It’s been quite a while since I blogged anything about ADHD. As I looked over past blog posts, I realize I’ve taken a little vacation from learning and helping my daughter with it. I didn’t mean to, it just became easy to get complacent and right now I feel a bit chastened. Don’t get me wrong, I never forget it’s there. We deal with it every day as I struggle to find effective and successful communication with my teen daughter. But as she’s grown and made such amazing strides compensating on her own for the struggles, I’ve allowed myself to take a backseat. I haven’t been reading, learning and keeping up with information on it and I know how valuable that is. Today I just feel like I owe that kiddo a shout out. She is amazing and she can (and does) do hard things every single day!

In the past 16 months we’ve lived in three states, moved two and half times and lived in 4 different homes. That’s a boatload of new neighbors, schools, church friends and social experiences. It’s a lot of change to digest in a short time. In fact, it makes my head spin to see it written out like this! Top it all off with moving headlong into teen years and it’s no wonder I’m a bit dazed.

As a parent, it’s hard to know when and how to share important information about your kids. Everyone knows something about their children that others don’t. Sometimes this information is big, sometimes it’s small but either way it’s a balancing act for the parent to identify the right times/situations in which to share these nuggets of wisdom. You constantly ask yourself if sharing will result in greater good, or make things worse. For example, when my daughter began Kindergarten I made sure the teacher was aware of her adoption status. This wasn’t because I wanted to call attention to her being adopted, in fact quite the opposite as I wanted to avoid any awkwardness about it. I felt the teacher needed to know before her upcoming family unit that my daughter’s details about birth and inherited genetic traits would be different and potentially awkward. Moreover, at that age she herself was still developing an understanding and I needed to help make sure it was positive. It was the right time to share this information, but it is still deeply personal and can carry unexpected consequences good and bad; it has to be held carefully. Her ADHD is much like this and because of those unknown and potentially unexpected consequences, I tend to err on the side of sharing too little especially as she gets older and gains more independence. I also worry that sharing can result in preconceived ideas or judgements that could be more harmful than helpful. Most days I’m a drowning puppy just struggling to keep my head above water. This is when some of my friends would say they put a dollar in the jar for future counseling and just move on. You do the best you can at any given time with what you have, but you always worry that it’s not enough or too much.

Well, last week my daughter (now 14) had a run-in with a fellow classmate. I found myself sitting in a room with the teachers, my daughter, the other party and that child’s parent discussing the mishap and trying to resolve any unkind feelings. As soon as I understood the dynamics involved, it was obvious why there had been some fireworks. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the room who could see with that clarity because I was the only one who understood key information about my daughter’s ADHD. I found myself wishing I’d been able to share my knowledge before the confrontation. With my daughter’s permission, I was able to share it after with the teacher. While it ended on a positive note, I couldn’t help but question if I’d dropped the ball in the balancing act of sharing information which would have altered the conflict resolution scenario.

Here’s the reality. My daughter has ADHD. She will always have it. It won’t magically go away as she gets older. But as she continues to mature and develop she can learn to balance and counter its detriments and live a functional and happy life. The strides she’s made in the past two years are evidence of this. But it’s still hard and I often forget how hard. In reviewing past articles I’ve written on it I came across this list on communication and ADHD and immediately felt myself sink in my chair for how much I’ve forgotten. Four years ago I found this checklist and shared thoughts on it. The intent is for the person with ADHD to circle and rate which of the items in the list they either acknowledge themselves or have been told by others they struggle with. Constant review of the list can help them see if they’re improving. Where I felt short was the constant review because in four years the issues have shifted for my daughter a great deal.

Ability to identify and express your feelings
Check-repeat what you heard and ask if you heard it right
Join a conversation without disruption
Stay on track in a conversation
Identify and reflect feelings of others
Actively let others know you are following the conversation
Miss pieces of information-”blinks”
Ability to keep a conversation going
Voice too loud or too soft
Speak too quickly
Interrupt others
Too quiet-rarely speaking in conversations
Talk excessively
Order or boss others
Criticize-judge or make evaluative comments
Disregard or minimize statements of others

The reason I share this is an effort to help others understand what “hard” means for my daughter. Most of us have experience with several of the above issues at one point or another in our lives. But my daughter knows each item intimately and experiences all of them simultaneously, every single day. I can’t even imagine that. She doesn’t experience them because she’s not smart or doesn’t care, she experiences them because she has a medical condition that impedes her ability to communicate. She has no control over it happening, only learned responses in dealing with the results. Her condition, while not as visible as an eye astigmatism with corrective lenses, is every bit as real. In fact, the lack of visibility is harder on her because it feeds the lack of understanding and harsh judgements of those around her. I wish so much I could remember myself, as well as share with others how hard she works to keep relations good with everyone she knows. I wish the rest of us could have a little more compassion and understanding accepting her mistakes with it. If she can do hard things, so can we.

More of my thoughts on ADHD.

Life with ADHD isn’t impossible, it even has its upsides. I’ve spent the last 7 years learning more about what ADHD is and what it isn’t; how to help cope with the challenges and even how to have some glimmers of success. I’m grateful for this knowledge, and one day I’ll be grateful for the reason I needed to learn it. Unfortunately, that day is not today. Today I am frustrated. Today I feel inadequate. Today, I’m drowning in a pool of irritation and inability and it looks like this:

This was my attempt at explaining to my thirteen year old daughter this morning what she does that makes me and everyone else in our family so crazy. I was trying to visually show her what it feels like to talk with her.

There was an episode on the Brady Bunch years ago about living by exact words. Greg attempts to slip up his parents and get his way by pointing out how their exact wording didn’t account for his actions. The moral of the story/episode was living by exact words is dreadfully impossible and frustrating. Well, that is our most recent development hurdle with our ADHD daughter. She gets hung up on words. No matter what we say, she seems to focus on one word to argue over. To her conversational counterpart, this feels like she’s screaming a message of not listening. In this example, I’d be saying the phrase and she’d respond with an argument that it was more like yelling, singing, etc. and not talking; completely missing the forest for the tree and causing me to want to pull my hair out in frustration.

Admittedly, we got off on the wrong foot this morning. The first topic of study resulted in a push back and battle of wills. When I started pointing out some corrections on her creative writing project she bristled. I bristled back. After a few terse words and both of us verbally agreeing to start over and “fix” the problem. I moved on to the next lesson of format when writing quotes. First, she cut me off before I could finish what I was going to say. This didn’t lend well to fixing things and caused me an opportunity to rant on how frustrating it is to be interrupted, especially when she didn’t know what I was going to say. She thought I was going to point out grammar details like capitalization and quotation marks. I told her no, actually I was going to point out with the help of the current book she’s reading how conversation is written in paragraph form. She relented a little with a simple sorry. But the moment I resumed with an example she responded with a correction on an exact word in the example. Snap.

Now, in the time it’s taken me to write this, she’s continued through her own frustration. For the first five minutes I heard pounding on the keypad of her laptop and huge sights as she worked on her story and corrections. The next five minutes brought singing of music while she typed, and the following five a request to be done on this project and work on something else. She also sent me an instant message asking me to please forgive her for making me so frustrated and she was sorry. This is one of the great upsides of ADHD. In 15 minutes the world changes and all is right for her again.

This is when I am actually a bit envious of her abilities. To work through frustrations and confrontations so quickly and so completely, to forget everything that just made you so crazy so quickly…well, suffice it to say, I think this would be a wondrous gift!

While I don’t possess this ability, I can benefit from its contagious nature. My pool of frustration is on the decline and my breathing has normalized. I still worry that I can’t figure out how to penetrate that shell of understanding. I don’t know how to reach her and help her develop these life skills that are so critical to her future success. I worry that they will become permanent handicaps for her in her future relations and life experiences. I find a measure of comfort in remember past developmental hurdles and how I worried the same way then, but she did master many of the concepts and habits that I wasn’t sure she ever would. There is hope. There is always hope. For today that has to be enough.

This week is ADHD Awareness Week. Who knew? Well, actually I knew it was coming because of a few subscriptions but I think it’s pretty new. The idea is to boost education on this condition that affects so many people today. It’s not new, it’s becoming better understood.

So today I’m going to share some links of previous thoughts/experiences I’ve shared on this here along with a few links of other things going on related to this week.

The Results Are In
Inspiration
The Power of Belief
The Results Are In
ADHD Education
A Mother’s Heart
If They Only Knew
The Kind of Person I Want to Be
Torch Passing Teachers
Communication and ADHD
Good News

Ha ha, I’ve written more on this than I realized!

Here’s a few fun and insightful things going on this week:

ADHD experts and professionals answer questions all week for free!
Everything you needed to know and more.
A personal look.

This week I will look at my daughter through more focused eyes. I’ll be reminded of all the amazing things that she is and the talented little ball of energy she has always been. Again, I feel utterly blessed to be her mom.

Thank you Cidnie for teaching mom about so many things that apply to so much in life. I can’t imagine my life without you or my knowledge base without your influence. You are so amazing. Today’s share is for you, for all you are, all you are becoming and all you can become.

Love, Mom

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I set up my Mii account on our Wii Fitness this morning and to my delight it calculated my BMI and weight in the normal region. Yay! Now, I didn’t really need it’s balance and muscle assessment to know that I’m not in great shape and my body is weaker than it should be but who knows, maybe it will help me work on that. One thing I learned with Dance Dance Revolution is that exercise in the form of some entertainment works well for me. So I’m hopeful. I also took heart in my first rounds of yoga exercises and balance games that I placed in the top three of my family members who have been doing it for a week now. I’m also delighted that the pool season is back because I can do so much more with my joints in the pool than in other exercise settings.

In other good news today I’m happy to report that I found another solution that is helping me with my summer vacation parental strain. As my husband and I talked last week, I realized that no matter how many things we did or planned to keep our daughter busy the fundamental problem wouldn’t be addressed. My ten year old daughter has ADD and that means her brain doesn’t organize things naturally, or at least the way most of our brains do. It’s why she’s always asking to do 10 things at the same time and why she spends 5 minutes of quiet time complaining of boredom. So I decided to take my last organization attempt during the holidays a step further. I printed out calendars from my Google calendar for each of the kids. One page was a month overview and then each week broken down on a single page with the hours of 6AM-5PM each day. My thought was if I made their planning visual not only would they better understand time and feel some control over their activities, they might also see how much they really have.

I’m happy to report that so far so great. They are both working at filling in their wants on their calendar and mom helps fit in some needs (a.k.a. chores) and catching the vision. This morning we planned out this week which took about 10 minutes compared to our first attempt last week which took about 20 minutes for 2 days. Progress. I’m finding it helps me too because the time we block for academic review and games is small enough that none of us go crazy. In fact, this morning they both asked if we could do it longer so that’s a plus for mom.

Speaking of time, mine is up so that’s all for today on the blog! *giggle*

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As one who used to believe that ADHD was a bunch of hogwash excusing parents from parenting responsibility, I’ve had plenty of repentance time in dealing with it since my daughter began school and was diagnosed ADD at the age of 8. I’ve also had plenty of community service time educating others about it as I am my daughter’s advocate. I guess as with all things in life, this is one of those areas where if you can’t see it the credibility is easily denied. And everything about the causes of ADHD are in the brain, thus generally keeping it invisible to the human eye although the symptoms and consequences of it are extremely visible. This is why ADHD is so often misunderstood as a behavior problem and not a medical condition. It’s also why ADHD got so much media attention when a study was able to show us the brain activity of an ADHD brain compared to a normal one. There was now proof making some aspects of it visible and thus more credible to the general public. (And I thought it was just a bunch of psychologists sitting around dreaming up new diagnosis and revenue channels - my bad.)

The way I’ve visualized the problem is to picture in my mind a bridge that connects the two areas of the brain responsible for our most basic functioning skills. In my brain the bridge is unfettered and messages travel back and forth freely. In my daughter’s brain her bridge is riddled with obstacles and there may even be areas where pieces are missing. So her messages often get blocked, bounce around or drop out entirely. It’s not something she can control by simply “trying harder” any more than someone who has an astigmatism in their eye could see clear if they would just try harder to focus. Nothing makes this confusion more apparent than the simple social skill of communication.

While many of us deal with our own personal struggles in the communication department, an ADHD mind has additional challenges. If we take the time to understand them it becomes not only easier to deal with and tolerate the issues, but also helpful for the person struggling so much to overcome these obstacles. While reading yesterday, I came across a checklist for this topic. The design is to have the person with ADHD circle a number showing how much of a problem this is for them. The key difference here is that while you and I may have some variation of some of these my daughter deals with almost every one at various levels. As a parent, it is so much easier for me to see it in her and it helps a great deal to realize that it’s not you and that you’re not alone. These resources exist for the very reason that others are dealing with all these same things every day and that is a powerful message and comfort to parents in the trenches. I’ll share this brief list here because I think it’s a great starting point in helping see and understand why ADHD is such a big deal.

Ability to identify and express your feelings
Check-repeat what you heard and ask if you heard it right
Join a conversation without disruption
Stay on track in a conversation
Identify and reflect feelings of others
Actively let others know you are following the conversation
Miss pieces of information-”blinks”
Ability to keep a conversation going
Voice too loud or too soft
Speak too quickly
Interrupt others
Too quiet-rarely speaking in conversations
Talk excessively
Order or boss others
Criticize-judge or make evaluative comments
Disregard or minimize statements of others

This list hit me with great impact and caused an instant feeling of greater empathy for what my daughter struggles with every day. It rejuvenates my patience batteries and the desire to help her with these common annoyances that aren’t an indication of how she feels about me nor is it a display of disrespect. My job is to help her learn how to find ways to trigger combat options for these things, ways to help her remember to hold her tongue instead of blurting what comes to mind when it comes to mind, support in helping her see the way these common things impact her social relationships with others. In short, my job is to help her learn how to succeed now so that future lessons will be less painful and her future relationships will be more successful.

We’ve been helping her with the interruption aspect since she was able to converse with us and in general she’s got this one down very well needing few prompts now that she’s 10. However, the ability to express her feelings, to actively show us she’s still engaged in conversation, identify and reflect feelings of others and disregarding/minimizing comments of others are all huge right now. As a parent these things make you absolutely batty, especially when they surface during a discipline moment or discussion.

So if you’ve noticed most of these things on a regular basis with someone you know or care for it may be an indication that they have a legitimate medical reason for their actions and not just a rude behavior issue. And if you’re a parent or loved one helping an ADHD mind on a regular basis it can help you just to review lists like this once and while to remember what doesn’t come naturally to those you’re helping. I know it has for me.

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Kelly asked this week if anyone knows a teacher who qualifies for passing the torch. She describes such a teacher as:

“Teachers who adopt their students for a year, as if they’re their own kids; who find ways to help even the neediest child to learn; who network with other master teachers to discover best practices to use in their classrooms; who share their expertise with parents to help them become more effective; who know their “kids”, love their “kids” and hurt if one moves away.”

I do know one of these teachers and I am so blessed that she is working with my daughter this year! As one who could have chosen many fields to excel in, she choose education specifically for the purpose of being this kind of teacher. Taking her own personal experience and using it to fuel her desire to help her students with different needs and learning styles find success, she is amazing at helping each student feel successful. Consequently she has more than her share of student who fit this description and it actually seems to feed her success with each of them. She’s amazing. She tells them how amazing and smart they already are, pointing out so many skills they’ve already mastered and how hard the were. And I’ve never known anyone who works harder at getting the message through to her students that you don’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself. How grateful I am for this!

I knew on ‘meet the teacher night’ my prayers had been answered when I walked away feeling excited for my daughter instead of anxious. FINALLY - a teacher who cared more about the students individually and their learning/mastering important life skills than the new guidelines, reports, tests, programs and procedures. With this being my daughter’s fourth grade year, and the continued push for more curriculum and higher expectations, this attitude in today’s education world was something I didn’t even dare hope for. Yet here she is, a teacher who really knows my daughter and cares deeply for her. She calls me with any concern and made my heart leap for joy at our first parent teacher conference when she told me how much of me she sees in my daughter…that she knows right from wrong and she works hard every day to choose the right. As a parent, these are the BIG questions that you have and worry about with your kids. Have you taught them enough to stand up for what’s right even among the peer pressure they are bombarded with every day? To hear a comment like that is like a spring rain that just renews hope and courage in a mother’s heart.

This post is in tribute of my daughter’s teacher and every other teacher that fits Kelly’s description. I wish we could clone them. *grin*

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A few things have happened in the past couple of days that have inspired me to think about the person I am and the person I am becoming.

Earlier this week I met with two of the staff at my son’s new school. I was immediately impressed with their sense of genuine caring for others and equally impressed with their ability to be so calm under pressure. At the time I interacted with both of these women there was a great deal of responsibility, potential chaos and distractions taking place. Yet both seemed to make the world stop for a moment while they visited with me or my son, made us both feel important and cared for. There was no rush, no hurry and no feeling that you were a burden, in fact they were the great calming influence for all those around them. This struck me because I’ve been to a lot of first days at various schools and I’ve never felt anything quite like this, at least not this strongly. It got me to thinking about how much I want to be like that. How much I want for people to instantly feel relaxed, comfortable, safe and cared for in my presence. The world is full of busy, stressed and self-important people. You run into them almost daily and you can feel the vibes that come from them, they leave you feeling unsettled at best. It was such a pleasant experience to feel just the opposite in a matter of mere moments. I was so impressed that I wrote e-mails to both of them expressing my thoughts and both responded with resounding warmth and enthusiasm for caring. They both said that in their experience kids learn far more and better when they enjoy coming to school and their goal is to help kids want to be there. It worked for me…I didn’t want to leave! *laugh* At any rate, I determined yesterday that this is the feeling I want to share with others and in my home. I want my kids to WANT to be here and to feel that same peace, safe and loving influence. The trick is what every parent out there already knows…this is far easier said than done.
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I have to give a shout out to my little Cidderbug today. The progress this kiddo has made in the past 3 years is astounding to me. Sometimes I feel bad for her that no one really knows what she’s up against or how hard some things are for her. Her great advantage and disadvantage is that to an unknowing eye she appears to be exactly like everyone else around her. But there are subtle differences in the way she processes information that makes some learning and social skills extremely difficult for her. She has been making steady progress and working hard but many assume she simply isn’t trying hard enough. Above all, she reminds me daily how much I take for granted and how amazing differences can truly be.

Yesterday we took her to get the earned reward of her first cell phone. This was a VERY big deal and something she’s been working hard for. She’s still too young for a phone and we’ve given a flat no response for the past two years - yes, she’s been consistently begging for two years now. But this summer my husband said he thought we could use this to our advantage and maybe we should consider it. The original deal was that she had to learn all her times tables this summer to earn it. She’s worked hard and has been doing well only struggling with some of the higher numbers, but it was her excellent behavior on our vacation that earned her the trip to the cell phone store yesterday. She didn’t know that was a possibility and generally was unaware of just how well she had done our trip so it was a doubly sweet surprise for her. There are probably more restrictions than privileges with it right now, but she’s still delighted. She can’t do anything now that she couldn’t do before but it’s totally different in her mind. And for $9 a month, mom and dad just got a new lease on discipline tactics/incentives. More on that program later.

I still have my moments when I feel exhausted and wonder/worry if she’ll ever conquer some of the gaps. But I cannot, should not and will not ignore the amazing progress she has made in the past three years. In so many ways she is like a different kid. The creative side of her is blossoming now. She’s become very intrigued by art and continues to be an amazing improviser. She has a free mind and I’m so proud of her for becoming less and less swayed by peer pressure. She is truly becoming her own person and it’s a beautiful thing. I wish I could describe the development I’ve seen. It’s not unlike the transformation of the caterpillar to a butterfly in my mind. I just want her to know that mom is aware of how far she’s come, how hard she works every day and how proud I am of her for all that she is and all that she is becoming. Keep flying my little butterfly. Keep flying.

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Earlier today I responded in a discussion about raising high spirited children. It took place between a group of adoptive moms, which incidentally is a group that is no newbie to the high spirited child. As I looked over what I wrote I decided much of it was worthy of being repeated here.

There’s something about a mother’s heart that helps us understand our children. I believe it is a gift that helps us be prepared for them as well a powerful resource that can help us know how to help them as they grow. I think it can help speak peace to our hearts when we come across things that just feel right. That mother’s intuition was something I’d heard about before I was a mother - the times and examples when a mother just knew something about her child. But it took experience as mother to truly comprehend and appreciate it.
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I’ve had a couple of conversations this week on the topic of AD/HD and it’s resurfaced some memories and feelings for me. It’s also shown me the power and support that comes when we are willing to share our experiences with others. So I wanted to take a moment to share some of my thoughts and experiences with medication related to the condition because it’s definitely a hot topic out there. To get there, I have to share some history or what I have to share won’t mean much.
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