You Can't Just Spank It Out Of Them

Now that elections are over, and political articles and posts are dying down, it seems like the judgmental parenting one’s are again taking over.  Specifically, I have seen no less than 4 on children with ADHD or Autism in the last 24 hours.  While most of the articles and blogs are positive, there is always a barrage of negative comments, or sharing of the articles with a negative post.

As anyone who regularly reads this blog, or those that have known me for a while, knows, my 15 year old has ADHD. He has a couple other side diagnoses too, which is typical for kids with neurological disorders.  Fighting the ignorance on these disorders is something I will do till I’m dead, because I know first hand how that ignorance can affect a child’s life, well into adulthood.

The biggest fallacy that people cling to in this area is that ADHD is not real, and that parents just don’t discipline their children.  Let me talk about that for a moment.  People that have met my son in the last few years, they looked shocked if he mentions he has ADHD.  Some of those people may be shocked right now reading this, they see a polite, somewhat shy, smart, sensitive, caring, athletic, disciplined, amazing teenager.  Why?  Not because I am a lazy parent who sits on the couch eating bon bons and watching TV while my child runs wild, but because as a parent of a child with ADHD, I have invested huge amounts of energy in finding resources, treatments, and strategies that help him cope with his symptoms and frustration. 

For us, one of those is medication.  Medication that gets him through the school day and wears off in the late afternoon or early evening.  He doesn’t take it so that I can drug him into submission and not deal with him (though it is nice when it’s still in effect and he isn’t a constant chatterbox), it has worn off by the time I am around him.  It is so that he can focus in school and learn.  It is so the stimuli isn’t all hitting him so hard he can’t filter through it.  It is so he has a chance to process his feelings and thoughts without something else interrupting.  It is so he can practice the strategies we’ve worked on for years.

When my son was younger, before anyone would listen to me that something was wrong, I was more of a disciplinarian than I am now.  He was grounded, he was spanked, he had toys taken away, and privileges revoked.  Yet, he still was not reaching his potential in school, I got notes and calls from teachers, he was actually suspended once in the 3^rd grade, he would hit me, throw things, destroy his belongings, lie constantly.  We did sticker charts, behavior contracts.  When I pushed, teachers told me they were going to get him tested through the school system, and none of it ever came through, and many of those same teaches treated me very condescendingly at conferences, as if I was to blame for everything.  I spent way too much time hiding in the bathroom crying out of frustration.

For my son, a turning point came at the end of 5^th grade, when a new teacher (I think he had 4 different teachers that year, which definitely wasn’t a help!) had a conference with me, and to my surprise agreed with everything I said about my son, because she actually saw his full potential.  She encouraged me and helped me to get private evaluations done because it would be much quicker than going through the school system.  She filled out paperwork in a very short time frame for the neurologist evaluating him, and the summer between 5^th and 6^th grades he started medication.

Because we don’t really just drug the children of our society, the doctor started him on a very small dose.  It can take a while to find the right medication and dosage that works for a child.  While we worked everything out with the medication, he still struggled, and ended up failing 6^th grade.  However, about that time, we found the right medication treatment and I enrolled him in a private school for children with learning disabilities.  The child he always was, was finally visible. 

He excelled in school, getting all A’s but for ONE B in the next three years, and now in a regular high school he is still getting all A’s and B’s.  There were not nightly fights about homework.  I no longer had to ask him for a 5 minute break here or there, because he discovered how to entertain himself.  He still hates grocery stores, noisy restaurants, and crowded events because of the amount of stimuli, but he can handle them without a meltdown.  We still technically have a behavior contract, but the only part of it we look at anymore is the part about school grades, specifically the rewards he earns for them.  He now has an “off switch” that he can control. As a hormonal teenager, he can get loud and rude and obnoxious when I ask him to do something or not do something, especially after his meds wear off, however I have learned to tell him he is being unacceptable and walk away, and wait the 10 minutes for him to calm down and inevitably come and apologize to me for it and then talk about the problem and he follows through on my requests. And, well, I hand it to the naysayers, I rarely, very rarely, discipline my child anymore.  I don’t need to.  Those lessons that I tried to teach when he was younger, they actually did sink in, it was just hard for him to find them before.  If he does get stubborn, all I have to do is give the look or, at the worst, start to pull the cord out of his PS4, and there are no more issues.  He has really come to recognize his symptoms and is in control of telling his doctor if he needs a medication adjustment, as well as learned how to recognize them in others.  We often give each other that knowing, our heart feels for them look when we see a child struggling with his own issues.

A neurological disorder is not something you can just spank out of your child.  It takes a lot of hard work, education, rethinking how you deal with your child.  And it takes TIME. Time in which both the parents and the child are frustrated and working hard. The next time you see a mom in the grocery store who looks like she is about to burst into tears because her kid throws a box out of the back of the cart on the floor AGAIN, try picking it up for her instead of giving her a dirty look.  She might just think back on it at the end of the day and feel encouraged, instead of having to cry in the bathroom.

That’s why they have wine.