Is Your Child a Homebody?
Summertime. A time to be carefree; a free spirit; a new world explorer. Or maybe not.
Our son loves to be home. Given his choice, he would stay home pretty much most of the time — in his pajamas with his hair all messy and toys all around him. He doesn’t, of course. He is usually pretty busy between school, sports, OT and so forth. However, we have had a two week break between the end of school and before summer camp starts. Getting him out of the house with the babysitter has been a real challenge.
Don’t get me wrong. In general, the babysitter situation, as I wrote in my last post, is working out well. We hired a 17 year old boy and our son loves playing soccer, basketball and XBOX with him. This is good. However, he does not want to leave the house to go to the playground, or to the batting cages or to the YMCA pool. I attribute this to his being uncomfortable with anything new which I think is part of his cognitive rigidity aspect of ADHD. It is difficult for our son to face new situations and changes.
My approach to this has been twofold. First, try to get a good friend to do the activity with him. The idea being that a good friend provides our son with the comfortable framework that he needs. Secondly, I strongly encourage him to try the activity (encourage might be a bit euphemistic) and tell him that if he does like not the activity then, after he tries it, he can come home. Usually he then goes and has a great time!!
We go through this for every new activity. It is frustrating, it is annoying and it makes me sad that it is often so difficult for him. I remember my summer days of free flowing play and exploration and wish that things could be easier for our son.
I often question myself on whether he is just being a homebody or is it a form of anxiety/cognitive rigidity? My mother’s instinct tells me that it is his anxiety. And so we soldier on trying to think of new ways to make him comfortable enough to try new activities, situations and sports. It is a daily battle that I wish was not a battle for him at all.
Do you face a similar situation? How do you handle it? Any ideas for me and for others would be greatly appreciated!!
Until next time …. Take care!!
Karen
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July 11th, 2010 at 2:07 am
My knucklehead is not so much a homebody as “forgetful”.
When he was in highschool, he would spend his entire weekend playing PS2 or computer games and vegging out on the couch- forgetting he had a girlfriend or even friends until he went back to school on Monday morning. By then of course, if he had a girlfriend she would be immensely annoyed at not getting any attention!
He has no qualms about spending time with friends or family if plans are made though.
August 9th, 2010 at 11:33 am
My son is young, just 6, so I have a little more leverage, but what we do is a quid pro quo. We negotiate for something he wants if he does what I want. So for example, after signing him up for a specific camp (for two weeks !) that he wanted to attend, he went one day and hated it. I explained that I’d paid for it, and needed to work during the day. I asked if we could make a deal so that he would still go. He agreed to in exchange for 30 minutes of wii time on a week night (normally a weekend only activity). Like you I share the sadness of seeing him not enjoy things. He flipped out on a recent trip to Disneyland. In retrospect I should have seen that coming, but I just keep thinking ITS DISNEYLAND SHUT UP AND ENJOY. New things increase my son’s anxiety so we also make a “plan” of how things will go when we set off for somewhere new. Fortunately for me, he almost always enjoys himself once he is somewhere (although he will express negative/ambivalent thought about it later). I have to remind myself that is his anxiety talking.