trouble accepting responsibility for actions...

[Guest guest]

Hi,

I'm wondering if other parents here share a similar problem. My son

has almost never been able to admit he's done something wrong or

accept responsibility for his actions. He always justifies his

actions, blames others, or just outright lies about it. He's 16 yrs.

old and for as long as my husband and I can remember, this has been a

problem with him. We also have a teen daughter and I realize most

kids will lie to get out of trouble. However, his actions are

extreme and he's been this way since he was very little. Sometimes

it's downright disturbing. He usually just gets angry with us and

when he gets grounded or we take something away, he'll stay angry at

us the entire time & will never own up or admit he did anything

wrong. Recently, he's started trying to get back at us like taking

things of ours & hiding them & even taking my credit card to order

things online without permission.

Could this be an OCD thing? I have OCD too, and I know it can be

difficult to admit we've done something wrong. I've tried to explain

this to my husband, but he sees it as a lack of conscious.

I think I've read about other parents of kids with OCD who have

experienced similar problems. Can anyone offer their opinion or

experiences and what they did about it? We've never had him actually

psychologically tested & I'm afraid if we did he'd get labeled as ODD

or Oppositional Defiant Disorder or whatever when it's really just

about his OCD.

[Guest guest]

We have this same trouble with our son with OCD age 11. The symptoms seem worse

on meds than off. Also, the higher the med dose ,the worse the trouble with

impulsiveness and then not accepting responsibility. however, this is also a

baseline problems since he was very young. Another associated problem is that

he is unable to have any new subject matter brought up at school. He

IMMEDIATELY gets defensive about why he doesn't have full mastery of the new

concept BEFORE it is even finished being presented. Every new " module " in math

or science sends him into a defensive mode where he is completely unavailable to

learn. He is also unable to accept any suggestions about sports. His coaches

LOVE this as Im sure you can imagine. He becomes angry and defensive at the

suggestion that he needs to try to be open to learning, or anything new or

" unperfect " .

I think the bottom line is the need for perfection. If things arent perfect,

the world will end or something. So if you can talk yourself and others into

things being perfect, you being perfect then somehow it will avoid problems, but

then it just feeds itself because then they know they have lied and thats not

perfect...So then they have to lye about lying so that it is back to perfect.

It is a huge focus of our ERP- the need to be perfect. I always show him all

the typos and spelling errors I make before spellcheck gets to me. We practice

handing in wrong homework at times(this takes coordination with the teacher), or

things left blank at school. We practice saying " im sorry, I made a mistake " .

We as parents try to model saying we made a mistake or point out our

imperfection or inperfection of other people he looks up to etc. It all works

better some times than others. However, I think it is definately an OCD thing

in our son. He is willing to defend something that he would not even get in

trouble for to the point of getting in trouble- that is a teltale sign for me-

if something seems like abnormal or maladaptive behavior, it probably is.