Not Everything Is ADHD
By: S. J. Gordon
Tags: Adhd, Family, Life, Parenting, Children

I have often talked about my son and the fact that he has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I’ve talked about some of his behaviors that were clear demonstrations of his ADHD and what we learned from them and from him.

There’s more, though, that I feel it incumbent upon me to mention. Not everything he does is the result of the ADHD.

Sometimes, my son is just being a butthead.

Yes, I said it.

I love my son with every ounce of my will and being. I cannot and will not imagine a world in which he is not my dearest boy. I could get horribly sappy about it, but I think I’ve made my point. He means just everything to me.

But even having said all that, he’s human and definitely not perfect.

Many of the times he chooses butthead-ery over darling-ness is a direct result of his nearly overwhelming desire to avoid being told what to do.

If you can hear the sigh in my voice, even through the written words on an electronic screen, I won’t be surprised.

One of the big battles over the last six months or so before he left for college was about whether, at any given time, he needed to comb his hair. Yep, you read that correctly.

I believe he agreed that going to bed with hair still wet from the shower and then not doing a thing to it in the morning before leaving the house resulted in something GQ would never put on its cover.

He couldn’t really say that he’d forgotten because he stood in front of the bathroom mirror to brush his teeth. I very much doubt this was accomplished with his eyes closed.

He just wasn’t going to comb that hair for the simple reason that I told him to do it.

My eyes still involuntarily roll whenever I think about it.

Sometimes, he thinks he’s funny.

One of my husband’s favorite examples of Times When Our Son Was a Complete Butthead was when he was quite small, perhaps five years old.

We were getting ready to leave the house and, wherever it was we were heading (I can’t recall anymore), we were going to be gone long enough to warrant taking along a few treasured possessions to help pass the time.

These items were packed in my son’s little backpack so he could carry them himself. We were trying to instill a sense of pride that he was such a big boy, he could carry his own things.

Yeah, he wasn’t so into that, really. He liked it better when a parent (he wasn’t choosy about which one) did the carrying.

At any rate, it was time to leave and I instructed my son to pick up his backpack and head out to the car. My son sweetly asked, “Where is it?”

People, that bag was sitting practically on top of his foot.

I told him it was by his foot and to pick it up. He proceeded to look all around in a big, exaggerated circle for the bag. He gazed across the room, peered into the farthest corner, and examined the ceiling. He did not, however, look any lower than his own waist.

While I stood, spluttering and trying not to completely lose my temper with our small human, my husband caught a look on my son’s face.

My son was smirking.

He knew exactly what he was doing and how annoying it was. He did it anyway because he just thought it was really funny. For him.

Not every poor decision or choice is so benign.

It isn’t my goal to enumerate every poor choice, bad decision, and naughty behavior my son has ever made. On the whole, he’s a fantastic kid and I wouldn’t want to imply otherwise, nor do I want to give the impression that I am unduly annoyed by him.

As I mentioned, I adore this kid.

It’s important, however, to recognize the difference between a behavior caused by lack of focus or impulsivity and a behavior that is the result of just flat breaking the rules.

When he flushed his caterpillar-shaped comb down the toilet causing a backup that required a pricey visit from the friendly rooter guy, that was a case of impulsivity.

That situation called for a discussion about what is and is not a good idea and why we should pause long enough to identify which is which.

When he told us he was going to lunch but actually disappeared for three hours to visit a girl he did not have permission to visit (she didn’t have permission from her parents, either, by the way), that was a decision to break the rules.

One must see the difference.

My response, as a parent, had to be different. When what is going on is clearly a byproduct of his complicated ADHD mind, scolding and punishment makes no sense whatsoever.

When he makes a poor, but thought-out, choice to disobey or otherwise do the wrong thing, then clear consequences and explanations for them are in order. My responsibility, as his parent, is to ensure that he learns the gravity of his decisions.

Our goal has always been to help him find his way through and with his busy, complex, and sometimes surprising ADHD mind. Scolding and punishment are the least helpful responses I can imagine.

However, ADHD is only part of what happens in that brain of his. There is also a growing child in there. A child needs boundaries, accountability, and clear explanations of what is and is not to be tolerated.

It comes down to knowing what his ADHD is and what it is not.

For my son, ADHD is a lot of swirling ideas running through his head, making it hard to focus on any one of them. It’s too many choices at any given moment, too many things to do, and way too much stimulation.

It’s the anxiety that comes from all of those “too manys” and “too muches.”

That’s when my role is to help him dial down and dial in. I won’t say this is always done with smiling, cheerful patience. I’m human, too, after all. But it’s not the same as dispensing punishment.

His ADHD is not the state of mind that brings him to choose to ignore or simply break a rule. His ADHD is not the reason he opts for half-truths or evasion to get his way.

In other words, sometimes, there has to be some hollering and finger shaking.

As parents, we need learn to recognize the difference and to be very careful to know when to lovingly explain and when to lovingly ground him for the foreseeable future.

Distracted or difficult, the important part is the love.

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