Category Archives: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

So David is in trouble.  mostly for non-compliance.

What is non-compliance?

It is not listening. It is not following the rules.  It is going into other peoples bedrooms without their permission.  It is deciding when you can take your medication and when not to take it.  It is deciding that you can eat what ever you want whenever you want as long as it isn’t supper time.  It is many things.  these are only a few.

So he is being on time out.

Today at the supper table I told him that he couldn’t remove his time release rittalin patch until he had permission.  Minutes later he asked if he could go to the bathroom.  When I told him that I would check his patch when he came out, he showed it to me.  He had decided to take it off, because “I didn’t hear you tell me I couldn’t take it off…”

Just now, he asked me if he thinks he doesn’t care about us.  Sadly, I don’t think that he does.

When I confronted him about why he went into his sister’s room when she wasn’t there, he said “I have ADHD…”

How can we prevent him from using his disability in such a fashion?  By trying to get the school to accommodate his disability, aren’t we using his disability as an excuse?

By the same token, I am on disability because of my illnesses and how they affect my balance, concentration, memory, and light sensitivity.  Am I not using my disability?

Maybe it is altruistic of me to expect him to understand that he can’t hide behind the things that he is diagnosed with.  They are not all that he is.  They only make up part of his life.  He can choose how they affect him, and how he responds to their role in his life.  Now it may sound like I am personifying his ADHD, or his Bipolar, or his TBI, but I am not.  However, he is who he is in part and despite these conditions that he has been blessed with.