When my mother was three years old my grandmother took her to the doctor; "This kid is so hyper she's driving me crazy." The doctor's reply was to keep her busy and give her a lot to do. My mother started ballet and tap dance lessons shortly thereafter. This happened around 1951 or 1952; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) wasn't formally discovered until around 1989. For many who suffered from this affliction prior to that time, help came too late. There are plenty of great articles about ADHD and my intention here is not to reiterate those volumes. Rather, I want to paint a picture of what it's like outside the ADHD fishbowl.
Much of what is discussed in the media revolves around children with ADHD, advice for parents with ADHD children, and how to cope with their energy levels, inability to focus, etc. There are support groups, special classes for parents and children, and all kinds of recent information instantly available via the magic of Google. Many parents with ADHD children know all too well the daily battles over homework, playtime, bedtime, setting boundaries and the like. What seems less know is what it's like to be the child of an ADHD parent, especially a child born in 1970 to a mother who had no name for her affliction until 1989 at the earliest. It was only in the past two years that my mother has come to understand she has ADHD. Unfortunately, in many ways the damage is done; ADHD "rarely travels alone" and unringing that bell is almost impossible. She is a hoarder and always has been, and I would bet my bank account she would easily be diagnosed with Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD). If you read the list of symptoms in the link, she has all of them.
I don't know what it's like to have a "normal" mother-daughter relationship because I've never had one. My mother has always been a walking contradition- do as I say, not as I do type- with the inability to see her own behavior in the context of larger society. What is deemed appropriate behavior is an unknown concept to her to a large degree, and was worse during my younger years (she has tempered somewhat with age, but it's all relative). She has flat-out publicly horrified me (and her parents, and my dad, and even my biological father back in the day) on more occasions than I can count. She spent many years self-medicating the ADHD without realizing that was what she was doing. ADHD is a dopamine receptor problem, unlike bi-polar disorder which is a serotonin receptor problem; therefore, it requires substances that stimulate dopamine. While there are legal medications to do that today cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy and other types of stimulants all do the job, and do it almost instantly (unlike many prescription meds). Since dopamine appears to be linked to the reward/response parts of the brain, with many ADHD sufferers preferring instant gratification over delayed (even larger) rewards, and with no other medication available until recently, you can do the math. Fortunately those years are long behind her, but her unwillingness to really deal with those dark years openly and honestly have created a rift between us that will likely never heal. She is oblivious to this even though I have never hidden my feeling about it.
For most parents, their children are the center of their universe. For the child of an ADHD parent this is not so, even when you're an only child. You can't be the center of gravity because there seems to be an inability to see beyond the self- to empathize. There are glimmers of it, but whatever the case is, it's always pulled back and seen exclusively through their own lens. I was talking to my dad about a month ago and told him that it had recently occurred to me that aside from one trip for a week down the shore when I was five- the first time I really met who would become my brothers and sister- we have never been on a family vacation. I went away with my grandparents, and my parents took vacations as a couple so my mother could "get away." Get away from what? I was a very quiet child. I wasn't allowed to make noise because any little noise drives her crazy. She put the fear of god in me at a young age so I never disobeyed curfews, never sneaked out, always got very good grades (I was grounded a whole marking period if I got below a B), and spent most of my time after school in the care of neighbors. Aside from her dragging me shopping for literally hours on end when I didn't want to go, I recall very little "quality time" with her. The sad thing is that if she read this it would hurt her to the core (not my intention) and she would instantly become defensive and defiant, however, she would be hard-pressed to come up with specific examples of time spent aside from what I just described. Painful or not (and it is painful to me), it's the truth.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation earlier this week (and it's identical to many, many before that). She calls and tells me she just wanted to hear my voice. She calls me little names like "baby girl" in this weird little voice that quite frankly make me cringe, but I say nothing. She says how special and important I am and what not, and in the next breath she talks all about herself, what she's doing, how work sucks, how everyone at work has an attitude problem and doesn't like her for no reason, how they all play favorites there, and on and on. On my end of the conversation is about ten minutes of total silence. If I try to jump in and talk about something, she cuts me off mid-sentence and generally uses the beginning of my sentence to segue into yet another story about herself. Very often this is a total non-sequitur that begins with 'that's just like my situation,' except what I was trying to say is nothing at all like whatever situation she brings up. I have learned the very hard way to never discuss anything with her that I deem important. I don't need a sympathetic listener too often, but when I do it's never her. Whenever she asks me how I am- regardless of how I actually feel- I always say I'm fine, even when very often I have been far from it. Our relationship has been a role-reversal for decades.
I have no doubt that my mother loves me. To her I am her best friend, her baby girl, her pumpkin, the one she brags about and tells everyone my life story (which is another reason I don't tell her anything important- she has no filter), even though she hardly knows me. My casual acquaintances on Facebook know more about me than my own mother, and it's not for lack of trying. There's just no way to make someone interested in you, and when that person has difficulty focusing on anything outside of what is in front of them at that moment, it's impossible. Deep down she is a good person with a kind heart, but she requires a level of patience that sometimes I just do not possess. The hardest thing is knowing what is a result of the ADHD- things she truly cannot help- and what runs deeper, like the HPD. I have spent countless hours lamenting the idea that this is not how it "supposed to be." I have struggled for decades with trying to exercise patience at the expense of my own feelings. Where is the line in the sand?
