gizmo title sought

My husband was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but detested the drugs and was only on them for a short time. When he hit college and lost the structure of high school, he really couldn't handle it. A few years ago, I got utterly exasperated with the ADHD. I love my husband, but I was going to kill him. I had finally talked him into going to see a doc, and I asked my internist for a recommendation for ADHD. She suggested that he try fish oil capsules. Two pills, twice a day. Wow. It's made a huge difference. He's able to focus to complete tasks, but can still multi-task as he needs to. His brain is calmer, so he can sleep again, and the restless legs are mostly gone as well. We definitely notice a difference if he forgets to take it for a few doses. It helps that he also found a job that works well for him (2nd/

Oh, and the same doc claims that if every pregnant woman took the same dosage, there wouldn't be any ADHD. Not that she offered any proof, but it's fairly harmless and has so many good benefits otherwise that I probably will take it then (I take about half the dosage now for other reasons, namely restless legs).

Allura

------ WIP: The Dreamer, Clean Dog Cross Stitch News:

Not necessarily.

We have a big music festival here every May, but I refuse to pay $100 to be sweaty, sunburned and stampeded in the crowds (100,000 people, usually in 105 degree temperatures). But over the next 12 months, the community access channel shows some of the performances as hour-long ads for the next year's festival.

Great background music for stitching, writing checks, housework, etc.

But, no, there is essentially nothing on TV where I stop stitching so I can watch with my eyes glued to the screen.

On 7/7/07 11:00 AM, "Ericka Kammerer" wrote:

Chiming in to follow up Ericka. While no one in my immediate family is ADHD, my goddaughter is. And the main symptom isn't her being fidgety - she's not. However she does have memory and cognitive organizational issues. Very bright, high IQ, - not a parenting problem - per se. 2 PhDs with the parents, they run their lives around making sure quality time is available for the kids. The elder 3 are 23, 21 and almost 18 (the first graduated magna cum from BU a year ago, the 2nd just finished jr year at VaTech, and the 3rd will be going to MIT in the fall). They all work hard at addressing the issues with the 12 year old. It's hard. She's very bright, and but will constantly lose things, a lot of effort has gone into fixing environments for her, having very regimented, formulaic ways that she even has her school notebooks/files organized. She's been going to a "life coach" that specialized in helping ADHD people cope, have strategies to effectively live their lives. The biggest issue with her is that she was on Ritalin a couple of years ago, and it definitely helped - but she did so well that they took her off (with doctor's knowledge). After several months it becaome clear that this child does much better with the medication, however her parents decided to let her make the call on the meds, as it's her body. So, now there is an impasse, as the 12 yr old feels that on the meds she felt a bit different, and is very wary due to the gossip, partial information that she and the other youngsters pulled together (as in another girl on some medication complained that it made her feel not like herself and of other things). So, now her behaviour has gotten more difficult to control, keeping her organized, at least a bit, and the like - and even the life coach has said that unless the child goes back on meds, there is little she can do to help. It's a conundrum/ She is indeed easily distracted, but not in a fidgety kind of way. It's very hard for the entire family, all of whom are used to things coming to them with work, and dealing with the fact that this child needs much more structure than the others did - and that she just can't hang out in the family room when the older ones are having friends over, and expect to do homework that way. It's hard even for us to resist just asking this child to do what she's supposed to - her brain is just wired differently.

My other ADHD experience - 20 odd years ago. Working at a sleep-away camp during the summer - I was part of the admin staff (means hiring staff, doing schedules, helping run the place, etc). There was one particular group of young boys - about age 9, who were in the same cabin. In that group of kids who'd been friends for a few years - there were about 4 of the 8 diagnosed with ADHS, and on meds. These kids would come to the infirmary to be given their meds by the medical staff before or after meals at the main lodge. Anyhow, less than a week into the season, and we've noticed the counselors are having problems controlling these kids. Then one morning, the senior counselor that spends the entire day with them going to activities, etc (there are a few living in the cabin) shows up at breakfast covered with bruises. The kids had just lost it fooling around, and then went into complete uncontrollable rough-housing that took 5 adults to break up. So, in talking with the instigators, or most uncontrollable - we found out that their parents had taken them off their meds. Essentially the parents had told these kids some variation of "you don't have to take your special vitamins during the summer" . Without doctor's advice, or notifying the camp (as we are responsible for the campers' well being while entrusted to us) had just decided to give their kids a break from meds. Point being, when on the meds they were just a group of little boys that were bright, or normal seeming, and went to get their meds 3X a day or 2 X a day. Off the meds, they were little terrors - not because they were malicious, but were uncontrollable to some extent. Needless to say, the camp owner had quite the talk with all the parents, and the camp doctor was able to get them back on a plan. Said kids, AFAIK, all grew up pretty well, I saw a couple of them as adults about 10 years ago.

So, while there are pros and cons to drugs and treatment, and certainly some lazy school employees that make diagnoses that they're not qualified to, simply assuming all kids that have ADHD would be fine if they were more channeled to hobbies, or that drugs are part of lazy parenting is way too broad a stroke , IMO.

Sorry if this seemed long. Catching up on the reading after being off line a few days.

ellice

LOL - sounds a bit like me. Although, several years ago, I did catch my deputy telling a new Major coming into the group (with others there) that I was the most hyper-active person they knew. I thought it was my office mate, but the guys all laughed and said I was far more so - and the ones who knew me well had given up trying to understand how I worked so much in parallel (the multi-tasking view of life). I think it's just how some people's brains are wired - neuro science - such an interesting topic.

My brother was the handful - but that was more his temperamental nature. I was just stubborn. They just found more and more stuff for me to do, and since along with doing active things, I learned to read early, that helped - as I could always be put with a book.

ellice

ellice wrote: > having very regimented, formulaic ways that she even

Which is great if they go along with it. I know someone who was likely ADHD and resisted ANY effort to get him organized.

Life was much simpler if he had the excuse of "oops, I forgot" or "I lost it". That way, it was always someone else's fault if he missed an appointment; it was written in his calendar, but he made it MY responsibility to be the one who reminded him to go. And not just first thing that morning, but at intervals throughout the day "you need to be collecting your stuff now", "you have three minutes to go to the bathroom before you have to get in the car", right down to shepherding him out the door at the time he had to leave. God forbid that I was busy with something else at the time he needed to leave.

He'd been using the excuse for 30-odd years to avoid things he didn't want to do, and all he could see from our attempts to give him that necessary rigid organization was that we were trying to stifle his creative spirit.

We even suggested letting a bookkeeper handle his checkbook so that the bills would be paid on time, but he found it preferable to pay late fees and re-connection charges than to have someone else know how he spent his money.

I wonder if early reading and development of motor skills is a sign of anything ??? lol

From what I was told I was reading before I went to school and walking and climbing out of my crib when I was just past 9 months.

I wasn't a particularly brilliant student and certainly not a good athlete so it sure didn't help later on.

But there's the point. The large number of unqualified people making erroneous diagnoses on the one hand, and the number of both parents and teachers who'd rather medicate than take the time to figure out how to stimulate.

Yes, there are kids who have ADHD who do best with medication. But not every fidgety kid is ADHD and not every ADHD kid needs medication to function.

And I'd be willing to bet that for every normal kid misdiagnosed with ADHD, there's another one out there who *does* have ADHD but the parents shrug it off as "Johnny's just a bit rambunctious" and won't take him to a specialist.

There are some correlations, but probably not a whole lot of causation. Rates for ADHD are higher among people with higher IQs by a bit. I seem to recall some study or other suggesting that babies/toddlers/preschoolers who sleep less are more likely to have high intelligence.

I was walking and talking at 9 months, mostly because my father was deployed and returning home at that time and I think my mom and assorted other relatives had little else to do but coach me ;-)

They do know that gifted kids are more likely to read earlier, but early reading is not necessarily a sign of giftedness. A lot of the disparity in early reading disappears by 8 or 9 years of age.

Best wishes, Ericka

There's a lot of talk about the latter, and I'm sure there are some examples, but frankly I have yet to meet a single parent in real life who turned to meds because they just didn't want to spend any time doing anything else. For one thing, the meds aren't magic. You still have to do the other stuff even with the meds. They just give you a fighting chance at success, if they work at all (and many kids aren't helped enough by the meds or have unacceptable side effects). In addition, it's not just a question of "how to stimulate." It's not all that difficult to stimulate kids with ADHD. It's not just that they get distracted when they're bored. They get distracted in many environments *even* when they're interested and motivated. It's not just that if the teachers had an engaging class, all the kids with ADHD would magically become successful. Parking kids at desks all day exacerbates symptoms for some kids with ADHD, but you don't fix ADHD by adding more recess and PE back into the curriculum. All those things nibble away at the edges of the problem, and for some kids they can tip the balance, but they don't get at the root of the issue, and for kids with more severe cases they're just not going to do the trick. For most of us dealing with this, trying to find a balance that results in some reasonable degree of success means an all out assault on many different fronts, each of which is about as easy as herding cats.

True, but many folks are awfully quick to judge those who choose to medicate as lazy. Heck, you can fill a shelf with books from folks who claim that ADHD isn't real, isn't a problem (the kid's fine--it's just society that's screwed up), etc.--or even that folks who choose to medicate are damaging their kids. ADHD isn't all that well understood, and I think over time we'll find out that what we now call ADHD is probably a number of different things with overlapping symptoms, having a number of different causes. That's not to say that I think all the ADHD meds out there are wonder drugs with no downsides. There are some serious issues to be considered. It's just that the risks of not treating ADHD effectively are much more substantial than many people who are quick to pooh-pooh meds imagine.

That may be. There's certainly more awareness, but under- and over-diagnosis are both still problems. And part of the under-diagnosis problem is the number of people who think ADHD is nothing more than lazy parenting or boring teachers. People don't want to be accused of being a bad parent, so they resist investigating or accepting an ADHD diagnosis.

Best wishes, Ericka

This is the point. People with ADHD don't necessarily consciously understand this to be a way of dealing with their issue, and somewhat can't help but continue in the disorganized or forgetful way - it isn't an excuse all the time. Personally, with this child, I do feel that she has learned some ways to push some buttons and get to do or not what she wants, or get attention. OTOH, the family is very much on top of reminding her and checking "where is your homework - where are your assignments - show us your folders..." When school started this past year, her first in middle school, dad got her a multi-pocket folder thing so she could put her assignment sheets for each subject in a separate place - and amazingly enough when she argued about time to put her notebook away, put the papers away - made her do practice drills. Of course, we do think he's a bit extreme.

I don't know this person, and can't say what is the overlap between personality and purposeful behaviour versus issues from the ADHD. It's a hard thing to untangle.

ellice

As I said, IF you can get them to go along with the extra effort required to comply with regimented, formulaic organization. In this case, he saw organization as something other people do for him and wouldn't make the effort himself. It took time away from the things he'd rather be doing, so why not delegate it to someone else he perceived to "like doing that sort of stuff".

Not being his parent, I couldn't force him to do practice drills or exert any sort of punishment for non-compliance ... other than the penalties intrinsic in missing appointments and bill payments.

Yup, me too, always staring out the window, and I was finally diagnosed this winter. No WONDER I was having trouble writing my thesis - I couldn't stay focused long enough to write a paragraph. Fortunately, the meds I tried work for me and it's not such an issue.

Meredith