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

In our case, in addition to ADHD and learning differences there is a slight twinge of anxiety that creeps into our daily lives.  Our son is really happy at his school and with his school friends.  He also is still very close to his best friend from growing up and is always happy to have him over for a play date.  Outside of this, anxiety tends to creep in and affect everything else.

When our long term favorite babysitter needed to take extra classes in order to finish college, we needed to find a new babysitter for the afternoons before my husband and I are done work.  We ended up hiring two girls from our local college who were very nice and sweet.  The change, however, was too much for our son and he proceeded to lock himself in the back upstairs room of our house every day for a month.  Not a good situation.  We kept hoping that he would get used to the idea and give the girls a chance.  We talked about it with him and tried different strategies to no avail.  I felt horrible for our son in that this kind of change was so traumatic for him.  I also felt badly for the girls and for us.  Juggling work, homework, kids’ activities, laundry and commitments on a daily basis is challenging enough.  Throw in a healthy dose of anxiety and it becomes that much more difficult.  In situations like this, I tend to go through a full range of emotions from sad to supportive to angry.

So when college ended for the year in the beginning of May, we found ourselves with no babysitter and no support in the afternoons.  My husband and I juggled everything together and the kids probably spent a little more time in front of the TV than they should have.  Neither my husband nor I could face just yet the trauma of finding another babysitter.  We also needed to make some decisions about the summer which would determine the amount of hours that we would need from a sitter.

I then had an epiphany when asking a friend about the local college job boards.  He joked that they had gotten a response from an attractive male college polo player that we might want to consider.  His twin nearly teenage girls and an attractive male college polo player was not a good match for them.  I immediately laughed at his joke and we went on with our conversation.

However when I hung up the phone, I thought about a male babysitter.  It could work.  We had always had female nannies and au pairs.  Maybe it was time to consider something different that our son might be comfortable with.

So we met with a friend’s son about babysitting and he started this week.  SUCCESS.  Our son loves having a male babysitter and looks forward to seeing him every day.  (Okay today was only day 3).  No running to the bedroom or back room to hide – just soccer, baseball and giggles.

So maybe this solution was not so creative but it did require for my husband and I to think “out of our box” that we had created regarding babysitting!  So we have a new babysitter but no anxiety, for now.  Hooray!!!!  And so I celebrate a tiny success.

Until next time …. Take care.

Ever feel like you have just had a V8 moment? I recently did when I realized that ANY change in activity is a “transition” for my son. For a while, I have known that a change in our normal routine such as going away for the weekend, going on vacation or starting back at school were transitions and could produce great anxiety for our son.

Now that he has been officially diagnosed with ADD (ADHD – inattentive), I realize that any change in activity is a transition. Different types of transitions produce different levels of reaction but it has now entered my consciousness that I need to prepare him for transitioning from play time to dinner as much as I need to prepare him for a new activity or going away for the weekend.
 

 
Major Transitions or New Activities

Vacations and traveling weekend plans have consistently caused much anxiety with our son. To address this, we have always talked through the travel plans in detail extensively before the actual trip. Where are we going, how long we going to be there, what we are going to do while there, where will we sleep, where will we eat and so forth. We typically discuss the travel plans for a week or two before leaving. Sometimes we also play act the new situation. We dress up and pretend we are leaving for our plans at that moment and play through what is going to occur.
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