I don’t really know how to say this without sounding like a complete failure of a mother but I’m really struggling with my eldest son. I love him deeply, obviously, I just find him really, really hard to get along with.
He’s an incredibly smart child - his teacher has said his reading level is of that of a 14/15 year old and that she’s never known a child of his age to have such a large vocabulary. He is pretty good at maths and science but nothing exceptional. He loves reading and will happily do that for several hours each evening.
He’s a very ‘odd’ child. He’s always been very quiet and quite vacant. I thought he might be autistic and he had an assessment at 5yo. The lady said she didn’t think he was autistic as he was engaged, made eye contact and reacted typically to different pictures/ scenarios that she showed him. Since then he moved to a new school and has made friends and genuinely seems quite popular at school. We’ve had a few of his friends over for play dates but he’s just read a book and totally ignored them. I’ve tried to get him to engage but once he’s picked up a book he’s gone to the world and it’s been left to me and his 4yo brother to entertain his friend. Despite this he has always claimed to enjoy having friends over and not understood why these kids haven’t wanted to come round again.
The main thing I struggle with is his complete lack of awareness to anything. I need to give him incredibly specific instructions to do anything and even then I’ll need to constantly remind him or he’ll just zone out. So for example every morning I’ll have to say ‘go into the bathroom and do a wee, wash your hands with soap, dry your hands, put your red toothpaste on your blue toothbrush, put water on it, brush your teeth, spit it out and dry your mouth.’ If I miss any of these steps out he won’t do them or will try and use my toothbrush or will get in the shower because he can’t remember why I’ve told him to go into the bathroom. As soon as I stop hearing movement o have to go in and remind him as he’ll have just stopped and be staring into space. Several times a week he’ll get dressed for school (me having given similar instructions) but then wander into his bedroom while I’m in the shower or something, get undressed and put his pyjamas on because he thinks it’s bedtime. Every single school day he will put his trainers/ welly boots on to leave the house despite me saying ‘look at what your wearing and try and work out where we’re going before you put your shoes on’.
I don’t think he does it on purpose at all. He just absolutely has his head in the clouds and can’t focus at all. It doesn’t seem to be a problem at school as he just does his work in a couple of minutes then either gets started on his classmates work as well or stares out of the window until it’s the end of the lesson. The only time it’s caused an issue at school is once at swimming he insisted on having a private cubicle to get changed in, the teacher told him to hurry up after about 15 minutes and he started crying because his swimming stuff was wet and he didn’t want to put it on. He’d already been swimming, got himself dressed, then got himself undressed again because he thought it was the start of the lesson.
Everyone else finds it really funny. DS1 doesn’t think it’s an issue. DS2 is only 4 and is constantly helping him find things as he can never remember where anything is and telling him what’s happening next. But it’s driving me to absolute despair. It’s getting to the point that I’m really struggling to be around him as everything is just such a slog all the time.
I don’t know what to do. Has anyone else ever met a child like this? Is it a doctor issue? I’m a single parent so no one else really sees quite how bad it is. It’s just constant and I just can’t ever see a time when I’ll be happy to let him out of my sight because he’s such a liability.
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Really struggling with 8yo DS
11 replies
DimeBarLady · 09/12/2020 21:09
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