u/Greedy_Ground_8477

We have one boy with ADHD who is 7 (see my previous post for what that's been like...) I'm 40, wife is 39. We have talked about having other children, but because the first was so difficult, we have refrained. Now that I'm 40, and witnessing how things are going with child 1, any more children seems like a huge risk. BUT....Some days we want another, and I wonder what it would be like to parent a neurotypical kid.

My question(s) is/are for those with multiple kids:

Are your other kids neurotypical?

Is one child much more difficult than the others?

Do your kids get a long at least some of the time?

Do you regret having more than one?

Please bear with my long story here but I am at my wits end and I want to walk away from this entire life I created.

 

First off some context: My wife and I met in our late 20’s, never married before and were both in high performing careers, me in executive leadership and her in high ranking government work. We had a child in our early 30’s and from day one the expectations of fatherhood were vastly different than reality. I have always felt that there was something “wrong” with our son. I had difficulty connecting with him even as a baby even though I wanted to, more than anything. For the first 11 months of his life, he would not take a bottle, was only breastfed and cried for hours any time he was awake. He did not consistently sleep through the night a single time in that first 11 months and would only fall back asleep if his mother held him. He cried basically every time anyone else interacted with him besides her.

She worked one weekend each month during that time and I dreaded those weekends because he was either sleeping or crying the entire 9 hours she was gone. Everyone kept telling us it was going to get better. But it didn’t as he grew, his behavior and emotional problems grew with him. He was never able to separate at daycare or a babysitter without crying for long periods of time and still only connected in any real way to his mother.

I have never been able to build a bond with him, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes I think I am breaking through, and it just dissolves in a day or two. Fast forward to preschool and the behavior problems intensified. He was always slightly behind developmentally, in basically everything: walking, talking, crawling, ect. And still with that ever present attachment to ONLY mom. He was eventually kicked out of daycare for exposing himself repeatedly to other children to a problematic degree. There were other impulse control and emotional issues that played into this as well but the exposure was the last straw. This was so concerning to us that we put him in play therapy thinking that he had been abused by someone, but that went nowhere as he would never separate from his mother for long enough to get anything done from a therapy perspective. After months of trying, we gave up.

 

Fast forward to school age and he was accepted through a lottery to a very prestigious charter school in our area. He struggled so immediately and immensely, that we were called to pick him up from school at least 3 times a week. It took almost the entire year to get him to separate from mom at the door of the school without 30 min of crying. He was disruptive, struggled with learning and violent toward other children. By December, we were afraid they were going to expel him. Somehow we made it through the year, but the school recommended he repeat kindergarten. Because the struggles were so profound we sought out our doctor who diagnosed him with ADHD. A multitude of medications had little to no effect. He struggled with basically everything you can imagine, staying in his bed, sleeping through the night, emotional regulation, impulse control, and he was generally unhappy about 70% of the time. He has no empathy and still really only connects with his grandmother and a couple of school aged friends who are vastly more mature and advanced in basically every way.

Over the summer he was kicked out of summer camp for again, exposing himself. We have no idea why he does this and he is unable to articulate why. Its been less of a problem as he’s gotten older, but he will still do it if prompted by another child even now. He will also find kids who are younger and don't know better and ask to kiss them, even though we have had probably 100 or more conversations about why this isn't ok.

 

After tons of doctors, therapists, OT, PT, and even holistic therapies, we have seen little improvement.

 

Fast forward to first grade in his neighborhood school (which isn’t even on the same planet from an academic rigor standpoint) and we have all the same issues. Crying when he separates from mom, impulse control issues, behind academically. (He can not read even close to as well as other students from his class.) It’s like every emotional or social or academic issue, he’s got them all or is at risk of having them all.

 

We finally paid for a private assessment and learned that he has ADHD, anxiety, and borderline intellectual functioning (basically low IQ). I question the IQ piece because he was unable to sit through the testing fully and had to get up to come check on us multiple times. He was also unmedicated for testing.

BUT: No family history, so preexisting conditions, no outside causes. It just is what it is. No answers and no support.

 

I still basically have no emotional connection with him after 7 years of attempts. His mom is no help, because for 7 years she has been in denial that something is very, perhaps fundamentally wrong with his brain. He looks normal, and that’s where the normalcy stops.

 

I have serious concerns that he will ever be able to have a normal life, or perhaps ever be independent enough to live on his own. I grieve the child I never had, a normal child, every day. And some days I down right hate him, and resent his mother for not being more aware of all of this, more active. She takes what I observe about him to be a slight against her.

I’m not equipped for this type of parenting. I dreamed about reading books with my child and discussion literary themes. Taking him to places to discuss science and history. Having an intellectual relationship with him. All of this seems impossible now. Its not been rewarding, only a constant struggle that makes me resent my wife and hate myself for not connecting, and ultimately hating him for his inability to meet me somewhere even close to the middle. I’m sick of meeting with teachers who tell me how horrible his academics and behavior are. I’m sick of being embarrassed by his behavior in public. I’m sick of watching parents who are objectively worse than we are have children who are objectively better. And I am scared to death of his future.

 

Help me. Talk me off the ledge. I’m a coin flip away from asking for a divorce and offering her full custody.