When I dumped my four kids on relatives yesterday, I made a couple of miscalculations. I didn’t think about the fact that they only have two kids and that their oldest is the same age as Patches. My children were a significant invasion for which they were only partially prepared. They’ve watched all four of my kids before, but those times my kids must have been better behaved. This time my kids weren’t bad or disobedient, they were just oblivious. When my sister-in-law would say something to them, none of them would answer her or even respond. This drove her crazy. My kids do this to me all the time and it sometimes drives me crazy. I’ve developed handfuls of tactics to deal with the problem, but my sister-in-law doesn’t have those because her sweet four-year-old never behaves that way.
In the end everyone survived. The evening was not pleasant for my sister-in-law. It wasn’t pleasant for Kiki either. The other kids were oblivious to the fact that there was a problem. In fact they had a great time and are ready to go back again as soon as possible. As for me, I’m very sorry that it wasn’t nice for everyone involved, but I’m incredibly grateful that they were willing to do it. Now I need to spend the next week observing my children. I need to decide whether the not-answering-when-spoken-to is a symptom of ADD behaviors which I need to continue to work around or whether it is merely a bad habit which I need to correct. My suspicion is that it is a little of both. I’ve just been so accustomed to it that I hardly notice it anymore.
Ooops. Still, no murders, that’s good.
WRT the ADD thing – I don’t presume to know your kids or their mental health or otherwise, so please don’t take offence, but IMHO there’s and increasing amount of “I have a hammer, so everything’s a nail” syndrome, including sadly among those who should know better, I speak here of professionals. Diagnosing behaviour disorders is a minefield and it’s unfortunately easy to get labelled with an inappropriate diagnosis. In my observation of kids in general I don’t think your NAWST is necessarily either ADD or rudeness, I reckon it’s fairly common and really it’s just the result of most-or-all their attention going into whatever they’re doing right now, which is something even I do sometimes… it’s hard sometimes too take heed of the outside world. I dunno too whether what I’ve is ADD…
ooops
I’ve no idea what that last sentence was supposed to say.
I think it was “…I’ve just described is ADD or not”. But maybe it was something else…
Re: ooops
Don’t worry about it. To reply to your earlier comment, I’ve done extensive study about ADD and ADD behavior. Link has been diagnosed with it and is currently on medication. All of my study tells me that ADD is an appropriate diagnosis for what I see. The question is how much of the obliviousness is built in, like my son’s blue eyes and how much of it is learned. If it is similar to eye color, then no amount of behavioral modification will change it and I just need to find ways to work around it. If it is learned behavior, then behavioral modification will solve the problem. I just want to know which it is before I expend the effort.
Re: ooops
I LOVE how you describe this here. I’ve wondered the same thing at times, but the way you explained it is great. Too bad we can’t measure it like blood sugar or something.