agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’ve got a 14-year-old son and 9-year-old twin daughters. My son lives primarily with his mom, but has always spent plenty of time at my place, and the kids are all quite close. But there is a real problem with how he treats one of his sisters. The two of them share many traits and are quite similar in disposition, and when things are good, they have a very sweet relationship. They’ll go on walks together and chat and laugh the whole time. They also really enjoy play-fighting—e.g., hitting each other with foam swords. But at other times, my son will relentlessly pick at his sister, teasing her for things like not being as good at video games as he is, or questioning her abilities in other ways. It’s unkind, and although she sometimes claps back or does her best to ignore him, more often it sends her into a rage.

I’ve talked to him about it repeatedly (and yelled at him about it), and he has said he has trouble controlling himself. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but having observed it so many times, I believe him. It seems like an impulse-control thing, like the comments pop into his head and are out of his mouth before he can stop them. We have a good amount of neurodivergence in our family, and I strongly suspect that, like the sister in question, he’s got ADHD. I’ve wanted to get him assessed, but his mom—with whom I have a good relationship—is resistant, and he hasn’t had any issues in school yet that would offer more reason to push for it. I’ll tell him to knock it off and he’ll be chastened, but then 30 seconds later he’s picking on his sister again. What do you think I should be trying to do here? Yelling obviously isn’t the answer, and I can tell my son is feeling demoralized. I feel like this is about their similar personalities to some extent, because he doesn’t have the same issue with his other sister. But even if that’s the case, I want him to stop cutting his sister down, because she adores him and I’m pretty sure he actually adores her too.

—Bro, Chill

You didn’t mention what you’ve tried in terms of establishing clear limits or disciplining your son, but it’s clear that just talking to or reasoning with him hasn’t done the trick, nor has the fact that his treatment of his sister is having a negative impact on his relationship with the sister he presumably cares for.

While I’m obviously not trying to diagnose him (plenty of neurotypical teens also have impulse control issues!), you shared that you strongly suspect he has ADHD or some other type of neurodivergence, and I don’t think you should ignore that instinct. You mentioned that you haven’t pushed for an assessment for your son because he doesn’t appear to be struggling in school. But a kid can be doing fine academically and still need help in other ways.

Even if his apparent impulse control issues are not affecting his grades, they are contributing to unkind and/or uncontrolled behavior and negatively affecting his relationships at home. You’re constantly frustrated with him; your daughter is hurt; if things go on like this or get worse, there could be more serious harm done to those relationships. And if your son is really “unable” to control himself, you are probably not the only ones who will have to deal with his behavior—at some point, if it’s not already happening, others will too.

Again, I’m not saying that your son has ADHD. I also understand that you’re co-parenting with his mom and the decision of exactly how to help him change his behavior isn’t up to you alone. But when you’re truly stuck, when you’ve tried everything you can think of as a parent and nothing is getting better, that’s when it’s time to seek out more information and professional advice. I think you and your son’s mother need to have a serious conversation about this, and how to get your son the support he may need to better control himself, because the current situation is making at least two of your children unhappy and seems unsustainable.

—Nicole

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If Dad thought Kid needed glasses and Mom argued with him, Dad wouldn't write to an advice column, he'd just take the kid to the eye doctor and let the prescription speak for itself. And most of the time, that would work. (Sometimes it doesn't, fair enough, but mostly it does.)

Dad does not need Mom's permission to send a letter to the school asking them to start the process of evaluating his child for ADHD. By law, this is something every public school in the USA is required to handle if asked. Dad also does not need Mom's permission to take the kid to a private neuropsych. He can just make the appointment and do it.

Will this effect his "good" coparenting relationship? Sure, probably - but how great is it if Mom is unwilling to even let the child be evaluated? If there's no ADHD then it's just a waste of time - so what is she afraid of?

In the meantime, LW also needs to start getting parenting classes, because he's using parenting methods that are not effective for his kids.

A diagnosis from a private neuropsychology runs about $5000 in my area…

Oh, I know. Believe me, I know, which is why unless you're specifically worried about dyslexia I will always, always recommend you start with the schools.

It actually cost us more than $6000 here, and that's after they heard our insurance, rolled their eyes, and gave us a discount on the spot because that insurance, apparently, will never pay. (And they were right! Insurance never paid!)

(Unfortunately - and this is throughout the Anglosphere, not just in one particular nation or another - schools are amazingly resistant to diagnosing dyslexia. If they can deny it even exists, they will.)

School I was in kept trying to not diagnose dyslexia in my bff despite all of us on fourth grade knowing she had it, even if we didn't know what exactly it was.

(A fourth grader should be able to write without half the letters upside down and backwards and know that it's not quite right.)

E was about that same age when we started serious writing remediation at home. She can read well - so long as she's reading sentences, not lists of words, and nobody asks her to pronounce totally unfamiliar names or words - but she was ten years old and couldn't write her own name, or mine, or her parents' and sibling's, or almost anything.

"Stealth dyslexia". As hard as it is to get any dyslexic child diagnosed, do you know how hard it is when they read above grade level? Nobody takes you seriously, no matter how bad the writing is.

I’m gonna be really blunt here, “ADHD causes you to uncontrollably target one single, specific much younger child for an extended campaign of bullying” is a new one for me. Like. I’m not in any position to say whether or not this kid ALSO has ADHD and associated impulse control issues, but I somehow don’t think that’s the root of this specific issue.

/has ADHD

Sure, but a full evaluation would either confirm he has ADHD or confirm he doesn't.

Of course it would, and the kid should absolutely get one! I just think that’s a separate issue from a teenager persistently tormenting his primary school aged sister, and the latter needs to be addressed with much stricter behavioural intervention. I hate the thought of this nine-year-old girl picking up the message that her brother deserves extra leeway in his treatment of her because of his suspected neurodivergence, which is how I’ve seen way too many of these situations go.

I hate the thought of this nine-year-old girl picking up the message that her brother deserves extra leeway in his treatment of her because of his suspected neurodivergence, which is how I’ve seen way too many of these situations go.

I've written five or so different comments about my experiences with that message that don't convey what I want to say well enough so I will just say that I really really agree with you here.

I agree.

And also, like... even if ultimately he has severely lacking impulse control due to ADHD, which I can believe!, that's not (a) enough to explain this issue alone, or (b) easily helped even with a diagnosis. I have ADHD and I take methylphenidate. My understanding is that all the available medications help in quite similar ways to what I get from it: they help executive function prioritize things and shut out distractions, so they are primarily useful for initializing and focusing. That's very important for all kinds of things you need to do and it significantly reduces driving accidents, but it doesn't do that much for impulse control, except inasmuch as you might be able to continue focusing on something else. There are other kinds of help of course - primarily coaching and therapy I think - and this kid probably would need something akin to that regardless. I guess it is probably more likely to be effective approaching the issue from an understanding of ADHD if that's what's going on... I'm just not super hopeful about easy answers there.

There are other kinds of help of course - primarily coaching and therapy I think - and this kid probably would need something akin to that regardless.

And LW absolutely does as well, whether his son has ADHD or not.

Good point. His reaction to this is definitely not compatible with someone who doesn't.😅

I had a similar reaction, especially when I hit the columnist saying, Even if his apparent impulse control issues are not affecting his grades ... because when someone "can't help it" but only when it harms someone weaker and doesn't have any negative impact on him, that's not my definition of "can't."

If the kid's father thinks he might have ADHD, then he absolutely should get whatever assessment and treatment he has access to. If the mother stands in the way, I'm going to say that's a serious enough issue to take to whoever oversees their custody division.

And at the same time, without waiting for the assessment issue to be resolved, the father needs to get some training, or at least watch some videos, about effective parenting approaches to sibling bullying. I'm willing to bet that somewhere on the wide internet there's someone who has useful ADHD-informed parenting techniques.

If Dad has repeatedly had the experience that he scolds the kid and the kid is good for a while and then stops being good, then it's time to use some different methods.

I had a similar reaction, especially when I hit the columnist saying, Even if his apparent impulse control issues are not affecting his grades ... because when someone "can't help it" but only when it harms someone weaker and doesn't have any negative impact on him, that's not my definition of "can't."

Well... maybe. It may also be that he picks at lots of people just this way, but LW mostly only notices it when this particular sister "goes into a rage".

I think what we can all agree on, no matter what, is that LW needs to learn how to parent all his kids, because right now it doesn't sound like he's effectively parenting any of them.

Edited 2025-08-15 18:45 (UTC)

I’ve got ADHD, I’m sure my older sibling does too, and yeah, ADHD probably wasn’t the reason they teamed up with our younger sister to harass me when we were younger. Really, there were two big reasons they weren’t so nice to me: 1. Our parents have historically and consistently made me the punching bag (comparatively), and they 100% picked up on that and joined in because they were goddamn children; 2. As none of us regularly went to hang out with friends, we were pretty much each other’s main social life when not at school, so transgressions almost never outweighed the need to talk to someone (thus I’d essentially be forced to tolerate everything). Even in this position, my siblings weren’t even as close to each other as they were to me, so I was the punching bag, the mediator, and the mutual friend. Nowadays, I’m very close to my older sibling and at arms length with my sister (mostly because I don’t share interests or personality with her, rather than real issues).

'he has said he has trouble controlling himself. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but having observed it so many times, I believe him. It seems like an impulse-control thing, like the comments pop into his head and are out of his mouth before he can stop them.'

I might be more inclined to believe the 'neurodivergence' as cause had we not been seeing So Many Cases of persons of the Male Persuasion who are being held accountable for Being Awful that it is not just that they are blokes and unable to control themselves anyway, but autistic/have ADHD/whatever.

And indeed, the whole long history of Men Getting A Pass on impulse control issues, up to and including murder. (See, Crime Passionel under the Code Napoleon.)

Perhaps Father should be looking into what other influences son is getting.

This is such a weird letter. The daughter is almost completely absent - shouldn’t there be some concern for how dad can support her? At the very least, if the son starts up again 30 seconds later, why doesn’t the father send him to his room? Why does the father believe this is an inborn trait rather than a behavior that can be modified?

"I feel like this is about their similar personalities to some extent"

so your 9 year old shares the blame for her older brother bullying her...

one day, that boy is going to be out in the world and pull this on someone who just cleans his clock.

I wonder what the other 9-yr-old thinks about the whole situation….

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