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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

[b]+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.[/b]

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.[/quote]

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

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. [/quote]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of that out.[/quote]

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