Am I justified in thinking that my DD might have ADHD or am I clutching at straws and excusing bad behaviour?
DD has just turned 12 and is what I have often thought of as ‘not an easy child’. Her dad decided to leave when she was 5 - he struggled with parenting and, after 12 years together and 6 years of marriage we split up, He initially lived within 45 minutes or so and saw her every second weekend (though it took him 18 months to go from Sat am/lunchtime pick up to taking her on Fri evening). He would also take her out for tea on a Tues /Wed if he wasn’t away for work. About 3 years ago he moved 100s of mikes away, working for the same company - not sure how voluntary it was, or if it was a case of no move=no job. He comes up every second weekend and takes her to his elderly mother’s house about 45 mins away. He usually phones once during the intervening 12 days, for maybe 3 minutes, and it took him until the 4th to bother to wish her a happy new year. He doesn’t seem to have much grasp of her day to day life, and I have repeatedly tried to encourage him to make more effort to maintain a more regular dialogue with her and to play a bigger role in her life, but he doesn’t seem interested. He has a live in gf who has been up here with him several times, but DD has only met her once for one weeekend. I met her briefly and she seemed fine, and I would be okay with DD spending time with her, but he seems to keep his two ‘worlds’ very separate. Sometimes DD goes with her dad with no trouble on a Fri evening, but at other times it’s a source of stress and upset. I remember physically carrying her out to his car once while she kicked and screamed. She’s generally fine when she’s with him, with the occasional phone all/text chat with me, i’ve always insisted she go with him as that’s what we legally agreed and I want her to have a relationship with her dad, but she’s now getting to the age where she can have a say (I’m not sure what the legal position is on that in Scotland). She’s very much a homebody and it seems to be more the leaving me/home/her stuff/ cats/friends than going with him that is the issue. She’s also going to stay with her elderly, partially deaf grandma with no kids round about to play with, so not a big draw really.
Anyway, DD has never been a good sleeper - a fb memory thing popped up a few weeks ago from when she was 2, going on 3, saying that she’d gone to sleep in her own bed, but woken up at 11, wanting to be with me. I was trying to be firm with her, but eventually gave up and took her in with me at 5am. She still struggles to get to sleep - she’s usually okay once she’s asleep - and I quite often have to read her to sleep (we’re on the last Princess Diaries book!). If she goes to sleep in her own bed I quite often find her in mine in the morning, but she’s good at getting in quietly so I don’t really mind. She is going through a phase of falling asleep in my bed, which isn’t ideal, but not the end of the world. It can be 11ish when she finally drops off, then it’s a struggle to wake her up for school the next morning at 7.
She has always been volatile, and still continues to have meltdowns, 0-60 in seconds, usually at home. These can involve her physically attacking me. It’s quite weird when it happens, her face totally changes and sometimes she has claimed to have no memory of it afterwards. I showed her a video I’d taken on my phone one evening when she asked why I wasn’t letting her watch tv the next morning and she denied it was her! Homework is often a flashpoint and I dread the words ‘I have maths homework’, although a teenage neighbour / maths genius came over and gave her a maths tutoring session recently which seemed to help. As soon as she finds something difficult and I try to explain it (I usually have to look it up online first!) she tells me I’m an idiot who can’t explain it properly, or she’s an idiot for not being able to understand. She very much has a ‘fixed’ rather than ‘growth mindset’. Developing her confidence with reading was a long, painful
process in primary and at one point the teacher suggested we stop doing reading homework as it was proving so stressful and affecting our relationship at home. She has recently decided that she actually quite likes reading, a source of joy for me as I love reading, and this has been quite calming for her. She is very down on herself academically and constantly compares herself to others - she’s passing tests, but not by much, and her friends seem to be getting high marks so she tells me she’s stupid and an idiot. This is despite her doing revision at home, but she seems to freak out in test conditions. I’ve been trying to reassure her that this kind of testing is a new thing for her in high school and takes a bit of getting used to, and as long as she tries hard I don’t care what grade she gets. I’d love her, for her own self-esteem, to find something she’s quantifiably good at so she doesn’t just see herself as ‘an idiot, stupid, never going to achieve anything’ as she has described herself. Socially, she’s made a lot of new friends, who all seem very nice, and she was at her first ever sleepover without me at someone else’s house in the holidays - I made the rookie mistake of telling people she didn’t sleep so, although we’ve had lots of girls to stay here, she’s never been invited to stay at anyone else’s. The other two girls went to sleep at 2ish but she said she lay awake until 5, not for any particular reason or pining for me, she just couldn’t sleep.
Sorry for the epic post - I’m going to post this before I lose it!