I am feeling exhausted and depressed about my ADHD son. I really love him, but raising him is proving pretty joyless and exhausting.
We moved to a lovely new village a few months ago, some of his school friends live nearby, they came to collect him and rode bikes, went to play, it was all fantastic and a much needed change (previously we lived in the large town, and couldn’t do any of this).
Everything was fine for several weeks, until they stopped coming around. One of them told him: “I have to be honest, I don’t want to be your friend”.
But he still played online with a couple of them. Then one of them (the kid) contacted us to tell us our son had been bullying and pushing him into buying things for him. We had him apologise and banned him for several weeks. They became friends and started playing again, until last night when the friend said he didn’t want to be friends again, and his father told him to stay away from our son. We contacted the man and he said our son has been really inappropriate with his, saying sexual stuff, making strange noises and calling other kids “losers” and that he felt really uncomfortable around him.
This has happened more than once, parents telling us our son is a problem or upsetting theirs. There’s a pattern where he makes a friend, they play several times, and then he alienates them.
He’s very dishonest about this and flat out denies it, but as it’s now several similar reports, it’s obvious that our son is acting inappropriately, making kids uncomfortable or pushing them around (not physically) and then lying about it. He just cannot be a good friend. We have tried so hard, he has so much of our love and attention, but he is so low on empathy and can be cruel as a result of his thoughtlessness. He is very, very negative, suspicious of everyone’s intentions and makes mean and hurtful comments and is selfish and manipulative. It breaks my heart to say this, but it’s true. He is clever and interesting and kind to animals and his baby sister, but seems to have no idea when he’s upsetting people and is unmoved when he does.
He also has low self esteem.
He is medicated, sees a psychologist, I don’t know what else to do. I feel so concerned for his future. All of the parents are close and talk, I know my son is now pegged as the weirdo bully, and it impacts my other children because they don’t want to associate with us as a result. It’s impacting all of us.
He was only officially diagnosed last year, I’m still learning, can this diagnosis explain what’s happening? Is it something else, should I dig deeper? I feel like his behaviour is that of a traumatised child with a difficult home life, we don’t have that at all. He is otherwise very healthy, we try to involve him in activities, but something always goes wrong, he can’t do team sports because of the poor way he treats his team mates (getting angry when they make mistakes etc).
It feels so easy, just be nice! Just be nice to people! But he just literally cannot be nice. If he is nice, it’s because he wants something.
I don’t know what I want. Can anyone relate? Is the future bleak? Can this be helped and how?