More Measuring

It's easy to lose perspective when my ideal of normal daily life has become skewed. I can give my daughter a 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, one being typical behavior and 5 being super wacky. I gave her half a point for turning a foul mood around, because I really wanted to give her a four for not listening and following directions, for being extra sneaky about crunching on the pistachio shells that hadn't made it to the trash, and for wetting her panting during outdoor play.
Listening and following directions is a real challenge these days. My daughter doesn't pay attention to what anyone says if she has her mind on something else. My cries of, "Stop! Turn around! Come back!" go unheeded. Her mind is too full of the destination to pay attention. If it does sink in that I am calling her back, she is irresistably pulled into disobedience. Her distress is real when she does obey, sobbing, "But I don't want to!" I feel silly praising her for good listening when she does it with such reluctance and after much delay, but I know I can do it more often.
Sneakiness and backtalk are tougher to deal with. I am hardwired to respond to backtalk (including under the breath mumbling) with severe punishment. I am constantly reminding myself about the message and the effectiveness of the discipline I dish out. The old rules don't always work.
I understand why a six year old would wet her pants, however. Like a much younger child, she gets so involved with her play that she doesn't pay attention to her body signals. I can only sigh and be grateful that she rushed inside to change.

Measuring Behavior

How do I measure my child's behavior, when I am actively working to improve it? It seems easy enough. Either my child is listening and following directions without sulks, sighs, or eye rolls or she is disobedient and unruly, while creating more messes for me to clean up. Perhaps, but measuring my child's behavior can be more complicated than that.
First I can decide which behaviors to measure. With an ADHD child, I'll want to measure behaviors like listening and following directions, thinking before acting, staying reasonably calm and still, and general mood relative to the situation. I'll also want to offer warnings to control these behaviors and measure the responses. If my child gets few warnings and responds to them by changing behavior, that is good behavior. If she needs frequent warnings and doesn't heed them, that is not so good behavior. During each activity in the day, I can keep track of the number of warnings and responses and accurately measure how well she is doing. It's better than using my own mood as a barometer, which is inaccurate and drags me down.

When the Attitude Adjustment You Need Is Your Own

"Raising a child who purposely pukes on the floor like a cat with a hairball is no excuse for a bad attitude."

Okay, sometimes my child makes Dennis the Menace look like an angel, and that's isn't even the child with ADHD. As a parent, I am often overwhelmed by the deepest love and affection I have ever felt, but I am also overwhelmed by poor grades and behavior reports, forgotten jackets, illicit candy wrappers the dog has confiscated, scattered toys and crayons, and wordless shrieks punctuated by nasty but articulate accusations. Every now and then, a temper tantrum hits like a Kansas cyclone, and I respond with one of my own.
I know I am supposed to be the grown up in this scenario. I am supposed to be setting an example. I rarely feel as though I'm setting a good example, but at least I know that my explosive moods are best to be wrestled with alone. I have the presence of mind to administer medication, make sure teeth are brushed, and send them off to bed before the top of my head blows off.
"Is there gonna be blood?" my six-year-old asks.
I bite back a sarcastic, "Only if you don't get in bed NOW," and replace it with, "No, there's going to be fire, and trust me, you don't want to get burned."
I have learned that when my inner brat gets the better of me, she needs to be sent to her room until she calms down. Then, I can use my words to express my anger and frustration and expectations for better behavior in the future. Sometimes that part about better behavior goes for me, as well.

Nutrition vs. Medication for Managing ADHD--The Easy Way Out

When I talk with anyone about the "diet" my child is on to manage her ADHD, the discussion often turns to the ease of using medication as opposed to the inconvenience of nutrition. I once thought that meds were the easy way out myself, but I have learned differently.
Make no mistake, the Feingold Program is inconvenient. In order to avoid the synthetic additives that trigger exaggerated ADHD symptoms, we are limited in the brands and flavors of processed foods we can feed our child. Only certain brands are considered acceptable for products like potato chips, popcorn, pretzels, lemonade, yogurt, soy milk, cold cereals, and sliced bread to name a few food items. Convenience foods? Unless you shop at Whole Foods Market regularly, forget it. You can make many favorite foods from scratch, but it takes a great deal of creativity, ingenuity, and discipline to come up with easy meals that everyone likes. Additionally, salicylates, which occur naturally in many foods, can have an ill effect of those with ADHD, so in the beginning, we had to avoid many healthy favorites such as apples, oranges, tomatoes, peaches, and all berries.
The Feingold Program, like any nutrition program, is a lifestyle choice. My husband packs my daughter's school lunches. We import food to every birthday party and every other special occasion. We've all but given up fast food, with the exception of those establishments that the Feingold Association's Restaurant Guide recommends.
Like most lifestyle choices, this one has turned out to be healthier for the entire family. We know that our daughter can eat healthier and control her ADHD symptoms with nutrition, and it is a solution that will last her a lifetime. Still, the inconveniences are weighed against the ease of taking a pill or wearing a patch, aren't they?
Having explored the medication solution, we have discovered that it is anything but easy. Never mind that the process involves experimenting with dangerous chemicals with alarming and sometimes life-threatening side-effects. The first step on the path of treating ADHD with medication involves finding the right medication for your child. You can try one, and if it doesn't work, you can try another.
With fast-acting meds, you can start right away and stop right away, but it takes a few weeks at the very least to determine whether the medication is working properly. On the other hand, the fast-acting meds tend to wear out by dinner time, leaving you with a Jekyll and Hyde child to deal with. The teachers get Dr. Jekyll and the parents get Mr. Hyde. This does not help create a happy family life.
With the slower-acting medications, you must start with an extremely low dose and gradually increase it over time. It can take a few weeks to reach the appropriate dose, and then a month to see any result. If the medication is not effective, you must slowly reduce the dosage in order to stop the medication. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, the calendar pages are turning, and once you find the right medication, you will likely have to start the process all over again as your child grows and changes.
For our child, it has taken us eight months to figure out that neither medication we tried was effective. During this time, we stubbornly stuck to the nutrition solution because we knew that whatever result came from the experiment, nutrition was the only long-term solution. It has also proven so far to the be the only easy way out.
Eventually we may find a medication that controls our child's ADHD symptoms. If we get lucky, that medication will contain none of the offending ingredients that send her over the edge. And if she's lucky she will only be taking them for a year or two. No matter what happens, at least we will eat well.

Rough Road, Stormy Seas

My six year old daughter has lately been unable to keep her fingers out of the peanut butter. I would frown at one taste with a clean spoon, but that would require more foresight and restraint than she has right now. It is not limited to peanut butter. She has taken to raiding the refrigerator, exploring the contents of dresser drawers other than her own, and climbing up to reach forbidden objects. I've noticed an uptick in disobedience and defiance, more tantrums, more distress in the feel of snug clothing against her body. And then it hit me. We are reducing the medication she was taking because it was not effective enough to keep her calm enough to learn.
This particular medication did have somewhat of a calming effect on my daughter. However, it does contain an artificial color in the coating on the pill. My child is allergic to artificial dyes--they dramatically increase her hyperactivity, impulsivity, non-compliance, and inattentiveness. We had hoped that the medicine would overcome the effects of the dye, but no such luck. So we are gradually decreasing the dosage.
This means, of course, that over the next couple of weeks, my daughter will be getting less and less of the medicine but all of the dye. I'd ask someone to wake me up when it's over, but I have to be on hand to contain the damage. At least it is only a couple of weeks.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

My daughter has been struggling with the concept of possession, self-discipline, and respect for others' belongings. She battles with her intense desires for everything from cookies in the cabinets that are acceptable to eat ONLY when we give them to her to her sister's lip gloss. She has progressed from snatching whatever looks interesting in the moment. Now she rationalizes.
"That's my sister's headband," I caught her saying one day. "I bet she doesn't want it anymore. She left here. She isn't taking care of it. I bet I can have it."
I watched this mental shift in horrified fascination. My mind went directly to a store, and I could hear her thinking, "Those look cool. They have lots of those. I bet they wouldn't care if I took one."
I intervened as she reached for her sister's headband. "What do you want to do with that?" I asked.
"I can keep it. She doesn't want it anymore."
"Let's put it in her room," I suggested in a rare moment of patience and insight. I took her hand to lead her upstairs. "That would be the best thing."
My daughter was reluctant, but with my help she returned her sister's headband. How many such incidents will I have to lead her through before the lesson sticks?

Managing Your Emotions Parenting an ADHD Child

No matter how much you love your child and how wonderful your child is, you will find yourself caught up in an emotional whirlwind when your child is hyperactive and impulsive with an attention span faster than the second hand on your watch. Handling your varying states of exhaustion, frustration, guilt, anger, and heart-stopping fear is so important to your parenting efforts. So is understanding your child.
Chances are that you are wrapped in a cocoon of fatigue that started when you brought your newborn home from the hospital and hasn't let up since. The first remedy for that is rest for you. Any which way you can get a break, even a small one, take it. Understanding friends and relatives can help you out here. Leading right in to the next remedy is to exhaust your child. Any activity that will tire your child out, from turning your child loose in the backyard to martial arts, gymnastics, climbing, or any other suitable sport, is a good one. If someone else is in charge, so much the better. Any time someone else is helping your child burn off some energy is a time for you to rest. If you can catch up on an errand or two without your child in tow, that works also, but don't try to cram too much work into those precious moments or you'll be even more tired than you were before.
Whenever you feel frustrated, remember that your child is even more so. She doesn't want to ride the rollercoaster she's on. He isn't trying to leave a path of destruction in his wake. Your child wants to please you more than anything, just like any other child. Don't be fooled by the smart remarks, the non-compliance, the forgotten rules. When you let yourself see your child's frustration and sympathize, you'll find the patience you need.
It is so easy to feel guilty that your child has these challenges. Keep reminding yourself that this is not your fault, and you are not being punished by bad karma. Whatever the causes of ADHD, you gain nothing by drowning yourself in a sea of guilt. The sooner you comes to terms with that, the lighter the emotional load on your psyche. Also remember that you have nothing to prove to anyone. Just knowing that you are doing your best as a parent is all you really need.
Your ability to deal with anger is critically important to your piece of mind and keeping the family peace. When your anger is overwhelming, you can walk away and count to 10. Sometimes you can create a suitable consequence for your child's actions, wiping the table, the floor, or his own shirt with a damp cloth, picking up every spilled crayon on the floor, sweeping the mess into a dust pan. For those times when you are angry with your child for being born with her challenges, try to get some perspective in a quiet moment. This is just the hand you both were dealt, and every time you solve a problem or a crisis you become more and more capable.
As for fear, don't live in the future. Just try to keep your child safe in the present moment. Fear is not meant to be squashed down for it serves the purpose of alerting you to danger. The problems comes when you are plagued by fears of the future, by worries over incidents that haven't happened yet. Listen to these fears, and then release them. If you cling to fears of what could happen to your child in the future, you won't be paying attention to what is happening in the present moment.
In order to be the best parent you can be for your child, pay attention to your emotions and try to stay positive. Acknowledge your feelings and let go of the ones that don't feel so good. Sympathize with your child. Most of all, be kind to yourself.

Judgment

One of the hardest things to cope with as the parent of an ADHD is being judged by others. Everyone thinks we're slacker parents who can't be bothered to discipline our children. We feel the stares and glares as we drag an eight-year-old through the store, screaming because he isn't getting what he wants or because we're screaming at him for some misdeed. Other parents don't arrange playdates because our child is too aggressive and confrontational. Sometimes even those closest to us, our spouses, parents, in-laws, and other relatives are full of criticism and unhelpful advice. How often have I heard the condescending, "She just doesn't listen to you, does she?" implying that it's all my fault.
I have only one way to cope with judgment and those who are judgmental and critical. In the friendliest way possible, I simply don't care what others think of me. My daughter and I make spectacles of ourselves on public so frequently that I lack the emotional energy to care. I get hostile, disapproving looks and comments, and I just tell myself, "I wish you well, but I don't care what you think of me." This is not easy, especially since I've really learned to appreciate the sympathetic, encouraging responses I get from total strangers. Of course, I want to be well thought of--I've just learned not to count on it. I let others keep their criticisms and focus my attention where it needs to be--on my child.

Help for ADHD and Learning Disabilities

I am existing from one hopeful possibility to another. I suppose it's natural to cling to possible solutions when you're wrestling with a knotty problem. The latest focus of my optimism is the Shedd Academy, located in Mayfield, Ky. The Shedd Academy specializes in educating children with dyslexia and ADD, with remarkable success.
I spoke to the friendly, helpful lady who answered the phone at length as I inquired about resources for learning materials and curricula to teach dyslexic children the fundamentals of reading and math. The materials available are only to those who have been trained to use them, and however inconvenient this may be to me personally, it is reassuring to know that I could be trained to supplement my child's education if I had to.
My husband is naturally assuming the role of resident skeptic. He didn't grow up with a sibling who struggled with reading and thought her father drove an Avon car. (It was a Chevy Nova.) He didn't watch her trace her spelling words on sandpaper and learn cursive without learning to print as part of what was known as the Shedd Method. He know her when she was mainstreamed in fifth grade reading on the high school level and doing eighth grade math. It's good that he plays devil's advocate. I need the balance.
I don't know of this is one of the solutions to helping my child learn, but I am certainly going to find out.

Keeping Your Peace of Mind

When you have a child who insists on doing the opposite of what you suggest (unless it involves sweets), who responds to firm commands with a wild, "No! Never!" and a mad dash in the opposite direction, who pours your shampoo into the bath, you begin to wonder about your peace of mind. Add that to your constant yelling and threats of punishment, mix in a raging dose of sibling rivalry, and you're wondering if you ever had any peace of mind to begin with.
I can only think of one solution at the moment, and that is taking time for yourself. Never mind that you feel guilty leaving your little tornado in the care of anyone else. Take a deep breath and consider who you can call to give yourself a break. Go sit in a cafe or browse in a bookstore, go to the movies, the batting cages, the spa, a museum. Go sit in a quiet church where all you have to do is kneel in a pew with your hands folded to be left alone. Join a book club, a discussion group. Do whatever feeds your spirit and brings you a sense of calm. That's the first step.

When Parents Hate Homework

Homework might have been boring in the past, in my childhood. It might have been a burden, something I did only because I had to. But I have never truly hated homework until now. How painful it is to haul out the stack of papers and sit with a child who wiggles and fusses, eyes darting everywhere, insisting that she must color, her boo-boo hurts, that the light hurts her eyes. She grabs the pencil and begins to scribble, not waiting for directions.
She groans at the instructions. Each word she writes is a jumble of consonants, a short vowel word written right to left and spelled backwards, or just the first letter of the word. She writes, "I L sme," and I know she loves our dog, Sammy. Her favorite animal is a G-O-D, written right to left D-O-G. She writes letters backwards, common for a first grader, but the letters are sometimes stacked vertically on their sides in a Tower of Babel.
This is a bright child who is struggling to learn to read, to count to twenty without skipping a number. This is a child who has been sent home from school twice for vomiting her breakfast under the strain of learning in a special education classroom. In a strange way, I am grateful to her. She won't fly under the radar and fall through the cracks. But can she learn?
I believe she can learn. I have faith that she can learn well and thrive in the right academic environment. I just have to find the right place and the right tools to help her.