Brynn Harvey
I am a stay-at-home wife and mother to three amazing kids, including one who is in constant battles with ADHD and tactile defensiveness. I think we're the perfectly imperfect family! I am an introvert, and I recently discovered that I am a highly sensitive person. I love to be at home, and my favorite hobbies are reading, cooking, watching movies, puzzles, and playing games with my family. You can also find me online: Facebook - Pinterest
Can a Teenager With ADHD Drive?
As soon as my son was diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive type, my brain had so many questions. One of those questions that always came back to me was whether he could learn to drive, having ADHD.
Can a teenager with ADHD drive? In short, yes! But let me tell you about our experience.
My son turned sixteen a couple of months ago, and I will tell you that the last year has been a whirlwind.
Surprisingly, my son is getting his driver’s license was a lot of work. I think some of it is because he is my oldest, so getting a driver’s license was a new experience for both of us. It was a year’s worth of work for both of us. He had to take the test to get his learner’s permit, drive many hours, take a Driver’s Education course, and take a lot of drives with an instructor.
Before he got started, I always thought that his ADHD was going to be a problem. He wouldn’t be able to pay attention in class or while driving. This was very far from what happened.
He got his learner’s permit very quickly. He just had to take a written test. Getting him to drive the car was the hardest part. And it wasn’t the ADHD that ended up being the problem. He ended up having a great deal of anxiety. Every time he drove, he worried about getting into an accident and wrecking the car.
Even as he got more experience with driving, he has struggled to get over his anxiety. From the beginning, he never enjoyed driving, so getting him to commit to driving was always a battle. Once he got his license and realized how much more freedom he had, his anxiety went down.
In the end, and with much celebration, my son received his license. It was a lot of work to get there, but every child is different, and every child’s ADHD is different. Can a teenager with ADHD drive? In my experience, I know that if you have a child with ADHD, it is possible for them to drive someday. It may not be easy, but they can do it. Just give them lots of encouragement and be patient.
Do I Make a Halloween Costume or Buy One?
I love the Halloween season. I love all things fall! The one thing I stress about Halloween is Halloween costumes for the children. My kids are great; they always know exactly what they want to be. That has never been the problem. My stress as the mother is, do I make a Halloween costume or buy one?
In the past, I have done both. When my kids were younger, there were some Halloween’s that I would attempt to make their costumes. Some years I have bought them. In the years I have bought them, I always felt like I wasn’t a great mom because I didn’t make this fantastic costume for my kids to wear.
During the years I made their costumes, I would try hard to be like the other moms and make these beautiful costumes. I would spend hours trying to make these costumes, and in the end, they never really turned out great, and I would feel like a horrible mom because their costumes weren’t these great, amazing costumes.
I have concluded this about myself in just these last couple of years. I AM NOT A CRAFTY PERSON!! Making costumes was just not my thing. It was the most stressful thing and would take me twice as long to make as it should. Making them for me took the fun out of the holiday season. I love doing all the fun fall festivities in our town. During the years that I would make the costumes, I felt like I didn’t have time to take the kids to do all the fun activities.
So, I stopped making their costumes. I buy them now. It has taken the stress out. We have more time as a family to do fun activities for Halloween. It has taken me a long time to feel good about not making costumes. I always felt like less of a mom when I didn’t make them.
I have bought costumes for the last couple of years, and I have no feeling of guilt. It is the best choice for my family and me. We enjoy the season so much more than we used to. I admire those who can make their children’s costumes or even their own. It just isn’t my thing. You are still a great person if you don’t make costumes. You do what is best for you and your situation.
In short, do I make a Halloween costume or buy one? My vote will always be to buy one! What do you do? Do you make your costumes, or do you buy them?
Warning Signs of Tactile Defensiveness
My son has been diagnosed with tactile defensiveness. Many of you may be wondering what tactile defensiveness is and what that means for someone with it.
Tactile defensiveness is a term used to describe hypersensitivity to touch. Individuals who experience tactile defensiveness are more bothered by the feel of things that touch their skin. Sensitivity may occur with food textures, clothing or fabric textures, self-care tasks, and receiving a hug or kiss. Or, it could be with specific items like paper, pencil, or messy play. Individuals who are sensitive to touch may respond by avoiding sensations or having a more significant reaction than would be expected or seen in others.
Looking back on my son’s childhood up until his diagnosis, there were a lot of warning signs of tactile defensiveness.
My son was my first child. When we brought him home from the hospital, we quickly noticed that he would cry every single time that we changed his diaper. With him being my first, I didn’t think anything of it. I figured that is how babies were. My mom lived close by and came over quite a bit the first week we were home from the hospital. She kept saying that he shouldn’t be crying when his diaper was changed. So we started trying many things to make him comfortable when we changed him. We tried different diapers, but that didn’t work. We tried different wipes, and that helped a little bit. We settled on a very soft wipe. He didn’t stop crying when we changed him until my mom bought us a wipe warmer. Luckily, after a couple of months, this finally got him to stop crying. It wasn’t until our diagnosis that we didn’t fully understand why he was crying when we changed him. He didn’t like the feel of the cold wipe on his bum.
Another strange thing that happened was at bath time. He loved being in the bath, but he would start crying as soon as we would get him out. It was every single time. We thought it might be because he didn’t want to get out of the bath. That wasn’t it, though. It was a different kind of cry. He would also cry hard when I rubbed lotion on him after his bath. My mom once again mentioned that he shouldn’t cry when I put lotion on him. We couldn’t figure out why he was doing that. Let’s say that I dreaded bath time. I would go as long as I could without bathing him because it was an awful experience. Once again, we didn’t understand why he was crying at bath time until we got our diagnosis of tactile defensiveness. He didn’t like the feel of the cold when he got out of the bath. He hated the feeling of me rubbing lotion all over his body.
Those were the two significant early signs of tactile defensiveness.
Another sign that I remember is that he hated baby food. It didn’t matter what it was he didn’t like it. I could get him to eat some of the fruit because it was sweet, but he didn’t enjoy baby food. Once he started eating solid foods, he only ate solid things, like chicken nuggets. He wouldn’t eat anything slimy or gooey. We still have a problem with this, which is our most challenging battle.
Looking back, another sign I can remember is that he wouldn’t touch certain things with his fingers or hands. He would never pick things up and put them in his mouth. Do you know how some babies find things on the ground and put them in their mouths? He never did this. I am unsure if it was because he was just a good baby or because he never wanted anything in his mouth. He never had his toys in his mouth or balls or anything like that.
These are the things that I can remember that were definite signs of tactile defensiveness after looking back on them. Once we got our diagnosis of tactile defensiveness, everything up to that point made so much sense.
Suffering Through the Pandemic, One Child’s Journey
How many of you are so sick and tired of this pandemic? I know I sure am. I will not say everything about the pandemic has been horrible. In the beginning, I enjoyed how slow life became. I loved all the canceled activities and us being able to be home as a family. We were able to spend a lot of quality time together.
But, the pandemic wasn’t all fun and games for our family. We had our struggles. Online schooling was brutal. Some days it would take my oldest son five or six hours a day to do his school work. There were lots of tears from my daughter, who was in third grade. My preschooler did pretty well, but somedays, it was hard to get her to sit in front of the computer.
My third grader is the one that struggled the most with everything. She did well at first; she got up and did her homework without question. After a couple of weeks, she started to regress. Her birthday is in April, and she had a hard with her birthday because we were stuck home. We couldn’t plan a party or do much of anything. It was a little underwhelming. I tried my best to make it a good day, but it was still hard for her. The day after her birthday, she came into my room at bedtime and started crying. She said she wanted everything to go back to normal. That night she laid by me and cried herself to sleep. That is when I knew we had a big problem that we needed to address.
I knew she was having a hard time; there were signs. She is a social butterfly and thrives on going to school and seeing her friends daily. She made a couple of comments that she missed being with her friends. The biggest thing is that she started sucking her thumb again. She sucked her thumb when she was a baby and hadn’t sucked it for years. It was a little bizarre that she would start sucking her thumb again. She wanted us to lay with her at night until she fell asleep. It became exhausting because some nights, she would take a long time to fall asleep.
I knew that night she came into our room crying and that we needed to take action quickly before it became worse. The next day we contacted her school counselor. We were able to set up online sessions with him every week. He gave us a lot of ideas on how we could help her.
Two strategies helped her. The first strategy that helped was having a worry box. She got a shoebox and had to decorate it any way she wanted. After decorating it, her counselor told her it would be her worry box. She would have to write anything she was worried about on a piece of paper and put it in her worry box. Writing her worries down and putting them into her worry box helped her a great deal. Once she gave her worries to the worry box, she wouldn’t worry about them anymore.
The second strategy we used a lot for her anxiety was “Count 5”. When she had anxiety, she would use Count 5. Here is how it works. First, you count five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. Once she did this, it would help her relax. Like I said before, we used this one quite a bit. Count 5 is the one strategy that helped her the most.
Meeting with the counselor helped a great deal. She eventually stopped sucking her thumb, and she was able to fall asleep on her own. We met with the counselor weekly until school got out for the summer. She still struggled through the summer. In our town, we could go back to in-person school in the fall. Once she went back to school full time, she improved significantly. When she was able to be back with her friends, she completely changed. It was amazing to watch her transform once she was able to go back to school.
I am grateful that we had the resource of the school counselor. If we didn’t, I think things could have turned out differently. Even though she has improved dramatically, she is still not the same girl from before the pandemic started. We still have times when her anxiety and fear take over. But now that I know she can suffer from depression and anxiety, I will always keep a close eye on her.
Why You Should Do a Mother and Daughter Bookclub
This past year my daughter and I were asked to join a neighborhood book club for mothers and daughters. I was initially hesitant because we didn’t have the time to add something else to our schedule. I am not the fastest reader either, so I wasn’t sure if we would finish the books we needed to read in time each month or not. In the end, though, we decided to join. I am so happy that we did. It has been such a wonderful bonding experience for us.
Our book club includes girls ages 7 thru 11. Both of my daughters are in that age group. They are both welcome to the club, but my 7-year-old isn’t always interested; however, my 11-year-old is eager to meet and discuss what we’ve read.
Each month we are assigned a book. Whichever mother and daughter host the book club for the month, will pick out the book. They also pick the evening that we will get together to discuss the book. When we go to our book club, the girls will run the discussion with a bit of help from their mom. The girls will come up with questions we will answer or discuss. When we have finished the conversation, we have treats or dessert. It isn’t very long, only about an hour or so. But it works because the girls at that age don’t have a very long attention span.
In our book club, some mothers like to read the book separately from their daughters. A few will also listen to it in the car with an audiobook. I like to sit down at night and read aloud to my daughters. Reading aloud makes it fun for all of us as we can talk about what we just read. I feel like we can bond more with each other this way.
If both your daughter and you like to read I suggest starting a book club with your daughters and their friends and moms. Joining this book club with my daughters has helped our relationship, especially with my older daughter. It might surprise you how fun it can actually be.
I’m also always looking for new books or things we can do at our book club! I would love to hear from you about what you’ve found that works well and what books you’ve read! Leave a comment below and let me know!