You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (29 page)

Zachary was evaluated and diagnosed with multiple learning disabilities and ADD. His psychologist recommended intensive tutoring but the family never has enough extra money to hire anyone. Jan has taken on the job but can’t do it with any regularity because she’s so overwhelmed by the details of her life. So Zachary struggles along without the educational help he needs.

Jennifer

Jennifer
is the baby of the family and her parents treat her that way. They place few demands on her. At eight years old, she’s a delightful child with a sunny personality and an engaging sense of humor. She’s fairly hyperactive but doesn’t display the irritability and moodiness of her father or sister. She channels some of her excess energy into gymnastics, cartwheeling or dancing around the house
much of the time.

At school she has become the class clown, entertaining her peers and keeping her teachers so busy laughing that they ignore
her difficulties with schoolwork. Her grades are even worse than her brother’s, but no one gets on her case about it. Her teachers assume that she just isn’t very bright. Her parents are busy arguing with each other and with Amy. They work so hard at just
surviving that they don’t have time to worry about their youngest child. They figure that at least they have one normal child even if she isn’t any smarter than the rest of their kids.

Notes: Act V, Scene 1

Marriage and child rearing present all the challenges we’ve already discussed and then some! The intricacy of the dance of family relationships is dramatically more complex than that of groups,
friendships or romantic interactions. In this regard, we would like you to consider these new math facts. Are you ready?

1 + 1 > 2

2 + 1 = 4

2 + 2 = 11
plus

We’re not going to tell you quite yet what these equations mean, but the answers are correct … sort of. It depends on the questions you’re asking. We’ll get back to this in a few paragraphs.

As soon as two individuals become a
legal we
, the rules change and the complexity and intensity of the relationship increase whether or not either has ADD. There are often unrealistic expectations that the spouse will fulfill the roles of Savior, Mother, Father, Best Friend, Expert Lover, Tower of Strength, Therapist, etcetera.

Further complicating the relationship of a couple, particularly as time goes on, is the history they have shared.
Communications are colored with memories, both good and bad. An innocent remark can spark an argument about a past hurt or
unresolved conflict that had an impact on the relationship. If we add a spouse with ADD to the picture, the relationship can change unpredictably.

Jan and Tom were delighted to find each other and had an exciting courtship. Jan loved the spontaneity of impulsive trips to
the beach and phone calls at 3:00 a.m. Tom loved having Jan help him remember to put gas in the car and agree with his opinions.

When Amy was born in the first year of their marriage, they seemed to become totally different people. The transformation they experienced is certainly not unique to ADDers. Virtually all parents, even those who carefully plan their families, say it’s impossible to
imagine the magnitude of the changes that occur with the birth of a child.

This brings us back to the answers in our equations. They are correct if we ask the following questions:

What does one spouse plus one spouse equal?

What does one couple plus one child equal?

What does one couple plus two children equal?

Jan and Tom assumed that their problems resulted from baby Amy’s constant crying.
A difficult infant can definitely add stress to a relationship. Even if Amy had been a calm, placid baby, our couple would have experienced a transformation in their relationship.

With the addition of each child, the relationships between and among family members become increasingly complicated. The complications grow not arithmetically but geometrically. This may be why parents often say a second
child adds more than just double the work of an only child. The extra work doesn’t have nearly as much to do with extra laundry or meal preparation as it does with an exploding number of relationships. Let’s look at what happens to the number of relationships when you add children to a family:

Synopsis: Act V, Scene 1

Although it is now easier for different kinds of computers to talk to each other, making the PC and the Apple worlds more compatible was quite a challenge. We wonder what those programmers would think about the task of interfacing a family unit. They would have to program individual personalities to interface with the multiple relationships among family members.
The dyad of husband and wife alters the one-to-one relationship of premarriage days even before children add to the complexity of interpersonal relationships.

Since ADD tends to run in families, it dramatically alters the dimensions of the family unit and exponentially ups the ante as children are born. Raising ADD children is a challenging job that taxes the resources of non-ADD parents. Many
adoptive
parents can attest to this. In a family like the Bakers, where everybody has the disorder, the potential for discord and communication breakdown is enormous.

Does this mean that the equation of ADD adult(s) + children = disaster? Absolutely not! You may be a wonderful parent! ADDers are lively people. Many can respond to the challenges of child rearing with incredible enthusiasm and
avoid the pitfalls by leaping energetically over them!

The Job of Parenting:
ADD adults have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to parenting. A typical balance sheet for an ADD parent may look something like this:

How does this balance sheet play out when you become a parent? It’s hard to say with certainty. Your child’s personality and the interrelated profiles of you, your spouse and your offspring all have impacts. You might become a parent
who yells a lot or is grouchy much of the time. The added noise and stress of having children may push buttons that weren’t pushed before. You might look at your reflection in a mirror and wonder where the mean, angry person came from.

On the other hand, you might take advantage of the wonderful “immaturity” everyone used to criticize. With your children in tow, you can giggle, climb on the monkey
bars and sing aloud in the grocery store without questioning looks from other people. You might effectively use your compassion and open-mindedness to roll with the inevitable punches of parenting.

Your effectiveness as a parent will be tested by the genetic probability that one or more of your children are likely to have ADD. Their high-strung temperaments will require special handling. In some respects your own ADD uniquely qualifies you as a provider of special handling. You have insight unavailable to your non-ADD peers. If you haven’t yet achieved a workable balance in your life,
however, you will need to consider your own needs for nurturing. You will be more available to your children if you are also taking care of yourself.

Parenting has been compared to a scary, exciting, unpredictable roller-coaster ride. We submit that when ADD is an issue, parenting becomes an even wilder journey. It’s like guiding an out of control rocket ship at the speed of light toward an unknown
destination! Is this necessarily so bad? Just think of all the teacher conferences and emergency room visits our parents would have missed if it hadn’t been for us! What would they have done with all that extra time? Just think how boring the world would be without us.

Can we learn any lessons from this survey of the family dimension? We think the most important one is the need for planning.
Your parents and teachers probably complained so often about your poor planning that the very word makes you uncomfortable. As much as you may dislike planning, it’s probably the single most important thing you can do for yourself. Use the following considerations as a framework for your “Planned Parenting.” The job of parenting is too important to leave to chance.

Survival Tips: Act V, Scene 1

Spacing of Children:
Carefully consider the spacing of your children. This has nothing to do with the psychology of spacing as it affects a child’s adjustment. Rather, careful spacing allows you to absorb the impact of each child on your capacity to handle the additional demands. If you have several children in the space of a few years, you may be pushed beyond your limits before you know it.
Spacing buys you the time you need to make a wise decision.

Personal and Financial Resources:
If you and your spouse want to continue full-time employment, can you both emotionally handle the second shift of parenting? If not, can you survive financially if one parent has only a part-time job or stays at home? Of course, if you’re a single parent, you won’t have an option in this regard.

Realistic Assessment of Effort and Money:
Do your homework. Ask other parents, especially parents of ADD children, about the work and money it takes to raise children. Everyone knows that children are expensive. But when ADD is part of the financial picture, you’ll need to think about the added expenses you may incur. Your child may need extra help. He may need, among other services, tutoring, speech therapy,
medicine or psychological counseling.

General Strategies:
What resources are available to lighten the load? Are there relatives living nearby who are willing to help? Can you reduce your financial obligations? Can you organize the workload so each parent can have periodic breaks? When you add children to your life, you need to be even more ruthless about simplifying it to maintain balance.

Act V, Scene 2: The Art of Relating in the Family

In the following scenes we’ll offer a glimpse of the Baker family’s interactions. They are illustrative of the complexity of family relationships when ADD is added to the mix.

Jan, Tom and Zachary

Jan is tutoring Zachary at the dining room table. Tom walks in and starts to tell her some exciting news about work. When she doesn’t respond, he becomes
increasingly exasperated by her seeming uninterest. When his raised voice finally elicits Jan’s request to “wait a minute,” he leaves the room in a huff.

Tom, Jan and Jennifer

Tom sits bleary-eyed at the breakfast table, drinking his first cup of coffee and trying to read the newspaper. Jan, who is a morning
person, chats to him nonstop and reminds him that it’s garbage day. Tom finally looks
up from his paper and announces that the garbage needs to be taken out. Jan testily replies that if he’d been listening he would know that she’s aware of that fact. Jennifer suddenly appears out of nowhere to give her startled parents bear hugs. She is scolded for being so rough and slinks out of the room wondering why her parents don’t seem to want her love.

Jennifer, Amy and Zachary

Jennifer
rushes into her sister’s room and pounces on the bed to give Amy a morning kiss. Amy, who is just beginning to wake up, shoves her off the bed and feels only mildly remorseful when Jennifer scrapes her knee on the way down. Now fully awake, Amy heads down the hall for a shower and lets loose a string of epithets when Zachary walks in to brush his teeth.

Notes: Act V, Scene 2

The Baker family
includes five people whose individual differences collectively combine to create Chaos on the Cul-de-Sac. All families share some of their problems—balancing the rights of individual members with the needs of the larger family unit. The Baker family has an extra layer of shared ADD challenges that makes this balancing act particularly difficult.