My 8 1/2 year old son has ADHD. He is smart, funny, imaginative, sensitive, loving, well mannered and wild. He can in the range of a day take you through every emotion known to man. He didn't speak until he was almost 2 1/2 but has made up for it since. He didn't have to speak. He has a big brother who spoke and did for him. My son is the product of a very, very tumultuous relationship with a beautiful man suffering from a classic case of Peter Pan syndrome. Our relationship was never violent physically but emotionally we tore each other apart. It did not lend itself well to an easy pregnancy and my older son has had anger issues as a result of seeing us fight for so long. I have no idea how many times we separated and reconciled.
The hard thing is that my son looks just like his dad and mimics some of his mannerisms so well that I want to tell him Stop! Don’t do that again. But how could I do that to my little boy. He has the most beautiful eyes. They are very dark brown just like his father and I have.
When my son was in preschool the teacher suggested that we hold him back a year before enrolling him in Kindergarten. My son's father would not hear of it. His family is traditional Mexican. They are very good people who love my son but could not and still really do not accept that there is something different about our child. My son went to Kindergarten and was a hit with the kids and teachers. I've never gotten a bad behavior report from school on this child. Although there was a table dancing incident in the library once. Kindergarten was when we really began to see struggles emerge. He had trouble sitting still and cutting things out. You wouldn't think that this would be a major problem, but apparently it is.
His struggles at school continued and I got tired of telling his father about calls and reports from his teacher so I made his dad go with me to conferences and to have our son tested for possible ADHD. People who say that ADHD is not a real disorder but is a result of bad parenting really, really do NOT know what they are talking about. You watch your child struggle with homework or get upset when he can't make friends or cry and cry because a pet died or the topper is when he does dangerous stunts to impress other kids so that they'll like him. When these people say nasty things to parents of children with ADHD you have no idea how much you are pushing a raw nerve and how badly I want to tell you off, but won't because my sons are watching.
I found that the doctors weren't actually the obstacle - it was the school. They have so many children with different difficulties that they actually want a child to be medicated so that the blame for ignoring a child’s needs or downplaying them is not on their shoulders. If there is an educator reading this, please do not get defensive, this is true I speak from personal experience and talking to many parents with children like mine. You may not have had to deal with this directly but we've been in 2 school districts and dealt with 3 different principles, 6 teachers and 4 psychologists who wanted more and more medication for our 50 lb child. It's hard enough now to get him to finish his food, unless it's homemade macaroni or pot roast.
Our son was finally diagnosed with mild ADHD and mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We had a great doctor who finally helped put everything in order and explained our son's learning disability to us in a way we could understand and not feel guilty that we'd permanently damaged him.
It took us 8 months to get an IEP (Individual Education Program). We had been told by our previous school district that one was in place, this proved to be a cover-up. Someone in the counseling department had dropped the ball. This IEP would ensure that our child could learn Math (which was his primary difficulty) in a way that he would not be penalized for not being able to keep up with the rest of the class. That he could have a break during tests and get to walk around in the hall way or test away from other kids so that he would not be a distraction or they would not distract him. It is absolutely unbelievable in this day and age how many teachers are resistant to a change in protocol. My mom has a friend who works in Special Services and has advised me many times of who to talk to or what services could benefit my child. She has been a Godsend. Finally our child is starting to "get" math and seems to want to do it more. His handwriting is still atrocious and drives the teachers and me crazy.
We are supposed to review the IEP in a couple of weeks. I am dreading this somewhat because the teachers for the most part don't want to be troubled by the extra work of teaching one child differently than the others. The special education teacher has been great but getting the regular teachers to adhere to the IEP even if it is a legal document has been difficult. I worry that they are rude to my child because of this and he doesn't tell me because he knows I'll go to the school and raise a fuss.
My son’s father is on board now that he's heard so many different voices telling him about problems that our son has had and seen the real progress that he's making with the help of tutoring from the Math department. My family has always been supportive of our son's struggles they went through it themselves with my 2nd oldest brother. However my son's fathers family is not on board they think that this is a phase to be grown out of and that since he lives with me I'm not doing something right.
My sweet husband keeps giving me pep talks. He's been through all of this ADHD drama with his son who is 21 now and is slowly turning into a great man. I know that my little boy will be okay but it breaks my heart to hear him want to give up on something difficult and to so easily think that people are his friends. He is my baby and I've had to fight so hard to get him the help that he's needed that I have a hard time realizing that he is getting older and all too soon I won't be able to make things better for him like I want to.
