ADHD kid has similar friends; it’s not easy

amother

Sun, Sep 22 2024, 7:10 pm

My 12 year old son is not academically challenged, but has highly impulsive ADHD and social/behavioral challenges that prevented him from being able to attend any of the frum schools in our area for several years.

One small Jewish school (co-ed and students with various levels of observance, but frum hanhala) took him last year, but an incident toward the end of the year snowballed into a huge mess. Though the school would never call it “expulsion”, he got suspended 3 weeks before the end of the year and wasn’t allowed to return.

And now I’m homeschooling him. It’s not easy, and it’s not really what either of us want to do long-term.

I’ve sent him to frum summer day camps over the years, and he has one long-time best friend in the community who has many of the same interests and has a similar dramatic, impulsive, quirky personality. (I’ve had many a heart to heart talk with this kid’s mom about how her son has been able to get into and stay in one of the frum schools while my similar one has been rejected multiple times… its unfair and I know she has nothing to do with it, but it still hurts.)

DS hasn’t ever made friends within the typical yeshivish groups at our shul - I don’t know how much is DS’s own self-consciousness, but he feels like they “look down on him” for his lack of Judaic skills, his disinterest in sports, and his social awkwardness.

This past Shabbos, his one BFF brought some friends over to our house after lunch. Now we had DS + 4 more very loud, very impulsive, very neurodivergent boys bouncing around our house for 4-5 hours. Weird kids of a feather flock together 😅

If anything, DS got overwhelmed by the chaos after a little while and excused himself to sit in another room with a book while everyone else happily yelled at one another despite being 2 feet apart.

DH really didn’t like it. Even while they were still here, he would pull me aside to say that they were too loud, their conversations veered too often into inappropriate topics, they made a huge mess, etc etc, and we would have to ask them not to come back in the future. I pleaded with him that I’d try to keep things under control. I did the best I could to manage the insanity - trying to provide appropriate entertainment, getting them out of the house for 45 minutes (I supervised them at the park), making sure to give attention to DS’s other siblings… it’s exhausting, but deep down I was glad that these boys (full of rude 12-year-old humor and energy) still chose to come to my house and DS felt “wanted” for once in his life.

Then today, DH found someone had left an apple near his exercise equipment in a room we don’t let food into, and it got completely smushed by one of the weights and now it’s a sticky, pulpy mess. He called DS over without any context, just “look at this! How could you do this?” and DS was very confused and resistant to come, and that’s kinda understandable, especially for a neurodivergent kid!

And he started threatening that if he can’t get his friends to behave, then DS won’t be allowed to have them over… like he had any control over a gaggle of chaotic boys, or noticed someone had helped themselves to an apple and brought it into the room…

And I just feel so so bad for DS. He’s so isolated from kids all week, and life has handed him a pekeleh that means these are the type of kids he’s going to associate with - either by choice or necessity.

And I don’t think taking that away from him is the solution. DS will find and gravitate to these kids anyway - I’m happy to have them at our house, where I can overhear their stupid jokes about running drugs over the border to give to children, or being a murderous follower of Voldemort, and remind them every once in a while “hey guys, let’s pull back a little or change the subject.”

I want DH to understand it’s not DS’s fault! And if we take away the kids who have chosen to socialize with DS, he won’t necessarily find a new and better, quieter, more “appropriate” and well-behaved chevra.

It just hurts. And my heart aches for my son. I can’t believe he’ll be bar mitzvah next year. I have no idea what the future looks like.