It’s been a long while since I’ve written about my older son, Morgan. (Here are a few posts I’ve written about him in the past: here, here, and here ). Long story short–he has ADHD. He’s now in 7th grade and we have been on quite the roller coaster ride trying to figure out how to manage it and get him the help he needs to be able to do his school work and learn to function “normally” in this world. I know many of you have had (or are having) similar experiences with your children. I have found that sharing about it is the best way to discover new ways of coping and solving. So, I thought I would go back to when he was officially diagnosed 4 years ago and share the journey we have been on since in a 3 part series.
The Diagnosis.
We have been aware since preschool that Morgan’s classroom behavior wasn’t what it should be. We blew it off to him being a normal, active boy that just had trouble sitting still. Teachers tried to convince us every year that he needed to be held back, but in my gut–I didn’t think that was the issue. By third grade I started hearing about classroom behaviors that were causing me (and his teacher) a lot of concern. It wasn’t that he just wasn’t sitting still and being wiggly, he was being down right destructive and a huge distraction to his whole class. His teacher told me that he would dive under desks and roll around on the floor, he would tear up paper and break pencils, he would just sit and stare off into space–not doing his work, and he would make obnoxious repetitive noises. It was a daily, hourly, sometimes moment by moment struggle to keep him on task. These are all classic signs of a child with ADHD, but since Morgan had a type of epilepsy at the time–we honestly didn’t know if his behavior was due to the medication he was on.
His 3rd grade teacher was the first one to plant the idea in my head that he really couldn’t help it. Up until that point, I found myself getting angry at Morgan for not doing his work, aggravated at him for being such a nuisance in class and so frustrated with him that he kept getting in trouble. She had raised a son with ADHD and knew all the classic signs–all of the behaviors she was seeing in class were his way of coping with a brain that just couldn’t focus. His thoughts were going everywhere at once and unless we got him help–being successful in school was going to be a problem. She felt strongly that we should at least have him evaluated to find out. I have to be honest–I was extremely resistant. I had so many friends with husbands that had been misdiagnosed in their youth and placed on Ritalin. None of them had good things to say about it. But, after him being sent to the principals office multiple times and facing a teacher that was about to fall apart–I knew we had to at least talk to our pediatrician about it.
We had to fill out a form that asked a whole lot of questions about Morgan’s at home behavior. His teacher filled out the same form for his classroom behavior and then we handed them over to our pediatrician for the results. When we met with him to get the results I remember thinking that he was very cavalier about it–I don’t think the ADHD diagnosis took him much by surprise. He down played it a lot–basically telling us that we all have ADHD at some level (I believe that is true), but with Morgan–he has it a little worse than most. He gave us several options to think about in regards to how best help Morgan do better in school; we could pull him out of school and homeschool him (oh my goodness the thought of this made me break out in hives. I am a loving mother, but I am NO teacher), we could try changing schools and find one that specialized in kids like him (this does not exist), we could just keep going, cross our fingers and hope for the best, OR we could try medication.
Thankfully, Super Rockstar was there–he is always a good listener and deliberate thinker. The idea of medicating Morgan scared us both, but I learned so much that day. Nowadays doctors are VERY careful about medicating ADHD–especially in children. Plus, there are many, many different options and types of medicines. They start them on the lowest dose possible and then if necessary increase the dose until they get it right. Also, they monitor it very carefully. Since these are controlled substances that have to be prescribed by a doctor AND they all have various side effects–weight loss being one of them, the child has to be seen by a doctor every 6 months to check progress. With Morgan, he started him on a very low dose of Adderall. It’s probably the most common ADHD medicine and he thought it would be the best place to start.
I was so scared about giving him the medicine–my biggest fear was that it would zone him out or alter his personality. But, our pediatrician assured us that would not happen. The way he described it is that the medicine for him would be kind of like how coffee is for me–waking up the brain and helping focus (that was language I could understand).He also suggested we only give it to him on school days–not on weekend or holidays. This really was the best possible way to dip our toe in this rather scary arena. We could try it out and, hey, if it didn’t work or if it wasn’t what we wanted to see–we could just stop.
We saw positive results almost instantly. I didn’t tell his teacher about starting him on medication–I wanted to see if she noticed a change in his behavior. She did. I heard from her by the second week. She told me that he had been sitting still, focusing on his work and she didn’t have to remind him once to get back on task. A miracle! Yes! We were so excited….at least for a time. There was still so much to learn–side effects being one of them. I’ll tell you all about that and more on the medication journey next week.
What a scary situation to deal with with. I am so proud that you both sought help for him. I think back to many kids, I knew when I was a kid, who were just called hyper and constantly punished or abandoned, as unruly.
Hopefully his dosage stays low and he learns his own control ( I heard this was possible). 👍🏼 Good job guys. He seems so talented.
Thank you Gaylyn! The hardest part of this journey is that it’s a LONG process of trying to figure out what works and having to survive a lot of trial and error. My prayer is that yes, he will learn to self manage and over come his deficits and be stronger for it all.