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02/22/2012
Expert
It's kind of fucked up how people say, "You're the expert on your child," when they want to be reassuring. You know, don't ignore your intuition. Let your knowledge of your child be your guide. Trust your instincts. Mother knows best. You're the expert!
I am not reassured by that phrase. In fact, it makes me panic. These days I don't know what to do with Charlie. And if I'm the expert, shit — does anyone?
Rough times. I don't even know how to talk about it. I walk around feeling so embarrassed — not by his behavior, his lack of impulse control, or his utter lack of insight into his own feelings or motivations, although God knows there's that, but by my own helplessness. By the way I'm stumped by my child.
He hit a girl who screamed in his ear. He shouted bad words, which made his friends laugh. He bopped a kid on the head in the telling of a joke. Knowing him as well as I do — being, ha, the expert — I can see, sometimes, why he does what he does. Sensory overload. Carried away. Can't read social cues.
But thinking I know why he does it doesn't help me know how to stop it. Patient conversations are all well and good; he knows the rules, can recite them with an eyeroll so advanced, I think he might be gifted, but they don't hold sway when he's in the moment. Incentives don't interest him; he's unimpressed by small rewards for incremental good behavior, and longer-term efforts to earn bigger prizes frustrate and confound him. Punishment? Sure, I guess: That works okay if the object is to make him feel bad for as long as the inconvenience lasts. But it doesn't teach him how to manage the urges that overtake him. It hasn't helped him change.
The impulsiveness, the active Id, not knowing when enough is enough: I know that most of this is the ADHD talking. (I smile when I see people sniffing and saying, "I don't believe in ADHD." That matters not at all, my friend, if it believes in you.) But that makes the quandary worse: How much of an allowance can you make before you're making excuses?
How can I penalize him for what he can't control? But also, how can I not, when that feels like letting it slide?
This, by the way, is on meds, which help, but not enough.
Lately I spend most of my time as a parent feeling like a failure. Shouldn't I know how to help him? I'm sad and shamed and mystified as to what to do for my kid. I see so clearly what might lie ahead, and it scares the bejesus out of me. I think, if I'm the expert, we're all in a lot of trouble.