I have a 7 year old son that was, well, kind of diagnosed with ADD. Behavioral issues - he ran from his classroom and bent back the fingers of his teacher - brought things to a head 5 weeks ago. A trip to the neurologist resulted in a quick ADD diagnosis and a suggestion to medicate - we wanted to investigate further before medicating. The school also did some testing that suggested that it was not ADD, but elevated anxiety levels with some depression. A school-referred psychiatric visit resulted in an ADD disgnosis with accompanying anxiety with the suggestion that we treat the anxiety first and that may alleviate enough of the ADD for him to cope successfully at school. However, during the visit to the psychiatrist, we all met in the room and my son was given a puzzle to work on while we discussed the issues. My son sat quietly and worked on the puzzle for a half an hour and the psychiatrist remarked that this isn’t typical ADD if he can sit there and not be disruptive for that period of time.
My son is clearly an extremely intelligent, creative and energetic kid He definitely suffers from low self esteem at times and is very self critical when he either can’t or won’t perform at school the way the other, some medicated, kids do. Having him out from school is compounding the problem - he clearly is fully aware that he is different and somehow unacceptable according to the defined system.
My frustrations are at a peak both with the school system and the medical community. As a parent I make every effort to validate him while being firm with respect to the behavioral issues. I have two other kids and his mother and I both agree that he possesses inherently gifted levels of creativity and intelligence and what he needs is curriculum delivery in such a fashion as to address his special needs.
Any suggestions and/or advice would be much appreciated.
Re: Need Advice
Jan, your letter was absolutely great and a gift from above for me today.
At this very moment, I am preparing the affidavit to pull my 6th grade ADD kid out of a “hostile to special education” school. Even if we took a lawyer in to demand a 504 plan, it wouldn’t help her get anything but C’s and D’s. All she hears in her EveryDay Math class is “blah blah blah blah”. She has a teacher this year who is horrendous for a child with ADD. I am going to buy the entire year of math from the University of Missouri Online service, to undo the damage this woman has wrought. And even though she has been completely unresponsive to our pleas for help this year, it’s not completely her fault, it’s the school and the district. Blissfully, they are no longer my problem ( I hope…that is if they dont’ fight me on this homeschooling).
My daugher can sit and play Barbies and toys, talk to them, talk thru them, play act them for literally 4 hours straight, but can’t sit thru information she doesn’t understand. She is straight across the board ADD, and I am here to tell you …parents with younger children….middle school is devastating for an ADD child if you have the wrong teacher. I begged to have her moved at the beginning of the year, I demanded it a week ago, and they are just ignoring me. I can’t wait for them to get the bill for Cyber School!!
Also, Jan, I am so glad you included the stuff about IQ. That’s what the school psychologist based everything on…even though I know she isn’t supposed to, and I need to understand what IQ has to do with how she learns, and how I need to proceed from here in teaching her.
Thank you again for your great letter.
Re: Need Advice
There is probably not “one” answer to your dilemma but I would encourage you to read Dr. Jacqueline Stordy’s book, “The LCP [long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids] Solution: The Remarkable Nutritional Solution for ADHD, Dyslexia, and Dyspraxia.” Essential fatty acid supplementation has definitely helped my son. You can order this book from amazon.com.
We have also gotten encouraging results from cranial sacral therapy (for more info go to the website of the Upledger Institute) and neurofeedback training (you can search the web for neurofeedback).
Medication does work for some kids but there are alternatives that have some compelling scientific justification.
Re: Need Advice
Yes its true that ADD kids can sit and work on puzzles quietly. My ADD kids can play with dolls and legos for hour on end. They are also the best behaved kids in public. I am routinely told that by perfect strangers who come up to me and tell me they are impressed with my kids behavior. That is because they do not have hyperactivity. They are the inattentive type and all of them are very shy and quiet. (But not always at home!).
I suggest going to Dr. Daniel Amen’s website www.brainplace.com. He also has a book on the different types of ADD. It may be your child doesn’t have ADD, but you should inform yourself on the topic. Only you and your wife will be able to tell, since you know your son the best. Read as many books on ADD as you can and see if your son fits the profile. Then you can answer the question: is he acting out because he is creative and gifted and bored by the curriculum, or is there ADD as well? Ask yourself, does he have a novelty bias? That is does he seem intensely interested in topics for a while then bored with them? Does he flit from topic to topic and project to project? Those are ADD symptoms. But there is definitely an overlap in highly creative and original people and ADD. Read Lynn Weiss’s book “ADD and Creativity.”
Re: Need Advice
Your post isn’t entirely clear. Has he been put out from school until…what?
Your son might have ADD or might not. Different people will have different opinons there but as you recognize the diagnosis of ADD is one often quickly arrived. at. I would be most concerned about ‘bending the teacher’s fingers back’. Was that a first? Even if so, that’s unusual as is running from the classroom. ADD or not, something is up for a young child to take a teacher’s hand and try to hurt.
If it’s not ADD, then what is it would be my question. I understand the school wanting an answer to that. If it’s anxiety, what is causing that? If it’s depression, what is causing that?
Has your son had other testing done for possible learning differences that would make it hard for him to feel comfortable in school? If he has and other possible learning differences have been ruled out, then you might consider among the many medications there are for ADD or anxiety or depression while you continue to try to figure out what’s causing such a young child to be anxious or depressed.
As with many medical issues, there is a trying period of trial necessary to see whether a medication is successful or not. For every professional out there, there’s yet another opinion. These kind of decisions are very hard for parents but it’s us who usually makes them.
Do you have a long-standing family doctor you know and trust? You might consider running some of this by that persion for their opinion.
Good luck.
Jim, Your son sounds exactly like mine. He does have ADHD and he is also very intelligent. We had my son on stimulants for 3 yrs and it did help him to focus but he had some severe side affects so we took him off. We are now on imipramine which is an antidepressant that helps somewhat. Your child sounds as though he is very frustrated at school and is acting out. We took my son out of school last year and began home schooling him. He is so much happier and can do the work at his own pace now. He would come home from school and disintegrate in front of me every day. It was heartbreaking.He was such a gifted child and hated school. He said he had been in school 3 yrs. and hadn’t learned anything! It was true. Now he is enjoying learning again. It took several months to get him to want to learn again but he is progressing well now. You said your son could sit and do a puzzle for 30 mins. so maybe he isn’t ADHD. That is typical of ADHD kids. When they are doing something they like they can hyperfocus.This is also typical of gifted children and the diagnosis of ADHD is very difficult to make. I suggest you have a battery of test for IQ, achievement,personality etc. If his IQ score has disticnt differences in the subtest he may have a learning disability.Check out the Gifted Development Center website. Linda Silverman has a lot of good info on there about gifted versus ADHD and how to interpret IQ scores. Good Luck, Jan