ADHD Parenting Blog

Archives: October 2008

Safe Haven for Kids

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 parents to leave babies at hospital emergency rooms—no questions asked, no fear of prosecution. Although intended to protect newborns, Nebraska’s law covers children ages 0-19. It’s being used not only by teenage girls who manage to deny pregnancy until they give birth in a porta-potty, but by parents or guardians of older children, many of whom have mental health or behavior problems. People are shocked. Betsy said she can’t imagine such a thing.

I guess I have an exceptional imagination.

In my world—in the global world--abandonment is real. I adopted my daughter from an orphanage in Russia. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the circumstances that lead birth mothers in other countries to place their children in the care of others.

And, I’ve had a small taste of what it’s like to parent a troubled child. I worked in a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed kids when I was first out of college, then with adults with chronic mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, some of whom were parents, some of kids with mental health or behavior disorders. Last but not least, I’m the parent of a child with (relatively mild) special needs.

Don’t misunderstand me—I’m far, far, far from wanting to take a road trip to Nebraska. But, what if…

…we weren’t financially stable?
…we had no health insurance?
…we were homeless?
…we had no support from extended family?
…one of us had a drug or alcohol problem, or a mental health problem?
…I had no spouse?
…we lost our jobs?
…there was a shortage of Ritalin?
…we lost our services?
…I wasn’t savvy enough to access the special services that are out there?
…the services out there weren’t good enough to make a difference?
…we had more than one child with special needs?
…Nat’s special needs were more severe?

What if several of those things were true? Problems like those don’t just add up—one plus one equals two. They compound exponentially.

Thankfully, I’m more likely to end up on a beach in Mexico than an E.R. in Nebraska.

But, unlike Betsy, I can imagine.

My ADHD Kid's School Social Life

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 side of school—who she plays with at recess, who said what to whom.

She threw out a girl’s name I didn’t recognize, and then quickly backtracked. “She always says, ‘Don’t, Natalie. Natalie, stop it!’”

Then came the killer blow.

“One time in the lunchroom, Will said, ‘Do you like Natalie?’

‘No.’

‘No.’

‘No.’

‘No.’

‘Everybody said. ‘No’.”

The school nurse called a couple of weeks ago. Natalie was in the lunchroom, and was crying. A teacher took her to the nurse’s office. She had a sore throat or a headache or something, and couldn’t stop crying. She wanted to go home.

I’m so glad the nurse was able to reach me, and that I did, in fact, take her home. Imagine Natalie going back into the lunchroom to sit with those kids. Going outside for recess. Returning to class. Picturing it breaks my heart.

“Don’t worry about those kids. You have so many other friends.” I said.

Nat’s incredibly resilient. She’s sailed into school quite happily every day since.

I don’t know how she does it. I hurt so much I can hardly breathe.

A Happy ADHD Family

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 a huge difference. Huge! Did I mention…the difference is HUGE?

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, from 5:30-7:30 pm, I can count on Hannah. It’s not so much what Hannah does (although that’s huge too!) but the fact that she’s there.

Her presence in our home means I can be in the same room with Natalie, and instead of expending the last of my daily allotment of energy on keeping Natalie's energy contained. I can load the dishwasher. Instead of coaxing and prodding Natalie to abandon her markers and paper, put on her shoes and jacket, and climb in the backseat of the car so we can pick Aaron up from basketball practice, I can jump in the car and go alone. Instead of begging Don to come straight home from work to help me survive the evening, I can happily accept his offer to stop for groceries on the way home.

Nat’s services are provided by Gayle and her agency, Village Enterprises, named for the famous quote, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The village concept is true for all children, but is especially poignant when the child in question has special needs.

For today, at least, I’m one happy villager. Thanks, Gayle. Thanks, Hannah.

Don called just now. “I’m blogging about how nice it is to have Hannah come every Tuesday and Thursday night,” I said.

“Oh, it’s huge!” he said.

Make that two happy villagers.

No, make that one happy family.

I Want My Mommy

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, and up until today, I’d have told you this: that her death made me extremely independent. Mature. Self-reliant. Responsible.

Yeah, yeah.

Today I’m looking at my life differently: I don’t want to be responsible. I’d like to buy back those missing years of my childhood. I figure I have 7 years coming to me, credits for ages 13-21. I’ll take them now, please.

In order to do so, I’ll need a mom. To buy the groceries, and cook healthy meals. To do my laundry. Deep cleaning! Wow! That would be so cool! To keep track of schedules, arrange rides. To simply be there, so I could be free to come and go.

I’m leaving in two hours to drive to Dubuque for the Iowa Library Association conference, where I’m presenting about Project Smyles, the early literacy outreach program that I helped create for our library. I’ll be gone for three days. I arranged for babysitters, made phone calls, arranged rides. I’ll stock the fridge before I go. I’ll scoop out Smokey’s litter box. I’ll keep my cell phone charged, and I’ll call home each night.

But...someone else will prepare my meals. Change my sheets; wash my towels. I’ll watch tonight’s presidential debate uninterrupted, and I may even drink as I do so! The conference schedule will structure my days for me. Don will take care of himself and the kids.

It won’t be a slumber party. It isn’t 7 years—not even 7 days. But it will be a change of pace, a chance to recharge a little—get re-energized about work. Sometime Friday evening, somewhere on Highway 20, as I drive back to Ames, I’ll morph back into a mom. And when I do, the universe will still owe me little mothering. Somehow, someday, I intend to collect.

Hooked on Mary

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, obsessive-compulsive order. I want every item in our house to have a designated space. I want containers that are labeled—in two spots—on the lid and on one side. The labels should be computer generated, not hand-written, with both the name and a color picture of the objects inside. I want the spot on the shelf where the container belongs to have a matching label. I want the containers themselves to match—or, better yet-- be color coded, and to stack in perfect, symmetrical, pleasing order. I want…I want…I want…

As I drove home from work one day, I read the bumper sticker on the car in front of me: organizer-coach.com. I went to my computer when I got home and checked out the website: Mary Sigmann, professional organizer. Jackpot! I scheduled a work session for the following week.

I had three sessions with Mary. Fast-paced, intensive work sessions. We tackled the basement, both kids’ rooms, several closets, and Nat’s craft area. The work was tiring, but oh-so-satisfying. Her approach to helping kids with ADHD is to reduce the amount of stuff they have, or at least the stuff they have out at any one time. We filled garbage bags. We put bags and boxes of stuff for Goodwill straight into the trunk of my car.

It’s been several months since my last Mary-fix. We’ve lost a lot of ground since then, but we’re still much better off than we were without her. If I could afford to, I’d have her come monthly. I can just picture what my house would look like!

I want my Mary…please, just a little Mary! I swear it’ll be the last time!

Where’s the car? I sold it to buy a little Mary…

Navigating the ADHD Provider System

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 them! And then I just say “thank you!”

We live in Iowa, and the services Natalie receives are paid for by a Children’s Mental Health Waiver. I think the Waiver is Iowa’s method for administering certain Medicaid dollars from the federal government.

As I understand it, Iowa’s CMH Waiver is only about 3 years old. Anything that new could use a little tweaking, right? Time and again, since Nat’s been on the waiver, I’ve found myself dying to provide a little feedback; do a little advocating.

Okay, here’s what I really mean. I want to ask, “What the HELL are you thinking?” Problem is, I can’t figure out whom to ask!

The first battle I fought had me making phone calls and asking the age-old consumer complaint question: “Who’s your supervisor?” Then, “Who’s your supervisor’s supervisor?” The issue was whether or not Natalie qualified for the Waiver based on a diagnosis of ADHD made by our Pediatrician. The waiver says that the diagnosis has to be made by a Licensed Mental Health Professional, and since a pediatrician’s licensure doesn’t involve working under the supervision of a LMHP, their expertise doesn’t mean shit. (Excuse me, I guess I’m still angry!)

Our pediatrician is on the faculty of well-respected medical school, and travels around the state doing clinics to treat kids with ADHD. It doesn’t get any better than that, folks. But that wasn’t good enough! It was a letter from a Master’s level therapist who saw Nat maybe 3 times that did the trick.

Don’t even get me started on Nat’s respite services—the stories I could tell!

My latest gripe relates to the fact that although having ADHD is what qualifies Nat for Waiver services, the services can’t help with one of the biggest problem areas kids with ADHD face—organizing. Isn’t that ironic? We can only work on touchy-feely issues, not practical ones. Organizing isn’t considered a “coping skill”.

I’d argue that it is; that for a kid with ADHD, learning from an early age to develop, and follow, systems to succeed at anything that requires organization is not just a coping skill, it’s THE coping skill. At Natalie’s age, her main “jobs” are to play and to learn in school. In order to succeed at playing, she needs to be able to find her toys. In order to learn in school, she needs to be able to find clean clothes to wear, find and pack her backpack, get papers home to Mom, and do homework. All require organization.

I do the best I can to create an environment where she can succeed. I paid big bucks to work with a professional organizer. I bought a locker for Nat’s coat, shoes, and packpack. I bought plastic bins, shelves, labels. I’ve cleaned up and re-organized Nat’s room a million times.

Natalie is old enough now to start using the tools I’ve provided--but I NEED HELP teaching her to how to do it! It’s endless. Overwhelming. Exhausting. Constant.

Advocating at the State level would take time and energy, and I use up my quota for both just getting through each day.

The service providers we work with don’t call themselves ADHD Coaches. I don’t know—but I imagine—that ADHD Coaches help with organizing. Do you employ an ADHD Coach, or another service provider to help your child learn to organize? How is that ADHD service financed? Is that service paid for by insurance, a government program, or privately?

My ADDitude Life

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 library where I work last week.

“Oooh! A new book about succeeding in school with ADHD! "I said.

Tracy, one of my ever-helpful colleagues, responded. "We have a magazine about ADHD. Did you know that? Tons of parents read it."

Hmmm, I think I may have heard of it…

Three
We cleaned out our garage last weekend and uncovered the drum set Nat received—and promptly destroyed--last Christmas. I described the incident in a post; Tales of Destruction. I ended the post by asking: “What’s the most expensive item your child with ADHD has destroyed within 24 hours?” Seeing the drum set again prompted me to go back and read the comments that have been added by readers. You have to read these parents’ stories!

The winner had a tale of $3000 in damage to a brand new 2008 Nissan Pathfinder. I sincerely hope no one can beat that! I’m afraid to ask…can you?

Talking About ADHD with Your Child

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 younger.

His parents said that they used the words autism and autistic frequently in DJ’s presence, but didn’t recall actually telling DJ he has autism and explaining what that means. He clearly knows now, and in fact, is an activist fighting for respect, full inclusion in school and society, and a deeper understanding of people with autism.

That made me think: Do I talk about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or use the acronym ADHD in front of Natalie? Should I make a point of explaining to her that she has ADHD, and what ADHD is?

Coincidently, the question came up in a goal setting meeting with Natalie’s case manager, Tammy, and Natalie's in-home therapist, Gayle, last week. Should we write a goal saying that we’d tell Natalie about her diagnosis, Tammy asked? Keep in mind that Natalie is 8, a second grader.

“Let’s leave that up to Mom,” Gayle said, after a brief discussion. Yeah, that feels right.

I hadn’t thought about whether or not I talk about ADHD in front of Natalie. I think I probably do—in fact, I’m sure I have, very naturally, and without inhibition-- when talking with Summer, Nat’s O.T., Gayle, and teachers or other service providers. It’s not a secret, but it’s also not something I’ve clearly defined for Natalie.

She knows how to answer questions from friends about why she takes medicine. She’s done so dozens of times. “It helps me concentrate,” Nat says.

“And it helps you slow down so you can make good choices,” I tend to add, careful to emphasize that she’s in charge of making those choices—having ADHD isn’t an excuse she can use for poor behavior. My gut tells me that’s good enough for now.

Have you talked with your child about ADHD? At what age? Did you sit down and read a book about ADHD with your child—and have the ADHD talk? Or, did your child come home from school one day with the question: “I heard my teacher say I have ADHD. What’s that?” I’d love to hear other parents’ advice about how and when to explain to a child that they have ADHD.

The ADHD / Anxiety Connection

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 anxiety disorder, one mental health professional said Natalie probably will be at some point.

She has a lot of headaches, and she certainly holds tension in her body. Our O.T. has recommended therapeutic massage, and says Nat doesn’t know how to relax her muscles. She also shows signs of anxiety in social situations — a fear of new people (in some circumstances, and a dangerous lack of healthy fear in others!)

So, what to do about it? Natalie’s anxiety is not severe enough to require treatment with medication. I guess we’ll continue to work on learning simple coping skills — mindfully taking deep breaths, releasing excess energy through physical activity, and learning what it feels like to relax in order to get to sleep at night.

How do you help your child with ADHD cope with anxiety?

Addressing Differences in Our ADHD Children

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 her child every time she engaged in stimming. Stimming is repetitive self-stimulating behaviors, that either provide sensory stimulus to the brain, or help the child release excess sensory stimulus — such as hand flapping or rocking. The mother wasn’t sure that stopping her child was the right course of action. Wouldn’t she be taking away the child’s ability to express herself? Isn’t stimming a part of who her child is?

DJ Savarese, a non-speaking high-schooler with autism, advised her to ignore behaviors if she wanted them to go away. Very wise. Focusing on the behavior in an effort to stop it could certainly reinforce it instead.

Ralph Savarese, DJ’s dad, argued that stimming could be viewed as a difference, but that just because it’s a difference, that doesn’t mean it’s a negative. Others could simply accept it.

He differentiated between accepting the fact that someone flaps their hands to express joy, versus the less positive side of stimming - getting stuck performing a stereotypic behavior in a compulsive manner. He also acknowledged that kids like to fit in — if it bothers the individual to be seen as different, they might want to work toward reducing the behavior.

I’d add that if you try to reduce a behavior that helps the child cope, you’d better offer them some choices of desired behaviors to replace it.

Again, Natalie doesn’t have autism; she has ADHD. How does this topic apply to ADHD? I’m often torn between normalizing Natalie’s differences, and hoping others just accept them. Take, for example, my rush to offer Natalie’s whole class an assortment of pencil grips, which I wrote about previously. The teacher’s response to my offer was that it wasn’t necessary. Let the kids ask once why Nat had a new kind of grip, she suggested, and she’d normalize it. That would be the end of it. No big deal. I agreed.

Taking ADHD medication, leaving school to go to O.T., going to the special ed room or having the special ed teacher in her classroom, having trouble with handwriting and drawing, rocking to go to sleep during sleepovers — the differences are there. Are they negatives? Positives? Are they important to address, or are they no big deal?

I’m going to challenge myself to not just react when Nat points out a difference, or when I notice something different — but to ask myself those questions.

Does your child with ADHD see himself or herself as different? If so, how do you, as a parent, react?