Sounds like life has been quite challenging lately. You mentioned that your son lost his ADHD doctor when you moved. If you haven't found a new doctor yet, check out the ADDitude Directory for find your son help close to your new home. It also sounds like you are dealing with a serious case of oppositional defiant disorder, which experts say is closely tied to stress in the child's life. Experts have also recommended specific behavior therapy in helping deal with severe cases of ODD and behavior problems in addition to medication.

The ADDitude website has a whole section dedicated to dealing with behavior issues in children. This might be a good place to get started.

Hopefully things will calm down once your family gets settled, gets the ADHD under control with the help of a doctor, and tries some behavior therapy techniques.

Good luck, Dena

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Changing schools, friends, homes. WOW! It’s tough enough for a ‘normal’ kid with all these changes at once. As for the bullies, get to the school and get it taken care of somehow. Make them accountable, the law states that bullying is a 0-tolerance situation. Make the school prive it. Yes, it will probably make things harder for a while, but at least they will know there is someone behind your son and that bullying isn’t allowed in school (at least that what the principals and vice-principals like to think!). Begin your search for an ADHD specialist immediately. Ask the hospital clinic you went to before to refer you to someone, which they should have done in the first place. And if in the same area as the hospital clinic you were in, fight to get back in the program, as your son seems to be showing additional comorbid symptoms. That should get him back in. Or contact your closest LD office and ask if they can recommend a Dr./Pediatrician that specializes in ADHD children. How about a school psychologist /social worker, teacher, someone at school that your son can feel safe with when he is feeling ‘locked-in’ and he can go to get away from it for a while or an adult he feels comfortable with to talk his feelings out with at school. A 'safe zone' if you will. These are things I try to help my own child with. We just moved to a new school, home too and he is almost 17 and having issues with the kids at school, the way things are done, finding his place, and moving, losing his friends and freedoms. It’s a lot and parents seem to forget that kids can be very cruel to any new kid, no matter the age. Talk to your child’s teacher and explain what is happening. Get an IEP/504 done at school. Go to school and stay in the background for a bit and follow your son around and see what is happening. Don’t rely on teacher, principal, vice-principal. See for yourself. Remember what it was like when you were 7 and then multiply that negativity by 10x to the attitude of today’s children. It’s not all peaches and cream out there. And children are crueler than they ever were before. I apologize for sounding so negative, but I personally think we, as parents, forget that our kids don’t do well with change as fast as we want or need and we need to look out for how we handle changes and our children during these times. Good luck and prayers for obtaining help for your children. Yes, the 3-year-old is having issues with a new home, friends, etc., even if you don’t realize it. Don’t forget her because that is probably why she gets all troubled when you are trying to discipline your son. He is getting the attention she wants.

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I find that when our three ADD kids are having a really hard time at school and with behavior it is generally due to what is happening around them. What we have found that works very well and in a short amount of time is to do things individually with each of our kids. For example, boy scouts or playing a game with each kid like basketball. It has to be something that we can do one on one and spend a little bit of time. It makes them feel important in a very big world. I also will make a point to invite over other kids with similar interests or home situations and set up "playdates". As long as our child does not have to initiate the friendship, it seems to come easier and then they have a friend at school. I start with one friend and then add new friends every couple of weeks. Lastly, the Adderal dose does not seem significant enough. We use the concerta twice a day--just before school and then about 2-3pm. A different med may make a huge difference. We did find the Strattera to stunt our kids growth though. Our internest said he saw that with more than just our kids, but the med works GREAT! I take it. I should also tell you that we accept the challenges of ADD because we know that it is a gift as well. Our kids are smarter and faster than others, and have two highly successful parents because of their ADD.

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You can learn alot from

http://www.holistichealth.com

and from

https://www.neurorelief.com/

One thing to remember is that dont pressure a child that has neurotransmitter imbalances as they dont have the ability to cope with it till they get their balance back. One might think that they are just like any other kid so you treat them the same. Our son was very impulsive , we had his neurotransmitters tested and found out he was walking around in a constant state of stress as his stress neurotransmitters/Hormones were very high so he was primed for a fight or flight stress response at any moment and it was the reason for his impulsiveness. If you or the school is trying to be stricter on them as a way to cure them its going to send them into a downward spiral as being not able to cope only backs the imbalance worse and once you have elevated stress neurotransmitters it takes around 9 months to get them lowered.

One you get a neurotransmitter test done and figure out what ones are high and what ones are low you can get on a supplement regimine to balance tings out but it takes time.

Another thing is the stress over time causes issues with cortisol. As Cortisol is a limiter to stress. But after a awhile from the constant stress from the hyper activity and pressures to be a good kid a child will become not sensitive to cortisol anymore as constant high levels of cortisol de-sensitizes the receptors to cortisol. Not getting a regular good nights sleep and having a regular bed time every night is important as cortisol has diurnnal variation as its on a body clock and cycles to different levels thru out the day. If thats off then trouble controlling stress responses as in impulsive behaviors is an issue. People take PhosphitidylSerine to help make the body sensitive to cortisol again. Magnesium is another good one. One more thing is that Cortisol production can get weak from the over use and levels of cortisol can then get very low , put that on top of poor sensitivity and you got problems.

There is lots to learn and the websites above have alot of information on how the body works in reference to ADHD.

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I too have ADD and Ive also taken aderall. im fifteen and i suppose its expected that i be very argumentative and agressive, but when i was switched to metidate, the agressiveness faded. i think it was the aderall that was making me so angry all the time

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My son also had what we called the "poopy problem"!. He started the same behavior when he was 4 and we had him from his pediatrician to a pediatric gastroenterologist at a big city university hospital. He had to endure many a horrible test and no solutions were found. This continued up until the time he was finally diagnosed and medicated for adhd. Within a week of starting meds, his problem literally disappeared. My son had fine and gross motor skill delays and what we later found out was poor body awareness and the inability to attend to his bodily functions due to adhd. Fortunately, this was all resolved as he entered middle school! So, perhaps it may be a matter of finding the right dose of the right medication.

My son also started out on Adderall, but soon became depressed, frustrated and very very angry. We switched him to Concerta and raised the levels to what he felt comfortable with. Then we found out about wrap-around therapy which really saved our family life. He qualified for medical assistance due to his disability (this is NOT based on salary or existing insurance) and so qualified for wrap-around because of being agressive. The counselors came to your home or school and we learned what we needed to do to survive this horror! It went a long way to accepting our fate, too. This is a biggie.

We learned to say "I understand why you are angry, I am angry too. You are such a wonderful guy and I am sorry that you have adhd. We will work together to find a way through this." We read all the funny books about adhd (google ADHD Warehouse for tons of books). And get to a support group!! Google CHADD and see where there is a chapter in your area. You will feel much more empowered to be with people who get what's going on in your family and may have suggestions for you. Without my group, I would never know about getting medical assistance for my son (trust me on this, my son is now 19 and having a kid with disabilities is more expensive than you think!), never know about wrap-around. I would never have known that there is a community for parents and kids like us. You do not have to go through this alone.

I want to bring you hope that you are on the right track. By reaching out you are inviting help. Try to remember than Xavier is not spiraling down. He is at a couple of roadblocks that you have to find a way around! This will be a lifelong commitment to your son and he is worth it! Be his partner in this journey. When he says he hates you, he doesn't. He hates his inabiltiy to regulate himself and you are the safest adults that he can vent his frustrations to. (My son just told me a couple of days ago to go f--- myself. After many years of the wrong reaction, I learned to walk away. I said "oh, ok, I will". I apologized to him later because when I am scared for him (he isn't doing too good his first year of community college), I get angry. Then he apologized to me and we go on). Believe me, it's a work in progess.

Good luck! It's a long road, but you'll get there!

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Hi We've been through all of that and the last resort was to homeschool him and let me tell you he's a completely different child and he's a lot happier. No more phone calls and he's doing the work because it's fun. We are using K12 because it's a public school but at home and it's been great. Also if you read the book : "Optimum Nutriition for your child's mind" by Patrick Holford it will help you understand what's going on and what you can do naturally to help get his brain in alignment. I've done what it says and I've seen a huge difference and it's only been about two weeks. I wasn't a believer of vitamins and supplements and after I read the book and done what it says it has helped. Some doctors are not to keen in this belief so I did the research myself. Patrick has a bio brain centre and he has a website so you can ask questions. If you haven't done so you need to go organic and this is another thing that I didn't think much of well it has helped! I am also purchasing 3steps to conquering adhd because I came upon a blog and the people have followed this book as well. I am going to give it a try. Hope this was helpful to you. Hang in there and don't give up!

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