I am desperate to be a good parent to my three neurodivergent kids.
I have read so many books, I’ve done the webinars and the workshops, I know all about peaceful parenting, positive parenting, secure attachment parenting, low demand parenting, good enough parenting, meeting the most basic needs is still feels like an uphill battle most days parenting. Then I’ve read all the books again, in case I missed anything.
I’ve been to psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, GPs and peadeatricians. I pay a few hundred dollars for a half hour of their time. I talk fast to try to get as much information in as possible, to make my desperation clear, while my kids howl and bang the waiting room toys together in the background. The doctor nods sagely at me and types something into their files. They offer a few words of advice, usually something I’ve already tried, but I smile and thank them, and leave their offices knowing that it has solved nothing, changed nothing, feeling strangely empty and pummeled by the remaining 23 hours and 30 minutes of the day.
As a neurodivergent parent, I bring my own unprocessed trauma, my mal-adaptive coping strategies, my perfectionism and impatience and hair-trigger rage, my sensory overstimulation, my tendency to repeat cycles of hyper-productivity and burnout, and my dysregulated nervous system that perceives demands as threats against my survival to the family table.
I’ve attended the parent groups, all nervous smiles and clasped hands, hoping to be seen but not seen too well, because that would reveal me not as a proper mother like the others, but a pile of dirty laundry and fish fingers in a trench coat, trying to pass myself off as one of them.
I’ve sat through endless parent-teacher meetings, done the IEPs, begged the overtaxed and underfunded education system for support. I’ve done the diagnostic questionnaires, the funding applications, all the administrative processes that may or may not lead to any measurable improvement in my children’s learning outcomes, but are required as documentation of the fact that I’ve tried, I’m trying, fuck, I’m trying my hardest.
I’ve Googled the crap out of the internet, offering prayers and tribute up to the gods of the great algorithm to yield some new scrap of insight that will bless my home with a modicum of peace and predictability.
I’ve tried all the therapeutic methods, the systems promising a more regulated nervous system and a more expansive and responsive approach to the hard fucking slog that is being a parent, harder still when your kids are wired like booby traps, and the slightest tremble may set the jaws of their anger crushing around you.
If anyone were counting, I’ve probably put in enough credit hours to earn a PhD in child development by now, with all the research I’ve done.
And for the most part, the information I’ve reviewed is based on the most cutting edge neuroscience, and practically supported by government health agencies, and peer reviewed, best practice, expert endorsed and cleverly packaged for parental consumption, and it probably all would work exceptionally.
Except it doesn’t.
Because like my kids, I am also neruodivergent.
My brain is wired differently. It resists the systems that neurotypical society is built around.
I am not a clean slate.
As a neurodivergent parent, I bring my own unprocessed trauma, my mal-adaptive coping strategies, my perfectionism and impatience and hair-trigger rage, my sensory overstimulation, my tendency to repeat cycles of hyper-productivity and burnout, and my dysregulated nervous system that perceives demands as threats against my survival to the family table.
The recipe for my specific cocktail of spicy brain juice includes autism and ADHD, served with a generous lashing of depression and anxiety (sourced from free range organic trauma) and a twist of PDA for extra zest. (It used to come with BPD and Bipolar disorder, but those were removed from the menu when more suitable ingredients became available).
This self knowledge is relatively new, so while I am learning to parent my higher-needs children, I am also coming to terms with the myriad ways my own needs have not been met, and feeling the weight of that history settle over my shoulders like a mantle of grief. With it comes the added pressure to DO BETTER, for my kids and for my self.
This is easier said than done.
Take, for example, the following gloriously alliterative rhyme:
Connect before you correct
This is such good advice that I’ve got it on a post-it note next to our weekly schedule whiteboard.
And I get it. I really do.
The message of connection over criticism is all the more poignant considering that kids with ADHD have been estimated to receive over 20,000 corrective or negative messages before the age of 10 (Jellinek, 2010).
It’s utterly heartbreaking to think that this is a pattern I am repeating from my own childhood, that my kids are internalizing the idea that they aren’t enough, and that my love is conditional on their performance of tasks that they don’t even understand.
Especially when my own window of tolerance fluctuates from day to day, depending on how depleted I am. It must seem to them that my own moods are constantly shifting, that the scale by which their worth is judged is arbitrary, when really my love for them doesn’t hinge on how long I can tolerate watching them unsuccessfully attempt to complete a task on their own.
Sometimes I have the patience to support their independent exploration process, to lovingly hold space for their learning, and sometimes I need them to just do the thing (for fucks sake, no not that way, you’re taking forever, nevermind, just let me do it, see? That’s how.)
My children are more like wolves than golden retrievers. Confronting them with intentional eye contact is a direct challenge, and will be met with raised hackles and snapping jaws.
My own perfectionism doesn’t help. My need for systems to help with task management is built on a foundation of shame over all the tasks I’ve tried and failed to complete. I am ruled, in part, by the knowledge that time-blindness is a weakness of mine, and so there’s a non-stop sense of urgency, a tolling bell in the back of my mind, trying to keep me on track, to keep me from losing momentum, fueled by a fear that if I just pause for a moment I’ll drop all the balls I’m juggling and not be able to pick them up again.
So I correct my kids more than I would like to. And often without connecting first.
You see, connecting with ND kids isn’t always straightforward.
Like me, they can get into hyperfocus mode and have zero interest in anything outside the laser-beam of their attention. So when I impose upon them to acknowledge my presence, even in kindness, my attempt to connect can be perceived as an intrusion onto the sacred space of their focus. I am like the British, plundering the ancient treasures of their culture, and they are rightfully pissed off.
Lots of ND kids don’t like physical contact, or have very specific needs around it (which is absolutely valid and bra-fucking-vo that we’re finally culturally ready to acknowledge kids’ bodily autonomy and right to consent), so while some parents may find a gentle hand on the shoulder is a good way to get their kids attention, mine do not appreciate it.
Same with getting down to their level and making eye contact. My children are more like wolves than golden retrievers. Confronting them with intentional eye contact is a direct challenge, and will be met with raised hackles and snapping jaws.
My kids are also way too smart to have their feelings acknowledged, to be coached through any sort of emotional and situational awareness (although this one is almost definitely on me). They know when I open with “Hey I’ve noticed…” or “I wonder if…” or “It looks like you’re feeling…” that we’re about to launch into some empathy and problem solving, and they will be sooooo booooored. They have had enough practice with my attempts at communication to recognize when I am implementing a strategy, and will waste no time bucking me off my high horse.
Seriously, though, I’d love to find ways to connect with my kids. And the best way to do that, according to internet wisdom, is to meet them where they’re at, engage with what they’re interested in.
Well fuck. I’m sorry, but having to endure an hour-long lecture on the subtle lore of skibbidy toilet might actually break me. I’m not being overly dramatic. The dopamine deficit associated with understimulation, otherwise known as boredom, can be akin to real physical pain for people with ADHD (Matteson, 2019).
Of course, there’s perfectly good advice for dealing with this too:
You have to regulate your own emotions before you can help your child learn to do the same.
Makes sense, right? The problem-solving part of our brains doesn’t work when our bodies are in survival-states of arousal.
As the adult, you’re the one with the fully developed pre-frontal cortex. It’s your job to use it to Calm the Fuck Down, so in turn you can help your child learn to do the same.
But trying to regulate my own emotions while my child(ren) is having a meltdown feels like trying to swallow a small, living bird.
Sure, I’ve got a fully developed prefrontal cortex but I’ve also got a lifetime of unhealthy coping strategies carved deep into the furrows and folds of my already-deficient brain. Does the latter negate any supposed advantage the former is meant to give me in managing the stress of parenting?
You’re bound to make mistakes as a parent. Show yourself a little grace.
I wish I could afford a bit of grace. My grace account is well and truly in the red.
Should I slip into complacency, I risk losing my already-tenuous grip on productivity, which has so far served as the only measure of worth I have any chance of attaining, even if it means holding myself to an impossible standard.
In this way, grace feels dangerous. Sly.
Grace is a Foxy-whiskered gentleman leading me into a woodshed full of feathers.
Perfectionism feels safer, even as it slowly destroys me.
There is no one way to get it all right, no one way to be a parent.
Oh, but if only I can just get it all right, everything will click into place, a sudden sense of peace will wash over me, my home will be a tidy clockwork mechanism that runs on joy and smiles, and my children will be well adjusted.
I’m not ready to let go of that dream.
But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that I can accept that I may as well not even try to be a perfect parent, that such a thing does not exist.
That even excellent parents yell and scream and slam doors and stomp out and say hurtful things that they regret, maybe even using the same words that destroyed them when they were small and just needed to be understood, to be loved.
That even great parents fuck up.
The Circle of Security Parenting model (Hoffman et al., 2017) uses the term “Rupture and Repair” to re-frame parental mistakes and vulnerability as opportunities for growth and re-connection. That ruptures are inevitable, we, as parents, flawed humans all of us, are bound to fuck up, but what matters is that we show up and make the repairs.
But how can I repair the rupture between us when I, myself, am a broken pitcher, pouring out everywhere and frantically racing back and forth to the well in hopes that there will be a few drops left for the garden by the time I get there. Ok, that metaphor got away from me. But you get the idea.
The rupture between me and my kids every time I lose my shit only highlights the rupture between who I am and who I should be. And every time I move, the wound opens wider, the sutures pull at my ragged flesh.
Can’t someone stitch me back together?
References
Hoffman, K., Cooper, G., Powell, B., Benton, C. M. (2017). Raising A Secure Child: How Circle of Security Parenting can help you nurture your child’s attachment, emotional resilience, and freedom to explore. Guilford Publications.
Jellinek, M. S. (2010, May 1). Don’t Let ADHD Crush Children’s Self-Esteem. Clinical Psychiatry News. https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/23971/pediatrics/dont-let-adhd-crush-childrens-self-esteem
Matteson, N. (2019, June 12). When You Have ADHD, Boredom Is Painful, HealthyPlace. https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/livingwithadultadhd/2019/6/when-you-have-adhd-boredom-is-painful