Blending in

[catclaw]

Hey

I have made an obervation about my ss over the past few years:

He is a really smart and charming kid. People who first meet him always praise his kindness and politeness. He has the ability to make a perfect first impression. Initially he got invited to playdates but most parents refuse to have him over by now, except for 2 families. He can't keep up this impression for long though.
He always aims to pleases adults - he uses the sentences "you are right", "i know", "this is a good idea" inflationally to make them shut the hell up. But this eventually flips - it takes from a few days to a few weeks (depending on the frequency of interaction with ss) for everyone to notice that he's just trying to keep up a facade. When this facade drops, he cries and is confused what just happened.

(Right now he's sitting on the table with dh and telling him in a long monologue that homework is really important and that he will stop lying about it tomorrow)

This first impression thing is something i observe in his BPDm as well. It really scares me.
He shows some BPD traits as "problem solving skills" (gaslighting, lying, crying on purpose, overdramatizing, dissociating and blaming, blaming, blaming) and I'm really afraid as to where this will lead because he just doesn't care.

He's still too young to be diagnosed but he learned these strategies from a young age and there's no sign of him trying to find or take on alternative strategies. He's swimming and on the verge of drowning in his reality contructs and stickts to them desperately.

I don't know. Is this something anyone has dealt with?

[livednlearned]

I have it two ways, one with my own son (N/BPD - bipolar father) and one with SO's D19 (uBPD mother).

With S15, I noticed he mimicked his dad's (total lack of) problem-solving skills, even parroting the things his dad would say (an example: "you love the dog more than me." He had other maladaptive coping skills, and underwent a psych eval when he was 9 that to me seems like BPD lite: ODD, ADHD/ADD combined type, depression/anxiety. What made me sit up and pay attention was suicidal ideation at age 8. He has gone on to be diagnosed with OCD and Tourette's, though to me these are all expressions of a very shaky sense of self combined with extreme anxiety. I guess what you might call sub-clinical BPD, where there are traits, but thanks to this or that variable, not full-blown.

Like your SS, S15 lies about homework even though I know his tells, and he knows I know his tells. His psychiatrist said to me that in his experience, when people lie, they are often lying to themselves. The key is to strengthen their sense of self enough to handle whatever it is they are trying to protect with lies.

Not easy.

I started out validating S15 a lot. That made a huge difference -- S15's psychiatrist told me this has probably had more effect than anything else, in addition to the hour a week he spends doing pretty much the same thing.

What I have since learned is that S15 needs the support, empathy, truth statements, with an emphasis on the truth. So, I can say, "Yeah, no one likes doing homework, especially with all these fun things to do online -- even I feel that way about my own schoolwork and I'm an adult  (support). You have a hard day of school and the last thing you want to do is come home and do more (empathy). Even so, homework has to get done, and we need to come up with a system where it gets done (truth)."

We came up with a deal together, about what would happen if homework didn't get done. He didn't keep up his end of the deal, so now he's fulfilling the consequence, which involves things that are easy for me and require my oversight.

Because he is ADHD, I've also started to be more explicit in the way I parent, offloading more and more life skill responsibilities to him, meanwhile talking about how to plan. This helps me model out loud a different kind of problem-solving than what he got from his dad.

It's hard, tho. I don't mean to make it sound like I have this all figured out, because I don't. It's more like a goal we have labeled, and are trying to stick to a strategy to get there.

[soundofmusicgirl]

Like your SS, S15 lies about homework even though I know his tells, and he knows I know his tells. His psychiatrist said to me that in his experience, when people lie, they are often lying to themselves. The key is to strengthen their sense of self enough to handle whatever it is they are trying to protect with lies.

@livednlearned... wow. That is some really good advice. I have struggled and am still struggling how to react to the obvious and blatant lies of my SS10. SS10 also has depression and anxiety and thoughts of failure. So this really hits home.

[livednlearned]

I think the key   for me is learning that kids with BPD parents don't individuate very well (which is where validation can help), and that they have the same poor coping mechanisms to deal with shame, which is a pretty tough emotion to be fair. I don't like it much myself.

So, shaming S15, or punishing him, or lecturing, etc. isn't very effective. Even speaking calmly isn't effective.

The only thing that has worked for me is to validate the core emotion, point out the obvious matter-of-factly, and then, when S15 is in a regulated mood state, talk about what a good contract might be. Then we agree on it together, and it's up to me to enforce it. He usually tests the boundary pretty good in the beginning, which is both annoying and exhausting.

Right now, we treat his computer gaming time as his paycheck. Homework is his job. He has to do the job to get the paycheck.

Everything is like this.  

A really helpful book is Love and Logic -- there is one for younger kids and one for teens. Some people don't like the subtle Christian messaging (there's some stuff on abstinence, for example, in the teen one). But the mechanics of how to stand by your boundaries in a loving way has been effective for me. When things break down, it's usually because I've become soft on the boundary or forgotten what I learned  

[catclaw]

Like your SS, S15 lies about homework even though I know his tells, and he knows I know his tells. His psychiatrist said to me that in his experience, when people lie, they are often lying to themselves. The key is to strengthen their sense of self enough to handle whatever it is they are trying to protect with lies.

Not easy.

This is the thing! I mean, SS doesn't have a stable sense of self. His sense of self and his perception of himself is all very dependent on his mother. I would say he's lazy if I didn't know that he never actually had a chance to learn how to learn and how to build up confidence in his abilities and that he was told that he (and his mom, again in "we"-form) is special and that he doesn't need any of this and that he should just do what he wants. I think this "specialty" is something he needs to protect. He often says "I'm not like the other kids". Yes, this is true. No kid is like "the other kids". But he fails to recognize this and is very very skilled in letting other people do his work or avoiding it completely.

His teacher says he's like a master of distraction. When he's asked why he isn't doing his tasks, he answers with a totally unrealted counter-question (like how many miles is a thunderstorm away if there's a difference of 10 seconds between thunder and lightning - during English class) and motivates the other kids to discuss this instead of focusing on class. When everyone's involved in his question (and the teacher is busy trying to get back to business), he's happy and goes on doing whatever he's doing instead of whatever he's meant to do.

He's smart and he has this cute little attitute of forgetfulness. When he forgets things, it's like they don't matter anymore. He plays with this a lot. I don't really know how much of his everyday tasks he really forgets and how many is just comfortable because this "closes the case". He knows that people percieve him as forgetful and don't get disappointed or mad when he, again, has "forgotten" a thing, a promise, a task, a date, whatever.

I'm not sure what exactly he tries to achieve with this, or what lies beneath. I feel like most of this comes together in some form of... being special and thus having different rules and entitlement which he's trying to protect. And I find this difficult to stabilize because I don't see him in a position of any of this. It's just the bond he has with his mom.

[livednlearned]

I wonder if your SS uses his distraction tactics to keep his mom off his trail, so to speak. Maybe these are tactics he not only learned from her, but uses them against her, to carve out a little breathing room for himself.

S15 does this too. If I come into his room with a request, he will throw me a funny side story about the cat, hoping that I will forget what I came in for. Sometimes it works 

What if you were to ask questions when SS says he is not like the other kids. "How are you different than other kids?" ":)o you think there might be other kids out there who are like that too?" "How does it feel to be different than other kids?" And if you want him to reflect on his distraction tactics, what about asking him "how come you... ." type questions. My T told me that people tend to respond better to questions phrased as "how come" compared to "why," and that seems to be true with S15. I will usually wait and ask him when I'm not irritated! More as a way to be curious about his behaviors.

[catclaw]

Hmm, my first impulse would be to say no, he doesn't use these tactics against his mom. Or more like, not more than against anyone else.
He's struggling for mom's attention after all - he tells her lies about his hard life with us with us being portrayed as emotionally violent, neglectful and what else. When confronted, he says "i invent stories when I'm angry". This may be to distract her from doing other things than spendin g quality time with him, but he really craves her attention and yet only gets to spend 1-2 hours with her eow. So... .now that I'm writing this out, yes, he uses distraction tactics against her, but in another way than during everyday life. I didn't see it that way until now... so thanks!

We have asked him about his "specialness" and his answer used to be "mom and i just are". When putting the focus on just hin, he doesn't know what it is that makes him special. When asking for examples he counts "i like to sleep in (he doesn't, he's wide awake at about 7), i don't like work (he doesn't even try in the first place), i forget things" and then adds "just like mom". When asked hiw he feels about this, it depends in the actual topic. He enjoys having extra rules at school (like a reduced homework plan, 1:1 contact with a special ed teacher, being the only one who has a token system for solved tasks) and doesn't have any motivation to change his behaviour because all of this would then go down the drain. He feels like he's entitled to special treatment because of traits he doesn't acutally have.