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I have a 16 year old son with ADHD. He was diagnosed at age 4 1/2, but I can honestly say that I knew it in my gut much sooner than that. He is medicated, but before we made that decision we had him evaluated over a period of
time by a qualified psychiatrist who specialized in ADHD, and he is carefully monitored still.
For us, medication is part of the solution but certainly not the entire solution. What has really made the difference for him was the discovery of his unique strengths and talents and our investment of time and effort to nurture those.
Sticks (my pseudonym for him) is a drummer. A really good drummer. He aspires to attend Indiana University and major in Jazz Studies. He's been playing drums since 5th grade, when he started drum lessons and Irish Dance lessons (at his insistence) concurrently. Over the next four years he competed at the irish dance world championships twice and nationals three times before retiring to focus on drumming.
Because he has had this creative outlet, he's been motivated to achieve in school. After some fairly miserable middle school years (which I attribute to the school more than the student), he is an A student in Honors and AP classes in high school. He's ranked 50th in a class of 500 and consistently achieves on the standardized tests as well as his classes.
I truly believe that the core of his success is finding what got him excited about his life, finding a purpose in it, and helping him to understand that his school performance was an integral part of achieving his higher musical goals. The medication assists, but does not cure.
Here's another piece of our solution: We trained him in the use, care and feeding of computers at a very early age. He is tech and web-savvy and uses the web tools like online calendars, email and IM to leverage his time. He has the Student version of Microsoft Office and knows his way around it (and has since 4th grade), so that he can QUICKLY compose, edit and print schoolwork. His handwriting is atrocious (fine motor skills are often lacking in ADHD kids), so using the computer is a far better use of his time and easier on the teacher's eyes.
Finally, we made a point of always staying involved to the extent possible with his teachers by volunteering in the classroom or in any way we possibly could. By doing this, we kept a line of communication open with them as well as a line of accountability for him. The only exception to this was middle school, where we found ourselves cut out of the loop by the school itself. Again, I count those middle school years as lost years, and my non-ADHD daughter is now in the same vortex with similar results, which is why I attribute the middle school issues to the school rather than the student.
If there's one theme that emerges from our experience with ADHD, it is this: Don't automatically reject the possibility of medicating your ADHD child, but don't assume that medicating your child is the answer. For us, it enabled Sticks to reach for and attain his goals. He still had to do the work and learn the hard way just like the rest of us. :)
(April 2006) (
