Defience

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My son is 16 and over the past several months he has gotten more and more difient. He says he "forgets" to do things he has been doing for years. Like hygine routines, picking up his room, feedign his fish, ect.. We have lists and note reminders all over the house. We have taken all electronics away, grounded him to his room, we have tried everyting we can think of. Can anyone give us some advice on how to help him to do the simpelist things like brushing his teeth and putting on deoderant? We need help! Thank you, Michele

Have you asked him why he is forgetting and why he can't follow the lists? Does he do things when you tell him to do it and he does it right away such as brushing teeth or deodorant?

Trust your son, he is most likely telling you the truth. I myself always forget to do important things i.e homework, tooth brushing and such. The only thing I can tell my mother when it happens is that I forgot to do it but then she doesn't trust me and thinks I'm always lying to her. Don't be a rockhead with your son.

He says he doesn't know why he forgets. He says "hwen I try not to forget something I always mess it up". Yes if we say "brush your teeth" he will do it right away if its at the appropriate time All on his schedule. We have check sheets with all morning and evening hygine routines, but he needs to be reminded to do the check sheets on a daily basis. We have had versions of these lists since he was about 8. So they are nothing new.

I don't know that what you are describing is defiance. Defiance would be:

Parent: "Please go brush your teeth."
Child: "NO! You can't tell me what to do!"

For whatever reason, sometimes my kids need a lot more support from me than they usually do. I don't know why, nor do they. It just is what it is, so we work through it together.

If I were in your shoes, I think the conversation would go like this: "OK. For whatever reason you can't remember right now. As long as you do not argue with me when I remind you to do things, we are OK. I will help you remember. I just want you to remember that I cannot be with you to remind you of everything for the rest of your life, so this can only be a short-term solution, OK? We'll discuss it again in (two weeks, two months, whatever is reasonable for your kid) and see if we are ready to try something else."

My parents, due to lack of knowledge more than anything else, punished me for things I couldn't help when I was a kid. That is not a route I would recommend to anyone. My "rule of thumb" is that if consequences are not working, then it probably isn't something that can be fixed by consequences. We have to find another way. And sometimes that means that I need to be a bigger part of the solution than is "normal" for a kid their age.

I guess defience is the wrong word. It just seems like he knows what he is supposed to be doing. There are reminder notes all over the house about everything. He is just not doing it. We are not asking for out of the box expectations. Just regular hygine and chore things. He gets upset(deffensive) when we question why he didn't do something. I just feel at my wits end.

Damn, when I hear that someone grounds their kid for "forgetting" stuff, I think that those parents must have lost their mind. You ground children for causing trouble like shoplifting, smoking weed in public or being abusive but for crying out loud, you don't punish a child for forgetting to shower or brush teeth. I recommend you talk with him without getting upset at him or if he really has a bad memory, see if he is healthy because sleeping disorders and other factors can really temporarily take a toll on short-term memory.

You are lucky that your child wasn't like me when I was his age because I had ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) and first started to smoke around the age of 16 or 17. Hell I even drank beer at school (which drinking age is 16 in my country, you still shouldn't drink alcohol at school). Just be happy that your child wasn't like me, even though I turned out alright with no police record entries and no driving violations.

It could be way worse. So don't be too harsh on him or it might backfire.

"Forgetting" can be a focus issue.

I've often explained this as being the mental version of trying to push the 'like' poles of two magnets together - you can't see the force field that keeps repelling them from each other, but you can feel it and see it working. No matter how hard you push, those two magnets will not go together that way - they will slide to one side, they will go over, or under, but they will not connect.

Sometimes ADHD feels like that. You know what's expected of you, but you cannot do it and being pushed to do it just makes you frustrated and angry. Its nearly impossible to explain it to someone who isn't experiencing it, so its just easier to say "I forgot" so they'll leave you alone.

Autistic focus is an odd phenomenon - either we're zoned in with laser beam intensity and can't be pried away from something, or we simply cannot generate the slightest particle of interest in even looking at it. There's very little gray area in between, and if one thing has us temporarily obsessed, everything else gets ignored until we've had our fill of the obsession. During hormonal teen years, there are several things that can obsess your attention and focus and make it hard to pay attention to daily chores.

I totally get what you are saying and we have some of the same struggles here.

My son's neurologist puts it this way "The problem isn't knowing what to do. It's doing what you know." My son's biggest struggle is turning in his homework. If you were to ask him to give a 5 minute speech about the importance of turning in your homework and the potential consequences of not turning it in, he would be able to give you at 10 minute one. It's not that he doesn't understand or know. It's that his executive functioning--or rather, DYSfunctioning--trips him up each time. It is frustrating for me, but I am always careful to remind myself it is even more frustrating for him.

When my son was 7, he said something to me that was very profound (I thought). It was something along the lines of "Mommy, I know what I am supposed to do, but I don't do it. I know what I am not supposed to do, but I do it anyway. I must be a bad boy." He's not a bad boy. He has never been a bad boy. He is actually complimented regularly about what a sweet, kind, thoughtful kid he is. However, it is equally true that sometimes he doesn't do things he knows he should, and he does things he knows he shouldn't. It's his executive dysfunction. Part of his wiring. The good thing is that I am confident he will one day learn some "workarounds" to compensate for his issues. I have learned them over time. Granted they are not foolproof and I sometimes still have problems, but for the most part, I have figured out ways to compensate. It's important to remember, I have not found a way to fix my executive functioning problems. I can't fix it. It's hard wired. But I can compensate for them.

Another thing that might be helpful that I thought of when you said he becomes defensive. In 6th grade, my son had numerous explosive moments related to his teachers questioning him about homework. They would say things like "You knew you had the assignment. I wrote it in your planner for you. Why didn't you do it?" Not in a mean way...just trying to figure out where the disconnect was. He--my generally calm kid who is as cool as a cucumber--would erupt in anger. A few times he yelled at the teacher and walked out of the classroom. That is so totally not my son. When we talked about it, what I came to learn is that their questions made him feel horrible about himself because he had no answer. He did know he had the assignment. His teacher did write it in the planner for him. But he had no idea why he didn't do it and he would feel rage toward himself because he could not manage to do something that it seemed to him like everyone else his age could do. It made him feel stupid. It made him feel childish. It made him feel like a failure. So, what worked instead is the teacher would say "I will let Mrs. Jones know you need to do the homework in study hall and I will have her give you a pass to bring it to me when you are finished." No blowing up. Homework done. Esteem intact. The trick was realizing that asking him questions that he could not answer was not helping the situation at all. It felt like an attack, and he was already attacking himself internally. It's possible his defensiveness is because he really doesn't have a "good" answer.

I'm not saying it is easy. Or that you are not entitled to feel frustrated. It's hard and it's frustrating. But it is possible that what seems to be a simple issue on your side may not be a simple issue on his side. As someone who has executive functioning issues, all I can tell you is that it honestly sucks. And it is almost impossible to explain to someone who does not have executive functioning issues. I am 47 and I am only starting to understand how it all "works" for me. At 16 it just makes you feel like a freakish failure. My gentlest suggestion is for the time being, give him verbal prompts. As long as he complies without argue, let it be until you are able to find something else that works.

LeagueGirl, I wouldn't worry about it. As you said, you are no longer together and he was a jerk anyway. It's hard sometimes to figure out what is justified and what is an excuse, even for me when I look at my own behavior. Did I really forget to do it? Or did I just not do it? No one is perfect and we all make mistakes. I sometimes think back to times that I punished my son when I shouldn't have, because I didn't know any better. I thought he could help it. There is no point in beating myself up for it. All I can do is take what I have learned and apply it in the future. I think it is the same for you.