Diagnosis Day

It's 7:45pm. Nathan is at a meeting and all three kids are asleep. I'm glad that I have a quiet night ahead of me. I hadn't known going into the appointment, but today was Diagnosis Day with Evan's psychologist. In the 5 or so visits we've had previously, we looked at how Evan's attention is affected by learning style, food sensitivities, personality type, and other factors. We were trained in (and have been using- more on that in a different post!) a "moderated learning" program to work on Evan's problem behaviors and build self control. I couldn't be more pleased with how wholistic our psychologist is-looking at all the factors that play a role in Evan's attention skills, seeing what behaviors are resolved as he builds self control, trying supplements... I'm glad that we've worked through each of these things step by step, and how it's provided me with the chance to work through my feelings and prepare for today's diagnosis: ADHD.

At this point, I am not at all surprised that Evan is now officially diagnosed as having ADHD. I've been reading a lot lately, and have been watching Evan pretty closely the past two months (and reasonably closely the past 6 years...). In a way, I am really relieved and validated. Parenting Evan has been really wonderful, and REALLY challenging. I've searched and struggled and failed in ways that exceed the normal difficulties I've faced with my other kids. I've known for a long time that Evan is a wonderful, complicated package. I don't need outside confirmation to believe it, but I do appreciate it. I like to seem like I "have it together", and I've been constantly humbled as my best efforts and ceaseless reading and applying the best parenting wisdom I can find, haven't yielded the results that other people I know have seen. (I know parenting is humbling for all of us...)

I'm grateful that I had time to work through my conflicted feelings about a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. Today while at the psychologists office, I remembered a time when, as a child, my parents were talking about a church classmate of mine who was on Ritalin. The impression that I got was Ritalin was horrible, addictive, even a killer-and my classmate would be lucky to live to enter his adulthood. (Well, I guess that was two decades ago-we know a bit more about side effects and long term usage now) Over the past two months, I've thought of the whispers of other primary leaders I've worked with- "Oh, well he/she has ADD," and the insinuations I've heard in their tone of voice. I've thought of the parents of ADD kids- those who seemed, to me, a bit too militant about furthering the interests of their child- and those who I thought didn't do enough. I've thought of the times in my life when I felt that Americans are over diagnosed and over medicated- that what we need is more rules and more discipline- not more excuses.

After all of my thinking, I've come to the conclusion that one way or another, Evan is being labeled. The labels range from "Sooo smart!" to "too smart for his own good" to "impulsive" and so on. So, I've decided that (hopefully) it will be to his overall advantage to have certain people know that he is a boy who's body and mind are racing.

So what about medication? That's another front on which I feel grateful. Dr. Scholten reccommends using a medication trial method where the individual is started on a very small dose of meds. Each day a chart is filled out that tracks where the child is in different parameters of attention and if any side effects are being observed. The dose is slowly increased

TBC...