Our kids need our affection the most, at exactly those points in life when they are most unlovable.After that he stood by the door waiting for me to kiss him goodbye with a cynical odd look on his face, and I grudgingly did give him a kiss and quickly brushed his hair, even though after an outburst like that he's the LAST person I wanted to get affectionate with
I can relate to how you feel... as a parent, I've had to learn to suppress that feeling, and love difficult child anyway.
But it is really hard to learn.
I'm going to challenge you on this one. Just something to think about...Really it is NOT helpful to have more and more things he is diagnosed as, I know what he is in the end of it all.
If he was diagnosed with lymphomic cancer, for example, AND had a broken leg, would you say that there's no point in addressing the broken leg? Of course not.
Even if in the overall scheme of things, there is some CD component, it is still worth pursuing every other possible diagnosis until you get them all. Because... these other things are much more treatable, and you may find that in addressing these, you lessen the impact of the CD. The un-diagnosed problems alone can cause severe ODD bordering on CD... whether you solve all the problems or not remains to be seen, but you might as well solve what you can.
NOW we're talking. Yes. If you can get help for the whole empathy thing, it WILL make a difference.Meanwhile the psychiatrist thinks that some one on one therapy with Stevie and I would help with the attachment issues and if he can at least build some empathy for me, then that's a start we can be happy with.
Getting help for other (smaller, if you want to call them that) issues, can also help with relationship-building.
Hang in there.