My teen is obsessed with being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD/Austism and I am exhausted

[Anonymous]

Your daughter sounds almost like a twin to my 13 year old who was diagnosed with autism last year and has an older diagnosis for ADHD.

We resisted the diagnosis for a bit but it really has brought us closer together and gave us a lot more empathy for what was going on with DD. At the same time, knowing these extra things that were going on with her weren't her fault but were the result of a condition she had gave my daughter a lot of peace and greater ability to live in the body and brain that she has. So there is a lot of good to come out of a diagnosis.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

[Anonymous]

OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We finally have an initial appointment with our pediatrician tomorrow and she is spun up about the fact that they might not find anything wrong, which to her means that they are not listening to her. It is a conversation that never, ever ends.

This is a smart kid, incredibly able to make conversation with peers and adults. She suffers from some lack of confidence, which I frankly find more concerning because she could excel at so many things.

She is also stubborn as h#L! and is bound and determined that she's going to be diagnosed with something. Part of this is from her therapist, or what she is perceiving that she is hearing from her therapist.

I want to be supportive, but if she would put as much energy into anything as she has put into this effort we would have terraformed Mars already.

She could be a little more organized and since she was a child she has resisted going into any activity where she has to start as a beginner - she wants to be perfect from the start. She gets A's and B's, has lots of friends and parents uniformly like her.

I love her SO much but as I said, this conversation JUST GOES ON.

Perseveration is a symptom of ASD. Just saying.

-- Mom of teen boy with ASD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

NP. I have a daughter with a lot of similarities to OP's daughter. PP, can you talk more about how you emotionally stretch and the type of self-care that increases capacity for dealing with this? Mentally, I l would love to do this. But the reality is that my personality is such that I find my daughter's rant a huge emotional weight that I can't effectively deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

+1 and I can say from experience that one of the things that gets in the way of parents supporting their kids emotionally is that many of us got little, if any, emotional support as children. When you have that really irritated, almost angry, response to hearing your kid emote or struggle, that's a sign that you were probably emotionally neglected as a child and it's going to be hard to overcome that. But it is absolutely possible and worth it. Learning to give my kid what I never had has been painful at times but has paid so many dividends. Not just in my relationship with my child, but in my relationship with myself.

Also, specifically regarding the validation-seeking that OP is dealing with, I have found that as I become more comfortable and understanding of my own negative emotions, that makes it easier to validate my kid's negative feelings (fear, insecurity mostly) and it tends to short-circuit that feedback loop of needing constant validation. I think one roadblock parents run into (or really anyone dealing with this) is that the person comes to you wanting you to validate their anxiety. Well, no one really wants to validate anxiety, especially when you think it might be overblown or that there is a different, healthier response to be having. But if you dig underneath the anxiety and learn to validate what's going on to cause the anxiety, it's easier. Like for OP, it sounds like one thing that is happening is that her daughter is struggling with identity -- she wants to know who she is, what kind of person she is. This is almost certainly tied to fear about the future after high school and is really common and understandable for teens. Dig into that! You can use the ADHD/ASD diagnosis process to explore it. Ask her to tell you how her brain is responding to stress and what makes her feel it's likely to be ADHD or ASD that causes that response. Tell her how your brain works similarly or differently. Maybe explore things like meditation of mindfulness while you go through the diagnostic process, which will help her no matter what her diagnosis is. Make her feel really and truly heard on this issue.

If she keeps coming back to you with it, that's an indication that she is trying to get you to understand something (or maybe even trying to get herself to understand something) and doesn't feel like it's gotten through. See if you can identify it and really listen and connect over it. You may find this is what it takes to keep these conversations from going around and around over and over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

+1 and I can say from experience that one of the things that gets in the way of parents supporting their kids emotionally is that many of us got little, if any, emotional support as children. When you have that really irritated, almost angry, response to hearing your kid emote or struggle, that's a sign that you were probably emotionally neglected as a child and it's going to be hard to overcome that. But it is absolutely possible and worth it. Learning to give my kid what I never had has been painful at times but has paid so many dividends. Not just in my relationship with my child, but in my relationship with myself.

Also, specifically regarding the validation-seeking that OP is dealing with, I have found that as I become more comfortable and understanding of my own negative emotions, that makes it easier to validate my kid's negative feelings (fear, insecurity mostly) and it tends to short-circuit that feedback loop of needing constant validation. I think one roadblock parents run into (or really anyone dealing with this) is that the person comes to you wanting you to validate their anxiety. Well, no one really wants to validate anxiety, especially when you think it might be overblown or that there is a different, healthier response to be having. But if you dig underneath the anxiety and learn to validate what's going on to cause the anxiety, it's easier. Like for OP, it sounds like one thing that is happening is that her daughter is struggling with identity -- she wants to know who she is, what kind of person she is. This is almost certainly tied to fear about the future after high school and is really common and understandable for teens. Dig into that! You can use the ADHD/ASD diagnosis process to explore it. Ask her to tell you how her brain is responding to stress and what makes her feel it's likely to be ADHD or ASD that causes that response. Tell her how your brain works similarly or differently. Maybe explore things like meditation of mindfulness while you go through the diagnostic process, which will help her no matter what her diagnosis is. Make her feel really and truly heard on this issue.

If she keeps coming back to you with it, that's an indication that she is trying to get you to understand something (or maybe even trying to get herself to understand something) and doesn't feel like it's gotten through. See if you can identify it and really listen and connect over it. You may find this is what it takes to keep these conversations from going around and around over and over.

I'm 10:32. That's really an amazing spot-on description. How did you learn to deal with these issues within yourself?

[Anonymous]

It’s not uncommon for people to want a diagnosis when they feel different, or that somethings wrong with them. Many adults struggle with this too. They WebMD and self diagnose condition they don’t even have, because it makes them feel better to have a “label”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not uncommon for people to want a diagnosis when they feel different, or that somethings wrong with them. Many adults struggle with this too. They WebMD and self diagnose condition they don’t even have, because it makes them feel better to have a “label”.

100%

This may also be a reason for the recent trend to want to identify as "gender fluid" or trans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

+1 So much!

My DD was obsessed with "getting on meds". I had tried every natural remedy, sleep, diet, therapy, acupuncture, etc. After consulting with her medicated friend at school, she then told her therapist that she "got out of the shower and there was blood on her legs, she didn't remember cutting herself...."

The therapist asked to see, but she "didn't want to take off her boots; too hard" so the therapist didn't push. The therapist called me and I was like, "What? She's walking around in shorts; this is a total fabrication!"

And the therapist and I agreed on this: "If it's true, she needs a psych eval. If it's a lie, she needs a psych eval."

The psych eval was the BEST THING that happened to both of us in the course of me raising this child. My kid says she felt finally "seen." It's been a few years now, and she is a first-year at a T10 university and doing well. She's "adulting" which is so huge and I am grateful every day; I almost cannot believe we are at this good place!

I also learned a lot. I learned how to see how she was atypical. I learned how certain meds work and in that process, came to accept how they could be helpful and I wasn't just "giving up and putting a difficult child on meds so I could have some peace."

There is no harm (other than time and $) in you and your kid learning more about how their brain works, and you learning more about how to deal with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

NP. I have a daughter with a lot of similarities to OP's daughter. PP, can you talk more about how you emotionally stretch and the type of self-care that increases capacity for dealing with this? Mentally, I l would love to do this. But the reality is that my personality is such that I find my daughter's rant a huge emotional weight that I can't effectively deal with.

I can try!

A lot of it is just those little things we all know we should do but often don't. Sufficient sleep, daily exercise, nourishing food, walks, doing fun things for ourselves that help us feel like whole people, taking mini-breaks throughout the day when we feel overly tired or overwhelmed, time with friends, etc. Before DC went to therapy, I wasn't doing these things really consistently because I didn't realize how much my moods were negatively impacting my child's mental health. When I discovered this, all these little things became a huge priority. Also Brene brown has a chapter about calm in one of her older books, gifts of imperfection, that I read several times over.

PP mentioned that a lot of our struggles with hearing others' emotions stem from our own childhoods where our emotions were invalidated. For me this was totally true and I have been working on it in therapy. I am doing dialectical behavioral therapy to learn self-validation in addition to emotional regulation and distress tolerance and it has been amazing. The results that have come from just learning to identify and then just be mindful about emotions, thoughts, and feelings are kind of magical.

I also learned something from a parenting book that seems obvious but for me was pretty revelatory: I don't have to adopt my kid's moods and feelings. Just because my child is freaking out about something doesn't mean I have to let that impact how I feel. "You don't have to go in there" is how the book phrased it. I listen, I try to understand, I sympathize, but I don't get anxious or irritable just because that's how my child is feeling.

It took at least a year to change and I am so not perfect about it. But I seriously had such an irritable and inpatient personality before and now my husband is constantly telling me he cannot believe how patient I am. He can't handle her emotional dumping. Which is actually okay because she has me (and her therapist).

We have had issues with her depending on me too heavily when she is in crisis mode. But the way her therapist is having us deal with it is not for her to just deal with things alone (though she is learning to identify trouble emotions and self-soothe before the situation gets unbearable). Instead, I approach her on an almost daily basis and ask her how she is doing (red, yellow, or green) so she has some support and guidance if she needs it. This way she doesn't need me *immediately*, which is good because no parent can do that all the time do that all the time (because maybe I am in the middle of getting myself some food so I can better emotionally regulate).

So it's a mixture of handling the issues so they are rarely *that* hard to deal with, and expanding my own emotional capacity for support.

This does seem like a lot to do for a kid, but honestly now I think of it as doing it for myself as much as for DC. Life is just easier for mewhen I live it in a way such that my kids' moods don't throw me for a loop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

NP. There is actually a statistically significant overlap between people who are trans and people who have ASD. Maybe that was it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, is there any possibility she might also be transgender?

Not OP, but where did this come from? What in the OP made you even suggest this?

NP. There is actually a statistically significant overlap between people who are trans and people who have ASD. Maybe that was it.

That’s not enough to suggest it. Armchair psychiatrists are so harmful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think people aren't really getting your rant. Once you have acknowledged whatever it is she is obsessing on sympathetically it is perfectly okay to change the subject. If she doesn't get the hint just leave the room. Or give her a chore to do so she has to leave the room.

Well OP’s frustration is valid but I’ll tell you what, once your kid gets a diagnosis and you learn about the issue and finally understand what’s going on in their heads, it’s so, so much easier to deal with them. So I think it’s very likely that the best thing OP can do to get rid of her frustration is to get a neuropsych evaluation.

I don't disagree with the advice about the neuropsych eval, but, DD will likely just keep obsessing about something after it. This is her personality (and maybe a symptom of a disorder). Doesn't mean OP has to listen/discuss it all the time. Do you have a kid like this? Sometimes they literally have to be told to shut up (in a nicer way of course). It is a teaching moment.

Yes I have a kid like this. I'm saying we are getting the rant, but OP's exhaustion isn't an inevitability and it probably doesn't have to be dealt with by kindly telling the kid to shut up. I would say OP that besides really trying to learn about her child and understand where her child is coming from, OP would probably feel much better if she did some self-care so that her capacity for dealing with a challenging kid increases, instead of trying to constantly figure out in the moment how to support her kid when she has limited emotional resources. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Just as an aside, that I don't intend at all to be judgmental, I feel like parents don't stretch themselves as much as they could when it comes to supporting their kids emotionally. We are often capable of much more validation and empathic listening than we realize, just like we capable of really stretching ourselves physically when the kids were little. Like, for me, I really can't even describe how difficult my child was, and I didn't think I had it in me to parent her the way her therapist told me I needed to. But I learned and I practiced and I'm doing it. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, though, so I don't actually judge parents who don't.

+1 and I can say from experience that one of the things that gets in the way of parents supporting their kids emotionally is that many of us got little, if any, emotional support as children. When you have that really irritated, almost angry, response to hearing your kid emote or struggle, that's a sign that you were probably emotionally neglected as a child and it's going to be hard to overcome that. But it is absolutely possible and worth it. Learning to give my kid what I never had has been painful at times but has paid so many dividends. Not just in my relationship with my child, but in my relationship with myself.

Also, specifically regarding the validation-seeking that OP is dealing with, I have found that as I become more comfortable and understanding of my own negative emotions, that makes it easier to validate my kid's negative feelings (fear, insecurity mostly) and it tends to short-circuit that feedback loop of needing constant validation. I think one roadblock parents run into (or really anyone dealing with this) is that the person comes to you wanting you to validate their anxiety. Well, no one really wants to validate anxiety, especially when you think it might be overblown or that there is a different, healthier response to be having. But if you dig underneath the anxiety and learn to validate what's going on to cause the anxiety, it's easier. Like for OP, it sounds like one thing that is happening is that her daughter is struggling with identity -- she wants to know who she is, what kind of person she is. This is almost certainly tied to fear about the future after high school and is really common and understandable for teens. Dig into that! You can use the ADHD/ASD diagnosis process to explore it. Ask her to tell you how her brain is responding to stress and what makes her feel it's likely to be ADHD or ASD that causes that response. Tell her how your brain works similarly or differently. Maybe explore things like meditation of mindfulness while you go through the diagnostic process, which will help her no matter what her diagnosis is. Make her feel really and truly heard on this issue.

If she keeps coming back to you with it, that's an indication that she is trying to get you to understand something (or maybe even trying to get herself to understand something) and doesn't feel like it's gotten through. See if you can identify it and really listen and connect over it. You may find this is what it takes to keep these conversations from going around and around over and over.

I'm 10:32. That's really an amazing spot-on description. How did you learn to deal with these issues within yourself?

I'm 11:49 and I didn't add to my other comment something that has been helpful: parenting myself. It sounds sooooo stupid that I'm not even going to describe the procedure here, but you can look it up on YouTube. I think it has been decently helpful for me, though I'd say DBT has been the real game-changer.