Whiny unmanageable kid ...

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Bob Morehead wrote:

> The question comes up, how did the boy get like this in the first place?
> As Scouters, all of us have had ADD kids in our troop from time to time.
> While they may be loud, disruptive, or difficult to control at times,
> they are NOT all whiny, lazy shirkers of responsibility. I cannot speak
> for Aloysius or his parents; I do not know them. I CAN speak for the
> boys I've met who are LIKE him.
<cut>
> Invariably, it comes down to the parents excusing unacceptable behavior
> because he has this disorder ...

I agree to some extent. There is a kid in one of my British troops with
ADD and Asperger's syndrome. Dad alternately excuses his behaviour
because of his " disability " and yells at the kid for being " naughty ".
The result is mixed messages. Part of the trouble is a 60%
hereditary component in ADD. This guy has all the classic ADD symptoms,
and told me he scored over 90% on an adult screening test for ADD ... but
he doesn't want to acknowledge it and get treatment. As a result there is no
consistent discipline, the kid rarely gets his medication on time ( although
when he does it works well ) and everything is pretty chaotic. These are
parents who say that behavioural management programs do not work because
they tried them for three weeks (!) and there was no change. (Most
parents in the support group say it takes about a year to see any real change.)

David ( not his real name ) responds well to the other adults when his
parents are not around, but when they are he is almost unmanageable,
because he has learnt that they will take the easy way out and give in to
him. For example, on Cub Camp he left the table and wandered off, so I
asked the kids on cleanup to throw his cereals away and wash his dish.
I said that the kids knew that if they left the table we would assume
they had finished their meal, and David was no different from any of the
other kids. It would not do David any harm to wait until lunch - he would not
die of starvation in the meantime. But Dad said no, he would only keep
whining. I said let him whine. But it ended up with Dad getting a new
bowl of cereal for David to eat when <he> was ready.

But we need to be aware that parents of " high maintenance " kids have to
cope with problems 24/7, often without a lot of support. They get called
in when the school Principal , Scoutmaster or whoever decides that they
can't cope with their kid. They are often criticised by parents of "nice"
kids. Even professionals sometimes implicitly blame parents by talking about
" lack of bonding " or " early childhood trauma " as a cause of behaviour
problems. Add the fact that a good few of these parents may have residual
ADD themselves, and maybe we can see where they are coming from. Many of
the adults in ADD support groups were only diagnosed when they took their
kids for help and someone spotted that a parent - usually Dad - has some
of the ADD behaviours himself.

Of course the ultimate legal and moral respponsibility for a child's
behaviour must rest with his parents or guardians, but sometimes we as
youth workers need to realise that whether we like or not, for some kids
we are the only adults who offer any sort of consistency in their lives.
We do the best we can ... we win some, we lose some. Hopefully we can say
that we " did our best " for these kids.

Ian N Ford
Special Needs adviser, Greenwich District Scout Council

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