Our Life with ADHD

I've decided to write these pages for a couple of different reasons.....first, to share my families' experiences with AHDH and secondly to provides some good online sources of information and support for parents, family members and others who want to know more about this disorder.

Do you ever feel like your life is a timebomb waiting to blow??

Well, that is how our life feels alot of the time. The reason for our feeling this way.........ADHD! For those of you who are not familiar with these letters, they stand for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. There is much controversy surrounding this disorder, but from a personal point of view, I say it is VERY REAL! Many people claim that ADHD is a label used to describe poorly behaved children, but you only have to live with a child who has been diagnosed with ADHD to know that this is NOT the case.

To give you a little background about our family, my husband and I are the proud parents of 3 wonderful children. The oldest is Adam who is nine years old, the second is Robynn, seven years old and the youngest is Alexandra who is five.

From the time that Adam was conceived, he never stopped moving. Jokingly, I describe the fact that during my pregnancy I was amazed that Adam NEVER slept. How could one small human being have that much energy??? Well, by the time that Adam was born, I figured that he would settle down and eat, cry and SLEEP, as all infants do. Hmmmm, I was wrong. Aren't babies supposed to sleep most of the time? I was sure that I had been told that. Well, I guess Adam was an active baby and that was fine.......I didn't need sleep anyway! *grin*

Adam proved to be a very active baby. He never stayed in one place very long, walked at 10 months and couldn't even sit still long enough for cuddles. By the time he was 3 years old, he seemed much more moody than other youngsters. His moods could swing from, almost, euphoria to rage at the drop of a hat. We went to our family doctor to see if there might be a problem, but we were told that this was probably just a stage and try not to worry about it. It sounded reasonable to us at the time, so we didn't do anything more about it....yet.

Four-year-old kindergarten went by quite calmly. Adam was extremely shy and quiet, but he made it through. Five-year-old kindergarten was completely different!

We were called into the school for a parent/teacher interview in November of his 5-year-old kindergarten year. The teacher sat us down and started to ask us all sorts of questions like, "Does Adam act [this] way at home?", "If he does...how do you handle the situation?". What was she talking about?? We had expected to find out how well he was learning his alphabet and numbers! We soon found out why she was asking us these questions, when she said to us....."I think that Adam has a problem." Those words chilled me. She suggested we take him to our family doctor and see if we could get him in to see a psycologist or psychiatrist. After the interview, all I could do was cry. What was wrong with my son???

Kaboom..........one of our timebombs just went off!!!

The next page will continue the story of our family during and after Adam's diagnosis of ADHD, a couple of personal Web pages that I have found of other families who are very familiar with ADD/ADHD, and some great reference links.

The Dreambook on this page has been created specifically for ADHD entries. If you have a story to share, questions to ask, or comments to make please sign below.......Thanks!!