What about in the meantime you use your pediatrician for help. They are very well versed in most ADHD cases as well as the latest on meds. You may also want to let your school psychologist in on all of this. Most of the time I have found that the more honest I am about my son with others the more compassionate others are around us. My son is now 10. He is in the seminar (gifted) program at our school. He is currently on one dose of vyvanse daily. Best wishes and take it one day at a time.

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Did you try leaving out sugar&additives? The first step would be take him of sugar and additives (100%! let him only eat the sugar which is in fruit etc, NO added sugar in anything. Especially be aware of the additives, one lollipop will upset the whole experiment for another 48 hours. NO artificial sweeteners!! READ THE LABELS.)

80% of ADHD kids do really well without medication when they keep this diet. Dairy could be a problem too, but that would be the next step if this does not work (enough). Try this for 48 hours and see how it works - the change will probably be dramatic.

Sweet stuff he CAN eat & drink:

Fruitjuice 100% (no sugar/additives); Jam without sugar or sweeteners; Yoghurt without sugar ( I use the Bifidus or Acidophilus, it's less sour) with one spoon of the jam; Muesli without sugar; Homemade pancakes with cheese / jam / fruit; Homemade compote: apples with any red fruit for example.

And then of course crisps (salty - the other flavours have additives!!), nuts, cashewnuts, peanuts etc.

Step two ould be using EFT, free manual at http://emofree.com. Lots of posts about the effects of EFT on ADHD kids, just search for ADHD in the search box (left upper corner)!

Keep us posted. If you want to read more, I have a website where I post about it: http://eft4add.com.

Charlotte

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Thank you patiencemama. It really helps to hear how well your son is doing.. This has been a hard thing for me to accept. Imagine someone with ADHD being the "ostrich in the sand" about one of her children having it. I have finally accepted it and we are going to make this work. Us ADDers are awesomely unique and I will make sure my baby knows that!!! I have thought about talking to his pediatrician. I talked to her once before about it when he was literally jumping off the walls at her office. I'm concerned anything she does may skew the evaluation, though.

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Thank you for your tips. He is already off of sugar 100% (except for fruit and about 3 servings of juice a week) and we have been taking him off other foods as well. He is on natural ADD supplements and I am hoping those will kick in soon.

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Oh that is good news.. try the EFT as well, if he is already "clean" from most energy toxins, it will probably help him a lot. It helps my daughter a lot, I use a Tappy Bear for her, and she really does well since we started tapping. hugs! Charlotte

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I just responded to a similar post with this article:

Does Your ADHD Child Disrupt the Classroom?

Impulse Control: Helping ADHD Kids Manage their Behavior

These suggestions might help you with your son's impulse control issues. There are ideas you can put into place at home and at school (with the teacher's help).

I hope this helps a bit. Dena

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My 6 year old son was diagnoses adhd and dyslexic this summer. First thing I did was let his teacher know. She already has some coping mechanisms in place in the classroom. My little guy has has a tendency to go into lala land( as did I from grade school thru college and beyond). It definately helps for the teacher to know whats going on. As for his hyper activity( my son saves that for home. Thankfully, so far, hes very well behaved in school), perhaps the teacher can be persuaded to give him what our teacher calls a "body break". A walk to the office with another child with a note. I was at school teh other day to find my adhd son escorting a friend to teh nurse because his friend needed a bandaid. These little breaks help. Also- get rid of as much sugar as possible. lots of protein if you can get it into him at breakfast and lunch. My son ( and myself) are both responding really well to omega 3 supplements. I've also ditched anything with artifical colors, flavors, preservatives...I found all natural substitutes for his fav. snacks and treats( they are more expensive tho) and my husband has noticed a difference in him when he gets home from work at night. Best of luck...

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to see you have already taken him off sugar etc...apologies for the repeat. Typical of me,,to not have the patience to read everything before I respond...lol

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Thank you for your reply too. Since it is taking so long to get him to the psychologist, we opted to take him to his pediatrician. They are completing his evaluation and will be giving us a call soon I hope. It has deteriorated to a point in class that he often has to sit behind his teacher at her desk just to have any chance to finish his work and he still doesn't get it done because he is talking, walking around etc. He has been getting a "red" in conduct everyday. I found out that the psychologist he is going to is very good at non medicine management which is exciting, but until then, I think we will do medication just to get him by. It was a very hard decision for me (I cried for almost 10 days and had to take a day off of work because of all the stress) but my husband, my sisters and my mom reminded me how much I have suffered because my dad refused to medicate me. Thank you all so much for your tips and support, it means the world to me.

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I know exactly what you are going through. My son was diagnosed at age 6. Mean while we were going nuts. To help our son we used positive enforcement by using a daily behavior chart for school. The teacher and I came up with 4 target behaviors we thought were most important. For example, staying in seat, being nice to friends, raising hand and completing work. At the end of the day the teacher would put a sticker on the box to let me know he accomplished the task. At first we gave 1 day reinforcement, if he could get a sticker for all the things. He was able to decide what he wanted. My son decided that each sticker was worth 10 cents. When he had enough money to spend at the dollar store he could spend his money on anything he wanted. There are many other ways you can do this, each child is motivated by different things. As he was able to accomplish it daily, then we moved to three days then to the week. It takes a long time to have your child tested. Then we were faced with the medication issues. My son is now 11 and is an "A" student since starting on medication at age 7. My advice to you about that is DO SOME RESEARCH ON YOUR OWN. You of all people know your child better than anyone else. Quote:

badkitty said: My son is 5 years old and just started kindergarten. He is doing horribly in conduct. The teacher says he has no self control and cannot focus on tasks. Having ADHD myself I have finally admitted he is showing some classic ADHD traits not just "boys being boys" as I had tried to convince myself. We have decided to take him to a child psychologist trained in ADHD, but cannot get him in till Nov 2nd. I don't know if I can make it till then. He got sent to the principal's office today for accidentally scratching a girl in the face with a pencil and then purposely sticking his pencil in another girl's hair. My son doesn't have the aggression part of ADD he just gets way too excited. His teacher and the principal go on and on about how smart he is and what a wonderful vocabulary he has and how sweet he is, but he is in a gifted school and I am afraid if we don't improve his conduct he won't stay there. For now the teacher and principal are willing to work with us but I need help. To make a long post short, what can I do to improve his behavior while we wait on the Dr's appt. As you know reward/consequence doesn't do much. We have offered him every reward under the sun including a "Nicky day" where he gets to do anything he wants. We have a consequence strategy in place that we follow through on (and have since he was little) but it has little to no effect. Please help. I am at my wit's end.

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We finally got the results from the doc today and he has fairly profound ADHD. In her words, while he is not at the tippy top of the scale, he's up there. We are going to start 20mg Vyvanse on Friday and go from there. He has a behavior chart sent home everyday and we told him that checks were worth .10 and plus signs were worth .25 as long as he was on green or yellow. If he was on red, no money. So far, he has been on red everyday. I pulled him off the bus this week because he was going to be suspended if he got sent to the office again. They actually had to put a seat belt on the bus for him, but he kept getting so excited, he would hit the boy next to him. Here's hoping the meds work. I've heard great things about the psychologist he will be seeing in Nov, so hopefully that will help too.

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Speaking as a doctor who treats ADD/ADHD, and as a mother of a son with ADHD, the condition is best tackled on many fronts with a combination of meds, diet, exercise, therapy/behavioral interventions, etc. It really is too much to list in a brief post.

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Just an update, I ended up taking my son to his pediatrician who actually said "I was wondering when we were going to have this conversation." She tested him and diagnosed pretty profound ADHD. She started him on Vyvanse 20mg which has been a miracle for us! He did get into the psychologist who is wonderful! We had to up his dose to 30mg a couple of months after he started it, but it seems to be working. The psychologist also had him tested as well and confirmed the ADHD but also found that he has an overall IQ of 128 and a vocabulary IQ of 153! He said he had never seen a vocab IQ that high in a child his age! So not only were we dealing with ADHD, but with boredom. His school put him in an accelerated reader program which seems to be helping, but we still have trouble with incomplete work. We started a behavior chart at home and that is working well too.

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Dear moms,

See if your school has what is called a SEPTA. A SEPTA is just like the regulare PTA only this one is for parents who have children in Special Education. Your child qualifies for Services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. (IDEA) qualifies for an Other Health Impaired Label. (OHI). Don't accept a 504 plan for your school. 504 is actually a nondiscriminination act. A 504 plan does not include goals and objetives, but it does not have any of the accountabiity that IDEA does. I can't tell you how many High Schools I've been to that don't even know that the kid has a 504 plan! See www.help4specialeducation.com for more info.

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