How to deal with an angry and resistant AUDHD teen who also wants to go to college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have learned with my own kid that i have to drop the expectation that he'll say "hey, I need help, I'm sinking here." It hasn't happened yet. FWIW asking for help seems very, very difficult for him. But I can read in his behavior when he does need help, and then provide it, and though college is messy he is managing and learning.

Phew, this describes my kid (high school sophomore) to a tee. He just got back into therapy and one of my goals for the therapy is to try to unpack what is at the root of kid's unwillingness to ask for help and see if there might be a therapeutic path toward addressing it. Without solving that, it just feels like kid is going to be in one spiral after another.

I think in my kid’s case it’s physiological. He begins to panic or freeze up and loses the ability to act rationally. But nothing, including antianxiety meds, has really helped so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:let him sink or swim see how he manages in his own NOW
because in college you cannot help him, make sure he turned in assignments etc
and manage his time
letting go hard especially with the habit of the guardrails but let go of the rope

THIS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. I really appreciate all the responses and your lived experiences. I managed to have a calm conversation with him yesterday. Basically, he wants to be neurotypical. He doesn’t want to have ASD or ADHD. In fact, when we went to tour some smaller engineering schools like RIT, he unironically made comments about the students being different or quirky. I resisted the urge to say that is what people may think about him but it’s true. I don’t know where to go with that for the long-term but we did talk about compromise on the scaffolding I put in place for him with professionals. Those were in place when we came up (with a parent coach) with our plan for the parents to scale back and not be involved at all with schoolwork such as checking Schoology or reminding him to turn in work or email teachers. I would like to condition college on getting services and registering in the disability office but until he accepts he has challenges, I don’t know what good that would do.

OP you cannot force anyone, child or not, to think a certain thing about themselves, particularly when it is as reductive and stigmatizing as condensing the whole of their personality into a DSM diagnosis. So you need to just drop that.

[Anonymous]

A teen brings up tons of previous infractions he perceived to be against him?? Yikes.

Is he on medication for mood swings or anger outbursts, as well as adhd focused one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: could use some advice/commiseration. Son is almost 18. A senior who is college bound. Already been accepted to two engineering schools.

He has ASD and ADHD and major executive functioning issues where I have had to sit with him for the last 3 years, monitoring everything and reviewing to see if he did the assignment right, turned it in, etc. As you can imagine, that did wonders for our relationship. He is very rigid. can be mean when angry and is very angry. Angry at our help and says he never wanted it and we should have just let him manage. we told him we would back off but he would have to work with an executive functioning coach and get tutoring. He hates his coach probably because she challenges him. He wants zero help and for us to butt out of his life, let him do what he wants and handle his life how he wants.
And, when he gets angry, it is so unpleasant and he brings up grievances from years and years ago and it becomes just an anger dump of stuff that he still can't let go of what we did wrong.
The problem is that he also wants to go to college and if we do that, the odds are that his grades are going to be such that I don't feel comfortable paying tens of thousands of dollars. I thought for sure that he would be more open to figuring out how to manage his stuff with a third party but he is mad at her too now. The first question is should I just dump the executive functioning coach and tutoring and just let him sink/swim?
I guess the second question becomes this: has your rigid, refuse to listen but also refuse to acknowledge challenges ASD teen, ever come around to just saying " I need help." or "I want to figure out how to manage my life/work" or just say "I'm sorry for yelling at you-I know you have the best intentions" and talk in a way that is respectful and kind?
I'm just feeling discouraged about my son's ability to hold on to anger, not be open to any advice at all, and whether we will ever have an open relationship. I am also concerned that if we are not comfortable sending him to college and tell him that. he will spiral downward.

Is the father or another family member the same way and he sees that response pattern too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:let him sink or swim see how he manages in his own NOW
because in college you cannot help him, make sure he turned in assignments etc
and manage his time
letting go hard especially with the habit of the guardrails but let go of the rope

THIS

I don’t know.
I wanted my adhd, asd, dyslexic brother get my father’s math help for four degrees now. Undergrad digital music degree, then accounting one year thing, then computer programming. My parents did homework with him for decades and then were always surprised when he did well enough on a test to pass the class. Ugh.

He’s 42 and lives at home. Unemployed most times. Had a girlfriend but her family “did not see a future.” They deeded him some rental properties into irrevocable trusts and set up property managers so he has money and assets.

But he never got angry or exploded. Just depressed and anxious. He keeps a simple life so maybe that’s why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:let him sink or swim see how he manages in his own NOW
because in college you cannot help him, make sure he turned in assignments etc
and manage his time
letting go hard especially with the habit of the guardrails but let go of the rope

Sink or swim is appealing, but each time we’ve tried it our kid has sunk like a stone and then become suicidal. So it doesn’t seem like an option.

THIS

[Anonymous]

Sink or swim is appealing, but each time we’ve tried it our kid has sunk like a stone and then become suicidal. So it doesn’t seem like an option.

I posted earlier in the thread about my sophomore not willing to ask for help and just wanted to echo that we had the same experience when we let go and tried 'sink or swim'. Adding depression, suicidality, and failing grades did not help my kid. And more importantly, it did not "motivate" him. He just ended up at the bottom of a shame spiral, certain that nothing or no one could ever help him because his challenges were too big.

[Anonymous]

I’m a big believer in sink or swim. I would cease all intervention in school work. I would also make it clear that I’m not paying for college if his grades drop without my help.

And for those saying they can’t do that because it was cause suicidal ideation, I highly recommend reading up on NVR for non-emergent young adults. If you google that it comes up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a big believer in sink or swim. I would cease all intervention in school work. I would also make it clear that I’m not paying for college if his grades drop without my help.

And for those saying they can’t do that because it was cause suicidal ideation, I highly recommend reading up on NVR for non-emergent young adults. If you google that it comes up.

I looked it up but don’t understand how it would apply in our situation. We are not fighting with him. We have tried to be supportive through countless shame spirals and multiple serious self harming events and psychiatric hospitalizations. Letting that continue to occur doesn’t seem helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. I really appreciate all the responses and your lived experiences. I managed to have a calm conversation with him yesterday. Basically, he wants to be neurotypical. He doesn’t want to have ASD or ADHD. In fact, when we went to tour some smaller engineering schools like RIT, he unironically made comments about the students being different or quirky. I resisted the urge to say that is what people may think about him but it’s true. I don’t know where to go with that for the long-term but we did talk about compromise on the scaffolding I put in place for him with professionals. Those were in place when we came up (with a parent coach) with our plan for the parents to scale back and not be involved at all with schoolwork such as checking Schoology or reminding him to turn in work or email teachers. I would like to condition college on getting services and registering in the disability office but until he accepts he has challenges, I don’t know what good that would do.

Maybe you shouldn’t have resisted the urge to tell him the hard truth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. I really appreciate all the responses and your lived experiences. I managed to have a calm conversation with him yesterday. Basically, he wants to be neurotypical. He doesn’t want to have ASD or ADHD. In fact, when we went to tour some smaller engineering schools like RIT, he unironically made comments about the students being different or quirky. I resisted the urge to say that is what people may think about him but it’s true. I don’t know where to go with that for the long-term but we did talk about compromise on the scaffolding I put in place for him with professionals. Those were in place when we came up (with a parent coach) with our plan for the parents to scale back and not be involved at all with schoolwork such as checking Schoology or reminding him to turn in work or email teachers. I would like to condition college on getting services and registering in the disability office but until he accepts he has challenges, I don’t know what good that would do.

OP you cannot force anyone, child or not, to think a certain thing about themselves, particularly when it is as reductive and stigmatizing as condensing the whole of their personality into a DSM diagnosis. So you need to just drop that.

NP. Doesn’t he need to recognize his limitations? Inadequate self esteem is such a bad thing, ruins people left and right IME

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:let him sink or swim see how he manages in his own NOW
because in college you cannot help him, make sure he turned in assignments etc
and manage his time
letting go hard especially with the habit of the guardrails but let go of the rope

This. Sink or swim right now, before he goes to college. Tell him you see his point, he is getting older and needs to take control of all this himself before leaving home.

Better that he sinks now rather than after he's 18.

[Anonymous]

This is a troubled youth. He will likely sink at college. He needs supports and growth before that launch. Try 2 years of community college and save the money and get help.

[Anonymous]

NP. The shame spiral is real, and so harmful.

I can’t say that we necessarily get it right, but I have found it most helpful — by which I mean the least likely to tip DC into shame, while also adding the least friction in our relationship — to discuss everything in terms of what they can learn about themselves. It’s like it’s all an interesting experiment where the goal isn’t any one outcome (this assignment done, or that college, or whatever) but rather to observe and to note what they learn.

If it doesn’t go well, I’ve tried to meet them with warmth and humor, and to find the useful information that *can* be gleaned. There’s always something, and they are more likely to find that nugget when they aren’t shut down.

It’s been helpful for me, too. The truth is nothing is total stakes, everything is “figure-out-able” in one way or another, and life is long.

- everything really can be a learning opportunity, and if you’ve learned something about yourself, that’s a win.

I do think it has lowered the temperature quite a bit.