The Smell of ADHD Impulsiveness

I went to bed with a headache. I woke up with a headache. Could that have anything to with the SMELL permeating our house?

Natalie and several friends were playing upstairs in Natalie’s room last weekend while I worked in the kitchen. Lindzey came down to find a Nintendo DS game, and then ran back upstairs. The scent of too much perfume followed her.

Lindzey, a real girly –girl, must have gotten into her mom’s perfume, I thought. But the smell didn’t dissipate after Lindzey left the room. It kept getting stronger. Where in the world was that smell coming from?

When I finally decided to investigate, the mystery wasn’t hard to solve. It turns out that Natalie was the culprit in The Case of the Sneaky Spritz-Happy Bandit. She’d emptied out a canister of vanilla body spray in her room, and then had gone on a search for more spray-ables. My good perfume sat on her dresser, and my nose told me that several good sprays had entered the mix.

I gave Natalie heck; reclaimed my perfume. I turned off the furnace, opened windows, turned on the ceiling fan. By bedtime, the smell was still too strong for Natalie to sleep in her room.

Fast forward a couple of days. Each time we open the door and enter the house, we’re still greeted by Natalie’s signature scent. Natalie, and this time, her friend Harry, are playing in Nat’s room. The smell, once again, starts to intensify. Would she…could she…REALLY do it AGAIN?

Yes! I guess spraying is a fascinating, fun, just-gotta-do-it-regardless-of-the- consequences activity! This time, Natalie had used up most of a bottle of aromatherapy room spray that she’d found in my bathroom. She came downstairs to show me how she’d refilled it with water, so she could spray even more. I grabbed it out of her hands, and threw it in the garbage. Upstairs, I found half a dozen bottles of hairsprays and styling products on the counter in her bathroom, and the tell-tale scent of hairspray filled the air. I could barely breath—yet I was fuming.

Natalie knew better! And she couldn’t stop herself. That damned ADHD impulsiveness at work, once again.

Ironically, Natalie’s spray of choice for today was designed to relieve stress.

Needless to say…it didn’t.