Our Family and ADHD!

This page will continue our family's story of coping with a diagnosis of ADHD. At the bottom of that page you will find some informative and interesting links to other ADHD pages.

Through our family doctor, we were very lucky to get Adam into a diagosis program at a prominent local psychiatric hospital. The diagnostic process took a long time (8 months) but we were very pleased to have such an in-depth examination, so that we were confident with the results and had time to deal with the changes that were taking place in our lives. These 8 months were very busy for Adam, attending the hospital school in the morning and his community school in the afternoon (at 5 years old), and a month of summer school at the hospital, but he met the challenge! In the end the answer was given to us............Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

OK, now that we know this, what do we do?? During Adam's testing period, we had a cousellor from the hospital program come to our home, weekly, to help the rest of the family. I was working at home, for a daycare centre, so it was wonderful of them to accomodate us. The Counsellor "Connie"* took us step by step through the challenges of ADHD and trained us in the use of behaviour modification, to help Adam (and to help us keep our sanity). "Connie" was very compassionate, being the parent of a child with ADHD herself. She also worked with the school to help them deal with the challenges of teaching Adam. If you haven't understood yet, dealing with a child with ADHD means a whole new set of rules and the only way to make any progress is to have everyone involved, work together!

To give those of you, who are not familiar with the disorder, a little background about the types of things we have had to deal with, I'll tell you a bit about Adam and his ADHD.

As I said before, Adam has always been an active child.......hyperactive is the word we are now used to. Hyperactivity by itself is not a hard thing to deal with, although is can be frustrating, but when you combine it with some of the other aspects of ADD, you have a whole new ball game. Attention Deficit means a lack of attention. Combine the two AD and H, and you have a child who literally BOUNCES from activity to activity without stopping. Again, you say, this should not be too hard to deal with, and you're right it's not.......but wait, there is more!

Two very common characteristic of people with this disorder are incredible impulsivity and very quick mood changes. Now when you add these two to the whole package, things can sometimes get a little scary. Imagine watching your children eating breakfast one morning and seeing the older of them reach across the table to punch the younger one in the head. Why would he do that? Well, in this case, the little one happened to block the other's shadow on the wall when he was looking at it. OK, kids will be kids, right?? As we have learned over the last few years, through reading, C.H.A.D.D. and talking to others who have, or are dealing with ADD/ADHD in some way, the way to look at it is......by the time the child figures out that what they want to so is NOT a good idea (be it dangerous, hurtful or just unacceptable)...it's too late, it's already done!!!

That's the key to impulsivity... being able to stop and think before doing something. Adam doesn't do that. Adam CAN'T do that, at least not without a lot of learning, support and patience. If he gets angry and wants to hit someone, by the time he's figured out that hitting is wrong and will hurt someone, that other person is already crying and bruised because Adam's already taken his shot. If Adam wants to see something across the road, by the time he thinks he's supposed to stop and look both ways for cars before he crosses, he's already standing in the middle of the street. I hate to think of how many times I've had to pull Adam away from the road, because he's tried to step into traffic....and he does this even while holding my hand!

Now about these mood swings.....I know, a lot of people have mood swings, even I have them, but when it comes to Adam, you deal with extremes. Have you ever watched someone's mood turn from bliss to rage in a matter of seconds, because you walked too close to him? Trust me, it's like you're watching someone changing into a different person in front of your eyes, and that IS scary. We went through a very long period of time, walking on eggshells, because you never knew what was going to trigger one of these mood swings and what the consequences would be. I had been bruised and battered more than once and tried my best to avoid setting off an angry response whenever possible.

To find out some of the ups and downs that our family has had to deal with, at home and at school, and to find about Adam's progress over the past few years, please continue on to the next page Life Goes On......and so does ADHD! :)

Below you will find a couple of wonderful personal web pages about living with a child who has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. I have put up these links with the kind permission of the page authors.......Thank you! :)