ADHD - Advice welcome (longish)

[Marilyn82]

Hi all,

I'm posting because I guess I just want some support from people who have been down this path. I'd love any advice you mamas might have for me.

I believe my son has ADHD (primarily the inattentive type). I guess when I look back, the signs were always there but I chalked it up to immaturity and/or age. Over the past couple of years the symptoms have been much more pronounced. I've suspected ADHD for over a year now but had not really done a lot of research because I wanted to wait and see if his behavior was more linked to age etc. I spoke with his teacher at the beginning of the school year and told her that I was concerned that he may have some type of auditory processing disorder and/or ADHD. She agreed with me at the time and told me that we would begin the process of having him evaluated but that it might not happen until the end of the year or beginning of the following year. DS is 7.5 years old and I think she too wanted to see how the school year played out.

I feel bad about this set of decisions because the dynamic I have with my son is really difficult. It has degraded over the course of the year to the point where I had a bit of a breakdown because I feel so bad that I sometimes cannot even stand being around my own child. You see, I have generalized anxiety disorder and it doesn't exactly mesh well with the ADHD symptoms my son has. I think if I would have had him diagnosed sooner, I would have been able to get some tools to help me deal with it and it would have really helped. As it stands now I feel that my inability to 'handle' him has caused some damage, both to our relationship as well as his self esteem. I've had an extremely stressful year and am afraid that my very intuitive child has picked up on my constant irritation with him, despite my attempts to hide it.In addition, he is about a year behind in reading and math.

I finally began really delving into researching and it's like I could almost hear an audible "DING DING DING DING". As if all of the symptoms/information on the inattentive ADHD are describing my child in a way I could not find the words for. I KNOW he has it, I'm certain of it. I already understand him so much better and I think our relationship is already improving because of it.

I spoke with his teacher to see what the status of the evaluation was. I was told that she had decided not to have him evaluated after all because he would need to be at least 2 grade levels behind and she feels that he does not have a LD. She completely agrees with me about the ADHD and recommended I have him evaluated through his doctor. I took him to the doctor (we use a family practice where he sees the Physician's Assistant who has always been great thus far) and she said that it is usually done through the school and gave me a letter requesting that the teacher fill out an evaluation form (which she is supposed to obtain from the district apparently). I dropped that off at the school and sent the teacher a follow up email but have not received a response.

So my plan for now is to get him on the Feingold diet to see if it will help. I also plan to try to get him in some type of counseling if at all possible. We have zero extra money right now and ds is on state medicaid. I have to call and see what services are available to him through insurance. 

I guess I will have to figure out how to navigate this whole school system now, any advice would be a huge help.

I've ordered a couple of books on Amazon (Super parenting for ADHD and also Driven to Distraction) but any more recommendations would be appreciated.

Sorry for being so long winded, thank you in advance :)

 

[Emmeline II]

ADHD is diagnosed through a psychologist or doctor (preferably a psychiatrist--PCPs usually do not usually have the time to do a through evaluation or much experience with ADHD medication when needed). Some schools have psychologists but I would not rely on that as their concern is the child's performance in school. If the evaluator wishes to have the school's input (which they should) they should have their own form to give the teacher--and you will likely get a quicker response that way. I would try to get in to a psychiatrist (or psychologist) that is experience with child ADHD.

[blessedwithboys]

Skimmed your OP bc of loud crazy kids crawling on me but just wanted to throw it out there that the diet change is great and so is reducing chemical cleaners and bath products and such but what helped my son the most was a sleep study.  What we thought was ADHD was really a sleep disorder and now that we are treating that, he is getting better.

[jtbuko]

My son is a similar age, and I can relate to your post. Teacher got frustrated which lead to really productive conference where she raised issue of testing for possible inattentive type ADHD a couple months ago. This led to lots of library and web research for me, visit to ped (who gave a diagnosis via forms filled out by parent and teacher), several visits to private psychologist with more extensive tests that led to the same results as ped. I turned in school form for child study Monday and have not heard a thing yet.

arrggg... gotta run, will try to come back later

[FarmerBeth]

Along with the psychiatrist that Emmeline mentioned, I'd also suggest you have an audiology appointment and specifically ask for testing for central auditory processing disorder (sometimes SLP's can arrange this, too.  Inattentive type ADHD and central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) look very similar.  My youngest son's "attentional" and sometimes behavioral problems improved so much with diagnosis and treatment/adaptations for CAPD that his teachers this year were surprised there had ever been a question of attention.  CAPD is less likely if there are ADHD symptoms but no reading difficulty (most children with CAPD have reading difficulty due to phonological processing difficulties) or if the poor attention is across the board (kids with CAPD can often pay better attention to visual tasks or pay better attention with less background noise).  Your gut feeling and the teacher's are probably right if you really feel it's ADHD, but better off to cover the bases in case.

[joensally]

Originally Posted by FarmerBeth 

Along with the psychiatrist that Emmeline mentioned, I'd also suggest you have an audiology appointment and specifically ask for testing for central auditory processing disorder (sometimes SLP's can arrange this, too.  Inattentive type ADHD and central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) look very similar.  My youngest son's "attentional" and sometimes behavioral problems improved so much with diagnosis and treatment/adaptations for CAPD that his teachers this year were surprised there had ever been a question of attention.  CAPD is less likely if there are ADHD symptoms but no reading difficulty (most children with CAPD have reading difficulty due to phonological processing difficulties) or if the poor attention is across the board (kids with CAPD can often pay better attention to visual tasks or pay better attention with less background noise).  Your gut feeling and the teacher's are probably right if you really feel it's ADHD, but better off to cover the bases in case.

Yes to the above.  Here's the thing with ADHD - it's a checklist of behaviours and if a child manifests enough of them, it gets called ADHD.  BUT, if the behaviours are actually caused by some other issue (ie CAPD, or certain vision issues that the behavioural manifestations of which largely mirror ADHD), without dealing with the other issue you're going to have limited success helping the child to manage their behaviours.