I'd love to hear any of your stories about how you came to discover your child was dealing with ADHD. What clued you in? How old were they? What was the testing process like, and how has your life been different since then? If you could go back and do it again, what would you change? If you could give advice to a mom just starting down this road, what would it be?
My son showed signs as early as 18 mos. We KNEW there was something different before that even. He did not sleep like a baby should. He cried ALOT, and was very advanced for his age...(picked his head up & turned it the day after he was born, doing puzzles with the blank side up at 18 mos). Our doctor did an unofficial diagnosis at 2 years. It was unofficial, because we didn't want to spend the $$ on tests when we did not plan on medicating.
Instead, we spoke with people, and gathered alot of information from the library. His own doctor has ADHD, and gave us many good ideas. We also saw a child psychologist that specialised in ADHD.
Potty training was a nightmare, he was THE difficult child in nursery/childrens church.
But he was sweet, and extremely bright. His first word was butterfly. Compressor soon followed. His first sentence was "Aunt Sarah's funny."
He had a very hard time dealing with change of any sort. When we movd into a new house, he became violent, breaking windows, throwing things.
The psychologist gave us a few questionnaires that determined he not only had ADHD, but it was accompanied by an anxiety disorder. I was told this was common.
As far as his ADHD symptoms go they are more frustrating than anything else. Now that he has the anxiety under control his ADHD is easy to manage without meds.
He has the ability to "hyper focus" on what he's working on. But he can't remember what he was sent to the garage to do. If he's interrupted mid sentence, he can't continue the conversation...he's completely lost. If he is in school, and there are things that can distract him, they will distract him and he will take twice as long to get back on task. This hurt his grades until we took out an "action plan" with the school.
One of the areas that he was suffering was language arts. He couldn't comprehend what he was reading when there were distractions, or group reading. He needed a "reading room". It's like a sound proof practice room for musicians.
He also had problems in writing. The ideas that would come into his head were gone before he could write them down. The doctor said he had a "turbo charged brain in a moped world". Meaning that even his hands and mouth couldn't keep up with the speed of his brain. The writing problem was solved with an old tape recorder. He would speak his story or assignment into the recorder, and then write it down from what the tape played back.
One of the hardest things, and I don't know if this is common with ADHD kids, is that he's too content. What I mean is that for punishment, taking things away from him is not painful. He truely doesn't care. He could go a year without his gameboy, and it wouldn't phase him. It spills over into his schoolwork too. But he also is a perfectionist. If he can't do it perfect, he just simply won't do it.
Lately, I've suspected that my daughter may have it too. She just turned 10. Which is old for a new diagnosis. Usually it shows up much earlier.
Is there more info you were looking for?
