Every time I was ready to tear my hair out, I would remind myself that Chris was not really his chronological age, but was three years younger. This always served to help me calm down and see the situation in a new light. With this insight his “inappropriate behavior” was not so inappropriate after all. And my response then could be geared to what he could understand and appreciate.
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Dr. Martha Denckla, our closing plenary speaker at the CHADD conference in San Francisco earlier this month, added a new twist to this insight. She suggested we consider our children with ADHD as both absolutely brilliant and three years younger than their actual age. What a fantastic combination.
Your precocious and delightful seven-year-old is hiding in the body of a ten-year-old. That sixteen-year-old teen who wants desperately to get his driver’s license is really a twelve-year-old who wants to do what all the big kids do. No wonder there is such a sense of disconnect with what is expected in life and what our kids do.
Today my twenty-five-year-old son is a well-grounded and successful twenty-one-year-old. He is thriving as a junior in college who has found his passion in life. He is my late bloomer. And he is blooming beautifully.
Ruth Hughes, PhD, is the CEO of CHADD.