How to keep the love alive?

[NinaManiana]

My 6 year old son has all the alphabet of stuff going on… ADHD, ODD, ASD, PDA. Basically, he’s a nightmare child. Every day from dawn till dusk feels like me telling him stop, no, don’t do that, no. He won’t engage in activities (no focus + can’t do demands), won’t occupy himself for any length of time and is scared to be alone. Multiple violent meltdowns each day. Violent and abusive to his brother.

All this i can manage, just. We get a lot of help, son has heaps of professional support and i hope one day some of it may stick. But my question is for anyone else with kids with a similar profile, how do you keep the love alive? In calmer moments i tell him i love him. I hug him and whisper to him when he’s asleep. But i worry that his whole experience of life is relentlessly negative because he’s always being told no, stop, don’t. (A note on this; i’m not just highly strung with my expectations, his behaviour is dreadful including things like spitting at strangers in the street, attacking his brother, smashing stuff in the house etc). And i worry that as he’s getting older and the behaviour takes on a more sadistic or evil edge as he deliberately tries to hurt and inflict maximum damage how do i keep
loving him and not just see him as some domestic abuser who is vile to me and leaves me covered in bruises and tells me i’m stupid and throws the food i make him on the floor. Like, when he was 2 that’s just what 2 year olds do. But now he’s 6 i’m gutted the other parents get to chat and do normal stuff with their 6 year olds. But what about when he’s 10? 15? And still smacking me? Is it possible to keep love for your child in those circumstances?

Reading this with a heavy heart @NinaManiana. I think my DD is much less "challenging " than your DS from your description, so I don't fully know your experience, but recently we had a very painful situation with DD and for the first time I felt something similar - what if she does this again and again, will I stop loving her?

Is your DS taking medication for ADHD, does that have any impact?

Recently I have begun to feel embarrassed and humiliated at how my DD treats us. It is an experience I think few parents could understand.

I haven't said anything helpful I'm afraid, I hope others will be along who are further down the road than me and can offer their experiences.

I know this isn't the point of your post, but with the saying no all day - have you read up on declarative language? I keep meaning to get the book as my instinct is that it would help my DD a lot.

the ‘no’ thing is for brevity on mumsnet. In reality i don’t often say ‘no’, i spend a lot of time giving options, and listening to his reasons, and exploring alternatives and it’s exhausting, and takes all day, and often we don’t leave the house because we spend hours and hours going round in circles about why we can’t have (example) pizza for breakfast because there isn’t any in the house and no, mummy can’t just make the dough because we don’t have yeast or 2 hours for it to raise and unfortunately, pizza hut isn’t open yet but we have so many other options, and other child is hungry and crying by now, and no, we definitely don’t have any in the freezer, come and look in the freezer, i know you want pizza, pizza is lovely, we all love pizza, ok i’m stupid then, no pizza hut still isn’t open, but yes i know you love pizza, how about pancakes…. and on. And on. And on. And the end result is a screaming meltdown.

and the thing is in all this, in this scenario? If we had pizza he’d have kicked off about something else. Because there is always something.

This really resonates with me. I love my dd 9 but sometimes don't like her, she can be incredibly annoying and difficult through no fault of her own. On a family lunch yesterday I was so horrible to her after she had a meltdown over something tiny and then wouldn't stop crying. I felt horrendous afterwards and still do. I hate hate hate hate autism. It's ruining both our lives.

I don't have this situation OP mine has ASD but nothing like the issues you're dealing with. Kids with ASD, ADHD etc are often emotionally far younger than other kids their age. Could you view him with the emotional maturity of a two or three year old? Would that help at all I wonder? View his behaviour as you would a toddler? This might make it feel a bit easier to like/love him as your expectations would be different perhaps.

Also it sounds like whatever you do you know the outcome is going to be a meltdown - so perhaps prolonging it with all the discussion of why you can't get pizza or whatever is pointless? You know he will kick off about something so just see it as that's what he needs to do and allow him to do it (while obviously making sure everyone else is safe). Him - I'd like pizza for breakfast. You - We can have pizza for dinner on Saturday but for breakfast today we have pancakes or toast. Allow him to have his meltdown and just ignore it as much as possible (perhaps see it as his way of dealing with the situation). If you don't get so engaged in it all and just accept he needs to meltdown it might be easier to accept perhaps? I know that I could get into similar endless discussions with mine - but I know he will never let me 'win' so I try to avoid it. Once you have told him the options he knows the choices so I would repeat it no more than once and not respond to anything else - don't get dragged into the rabbit holes. You might just be less exhausted if you're not in the endless discussion and that has to help with your relationship.

You say he is violent and abusive to his brother and that is very worrying. It will be affecting him - does he go to young carers or get any support? He probably also gets a lot less of your time and a very different life to other children. Is this a safeguarding situation though? Can you keep him safe? What school does your son with ADHD go to? How does he cope there? How do you even get him there?? I think you really need to think about a residential setting for him for the sake of all of you. As you say, as he gets bigger and stronger the violence is going to become more and more dangerous for all of you. I don't know the criteria or availability but I really think you should consider looking into residential schooling.

I can't imagine how hard this all is for all of you OP - and of course for your son dealing with all these issues he has too. But safeguarding your other son not only physically but also mentally has to be a priority. Is residential school a possibility?

If he was at residential school it might also be easier to love him as you would get a break from having to constantly deal with his behaviour. It might also be really, really beneficial to him.