Sometimes we need to toot our own horns to remind ourselves we do not owe our accomplishments to a bottle of pills.
I have had the good fortune of not having to work full time for the last two years (if you call running up Credt Cards and falling behind on the mortgage good fortune,lol). I needed to be home for Scotty. I won’t flatter myself and say I do homeschooling, but lets say, I do a lot of 1 on 1 teaching at home. I live in a great school district, but the cracks in their floors are as huge as any school, and he doesn’t exactly scream for attention.
He would never have gotten tested if it wasn’t for me. I only started medding 6 months ago, but I don’t think he’d be reading writing and doing 3rd grade math, half way thru firrst grade, if it wasn’t for me and his fantastic abilities and effort. He wouldn’t be playing basketball, soccor, or baseball, kickboxing or swimming if it wasn’t for his determination and confidence (I did not push these, he has lousey gross motor skills!). Not in another ten years could he have played the lead in the school play if it wasn’t his talent and great imagination. He wouldn’t have formed good relationships and be enjoyng his friends so much if it he wasn’t such a fun a nice kid. His belief and faith in God and Christ is also his own doing, dad and I are athiests! All I do is buy him comic book bibles, drive him to Sunday school and send him to my kindly Jesus happy neighbor when he has a question.
His current meds do one itty bitty little thing for him, and that is, help him keep a stream of thought. That is all it does, that is all I need it to do. Nothing more. That is why stims were not for us, there is nothing else that needed to change about him, there is no other part of his system (diet, activity level, behavior, emotions, sleep patterns) that needs changing. And for his type of ADD, far too often, the amphets are just too much of a med for him. When kids really need this stuff, it is a great, life improving medicine. When kids don’t need it, it is a mind altering drug and it becomes immediately apparent, they don’t need it. They are better off with out it.
In any case, we don’t want our kids feeling they owe their accomplishments to a bottle of pills. We have to find a way everyday to tell our kids we are proud of them and all they do and try to do. Help them see that the medicine only levels the playing field between them and their peers, the rest is completely their own doing. 20 stickers a day won’t mean as much as hearing something small and encouraging once a day from someone who loves them. And lets pat ourselves on the back, knowing that if our kids were born to another set of parents, they might be in a very sad place.