My son always had a lot of energy. He also had a lot of enthusiasm and love so we just wrote it off as him having a zest for life which made him special. When he was four and all the other kids in daycare were able to draw a self-portrait and his was a squiggly circle with a few marks in the center, we thought wow he does his own thing and that made him unique.
Kindergarten started and he loved getting to meet new friends and playing at school. Then came grade one and he came home most days crying, saying no one wanted to be his friend and school was too hard and we wondered what is going on with our sweet, special boy.
This is when we started to find out it’s normal for kids to have lots of energy, daydream, be a squiggly worm at dinner and act without thinking at times. The difference with Ryan was that his traits of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity were all the time. It became clear he was disorganized, talkative, had poor memory, time-management and social skills.
After trips to speech therapists, psychiatrists, tutors, pediatricians and more googling than I should admit, our suspicions were confirmed; Ryan finally got 100% on a test… the ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) test.
Soon many things started to add up. He had always been accident-prone since he could walk and now it made sense; he acts without thinking things through. All the times we would ask him something simple like put on your coat, eat supper or count to 10, Ryan would look at us like he understand what’s expected but then have trouble following through, he couldn’t focus on details. And this wasn’t just at home or school, it was all the time and it was taking a toll on his social life and schoolwork.
Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Please don’t misread this. It sounds so simple right? Our kid had a problem and we figured it out. This was very far from the reality. It involved many tears (his & mine), frustrations (his & mine), hours spent researching and reading, hours spent with Doctors and specialists and even more hours talking to other moms and friends to try to figure out what was going on. One of our biggest clues is when he went for ADHD testing with a Neuropsychologist (that finally offered an ADHD diagnosis) for the first time ever they were not able to complete their testing in the two four-hour sessions and he had to come back for a third.
Even today as ADHD continues to grow (and yes boys are three times more likely to develop it than girls), there are still many problems in diagnosing this behavioral disorder. Part of the problem is due to the fact it requires observation by multiple people in the child’s life (family, Doctors, teachers, professionals, etc.), and another part is because many parents do not or cannot handle admitting they have ‘special’ children. Trust me, I was there.
It’s not easy when you don’t know what exactly caused this to happen. Was it something you did to cause this? Am I a bad parent? Then you realize there is no quick fix, no solution. If they do actually do have ADHD they will have to deal with their ENTIRE lives. Thankfully by the time they are 18 they should develop skills to cope and be able to integrate seamlessly with others. But in the meantime the parents are the ones who need to help them deal with everything going on that a 6-year-old is not able to understand. This was when I realized my special kid needed some special help and that was my job. I was going to learn, read and help him and way I could.
