ADHD and Sneaky Behavior

[Anonymous]

Computers are locked. Must be unlocked by me to gain access --always. Don't even so to use my phone unless I'm sitting right by your side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No good suggestions but this is major problem with my 7 year old with ADHD. I'm the one that posted about needing a safe for the cookies.

That was such a great idea that I keep Meaning to look for one at Costco.

[Anonymous]

Since having an ADHD child (who is now 14), I've really had to change my mindset on these behaviors. I'd never call my child "sneaky." Why? Because that implies that my child is consciously doing something malicious.

Things that I know now....

- We, as humans, will always try to find what stimulates our brains. That's what gives us pleasure. My child uses the ipad because it stimulates her brain.
- My ADHD child has trouble sleeping. She was always a bad sleeper even as an infant. She has not learned how to calm her body down so she can sleep. Her ADHD brain is racing all the time.
- My ADHD kid loses track of time. She doesn't know 10 minutes or one hour. She never thinks she's running late. Time simply doesn't exist.
- My ADHD kid is impulsive. She will do things without thinking. She does not think about consequences.
- My ADHD kid cannot regulate herself. Self control is very weak.
- My ADHD kid does not respond well to punishment. She most often times does not know WHY she is being punished because she can't connect the dots.

She is not sneaky. We also never accuse her of lying. She does what she does without regard to how it affects us, her parents.

That's pretty much our baseline.

And yes, we do have issues with her using the ipad late at night, especially when she can't sleep.

So lately, we've just had to take it away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since having an ADHD child (who is now 14), I've really had to change my mindset on these behaviors. I'd never call my child "sneaky." Why? Because that implies that my child is consciously doing something malicious.

Things that I know now....

- We, as humans, will always try to find what stimulates our brains. That's what gives us pleasure. My child uses the ipad because it stimulates her brain.
- My ADHD child has trouble sleeping. She was always a bad sleeper even as an infant. She has not learned how to calm her body down so she can sleep. Her ADHD brain is racing all the time.
- My ADHD kid loses track of time. She doesn't know 10 minutes or one hour. She never thinks she's running late. Time simply doesn't exist.
- My ADHD kid is impulsive. She will do things without thinking. She does not think about consequences.
- My ADHD kid cannot regulate herself. Self control is very weak.
- My ADHD kid does not respond well to punishment. She most often times does not know WHY she is being punished because she can't connect the dots.

She is not sneaky. We also never accuse her of lying. She does what she does without regard to how it affects us, her parents.

That's pretty much our baseline.

And yes, we do have issues with her using the ipad late at night, especially when she can't sleep.

So lately, we've just had to take it away.

OP here. I totally take back the word "sneaky."

Thanks for calling me out on it.

[Anonymous]

Hmm. I agree with PP, but still think ADHD kids can be sneaky. My kid steals his sisters candy because he has no impulse control, but he hides the wrapper under his rug because he is sneaky. When he was younger, he wasn't sneaky about stuff but now he is. It's the coverup that bothers me more than the crime, from a parenting perspective. (His sister is bothered more by the crime, of course.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hmm. I agree with PP, but still think ADHD kids can be sneaky. My kid steals his sisters candy because he has no impulse control, but he hides the wrapper under his rug because he is sneaky. When he was younger, he wasn't sneaky about stuff but now he is. It's the coverup that bothers me more than the crime, from a parenting perspective. (His sister is bothered more by the crime, of course.)

Covering up your mistakes is normal human behavior.
Why do people cover up "mistakes" ?
Because they've been told that they are doing something totally WRONG even though their internal defense mechanism is doing everything from keeping them safe from the punishment that is coming.

Think about this from the perspective of your adhd kid. Find out more about his thinking process. You will be surprised and humbled by those intricate and tangled thought patterns that they have. Learn about how your child perceives things and meet him at his understanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since having an ADHD child (who is now 14), I've really had to change my mindset on these behaviors. I'd never call my child "sneaky." Why? Because that implies that my child is consciously doing something malicious.

Things that I know now....

- We, as humans, will always try to find what stimulates our brains. That's what gives us pleasure. My child uses the ipad because it stimulates her brain.
- My ADHD child has trouble sleeping. She was always a bad sleeper even as an infant. She has not learned how to calm her body down so she can sleep. Her ADHD brain is racing all the time.
- My ADHD kid loses track of time. She doesn't know 10 minutes or one hour. She never thinks she's running late. Time simply doesn't exist.
- My ADHD kid is impulsive. She will do things without thinking. She does not think about consequences.
- My ADHD kid cannot regulate herself. Self control is very weak.
- My ADHD kid does not respond well to punishment. She most often times does not know WHY she is being punished because she can't connect the dots.

She is not sneaky. We also never accuse her of lying. She does what she does without regard to how it affects us, her parents.

That's pretty much our baseline.

And yes, we do have issues with her using the ipad late at night, especially when she can't sleep.

So lately, we've just had to take it away.

OP here. I totally take back the word "sneaky."

Thanks for calling me out on it.

A different pp here- awhile back, I wouldn't have had much heartburn about how we characterize behavior. I recall however, sitting in a parent teacher conference when the teacher was describing my DS as "defiant" because he wandered the room when he was supposed to be working. After some digging around and having his therapist do some classroom observations, we discovered that DS didn't understand how to start projects, was feeling anxious, and coping by avoiding the task. Once we got better support in place the "defiance" improved- it was an issue with executive functioning deficits and anxiety/embarrassment.
Since then, I have tried to focus on the bahavior instead of the motivation. Kids with these issues are at the side of the bell curve- the behavior is an outlier, but so is the thinking/motivation behind it. My DH does some odd things and when I call him on it, his explanations are often unexpected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hmm. I agree with PP, but still think ADHD kids can be sneaky. My kid steals his sisters candy because he has no impulse control, but he hides the wrapper under his rug because he is sneaky. When he was younger, he wasn't sneaky about stuff but now he is. It's the coverup that bothers me more than the crime, from a parenting perspective. (His sister is bothered more by the crime, of course.)

Of course kids with ADHD can be sneaky as can NT kids. A child waking up and watching tv or on the computer for hours on end during the middle of the night isn't trying to be sneaky. They have anxiety that doesn't allow them to fall back to sleep.

As an adult if you were wide awake in the middle of the night, you'd probably turn to TV or the internet to entertain yourself. A child with regulatory issues isn't going to notice that 2-3+ hours have elapsed. They just don't feel sleepy. They need to learn that if they awake during the night, they need to try other things to get themselves back to sleep. It's a learning process.

[Anonymous]

20:43 and 6:59 here.

Just wanted to add to what a PP said on My DH does some odd things and when I call him on it, his explanations are often unexpected.

This is something we've had to do a lot at our house.
I've learned that understanding the ADHD mind is what keeps me sane.
On the outside, my child may be called a liar, lazy, unmotivated-- the same things that we've called my brother, who now I suspect has had undiagnosed ADHD all along.
We've learned to not label these things, but rather, understand WHY a person might be doing something or feeling that way. Once we get to the bottom of something, and I'll tell you that, as pp said, the explanations are so unexpected. Sometimes, bizarre, yes. But we just acknowledge, and most especially validate DD's thoughts and feelings. Once we got into that pattern at home, we all calmed down, our interactions have become more positive and our relationships with each other are stronger than ever.

I see that most of the posters in this thread have kids who are younger than my 14 year old. It makes me cringe to think of how I used to react when she was between 8-11, before she was diagnosed.
Makes me feel sad that my brother got treated the way that he did because none of us understood.

There are physiological reasons why our ADHD kids act the way that they do. You might want to read about dopamine, serotonin and melatonin- I think that's pretty much the basis of a lot of how our brain works.

[Anonymous]

There was a great article about this on ADDitude recently. I didn't find the link, but the basic point was that kids with ADHD can be 'sneaky' because they struggle finding ways to explain or ask for things when they know it might be an issue. So they just do them as a way to avoid the frustration. There was a similar article about lying that I did find - http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/5705.html - and the conclusion was that when the child does something they were asked not to (or didn't do something they were asked to), they lie instead of admitting to the forgetfulness. That it wasn't outright disobedience, but rather a function of the ADHD and its disorganization and other symptoms.

[Anonymous]

Well I will boldly say that my child does sneaky things. When she waits for me leave the room to do something or keeps peaking to see if Im watching. I have fallen asleep on the couch and she has to get past me to get to the kitchen. If she makes a noise on her way by and I hear it and sit up. She will stop immediately in her tracks and be perfectly still until I think it's nothing and lay back down. Then she's on the move again until she makes another noise and I catch her red-handed. Countless times this has happen. In fact I have been up for an hour and its 6am from catching her sneaking around the kitchen tonight.
Going nuts #NeedZzzzz