Not the road less traveled

Ever since this mind boggling realization that ADD was real and it was not my son's fault but a real malady, I have been on the search for a cure. I want my son to live a long and happy life free of any disability that would diminish his enjoyment of this gift we call life. We have seen many doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, educational specialists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, read books, gone to seminars, joined CHADD and gone to meetings, and even started a parents help group for the local area not served by CHADD, gone to AA and alanon meetings to try to stem a natural desire to self medicate and control the symptoms that the doctors are failing to alieve. I even came up with some cute T-shirts designed to show my son it was okay to have ADD and start accepting it rather that fight it and deny it because the books and tapes available to do this just were not getting the message accross. It is through more than a decade of this windy often rocky road that I have come to beleive some key fundamental things regarding ADD. ADD is an umbrella term that encompasses many different maladies, and to top it off, the list of comorbid diseases that often accompany ADD are enough to confuse all but the most knowledgable and highly specialized doctors around. In some uncomplicated cases people respond quite well to medicines and psychotherapy. Some just need a diet change or allergies addressed properly. For more difficult cases brain scans seem to be the only hope for an effective solution to the various aggrevious symptoms. In the future we will not so much address these problems as ADD som much as we will more specifically diagnose the problems to various specific parts of the brain through brain scans. This is fast becoming a more effective solution for such a confusing problem. This personally has been the most miraculous breakthrough in our entire ordeal. Finally we got answers to our most perplexing dilemmas. The tools are now becoming available and the experts in the field are earning more credibility from the medical community all the time. (no small feat at that!) Soon even the medical insurance companies will cover these proceedures and we all will feel like it has become commonplace to deal with mental infirmities just like we deal with the physical ones, which by the way we are far from conquering. Psychology is exiting the stone age, and we are now looking at the organ involved and understanding so much more. I am glad this was available for my son.

ADD Exercise #2

ADD activity #2

Spelling- want to see why your ADD child has such illegible handwriting?
(this one helps to have a partner say the spelling words and time them appropriately, like a real spelling test)

1. Sit down on a firm chair and place a pad of paper on your lap with your legs together and feet flat on the floor.
2. Place your name and date on top of the page and then number from 1 to 10 down the left side of the page.
3. Now turn the pad of paper upside down and place your pencil or pen in the other hand.
4. Now (with your partner saying one word, repeated every 10 seconds for a total of 3 times and 30 seconds per word)
spell the following 10 words next to the numbers 1-10. You should be writing upside down with the wrong hand and going from right to left. Also, as you are doing this you need to make circles with your feet- the right foot going clockwise, and your left foot going counter clockwise-
Ready? Begin.

1) pretty, 2)lime, 3) bend, 4) canvas, 5) regular, 6) investment, 7) opportunity, 8) frustration, 9) bartender, 10) individual.

Any of us can spell these words in 10 seconds with much time to spare. Most children can do this easily in 30 seconds. I added larger words for us adults to keep this fair. Adults spelling childrens words and comparing themselves to children is silly. We only start out easy so you can get the hang of it.
It also helps when halfway through as we start to fall behind your partner periodically tells us to "pay attention" and "try harder" When the time is up, turn the paper rightside up and see how many words you actually completed. Does the handwriting look familiar? How do you feel?


I first learned these exercises from attending a seminar on ADD taught by Dr. Barkley if I remember correctly. Many parents ran outside during the break to call their spouses telling them not to spank or punish the children any more. We learned how to see more than just the world through the eyes of our children that day, we learned what we looked like too, and that wasn't very pretty.

Learning to be ADD

ADD activity #1

This activity will show you that having ADD does not mean you are stupid. You know the information, you just don't control the access or distribution of this information very well.

Recite 2 easy nursery rhymes. We all know them backwards and forwards.

1- Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow.
2- Jack and Jill ran up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

now for the ADD part- without looking at the above rhymes, recite the first word of Mary had a little lamb, then the first word of Jack and Jill, then the second word of Mary had a little lamb, followed by the second word of Jack and Jill, then the third word of Mary. . . etc. . . all the way through both rhymes.

I couldn't do it either, even though I tried REALLY hard. As you are doing this its nice to have a partner slapping you on the wrist every 30 seconds for "Not trying hard enough" or "Not paying attention" and threatening you with grounding or no dessert, etc. . . Now we are entering the world of our Alpha Delta Deltas.

What is ADD Really?

The journey leads next to discovery. I needed to know what this ADD thing is and what I could do to help my son. What was he going through? When was he capable of doing things and when will he need help? How can I tell the difference between him not being able to achieve and just not wanting to cooperate or participate? Are meds necessary? Can diet and environment affect him? What are some alternative interventions that can help him return his attention to the task on hand? What kind of tools can help? What are behavior mods? Where can I find them? Which ones really work? Who can I talk to about all this? and on and on and on. Just as I get one question answered, ten more pop up. I was sinking fast. This was not going to be easy and all my wonderful HELPFUL friends and relatives were going to have to shut up and keep their opinions to themselves for awhile. Spanking, time outs, no TV, etc. . . did not work. I needed something and we were ALL clueless, except I was the only one who knew it.
My son was getting kicked out of class around 3 times per week and I had to come get him. How could I work? Wasn't school supposed to be able to deal with him? Isn't there more than just my son with ADD in this school? Does everybody who has a child with ADD have to leave work early to deal with their child? More questions and nobody had answers, that is until I found books on the subject. Even the psychologist that we got referred to just sat and talked with my son. That was it. I never got any info or feedback. I was just supposed to understand he was getting help. What kind of help and when it would become apparent was irrelevent I guess. The books helped, and soon the authors would do speaking tours and I got to go to a seminar conducted by a nationally renowned expert. This class by Dr. Barkley was fantastic. It really opened up my eyes as to what my son was going through. He mentioned a group called CHADD and said they had local branches and they could help answer questions.
What was profoundly insightful about the seminar was he actually made us all have ADD for a moment so we could REALLY understand what our children were going through and see the difference between having a disability and being intelligent. You CAN have both, as Alpha Delta Delta's do. Next- becoming ADD.

And along came a teacher

One day, out of the blue while I was picking up my son early from school because of something he did or took or hit, his teacher walked outside with us and closed the door behind, leaving the classroom temporarily teacher-free. She looked into my eyes and probably sensing my loss for direction offered some advice in one brief sentence that changed my life completely. She said, "Meds have worked miracles for children with ADD" and with that she kindly smiled and returned to the room like a Genie summoned back to her bottle.
All the short walk to work with my son I could not get those words out of my head. Was there something wrong with my son? Did my son Have ADD? When I got to work I called our pediatrician and booked an appointment. He gave my son a physical and I asked him if he knew anything about ADD. He said he did and he gave me some questinoaires to fill out, have my sons teacher fill out, and then return with them completed at my son's next appointment. There were a over a hundred questions and you answered them with, "never, sometimes, and frequently." I was pretty shocked by the questionaire. There was so many things that my son did that were on those sheets of paper I could hardly believe it. I was even more amazed when the forms were filled out by both myself and my sons teacher. Identical responses to all the questions, and the ones that we responded to positively (almost all of them) they were almost all, "frequently." The funny thing was that during the doctor visits my son was pretty well behaved. He didn't even fidget much. He looked so calm and cute and happy. Probably because of this the doctor then referred us to a psychologist. We visited her a couple of times and she prescribed some ritalin after she was sure my son was ADD. After a couple of visits he would start to climb the walls and it was then I learned that for short periods of time in new environments an ADD person is so stimulated with the new surroundings that they can appear to be having a "honeymoon" from their symptoms. I balked at the ritalin thing, not wanting to drug my son, and asked about alternatives. She suggested exercise, behavior charts and the Feingold Diet. Our journey had just begun.

In the Beginning there was a child, a divorce and lots of blame

Looking through the rearview is sometimes pleasant, sometimes not, yet I find myself assessing my life more frequently as each trip around the sun becomes seemingly shorter. Could I have predicted this ADD parenting thing and chosen an easier softer way? What could I have done differently to have made the course of events better? What can I say to those following in my footsteps to help them avoid some of my misteps and help them get to where I am now much easier and more quickly?

Well for one thing, don't do what my wife and I did the first 3 years of our sons life- we blamed each other for our son's behavior. She was an addict/alcholic (self medicating ADD) and I was a non manipulatable self willed co-dependant. A match made in Hell I used to say. We were divorced before he was born and visitation was a fun new way to sling arrows into the backs (and fronts) of each other. I would complain that every time I picked him up he was sick, and she would complain that every time I brought him back home she could not control him. I was the reason her life was in such a shambles and I would put the blame directly in her lap where I knew it belonged.
Looking back I can see that although neither of us needed these little wars, I can see no escape from them. This was just the way it had to be under these circumstances. The only other thing I could have done would have been to admit all wrong and pay all her bills, just like she wanted me to so she could go out and party all night long without any consequences. What addict/alcoholic wouldnt want this? And being a self-righteous co-dependant I was not going to give in one bit.
After a few years of this the new game was to bring him over to my house at 8:00 a.m. and tell me I had to take care of him because she couldn't and after all he was my responsibility too. How could I argue with that? So I found daycare, got him to a doctor (still sick) and rearranged my schedule to accomodate my suddenly new lifestyle. Of course a week or two later I would get a phone call demanding more assistance with the threat of taking him back if I didnt comply. Needless to say she came and got him the next day. 4-6 weeks later we would play this out again, and finally the third time I realized this was a new and twisted game and changed the rules by refusing to give him back and I took her to court for full custody. Although I got a lot of heat from her and her family, this went over a little better than I expected and I suspect that this was what she was hunting for all along. Sure she had to blame me for it, but how else could she save face?
Soon, after having my son with me longer than a couple of weeks we started having problems. The public seemed to want my son to behave with a little more constraint than we were used to at home. At home he could play all day and what little boy doesn't, right? In public he had to sit still for a few minutes or be quiet or basically not climb around so much. Surely my wife didn't teach him any manners or work with him at all, so naturally she got all the blame. Hmmmm, sounds vaguely familiar, except the roles are now reversed.
Looking back these were the arguments that didn't need to be fought. Our son was the way he was, not because we were awful parents. We were merely basically skilled parents, with a high needs child. We were in over our heads and the easiest way to bail out a sinking boat is to pass the bucket to the other person.
Three years and 2 daycares, 3 preschools and 2 kindergartens later I was picking him up from school early a couple of times a week. He was not doing any better in elementary school than he did in a more casual setting like preschool. Still hitting people, pushing people, swearing like a marine, "whapping" other kids with sticks, throwing rocks at cars, hiding under desks, and running into the street whenever the urge hits him. Something had to change, and that something had to be me.

Where to begin?

Having had a child diagnosed with ADHD for over 14 years now it seems strange to begin a blog at this time. So much has happened, so many battles have raged and so much has changed. Because I have so much history, and yet still so far to go, this blog is sure to time travel so I hope I don't lose anybody. I will try to pass on what I have learned, and continue to learn in the struggle to help my son and the ADHD community at large deal with such an overwhelming subject as Attention Deficit Disorder.
As of this writing my son is away at a group home where he has been on the recommendation of his IEP group for the past year and few months. This has been an experience unto itself. We had high hopes in the beginning that this would be the best environment for him to thrive and get back on track with some of the issues that had gone south since his first year in mainstream high school, yet it has turned out to be much less than we hoped. For now I am looking forward to having him come back home, once I persuade the judicial system that he is no longer being served at his current location and the best place for him is back home.
As a youth my mother would tell me that I would someday make a great father. I was great with kids and read to them in separate character voices so they could more easily follow who was talking- that kind of thing.
My first child was rather easy to parent, and my skills as a father were few and simple. I thought, "Wow, this is easy" (don't ever say that as soon you're about to see.) Then came my second son and all of a sudden I had to constantly learn new ways to try to gain control of the situation as each successful strategy was short lived. Now I know something about great parents. We are not normally self made- we are CHOSEN. People don't just wake up one day and say, "Hey, I think I'm going to learn twenty different ways to get my child to stop grabbing things that don't belong to him" especially when their child responds well to verbal stimuli and doesn't do this frequently. I had to wait until I had a child that didn't respond to the usual; talking, scolding, time out, longer time out, slapping the hand, spanking the bottom and sending to the room school of thought before I even had to THINK about learning some REAL parenting skills.
Now for the one-liner. I like to wrap things up into nice little sound-bites that are easily memorized and can be readily dispensed when the need arises. There is a saying that goes- "A calm sea never made a great sailor", and being a sailor I know what that means. It means that if you stay in a protected area or only go out on calm, gentle days, you will never be pushed enough to handle a challenge when the storm arrives. This is a great parallel to parenting, so we can safely say, "A Calm Child Never Made A Great Parent"
Please do not take offense to this if you had occasional difficulties with your children and you consider yourself a good parent. I have no doubt about your sincerity and even if all you did was attend your children's baseball games, helped them with homework and taught them good values and manners, then I would have to agree. I see LOTS of children every day whose parents could learn a lesson or two from you. what I am talking about is something much different, and if you don't have a difficult child, then you couldn't even begin to understand what I am talking about. Another way of putting it is like me as a male not understanding what it's like for a woman to carry a child for nine months and then give birth to them. Even though I was supportive and had to put up with my wife and pick up all the slack as she became less and less able to do her share of the responsibilities throughout all that time, I'll still have to take your word for what it is like to do something like that. I hope you will take mine : ) And to all you parents out there who are dealing with difficult children, learning disabilities, physical, mental or emotional problems and the like, I salute you. We are Super Parents and we deserve a little respect.