Youth stubbornness may be linked to attention disorder

Despite taking my daughter to boarding schools all the way from primary school, buying her books and giving her time and space for reading, she has little interest in studying.

She is now in Form Three and spends hours listening to music and on social media sites (she knows virtually every celebrity). She says books make her sleepy after barely an hour of reading.

In school she wants to spend a lot of time playing. As middle-class parents, we tell her she has to rely on herself in future. She is our only child. What do we do about her?

Towards the end of last year we saw a 13-year-old girl who, like your daughter, was an only child. She was, her parents confessed, a pure accident. They were both in their 50s and she was born several years after they had given up ever having a child.

They told us that they had spent millions of shillings on fertility experts and had given up. When her monthly periods failed to come, the couple discussed the matter and agreed that menopause had come early.

Life went on for a while but then, came morning sickness, so common in early pregnancy. Again menopause took the blame and life went on as usual.

When she eventually visited her GP on account of swelling legs and increasing tiredness, she could not believe the results of the pregnancy test.

She went for an ultra sound the following day with her husband. She was in her fourth month of pregnancy!

Although no complications were evident, she decided to take unpaid leave to “make sure” that nothing goes wrong with the “pregnancy”. So precious was this pregnancy that the baby got the name before she was born.

To their surprise and joy, Precious was born naturally and was perfectly formed. That, was to be the beginning of the problems for this baby girl and the parents. So precious was the baby that special care had to be provided.

In addition to a full-time nurse — who took the baby’s temperature three times a day — there were two live-in maids. As the baby grew the levels of hygiene in the house was maintained, using all manner of disinfectants.

Needless to say, her room was all white to make sure that no dirt hid in the room.

In addition to all this “care”, strict rules were put in place about visiting the couple who may touch the baby.

Gone to school drunk

By the time we saw the girl at the age of 13, she was as wild as any teenager can be. Like your daughter, she was fed up with school and had no interest in books. By the age of 11 she had changed school three times.

Once for fighting, the other for pouring white paint on a teacher’s black car (just for fun) and the third time because she had gone to school drunk. Yes, a 13-year-old went to school drunk.

In therapy, a number of things became apparent and in time both the girl and her parents started to understand the situation a little better.

The first and perhaps most important fact about their story was the realisation that the couple had obssessional traits which came out at different stages in this story.

Their concern about having a child as soon as they got married caused extreme anxiety when pregnancy did not happen in the first two years.

Anxiety mounted over the years as they went searching for “outside” causes of infertility while as they were to find out soon, all they needed to do was to relax. When they gave up, Precious was conceived.

The second aspect of their obsessional personality was visible in their clean space when the baby was born. Quite clearly they had taken hygiene to a level that is neither necessary nor desirable.

Like you they tried to make the environment around their daughter perfect. As they were to learn later, they had suffocated their daughter with love! To survive, she became a rebel. The girl had her own issues.

Like your daughter, she had what one of her teachers described as ‘‘the concentration of a flea’’. A few minutes in class caused her much pain and she lasted only a few minutes in one place. Like your daughter, she was the most playful girl in her class.

She was very good in subjects that she could hyper focus on. Your daughter knows every celebrity there is to know. The girl we saw was an expert in women’s hats. She spent endless hours on the Internet studying hats.

This combination of poor concentration in class, extreme playfulness and impulsivity (e.g. with the teacher’s car) led to a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

So, we have a set of older parents, with obsessional traits (including taking children to boarding school for discipline) who have a child with ADHD.

In your case, go back to the drawing board and find out why you sent her away at such an early age. Is the problem with you, her, or both of you?