When I was in my 20's, I used to say that ADHD didn't really exist. I thought (and would verbalize--what an ass, I know) that it was all due to bad parenting skills. I've learned the hard way not to make such statements anymore. In fact, you could say that statement bit me in the ass. My oldest son (H) was diagnosed with ADHD at age 6.
My son was 6 weeks from his 4th birthday when my mom died. He was very close to her, and my husband and I took him to see a psychologist. That's when we first heard ADHD. The psychologist did warn us that it was hard to diagnose ADHD at that age because many of his behaviors could be due to the simple fact that he was 4.
Fast forward to age 6, we were having a meeting with Hayden's TK teacher, his summer school teacher, and the director of the school (who, by the way, gushed over the fact that my husband took time out of his busy schedule to come to the meeting while barely giving me a "hello"). Basically, they kicked us out of the school. We scrambled to find a school that would take him and found a fantastic one with small class sizes and wonderful teachers and a pretty hefty price tag. He went to that school for 2 years and it was a wonderful experience. This year we transitioned him to public school because we have 3 kids and to send them all to private school would mean I would have to work full time and we'd have to sacrifice things like food and shelter. I work part time and really enjoy being there for my kids when they get home from school. Don't get me wrong, I'd go back to work full time if my son really needed to go to an expensive school, but our public school is fantastic.
And when I say fantastic, I mean do mean fantastic. My middle son(L) also goes there and we have been very pleased with how he's doing. H is having some problems. We think the class size is too big for him. He went from the private school which had 12 kids in the class for K and 1st grade to 24 kids in the class at public school. He's also in one of the "learning cottages," which is a fancy word for trailer. I'm not against the trailer, per say, but the acoustics of the room do nothing to help his inattention or his sensory processing problems (more on that later). I asked the school counselor if I should just pull him out and send him back to his private school because his anxiety has really reached an all time high. She said she was going to see if she can get some "pull out" help--meaning he will be pulled out of the classroom for up to 3 hours a day to work in small groups. We have our 1st IEP (Individual Educational Plan) meeting scheduled in mid April. I've heard horror stories about kids with ADHD being denied services at school, but I am really hopeful that H will get what he needs. If not, we're going to be forsaking food and shelter to send him to a school whose yearly tuition is in the 5 digits. I feel fortunate that that is an option for us, but it would still be a stretch.
Anyway, I wanted to write down our journey dealing with ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD). I haven't even touched on our medication trials, the 6 hour round trip drive to the Duke ADHD clinic before I found a child psychiatrist in Charlotte that I entrusted my child's mental health with, the incorrect Asperger's diagnosis we received when he was 7, the multiple social skills classes, the OT appointments, the wanting to strangle my hyperactive child when he screams at us, the classes we've taken to help us deal with ADHD. I wish I would've started writing this down earlier, to see how far we've come from where we started. We still have miles to go and will start a "sensory diet" after we meet with an OT who thinks we can minimize a lot of H's symptoms with OT. I am skeptical, but will keep an open mind as this OT took quite a bit of time explaining to me WHY the sensory exercises work to help and it made sense.
More on all of this later, I wish I had more time to put down all the thoughts swimming in my head, but I must go make my 3 boys breakfast.
