When ADHD meets dementia

And other daily challenges in Japan

July 2023

It was Tuesday and once again I was sitting with my Japanese teacher reading over photocopied pages of a textbook. The sun was very bright through the large glass windows of the classroom. It made me squint, then I would tire quickly. A bad combination when trying to learn another language in a class that wasn’t riveting! Over the last few weeks it had seemed that I was learning a new way of counting nearly every week. It wasn’t necessarily in the textbook, it just seemed to come up in our lesson. On this particular day, we looked again at numbers. Big ones. I knew up to 100. Now we were looking at numbers with many zeros behind the 1. I looked down at the piece of paper with a list of numbers and their corresponding names.

“One thousand is sen” my teacher taught me. “Ten thousand is man. One hundred thousand is jouman.” Then he gave a little apologetic chuckle as he pointed to the sheet of paper, “In Japanese, there are 4 zeros after the comma.”

Whaaaaaaaat????!!!! If I thought different ways of counting was hard enough, now my mind EXPLODED!

“You place four zeros after the comma??!! How does that work? Is it the same number? How do you know what number it is?!” I couldn’t comprehend. The explosion must have blown too many brain cells, I just couldn’t get it!

After class I went on the hunt for shorts in the city. I’d spent weeks looking for shorts. The days were regularly warm and even though I like wearing summer dresses, sometimes you just need to wear shorts! I couldn't understand how the Japanese can overdress in such warm weather! I went straight to UNIQLO and was disappointed, again. I expected they would have a nice range being a western style clothing store… They didn’t. They had some shorts though, which was a relief. They weren’t my style, but now I was feeling pretty desperate. I bought two pairs: navy and khaki green. At least they were cotton, and not short-shorts, or long-shorts. They were just normal length shorts.

With my new purchase sitting beside me in the car, I should have felt elated that I finally had shorts to wear! Instead, I spent the 45min drive home mulling over the Japanese numbers and trying to figure out how they could put four zeros after the comma, and what that does for the numbers! Days later, my mind felt like it still hadn’t recovered from the explosion! (I’m not sure whether it was the way it was taught to me, or if I’m just a slow learner, but it took weeks for me to comprehend and not be confused!)

Learning Japanese was a continuous challenge for me, and it appeared that parenting wasn’t letting up either. Despite the parenting challenges, I hadn’t been very dedicated to the parenting course I signed up for several weeks ago… I’ve implemented one thing though: calling my child for good things, not just for giving orders. I realised that that was something that I was doing wrong, only calling them to give orders, or to scold them for something. No wonder they switch off when I call them! So I’ve started to call them to say something good, or to give them something good. The easiest thing to start with for me, was giving them the enzyme drink. The ume (plum) enzyme and the edible weed enzyme drinks are both finished and strained and we are taking it before our meals. I would place a little in the bottom of the glass, add some water and then call the kids. It didn’t take long for them to learn that responding to their mother was now a good thing!!

Shujin started a short course for his work. He needed to be trained up to be a “carer”. On the first day, he turned up wearing shorts and shirt. He was promptly told he needed to wear long pants for class. There is no logic to this. They are sitting, listening to lectures, and they have to wear long pants?!

He was also promptly told that he needed to wear a face mask. The mask mandate ended months ago, but they were still enforcing it.

Class started, he pulled out his laptop to take notes. He was promptly told he couldn’t use his laptop. You were only allowed to use pen and paper for note taking. He explained that he’d been living out of Japan for 20 years. He wasn’t so good at Kanji (the Chinese characters that the Japanese use) and he found it easier on the laptop (because the computer does this cool thing where it automatically converts the words to Kanji for you when you’re typing using the simple alphabet!) Despite explaining his reasons, and having a very good and valid one, there were no exceptions given. The laptop could not be used.

When in class the following week, the boring lecture started and he very promptly got distracted by a page in the textbook that talked about ADHD. Bob ticked every. single. box.

• constantly fidgeting

• squirm in the seat/can’t sit still

• being unable to wait their turn

• acting without thinking

• difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn

• mood swings, irritability and a quick temper

• inability to deal with stress

  just to name a few…

We’d never had him officially diagnosed before, but did have a good friend (who had been a principal, teacher and school counsellor) tell us that he has ADHD. At the time we discussed it and agreed, but I guess we took it rather lightly. We didn’t educate ourselves on how to support him, or parent him, or anything

Now, when Shujin came home and shared with me what he’d read in the textbook, in some ways it felt strangely comforting to fully acknowledge Bob’s ADHD. Probably because it wasn't just me acknowledging it, but Shujin also. It was soooo good to be on the same page as my husband. I feel like, in the past, all health related things have been my interest, not his. Now that’s changing. I also felt strangely comforted by acknowledging that I am dealing with a special needs child. No wonder parenting is so damn hard!

So now we've started educating ourselves on how to parent an ADHD child as you can't parent them like a normal child and expect the same outcome. (Parenting is all about training the parents!) We both feel that, despite him being challenging, he hasn't always been THIS challenging and I feel that, if he's always had ADHD then it was more mild in the past. I dare say MSG, highly-concentrate corn syrup, fructose and the like that is so prevalent in Japanese foods, is also a big contributor. As much as I do my best to avoid it, I’m still discovering them in surprising places… (eg. canned tuna. As if tuna needs flavour enhancing!!!) And perhaps pre-adolescence is contributing. He's certainly shows huge spurts of testosterone!

I’m also training Missy how to deal with her brother. Giving him reactions is what he is after, but if she doesn’t like the behavior, she needs to ignore it. Definitely more easily said than done, especially for a child! I resorted to dog-training techniques: ignore bad behaviour; give instant rewards for good behaviour. When Bob starts provoking Missy, she is to turn her back to him and walk away. If she comes straight to me and tells me she turned her back, I give her chocolate. Our house is already becoming more peaceful!!

Of course, Missy isn’t the only one that Bob can provoke though. Okasan is the type of person who is reactive, so it makes perfect sense why Bob gravitates to aggravate her - he wants the reaction, and he feeds on it for his energy. It’s one thing to teach Missy and help her respond better, but to teach the dementia patient (Okasan) how to handle the ADHD kid…? Oh help!

We, of course, have also been talking to Bob about it and helping him understand himself. I think it's been healthy, but we certainly have a long road ahead of us as we figure out how to best navigate this life.

In the midst of the chaos I feel I’ve been living in the last few weeks, I managed to escape for a few hours to join the craft morning in our village. They were making lavender sticks and I was keen to learn. Lavender would surely be great in our home to further help calm everything down!!

I carefully watched as the lady showed me how to bend the stems down and weave the ribbon through them. It was more challenging than I originally thought, but that makes the end result all the more fulfilling. The session finished all too soon for me, I would have loved to make other items too!  

With my lavender stick in my hand and a small bunch of lavender in my other hand to craft with at home, I walked back to our house, feeling a sense of joy and peace. This week had certainly been an improvement from the previous two weeks! I was no longer dreaming of deserted islands, but now I was dreaming of crafts and lavender and a more beautiful, possibly peaceful, home. If only dreams came true…