Parent of 8 year old ADD / ADHD child

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone,

im a mom of a 8 year old

i knew that something was off with my daughter since grade one. But every teacher would tell me that she was still immature and the youngest of the class ( her b-day is in sept , so she started at age 4 10 days after school started she turned 5). They kept saying she will grow up and mature.

We do homework everynight. i do some and my husband does some after work. we do it on sat and sun

she had after school help , and resourse teacher twice a week and we had a younge kid come it to help with reading and spelling once a week.

even with all that help she didnt even have a 60% in her classes ( 60 is a pass )

but the school said they dont check until grade 3

so at the begining of the year i got so many negative coments ,” she is not listening’ ‘ she is talking out of turn’ ‘ she keeps getting up ‘ etc.

also got a bus report becuase she wasnt sitting in her spot ,

so i finially put my foot down and said i wanted something done. I bugged the princial and everyone else that they finally did some tests and said there was a problem , but that was not on the top of the list.

So, pig headed as i am ( im a irish leo LOL) i went to private.

i even had people telling me that i was looking for a problem that wasnt there. I was so happy to put the report in their face.

My way of thinking is ” if you feel somethings not right , follow your instincts”

its been a week that she started meds.

im nervous about the med, but happy at the same time;

i think this will help her so much.

but im stil a mom with all kinds of worries.

i tell her there is nothing wrong with her and that its ok

i talk aobut it in front of her so that she sees there is nothing bad about it. Because I know there isnt , but kids can think differently

we also have friends that their kids have ADD AND ADHD so its nothing new to her.

they also see signs of dislexia. but they dont know for sure . they say that often kids that have ADD have signs of it. That when they start meds it goes away. Becuse they go to fast so they mix things up.

that bothered me more than the ADD , because i wasnt prepared for that.

but we will hopefully see some difference soon

I like hearing others thoughts( parents of children ) and how you feel WITH ADD, it helps me understand on how my 8 year old daughter is thinking.

i hope someone writes back to me

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[sdwa]

Don’t worry about the meds. They are very safe. But are they working? I’m not hearing you say you see a difference in your daughter’s behavior. With my son, who got diagnosed at age 5, we noticed an immediate, dramatic difference. He calmed down and became clear and much more focused. I think you should see a difference – if not, you might want to talk to your child’s doctor about trying a different medication.

My son has unfortunately gotten the message that ADHD is “bad” and that he is somehow bad for having it. I’m not sure why, since I have it, too, and the only way I think it’s bad is if you don’t know you have it and don’t get treated for it. We have many struggles over school attendance and homework assignments. He is a moody, emotionally volatile kid, and extremely hard on himself, plus socially pretty isolated. He is now 12, and it’s hard for me to make him do anything – if he doesn’t buy into a solution, I can’t force him to, so I have a hard time with that. He learned to read late – in about the third grade. Now in 7th, he’s an excellent writer and story teller. He also has a flair for the dramatic. He’s a high-level abstract thinker, not so into the cliques kids form at this age.

When I was that age I was more the shy, withdrawn type, extremely sensitive to noise and light, easily over-stimulated by social activity, crowds, and visual clutter (like a lot of stuff lying around produces mental noise). This was at a time when being “shy” had a stigma attached to it, so I got the message that there was something wrong with me because of that. I’ve always had a hard time relating to other people, can’t understand what interests them about the things they like to talk about. Prefer my own company, writing, making art, or if social, prefer to see friends one-on-one. But everyone’s ADHD is different.

Most people have problems with procrastination, not being able to prioritize, not being able to block out what’s going on around them so they can focus on one thing, poor short-term memory, forgetting and losing things, being clumsy and accident-prone, being high-strung emotionally and not being able to keep their mouths shut when it would be prudent to do so, a hard time transitioning from one activity to another, waffling between inertia and obsessive activity.

It helps to have an external structure – for people like me who are visual, if I don’t see something, it doesn’t exist, so I need calendars on the walls, pictures of things to remember, a designated home for my stuff, and ear plugs so other people’s conversations in the house don’t irritate me.

Feeling chronically over-stimulated is a real problem. I can be extremely irritable because so much going on around me causes stress. When I look back on my childhood I think of all the times I had melt-downs and people were screaming at me because I couldn’t calm down – they were making it worse by expecting me to be outgoing and to participate when I was just exhausted. Tuning people out became a defense mechanism in part because they never had anything nice to say and also everything going on around me was just too much information to process at once.

Having ADHD is like having a very poor filter for sorting incoming information – it all carries more or less the same weight unless something truly crazy is going on.

Hope this helps.

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[Outoftune]

Well I don’t have kids but I can tell you that your daughter has a wonderful Mom and is going to be much better off because of how you are handling this! HUGE KUDOS to you! The earlier you start educating yourself and start treatment the better. As far as the meds go by the way I am a very holistic person, eat only organic, use chemical free beauty/cleaning products, I don’t even take asprin or anything and yet I have to say that I believe in these medications. For a child of course it is important to be extra cautious but provided you have her blood pressure, heartrate, and other vitals checked and after a few years make sure it isnt effecting any organs etc… and if course be aware of any side effects physical and effecting personality I wouldn’t be concerned. She is so fortunate to know now and have such a supportive Mom!

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[Anonymous]

The reason why i wasnt to sure if i saw a difference is because she would tell me ” look mommy i think the medicine is working , im calmer ”

Now was or is it working or was it her that believes the meds.

I did however talk to her teacher, and she told me that last week my daughter did a math speed test , she was the first one to finish ( which i tell my daughter being the first is not always the best, but you know kids ) she got 20 on 20 and didnt count on her fingers.

which to me , that is HUGE.

i see that she is a little calmer , and can actually do some chores (pick uup her room) on her own.

so i do see a small difference, but not big. Which im ok with.Because our doctor wanted to start her on a small dose (10 mg )so that she doesnt turn into a zombe , or have to many side affects.

In Month we go back to see if we up the dose to 15 mg.

He chose this med because of the fact that we can go slowly .And i like that he is doing it that way.

i have seen to many kids around me being zombies because their dose is to high. So i really dont mind him taking his time. I find its less of a shock to her system

so far she doesnt have problem sleeping , she still eats as much.

i find she is a little to sensive to things; But i also think that might because she is becoming aware of things around her more than she did before.

thank you for responding to my post.

i like to hear from everyone.

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[kc5jck]

Sounds like your daughter is doing great. Don’t go looking for trouble.

I would recommend that you become familiar with the side effects of whatever meds she is on. I recommend this from personal experience with a med my son was on. It was not an ADHD med, but in twenty minutes on the internet I was able to diagnose a problem my son was having which four other doctors had missed. There was a long list of bizarre and seemingly unrelated symptoms including a 25% weight loss which matched up perfectly with adverse effects of minocycline, the drug he was taking. The last doc, a specialist, didn’t believe me and had to be convinced. My son is OK now.

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