An ADHD Journey–Part 3

During this whole journey of discovering that Morgan struggled with ADHD (you can read part 1 and part 2), we were constantly trying to figure out what was his “normal” and what was ADHD.  There are no clear cut answers because all of us struggle with short attentions spans occasionally or feeling restless when we’re in situations that are unpleasant. We felt that the medication was helping him, but we were still seeing a lot of behaviors that were not good–he just wasn’t himself.

It was in the late fall of 6th grade that I got the first of several alarming calls from the school principal. Morgan had gotten pretty upset in one of his classes and blurted out that he wanted to die and wished he were dead. Schools take this sort of talk VERY seriously. When a child uses any sort of threatening language to themselves or others there is procedure they go through to assess the threat. Thankfully, they found in the assessment Morgan wasn’t seriously thinking about taking his own life, but it left a sense of fear and dread in us. We know our son–and no, I don’t believe he ever seriously wanted to take his own life, but we also know that he is very impulsive. We feared that in a moment of extreme emotion he might do something horrible.

It was then that Super Rockstar and I determined that we needed help.  All of our efforts were falling flat–so we decided to seek counseling for Morgan. Our first meeting with the counselor was extremely difficult. We told him what brought us there (the scary school incidents where he used threatening language against himself) and even though we quickly followed up with “We don’t believe and the school doesn’t believe Morgan really wants to harm himself and that’s why we’re here–he needs help in learning skills to communicate his feelings in a more healthy way.”, all our counselor heard was– “suicide threat”.

Here’s where things got very serious and VERY scary. Because Colorado had recently passed a “zero suicide” law (apparently our state unfortunately has one of the highest rates of youth suicides)–anytime a counselor even hears the words, they are required to immediately assess the threat.  If the counselor deems it necessary, they can call for an ambulance and have the child immediately whisked off to a mental health facility where they will be completely cut off from their parents (except maybe some phone calls) evaluated, given any medication the facility deems necessary and it can take up to two weeks before you see your child. Keep in mind– parents have absolutely no say in it at this point.

I have never felt so scared for Morgan (and us). We came to this counselor to get help for our son, but we ended up having to talk him off the ledge of extreme reaction. The counselor reluctantly agreed to let him go home with us that day. We didn’t tell Morgan right away about what had almost happened–how close he came to being taken away from us. In his mind, the meeting had gone pretty well and he seemed to like the counselor. Super Rockstar and I were in turmoil. We knew Morgan needed help, but what could we do? If he said the wrong thing, it could end up being disastrous.

When we got to the counselors office the following week, we prayed together as a family before going in.  We asked that God would guide Morgan in speaking the truth about his feelings and that the counselor would listen and hear and not be predisposed in any way. It was amazing. When Morgan was asked the question about “Have you ever thought about dying?” Morgan answered “Yes, of course, I THINK about dying, but I’m not ready to die at this time”. When asked “Have you thought of ways that you would kill yourself?” He answered “Well, I know there ARE ways to kill yourself and I know what some of them are.” The counselor asked him to clarify–“Are any of those ways you would try to kill yourself?” Morgan answered with a horrified “NO! I don’t believe anyone should ever kill themselves!”

Finally, our counselor heard what we needed him to hear. MORGAN IS NOT PLANNING TO KILL HIMSELF! So, please take your finger off the panic button and help him where he is in need. We spent the rest of that session talking about the importance of word choices and ways that Morgan could learn to calm himself down.

And then a very interesting thing happened. Our counselor talked to us about how ADHD can often cause angst in kids and wondered what (if any) medication we had Morgan on. After we answered, Morgan interjected “I think the medicine makes me sad”. We all kind of paused for a second and looked at him. The counselor was the first to admit that it was a possibility–depression is a side effect of many medications–including ones for ADHD.

When we got home, I looked up the known side effects of what he was taking and sure enough–front and center: “may cause depression and suicidal thoughts”. I can’t believe I missed it. I can’t believe our doctor never warned us of this. I can’t believe we went through months of Morgan feeling absolutely awful and never once did it occur to me that it was a side effect of his ADHD medicine.

I stopped giving it to him immediately. Even though I knew that he would probably revert back to the lack of focus and behaviors at school that led us to give him medicine in the first place–I didn’t care. If this stuff was causing him to despair his beautiful, precious life–to the trashcan that medicine would go, never to be seen again.

It was an instantaneous turn around. Almost overnight, he went from acting sad and having no energy, to bouncing around and singing–acting A LOT more like the Morgan I have always known and loved. The next week at our appointment, the counselor even marveled at the change in Morgan’s demeanor. He was uncertain about us taking him off medication–but held his peace and surged ahead with teaching our son communication skills and coping mechanisms.

Next week–in my final post on this ( I told you there would only be three parts, but that was before I knew I had so much to say about this–haha!), I’ll share with you where we are today.