Kids with ADHD often have days and weeks and months and years in which almost every interaction with a parent or teacher is mostly negative. It doesn’t take long for this conditioning to make kids feel bad about themselves–e.g., see themselves as stupid and lazy–and feel bad about the parents and teachers. They often become secretive or otherwise avoid the people they’ve had thousands of bad experiences with.
If there’s any way to shift that balance, it will be powerful for your daughter and for your relationship with her later. Sometimes this means just letting go of certain things. Sometimes it means letting her get away with stuff. If she has siblings, it probably means looking like you’re treating your kids unfairly. Sometimes it might mean reaching out with love and kindness when there seems to be no chance that will be received well. You can potentially be one of the best things in her life, but the path of least resistance–and the path that “normal” parenting leads to–is a world where you are an agent of unpleasantness or punishment for her more often than of happiness and comfort.
As she grows up she will learn lots of things adults need to know; some quickly, some very slowly. She’ll need help at a lot of points, and if you can be a person she asks for help, her life will be better. When she’s 20 or 30 she’ll be independent and living a life, no matter what your parenting style was. At that point, the relationship she has with you depends a lot on her accumulated memory and gut-level conditioning from years of being around you.
I’m choking up as I write this because I have a daughter and I know I’m not a perfect dad. I want very much to have a good relationship with her as she grows up, and I know I don’t always make that easy. It’s a huge challenge. I say this because what I wrote sounds really preachy; I’m preaching to myself as much as to anyone else.
Kids with ADHD often have days and weeks and months and years in which almost every interaction with a parent or teacher is mostly negative. It doesn’t take long for this conditioning to make kids feel bad about themselves–e.g., see themselves as stupid and lazy–and feel bad about the parents and teachers. They often become secretive or otherwise avoid the people they’ve had thousands of bad experiences with.
If there’s any way to shift that balance, it will be powerful for your daughter and for your relationship with her later. Sometimes this means just letting go of certain things. Sometimes it means letting her get away with stuff. If she has siblings, it probably means looking like you’re treating your kids unfairly. Sometimes it might mean reaching out with love and kindness when there seems to be no chance that will be received well. You can potentially be one of the best things in her life, but the path of least resistance–and the path that “normal” parenting leads to–is a world where you are an agent of unpleasantness or punishment for her more often than of happiness and comfort.
As she grows up she will learn lots of things adults need to know; some quickly, some very slowly. She’ll need help at a lot of points, and if you can be a person she asks for help, her life will be better. When she’s 20 or 30 she’ll be independent and living a life, no matter what your parenting style was. At that point, the relationship she has with you depends a lot on her accumulated memory and gut-level conditioning from years of being around you.
I’m choking up as I write this because I have a daughter and I know I’m not a perfect dad. I want very much to have a good relationship with her as she grows up, and I know I don’t always make that easy. It’s a huge challenge. I say this because what I wrote sounds really preachy; I’m preaching to myself as much as to anyone else.