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Challenges
I think the hardest thing has been Stephanie’s alienation from others her own age. She has a remarkable connection with younger children, older children, and adults, but relating to her own age group has always been a struggle. She had my husband, myself, and her sister that understood her and loved her with total abandon, but then to bump into not having a best friend like other kids, or running off and playing in the school yard the way two other little girls might do, she would tend to be alone. As her protection, she would keep people out by putting her nose in a book. Her original being different in that she maybe had some annoying physical things where she was impulsive and would cut in and other things like that would bother other kids that were trying to learn to socialize set her apart and set her up for unkindnesses from other children. I would say the isolation that it causes is a big challenge, unless you get involved with a network. There were actually times, before we had a network, that my husband would sit in a chair looking out into the living room watch the other kids playing with kids and said he felt like he was in the twilight zone. One challenging thing is having to tell your story over and over to every doctor, therapist, counselor, teacher, etc. Also, trying to decide what Jason can handle and what he can’t. Watching him struggle with his peers because he cannot read the social cues is also difficult. What you control and what you don’t control It’s really difficult to try to separate what behaviors your child really doesn’t have control over and what behaviors they should perhaps be accountable for. I think it’s really hard. You find if they can modify their behavior, then you want to do the appropriate parenting to help them do that and yet sometimes they just can’t. So you have to understand that it is not always their fault they don’t have total control. I do think a big problem is, maybe because I’m a social worker, I think that it is a huge disadvantage if you don’t have enough money to afford to get help. Then you can’t pay for the neuropsychological testing— that’s why we went through the school system to get ours done, because it is part of the tax dollars. We could not afford a lot of things that might have helped us. I can remember kids getting tutored who didn’t even need to be tutored; parents’ wanted them to get A’s instead of B’s. I’m thinking, “If I could just pay for one of those tutors I could get my child the help she needs to figure out how to study.” I do think that there is a socio-economic disadvantage in the way we help kids who need more of the services. There are learning centers in the school systems. Megan went to the learning center at the high school, but in truth what she got the most out of was through that tutor one hour a week. So at the bare minimum the school provided something, but we really had to pull it together to pay for a tutor. Putting aside our own goals in life, and saying, “We have a nice, nice young man here.” And just love Nick for who he is. And you have to nurture the strengths and support the problem or weakness areas. Having ADD in the third grade is not the same thing as having ADD in the eleventh grade. It depends where you are developmentally. Of course kids want to do things on their own and in their own way, but they don’t always remember to take their medication, and then you don’t know how much you are supposed to intervene. Should you leave them alone and let them figure it out on their own or should you not? For example, how many times do you go to school with a paper a child has forgotten to bring in? Or do you say, “Well you are just going to get marked off on that paper because you forgot to bring it?” Those things are very complicated. I don’t know how people do it who can’t afford help. I think you run into harder things. You can’t afford a private tutor, or you can’t afford all the music lessons, or you can’t send them to these pricy camps. We could indulge his interests, but I think if you can’t do some of those things, and you’re not in a good school system, or you don’t figure out how to negotiate with the school system and what your rights are, it can be hard. Kids with ADHD don’t take a lot of responsibilities for their actions. They blame other people: it’s not their fault, it’s somebody else’s fault. And that’s very hard. It can be hard on the family: they’re always late, they’re always slow, they’re always moving things. That can be very difficult. |
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Hospital Boston Department of Psychiatry. All Rights Reserved. The information on this website should not be taken as medical advice, which can only be given to you by your personal health care professional. Updated: February 12, 2007 |
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