Today at family therapy the most amusing moment unfolded. Recently, our oldest’s English teacher quit for unknown reasons. The gossip around the school is that maybe students or possibly other teachers were bullying this teacher. My kid is unaware of anything as usual.
Now my kid really disliked this teacher and it typically boiled down to the teacher not allowing her to utilize any of the things in her IEP. This was becoming quite a contentious issue between the special education teacher and the English teacher. She just flat out refused some of the accommodations.
Today during the therapy session, instead of talking about any of that my child complains that the teacher was annoying. Apparently the teacher had ADD and made jokes about it which sometimes she thought was funny and other times found rude. However, the thing that really upset her was that the teacher used ADD as an excuse every time she did something wrong. Examples given: she loses her train of thought in class, she forgets to grade paperwork, and if she tripped over herself.
I honestly struggled with not laughing out loud. I did chuckle a bit and it upset her, but I did not fall out of the chair laughing like I was in my head.
My oldest constantly uses her diagnoses as excuses to not be able to do things. Now remember, her diagnoses have evolved over the last few years as we have gotten more extensive done.
“I have depression, I can’t clean my room…. I have anxiety, I can’t clean my room… I have ADHD, I can’t clean my room… I have autism, I can’t clean my room.”
She says these things even though she could clean her room before and after these statements. Being able to clean her room has never been an impossible task for her. She may not like it. She may protest and not clean it for days. It will eventually get cleaned regardless of the diagnoses hanging over her head.
I am not saying it is easy for her. This is never a timed event. It is just a chore that a now 17 year old should be able to fulfill. She keeps saying that we treat her like a baby, but these are the types of things that she will fight over. We are still working on things like putting laundry away, cleaning up after yourself in the common rooms, and using toilet paper.
After getting the autism diagnosis and learning more about it, she now uses it as an excuse to treat people poorly. She will say very rude things and say “I did not realize that was rude because I am autistic.” Even before anyone will tell her what she said is rude. As I have posted before, she does not get in trouble for the things she says. We have conversations about appropriateness. We discuss how to handle situations differently and how words make other people feel. There are no punishments or forced apologies in this house. Yet her go to is always her diagnoses’ fault and she struggles to listen to alternatives to her behavior. Even long after the event, she still hates being confronted with the consequences of her own choices.
I remember we had a fight one time and she wanted to never talk about the fight again and I told her she could have her way if she admitted that she messed up. She blamed everyone and everything instead of just saying, “I messed up.” I say it all the time, so this is not something she got from me or my husband. We are well aware of our screw ups. I think about them every night instead of sleeping, but that is a problem to talk about for another day.
Accountability is a word we use a lot in our house. Three of us are quick to blame ourselves for everything that goes wrong and one of us refuses to ever admit fault for anything. It is a unique dynamic in our home. It is also frustrating for so many reasons. It is something we all need to learn. We cannot be held accountable for things beyond our control, but we do need to take into account when we should have made better choices.
Mother of Trauma 
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