papashango
New Member
sorry for the wall of text -- how do you make it keep paragraphs?[p]I was up late last night, searching the interwebs for someone, anyone, who's in a similar boat and I came across this site. Rather than start from the start, I'll just post the thoughts I jotted down yesterday. We've been seeing a therapist for 8 months now but she hasn't been able to diagnose yet. We're going in for intensive testing this June and hopefully starting some sort of medication. We've all reached our limits -- it feels like the entire family is imploding. Sorry to vent! ****************************** [/p] Today is a perfect example of what happens around here all day long. Every. Single. Day. The boys are watching a cartoon this morning (wife's out of town -- I needed a minute to make lunches and do the dishes). difficult child (5 years old) is amused by a song they're singing in the show and starts belting it out for 30 seconds or so. #2 thinks it's funny and parrots. difficult child decides that it's rude and disruptive for #2 to be singing and starts screaming at him to be quiet and sit down. After 30 seconds or so of hearing him scream, I intervene and tell him to stop yelling -- follow the golden rule. So then the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) kicks in and difficult child starts asking if he can start the movie over because it's ruined. I say no. Then comes the 30 second barrage of repeating himself -- can we start over? Can we start it after school? I need to start it over! #2 ruined it! Can we start over? I get irritated and send him to his room. If I had chosen not to send him to his room, this would have gone on for a few minutes, led to tears, screaming and a complete meltdown. I nipped it in the bud. 5 minutes later I tell him he can come down. I sit down and start explaining the golden rule and why his behavior wasn't fair to #2. He CANNOT pay attention -- he's trying to keep his face pointed in my general direction, but his eyes are darting all over trying to find something.. anything.. more interesting than what I'm saying. It's all in one ear and out the other, just like everything else that anyone says to him. Zero impulse control -- zero ability to focus on anything that's not immediately fun. He doesn't believe he's at fault. He's never at fault -- it's always some convoluted lawyering about how it's #2's fault for singing -- if #2 wants difficult child to be considerate, #2 has to follow the golden rule first and not sing after difficult child has already done it. The golden rule, and really any blame for anything, always starts with the other person. The other person always has to be the bigger man. Every time. The kid is 5 years old and, in his opinion, has never been wrong about anything. And he seems genuinely confused that I'm getting on his case because I must just be being mean for no good reason at all. Is that ODD? So I get annoyed that he's not listening to a word (I'm keeping it short -- it's not like I'm droning on. He just doesn't care) and send him back to his room. 5 minutes later I let him out -- he's written a note to Mommy (who's out of town and thus the nice parent du jour) explaining that I'm mean. He cannot control his impulses in the slightest. Then his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) kicks in and makes it 100 times worse. Then when you try to correct him, regardless of how gently, you're just being mean and he's not to blame for anything. It's always the other person who started it even though 95% of the time, difficult child has caused the problem in the first place. And now it's up to me to calm things down before school and be the bigger man once again. Yeah that's part of parenting, but does it have to happen 600 times a day? 7 days a week? And if by some miracle he does listen to what you're saying and accept responsibility (or maybe he's just faking it so I'll shut up), he's forgotten the lesson in 90 seconds and he's right back to tormenting the rest of us. This is some completely unworkable bull****. And this is my life.
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