As Ada was about to enter high school, some circumstances changed in our lives. We decided to pull the younger three kids out of public school and homeschool them. Since Ada was entering 10th grade and only had a few years left, we opted not to homeschool her. All my research and studying up to this point was regarding teaching younger grades, not high school. I felt it was already going to be a difficult adjustment and I didn't want to get in over my head.
A few days before school started, Ada came to us and asked if she could homeschool as well. We discussed why she desired this and what that would mean. She has a lot of anxiety, both social anxiety and performance anxiety. She gets overwhelmed with so many people in the same environment, such as the high school setting. She is also a perfectionist who doesn't do well with failure. This is a struggle she has had since she was young. In many instances she would not try anything new because she was afraid she wouldn't be good at it right away. Failure was filled with anxiety. She did not see it as a growth opportunity, something that could help her to learn and progress. For these reason, she was hoping to homeschool.
I told her we needed to take it to the Lord, that we both needed to pray about it and decide what was best. What we decided to do was dual enrollment, part of the day at public school doing classes such as math, seminary, and choir, and part of the day at home doing her other classes at her own pace online. She would not be graduating with a degree or walking at graduation with her graduating class, because I would be writing up her transcripts. She informed us that she was okay with this arrangement and that the Lord had told her this would be the best option for her at this time.
The questions still remain: were we giving in to her anxiety, feeding it and allowing it to control her life? Were we neglecting to teach her how to cope with it, because situations will always arise in her future life where she will have to confront the anxiety head on? We live in a world with other people; we have to learn how to cope and survive. I still don't know the answer to those questions. I trusted the Lord that we were doing the right thing and we moved forward with it. It's possible that all along, we all needed this homeschool experience together, to strengthen our family bonds to have that extra measure of spirituality I was able to provide in a home situation that they didn't get at school. We had much that we were faced with in the next few years; we needed that strong family bond that this opportunity brought to us.
It was during the next few years that Ada's struggles became overwhelming, to both her and to us. The behaviors she chose, her ways to cope with life, started to take control of her life. Without her realizing it, it controlled how she interacted with every person, it controlled her moods, it took away her peace. Those who struggle with addictive coping struggles don't understand how much their actions effect others. They bully. They are mean. They push family and friends away without realizing it. Their guilt causes them to isolate themselves more and more. And they turn to these behaviors to cope with the way they behave, to have the release that brings them temporary fulfillment. Then the cycle continues. These struggles change personalities. Living a life contrary to her value system caused her more depression and more anxiety.
The sad thing is, it's really hard to be around people who are angry and mean all the time. It is like you are allowing someone to beat you up each and every day. Because, emotionally, that's what they are doing. I understand addiction. I understand the person who deals with it. I have studied it quite a bit. I have seen loved ones struggle, and triumph. Because of that, all I knew to do was to continue to love her, even when she was mean. No matter what choices she made, even if we knew they were contrary to what would bring her ultimate happiness, we chose to love her. What good would it do any of us if we pushed her away? She already had a low self esteem. She already felt unlovable and not good enough. She needed to know that, as her parents, that love would never leave. Ever.
Ada's little sister, Mae, got the brunt of a lot of her anger through these years. And yet, Mae still loved her. She had this amazing, resilient love, a gift that I'm sure was given to her. She tried so hard to always show her love to Ada, even when Ada would push her away. Yet, she stilled tried. I don't think Ada ever realized how much her siblings loved her through this. Even at young ages, they knew she was hurting, that she needed an extra measure of love. They would give it any way they could, and never ask for it in return. They prayed for her, they served her, they tried to include her. I know her littlest brother, Ry, was one of the only ones who could make a difference sometime. With his gentle love, and his affectionate personality, he was the only one that could reach through her tough exterior with the simple act of giving her a hug. Truly, families are gifts from God, and each family member has unique gifts for helping each other through lives biggest trials.
That isn't to say it was always easy for the younger kids, though. Kids need boundaries, but each kid is unique. What works for one of my kids didn't necessarily work for Ada. We had very unique circumstances with her, mental illness issues that influences the way we raised her. The younger kids would often ask why she didn't have to do certain things that they did have to do. It wasn't fair, in their eyes. In truth, it probably wasn't. There are times that we were just tired of the fight, tired of having to pick our battles, battles that we fought every single day. But, as parents, we also had a unique understanding of what would be best for Ada. So the boundaries were unique to her. Did we mess up at times? Absolutely! But I will never deny that we did our best.
It's hard to know how much to share, and how to break this up into part 3. A lot of what happened during her high school years were the foundation for what happened her senior year, the most difficult year of all. As she reads this, some things might be difficult to read. I hope I share enough, especially for her to know, that she was loved. Even with how difficult things were, there was so much spiritual growth, so many spiritual miracles that happened, that I would never want to give those back. With each measure of difficulty we addressed an extra measure of love from God was given.
I will just touch on a few more things.
Her friendships: I mentioned that because of her anxiety, because of her coping behaviors, she would pull into herself and hide out in her room. That was her "safe" place. But, because of that, she didn't reach out to build friendships. She will contradict me and say that she did, but that they rejected her. And to some extent they did. Teenager's mental abilities are very immature. They don't look at the whole picture of someone's life and circumstances and judge from there on how to behave. They push people away, they don't give their friends the love that they need; in a word, they are self-serving most of the time. It's just the truth about this age of growth. We noticed that the type of friends Ada made at this time were, how do I say this, a bit broken. They all had situations in their lives, choices that they made, that made them unhappy a lot of the time. Ada was drawn to them. I believe there are a few reasons for this. I think it made her feel good to realize there were people like her that felt broken, but also that she wasn't quite as broken as them. I also think she felt she could help rescue them, the way she would have wanted to be rescued.
And lastly, I want to touch on things that I think I could have done better during this time, and things that I felt I did well: I feel like we could have done better her whole life in teaching her that she could succeed at doing hard things. In our desire to teach and correct behavior, I believe she felt she could never do anything right. So by the time she was in high school, by the time we tried extra hard to build her self esteem, it fell on deaf ears. She wouldn't believe us. We tried to give honest praise, filled with love, but she rejected it. I wish I would have been more excited for the things that she loved in her life, even if they were very different from things that I loved. I wish I would have given more hugs every day, given her gentle caressing touches, even when the porcupine attitude came out.
But what did I do right? Maybe she will have to help me with this. I would have to say that what I did right was to rely on the Lord. I prayed, oh so much, for her. I studied ways to understand her and love her in the way she needed. I went to the temple WEEKLY, because it was there that peace would come and I would be filled with the love of an Eternal Father who understands what it's like to have children with struggles. And I gave myself permission to honor her agency, while still setting boundaries in our home.
I know these posts are long, and that a lot was unsaid of these few years of her life. I felt this is what needed to be written, though. I hope, by sharing my story, that it reaches the heart of even one person who needed to hear it.
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