Tag Archives: ADD

Nov 26

Sometimes My Child Needs A Different Mother

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I’m frustrated and sad because I don’t know how to help you with this. I don’t like to see you in pain, but I don’t know what to do.”

Have you ever wondered if your child would do better in life if they had a different mother? Perhaps we all have. I have often had the thought that I am too soft to be good enough as a mother, that I have too much empathy that has gotten in the way of me giving my three children what they need. But having this thought as it applies to my oldest two children has been occasional and minor, where as this thought has, at times, been overwhelming when it comes to mothering my youngest daughter, Sarah.

Sarah is now in the seventh grade, her second year of middle school, the hardest year of middle school for most girls, and almost every school day over the past three months has been a challenge. My girl has had major mood issues her whole life, anxiety that manifests as angry outbursts, and ADHD. She has had many interventions over the years, but the most effective, it seems, has been riding horses. With horses she is able to relax, to be accepted, to learn about communication, among many other things. But medication has also been necessary and something she fights every day. Continue reading →

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Apr 26

You’re nuts. I’m not. Mixed Feelings About Taking Your Child to Therapy

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As I sat across from my new 12 year old patient and her mom, I saw the look of dread in the girl’s eyes and in her body language. Sweatshirt hood was up, looking down into her lap, arms crossed. I am a psychologist and work at a medical center in an eating disorder’s program. I have seen this look of dread many times over the years.

“Oh, she didn’t want to come today,” the mom explained almost apologetically.
“Only crazy people come to places like this” her daughter blurts out, the first words I have heard from her.

“Well, I can totally understand why you would feel that way,” I said. “A lot of people feel that way about coming here, but actually most kids and teens who come here are just like me and you, just normal people with the normal variety of challenges.” The girls shoulders relax a bit. “It takes a lot of courage to ask for help,” I say. A little bit of eye contact now. And we have our starting point. Continue reading →

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Mar 28

No Long-Term Benefit Of ADHD Meds?

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ADHD meds no good, ADHD meds useless, avoid ADHD meds

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Want to cause a ruckus? Criticize attention-deficit meds.

Over three million U.S. kids take these drugs to help them stay calm and attentive. Parents may not be thrilled to dose their children but they are following expert advice to improve behavior and school performance.  They tend to see results. And they don’t need to be judged.

But it helps to pay attention to what works for parents who don’t put or keep their kids on meds. My son was diagnosed with ADD when he was in first grade.  There was a great deal of pressure from his teacher to put him on medication. As many parents do, I struggled to find ways to alleviate the problem without drugs. We found significant improvement when we changed his diet but that wasn’t enough to make the school setting truly work for him. The way he learned best and the way he flourished simply didn’t fit in the strictures of the school environment. He wasn’t wired to sit still and pay attention for hours. Once we began homeschooling we discovered that without classroom and homework pressure, what appeared to be ADD symptoms largely disappeared.

The newest studies of attention-deficit disorder medications now indicate that the calming effect of these drugs don’t necessarily indicate that those who take them have any sort of “brain deficit.”  As L. Alan Sroufe, professor emeritus of psychology at the Universityof Minnesota’s Instituteof Child Development explains,  such medications have a similar effect on all children as well as adults. “They enhance the ability to concentrate, especially on tasks that are not inherently interesting or when one is fatigued or bored, but they don’t improve broader learning abilities.”

Research shows the effect wanes in a few years without conferring any lasting benefit. Dr. Sroufe writes,

To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.

This isn’t to say that drugs such as Ritalin are useless. It’s important to remember that studies cited by Dr. Sroufe are limited to children with ADHD, not concomitant diagnoses such as oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, or autism where such meds may be invaluable. Even when facing ADHD itself, parents need support that extends beyond what the mental health system, insurance company, or school district willingly offers. Some states provide advocates who help parents stand up for the child’s right to appropriate education, including extra time to complete assignments, smaller class sizes, and the kind of counseling that helps ADHD children internalize behavioral standards and respond appropriately to social cues. Parents also turn online for support. The blogosphere is full of information and empathy from others raising ADHD children, including the following:

Easy to Love, Hard to Raise

ADDitude Magazine ADHD parenting blog and education blog

ADHD Awareness

Edge Foundation

A Mom’s & Dad’s View of ADHD

Life with ADHD

While Dr. Sroute looks for a mental health answer, I think it’s a much bigger issue. It asks us to look at how today’s children are restricted in movement, have less time for free play, and are exposed to unnecessarily early academics.  It asks us to look at the quality of the air, water, and food in the lives of today’s children. It asks us to support all families as they are, recognizing that one-size-fits-all guidelines don’t embrace diverse ways of being. To me, particular hope lies in research showing that free time spent playing in natural settings significantly improved the behavior and focus of ADHD children. The more natural and wilderness-like the area, the greater the improvement.

Are our wonderfully distractible, messy, impulsive children trying to tell us something?

 

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything. She lives on a small farm with her family where they raise bees, cows, chickens, and the occasional ruckus. Laura writes about learning, sustainability, and peace for print and online publications. Connect with her at www.lauragraceweldon.com

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Jan 18

School ADD Isn’t Homeschool ADD

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Today we’re pleased to offer you an an excerpt from our soon-to-be-released anthology,  Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories. The personal experiences shared in our book cover a whole range of viewpoints. This is one family’s story.

 

Image from W1LL13's Flickr photostream

I hesitated at the heavy glass doors of my son’s school. I’d cheerfully walked in these doors many times. I volunteered here, served on the PTA board, joked with the principal and teachers, even helped start an annual all-school tradition called Art Day. But now I fought the urge to grab him from his first grade classroom, never to return.

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Nov 03

Events That Change Everything

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Events That Change Everything

Rachel Penn Hannah

Transformative experiences mark the entrance from one phase to another. There are many such experiences that you can prepare for as much as possible. Having a baby, getting married, and moving out of your parents’ home. Some preparation is possible, though many feel that despite knowing ahead of time of the change to come, despite in many cases even making the choice to venture into new territory, they still feel unprepared. Other events come as a shock, like a death or a natural disaster or even the revelation that your child has special needs. They are completely unexpected. One’s life is changes for better or worse and often in combination.

I decided to survey my children (ages 11, 14, and 16) about significant events in their lives that have catapulted them from one stage to another. Their responses spoke deeply to who they are. My almost 17 year old son smiled and said “It would have to be before this past summer and after this past summer.” What came to my mind when he said this was the upsetting realization that occurred at the beginning of the summer that he had gotten involved in drugs and alcohol and the wake-up call this provided our family, the rally to put together a treatment plan for him, the dramatic constriction of his freedoms, the huge amount of time we have spent together since, and the activities that were put together that involved him doing volunteer work and leadership training and going away to a wonderful camp. My boy is sometimes overly optimistic, like when he says it will be no problem for him to get caught up on his school work despite his unmedicated ADD (“I got it covered mom”), but his response to this question spoke to how valuable this optimism can be. For him, this summer saved him and uplifted him and transformed him and he already remembers it fondly.

Continue reading →

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Oct 07

Stages of Dress

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Rachel Penn Hannah

Youngest daughter comes home from her first ever slumber party. She is ten years old, has ADHD, and has never been invited over to a girl’s house to play (not counting cousin). Girls have been invited over to her house to play to test the waters, but no invites to reciprocate.

Daughter is over the top excited when mother and father pick her up. Daughter had been preparing for days, carefully picking out birthday presents her friend would like: a large box of popcorn, a book about horses, neon green nail polish, and a small make up kit. Then daughter wrapped them individually, putting boxes inside boxes, each with a riddle folded on top.

Daughter says she did not fall asleep until 3 am, then woke up at 6 am with the rest of the girls. “It went well,” mother and father were told when they picked daughter up at the front door. Suddenly their spirits were light as air in contrast to the heaviness and dread they had struggled with through the night.
Daughter talks non-stop during the car ride home. She talks about the many things they did together, but mostly about “talking almost all night.” Mother could see daughter’s face in the rearview mirror and saw a wide-eyed thrill when daughter said, “And we gossiped.” “Oh it’s not good to talk badly about people,” mother felt compelled to say. Daughter looked confused, quickly saying, “we gossiped, Mom, you know, we talked about people but we didn’t say anything bad about them.” “Oh”, mother and father say in unison.

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Sep 08

Balancing Work and Parenting High Need Kids

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Rachel Penn Hannah

To work or not to work? Unfortunately, that is not the question. I have to work. Having two kids in a tiny, alternative high school that can better address their learning issues is expensive. Plus I have a younger child in middle school who might need private school in the future. I have been fortunate to be able to work half time, 12 hours one day and 8 hours the next work day. My husband and I both have professional careers, but his more than full-time hard work allows me to work less so that I can be home with the kids on most days. It sounds like a luxury (and compared to many situations it is), but with three kids with learning issues plus adolescent issues and one of these wonderful children with a mood disorder diagnosis even this work situation can seem to be too much.

I have recently taken a family medical leave to care for my son. He is 16 and is struggling with some substance abuse issues. When my son was in sixth grade the psychiatrist tried to find an ADD medication that my son could tolerate, but was unsuccessful. She then predicted that drug and alcohol use could be an issue in the future. The neurologist that treated my boy after a traumatic brain injury when he was 14 warned that his brain would now be more vulnerable and that drug seeking behaviors often follow neurological trauma. And the reality of these risks came to bear on the first day of summer, June 10, this year. My son took ecstasy, called us to come get him because he was having a bad reaction, and had to be rushed to the emergency room for treatment. Thankfully, after several hours with IV fluids and other attempts at medical stabilization he was okay.

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Aug 31

Lessons from Training Dogs

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Rachel Penn Hannah

Six years ago we got our first family dog. I knew instinctively that if the dog was not well trained I would not like the dog. As the weeks got closer to our puppy arriving from Yamhill, Oregon, I spent hours doing internet research about crate training. I learned that our newly remodeled house would be overwhelming to a puppy and that she needed to have her boundaries confined to the kitchen/dining room where we spent most of our time as a family unless we were playing with her in other areas of the house. I provided her with chewing toys to satisfy her oral needs and inspected her ears and body daily to get her used to cooperating with us and the vet. Our dog was also always fed after us at dinner. She learned to watch us eat, without begging, waiting patiently for her turn so as to better understand the order of dominance.

Omi was one of a liter of 12 puppies and had always slept in a pile of puppies until the day she arrived to us in California, having flown in a plane. Even though I felt sorry for her, I did not let her sleep with us like I wanted to ( an adorable soft nine pound goldendoodle). Instead, I insisted on her sleeping in her crate beside my side of the bed. She cried and cried until I put a sleeping bag on the floor and stuck my fingers through the door of the crate so she could lick them. She quickly fell asleep. We did this for about three nights before I realized that she just needed to see me, so I put the crate on a chair next to my bed, at eye level. She dutifully went to bed every night about 8:30 and soon slept through the night. She also learned “sit”, “down”, “shake”, and “come” all before she was 12 weeks old. I have never been so proud.

Continue reading →

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Jun 16

Context

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Context

One of the many rights of passage in our suburban community is fifth grade camp. It is a five day trip for fifth graders and their teachers to an outdoor education camp about 2 hours away. No parents. None. I remember my oldest attending fifth grade camp with little enthusiasm. He was willing but just barely. I knew we were in trouble, however, when I, amongst the sea of parents, watched as he walked through the crowd and up the steps of the school bus with his best friend. My boy seemed okay, but his best friend – the one he was to sit with and bunk with for the next 5 days – looked grief stricken. This can’t be good, I thought. Sure enough we got a call from camp that night and his teacher told us that Jake and his best friend were saying they wanted to go home. “You can’t keep us here against our will!” was their battle cry. We spoke to Jake on the phone and he agreed to try another day. Fortunately, both boys got in the groove and had a great time. Jake didn’t manage to take a shower or even change his underwear for the entire time away, but he came home with a smile on his face. When the bus pulled up on Friday, I remember fighting back tears because I had missed him so much.

The next child in our family to go to fifth grade camp was super excited. She too was going with a best friend, one that had no problems separating from her parents. I agonized about the weather the entire time Elizabeth was gone. It was rainy and cold. Was the jacket I bought her at the last minute warm enough? Would she get hypothermia hiking all day? Would she want to come home? Again, I was tearful and relieved when she got home and she barely gave me the time of day.

My third (and last) child was due to attend fifth grade camp last week. For many reasons we decided to opt out. Being away without a parent seemed too much to ask. She is my tough girl who needs to have an escape hatch nearby at all times. That would be me or her dad. There is also the intensity of the structure at fifth grade camp. The kids are scheduled from sun up until bedtime, moving from activity to activity and my youngest does not do well with that. She tires easily and gets irritable when she does. What if she melted down? This certainly would not help the already fragile relationship with her peers. Then there was the issue of her medications. The teacher was willing to give her medicine (which she takes twice a day), but there would be no privacy. This all seemed like too much to ask of my daughter. Plus, I don’t buy it – that fifth grade camp is all that important – so I asked her if she would rather go on a special trip alone with me. She didn’t even need to think about it before saying yes.

I found a wonderful ranch a few hours away from home that included horse back riding, fishing, wonderful meals, and unstructured time to be outside in an incredible oasis. It got me thinking (again) about context. My oldest two kids have ADD, but are fairly flexible and have good social skills. My youngest, however, struggles with these things in addition to having mood regulation issues and learning differences. It has taken me years, but I actually do not think there is anything wrong with my children. Fear told me otherwise, but acceptance has shed a new light. What I do see, however, is a mismatch between the narrow expectations our institutionalized school systems have for all children and the types of brains my children have.

Inspiring my youngest child to write is a good example of this. At school, kids are given writing assignments to do in the context of a crowded and distracting classroom. My youngest has dysgraphia along with ADHD and the act of writing can be incredibly laborious. “She has minimal output” the teacher tells me. And yet, as we were driving along country roads to get to the ranch and the horses, my daughter suddenly expressed a need for paper. “I need paper Mom! Don’t you have a scrap or anything? This is exactly the kind of place where I need paper because of all the inspiration around me!” she told me. While driving, I managed to find our directions, blank on the other side. Sarah took the paper, a pen from my purse, and the rectangle box of kleenex for a “desk” and began writing away. Within minutes she had written the opening two paragraphs of a great story. She is quite creative in the right context.

Once we arrived at the ranch, the head wrangler (Jessica) got me and Sarah on horses (along with 4 other guests) and we proceeded to go on the first of what would be five long rides through the country side over the next two days. Jessica, an expert on the topic of horses, enjoyed sharing her knowledge as she led the rides. These horses were beautiful and well behaved. They were relaxed. Jessica explained that the horses are free to explore the beautiful 300 acre ranch of mountainous terrain when they have finished their work for the day. For about 16-17 hours these horses are free. The only part of the property that is fenced off to them surrounds the guest cabins. The horses spend their late afternoons and nights climbing mountains, visiting creeks and ponds, working on their relationships (seriously), grazing on the land, and always come back to the barn area by morning. “These are free range horses” Jessica explained. “Here we let the horses be horses. They are not lined up and locked in paddocks. We do this for their mental health and it shows.” She also says that their vet (who is the head vet at UC Davis and an authority in the field) says that he has never cared for such a psychologically and physically healthy herd of horses. No behavioral issues despite the fact that some were rescued and all initially come to the ranch from different circumstances. Hmmm….

Over the next couple of days, Sarah sets her own pace and relaxes more and more. Before our first ride (just an hour after we had arrived), I went over to Sarah and her assigned horse to talk to her. “Go away,” she said. “Don’t be rude” was my stock reply. I started to launch into how much money I had paid for her to have this experience, how I had taken time off from work, blah blah blah, but instead I just walked back to my horse. Then it hit me. She was anxious. When she gets anxious she gets controlling….and rude. So instead of reacting I decided not to match her rigidity with rigidity, but instead to back off and give her space. To say that I have had to learn this lesson over and over again with Sarah is an understatement. Anyway, within hours I could tell that Sarah was more relaxed. After the two rides that first day, she grabbed a fishing poll and went to the pond just behind our cabin to fish. She was able to do this by herself. I felt comfortable just letting her go where she wanted and when she wanted. As I sat with my cup of tea I saw her lay in the hammock, run down to the barn, grab a fishing pole for a while, and simply walk around. That night walking back to our cabin from dinner, Sarah even held my hand for the first time in a long while.

So while I know that the ADD plus other issues are real for Sarah, would we really have the need to define them with such detail in another context? I am not sure.

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May 25

two worlds collide

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This post first appeared on {a mom’s view of ADHD} July 4, 2009.

__________________________

I am an organized planner. I need to plan things. I need to see where the trail is taking me before I begin the journey.

I thrive on familiarity. I am a hopeless creature of habit. I hate vacations. I am anxious going anywhere I’ve never been before, yet I love to explore new places and their possibilities.

I feel nauseous when I talk to someone new, especially if I feel somehow inferior to them. I am anxious about the unknown.

I am uncomfortable with spontaneity even though I am in love with the idea of it.

ITSO organizational wall of storage

This is Luke's room after I spent days {and lots of $$$} organizing and cleaning it. A year later, the bins are pretty much empty and you can't see the floor.

I hate a mess. I have an emotional and even physical need for order. I am always drawn to architecture, interior design, artwork, and patterns with symmetry. Anything left out of it’s place sends me over the edge emotionally. Every object has it’s rightful home.

 

In stark contrast, my son, Luke, who has ADHD, and my daughter and husband (who I also believe have executive functioning challenges at a minimum but are undiagnosed) are the complete opposite of me in so many ways. Luke and his sister, Emma, will go up and talk to any child, anywhere, to make a friend. For them, approaching someone new isn’t upsetting. Being rejected by that someone is.

They all three, Luke, Emma, and Daddy, have a blind spot when it comes to disorder. Literally, they don’t see it. When I look around our home, I see complete chaos. The way we live in it is total chaos. When I walk into the kitchen and there are scissors on the counter, my radar goes off. This is not where the scissors belong. This is not their home. I experience a physical pull to go and pick them up and put them in their home in the pencil caddy in the cabinet. My subconscious rant goes something like this:

who left the scissors here? why can’t they put anything back where they picked it up from? they know where the scissors go, that’s where they got them from in the first place. if they would just put things back where they got them, they would be able to find them next time without having to ask me. it is so much more efficient to always know where to find something. is that so hard? i mean, how difficult is it to have the one more quick step of returning the scissors to the cabinet? am i the only one who sees the logic in this? why can’t they just do this one thing for me? oh, i’ll put them away. no one else will. ugh…who took all the markers out of the pencil caddy and set them on the shelf? that’s not where they go…

For a long time now I have tried to teach everyone how to be organized. How to keep the household order I am most comfortable in. I get upset, I yell, I place guilt each time I have to return order behind them. I increasingly feel like I spend my entire home life working to return order, to eliminate chaos, to find my happy place. For me, order is a priority because it creates peace and calm for me.

Are the health and happiness of my family a higher priority? Sure they are! That’s why I have tried for the last year or so to overlook the disorganization in the house. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if the sofa pillows are lined up in a neat row or piled in a lump and some thrown on the floor. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if the kid’s toys are strewn all over the dining table, sofa, floor, etc. If it’s not a safety or sanitary issue, it isn’t that important. Why should I make them miserable trying to create order for me? Organization shouldn’t be a top priority.

That resolve didn’t work though. I couldn’t get comfortable in a chaotic setting no matter how much I reasoned with myself. So I decided to just pick up after everyone and quit trying to change them. I would be comfortable and I wouldn’t make them miserable, everybody wins. But now I feel like a maid. I have lost my identity completely. I see myself as mom, nurturer, cook, maid, organizer, shuttle service. I feel like I spend my life doing for others. And I do. But the organizing, picking up part of doing for others is actually for me. That’s a revelation, but it doesn’t make it feel any different.

Despite all of these reincarnations of dealing with my need for order and trying to live comfortably in my own home, it struck me this morning that my family feels the same sort of misplacement and discomfort in my orderly world. It’s not that they are too lazy to put things back where they got them from. It is just not a priority for them. They know logically it will make it easier to find that item the next time but they can’t stay focused on the task long enough to follow all the way through to returning the item to its home. It is just the way their brains are wired. It is their nature. They are different, not damaged.

I cannot change the way any of us are wired. Therefore, I cannot change the way they don’t even see that the sofa pillows are a mess and the scissors are not in their rightful place. Nor can I change that I have a physical need for symmetry and order despite knowing logically it is not a top priority.

So how do we all stay sane when our starkly different worlds continue to collide abruptly? If neither of us can change, and neither of us can comply with the other, does someone just accept to be unhappy in the others’ world.

I am essentially a non-ADHD personality in an ADHD world. And some days I struggle to survive it. But for these crazy non-issues like a lack of order, not because I have a child with a disability. It’s the differences in the way we see and experience the world that are the greatest struggle.

Penny Williams is the creator and editor of {a mom’s view of ADHD}. She is also a freelance writer, real estate broker, wife, and mother of two living in Asheville, N.C. She has published several pieces in ADDitude Magazine, the #1 national publication dedicated to ADHD, and has also been quoted in Parenting.com’s Family Health Guide on ADHD and The High Desert Pulse article, When Ritalin Works. When not writing, she can usually be found behind a camera.

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