My son was diagnosed last January at the age of 5 with ADHD. He really has focus issues and that's how we found it. He could not learn. Literally couldn't focus long enough to remember what he was told 1 minute ago. He goes to a school where we pay tuition and they told us in January that he had learning disabilities and would need to be tested. They thought he was possibly dyslexic. I cried to my best friend who is a 6th grade teacher and I described his symptoms and she said 'He's not learning disabled. He has ADHD. Trust me.' Long story short - his doctor wouldn't prescribe meds for his age until we went through this long process and after getting feedback from so many people and recommendation letters, she finally prescribed Adderall.

It was a blessing. He started meds in February and had caught up on the school year in 8 weeks and more by the time he was finished with Kindergarten in May. He went from struggling in every subject to passing and doing well in most all of them. The teacher said she'd never seen such a change in a child before. His confidence grew...he did great.

We are a football family. Last year was his first football season. He struggled very much. This year he started in the summer already on his medicine. He's only 6 but in a very competitive league. They play either practice or games 5-6 days a week. It was fine during the summer when he could take his meds (now concerta) before practice...he was doing well and had a starting spot. He had confidence and was really happy with football.

School started this week and we give him his meds in the morning now. After one week, he lost his starting spot already. He's bummed about it but literally can't focus during practice. I feel so bad for him. I explained to the coaches tonight that he would probably fall far back on the depth chart because now he would struggle. They said they'd work through it but clearly they have no clue how to work with an ADHD child. And with a team of 35+ kids- there's always someone there to fill that void.

This league has become like family. You spend so much time with the people... and my heart breaks but I'm starting to realize that ADHD is going to affect our life more than we thought. It makes me really sad to see this happen. I know there's not anything I can do. I won't add more medicine for him just for football - that's ridiculous but now he's going to be yelled at a lot more and all that confidence will probably go right out the window. The coaches adore him but at practice he's treated just like everyone else. If he messes up - he's in trouble. I'm not up for quitting but maybe next year - we need to move on. I'm not sure what the answer is at this point. I just wanted to get this all off my chest. I kind of thought we beat the ADHD monster with the meds. I was wrong.

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