A very worried-looking mother brings her 8 year old daughter to us. She’s convinced there’s something mentally wrong with the daughter, and wants to know if she has ADHD.
The daughter, however, doesn’t come across as remotely hyperkinetic in the clinic. In fact she seems very well-behaved. We send for a school report just in case we’re missing something. The report comes back saying she’s a model pupil. Somewhat shy, never in any trouble. Doing very well academically. Definitely not ADHD.
The Mum then starts asking if she has Aspergers Syndrome. Appropriate eye contact, normal social interaction, no problems with imaginative play. No, she does not have Aspergers Syndrome.
In fact, the only thing we can find wrong with the daughter is that she’s very anxious. As far as we can tell, this seems to be because she’s mirroring the anxiety of her mother, who still seems utterly convinced that there’s something…something…wrong with her daughter.
We decide to refer Mum to a parenting class to see if it can help her to develop a more healthy relationship with her daughter. The results of the parenting class are somewhat unexpected.
After a few weeks in the parenting group, we bring them back in for a follow-up appointment to see how she’s getting on with it. Mum is completely transformed. She’s no longer an anxious bag of nerves, and is more confident and smiling. The daughter’s anxiety has gone too, adding weight to our theory that this was a reflection of Mum’s anxiety. We ask her how the group was.
“To be honest,” she says, “I felt a bit embarrassed to be there. Everyone else there seemed to be getting constantly attacked by their kids and having non-stop trouble at school because of them. It made me realise that my daughter’s fantastic by comparison.”
We then discover what all this was really about. “When my ex-husband visits her, he always denigrates her and says there’s something wrong with her, and that’s it’s because I’m such a terrible mother. I think I wound up believing his propaganda.”
Ironic really. Most mums go to parenting classes to find out how to be a good mother. She went there to discover she already was.
I think you did a great job. But did this mother meet the criteria and the ticboxes to be allowed to participate in the parenting class?
Yes, she met the tickbox criteria. I believe it went something like this:
“Does she want to go to a parenting class? [tick yes] Okay, she can go to a parenting class.”
oh, stringent.
Nice story Z.