My duaghter sadi that she would find me a dog. I wish we could do some basic editing, my typing sucks.
I was on melaril very briefly. It made me so sleepy that I literally fell asleep while standing up. During gym, the coach called us all together into a tightly packed crowd. I leaned slightly on the guys around me and went to sleep. When the crowd scattered, I woke up on a trip to the floor. My parents, and my teachers, insisted I be taken off the drug. I disagreed, melaril made it very difficult to remain conscious. But when I was conscious, I could finally concentrate. I asked my psychiatrist if he could reduce the dose. He told me I was on the lowest dose. I asked if he could prescribe something else that would keep me awake. He said that combination of meds would be too dangerous. I said I was willing to take that risk, if it meant I could finally think. He decided to take me off the melaril and try something else insead.
I can’t recall any teacher who ever wanted me to conform, or be more normal. They wanted me to be able to do the work, and participate in class without being disruptive. These were the same things I wanted. It was never ‘I don’t like my mind. Give me pills.’. It was ‘I cannot function like this. I want to be able to function.’
Function is a very important word when it comes to mental health. It’s never ‘Johnny has too much energy, let’s give him some pills.’ It’s ‘Johnny is hyperactive to the point that he cannot function. The tests show he had ADHD. Ritalin is the recognized treatment for this. We’ll start with a low dose and work from there.’
Yeah, you were on the perfect zombie cocktail. It’s a terrible crime that shrinks prescribe drugs with the apparent goal of just getting the patient into a mindless calm. But Ritalin, even though it can help a kid who’s hyperactive, does anything but. It allows you that moment to decide what you’re doing before you start doing it; it gives you the ability to make a choice on your behavior. That’s the opposite of what things like Haldol or sedatives do.
I can’t make any judgments on what a parent does for their kid with ADD, but studies show that Ritalin, in prescribed doses (which are quite small) is not addictive. ADD people in general are more likely to develop substance abuse problems, but a pretty long history of use for the drug has demonstrated that it doesn’t commonly pose that problem.
That’s great - she’s obviously quite successful, and I’m glad. Problem is, that sort of thing doesn’t necessarily work. The exercise is a great thing for anyone with ADD, but that many structured activities, when I was a kid, would have driven me absolutely insane. I would never have been able to deal with that many things, and often, parents of kids with ADD have to be quite careful to limit the number of activities they engage in, because the kids have a natural tendency to take on too much, and the resulting stress and lack of free time can be extremely difficult.
I say this to illustrate the paradoxical nature of ADD - what works for one person is absolutely poisonous to another. Some kids can’t concentrate with music playing; I can’t study without it. Some kids respond well to a highly structured external environment like your stepdaughters’; others don’t, and do badly if they don’t have plenty of unstructured free time. And some kids just don’t respond adequately to therapy and life changes. It helps, but they still have the same troubles. In those cases, the drugs are an option.
Excellent posts Excalibre and doc Cathode. If all it took to manage hlanelee’s stepdaughter’s ADHD was a lot of structure, then personally I’d wonder about the diagnosis in the first place. I’m glad she had that outcome – there’s no way it would work for my older kid.
I wouldn’t discount diet totally though. I do believe that for some kids the Dengate diet is enough to manage their ADHD. Wasn’t enough for my older kid in the long run but he’s significantly worse if we don’t manage his diet closely. My younger son is on a gluten free/ casein free diet with a lot of supplementation and enzymes and it’s night and day in terms of attentional crap when he eats wheat inadvertantly.
I was in a dance class before I was diagnosed. I would constantly go off to another part of the room and do my own thing, not pay attention, flit around.
In first grade, it was so bad that I would sometimes pace while we were supposed to be standing at the blackboard, because I literally COULD NOT keep still.
I guess I am resentful of the idea of, “oh, just drug the kid up.” It seems to imply that my ADHD was somehow a failure on my part, and if I just kept working harder, I could have overcome it.
Oh, how I WISH that were true.
ADHD childern and adults can’t overcome this or out grow this.
They have to learn how to deal with it. And I am trying to help my son as much as I possibly can. That’s all I can do. And to let him know that I love him and always will.
Sorry, I said that wrong-what I mean is, I get angry when people assume that Ritalin is an easy way out, that I could just work harder and it would go away.
Which is wrong. I NEEDED (and still do) the Ritalin to function. When people tell me that I was just “drugging myself rather than making an effort”, it seems to imply that I’m a failure because I take Ritalin.
I’m on your side.
And I am on yours… Thanks allot. It makes me feel better to be reasured that I am doing the best thing I can for my son…