It doesn't stretch my imagination to understand why the safe haven law may be effective.

My coworker, Betsy, and I listened to public radio as we drove home from a conference a couple of weeks ago. She’s 24 and single, and at this point, anyway, doesn’t see herself as ever becoming a parent. A story came on about Nebraska’s Safe Haven law. I assume this story has made national, not just regional news—but here’s a recap: Nebraska’s Safe Haven law allows...
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I hate thinking about the negative effects ADHD has on my daughter's ability to make friends at school.

Yesterday, I went from feeling the love as I described in my ADHD parenting blog, to feeling some pretty darn awful pain for my sweet, lovable, vulnerable child. Don, Aaron, Natalie and I were all in the living room last night, and Nat was talking about school. “Who do you like the most in your class?” I asked. She never talks about the social...
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Thanks to Natalie's special service providers, I maintain my sanity two nights a week.

I was “feeling the love” this morning. Looking at Natalie and seeing her beauty. Kissing her fingers, her soft little cheeks. Talking nice, not crabbing at her. Complimenting her. Enjoying her. Loving her. What’s up with this? Small changes make a big difference. We’ve gotten on a regular, reliable schedule with Nat’s services, and knowing that I’ll have help on a regular basis makes...
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Forget the professional organizer, what I really need is a Mom.

A professional organizer—who am I kidding? What I really want is a mom. Not a mom like me—one who doesn’t keep up with the laundry, goes to bed before her 12 year old, and almost never bakes. I want a REAL mom to take care of me; to take care of my family for me. My mom died of breast cancer when I was 13,...
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I have a secret. A shameful, embarrassing secret.

I have a secret. A shameful, embarrassing secret. I spent hundreds of dollars to get high. My drug of choice? Sessions with a professional organizer.Don’t laugh! I swear, the high was unbelievable! Unfortunately, as with many drugs, the high didn’t last. I’d beg, borrow—even steal--to get the feeling back again. The knee-deep clutter my child with ADHD creates leads me to crave the extreme opposite: precise, militaristic,...
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Do you employ an ADHD Coach, or another service provider to help your ADHD child learn to organize? Who pays for that service?

I’m no expert on services for kids with ADHD. As I wrote once before, even though I worked in mental health for 16 years before jumping ship and moving to Library Land, I find it hard to navigate “The System”. I trust and depend upon our case manager and service providers for advice, and just sign on the dotted line. Make that plural: lines. Dozens of...
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The winner of "Tales of Destruction": What is the most expensive item your ADHD child has destroyed?

ADDs and Ends: Three Unrelated Stories Related to ADHD and ADDitude One Aaron, my sixth grader, has always been good at spelling. He hardly ever misses a word on a spelling test. In fact, I think he’s only missed one word this entire year: attitude. He spelled it like this: ADDitude! What a smart boy! Two I was looking through the new books in the youth area at the...
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Have you talked with your child about ADHD? What did you say?

I have a final thought to share from the Savarese family’s keynote address about autism: an audience member asked the Savarese’ if they told DJ he was autistic—if they used the tern autistic with him, when he was younger. DJ replied that he couldn’t understand spoken language until after he learned to read, so no, he wasn’t familiar with the word autism when he was...
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Sometimes, treating a child's anxiety can trickle down to fewer ADHD symptoms that impair social skills and school performance.

Here’s another insight I gleaned from the Savarese family’s keynote address on autism: Anxiety plays a significant role in DJ’s daily life with autism. Treating his anxiety with medication and managing it through coping skills has helped DJ succeed (kick butt!) in a regular classroom. Does your child with ADHD have problems with anxiety? Mine does. Although she hasn’t been officially diagnosed with an...
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Should we work to normalize the differences in our ADHD children, or should we expect others to accept those differences, and to view them as no big deal?

Here's a provocative point to ponder that I took away from the Savarese family’s keynote address about autism that I wrote about previously: Should we work to normalize our children’s differences, or should we expect others to accept those differences, and to view them as no big deal? The mother of a 3 year old with autism said that her child’s teachers were advising her to stop...
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