Teen refusing to accept diagnosis

[Anonymous]

Is OP the step mom?

Where is bio dad and bio mom in this? It’s highly genetic too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I think our teen is taking it in stride as we await the full results.

It's bio mom who continues to ignore emails from the doctor, disregard the diagnosis, not advocate for him at the tutoring center etc. She even stated she was struggling with it and acused us of manipulating the doctor to get the results we were looking for. We told her she is welcomed and encouraged to get a second opinion. This is technically the 2nd set of testing the child has done. One was educational only, the other psychoeducational. Both tests indicate major issues with processing and inability to complete timed assessments.

I just can't imagine living in denial and denying your child help. This has been many years in the making due to her denial. It started heavily in middle school (covid) and she blew off our concerns that he was below average on state testing and blamed it on covid. In 9th grade we really became involved with grades when it was clear he was struggling, she did nothing, we found drop in tutors. 10th grade we put an action plan together but she refused to follow it and we had to make concessions, spent 10k for tutoring on a program that isn't geared to address underlying issues and refused the psychoeducational testing we advocated for to the school. She has 50% of the time so progress is slow when it's only occuring in one household. Now that the child is old enough to have self awareness we've been able to make more progress. He's almost finished the expensive tutoring program, and he's made small improvements- but again it's not designed to work for students with processing disorders that need a different type of help, so we weren't expecting much.

Next steps are to engage with the Dr. who completed the assessment and follow his recommendations. We're going to encourage the child to live with us full time if she doesn't agree to the full plan the doctor suggests. He's a junior and has very little time left before college to get set up with what he needs.

She is honestly more concerned about her new family and doing things with her other child and is so inconvenienced by getting her older child help. It's nauseating.

With kids that old it is mainly up to them. Not parents.

If this is an attempt for full custody talk to a lawyer, but after age 14 that is also up to the child, mental disorders or not.

I’d focus on trying to get the kid to graduate and into the best matched trade program or community college you can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our teen was recently diagnosed with adhd, anxiety and a processing disorder. The teen struggles and doesn't realize how much and the impact. Despite talking with the doctor and family, the teen is rebelling against a 504 plan.

How did you get your in denial teen to come around?

Were there any diagnoses or recommendations made during elementary school or middle school??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is a “processing disorder”? If you aren’t the dad you need to step back and let his dad handle it. (She’s his mother not “bio mom.”)

Respectfully, she is disengaged and has been for the past 6 years. Dad is handling it, but I am a step-parent, not just an adult taking up space in the home. We pick up the slack and get hateful comments like this from people like you- bitter bio moms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is a “processing disorder”? If you aren’t the dad you need to step back and let his dad handle it. (She’s his mother not “bio mom.”)

Respectfully, she is disengaged and has been for the past 6 years. Dad is handling it, but I am a step-parent, not just an adult taking up space in the home. We pick up the slack and get hateful comments like this from people like you- bitter bio moms.

My husband is a step-parent, and I know its hard on him because he puts so much effort in, and gets flack for not being a "parent" (he is a parent! he acts as a parent in so many ways!). Ignore the haters. Being a step parent is thankless and hard - but you're doing a good job.

[Anonymous]

Mental disorders are very tough on a family. Dont lose your sense of self trying to help people who don’t want help.
Many of us had to do that with our very own kids. It’s a tale as old as time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our teen was recently diagnosed with adhd, anxiety and a processing disorder. The teen struggles and doesn't realize how much and the impact. Despite talking with the doctor and family, the teen is rebelling against a 504 plan.

How did you get your in denial teen to come around?

Is the teen unhappy?

Does the teen want help?

Does the teen want you to help?

What does the teen want to do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He might be able to avoid the plan with meds and therapy.

This is good incentive, thank you.

He is 16/ junior and because we are a split household and the other household thinks we're making things up and trying to label him that gets impressed upon him. Lots of stigma at the other household. He was against therapy, we made him do it anyways and it is not helping because he denies he has any issues and doesn't talk about anything. We're hoping to get him a new therapist soon that is a better fit and will challenge his answers and ask more investigative questions of him.

When the neuropsych evaluator gave initial feedback and recommended a 504, he was like no, I don't want that and I don't think it's necessary. We spent 10k on tutoring to have marginal improvement and when that ends this fall we know there will be a slip in performance and we are anticipating 2nd quarter being abysmal. Obviously that investment is not worth it given the new diagnosis and we're looking at different avenues there as well.

Parents should merge the split household so he has a stable home life.

Why are you unwilling to do what your child needs? Are the parents in therapy to get help restoring the broken home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our teen was recently diagnosed with adhd, anxiety and a processing disorder. The teen struggles and doesn't realize how much and the impact. Despite talking with the doctor and family, the teen is rebelling against a 504 plan.

How did you get your in denial teen to come around?

Is the teen unhappy?

Does the teen want help?

Does the teen want you to help?

What does the teen want to do?

He lacks self awareness so it's hard to say. He was very unhappy and depressed this time last year. We've made so many strides. He's playing a sport again, the social opportunities are starting to come around again, he is taking better care of himself now etc. It was definitely some sort of slump, I'm hesitant to call it depression because so much of it is linked to self-image and confidence. I think the tutoring helped him feel a lot more confident in the classroom too.

He's a much more confident kid, but has a long way to go and we want to encourage him to have a better outlook on mental health, not the negative and stigmatized view mom has impressed upon him.

Obviously we can't force him to engage or change his mind, but you can bet that we're going to do our homework on how we can best support him in our home, including offering him to stay with us as often as he wants and encouraging more time here in a healthier environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is a “processing disorder”? If you aren’t the dad you need to step back and let his dad handle it. (She’s his mother not “bio mom.”)

Respectfully, she is disengaged and has been for the past 6 years. Dad is handling it, but I am a step-parent, not just an adult taking up space in the home. We pick up the slack and get hateful comments like this from people like you- bitter bio moms.

okaaayy you sound really believable there. it’s almost as if you are more interested in sticking it to the “bio mom” and using this as an excuse to “win” by getting more custody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is a “processing disorder”? If you aren’t the dad you need to step back and let his dad handle it. (She’s his mother not “bio mom.”)

Respectfully, she is disengaged and has been for the past 6 years. Dad is handling it, but I am a step-parent, not just an adult taking up space in the home. We pick up the slack and get hateful comments like this from people like you- bitter bio moms.

.

She's still his mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our teen was recently diagnosed with adhd, anxiety and a processing disorder. The teen struggles and doesn't realize how much and the impact. Despite talking with the doctor and family, the teen is rebelling against a 504 plan.

How did you get your in denial teen to come around?

Is the teen unhappy?

Does the teen want help?

Does the teen want you to help?

What does the teen want to do?

He lacks self awareness so it's hard to say. He was very unhappy and depressed this time last year. We've made so many strides. He's playing a sport again, the social opportunities are starting to come around again, he is taking better care of himself now etc. It was definitely some sort of slump, I'm hesitant to call it depression because so much of it is linked to self-image and confidence. I think the tutoring helped him feel a lot more confident in the classroom too.

He's a much more confident kid, but has a long way to go and we want to encourage him to have a better outlook on mental health, not the negative and stigmatized view mom has impressed upon him.

Obviously we can't force him to engage or change his mind, but you can bet that we're going to do our homework on how we can best support him in our home, including offering him to stay with us as often as he wants and encouraging more time here in a healthier environment.

the more you express this as a battle between you and “bio mom” to prove your superiority, the less you are going to help. just … let go of your beliefs about “bio mom” and the need to be correcting what she does. she’s his mom and he loves her, no matter what her flaws might be. And, you need a BIG BIG does of humility wrt believing that you know what’s best and exactly what to do. Because I’m telling you, NONE of us SN Moms know that. No matter how much money we spend, no matter how much we seek out the “best” therapy or the right thing to say.

My xDH has a very different take on our kid’s SN and although at times it has been very upsetting to feel like he’s undermining my hard work or has a viewpoint that doesn’t conform to conventional wisdom, I’ve had to step back and check myself numerous times. Because parts of his perspective are totally valid; and some of what he brings to the table as a parent is incredibly valuable to our kid’s development and things that I might completely overlook while I focus on therapy, IEPs, etc.

And no matter how much I disdain my xDH for many very good reasons, he’s my child’s father and loves him like noone who is not a parent can. So barring some kind of actual medical danger, I would never, ever try to exploit our disagreements about SN/mental health to extract more custody time. In fact I consider that breathtakingly unethical and wrong. Check yourself, OP.

[Anonymous]

Get accommodations that actually help find out what helps your kid. Some are listening to music during class on headphones, breaks and retaking tests etc the point of the accomodations are to help and the input should come from the child as well

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get accommodations that actually help find out what helps your kid. Some are listening to music during class on headphones, breaks and retaking tests etc the point of the accomodations are to help and the input should come from the child as well

that’s right. this is all being pushed on the kid by adults. the kid needs to have autonomy to figure out what works. all sorts of adults want to give accommodations to my kid based on his label (ASD) but they are literally pointless to him. He’s never needed headphones, fidgets, etc; “deep breathing” has never worked for his emotional regulation.

[Anonymous]

Does the teen 'want' to live full time with you/dad? Does he know you plan to go for more custody?