Mildly Infuriating
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Honestly? We had to rule with an iron fist from 8-14. It was brutal for her, brutal for us. The above situation with the standing at the sink for 6 hours? That kind of thing was common for a few years. Any time we let her go without doing them (or any chore, homework, etc) it's like she knew she got away with it and immediately her behaviour would worsen. She would try to get out of it again and again, regressing to crying etc. if we let her get away with something even once.
We had to stick to our guns, every single time. Eventually she would realise that doing dishes was something we were going to make her do, no matter what, and she couldn't do anything fun until they were done, and finally started just doing them.
However the thing about AuDHD kids (in my opinion) is that they cannot apply a lesson or rule to other common sense situations. Like, you say no food in your room, they think "This is candy, not food, therefore allowed" and you end up having to reiterate and refine the rule for each situation.
The same is true with them learning how to do any chore, school work, life skill like brushing their teeth. It will require an exhausting amount of micromanagement and honestly there were times when we cried, raged, or plain old gave up. Every life skill had to be taught, and each situation that it applied to had to be taught separately.
You say that your reminders anger him? Good. He can be angry, that is allowed. He has to respect you, but he can be angry when you make him do something. Remember that he is 8 and your window to change any dynamics is closing rapidly, so if you need to change your parenting style, get help and do it now!
What helped us with the reminders thing is remembering that people with adhd experience time differently, so when he needs to do something, give a soft reminder first "Hey in 5 minutes we need to do xyz." and also respect his interests, we never shut off her pc in the middle of a game or whatever. "After that game, I need you to do xyz."
Of course this gets push back, and that's when we had to get "mean". Taking away devices or scheduling when her internet or phone would not work were the big guns, but around 9 or 10 years old she went through a phase where no punishment or incentive did shit to sway her. She literally ended up in a completely bare room like it was a prison because she couldn't be reasoned with and nothing was a consequence to her. She just doubled down until we had to take something else away. This is typical of AuDHD kids I think, they are strong willed and can go full "monk" and nothing will bother them. Which sucks when you must get through to them when something is not ok. Thankfully that stage didn't last long and it quickly got better after that.
Also, we put her into social activities immediately and through her whole time in primary and high school. Kids with AuDHD are... assholes. People don't like them. Teachers don't like them. She would come home and tell me a teacher was mean to her and I felt terrible for her. Kids were just awful to her.
Putting her in drama classes, dance classes, judo, scouts, you name it meant she had to learn how to deal with other kids, and the acting and drama classes were great for helping her learn how to mask in public. The short one hour class meant everyone had a chance to cool off until next week.
We spent a lot of time watching her social interactions and asking questions about them, examining them with her. "Do you think that girl was backing away from you because you might have been in her personal space?" "Why do you think your friend got mad at you earlier?"
At home we don't have to mask, but in public, around others, the reality is we do. We cannot say to our friends mom "This is disgusting" when they ask what we think of dinner. We cannot tell a friend they look fat in that dress, or invade people's personal space etc.
When we don't learn how to act we hurt people we care about, and we end up hurting ourselves.
She's now 20, going to uni, and doing well. She still sucks with executive functioning, the dishes are still her nemesis, but I am so proud of her. For a while we wondered if she would ever be able to live independently, and now we are sure she will be ready in a year or two.
Sorry for the novel. I know how hard this is for you. Sending you strength!
Thanks for the novel - seriously. There have been times when I felt like my kid is just an asshole too, reading that was oddly healing. If I wasn't his loving father, I could easily write him off as no good. I see the good though, and I've worked to make him self-aware about the things he struggles with. He definitely knows he's time-blind.
Recently he told me he thinks I'm unreasonable, and I explained that it's now how I prefer to treat him, and that sometimes he's so unreasonable himself that being unreasonable is the only possible response. He seemed to understand. He knows we love him.
He's more ADHD than spectrum (according to the expensive private assessment we ended up getting after years of waiting). But I definitely see him completely failing to generalize rules. He seems to do better when he knows the reasons for things, but he will still struggle with any frustration, distraction, understimulation - basically executive dysfunction.
I can't imagine him even attempting to stick with a task for six hours, even in a completely dissatisfactory way. He would sooner fall asleep on the kitchen floor than even pretend to try to do dishes. So at least yours had that much going for her!
I appreciate the validation about ruling with an iron fist (as often as possible with a really soft glove on it, right?). I used to be the most easygoing one in the room, but dad life with AuDHD has turned me into a stereotypical stern-faced patriarch and I often struggle with the role self not matching my true self.
I do need to get him mixing with kids more often in clubs and what-not. He's a social sponge, and the more time he spends gently being asked not to act like shit by people who aren't me, the better for everyone in the long run.
I wish there was a silver bullet for the mess that gets caused when we let them off the hook one single time. I don't like being strict, it takes a toll.
I completely understand the toll that having to be strict all the time takes. My parents were abusive and I never wanted to be the strict parent. I wanted to be the loving hippie mom!
The pressure of knowing that we were the only ones who could raise her into a grown ass adult capable of experiencing all the good things in life are what kept us going though.
So yes, we had a glove on our iron fist. We knew we couldn't let her get away with anything but we tried to be as kind about it as possible, and any time she showed that she was accepting a punishment for screwing up, we would give her a way of "earning" her way out of some of it.
Earn an hour of screen time etc.
I agree I wish there was a silver bullet for any time we let her off the hook. Heck, any change in routine would cause a cascading effect, even something as simple as going away for the weekend as a family meant that all expectations about getting back into the routine of school and life when we returned were off the table.
School holidays? Fuck me, they were the worst for that.
Definitely make the effort if possible to get him into an after school activity at least once a week. Scouts were great for her because she also got to go camping and they often had boisterous children. The musical theatre was great because it attracted the "weird" kids who were more tolerant of her. We let her switch at the end of two terms and any term after, to any activity that wasn't unreasonably expensive to start.
Like no we aren't buying a full uniform for football or something, yes we will buy a basic leotard and shoes for dance, you know?
Feel free to pm me any time, I know it can be really lonely. My husband's parents raised 3 A types who became engineers and it wasn't until they were living with us and trying to get her to do anything themselves that they finally started to understand. No, we aren't letting her get away with stuff, yes we have expectations, no we don't want to raise an asshole. Man it's hard.
feels like reading my parenting journey. ours just turned 9 and is on "house arrest" like you described lol. after a couple years of horrendous behaviour with no consequences working, they decided it was a great idea to purposely fuck up an eye exam so they could get glasses like their friend and it was obvious they couldnt see with them. they ended up hiding them for MONTHS and would spend hours "looking" for them. they finally fessed up when we told them if they couldnt find them, we were taking all their pokemon money til they were paid for. we knew they were lying, and sadly they are a compulsive liar. even the therapist told us we were wasting our money bc he believes it is a will issue, not a skill issue. they are diagnosed with ODD but as an audhd person myself, i know they is audhd as well.
thank you for saying it got easier, sometimes i am terrified of what the teen years will bring..
Oh god, yes. We had to teach her how to lie when she was maybe 8 because she didn't get the concept and was being too blunt and hurting her friend's feelings lol. We often wished we hadn't afterwards though, because she became like this. She would do things very similar to this, and we learned we had to be really careful with her around doctors, teachers, etc.
For instance we got a call one day asking if we were food insecure at home. Apparently she had been begging for food from her friends and the lunch lady for months telling them we had no food at home, we were poor, and she had only been having bread and water. /facepalm
So I sent them pictures of her lunch cupboard (we started having her pack her own lunches very early to force the skill and executive functioning) which was overflowing with food and snacks.
I asked her why she did it and she really didn't have an answer.
ODD is tough to throw in the mix. I remember when she was a toddler she begged for ice cream and when I finally gave it to her she screamed "NO!" she didn't want that. ODD kids are like that lol, but take much longer to grow out of it.
I have a coworker who has a kid with ODD and the best advice I have after watching (and commiserating with) her, is be mean NOW because as soon as he had a little puberty in him she lost all control and ability to get him to do anything he didn't want to do. It's better to be a monster for a few years now so you can continue helping them later, you know?
Also for compulsive lying, I hated doing it, but I highly recommend during the early years using a technology tracking software on their devices. We used Qustodio. It works on most phones and devices and allows you to set times they can use them and times they will not work. It allows you to keep tabs on what they are searching for and more.
We used it early on to control how many hours a day she was on the device, and felt especially vindicated when we learned she was on it for hours during the school day, even after her school banned phones!
What made us put it on her phone though? She left her discord open on her laptop and I happened to glance at it and saw a concerning conversation when she was 12. Mind you, we are open minded and don't give a fuck if she wanted to masturbate or have sex when she was ready. We never snooped.
What I saw though was a sexual conversation and a lot of lamenting about her parents (lamenting is normal, and we never brought it up) with a man who seemed to be much older. He seemed like a good guy, seemed supportive and wasn't reinforcing her complaints or encouraging her isolation from us. Thank god.
Upon further snooping we realise he is fucking 19 and she has told him she is 18! She was catfishing that poor boy! We sat her down and spoke with her, asked her what the fuck she was thinking. Told her that if someone besides us had found out she could have accidentally sent that boy to prison and ruined the rest of his life!
Told her that it wouldn't matter if we didn't want to press charges or she didn't want to press charges, if the wrong person found out it wouldn't have mattered, they would have arrested him, sent him to prison, and eventually charged him for being a sex offender.
We made her tell him her real age and stop talking to him. To his credit, the moment she told him how old she really was, he noped out of there, removed her, and went non-contact.
So yeah. Qustodio was a necessary evil. We never turned on the web search tracking or the message tracking, but told her that we reserved the right to check her messages any time. We did use it to prevent her from downloading weird apps constantly, and to schedule times she was allowed to be on the phone.
Like... not during school hours and not at 2 am on a school night. You know.
She was able to "get around it" by clicking menus fast, but it would still log that she was on it or doing something with it, so we would take it away after a talk when this happened. When she hit 14 we turned off everything, and just monitored, and only turned on the block as needed.
Sorry you're going through it now, I see you. I appreciate how hard it is to be the "mean parent". <3
thank you so much, i dont have a lot of support that understands what we are dealing with, so it feels good to not feel like a piece of shit over all this stuff. it is so dangg hard!! my parents just whupped my ass instead of parenting, so i feel like i'm making shit up as i go lol, no good examples to look to even if my child was a "normal kid."
I feel you on that. You are welcome to DM me if you ever need support, I am no expert and have fucked up more times than I would like to admit, but I have been there before at least. <3
hey, if you can admit you've fucked up, you're already ahead. i may take you up on that sometime :)