the Most wonderful time of the year?!
For teenagers, final exams, holiday fervor and social gatherings tend to march together, arm-in-arm, like gaudy, festive nutcrackers, into the month of December. It looms as a seasonal celebration full of unwanted time commitments and social demands, rather than their desired self-indulgent, restful two weeks of teenage bliss.
The adults of the house are juggling work responsibilities, calculating gift expenditures, and busily preparing for family holiday traditions. It measures up to volumes of stress in the household for everyone involved, with each member of the family feeling it in different ways. Teenagers are already dealing with mental exhaustion, paired with the over-hyped anticipation of that one day of the year, (for those who celebrate the season).
Insert a neurodivergent mentally exhausted teen, reeling emotionally while navigating the December lead-up to the holidays – the kid with ADD, who may have failed their final exams, or barely passed their courses, not for lack of effort or showing up. The fifteen-year-old who can’t control the level of noise and distraction that bombards her brain, everywhere she goes – in her safe places, like home, and her neighbourhood; and in her non-safe places, like the bus she rides, the school she attends, and the stores she enters. For teenagers with ADD, seasonal messaging is everywhere and difficult to filter or obliviate during the long month of December.
Stressed parents are preparing for elevated expectations, possible disappointment, and everyday challenges that amplify under the shine and promise of December. They become less emotionally accessible to their kids under all this pressure. Everyone feels it, but the teenager with ADD feels it MORE. A parent’s patience has run thin, their time is filled up with busy tasks that are time sensitive, and the neurodivergent 13-year-old tabulates to the second, every moment of attention that he isn’t getting from his parent. He senses every change in tone, notices every grimace, hears every sigh expressed from the parent who is the cornerstone of his daily attempts to self-regulate, and he reacts with uncontrollable, untoward behaviour.
Our children become innocent cohorts of the gift-giving demands and anticipations, exaggerated hopes and expectations that exponentially increase as the month of December progresses. As a culture, we become engaged and seduced by the holiday promise. Most kids have trouble sleeping the night before Christmas, their brains plied with the dream of getting things.
The neurodivergent seventeen-year-old is finally able to sleep in to a reasonable hour in the morning. His childhood experiences of excited anticipation turning into abject torture by December 24th are behind him. Previous countdowns to Christmas, with days spent amped up like a jack-in-the-box, popping out with progressively more force and noise and disruption, are also behind him. The seventeen-year-old with ADD practices self-regulation, but his emotions become searing and fantastic and overwhelming in conjunction with the household stress of the season. His well-meaning efforts at self-regulation are kyboshed, when his insufferable sibling effortlessly pushes his buttons, and all hell breaks loose on Christmas Eve, like every year before this one.
Family gatherings at this time of year vary in size and compilation, and drama plays out in subtle and overt displays. There is pressure to be in attendance, there are distances to be traveled, and idealized behaviour is often expected when extended families gather. This amounts to stress for everyone involved, at varying degrees, depending on family dynamics. Personalities can mesh, or be tolerated for those few hours together, sharing a meal and practicing traditions.
For teenagers, family gatherings are mostly boring and last too long, while they endure cringy, awkward moments with relatives. For the twelve-year-old with ADD, the seasonal family gathering is an accumulation of shame. Ever since they can remember, they were the center of attention without intention, because of their behaviour – and they internalized the guilt and embarrassment on the faces of their parents. The twelve-year-old has never forgotten the feeling of shame when an older relative belittled their parent for how they were raising them. Family gatherings make them painfully aware that their parents are doing their best with a “difficult child.”
Raising teenagers can be an other-worldly experience for parents. Raising teenagers with ADD can be like several other-worldly experiences happening at the same time – teenage feelings and sensitivities amplified to the maximum in all directions, in all variations, and at any given moment. It is wrought with internalized shame and sadness involving all family members. Unwieldy ADD emotions intensify, while overt negative behavior escalates throughout seasonal events peaking at regular, anticipated times of the year.
For many families with neurodivergent teens, the month of December is seldom (cue music) “the most wonderful time of the year”.
