ADHD and Guilt: How to Handle Parenting and Boredom

Hey Terry,

It's good that you're figuring this all out for us, because just when you think you're done parenting, grandchildren begin arriving!

Grandma Lise

I guess I have two major points to make, and have blown my wad (360-plus words) on but one of them. Now I re-read and notice Guilt is the main point. Briefly, then:

We have to remember it is possible to feel guilty without being guilty. There is no need, law or policy known to me that says we have to play with our kids. So, I am Not Guilty. If I feel Guilty, that's another sort of problem than how to make myself play when I detest it. The actual problem is how to live with the two conditions simultaneously. I find it best to give those feelings air and light and then learn to eat those feelings in order to digest them properly. That means, for a while, a side of Guilty Feelings with many meals. Before long, with practice, they are reduced to mere condiments and not a whole nother course, so you have plenty of room for rhubarb pie. Or chick peas.

Relationships in ADD families are even more important than in other families. The quality of relationship determines whether children are going to be essentially cooperative of spirit, or not. When they do what we ask them to, they are really doing us a favor. They do not share our values. We know we are not making them empty the dishwasher, because we already learned that you can't make a 2 year old do anything. So how could we possibly increase our dominance over them as they mature?

No, when they do our bidding it is because A.) they are dependent and know it, B.) we have made them afraid not to, C.) we do things with them instead of sending them off alone to do the unpleasant task, or D.) they are purely nuts.

And I figure if the kid doesn't feel guilty for not emptying the wastebaskets, how is it fair for me to feel guilty for not liking those stupid games?

All right, I don't mean to dominate the discussion, but this one I wrote first and wouldn't like to throw it away. If YOU want to, Terry, go right ahead and I won't be offended.

When my daughter got to wanting me to play with her, I thought I would die of it. I'd been convinced from the start that I needn't be all things to her, so I told her in matter of fact tones that when it came to playing, that's what friends are for. A couple of "Please, Mama?" episodes and it was over. I imagine the couple of times she'd roped me into it I had been a poor playmate anyway and she didn't press the matter much.

She had a fine imagination and was well engaged playing alone a good bit. There were times she'd want me to keep her company, so I might lie on her bed reading while she turned her room into a series of gondola arrangements by means of drape-and-tape with string, baskets of small plastic animals and frequent interesting repair jobs.

I don't like board games either, but I started learning them when she did. That wasn't as bad as I feared because she wasn't good at them, either. I didn't have to pretend. She'd feel magnanimous when she "let" me score a point I didn't deserve. Once she even reverse-cheated so I would win the whole game. I admit I like, still, to play Go Fish. Only four rounds, though.

Our best times in each other's company have been reading or telling stories. She'd choose 3 objects for me to make a story up about. That was kind of boring until she caught on to me and labored to give me 3 items so unrelated I was in constant danger of not participating when I had promised. And when she got old enough to be completely inane, I had to work very hard to bear in mind that I was bored by the inanity but keenly interested in the child.

I am highly sensitive to noise, More than once I asked her to please hammer more quietly (right), or informed her I needed to go read elsewhere because she was using up my brain space. Once when she was 4, she fixed me with her steady gaze and said, "Mama. If you looked in the dictionary in the ‘D' section, and found ‘Doesn't Like Noise,' there would be a picture of you."

You see why it was worth the struggle to listen to her.