agonyaunt | Dear Care & Feeding: The Effect of my Daughter's ADHD on My Granddaughter

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Dear Care & Feeding: The Effect of my Daughter's ADHD on My Granddaughter

My oldest daughter, Anne (30), has always marched to the beat of her own drum. At her best, she’s incredibly artistic and very intelligent. She graduated from a prestigious university with excellent grades while being a member of the school marching band; not an easy feat, and I have always been very proud.

Within the last couple of years, she has been diagnosed with ADHD. This has become the focus of her world and features in almost every conversation she has. It is her excuse for absolutely everything she forgets or doesn’t want to do. If it was just her, I could easily let this go. However, Anne has a 7-year-old daughter, Katie, who is the light of my life but struggles with her parents’ inconsistencies and disorganization. Katie’s dad does not have ADHD but is socially awkward in his own way. Anne and her husband each “take Katie for a day” every weekend so the other one doesn’t have to “deal with her.” Katie stays with my wife and I regularly. Ninety percent of the times Katie comes over, she is unwashed and her hair is unbrushed. She usually has on a dirty mismatched outfit. This could be explained away as being a 7-year-old, but Katie likes to look nice, wear dresses and have her hair done. She tells us her parents don’t believe in special occasions or special outfits.

We try to support Anne and constantly ask what she or Katie needs. Recently, she stated Katie needed fall clothing. We bought at least 10 new outfits, cut off the tags, washed and folded the laundry and took it to her house. Anne’s response was “oh”—not thank you—and she has yet to go through the bag of clothes to put any of it away. This is rude and not how she was raised, but we dropped it. This past weekend, Katie stayed with us and was so excited to go to her first ever friend birthday party the next day. She wore a dress in the birthday girl’s favorite color and asked us to style her hair so that she looked “as nice as possible.” She looked adorable and was so excited! When her parents pulled up, she was standing so tall at the door, but Anne and her husband came in and said nothing. Not “you look great” or “how was your sleepover” or “look at this new outfit!” Katie’s shoulders fell, and it honestly broke my heart.

This is not the first or even the twentieth example of how they are failing this child—from not packing water shoes for a beach trip and then yelling at Katie when she got her tennis shoes wet, to forgetting to sign her up for after-school care (so that now everyone else is scrambling to step in). I called Anne to discuss the birthday party incident and her responses ranged from “we are introverts and wait to have our reactions later” to “you don’t understand how my brain works.” I am at my wits’ end. This child is being emotionally neglected and not cared for in the way she deserves to be. Please help.

Being neurodivergent can be hard, because despite growing awareness and acceptance about things like ADHD, the person with the condition is—nine times out of 10—the one who has to adapt to the world, rather than the other way around. It can often feel inequitable and burdensome.

But, ADHD isn’t an unlimited hall pass. You don’t get to blow off the feelings of others. You learn, adapt, and find coping techniques that enable you to work around or harness your ADHD symptoms so that you can successfully navigate society. We can talk long and hard about the ethics and balance of asking neurodivergent folks to fit into mainstream social norms versus changing those norms to allow more variability, but that’s beyond the scope of this letter. It’s also not relevant in this case, because Katie is not “society.”

I said in an above letter that a parent’s job is to make sure that their kids are happy, healthy, safe and kind. As you point out, Anne and her husband do not seem to be meeting Katie’s psychological basic needs. ADHD and awkwardness isn’t an excuse—they have to find ways to “trick” or “train” their brains into giving Katie what she needs. We adults do these brain hacks in numerous ways—we leave ourselves notes so we don’t need to remember upcoming tasks on our own. We put our keys in the fridge to remember to take the leftovers home from Thanksgiving dinner. It is Anne and her husband’s job to observe what Katie needs (or hear you when you observe it) and problem-solve how they can meet those needs. And they do not need to be perfect at it; Katie is old enough to be involved in the problem solving, and to forgive them when they may fall short.

My guess is that some of Anne’s reactions may come from feeling like she is being judged for her inability to do everything perfectly (at least, that’s how a lot of my friends and family often feel as a result of their ADHD). As upset as you are, I want you to consider that some of the reaction you’re getting from her might be defensiveness or frustration on her part. Tread lightly and keep the focus on Katie’s feelings, not on Anne’s shortcomings. For inspiration, I have found the books by Dr. Edward Hallowell to do a great job discussing ADHD from a family perspective. Some of his work might be of use as you, Anne, and the family navigate this. Good luck, I hope they’re open to your feedback.

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I'm curious about this one, not least because I am not neuroatypical. On the one hand it's pretty clear LW is contemptuous of her daughter's ADHD. On the other... children do not live by bread alone any more than any othe rhumans, to mangle a verse, and I can absolutely believe that Katie's distress is real. So I dunno. Like I said, I'm curious.

Yeah, this seems like an Everyone Sucks Here (except for the kid) situation.

Yeah, if LW is portraying Katie's situation at all accurately, the parents need to step up, ADHD or not. On the other hand, LW is clearly kind of an asshole, so I don't know how accurate the portrayal of Katie's situation is, and most of the things mentioned in the letter could definitely be perfectly adequate parenting with LW pushing her feelings onto Katie.

yeah, a lot of this could be bad parenting (or parents who need better coping assistance), but a lot of this could be BS. Like, I read

Recently, she stated Katie needed fall clothing. We bought at least 10 new outfits, cut off the tags, washed and folded the laundry and took it to her house. Anne’s response was “oh”—not thank you—and she has yet to go through the bag of clothes to put any of it away.

And I absolutely admit I am projecting some of my own mother issues here, but is this the result of, "mum, could you pick up some fall clothes for Katie?" Or is this the result of "Oof, Mr. Anne, we'd better get Katie some new fall clothes, she's outgrowing these trousers. Anyway, Mum and Dad, thanks for dropping her off, see you Monday!" It's vaguely enough phrased that it could be either. (Also, not for nothing, but cutting off the tags means Anne can't return anything.)

Similarly:

She wore a dress in the birthday girl’s favorite color and asked us to style her hair so that she looked “as nice as possible.” She looked adorable and was so excited! When her parents pulled up, she was standing so tall at the door, but Anne and her husband came in and said nothing. Not “you look great” or “how was your sleepover” or “look at this new outfit!” Katie’s shoulders fell, and it honestly broke my heart.

Look, this could totally be absent-minded, inadequate parenting from adults who don't notice what their kid wants. But this could also be grandparents who are super excited to dress up their adorable little granddaughter, a granddaughter who asks her grandparents to style her hair because dressing up is the fun thing she does with grandma and grandpa, and parents who don't mention it because it's not particularly relevant to what they were thinking about at that moment, who don't believe in praising girls for their looks, or because it's not something Katie cares about at home. Did her shoulders actually fall? Who the hell knows? And if so, is it because her parents didn't mention her fishtail braid, or because they forgot to bring her favorite book with them, or because grandma was making lasagna for dinner? I wouldn't trust LW to have any idea because LW is obsessed with looks.

Basically I think there's not enough info here to know who to trust; LW isn't a reliable narrator to me.

Edited (gender, typo) 2022-10-10 20:06 (UTC)

Well, it does also say:

She tells us her parents don’t believe in special occasions or special outfits.

I kind of feel like a 7 year old isnt very reliable here. The grandparents could absolutely phrase questions in such a way to get the results they want. Not the kids fault, obvs, but its just how kids that age are. Its how the police got all those satanic panic "confessions" from children.

No, I don't have any particular mom issues around that and I read it the exact same way. It's neat how LW strongly implies Mom asked for help without ever actually saying that she asked for help!

And yeah, most of what's in this letter summarizes to "The grandparents are extremely invested in their granddaughter being dressed up like a perfect little doll at all times, and the parents couldn't care less". LW of course frames it such that the granddaughter is on their side, but I don't trust LW to have the theory of mind to know the difference. If the granddaughter really is super into dressing up nice and the parents are completely invalidating that, that's not great, but I'm not willing to take bets on whether granddaughter actually cares as much as LW thinks.

Yep, all of this!!

Katie usually being unwashed is concerning, if it's true, but otherwise it's hard to tell.

I admit I'm pretty worried about one particular mention.

"Ninety percent of the times Katie comes over, she is unwashed and her hair is unbrushed. She usually has on a dirty mismatched outfit. "

Either LW is lying entirely, LW is lying by exaggeration (it happened only twice in 7 years, and one of the times Katie was two and having a Day -- there are some times one cannot bathe a toddler because one can't use the Paper Bag Method of Cat Bathing), or Katie is being neglected at least regularly.

I guess to me it depends on what LW means by unwashed, unbrushed, dirty, and mismatched. If she's wearing an adult man's shirt, too-small pajama pants that smell, unmatched shoes, has rat's nests in her hair and stinks, that's a huge problem. If she's wearing a t-shirt and pants and sneakers that aren't color-coordinated and was slightly dusty with an off-center ponytail because she'd just been to the park, not so much. Since LW says it's something that could be written off as her being 7, I lean more toward that end of the scale, though.

I see a lot of possible middle ground here. If LW thinks little girls should all be dressed up in cute matching frocks all the time, but Katie wears jeans with muddy knees because why wash jeans every day, or has a marinara stain on her favorite t-shirt because who doesn't, then LW might read that as "dirty mismatched outfits". It's really, really hard to tell from the evidence they've given us. Hair, too; is unbrushed hair "it's in the ponytail it's been in since this morning and it's started to come loose and I expect her to have a hair ribbon", or is it "full of tangles, looks like a rats nest."

(I admit I am also biased because who talks about a seven year old's mismatched outfits? I mean, shoes should be from the same pair, but if a seven year old wants to wear a yellow striped jumper and purple plaid skirt over jeans, that's a thing a grandparent laughs/groans about, not worries about. But if they say "yeah, grandpa, I wanted to wear this skirt with tights but momma couldn't find them and told me to wear jeans" that's what I'd worry about. And I can't tell which this is)

Given that LW feels that "mismatched" is on the same level as "dirty", I'm inclined to think that Katie is not nearly as "unwashed" as LW wants us to believed.

So, I'm a little torn here. This grandmother is a nitpicky, over-observant perfectionist.

On the other hand, there does seem to be some actual factual neglect going on here, to a degree the grandmother may actually be *minimizing*. If Katie is actually dirty and with clothes that don't fit on a consistent basis, that's a warning sign of potential abuse and neglect, and not just "this person has ADHD and forgets things sometimes." So... pay attention to that.

If it is just them being spacey and the grandmother being a nitpicking perfectionist, then the last paragraph is gold and I heart it.

Edited 2022-10-10 17:46 (UTC)

I think it's the grandfather? "Katie stays with my wife and I me regularly."

Edited (html) 2022-10-10 18:29 (UTC)

Oh. Gosh. You're right. Thank you!

Oh, good catch!

IDK, this response might be pretty good? The LW's attitude sucks in several ways, but... Katie's needs aren't being met. The parents being oblivious about fancy outfits and failing to compliment her when she looks nice, or to notice, is not perhaps such a big issue - it could be the kind of thing they never quite manage to improve, even if they earnestly want to, and it probably won't do much damage. My ADHD mom also never got reliable about sending thank you notes, and I don't think failing to thank your own parents who frequently take a caretaker role for doing some caring for your kids is all that serious. Like, I don't think anyone in my mom's close extended family would even get butthurt about that, so it doesn't seem like a good sign to me that this LW did.

... But making sure the a child goes out bathed and in clean clothes at age 7 is kind of a minimum, IMO.

If they let her pick her own clothes, or style her own hair, that's fine, but she's not old enough to be responsible for her own hygiene or her own laundry. She'll survive that problem too - and one of my sister's childhood friends did, as well as growing up in a pigsty with two literal absent-minded professors. But it still looks like inadequate parenting to me and I wouldn't be confident that it won't do harm. I don't think that having clean clothes and a clean body for your children is too much to ask, really, no matter how absent-minded someone is: you can figure out ways to remind yourself of these, after all, fairly basic tasks. Maybe the parents need some therapy, or an intervention, or a book on time management or something.

Also the last paragraph sounds a bit worse, although it might be misrepresented by the LW's bias. I mean, yelling at a kid for something that was your fault is really bad, but if they did it because they forgot that it was their fault actually but then they apologized once they realized it's not all that big a deal. Forgetting to register for aftercare and having to scramble for babysitters, well... that's mostly their own problem, except that LW is choosing to help.

Edited 2022-10-10 17:50 (UTC)

I think praise from a parent is absolutely important to a child.

Yes, it would be damaging to never get any at all, but probably not a big deal if the parent in question never managed to convincingly care about her clothes in spite of doing their best.

As someone who grew up in a house full of undiagnosed neurodivergence, I think this response is pretty good. The only thing I'd add is that Katie should get some kind of age-appropriate evaluation to see if she's inherited the quirks of either parent, so she can get a head start on her own strategies for dealing with it.

I grew up undiagnosed and now suspect my father has something but he won't even GO there. I picked up on that too. The hair thing? I wonder if Katie hates having her hair touched by someone who isn't grandma so sometimes it looks a mess. Or she will tolerate one brush in the morning and that is that? Cause I was like that. I cried every morning for years getting my hair done and once it had one brush good luck getting anywhere near me. But if grandma has that magic hairbrush or just a different touch from Anne or Katie herself...it is all the difference. I still kinda hate doing my hair or having people touch it but my bestie? I happily sit and them do all sorts of things to it for hours.

I don't quite get what the significance of "Anne and her husband each “take Katie for a day” every weekend so the other one doesn’t have to “deal with her.”" Is it a slam on the parents for phrasing it that way? Would it be all fine if the parents had said "We each spend a weekend day one-on-one with Katie and each of us gets a little 'me time' on the other day"? Because as an arrangement I don't see the problem with it.

Yeah, agreed. And I can actually understand finding that phrasing off-putting but assuming Katie can't hear it, I don't think it's a problem!

I agree that LW is a bit judgmental, but the parents deserve it. They are neglecting their daughter. I don’t care how neurodivergent the parents are: There is no excuse for abuse. Thank goodness the grandparents are there to help that poor girl.

This was my first reaction, yeah, but then I began to think about how reliable of a narrator the LW might be. That uncertainty is part of why I posted this one here.

I have ADHD and was in a pretty difficult single-parent/long commute situation for years, but my daughter was clean, had clothes that fit, knew she was loved, and had her needs prioritized.

OTOH, I could see my narc-mother writing some of this — K preferred loose-fitting clothes from the boys’ department, she has super-thick wavy hair that is a challenge to keep from frizzing (it’s not the same texture as my own fine spiral curls, so it took a LOT of experimenting with techniques and products to get it to look its best, and she was resistant to brushing as a kid), and she loved mismatched socks (“Halloween is a theme,” even if one is green and one is orange!)

But she had the option of dress-up clothes and hair braiding/styling as desired, she was always clean, her laundry was done, she had the required black/white uniform outfit for orchestra concerts, and her school aftercare and summer care was always planned-out.

So… I don’t 100% trust the LW as a reliable narrator (they pretty clearly have contempt for their daughter using ADHD as an “excuse”), but I’m also concerned that Katie is being neglected, if they’re not exaggerating their account.

I spent 30 minutes unmatting my friend’s child’s hair with coconut oil after the kid spent a week with their shitty abusive/neglectful father, so I take reports of dirty/unbrushed children as a sign of a real potential issue.

Needs more info from a less-biased source — wonder what Katie’s teacher or daycare provider would say?

Edited 2022-10-12 07:17 (UTC)

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Dear Care & Feeding: The Effect of my Daughter's ADHD on My Granddaughter

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