Reply to Coming to terms with your teen being unmotivated and unimpressive?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why assuming no issues?  My teen has severe ADHD and associated learning disabilities. His schooling is decent, but not impressive, and left to himself, he'd be playing video games all day, because ADHD and addictive personalities go hand in hand. He needs A LOT of supervision, and will need a lot of supervision in college as well. Despite what idiots say on DCUM about letting their kids fail at a certain age, my son is part of a population that needs an extra decade in order to be a responsible, productive, adult. I know, because my husband and myself were like this too, and we are grateful our parents steered us in the right direction for longer than average.

You might want to double check whether yours has ADHD. [/quote]

He’s on Adderall. It helps to a point but he’s at the age where he doesn’t take it if he doesn’t feel like it. And it’s not like I can make him take it if he goes off to college or whatever is the next chapter. Even when he’s on it, it’s not a magic pill that guarantees productivity. He can take it and go play video games. He can take it and fall asleep if he’s bored. He just doesn’t give a damn about anything. He’s addicted to all things sports. He basically worships athletes and video games. Yet in real life I’ve never seen him put forth effort and display competiveness. He plays a no-cut sport and he’s terrible because he’s so lazy he won’t practice in his free time to get better. It makes no sense that he worships competitive athletes on tv yet sits on his butt all day.[/quote]

PP you replied to. Hmm.

First I think you need to talk to your child regularly about his future, how he sees himself in a few years, and what he needs to prepare for that future. If he wants a job related to sports or video games, great, but then he needs management and business skills, because he's not going to be the athlete. These kids need their lives put in context for them because they have very little self-awareness.

Second, you need to build trust. My son is 15, cannot be medicated right now for medical reasons, and is greatly handicapped by his unmedicated ADHD.  However, we've built a relationship of trust: we've coached him academically for years, we've done our best to help him organizationally (but we have ADHD as well...) and as a result when we tell him something, he listens. He doesn't always do it, but he feels the weight of our opinion, because he knows we've turned our lives around for him, and we've always been there for him. Heck, during the pandemic, my husband is available to tutor him in Precalc for as long as he needs it. If that's not parental love, I don't know what is!

Third, it might be time to calmly discuss cutting the TV and games if he cannot discipline himself to a certain amount daily. We rarely need to use that line, but when we do, magically DS finds a bit of self-discipline. It might be worth trying that before he goes off to college. Mine might just stay home and go to community college for two years then transfer, if he can't mature fast enough. That's another option for such kids, it buys them two extra years.
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