My wife and I are starting to strongly suspect HermitChild1 (HC1) of having ADHD predominately inattentive (formally known as just ADD, so not the hyperactive part).
Obviously if nothing else words and it gets to a point that she needs an official diagnosis and medication we will do that, but we would like to try non-medications options first.
I’ve tried doing some research online and it is either pretty basic stuff (get enough sleep, don’t eat too many processed carbs, etc) or the real woo-woo stuff.
Have you gone through this process before for a kid? Was there anything that you did or tried that really helped?
My brother and I both have ADHD, with a hyperactivity component (I think we’re probably purely hyperactive-impulsive, rather than combined - though impulsivity leads to inattention also). My parents “didn’t believe” in medication until the middle school threatened to send my brother to a school for kids with behavioral issues if they didn’t seek treatment for him. By that time I was 17 and I’ve never been on medication.
I’ve found that exercise is the most helpful thing for symptom control. Through my early 20s that was several hours a week of bike riding and/or walking. I still walk a lot.
Caffeine definitely helps. I think that flaxseed oil and L-Glutamine help too and there’s some evidence that omega-3 fatty acids like flaxseed do help (you could do fish oil instead, the lemon flavored doesn’t have an after taste).
My mom did…it didn’t work. All through grade school (80s-90s) I kept telling her something was ‘wrong’. Somewhere in high school I read about ADD/ADHD, showed her what I read and said I think that’s what my issue is. She explained that they had me tested for it years earlier (I do remember that) and I was ‘borderline’. They give my parents the option of trying meds and they passed. I said that since they tried not using meds for 10ish years, how about we try them. No dice.
When I was in college, I went to a psych doc, got on adderall and, omg, I wish I went on them earlier. Suddenly I was one of those people that actually did all their homework. I could read an entire book in one or two days instead of a month. My grades started getting better. And while it was obviously the amphetamine portion doing this, I was considerably more outgoing, which never came easy for me (and still isn’t).
After college, I stopped taking them. But a few years back, I talked to my regular doc and went back on them. The ADD/ADHD symptoms never went away and I figured there’s no point in fighting this all day, everyday when I really don’t have to.
My daughter certainly seems like she could benefit from it, so now I’m in that same tough spot. I’m sure they’ll help her, but giving my kid speed sure feels odd.
It’s interesting that you (elfkin) mentioned caffeine. That’s what got me to get back on the meds. I had a really, really hectic week coming up where I needed to be on point the entire time. I got some caffeine pills and took those all week. I don’t drink soda or coffee, so I knew they’d give my body a pretty good jolt, which they did and worked well. I also knew that the second I stopped taking them, I’d end up with a headache for a few days…which I did. That was when I decided to go back on adderall. No headaches when I’m coming down and not going wildly up and down all day.
I still believe that if I went on them on grade school, or even high school, I would have had no problem maintaining something in the area of a B average instead of spending 12 years struggling, just hoping not to get any Fs this semester. I probably would have enjoyed it all a lot more. I still envy people that can sit and read for hours. I could never do that. Still can’t. After a few pages, my mind is nowhere near the book, even if I still look like I’m reading.
But at the same time, just like you, I can imagine a day when she learns more about it and says something like “Wait, you knew there was a way to have helped me with this and you didn’t? Why?”
I was diagnosed with ADHD back in the third grade. My advice is- just put your kid on methylphenidate.
Why should that seem weird? Is it odd to give a diabetic insulin? Is it odd to give a near sighted child some glasses?
My parents did sometimes feel guilty that I was on meds. I wanted those meds very badly because they helped me so very much. Without them, I was almost literally bouncing off the walls and it felt like there was a hurricane in my mind. With the Ritalin, I could sit and concentrate and get things done.
Same for me. Why am I making my daughter struggle so much when she doesn’t need to?
There are behavioural techniques that can help manage ADHD. You will stumble across some yourselves, just by living with it. There are also books with ideas, or you can see a professional for advice.
There are studies that prescribing children with ADHD Ritalin and the like can actually improve connectivity between different parts of the brain.
I felt weird about giving my son the stuff too but the pediatrician basically demonstrated to me at several appointments how my son just was incapable of paying attention in addition to some other symptoms. Why not try it and see if there is improvement you can always take them off it later. My niece was prescribed Ritalin when she was younger and when she got a little older her symptoms seemed to improve and she no longer needed the medication.
Russell Barkley is a world renowned expert on ADHD. Consider buying any one of his books on helping to manage ADHD. He is a proponent of medication but only as part of a three pronged treatment program that includes education about what ADHD is and what behavioral steps can be taken to assist the ADHD individual, especially in the school setting.
As someone who had a late diagnosed ADHD kid (they were 14 at diagnosis - we knew something was “wrong” but the school was unwilling to support a diagnosis), START with meds. It can be a day and night difference while put the coping mechanisms in place to perhaps eventually go without meds. Too much time can be wasted futzing around with trying other things (or arguing with the school), and that time is lost when you are a kid - you get tracked as stupid or irresponsible for not turning in homework, or forgetting to do it in the first place…or, what finally sent us into diagnosis - getting to the point in math where a smart kid actually has to pay attention to follow through to the end of the problem. THEN add the other support mechanisms - get a therapist who specializes in ADHD to help learn the tricks to support getting stuff done in a brain that lacks executive function. If you want to try weekends without meds, and then see if they can still get some homework done, give it a try, maybe the therapy and other techniques you try will be able to compensate. But according to my kid, trying to learn the techniques to compensate while not being capable of paying attention or following through was doomed for failure.
I went to a doc who’s only job is try different medications on ADHD patients. Went through six months of experiments: “Ok, Doc, this one definitely helped me focus, but going a week without sleep kind of wipes out any benefits.”
Finally after one two-week trial I excitedly reported “This is great, we finally found one that helped, but I was able to get sleep, too!” He laughed “THAT was basically a strong cup of coffee. If you’d like to avoid prescription drugs, you could just have a second cup of coffee about noon.”
I’ve found exercise really helps, too. Now, I don’t have the attention span for “working out”, but long bike rides work, if there’s changing scenery (and a stop at a coffee joint).
This is one of the enduring regrets of my life. My son was ADHD, but try as I might–and I really tried, over and over–I could not get a diagnosis. His teachers would say, “He’s so impulsive. He’s so distractible. He’s so fidgety.” I’d say, “That sounds like ADHD to me,” and they’d say, “Well, he’s 6 (or 7 or 9, or 11). Maybe he’ll outgrow it” I asked his pediatrician. He said he didn’t diagnose ADHD. There were no psychiatrists within 100 miles. This was just after the whole over-diagnosis flap, so nobody wanted to diagnose it. It wasn’t until he was in college that he finally got on meds. They changed his life.
I wish I’d screamed until someone listened. I wish I’d let my kids have caffeine. I’d banned it because I thought it was bad for kids. I wish I’d given him a cola every morning.
Please consider meds. I taught kids whose parents didn’t let them take ADHD meds, and I hated seeing them struggle. While there are steps you can take like limiting distractions, those steps don’t help what’s going on inside their brains and bodies.
I’m reluctant to pipe in here, we’re fortunate, neither of our kids have had ADHD, but FWIW we’ve had several close friends who went through it.
In both cases they had a “naturalistic” bias, that somehow drugs were “artificial and bad” and they went through a whole bunch of different “natural remedies” and behavioural processes, none of which worked. Eventually at about middle school, their kids hit a crisis point and were on the edge of getting sent to a special school. They reluctantly put them on meds as a “last resort”.
In both cases their decision to not use meds was exactly this:
In each case the kids settled down and found focus etc and grades skyrocketed. A night and day difference for them. One friend’s son went from being 2 grades levels behind in math and english to above grade level within a year, Smart kid with lots of potential that just needed to get focused.
Again, FWIW, I’d say get your kid professionally evaluated and follow the professional’s advice.
Again, FWIW, I’d say get your kid professionally evaluated and follow the professional’s advice.
What about adults on the wrong side of 50 …
My son has just been diagnosed as having ADD. He is almost 30, and while he completed secondary school with good grades, he was completely unable to cope with tertiary education, and has been living at home ever since with generalized anxiety issues, unable to work. This is in addition to dyslexia (impacting his writing, not reading), and being somewhere on the autism spectrum. The reason he went to the psychologist was because we felt that a formal diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder would help in his dealings with welfare agencies. So in addition to that diagnosis he came back with a script for Ritalin and an ADD diagnosis.
Now I have to make a decision about whether I need to make a similar appointment - in very many respects, my son is a chip off his old man’s block. I had problems with dyslexia as a child, and developed strategies to compensate. I tick the same boxes for being on the autism spectrum. Compared to my son, I handle anxiety somewhat better - mostly by internalizing the stress (which probably has caused an entirely different set of psychological issues). In short, I think it is probable that I also have ADD. This seems to be a common pathway to adults finding they have ADD - their child gets diagnosed, and they recognise the symptoms in themselves.
I’m just not even sure I want to find out - mostly, things are going well in my life, and I am change-averse. I worry that changing something fundamental in my fifties risks upsetting the even keel my life is on. I’m not sure what to do.
