If you look at the common symptoms of ADHD, trouble paying attention, controlling impulsive behaviors (may act without thinking about what the result will be), and in some cases, are overly active from the website of the CDC. It looks like most of the children you meet waiting in line at the grocery store or at a school function right? It seems like there are kids like this that just need a little more discipline and boundaries and they will be perfectly fine, right? And sometimes that may be the case (it's true,let's be honest) but in some cases no matter what the parent does or how the school tries to help the child just can't function with these behaviors even though they really want to behave or be good.
Things have changed this year and with these changes Ed and I had to start making some choices. That's the biggest reason we've decided to start this process. We've talked about the symptoms of this and were aware of the similarities in the symptoms from the Autism, anxiety(I'll talk about this a little later) and ADHD. We had to decide how much these ADHD type of behaviors are effecting Eden's life? What can be gained out of having the diagnosis? What to do if she is diagnosed? Also when talking to her Doctor she asked what are looking to get out of this?
The ADHD behaviors are increasing her symptoms of Autism this year. For example, she's lining things up... all the time. This happens so much that some of the activities at school have had to be augmented because she becomes "stuck" while lining things up and can become aggressive when you try to stop her.She has been bolting/eloping in school whenever she is in her classroom and they ask her to do pretty much any task. She'll run or walk out of the room and find a preferred teacher or hide somewhere in the school. If someone tries to stop her from doing these things she will get extremely aggressive very quickly. She has refused just about every task for the last few weeks and is getting progressively more aggressive each day she is at school or at home. It's been difficult to do just about anything with her.
Our first goal for Eden is for her to be able to function, this means she should be able to attend school and do her work the best she can, she can be a part of life at home, or to go into public without being unsafe to herself or others. I was not able to say those things and it isn't a good feeling. She is too smart, happy and just a great person to not be able to share herself to the world. I don't want to have to worry that she has done something awful at school when I send her. I also don't want to not feel uncomfortable bringing her to church or out in public because of her inability to tolerate the outside world or any stress of everyday life.
For those reasons, Ed and I made the difficult decision to have Eden formally diagnosed with ADHD. We've talked about Eden's hyperactivity for years (even before we suspected Austism) but I was afraid we were just looking for the easy way out or an explanation of her behaviors beyond the fact we thought we were doing everything totally wrong with Eden (I know we aren't now but not knowing what's wrong parents always blame themselves right?). We started talking more about it during Eden's tri-annual IEP this past spring, but because she had been doing so well in kindergarten we didn't see any need for the diagnosis.
And then first grade happened. I called the doctor and asked for the process to be started which means lots of questionnaires for me and for her school. Once all those were completed I had an appointment with the Behavioral Pediatrician so she could go over the test results. Those showed that she met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD and even though some of the symptoms are similar in ADHD and Autism that they are two different diagnoses and need to be treated as two different disorders.
Ed and I had been talking about what options we had in treating this new diagnosis for months (we started this talk around the time her tri-annual IEP happened) and we came up with three questions we would ask ourselves before making any decisions on further treatment beyond behavioral interventions (for her Autism, ADHD or any other mental health issue she may have). They were: Is it seriously effecting her education? Yes Is it seriously effecting the way we live our everyday lives? Yes Is it seriously effecting the things she loves to do or the things that make her happy? Yes.
So, why wouldn't we want to do everything in our power to make her the best she can be? The answer to that is we are scared. We have heard lots of people talk about how medication makes you feel less like yourself. There is also the stigma of medicating your child for ADHD and that teachers are only pill pushers to make their job easier which is opposite of the case in our situation because our teachers even at the worst never talked about medication even though it was agreed there was something going on. I was the one who brought it up. Last there was the most difficult thing...letting go. Letting go of the fact that we have no way of making things easier for her no matter how hard we have tried (and we have tried everything). Letting go of what other people think about us.
We we started medication about a week ago. We won't see how it works for a couple of weeks. It's going to be a process to find the right medication and dosage. I'm confident that the doctors and teachers that work with Eden will all help in making sure she still stays her lovable, happy and smart self and we will help her really get to a great place where she can just be a kid and not have to worry about all this other stuff that is holding her back.
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