I am the parent of a child that I don’t know what to do with.

7 years ago, when I was gifted with my son Liam, I knew I could be a mom, a good mom, to this little boy. Even though I couldn’t make it work with his father and we split up before Liam was born, I just knew I would nail being Liam’s mom.

Boy, was I wrong.

In daycare, he peed on the playground. Not in his pants while playing on the playground, but actually on the playground. In preschool, he bit his friends. When asked “Why would you do that?” his simple reply was, “I just felt like it.”

In kindergarten, he threw fits on a daily basis. So much so that he wasn’t learning, and the teacher requested a conference.

I should probably interject here that I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education. So I should know how to teach my own kid to read, yes? I should be up on the cool ways to get my kid to be one of the kids that the teacher is happy to see walk through the classroom door every morning, right?

Again, wrong.

Part of the problem could be my diagnosis of clinical depression, but, seriously, who isn’t depressed these days?

Part of the problem could be that his father has the maturity of a sixteen-year-old boy, and has made it his mission over the last year to make my life absolutely miserable by insisting on being included in everything but not agreeing to counseling and testing to try and figure out how to help Liam. But then again, who doesn’t have an ex they wish they didn’t?

The fact of the matter is, I have no clue how to handle my child.

Liam is a sweet little boy. He only wants to make the grown-ups in his life happy, be the cool friend in his class. Except in the case where making the grown-ups happy and being the cool friend means doing something he doesn’t want to do. Ask him nicely to wipe the table after dinner, and sometimes he will, no problem. Most of the time, you would have thought I told him to take off his arm and feed it to the pigs. Everything is a fight. Everything is made 10 times harder. Every day I pick him up from school is a heavy feeling of dread and uncertainty in my gut of how he did while in the care of the school. What must his teacher think of me that Liam acts as he does?

I wish I could end this post with some insight or some great solution to fixing my child. Truth is, Liam doesn’t need “fixing”. He isn’t broken. I just haven’t figured out how to reach that part of him that hasn’t clicked yet. But I have hope- I love my little boy and am dedicated to finding out what it is he needs. I will scour the internet, work with his guidance counselor, and try to hear what he isn’t saying. Because his behavior is trying to tell me something, I just don’t know what it is yet.