When your child is brought into the world they are perfect in your eyes!!
It has been a little while since I've posted anything new and it's mostly because I've been deliberating whether to let you in a little bit deeper into our lives. After seeing a couple of posts on Facebook in regards to similar situations I feel strongly that it's time. We've had a little bit of a crazy month. As some of you know Cody was diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago. For those who don't know what that means, it's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. There are still many who do not believe in it but for those people I urge you to come and hear the story of a family who has a child with the condition. They may look the same as all of the other children, but believe me, there are some drastic differences.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, and other reliable sources
2-3% of children have the disorder which can equivalent to about 1 per child's classroom.
Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with the disorder
Children with ADHD develop 30% slower than children without the disorder.
65% of children with ADHD have disciple problems
25% have learning disabilities
Children with ADHD have poor listening capabilities
Children with ADHD tend to act younger than their chronological age.
Children with the disorder are frequently impulsive, insatiable, and often lack the ability to control themselves in many situations.
Many times they require less sleep than the average child.
Children with ADHD appear to have higher number of ear infections, allergies, speech delay(which tends to lead to aggressive behaviors), hearing, and vision problems.
These children are very often teased by other children and bullied at school.
These are just a few of the facts found with children suffering from ADHD.
A way that has been found to be helpful in SOME cases with ADHD are by putting the child on an all organic diet, excluding all processed food, colors/dyes, and high fructose corn syrup. Sometimes excluding wheat and dairy can be effective also. Another way that has shown to be helpful is some cases is medication. I would never let anyone tell you what to do for your child. Only you as the parent should decide.
In our specific case Daniel and I knew something was up pretty early in Cody's life. He's always been a very active/hyper child and never slept well. He actually didn't sleep through the night until after he was 3 years old and took very short naps...when he took naps at all. He had very frequent ear infections, but never had tubes. We brought our concerns early on to our then pediatrician who quickly chalked it up to "just being a boy". The following year Cody was still pretty hyper and wasn't talking like we thought he should be and once again we brought it up to our pediatrician and she said we could have him tested on his speech to see what's going on. With his frequent ear infections we believe that with all of the fluid in his ears he was not hearing us or anything else properly. We did have him tested and ended up getting him into speech therapy(he took part in for 3 years). Even with the speech therapy we still felt like something else was going on with they hyperactivity. He was very aggressive towards other children and we didn't feel like his social behaviors were as they should have been.
Cody started preschool and once again his aggressive behavior pattern presented itself. He did very well academically and luckily he had his cousin there with him to play but he didn't branch out too much to other kids. He liked to play by himself a lot and he would take toys from the other children. In the back of my head I wondered if he has some form of high functioning autism. But we thought maybe these behaviors were from his experience as an only child. There was always concern on my part how people viewed Cody. I was afraid that people would label him so I wouldn't schedule any play dates and avoided places where there were a lot of other children. I may have been hurting him instead of helping. Come to find out, it's very common for parents of undiagnosed ADHD children to respond the same as I did.
His second year of preschool he made more friends and had a wonderful teacher that really pointed us in the right direction, having a son with ADD herself. We will never be grateful enough to Mrs. Roberts!! She really opened my eyes to his behavior at school and gave some good recommendations. She is the person who also recommended that we have him tested for ADHD. I was extremely glad that someone finally brought this up, as I had wondered for awhile if he had ADHD.
Although our pediatrician was a great Dr., we didn't feel like she was really taking his situation seriously and had told us that testing and diagnosing for ADHD couldn't happen until Kindergarten. Come to find out that was wrong. Through a woman at our church we found a pediatrician that specializes in ADHD. Cody was tested and diagnosed in 2009. We tried changing his diet a bit but that really didn't do much so we opted to try medication. The 3 hour dose that the Dr. gave us showed a
huge change in his behavior. And when I say huge, I mean extreme changes for the better. Although he showed huge improvement, and decided this was the route we would take, we still had our work cut out for us on changing the behaviors that he had already developed (hitting, pushing, etc...)We had great hope for his future. We still had/have many obstacles to overcome but there was/is hope!
Cody struggled with a very strict teacher in Kindergarten. We thought it could help some of his behaviors until we really dug in and found out about the disorder. We were hoping by having a very structured teacher and schedule that Cody would adhere...but we were wrong. He did well academically but getting him to stay on task, and keep his attention was still a struggle. His teacher showed no mercy and kept telling us that he's a smart, capable young boy but he needed to focus more and correct some social behaviors. Cody had a hard time accepting direction from her. He would give her dirty looks or ignore her. We tried many things but still had the same issues. We didn't know what to do. We felt like he was trying but this teacher was ruff to deal with. We struggled all school year long but had I really done my homework I would have really seen that some of his behaviors were behaviors that all ADHD children suffer from(and I'm not talking about the faces he pulled at her or the ignoring).
Luckily we all lasted the year and we were kind of glad that was over. I went into the school office and specified that Cody needed a teacher next year that had some experience with ADHD. We ended up getting a really good teacher who has really tried to understand and help Cody. We have a daily visit to see how his day went but we found that he was still struggling.
After Daniel spoke to another guy at his work who has two kids with the disorder we found out there are special accommodations that are allowed to children with ADHD. One is conditions for testing one on one instead of with a group. We found that testing Cody in a group setting is not a positive environment because he gets distracted by trucks that go by on the street or the air conditioner turning on. Little things like someone walking down the hall can make him lose all concentration. Testing him one on one he keeps him on task and shows much better results. Giving these children better testing conditions gives them better chances of succeeding. We recently had a SST (student success team) meeting with his school teacher, principal, psychologist, and a couple others to put together a success plan so that next year when he has a new teacher, a plan will already be put together for that teacher to implement. We were also told that Cody's reading was a little bit behind and that if he didn't pass one more test that he could get held back. My heart sunk for him. I feared for him socially as he is still having some difficulty relating to some kids. What would his friends think or say to him if he didn't progress to the second grade with them? Would he have trouble making all new friends? Would he be teased? Will he lose all self confidence? A million things went swirling in my head. We jumped right into action. I have been spending an extra hour a day working with him. He still hates school but if I remember correctly...so did I!!
So fast forward to today. We take it day by day and we also thank our Heavenly Father above for him everyday. It's been a bumpy road at times and days can be crazy. It's nice when he goes to sleep at night and the work for the day is done but it's even sweeter when I get to tip toe into his room in the morning to lay by him and wake him up. He is my heart and one of the reasons why I am alive. I know it's part of mine and Daniel's plan in this life to care for him, love, understand, and give him the confidence he needs to be a successful in life. Which, we are happy to say that most ADHD children grown out of the disorder by the age of adulthood. He's such a special child and we love him tons.
I share our story to bring attention to the disorder and also so that people will perhaps think before they prejudge kids. Everyone is special in their own way!!
Where to begin...I had a great Memorial weekend. I took a trip to Portland, Or. to see my best friends from college. It still amazes us that we met each other 15 years ago on a little island in the Pacific. (Are we really that old?) We decided to say goodbye to our families for a few days and just enjoyed being together. We caught up, we reminisced, we ate good food, we had a movie night, we went to the spa to get facials, we got pedicures, we went to the farmers market at Portland State University, we celebrated our birthdays and we spent some needed time in the hot tub relaxing. Unfortunately my camera is broken so I didn't get to take pictures. I returned home happy to see my hubby and kid! Needless to say that I missed them a lot but I sure did enjoy a stress free weekend with the girls. Thanks to Daniel, Jen and Allison for surprising me with this girls weekend so we could celebrate our friendship and birthdays! Looking forward to our next girls weekend!
