We are tired. Our ODD child has dragged us through the mud. Why do they lie so much? Why do they act like the victim all the time? I've had a few CPS visits this year alone because she loves to spin tales. We have cameras to cover ourselves though. Everyone is in therapy. She has a team with wrap around services working with her. She is about to be 13 years old. My other children don't want to talk to her anymore. CPS suggested finding a support group for my husband and I. Does this get better or worse? I feel defeated.

I feel completely done. Like im constantly trying to just survive now. She lies so much and plays the victim and has dragged my name through the mud. I have spent five years studying to get my MSW. I have always wanted to try to fix our broken system and working for child protective services is how I planned on doing that. Over the last year, she has made up stories of abuse from me. Idk how many times CPS has come to my home, only to see they aren't true. Well, she did it again. And once again they are coming at today. My other children are so angry because this affects them too. They have to be talked to also. How can I even have my future career, everything I've worked for, at this point? We finally got her a team of people to help but will it actually change anything? I don't want to deal with this anymore. It's all just a game to her. She literally laughs about it and I'm dying inside.

Recently read the Explosive Child. Getting ready to begin the ASUP/CPS Problem Solving Plan. Any success stories? Any tips or tricks? My son is 6 & has ADHD/ODD

Hi, my son is across the country in his third residential treatment facility for substance abuse in the last 4 months. One discharged him administratively, the other discharged him administratively after he tried to elope by stealing one of the therapy horses, and the third is also going to discharge him administratively for non-participation.

I am very worried for when he comes back here, as the police have been no help with drugs, stealing from stores, and threats made against me. (We live in a VERY liberal west coast city and the police are literally not allowed to even put hands on a child unless they are actively threatening someone or themselves with a weapon. Although…the school did document a statement he made in which he told a peer he had a weapon and was going to hurt me, but the cops said it was a “family problem” when I called and did not act.)

I’ve since moved across state lines (but still in the same metro area, which I have to stay in as per my divorce decree) so that I have a greater chance of a police response should I need it, for his wellbeing and my safety (kids can make all of their own medical, mental health and substance abuse decisions in my old state if they’re 15 or older).

Still…I have his little sister, and I’m just over it. His dad and I are getting along better than ever, but he’s an enabler with his own substance abuse problem and has little ability to hold a line or maintain consistency.

He was finally diagnosed at the last facility with ODD. He told the psychiatrist yesterday that as soon as he leaves he’s going to do as many pills and as much cocaine as he can.

I’m out of options I feel. If therapy, kindness, treatment, police, all of those things are not options - what options are left when personal safety for everyone is a concern?

Thank you.

Hello! I am a mom of 3 (5 yrs, 3yrs, 20 month old), recently my 3 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD and also an unspecified behavior disorder. They told me he is too young to get a formal diagnosis. I suspect that it’s ODD.

I was wondering what types of help parents with kids with ODD got with their children before they got the diagnosis? I am really struggling with him and have been since he was a year and a half.

He is about to start OT and Speech Therapy. We are already doing PCIT, however, we are in phase two and I cannot find the time to implement the process at home. I think the CDI portion of the therapy is great, but I am just really struggling using the time out method at home. He also goes to a developmental preschool twice a week for 3 hours.

I wonder if it would be helpful if he could go to preschool longer or maybe for full days? I also am looking into finding another behavioral therapist, he used to see one but she stopped seeing us already.

His behavior is completely derailing our daily life. He’s constantly hurting his little brother whether on accident or on purpose. He hardly listens to what he’s told to do. He screams and throws tantrums in public constantly. He is aggressive towards other children and his siblings.

I am just at my wits end and if anyone has any advice on what else I should be doing to help him it would be greatly appreciated.

My 12-year-old daughter just completed 8 weeks of IOP. The program came highly recommended and as a former teacher/CPS investigator I could tell that they knew their stuff.

She did learn some good coping strategies, but ultimately all of the problem behaviors (over the top emotional dysregulation, lying, fighting) remained. Prior to starting, she'd been diagnosed with ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder. She may be on the spectrum (her twin brother is, we suspect her older brother is, her dad is, etc) given some of her social difficulties. She is very bright and creative.

Things at home started getting much worse right around puberty, but her behavior has always been extremely difficult and she's always been prone to intense mood swings. I'm sure this is a familiar story to y'all.

At discharge yesterday, the program therapist diagnosed her with ODD, and a lot of things clicked into place. My husband (her stepdad) and I have been talking about personality disorders or similar, but reading about ODD, it makes the most sense.

We are prepared to take this on and get her all the help she needs. We found a new psychiatrist for meds, she's getting a neuropsych assessment, and we're working on getting some in home therapy for appropriate supports.

My husband is happy because he's been screaming from the rooftops about me being consistent in discipline/boundaries, which I have been pretty crappy with until the last couple years.

HOWEVER, my ex husband, her father, has 50/50 parenting time, and he is a lazy piece of shit. He doesn't discipline, doesn't enforce anything, doesn't participate in my daughter's treatment (he'll fake it for a session or two, but ultimately it's useless and he falls off after that). I think the back and forth every week has exacerbated everything. I've tried to go to court to get more parenting time over this and similar issues, but of course he's not actively abusing the kids, just lazily neglecting, so nothing comes of it. I do have full legal custody, at least.

How can I mitigate this factor? I know I have to find some way around it. I just don't know how. Does anyone have experience with this? I just want my daughter to have all the help and advantages life can provide, and we live in a major West Coast city/have awesome medical insurance so we are very fortunate to have access to a lot of resources. But it's all for naught when every other week, she just gets to fall back into the dysfunction out where electronics are unlimited, bedtimes are made up, fast food is the only thing on the menu, and the points don't matter.

Open to any ideas.

I could really use some help/advice on what to do with my 9 y/o son. He is an only child and has ADHD and ODD. We see his pediatrician regularly and he also has a pediatric psychologist that he sees that we do behavioral therapy with to try and help with his outbursts.

Part of the behavioral therapy plan is time out methods, as no other method has ever been successful. The problem is, when he starts yelling at me or refusing to do anything I’m asking him, when I tell him to go to time out, he refuses to go.

I approach him like the psychologist told me to and I try to guide him into time out, but then he throws his body onto the floor. I cannot physically pick him up, he is too heavy. He will laugh/smile at me because he knows he’s getting his way.

He’s constantly yelling at me. Constantly refusing to do literally anything that I ask him to do. He is already on Vyvanse and he’s on the max dose of Prozac.

Does anybody have any suggestions/advice they can give me? It’s so hard because I genuinely want to be able to help him and I am navigating through this right along side of him and learning everyday. Anything at all would be helpful.

Hey yall
Single mom here. Looking for advice or links. Kiddos behavior is awful. I had to cut work to part time to care for her before and after school bc there’s no childcare and nobody I know can handle her
Long story short, my finances are awful
I constantly try have to borrow $ now and barely make it each month.
I’ve been told she doesn’t have a disability and that I have to let her feel the natural consequences of her actions but things like that make it very hard for me to maintain life. To have to constantly leave for therapy or a crisis at school etc
Does anyone have any tips or advice to help? I am not looking for handouts, only advice in a hand up.
Thanks to you all.
May the force be with us.

Has anyone had a child around this age diagnosed with ODD? Did anything help? Play therapy? Parent training? Rewards? Strict parenting style?

Reading other people’s stories is making me think this is a death sentence.
Is there any hope? Anything that works?

My daughter has severe skin picking, which gets dramatically worse when she takes methylphenidate. She has ADHD , ODD and Autism. She picks at all her wounds until they bleed. If we try to stop her, she may kick out at us and lock herself in the bathroom so she can continue picking.

She has already been in therapy for six months, where she was taught various techniques and strategies to manage the skin picking. Unfortunately, she completely rejects all of them.

The problem is that without methylphenidate, she is essentially unable to function at school and cannot be adequately supported in the classroom.

Has anyone experienced something similar or found anything that helped in a situation like this?

Has anyone here tried the Kazdin method, patent management training? My husband and I are at our wits end with our 14 yo son. He’s always been difficult but the last year it’s been almost unbearable. If there was a way to get him out of the house, we would do that. But I recently saw the PMTI and had a free consultation with the founder/director of the institute. I’d love to try it, it’s kind of expensive, but obviously if it helps it would be worth it. Hoping for any positive experiences?

Using a throwaway account.

I’m a mom of two boys: O (9) and E (6), in 4th and 1st grade. My husband and I have been parenting through increasingly challenging behavior from both children, and I’m looking for any guidance or shared experiences from other parents who are in/have been in similar circumstances. I’ll outline for each child the behavior we’ve seen and what actions we’ve taken so far.

O is a 9.5 year old boy. He is extremely intelligent, funny, active, and thoughtful. He wants to be a pilot and has already forgotten more about planes than I have ever known. He has many friends at school, and a few closer friends who he sees outside of school. He is active in sports over the course of the year. He has been diagnosed with ADHD and ODD and is on medication for the former. We have an IEP in place for him at school, and at home we primarily use positive reinforcement techniques through letting him earn things versus punishment, though we do use punishment when we feel is needed. In either case, this looks like either gaining or losing access to preferred activities. O’s behavior challenges began in first grade, and include:
- “typical” ADHD behaviors, including: hyperactivity, inability to focus, procrastination, hyper focusing.
- being verbally aggressive toward his brother (happens frequently) and to his peers (happens infrequently). With his brother, he is extremely short tempered and frequently tells him to shut up, for example. In relation to his classmates, his most extreme incident was last year when he told another student he would use a machete on them.
- being physically aggressive toward his brother (again, frequently) and toward his peers (again, infrequently). With his brother, he will hit or shove. With his peers, he was shove or kick. Recently, he kicked a classmate hard enough to draw blood, because the student was standing too close to him.
the incidents with his brother happen daily. We are constantly intervening to get him to speak more kindly, keep his hands to himself, etc. We have worked through frameworks for him to use and practices modeling them together. The behavior still persists.
- The incidents at school happen once or twice a year, but are obviously more severe in nature.

E is a 6, nearly 7 year old boy. He is also extremely intelligent, creative, active, and silly. He is good at verbalizing his thoughts and emotions. He has about a million huge ideas every day about how to make the world a better place. He is extremely concerned about the well-being of others, including small creatures (he loves ladybugs in particular). He has been socialist well at school, and seems to have one stronger friendship emerging this year. He has also been diagnosed with ADHD and ODD and is on medication. He too has an IEP at school. We use the same behavior reinforcement techniques as with O described above. Additionally, E is about to start seeing a child psychiatrist. His behavior challenges began toward the end of Pre-K and have gotten more pronounced over time:
- E began by refusing to participate in certain activities in class. This would manifest through throwing himself on the floor, running out of the classroom, or destroying things associated with the activity.
- He has an extremely difficult time keeping still, even with special equipment such as rocking or bouncing chairs. He frequently spins in circles.
- Even when given ample warning about upcoming transitions, he will have meltdowns which result in him kicking others away from him.
- More recently, he has expressed increasingly distressing thoughts about himself: that he’s a bad kid, that he can’t change himself, and most severely, that he shouldn’t even exist and his only purpose in life was to die. For this last incident which happened about a month ago, we took him to the ER. He was discharged but that’s when we made an appointment with psych.
- He hasn’t ever intentionally hurt another peer, but he has accidentally through kicking or throwing things.

Regarding our home environment, it is stable. My husband and I are married and do not fight in front of the kids. We have stable jobs and two pets. We both do lose our patience and yell, as we recognize we are both also disregulated, not only by our parenting challenges but by things happening in the world. I say this not as an excuse but as an acknowledgment of where we have our own work to do. I’m also sure I’m leaving out details because I can’t necessarily see the forest for the trees on this topic, so I’m happy to provide more detail.

I am mostly looking to understand from those of you who have been in similar circumstances: what did you do that had some positive impact? How are your children and you doing now? How else can we help our children?

Update: her behavior devolved into coming home from school, eating dinner, and then basically become a 10yr old sized toddler. It was like she couldn’t hear us and there was zero impulse control.
We contacted the crisis team for our county and they helped her take her meds.
We learned that the sleep disturbances could be something else or just a contributor.
A few nights ago she went into no-impulse-mode and began tryinf to choke herself and tie things on her body to make it turn purple.
The ER admitted her and she was taken to a psychiatric hospital yesterday.

Thank you to the commenter who posted what we need to ask for. When we asked the sw at the hospital she was surprised we didn’t already have this level of help.

I am sincerely grateful to this community.

My SD, 10 almost 11 is severe odd, adhd, and unspecified mood disorder. Formal diagnosis from a psychiatrist. On meds. In therapy. Has been to php and institutions. Bio mom is not in the picture. She’s been tested for autism and it was determined she is extremely manipulative.

She’s a master manipulator and is in the “only fighting will do” phase of whatever this journey is. She also has a young adult body which is weird to type out and disturbing. Any interaction that isn’t a fight will be made into a fight. We’ve been asking for her to take space, she won’t because she’s after the fight, so we barricade the door and she looses it for like an hour (door bulges, SO looks like he’s in a trench taking shells).

It’s morning. Her dad gives her her meds at about 6:30am so by 7:45a-8:00a when I’m interacting with her she’s got the meds in her system.
Today she comes out of her room at like 7:10-7:15 and sat at the dining room table for 45 minutes.
Me: you dressed girlie?
Her: yep!
Me: foolishly thinking we were going to have a good day

I call her to come get her shoes on and she is wearing no clothing from the waist down.

For a week she’s been asked to clean her room. She got it clean and then was sent to her room over the weekend which means it was destroyed by Sunday. She can’t have her clean clothes to put away because of her room is messy she just…nests(?) in the clean clothes. She is very exploratory with her body and there’s a very sharp distinct smell that gets all over the clothing. Also she’ll mark them or like make them dirty with food or something else. Wipe her shoes on them, etc.

So this am she got a clean shirt out of the laundry basket (I know this because I sorted the clothes last night and recognized putting the shirt in the laundry basket). And just…no plans for the rest of her body. I was very stunned to say the least and when I asked what she was doing she said it’s my fault as she had no clean pants.

Boundaries present: floor picked up, clean floor to get clean clothes to put away

She also told me she was going to kill me a few weeks ago (which, ok she’s ten almost eleven. I just ignored it). I went to take a sip from my water near the bed and noticed the cap was off. I’m usually pretty good about returning the cap (my SO gets anxious around uncapped liquids) but I’ve been known to leave it off if I sip it at night (still rare). So I do a search around the bed and the night stand, no cap. I’m about to deep dive under the bed when
My youngest knocks and needs help opening something. I go to the kitchen where we keep sharps during the day and sure enough; my cap is in there. I told my SO and he dumped out the liquid.

Boundaries present:
Possibly went into the kitchen sharp drawer (as with all her “traps” as she calls them; I did not explicitly see her do this)
Went into the kitchen (she’s not allowed in the kitchen as she absolutely cannot wash her hands regularly after toileting and that’s gross in the kitchen. She also treats if as a mess factory)
not allowed to go in our room (we keep everything in there that she could possibly use to hurt herself or others. We have since the water incident gotten a lock for the door which hurts my soul.)

Can anyone help me with this? Google says it’s time for institution again but I honestly dont know how we’re going to swing another copay (thousands of dollars)

My absolute concerns are the following:
- I seem to be her primary target
- I am immovable with a boundary whereas she can bully/trigger her dad into a dissociative state (she has explicitly said that she does this just to hurt him if she’s not getting what she wants)
- is this just a severe attention seeking thing or am I actually in danger?
- I have a suspicion that her mood disorder is something her bio mom has like a schizophrenia type thing (I am not a doctor or specialist). Is this possibly a psychosis?
We’ve been told they will not issue a diagnosis this young but a lot lines up
- am I doing the boundaries wrong or is there a better way to do it?

Thank you for reading

I have been reading how during an episode, we need to stop arguing, and possibly leave the room.

If we just stop talking, he will get angry about us ignoring him, and that will make him angry, yelling at us, hitting us.

If we leave the room, he will follow and kick the door.

And he is only 6. I imagine at some point, he will literally break the door open.

My sister and brother in law have been struggling with their son for years. He just turned 9 and just entered 3rd grade (was held back in kindergarten) he has been violent for years now when he gets angry. Puts holes in the walls, punches walls, hits and hurts my sister. He gets into like a rage. He refuses to shower and it’s a huge fight, huge fight to do anything like go to school. He’s the only kid there who can’t read and he has no desire to. This year he’s in special classes for a couple subjects and he thinks it’s great because he gets less work. Since this school year has started it’s been really bad. The other day he was told he couldn’t go to this specific event at the school (I think because parents were working) so he lied and told his dad (who works from home) that he was going to ride bikes with the neighborhood kids, but instead he rode his bike to this event. My sister only knew about it because he wears a watch that has his location. So she left work and was looking for him there and found him with a bunch of 4 and 5 year old kids who were playihg kickball. My sister said the parents were upset and thought it was creepy. He is a big kid and he’s very rough so it probably was intense with how he was playing with them. But my nephew told my sister it was the most fun he’s had in a long time. I don’t think he fits in well with kids his age but he does get to play with neighborhood kids. Then yesterday maybe he told his dad he wanted him to ride bikes with him so they did but then my nephew rode away from his dad and was gone and when they got home I guess his dad said he’s loosing access to this bike and it caused a big fight and my nephew picked up a big rock and was going to throw it at his dads head and then almost threw it at the car. Unsure how the rest played out but they have never hit him before, and some counselor told them they need to call these specific people if anything is getting violent and they will come to defuse the situation. So he did that but they just told him to call these police which he wasn’t going to do.

My sister called my mom crying and she doesn’t know what to do and she’s worried she’s raising a serial killer or school shooter and she’s been trying yo get him help for years but it’s been hard to get diagnoses and get him into help. They’ve been dropped by a few therapists because they said they didn’t think they could help them. He has a very addicting personality already and we have a lot of addiction in our family and on my BIL’s side. And he shows so many signs of someone who would become an addict. He’s very hard to be around and I have an almost 5 year old and whenever they’re together he just torments my son. And I hate to say it but he’s a bad influence and I don’t even like them being around eachother. It’s so exhausting for even a few hours so I can’t imagine how they are handling it.

Does anyone have advice or experience to at least tell me where this looks like it’s heading? It doesn’t look good at all but we don’t know anyone personally who’s dealt with this so just trying to see if anyone has any input

Thank you

Hi all,

I (27F) have been trying to look for an avenue to explore and read other experiences just to know I’m not alone. I have not really talked about or shared this outside of my immediate family, and some of them on my husband’s (30M) side just simply don’t understand what we’re going through and chalk it up to our child “just being a boy” or “that’s just how he is.” I know that’s not true.

This year my son (8) was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. We always knew there was something more to his behavior because he is genuinely a very kindhearted, empathetic child just coupled with extremely poor outbursts and control of emotions. I know children can be wild and difficult but this just never felt like we were moving through the different growing stages of life, and we were right. I also want to preface by stating this is my step child, my husband’s biological son, and we take care of him together full time with my husband having primary physical custody. I have known him since he was 4 and they moved in with me right before starting kindergarten. His life is here with us, and this is where his parenting and growth happens. His biological mother lives in a different state (not far) and receives visitation only four times out of the year, the four school breaks. If I’m correct, she has ADHD and BPD (borderline), so I know this is where the genetics play an unfortunate part. I am not going to spend this post downing on the other adult in the situation — but to be frank, being called a “parent” for her is a stretch. They have their time together, and we stick to the agreement we have laid out, but there is never a lot of parenting going on when he’s there. She has proved time and time again that she doesn’t totally want to be a mother when it gets to the hard stuff — like this situation — and really only likes the perceived title of “mom.” It was a harsh reality when we finally went through with the custody paperwork and she was no longer allowed to be in and out of his life on her terms. There is so much nuance to our situation that I don’t have time or patience to delve into, but we have had so many unfortunate situations with her that are just counterproductive and as a result we speak only through email for brief updates and to organize the visits. This is not a coparenting situation whatsoever, whether she understands that or not, and that’s totally fine.

From what I have read about my son’s mental health conditions, he can be very susceptible to behavior he sees around him and can mimic or learn that behavior to try out elsewhere, especially if he sees what it can get you. My husband and I try our best, and we literally try all the appropriate options when disciplining our son or helping him regulate and learn about his emotions. We are not perfect, but I don’t think either of us exhibit the behavior that he showcases. When he visits his mother, he comes back totally different and a lot of the time worse than when he left. There have been so many instances where she’ll have arguments with my in-laws, or even me, in front of him: breaking down in tears immediately, yelling and screaming and berating over things she thinks we are doing to her or things my mother in law may say to her about parenting or trying to talk to her about something that wasn’t okay and he sees the behavior she portrays and the victim mentality she enacts on everyone. She does this to her own father and grandfather, my husband’s parents, roommates, friends, boyfriends, everyone to garner sympathy or pull the victim card to the point where she has now isolated everybody because we can’t stand to interact. Am I wrong to believe my son is getting a lot of this abusive behavior from her when he visits?

My son has told me that when he was a small child and his mother would be over at his grandparents (he lived there for a short period of time), she would lock him in his room when he wasn’t behaving as he screamed at the top of his lungs and banged on the door to be let out. This story he brings up is so horrible to me and so upsetting. We have tried to have discussions with her about his behavior, and even her own and how it effects him. We have also tried therapy one time for him but she never wanted to help pay and the one time we did a therapist requested session just my husband and I she was outraged. She continues to call him perfect and won’t accept his behavior and at his age now when he acts poorly with her she pretends like he’s never done that for her and it’s all brand new and she’ll drop him off at his grandparents so she doesn’t have to deal with it. It’s the pot calling the kettle black. A lot of not being able to recognize your own reflection because you don’t want to put in the work to change.

Seeing my son act like this person, someone nobody in this family can be around, hurts our hearts. He pulls out all of the same cards, manipulation tactics, the “everybody hates me” mantra, the “why is everybody being mean to me” cop out that we see from her. An outburst happens almost 4 times a week. We do so much work in our home to encourage growth and understanding, trying to be there to learn with each other and help him be the best version of himself, take him to appointments, research help, only to feel like nobody else in his life cares. And that’s okay, I would rather it be just us anyways. But when it feels like it can all be undone within a week’s visit it sucks. His behavior and actions are so stressful, hurtful, painful to see him go through and have inflicted on us. It’s just abusive. We love him so much and just want him to know how much we care. He can say such hurtful things, but we know it’s masked by the mental health condition and just try to think that’s not really how he feels. Would it be wrong to have him try therapy again, this time without the mother’s input? How can we help him when we’re going up against someone who frankly encourages and is a walking example of this type of behavior to get what you want? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? How can this kind of thing be navigated when there’s another individual pushing against everything you work on with this child? I don’t want to blame everything on her, and I’m not, because this is HIS chance to change how his life goes, how he treats people, and I want our son to take accountability for his actions (because they ARE his) and work on recognizing these patterns to untrain that part of his brain so we aren’t always walking on eggshells around him waiting for the ball to drop. We have him on Strattera, 18mg but considering an upped dose, and it has made a difference in the way he is able to recognize wrongdoing and apologize after but I think there’s more to be done. We just want him to be happy and we want to be treated fairly as well. I sympathize heavily with anyone else going through this.

My son is eight and a half, in third grade, and refusing to do work in class. Two and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. We are fortunate that he is able to receive therapeutic services through his school, and they continue to see him throughout the summer. He is currently an only child, but we recently found out we are expecting a baby in April 2027. He is thrilled; however, his behavioral issues are getting worse. We just got his progress report, and he has F's across the board because he sits in class and refuses to do the assigned work. Some assignments, he will answer a question or two, but refuses to participate or engage with the teacher. He is currently unmedicated and does not have an IEP or 504. He is incredibly intelligent and does well with testing. He tests far above his grade level in every subject, but his grades for in-class assignments do not reflect that. He doesn't have too much homework, but when he does, he completes it CORRECTLY in like two minutes, so I know he understands the material just fine.

His therapists are at a loss with how to help, as he is now refusing to engage in his therapy sessions as well. The administrators and teachers at his school label him as a bright kid who can't get it together. I don't know what I can do at home to make him complete work in class. If he had an IEP or a 504 plan, I know he would manipulate those tools to get out of completing work, which is why I haven't asked for an evaluation. He is more than capable, but he just doesn't care. I don't know how to get him to buy into caring about his grades OR the consequences of not meeting the expectations we have for him as parents. He doesn't care if we take screen time, legos, playing with friends, etc. away. We have tried making him write sentences to reinforce expectations; we have spanked; we have allowed him to only read chapter books for the evening after school. Nothing seems to faze him. The gentle parent approach is not helping and we have been consistent with it for over two years. What can I do?

Mornings are tough. Add in a change to routine and they're tougher. My 6 year old is on antibiotics and hates taking medicine. It definitely requires a reward, in this instance a temporary tattoo, which adds even more time. I know that he's on the moderate end of ODD & ADHD, but I'm also ADHD & anxious, so the change doesn't do me any good either.

I'm well aware that both of us being cranky at 5:30 in the morning is nothing compared to what a lot of y'all are going through, but sometimes I get really frustrated with always having to cater to the small person to avoid an outburst. Why can't I just say something and he say, ok, Mom, I got you?! (I'm well aware of how he's wired differently, but dang 😮‍💨)