ODD mom moments

Raising an ODD/ADHD child can be expensive. ADHD children cost, on average, about five times as much as neurotypical children. I’m sure there are various factors contributing to this, but in my house, one of those factors is definitely delayed memory skills. 

Aurora has a tendency to remove various clothing items and leave them lying around. Quite often she then forgets where the said items were set down…or even that she was wearing them in the first place. This is annoying at home, but downright frustrating everywhere else. She has misplaced various shoes, coats, socks, and gloves at school, friends’ houses, in the backyard, and even at church. Sometimes she can find the items. Sometimes she works to earn the money to replace them. Sometimes she just can’t keep up with everything that is lost, so I just replace them. And sometimes she just does without.

Most elementary schools allow students to check out library books. I understand that this gives children a chance to read the books they may not get elsewhere. It helps them have an opportunity to be responsible for something. However, for Aurora, it is generally an additional expense. Keeping track of a book from the library to her backpack to the house to her room while she reads it and then back to her backpack and finally to the school library is often just too many steps. 

When Aurora was in third grade she checked out a book about origami. For some reason she took it out of her backpack while she was on the playground. For some reason she left it there on the playground. And for some reason it rained that night. The book was found and returned to the librarian in a ruined state the next day. The librarian called me with her apologies, and said we owed $20 for the book. With much complaining, Aurora worked for me to pay back the money. It should have been a good learning opportunity. Maybe it was, but it certainly didn’t change her behavior. It almost seemed more of a punishment for her forgetfulness. 

By nature Aurora is very curious. This is great for her in her personal development. She is always learning. This is not always so great for me, as her parent. I often hear about curious genius kids who take things apart, figure out how they work, and put them back together–like a car engine or a computer. It doesn’t work like that for Aurora. 

For his third birthday my son, Alexander, got a scooter from his grandmother. He loved that scooter. Aurora loved it, too. One day she decided she wanted to figure out how it was put together. She rummaged in the garage until she found the tools she wanted. She hid herself in her room with the scooter just in case this was something she was not supposed to be doing. And she disassembled the scooter. She probably learned something, but not enough to put it all back together the way it started. She forgot some steps. The scooter kind of worked after that, but it didn’t turn correctly. 

I approached her about the mostly reconstructed scooter. 

“You can’t just take apart things that aren’t yours,” I said.

“Well, Xander said I could use it,” she replied.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean you could use it in that way.”

Her voice quickly escalated into a shout, “Then he should have said so. It’s not my fault if he doesn’t say things about his scooter.”

That doesn’t even make sense, I thought to myself.

I took a deep breath. “Aurora, you made a mistake. Don’t take things apart you can’t put back.”

“How am I supposed to know what I can put back together. You always blame me for everything.” And she slammed her door. 

I didn’t replace the scooter. It still kind of scoots. See what I mean, though? Forgetfulness (plus curiosity) equals expensive. And in this oppositional defiant disorder moment her embarrassment at having destroyed something came out as anger as usual. 

Another example of Aurora’s lacking memory skills showed up one day when Ike and I decided to take our family hiking. We love to hike, and in Utah, where we live, we are surrounded by hiking options. 

We piled the kids in the car one spring Saturday afternoon and drove about half an hour to hike a trail that ended at a waterfall. It was a fairly easy two-mile hike that I had heard about from a friend.

Ike pulled up and parked the car, and I noted the muddy trail ahead of us caused by melted snow and spring rain. 

“Everybody out. Let’s go have fun,” I said to my family.

“Umm…Mommy,” I heard from the backseat. “I forgot my shoes.”

It was Aurora. 

“What?” I was shocked. Who gets in a car to go hiking without shoes? “I’m sorry to hear that. We are here. We are not going home or we will not be able to hike at all.”

“It’s fine, Mommy, I have socks. I can do it with just socks.”

I glanced at the muddy trail, at my three other children ready to get going, and then at my husband. He shrugged.

“OK,” I sighed. “I guess you are hiking in socks.”

And she did. At least, she did until she found some really interesting rocks along the trail at which point she silently pulled off her dirty socks and used them to hold all of her rock treasures. I did not even notice she had turned her socks into rock-carrying pouches until we arrived at the waterfall and she set down the bulging hosiery. I noted her dirty bare feet and sighed again. 

“Those socks were never going to be worn again anyway,” I muttered to my husband. 

Again. Forgetfulness equals expensive. And messy.

Well, one pair of socks is not incredibly expensive, but there are countless examples I didn’t mention. For example, there’s the time she was making cookies, got halfway done, and was distracted. When she came back, she had no idea which ingredients she had added and which she hadn’t. She had to throw away the whole thing and start over. There are the three times she misplaced her lunch box and had no lunch. She had to use paper sacks after the third replaced box. And then there are the many times she pulled game pieces out of board games to use in pretend play and just never remembered to put them back. 

Believe me when I say I can relate all of these stories now with a smile on my face. What else can I do but smile, shake my head, and shrug. I mean, seriously. Who goes hiking with no shoes?