Wow, did I speak too soon

I firmly resolve to never admit in writing to being even momentarily pleased with my children. Two of them have spent this afternoon being the biggest assholes they can possibly be. I have left my cool so far behind, I barely remember feeling anything other than rage and despair about this whole motherhood thing.

I hardly ever comment on the trauma of step-parenting on this blog, but this time I simply must. I believe that putting a child on psychotropic medications for no other reason than that a parent can not or will not handle said child is nothing short of child abuse. Take a perfectly happy kid, put her on an SSRI because she doesn't listen (I've looked at the specs of the SSRI, by the way, and nowhere does it say that it makes children behave - on the contrary, the specs explicitly say this medication is not for use by children), and then be totally fucking amazed when that child becomes a jittery, orally-fixated basketcase. Her mother actually gave her a rubber thong to wear around her neck and chew on like a portable petri dish to try to stop her from eating her hair - obviously a better solution than not drugging the shit out of her as an alternative to actual parenting. There is nothing as consistently frustrating in my life as loving these children and seeing so clearly when they are being mistreated and being able to do exactly nothing about it.

Oh, and girly's cough is back with a vengeance, boy twin has a fever, and my husband and I are both starting to feel a little under the weather. I was thinking earlier, after girly threw up from the phlegm, that the best thing about having only one child must be the knowledge that the vector of illness doesn't have all that far to go - in our house, it can take literally weeks for an infection to burn its way all the way out - but listening to my children pick and fight and torture each other all. goddamned. afternoon makes me think that maybe there are other downsides to this large family thing, also. Happy fucking mother's day.