validating. There have been so many conversations and theories about autism over the years, so having more understanding about where autism comes from is a good thing.

But my first reaction wasn’t actually relief.

It was guilt.

Because when you’re a NeuroSpicy mum raising NeuroSpicy children, you don’t just read something like that as an interesting piece of information. You immediately start thinking about your own family.

I know what it feels like when my own brain makes life harder. I know what anxiety feels like. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by things that other people seem to just get on with. And when I see my girls struggling with some of those same things, there is a part of me that thinks, Did I give them this?

Logically, I know there is much more to it than that. But mum guilt isn’t particularly interested in logic, is it?

I can be grateful that we understand our girls and can support them in ways that I wasn’t supported growing up, while also wishing I could take some of the harder parts away from them.

Those two feelings can exist together.

ADHD doesn’t wait while you sit on a waiting list

That conversation then led me onto something else I’d seen this week about ADHD assessment waiting times and restrictions being introduced in some areas.

This really bothered me because, as I said on the podcast:

“ADHD doesn’t wait.”

People aren’t usually seeking an ADHD assessment because they fancy adding another appointment to the calendar.

“People aren’t going for an ADHD assessment for a jolly.”

By the time somebody asks for help, there is normally a reason. Something isn’t working. Something is difficult. They’re looking for an explanation or for support.

I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 38, and before that I spent a lot of time wondering why I found certain things so difficult. Why could everyone else seemingly manage things that completely overwhelmed me? Why did my brain work like this?

At times, the question underneath all of that was simply:

“Am I broken?”

Getting diagnosed didn’t suddenly fix everything. I didn’t walk out with a brand new brain and an instruction manual unfortunately . But it gave me an explanation. It meant I could start understanding myself rather than constantly blaming myself.

It has been similar with seeking assessments for our girls. We never wanted a diagnosis because we wanted a label to stick on them. We wanted to understand them.

When your child is struggling, understanding why can completely change the way you respond. Instead of only seeing the behaviour in front of you, you start understanding what might be happening underneath it.

That matters.

Which is why I find it so difficult when we talk about people waiting years for assessments as though they’re simply waiting for a piece of paper.

Life carries on while you’re waiting.

School carries on. Work carries on. Parenting carries on. Mental health doesn’t politely put itself on hold until your appointment comes through.

And one of the things I talked about in the episode was my own experience of trying to access ADHD support. I was essentially functioning too well to get much help.

But surely that’s exactly when support should come?

“I had to crumble... be at the bottom of my capacity before anybody would listen.”

We shouldn’t have to wait for that point.

Then there’s the money thing...

The other thing that has been playing on my mind recently is money.

Maybe it’s because Christmas is creeping closer and suddenly you start thinking about presents, food and everything else that comes with it. But I’ve noticed that familiar financial guilt popping up again.

I don’t currently earn, and sometimes I really struggle with that.

I know what I do every day. I’m here when one of the girls needs me. I can drop everything if school calls. I deal with appointments, school stuff, uniforms, shoes, food shopping, cooking and the approximately 4,782 other tiny things that seem to come with running a family.

But knowing all of that doesn’t magically stop me feeling guilty about not bringing money into our household.

Because the difficult part is that not working hasn’t really felt like a choice.

Between the girls, we’ve had around four years of school refusal. There were periods where I genuinely had no idea what the next morning was going to look like. How do you promise an employer you’ll be at work for 9am when you don’t know whether your child will manage to get through the school gates?

At one point I was doing six school runs in one day.

Drop one off. Come home. Get the other one. Go back out. Pick somebody up at lunchtime. Take them back again. Then start the afternoon pick ups.

Where exactly was the job supposed to fit?

Apparently I was a lady of leisure

There’s one conversation from that time that has always stuck with me.

I bumped into somebody I hadn’t seen for a while and they asked whether I was working. I said no, and they told me how jealous they were that I had the luxury of being a “lady of leisure”.

If only.

I think that phrase stuck with me because, from the outside, not working looked like freedom.

But I didn’t feel free at all.

I wasn’t spending my days having long lunches, wandering around the shops and wondering how to fill my time. I was trying to support a child who was struggling to get into school while keeping everything else going around her.

At some points, my days were being dictated entirely by whether the girls could manage school and when they needed me.

“At some points I was doing six trips to school.”

There simply wasn’t room for a conventional job around that.

And that is the bit I think people sometimes miss when they look at a mum who doesn’t work and assume she has chosen not to.

For me, not working might have looked like freedom from the outside, but actually I’d lost a type of freedom.

Before having children, earning my own money gave me independence. It gave me choices. It meant that if I wanted something or wanted to go somewhere, I didn’t have to think about whether the money I was spending had been earned by somebody else.

Then suddenly I couldn’t work.

“That kind of freedom, that financial freedom that I was used to had been taken away from me because I wasn’t able to work.”

And I think the next thing I said in the podcast probably sums up where I am with it better than any lovely conclusion I could try to write:

“That holds a level of kind of heaviness on me, I suppose.”

It does.

I know we are incredibly fortunate that our family has been able to survive on one income. I will never pretend otherwise. But being grateful for that doesn’t mean I can’t also feel the sadness or guilt that comes with losing something I used to have.

Sometimes two things are true at the same time.

I can know that being available for my girls is the right thing for our family and still wish the circumstances were different.

I can appreciate that my husband financially supports our family and still feel the weight of knowing that responsibility sits with him.

And I can know all the ways I contribute without that automatically switching off the little voice that says, but you don’t earn.

I don’t have a lovely positive conclusion to that one because, if I’m honest, I haven’t worked it out yet.

And maybe that’s a conversation for another day.

So, what did I achieve this week?

After all of that, I came back to the same place I started.

It was a boring week.

The girls went to school. Everyone was relatively settled. We did the school runs, made the dinners, washed the clothes and got through another ordinary week of family life.

There have been times when I would have given anything for life to feel this ordinary.

And I’d forgotten over the last couple of weeks that I normally finish Super Mumma podcast episodes by asking my guests to complete one little sentence:

I am a Super Mumma because...

I realised I should probably be asking myself too.

So this week my answer was:

“I am a Super Mumma because I have achieved a boring week.”

And I’ll very happily take another one next week.