Hi, I'm Jennee, mom to a 9 year old girl who was diagnosed with add about 15 months ago. As a baby she did everything early, except walk on her own, she did that a week before her first birthday. As she got older having some issues that I had no idea how to deal with. She was, and still is very slow doing things. It takes her so long to get ready for school, to get anywhere, to do her work, to eat a meal... everything takes her extra time, even her speech is slow, it takes her a long time to say what she needs to say. I've seen her take a full hour to eat half a peanut butter sandwich, one she asked for! She wanted to eat it, she didn't want me to take it away but she would eat it so slowly. She was potty trained at 2 years old but then just before she turned 3 she went backwards and eventually had to be put in pull ups for 6 months. This happened about the same time I left her father so I blamed it on that. Even after she could stop wearing pull ups she was still having accidents often. It really frustrated me. I tried everything to get her to stop peeing in her pants. I tried rewards, punishments and talking to the dr. the dr was no help and just said she wasn't paying attention to when she needed to go and i needed to remind her. the accidents continued until she was 7. when she started school her first year went so well. she learned so much, she was ahead of her grade level in some areas, like reading, it was very hard to get her ready for school though. there was a lot of nagging in the mornings to get her ready. grade one she slowed down a bit, i thought maybe it was the teacher. grade 2 she really slowed down. her work wasn't getting finished. i tried to find out from the teacher why her work wasn't getting done, the teacher suggested getting her eyes and ears tested, getting an auditory processing test done, the school tested her speach. all is normal, finally i got from the teacher that she just doesnt seem to be able to pay attention, we got referred by our dr to a mental health woman who referred us to a pediatrician. we saw the ped may 07. he diagnosed her with add and she was put on concerta. soon after she started she began to have severe tantrums. i didnt know what was causing it. she was getting her work done in school but was awful at home. then the work wasnt getting done as much so we increased the dose and with that increase we also got increased tantrums. she was having them almost every night. i realized the tantrums were related to the pills and stopped them and waited for an appt to the ped again. people told me that the tantrums and behavior problems she was having were normal for a girl who was about to turn 9 but i knew that this was not my child. the longer she was off the concerta she better she became. i got my daughter back! while this was going on i was trying to find a reason for the slowness. i googled everything i could think of to find something to explain it. i read every add book i could get my hands on, i even read about autisim and aspergers and every other developmental disorder i could find, nothing described her. then one day i was in walmart and a magazine caught my eye, on the cover it said "the unhurried child" and i thought thats it! thats her! so i skimmed through the article to see if it really had anything to do with her but it was only promoting a book. i wrote down the name of the book and the author and googled that. through this i ended up finding something where a woman was talking about a book called the out of sync child, so i read that and it talked about sensory processing disorder. so i had an ot do a sensory profile for her. she is over stimulated. i feel this is important for me to know. when i got back in with the ped i told him about the ot and gave him the report from that. i had decided that since she was over stimulated that i did not want to give her another stimulant so i was going to ask for strattera, before i could ask thats what the ped recommended . she has been on that since may and is doing well. she does seem to get over stimulated easily and needs quiet time, especially after a busy day. keeping her in a predictable schedule is a big help and i have to give her warnings before i change things.

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